Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Sunday Nice Things： Birth With Babylist

00:00:00.000 Hey, y'all. Welcome to Sunday Nice Things. For the past year, I've been working on a

00:00:12.160 new podcast series that's near and dear to my heart and my passion for telling women's

00:00:16.340 stories. Today, I'm dropping the very first episode of Birth with Baby List into your

00:00:21.920 feeds. What I love the most about this podcast is that we gathered a group of truly incredible

00:00:27.640 experts to give fact-based information to hundreds of questions that real women had about pregnancy

00:00:34.840 and giving birth. There's an episode for every stage of giving birth, from how do you know if

00:00:40.240 you're in labor, what do labor pains actually feel like, to all of your options for pain management.

00:00:46.440 We get in the nitty-gritty of all of it. One of the episodes that I love so much is the one where

00:00:51.280 we talk about epidural versus no epidural, giving birth at home, and all of the options around pain

00:00:57.380 management and debunking all of the crazy myths that are out there about the different kinds of

00:01:02.720 pain management. I'm going to link to the whole series in the show notes, or you can just Google

00:01:07.320 birth with baby list. This is the podcast that I wish that I had had when I was pregnant eight

00:01:12.440 years ago. And since I didn't, now I'm making it. Now that I'm done, now that I'm finished with the

00:01:17.200 reading, I get to pass on everything I learned to everyone else. Hello, and welcome to Birth

00:01:27.980 with Baby List. Congratulations on your pregnancy. I'll bet you have a ton of questions, but you

00:01:34.700 might not be sure who to ask. That's what we're here for. I'm your host, Jo Piazza. I'm a mom of

00:01:41.360 three young kids, and this is the podcast that I wish I'd had when I was pregnant. It truly is.

00:01:47.760 In this show, you're going to get real insights from actual mothers who've been through birth

00:01:51.700 themselves. And that's what makes it completely different from anything else out there. You'll 0.67

00:01:57.240 hear their stories and their advice right from them. No filters. We're also talking to dozens

00:02:03.120 of experts from doctors to nurses and doulas to give you real fact-based information that'll help

00:02:09.460 you make birthing decisions that work for you and your family. Each episode of Birth with Baby List

00:02:15.780 is going to take you through a different part of birth, and will include a lot of different types

00:02:20.560 of experiences, because no birth is ever the same, and no mother is ever the same. So sit back, relax,

00:02:28.980 take some notes if you want, or don't. You can listen as many times as you need to to get all

00:02:34.060 of the information that's helpful for you. I'm so excited that you're here with us today.

00:02:39.460 Okay, so tell me a little bit about your expectations for birth before you gave birth.

00:02:55.280 I tried to keep them as low as possible and as vague as possible, if only because I did not want

00:03:02.640 to be stressed or disappointed when things didn't go the way that I quote unquote thought they would

00:03:07.620 should. We all go into having a baby having something in mind and it often does not go the

00:03:12.800 way that we have planned and mine certainly did not. But I did you know I wanted to be with a

00:03:18.140 midwife. I wanted to have someone who treated my pregnancy like a normal part of being a woman 0.98

00:03:22.920 not as if I was sick and needed you know intervention after intervention for no

00:03:28.380 particular reason at times. Okay yeah everyone has expectations going into birth but now I want to

00:03:34.620 hear a little bit about how the birth actually went. So I delivered four kids, two, three,

00:03:44.160 four years apart. They were all different. And it's funny because I look back in hindsight and

00:03:49.480 somehow their births reflect their personalities. They all came on their own time. They all came

00:03:57.320 despite whatever plan I had. It was two nights before my plan C-section, Sunday morning at 5 a.m.

00:04:04.060 I was supposed to have my c-section at like 6 a.m. on Monday by Waterbroke. It was like the movies.

00:04:12.180 I hopped out of bed and then it was just like in the movies, gush, like splashing on my hardwood

00:04:17.200 floor. And then there was a second gush. And I was like, yep, definitely. It was such good

00:04:22.560 comedic timing, you know? So we were like, well, I guess we got to go to the hospital.

00:04:28.420 What was coming up for me was it's impossible to birth. It's impossible to go into labor and

00:04:33.860 push out a baby. Like I get that people do it, but I'm terrified of that thing. It sounds

00:04:39.280 nuts. It sounds actually impossible. You just heard from a lot of women about their birth

00:04:46.280 stories and their expectations for birth. And that's what makes this podcast a little different. 0.96

00:04:52.060 Our goal is to talk to as many real women as possible in an honest and unfiltered way

00:04:57.100 so that you can hear directly from them about what their births were like.

00:05:00.540 you could ask a hundred women what it was like for them to get their babies out of their bodies

00:05:05.960 and you'd probably get about a hundred answers the first time i was in labor i made brownies

00:05:12.240 i took a long dog walk it helps for me to take a long walk this is early enough labor that like

00:05:17.240 that's still in the realm of possibility but then as it starts to become impossible like i'm taking

00:05:22.420 the long dog walk but now i'm like kind of shouting during contractions and i'm embarrassed

00:05:26.240 because I feel like my neighborhood can hear me.

00:05:28.380 Then I start to bring it inside.

00:05:30.360 You're going to hear things like,

00:05:31.500 my labor lasted three days

00:05:32.980 and I thought I was going to implode the entire time.

00:05:35.860 Or you'll hear something like,

00:05:37.320 my baby just fell out of my body and it was so easy.

00:05:41.280 The truth is, you have no idea what you're getting into

00:05:43.740 until you're actually going through it.

00:05:46.140 But the one thing that birth shouldn't be is a mystery.

00:05:50.600 You deserve to have as much fact-based information

00:05:52.940 as possible going into this experience.

00:05:54.720 And you deserve to get it from well-trained experts, data-backed studies, and moms who have been there and gone through it.

00:06:02.160 So they gave me the epidural.

00:06:04.600 I could have kissed the anesthesiologist who gave me that epidural.

00:06:10.220 It was the best thing that had ever happened to me, honestly.

00:06:12.760 I was just like, this is wonderful.

00:06:15.200 I love you.

00:06:16.840 And I was just in bliss. 0.79

00:06:20.120 And I had this fantastic nurse who had just come in on a shift change.

00:06:23.400 and she was like, we're going to get this baby out of you. I'm like, I believe in you. I have

00:06:26.380 a peanut ball and we're going to do all these things. And she's like, I have a method. I'm

00:06:29.960 like, okay, great. I'm glad you do because I don't. Those methods and all that advice,

00:06:36.680 that is what we're getting into in this podcast. We're talking to moms who you heard above,

00:06:42.200 but we're also talking to doctors, nurses, doulas, and dads. We're bringing everyone on to find out

00:06:49.080 what you want to know, what you need to know, and how you can best prepare for this birth.

00:06:54.160 Some of the best advice that I got as a new mom and as a reporter writing about birth

00:06:59.740 is that we have to include the birthing partners as early as possible in this process. A birthing

00:07:06.400 partner should be reading all the things, listening to the podcasts, watching the videos,

00:07:11.560 and attending the classes. Because trust me, the last thing you want to be doing while giving birth 0.80

00:07:16.460 is playing telephone with all the information that you're getting during a pregnancy.

00:07:20.800 I think I made just about every single OB appointment that my wife went to for both of

00:07:27.020 our kids. I learned a lot. You know, I'd never held a baby before my first daughter was born,

00:07:32.380 so I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. And those OB appointments taught me so much.

00:07:38.060 Two, they were this bonding moment or moments for my wife and I where, you know, we'd go to

00:07:44.260 the appointment together. We'd talk about it beforehand. We'd talk about what the doctor said

00:07:48.800 afterward. And we became so much closer for that. The other thing that I wasn't expecting to go so

00:07:58.260 deep on, but my parents got us a copy of the American Academy of Pediatrics, big book. And I

00:08:05.900 read that out loud to my wife. There's a section on pregnancy and then on birth and then on how to

00:08:13.280 how to have a newborn. And reading that together at night was so amazing in terms of

00:08:19.340 developing skills, but also just understanding what was coming.

00:08:25.980 Let me introduce myself. I'm Joe Piazza. I'm a journalist, a podcaster, and a mom of three.

00:08:33.580 Right now, my kids range in age from two to seven. I've given birth in a hospital three times.

00:08:39.880 Two of my babies were delivered by midwives and one by an OB-GYN.

00:08:44.600 For the first birth, I had the help of a doula, and for the next two, I decided to just wing it.

00:08:49.240 My first labor lasted 36 hours, and the last one was induced and lasted about 45 minutes.

00:08:55.820 I've been in hospital rooms with friends giving birth, and as a journalist, I've seen babies born on the floor of a hut in rural Kenya.

00:09:03.880 I think a lot about something the sociologist Barbara Katz-Rothman said about the process of birth.

00:09:09.240 Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers. Strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.

00:09:21.540 In order to trust yourself, you need good information. And that's what I'm here for. Let's do this. Together.

00:09:29.000 to start us off i want to bring on someone who might be in your shoes

00:09:35.780 laura is pretty much going to give birth any minute now how far along are you right now

00:09:41.100 almost 38 weeks every day every little thing is like oh my gosh do i need to go to the hospital

00:09:47.740 now do i need to go to the hospital now do i need to go do i need i know i want to i'm so ready

00:09:53.180 oh my god i know i know my one of my good friends just gave birth uh the other day and we we were

00:10:00.800 hanging out when she was at 38 weeks and she's like could i get any bigger and i'm like oh my

00:10:05.760 gosh get bigger oh yeah don't worry you can even though you think you can't like i don't know why

00:10:11.900 but when i was my first pregnancy i remember thinking like surely the baby's gonna plateau

00:10:16.960 like surely they stop growing after a certain period of time no they do not no they do not

00:10:22.380 no they do not there is always room to get bigger my friend always I'm at the point where like even

00:10:30.300 my maternity shirts are riding up at the bottom so I always have a little bit of belly sticking

00:10:34.620 out and I'm like oh my gosh I just yeah yeah you just own that is what you do you do totally so

00:10:41.260 how are you feeling I mean what would you tell your first time pregnant self oh my gosh I would

00:10:45.360 say this is the first lesson in parenting is that nothing is certain you can plan and you can think

00:10:53.900 you know what's coming and you can read all the things and you can keep googling and googling and

00:10:58.540 googling but you never actually know what's about to happen and you cannot control your kid at all

00:11:05.500 they have their own agenda they come when they want to it's the greatest lesson in parenting like

00:11:10.400 you got to embrace the uncertainty and you have no control like you cannot control them you cannot

00:11:15.200 control when they sleep you cannot control what or when they eat you just have to live with that

00:11:21.520 you just yeah and i think that is the best advice for giving birth you're like okay yes it's gonna

00:11:27.440 happen yep and you're gonna get through it but you don't have a whole lot of control

00:11:33.380 about how it's gonna go down nope not at all not at all no yeah and social media you know and all

00:11:41.100 the things you read can kind of give you like this illusion of control, you know, and I think

00:11:45.480 that's how I felt going into my first pregnancy was like, you know, I had the birth plan. I thought

00:11:50.720 it was going to go a certain way and it completely went the opposite way that I thought it was going

00:11:55.940 to go. So I, I now, you'd think I would have learned my lesson, but I'm still, I'm still

00:12:02.840 trying to grasp at control. Like I'm, I'm so ready. So I'm like, how could I make this happen

00:12:07.720 on my terms but you can't but you can't we are going to take a really quick break here

00:12:12.880 and when we get back we're going to talk about the things that you actually can control

00:12:16.880 what you can control is something i really want to touch on in this first episode because the

00:12:33.500 truth is that you can do all the right things to prepare your body and your mind, and your baby

00:12:38.940 might just have different plans than you do. And that is okay. In fact, it's totally normal.

00:12:46.220 Before we really dig in, I wanted to chat with some doctors about what we can and what we can't

00:12:50.780 control when it comes to giving birth. What parts of birth are generally within someone's control,

00:12:57.420 And then what parts are we just leaving up to the universe?

00:13:02.000 I'll say that the human body is pretty amazing.

00:13:05.480 And to remember to have respect for that.

00:13:09.280 Your body knows what it's doing.

00:13:11.400 That's Dr. Laura Hanks.

00:13:12.640 She's an OBGYN and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin. 0.52

00:13:16.820 She's also a mom.

00:13:18.080 But sometimes you don't feel like we have control over that, right?

00:13:21.100 Like your body is changing and doing things, whether you like it or not.

00:13:25.260 It's also important to remember that as an OBGYN, I'm taking care of two patients at a time, right?

00:13:31.380 So I'm watching the birthing patient, but also we're keeping a really close eye on baby when you're in labor.

00:13:40.480 And the way that we do that is watching baby's heart rate.

00:13:43.500 And so labor might be progressing and your body's doing exactly what it needs to, but sometimes babies don't tolerate that for whatever reason.

00:13:51.060 like the cord's getting pinched somewhere, the placenta is ready to be done. And we see signs

00:13:57.200 of that. And that can be really frustrating for patients when we say, you know, this isn't going

00:14:03.120 the way and it can feel like it's very out of your control because it is. And it turns out

00:14:08.320 even when they're bored, kids do what they want. You know, they just sometimes don't listen to us.

00:14:14.120 I would say it's more often than sometimes. Yeah, me too. I have to. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

00:14:20.160 It is definitely more often than sometimes.

00:14:23.420 I've posed this question to dozens of medical professionals while reporting this podcast.

00:14:29.780 And everyone stresses that there is truly so much you can't control about a birth and what a baby is going to do.

00:14:36.100 The only things you really have control over are how you and your partner handle things as you go through it.

00:14:41.840 I asked the midwife, Victoria Dean, the same question.

00:14:45.580 What exactly can we control?

00:14:47.200 But also, what is totally out of our control?

00:14:50.160 The most control we have over a labor, a first labor is nutrition and energy and expectations

00:14:58.960 around labor. So it's, you know, it's like, it's like trying to get a good night's sleep before

00:15:04.440 going to Disneyland. It's hard to do. If you go into it with a childbirth ed class and some

00:15:10.880 expectations around, you know, how you're going to cope with something makes a big difference on

00:15:17.400 how you're going to preserve your energy and labor. So just like preparedness is something

00:15:23.000 that you have a lot of control over. And mindfulness, like I think my favorite child

00:15:27.360 birth ed experiences or like, you know, outcomes are the child birth ed classes that do like

00:15:34.600 heavy focus on mindfulness. Like you can study yourself into like a miniature midwife all that

00:15:42.300 you want but if you don't know how to regulate your emotions and your fear and your anxiety

00:15:48.080 then all of the anatomy in the world isn't gonna help you move through that um sometimes i'll ask

00:15:55.320 people like have they ever been on a really long hike or have they run a marathon or like have you

00:16:00.360 had just like a horrific travel day where like nothing went your way and like your flights got

00:16:04.980 delayed or then you had to ride the truck with the chickens on it through the mountains to get

00:16:08.820 through whatever while you had diarrhea like those are like what what are the really bad days that

00:16:14.260 you've had yes as a couple that you've navigated together did it go well did it not go well like

00:16:20.320 what do you think would have made it better like all of those it's it's a very um cerebral experience

00:16:26.380 in its own way I think sometimes more than it does a physical so all of the things you have control

00:16:31.320 over how much you're eating even if you don't feel like it like a lot of people have upset tummies

00:16:37.060 in early labor, but you can eat compared to inactive labor where sometimes it really is

00:16:41.980 just like you can't do it. And drinking water before like you have some of the like

00:16:46.700 incontrollable urges to like vomit or get nauseous positions, especially when you're

00:16:52.280 having an unmedicated birth in any setting. And when you're if you do opt for an epidural

00:16:58.020 in a hospital setting, moving anyway, and that's where having a doula can be really

00:17:03.800 helpful, which I always tell people doesn't need to be someone that you hire. I love professional

00:17:09.140 doulas and I think they're money very well spent. But if you don't have that option, like it can be

00:17:14.620 a bestie and it can be a sister or an aunt or a cousin who you think can like really hold some

00:17:20.040 good space, which means like being quiet and intuitively kind of staying out of the way

00:17:26.320 or intuitively like fixing up the bed a little bit or putting hair back in a ponytail or offering

00:17:33.100 water like those kinds of sometimes that term holding space can like not mean much but that's

00:17:38.420 what that means um and so like making sure that you're getting encouraged to move around especially

00:17:45.120 if you have an epidural in the hospital because labor and delivery nurses have big jobs so those

00:17:49.940 are that's what you have control over but you don't have control over what the umbilical cord

00:17:53.560 does you don't have control over their little elbows you don't have control over like whatever

00:17:58.360 protrusions are happening in your own bony pelvis like all of those sorts of things are where we

00:18:03.660 ultimately give up control and have to acknowledge that like oh we've created a being with free will

00:18:08.940 there's many cogs in a labor process there's your uterus and the contractions and the baby

00:18:15.980 and your own like mental spiritual state there's the environment that you're in there's if you have

00:18:22.000 you know maybe you have a nurse that's having a really bad day and it's like really not on her

00:18:25.520 game or maybe like your partner's having a really bad day or your doula is like not not feeling so

00:18:30.920 hot like there's lots of things that can kind of like maybe contribute to the process but yeah it's

00:18:37.020 it's one of the last things that we like don't have a ton of influence on ultimately. I also

00:18:44.480 wanted to ask the experts right here at the outset about the most common misconceptions

00:18:48.940 that they hear about birth and the things that they wish they could clear up for new moms.

00:18:53.800 honestly that as doctors we're not we're not the bad guys we're not trying to make everyone have a

00:19:04.760 c-section we truly truly want healthy birthing people and healthy babies i recognize that this

00:19:12.860 is a very vulnerable time in someone's life um and if things aren't going the way that they had

00:19:20.000 planned. And I'm telling them it needs to go a different way, that that makes me the bad guy.

00:19:26.400 But I'm doing it from a place of wanting the best outcome for you and your baby and your family.

00:19:33.860 This is Dr. Laura Hanks from the University of Wisconsin again.

00:19:37.280 If you are a person that likes to control, that's not a fair thing to say, not control. But if you

00:19:42.240 are a person that likes to have a plan, please have a plan that makes you kind of feel better

00:19:47.520 and talking through it and walking through it, 100%.

00:19:50.020 But for those of us that are like maybe more disorganized,

00:19:54.100 don't feel like you're like behind the game

00:19:57.300 because you don't have fun.

00:19:58.200 It's okay.

00:19:58.820 We'll take care of you, I promise.

00:20:00.180 And we are going to talk so much more about birth plans.

00:20:03.820 So much.

00:20:04.620 How to make one, how to build flexibility into one,

00:20:07.840 how to talk to your healthcare provider about them.

00:20:10.060 We're also going to talk to real moms about their birth plans. 1.00

00:20:12.680 Ones who totally winged it, who went in with no plan at all. 1.00

00:20:16.040 and ones who made a birth plan the size of the latest Rebecca Yarrow's novel.

00:20:20.760 But for today, we're just doing the overview here.

00:20:23.340 And because of that, I do want to dive just a little bit into the different stages of birth.

00:20:28.280 So there's generally thought to be three stages of labor.

00:20:31.260 The first stage of labor is when contractions begin that result in some sort of cervical dilation,

00:20:38.080 so changing of the cervix.

00:20:41.360 Okay, wait one sec. I'm just going to pause us really quick right here.

00:20:44.640 we hear so many words and phrases that are never used outside the realm of being pregnant or giving

00:20:51.620 birth. And I want to make sure that we're defining those and explaining them and just making them

00:20:56.920 really easy to understand. And one of my favorite descriptions of the cervix dilating came from the

00:21:04.020 midwife, Victoria Dean, and I just want to share it with you. I know that I always imagined like,

00:21:08.600 oh yeah dilation means that like the human vagina gets bigger and accommodates a baby but that's 0.73

00:21:15.320 not what happens like the musculature of the vaginal canal doesn't move really it takes the

00:21:20.980 baby kind of moving through it to open it up and your cervix if it's you know it's like the knot

00:21:26.160 of a balloon and if that knot has some length to it like a turtleneck i guess like double

00:21:31.820 double imagery here the baby has to move down that turtleneck and shorten it and move it out

00:21:38.040 of the way and then it starts to open. It's not like a door is slowly opening. It's more that a

00:21:44.080 baby is pushing through something and moving it out of the way. I actually think that a baby

00:21:48.960 pushing its head through a turtleneck for the cervix to dilate is one of the best analogies

00:21:54.740 that I have ever heard. Okay, now back to birth stages. The cervix is changing. The cervix is

00:22:00.140 dilating. The baby's head is going through the turtleneck. Within the first stage, we have two

00:22:05.320 two kind of sub-stages, what we call the latent phase and the active phase. So in the first stage,

00:22:12.220 latent phase of labor is when you're anywhere from one centimeter to six centimeters.

00:22:19.140 Usually in that point, things move more slowly. Cervix dilates every couple hours.

00:22:25.260 You're walking around. You're not super uncomfortable. But once you get to active

00:22:31.880 phase when you're six centimeters and then to final dilation which is 10 centimeters that's

00:22:37.200 kind of the more not fun part um where where things get a little bit more intense and then

00:22:44.520 second stage is once you get to that 10 centimeters or um complete full dilation you have all sorts of

00:22:51.960 terms for it and when people start pushing so at that point the second stage can last for new people

00:22:59.940 can, some people push up to four hours. That's long. That's hard work. Sometimes people push

00:23:07.260 for three minutes. It just kind of depends. And then the third stage is from the period of

00:23:16.500 delivery of baby to the delivery of the placenta. So uterine contractions are continuing during

00:23:22.920 this time and the placenta is separating from the wall of the uterus. We talk a lot about

00:23:29.140 active management of this phase. So this is when people can have lots of bleeding. So

00:23:35.080 we unfortunately have to like push on the uterus. The uterus is a big muscle. 1.00

00:23:40.640 And so in order for it to stay contracted, we kind of put, we call it a massage, but that's 0.89

00:23:45.720 kind of the worst massage in the world. But that's in order to control the bleeding and help

00:23:50.760 facilitate placenta delivery. Okay. Okay. A little bit of real talk. I have to admit something here.

00:23:59.140 And before I got pregnant with my first kid, I had no idea that the placenta was actually going to come out of my body after the baby did.

00:24:09.220 I mean, I just, until I was pregnant with that baby, I don't think I'd ever even really thought about a placenta.

00:24:14.840 Like, I knew it was a thing in my body, but I had no idea that I was going to deliver this massive organ.

00:24:24.560 I definitely didn't know how big it was going to be.

00:24:27.120 and I had no clue that it was going to need to be helped out of my body after the baby came out.

00:24:33.580 And I know that I'm not alone in that. For me, the placenta delivery is just one of those things

00:24:41.180 that I didn't really think about until I was pregnant. And I really think that knowing what's

00:24:47.900 going to happen, but then also hearing real people talk about how it happened to them,

00:24:52.900 is just really helpful for birth because so much of what can get scary or anxiety-inducing about

00:25:00.640 birth is the new stuff. The stuff we just don't know. The expectation gap between what we've seen

00:25:08.200 on TV and in movies or on social media, and there's so much more social media these days,

00:25:13.080 the expectation gap between all of that and the reality is where things can get kind of scary.

00:25:19.360 I thought it was going to be just like the movies.

00:25:22.880 You know, we had this big thing where like, all right, if you call twice in a row, that

00:25:27.840 means that the baby's coming and, you know, I expected to be at work and, you know, screaming

00:25:32.960 down the highway to go pick my wife up.

00:25:35.500 And then, you know, we carefully but quickly drive to the hospital, rush into the room

00:25:42.040 and have a baby.

00:25:43.100 And that is not not at all what happened.

00:25:45.240 But those were my expectations going in.

00:25:47.400 In the next episode, we're going to walk you through the nitty gritty of how to build your

00:25:50.860 birth team and also how to choose where to give birth. And later on in this series,

00:25:55.460 you're going to hear all of the things. What do labor contractions actually feel like?

00:26:00.400 It felt more like a tightening of my guts. It felt like, I described it to someone as like,

00:26:06.940 if you ever go out for Mexican food and you have a ton of tacos and like split two pictures of

00:26:11.380 margaritas and you wake up the next morning and your stomach is like, oh, like that's how it felt.

00:26:15.760 And then it would stop. So that was neat. It wasn't like my leg is, you know, crushed under a piano that fell on me and the pain is all the time.

00:26:22.920 It was like, oh, my God, oh, my God. Oh, OK. A couple of deep breaths. I'm like, I'm good.

00:26:26.960 And then a few minutes later, like, oh, my God, oh, my God. Oh, no, I'm OK. OK, great.

00:26:30.280 Real life rundowns of getting an epidural.

00:26:32.500 I got the epidural and it was the first time in six months I hadn't been riddled in pain. I mean, I took a nap.

00:26:37.460 We're talking to women who've had planned C-sections.

00:26:40.280 It's probably not going to be what you expect. It's great to prep. 0.98

00:26:43.460 But I think what really struck me about my planned C-section was just how nervous I felt and how still there were things that surprised me.

00:26:55.440 It's a weird experience, and I will say, like, I had a great medical team.

00:27:00.180 They explained everything that was happening, but it still was, it still felt very strange.

00:27:08.720 Women who've had emergency C-sections.

00:27:10.660 suddenly there are without exaggeration five doctors multiple nurses two anesthesiologists

00:27:19.580 they grab the sheets they move me onto a gurney they roll me down the hall it looked like something

00:27:24.980 out of gray's anatomy like we were running down the hall people they were shouting ahead of them 1.00

00:27:30.300 nurses are pulling open doors we are running a woman who planned for everything and then had 1.00

00:27:36.320 very run-of-the-mill vaginal births. By the time the doctor was like, okay, let's try pushing. 1.00

00:27:41.780 I tried pushing and she's like, whoa, literally like close your knees. I have to get a gown on. 0.92

00:27:48.340 She wasn't like fully ready, but she was like right there. If you take anything away from this,

00:27:54.960 it's that the unexpected may very well happen, but also you're going to be okay.

00:28:01.820 and you really do deserve to give birth with people that you feel comfortable with

00:28:07.240 people that are going to support you and help you through this experience

00:28:10.300 and at the end of the day nothing might go the way you planned it

00:28:14.060 but some of the best advice that i got the first time i was pregnant

00:28:17.460 was that babies get out of your body one way or another

00:28:21.420 you've got this and you can do this what i will say is you'll get through it no matter

00:28:30.100 no matter which way it goes. One child we had was a natural birth without medicine. And the

00:28:36.300 second one was an emergency C-section, extremely premature in three months in the hospital. Both

00:28:42.340 of them turned out amazing. I had three C-sections, one emergency C-section and two planned.

00:28:49.580 And I have three beautiful daughters. Birth works, you know, it does. Bodies do know how to give birth

00:28:57.560 and there is plenty of support for the birthing person wherever they go it's a matter of really

00:29:03.820 knowing what your goals are knowing like the things that are most important to you in your

00:29:08.180 birth experience so that your team can really give you the experience that you're hoping to have

00:29:14.120 babies come out all kinds of ways birth stories are you know all types of journeys people take

00:29:21.200 to have their babies and their babies get here and just know that at any given time that you

00:29:27.300 give birth there are you know thousands of women who are giving birth the same day all around the

00:29:32.740 world you are not alone even though it might feel like that sometimes

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - February 22, 2026

Sunday Nice Things： Birth With Babylist

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