Nourishing Wounds: My 5 month Journey with Breastfeeding (and Continued Recovery)

I’d contemplated writing about breastfeeding, but like many of my prompts – I didn’t want to be seen as another mom complaining – or worse, a martyr. 

But my friend Aja, someone I’ve known since elementary school, told me I should write about it. 

I was telling her in an Instagram DM randomly one day about how I couldn’t eat certain foods because it stimulated production and my left boob stopped producing so I looked like a boob job gone wrong. 

“Girl, people need to know this shit. The real shit!” So if you hate this post, you can take it up with her.

To Breastfeed or Not to Breastfeed – That is the (#1) Question

Announcing you’re pregnant brings up a lot of questions and usually the first one is “Are you going to breastfeed?” My answer was ‘yes, I’m planning to but if it doesn’t work out, I’m not going to stress about it’.

I’d heard many women struggle to produce or their baby struggles to latch. My targeted Pinterest feed was full of lactation stimulants and 10 Things You MUST Eat in Order to Produce Enough Milk. In my mind, the only reasons I wouldn’t be successful at breastfeeding was if: 

1. I didn’t produce enough milk or 

2. if my baby didn’t latch. 

I’d stocked up on nursing bras, nursing tank tops, and nipple cream. I registered for bottles because people said I should, even though I didn’t actually know what the bottles would be for if I was breastfeeding.

A couple girlfriends gave me hand-me-down pumping parts and milk containers. One friend even gave me her old pump. 

Everything looked like it belonged in a middle school science experiment – flanges (funnel-shaped pieces of plastic), scored beakers with mL measurements, tubing, and freezer bags. I had no idea what any of it was for but they promised “oh, you’ll figure it out quickly.” I said thanks for the stuff and gently placed everything in a corner of the nursery closet. 

155/100 is my blood pressure the night I was induced - 155/100 is a very elevated blood pressure (120/80 is considered ‘normal’)

Preterm vs Premature  

My blood pressure rose at 32 weeks of pregnancy and the decision was made to induce me at 37 weeks to reduce my risk of complications. 37 weeks is considered full-term so she wouldn’t be a preemie and by all accounts shouldn’t have any issues being born 21 days early.

Our plan was go to the hospital on a Thursday night and have a baby sometime Friday afternoon. But my blood pressure kept rising, so I was admitted a few days earlier and our daughter was born in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. At 36 weeks and 6 days. One day shy of being full-term.

a 10 minutes old Aspen

These babies aren’t considered premature, they’re called preterm. 

Great, we had an adorable, tiny, preterm baby. 

She weighed 5 pounds and 11 ounces when she was born. After 24 hours she’d dropped to an even 5 pounds (perfectly normal for a baby to lose the water weight from living in an aquarium for 9 months). 

She was born so quickly our doula didn’t have time to get to the hospital for our birth, but she helped me with that very first latch attempt. Here I was with nearly DDD breasts feeling completely foreign to me, and a newborn on my chest – definitely foreign to me.

She gently took my breast and guided a brand new Aspen to latch. And then I felt a pinch.

“Oh my GOD that hurts!” I whined and silently wished she would pull her away from me. It felt like I’d been bitten by a sleepy snapping turtle.

After a few seconds, Roxy released my breast and Aspen fell away (and fell asleep). Roxy was concerned it felt like a pinch and not just pressure. But she was happy I was willing to try and I was happy she was there.

After that, Aspen went to have a variety of tests in the bassinet next to me – oxygen, APGAR, vitamin K shot and antibiotic ointment placed around her eyelids. We were eventually transported to the Mother/Baby floor upstairs after she was cleaned off and I was stitched up. 

My epidural was still wearing off so I required quite a bit of help to the wheelchair, bathroom, and eventually hospital bed. 

Sleepy baby

We all slept for a little while (it was around 5AM at this point) and when I woke up we were greeted by our dayshift nurse who asked if I wanted help trying to feed Aspen. I said “sure” and we did our best to position her on my breast but as soon as she got anywhere near me she instantly fell asleep...

I was given IV magnesium for 11 hours prior to her birth and therefore she also had magnesium flowing through her veins. Mag Babies are what the nurse and pediatrician called them (I never imagined all the categories newborns could be put it).

When you have a Mag Baby, they are usually very sleepy since magnesium makes you drowsy. I mostly felt hungover, but I weighed 220 pounds at the time. She weighed less than 6. 

8 hour old Aspen sleeping on my chest

Additionally, there is a phenomenon of when a newborn smells their mother – who’s been their home and refuge for 9 months – they feel comforted and often pass the hell out. So combining my Mag Baby with the familiarity of my body resulted in a mostly hibernating Aspen for the first 24 hours. 

A Watched Pot (or Boob)

My milk hadn’t come in yet so even if she’d been awake to latch, there was little to be had. The nurse taught me about manual expression – where you massage your breasts with your hands in a motion to mimic the milk ‘let down’. This made my hands tired and didn’t really do much at first. 

I wasn’t super concerned because the nurse and OB said it can take a few days for my milk to come in. But then Aspen’s blood sugar started to drop (something that can happen with preterm babies). The pediatrician was watching this closely and every 6 hours they would prick her poor little heel to check her blood sugar. It was approaching a level where they felt something needed to happen – either breastfeed, thaw donor milk, or give her formula.

I didn’t want to try the second two options just yet, so I continued to do hand massage and eat the lactation cookies my friend brought me.

Finally a few drops came out. And by drops, I mean a SINGLE DROP. My nurse took the black plastic spoon from my untouched hospital lunch tray like a trained marksman and let the singular drop of colostrum (hella nutrient dense initial form of breastmilk) fall into the spoon. She then carefully placed the spoon on Aspen’s lips, letting gravity do the work of drawing the drop into her mouth. 

“Oh, you don’t need much! This one drop will make a difference!” I thought yeah, right. There’s no way. 

But it did work. Her blood sugar started going up and staying up. She probably consumed 5 drops in her first 24 hours. All from disposable hospital meal tray spoons. 

Cattle Call

The next day we tried breastfeeding again. She kept pinching down and not making much progress. It was at this time the nurse brought up pumping. Remember the bag of science experiment equipment? Guess we’re going to learn how to use them now.

She brought in a pump as well as packages with sterile bottles, flanges, and tubing. She showed me how the tubing worked and how the flange fits on the tubing and bottles. There were a few internal pieces as well including a valve for suction. She helped me turn it on and start it. And by help, I mean she did everything including putting the flange up to my breast while I watched in straight up confusion.

Talk about a weird sensation. I felt like a cow being milked in this rhythmic pulsing sound and feel. Nothing came out after ten minutes. So we stopped. My nipple looked like it had been sucked through a tube, because I guess it had been...but it was a weird look nonetheless. Pink, purple, and giant. 

I tried again an hour later – this time a few drops splashed through the flange and into the bottle. 

Each time a few more drops would come out to the point where I was pumping 10ml every couple of hours. For reference – there are 30ml in a shot glass. So ⅓ of a shot was what my body was producing and I was told to be happy about my ‘progress’.

When I wasn’t trying to figure out how to pump and store my precious colostrum, we were figuring out how to feed Aspen.

The nurse mentioned ‘tube-feeding’ which made my heart drop through the bed. I thought she meant ‘feeding-tube’ as in a tube placed inside her nose or mouth to feed her. I was horrified she may need something like this. 

In reality, she meant taking a very thin tube attached to a small syringe and dropping milk into her mouth. She said you can place your finger in her mouth to mimic a nipple to get her to start sucking, and then sneak the syringe or tubing in her mouth to drop milk in. 

Then we leveled up to expert mode by taping the tube to a finger. 

I was still very drowsy from magnesium and recovering from giving birth. My husband was more than eager to help so he took the finger-feed lead.

It was amazing to watch him feed her in those first days. Wrapping her tiny fingers around his finger while he slowly pushed the syringe full of milk into her mouth. 

I will always be grateful for the moments Aspen and Ben were able to bond so closely during that time. 

Great Pretenders

Our first encounter with the lactation consultants included what can only be described as a poorly prepared pep talk. She informed me most mothers of preterm babies give up breastfeeding. Preterm babies and moms have some of the highest rates of failure when it comes to breastfeeding. 

Excuse me?

“Well, what I mean is...it’s really difficult for preterm babies and moms to be successful. They are what we call great pretenders. Preemies need to be supplemented because they’re unable to feed since they’re so small, and full term newborns consume adequate amounts of milk – therefore stimulating milk production effectively.

But with preterm babes – they latch and they feed. But they don’t feed enough, they get tired and quit. So they don’t get enough nutrition and they don’t trigger the supply/demand loop for your supply.”

Ok, now what?

“So you’re going to have to do something called Triple Feeds. You will need to breastfeed, supplement with a bottle of breastmilk, and pump.”

Every. Two. Hours. 

Aspen still wasn’t latching so we would:

Pump parts, tubing, valves, containers, syringes laying out to dry between feedings

• Briefly attempt breastfeeding 

• Default to finger feeds which takes about 20-30 minutes 

• Pump for 15 mins

• After pumping, I would put the pumped milk in the tiny fridge in our hospital room

• Wash the pump parts (my science experiment equipment) in the sink and lay them out to dry 

The entire process took me about an hour. 

3am fashionable selfie after pumping and washing pump parts in the sink and laying them out to dry

Which gave me about an hour until I had to do it all over again. 

Luckily my milk ‘came in’ (the term used for when your boobs finally get the message that they need to get off their ass and make milk) after 36 hours. Something I didn’t realize was when this finally happens – you get severe menstrual type cramps. After freaking out that something was wrong, we learned that this is totally normal. 

Your body is essentially communicating with itself via hormones. The hormones released to stimulate milk production are the same ones telling my uterus its tenant has been evicted and to start shrinking back to the size of an apricot versus staying the size of a basketball...

Day 5 – Going home

All of the above happened within the first 4 days. Did it feel like an eternity reading it? Because if felt like one experiencing it.

Once we got home we decided we would try bottles rather than use the tube to do finger feeds.

This helped a little in reducing what we had to wash. What helped a lot was remembering my friends had left me literal bags full of pumping supplies. Let me tell you the relief in realizing I didn’t have to wash the pumping parts after EVERY FEED!

It felt like a level was unlocked, an achievement was won. 

The next 4-6 days consisted of more of the same – attempting to breastfeed for a few minutes, bottle feeding, and then pumping. Thankfully the lactation consultant had created a schedule for us so we knew our goal for each feeding. Slowing going from 10mls in the hospital to 2-3 ounces seemed impossible but Aspen showed us she loves to eat!

Since my milk production was going well and I was producing for a full term baby and not a preterm baby, I was pumping a lot of milk at this point. The recommendations for breastmilk storage seem to change monthly, but what I followed was it can stay in the fridge for a few days and then it needs to be frozen. And since I was producing so much milk, the time to start freezing came after 10 days or so. 

More science experiment things to figure out! Freezer bags are great but take some getting used to. Imagine trying to pour a liquid into a Ziploc bag that only has half the opening. And then imagine being terrified of spilling a single drop because you’ve been programmed to NEVER WASTE THE PRECIOUS LIQUID GOLD!

I would lay them flat in a loaf pan so they would freeze flat making it easier to store in the freezer (thanks Pinterest for that pro tip).

After 10-12 days, Aspen finally figured out the latching thing. The lactation consultant said in the hospital she had a tongue-tie and this was contributing to her struggle (and my pain). She recommended discussing with the pediatrician about getting it clipped. My doula recommended the same thing. 

The pediatricians we saw in the hospital and in their office had the same collective eye-roll about tongue ties.

“Tongue ties didn’t really exist until lactation consultants decided to make it their hill to die on”.

Umm, cool cool. I was told to ask you about it, but thanks for your unsolicited grudge? Eventually he clipped her tongue tie in the office. Thankfully this is typically painless as there are no nerve endings in that little paper thin tissue underneath your tongue. 

Clipping the tongue tie made no obvious change, for her or me. I’m pretty sure she also had a lip tie (the tiny tissue connecting your upper lip to your gum line) because she constantly had ‘milk blisters’ on her upper lip. It looked like she had really chapped lips which occur from aggressive sucking coupled with a lip tie. But since the tongue tie revision didn’t seem to help, I didn’t see the need of putting sharp scissors in her tiny mouth again. 

Milk blisters on her top lip

Can we take a moment and appreciate her derpy little expression? And also note the ‘milk blister’ on her upper lip.

We were advised to continue triple feeds until she reached her due date – so roughly 3 weeks. It was draining to continue the cycle while my body attempted to heal itself from childbirth and my emotions tried to heal itself from the enormous hormonal let down. 

Thankfully when we reached her due date, she was latching and feeding well. Unfortunately for me, it still hurt like hell to have her latch on. I would have to pep talk myself and not forget to breathe while breastfeeding. I didn’t want to be bothered, touched, or consoled while I endured her feedings. 

I marveled at her tiny face and mouth doing this incredible but completely normal evolutionary task. I marveled at my body for being able to provide her sustenance. But beyond that, it was pain with every latch. Pain with every pump. Frustration every time I had to sit there and pump and not hold her. Frustration every time I had to sit there and pump and not go back to sleep. 

Same task, different reason

Aspen was gaining weight. She was surpassing the baseline expectations each week at the pediatrician. At this point, the pediatrician said I didn’t need to supplement with bottled breastmilk anymore. Yay!

The lactation consultants were still very weary of me no longer pumping in addition to breastfeeding. Their biggest fear was me reducing my supply/demand loop before my supply was established - which could take up to 4 months. FOUR. MONTHS?!

They were also concerned Aspen was only feeding from one side for each feeding. I was making enough milk that she only needed to feed on one side. This meant one boob got no love every feeding.

“You’ve got to keep pumping the other one!”

So I did.

Sometimes.

I’m human, and I’m tired. So I pumped most of the time. She also preferred the right boob and the right boob preferred her. My left side was lazy and unmotivated – irritating Aspen and irritating me. 

And then it happened. The first time I experienced a clogged milk duct. My right boob had a knot the size of a blueberry and then the size of a golf ball. After feeding her, the knot stayed the same. It didn’t go down or become soft like the rest of the surrounding tissue did after ‘emptying’.

It didn’t really hurt, at first, but it was noticeable. I had this mound of breast tissue that didn’t go down when she fed. 

I’ll be honest and say I don’t remember the first few weeks of dealing with clogged milk ducts. I’ve either blacked them out as a coping mechanism or my mind isn’t capable of remembering all the events, steps, and tears that followed the first one.

I researched how to treat clogged ducts and prevent them from returning. First step involved taking sunflower lecithin to thin your milk. Lecithin is an oil supplement to help make your milk more slippery and less likely to stick/clog in your milk ducts.

Then hot showers to massage and open up the milk ducts (like blood vessels, milk ducts dilate with warmth). Then I bought battery powered heated massaging pads you put in your bra to heat up and massage the milk ducts. Then I bought a knobby rolling thing that was supposed to break up milk ducts. 

I tried different feeding positions. I pumped and started on the right side so she would be vigorous and pull the plugs out. I stuffed cabbage leaves in my bra until I smelled like I worked in a German hofbrauhaus serving braised cabbage. I’d randomly leave a little cabbage patch trail of used leaves around the yard and house...and my eldest pup would systematically come behind and eat them. Welcome to my life. 

Ineffective but adorable use of cabbage leaf

I even had my husband try and suck out the clogged duct when I was in tears one afternoon. But when his beard touched my fire hot breast tissue, I knew I wouldn’t be able to withstand it and I knew he wouldn’t be able to power through my tears to try and help.

Thankfully with some breath work on my end and hunger on Aspen’s – she was able to release it later that day. 

These interventions worked every time...eventually. I would spend 30-40 minutes in the blistering hot shower massaging and expressing to try and unclog the ducts. I would spend hours each day pumping. 

But the thing is – all of the interventions I’ve listed not only help release clogged ducts. They also help stimulate production. 

The lactation consultants to this day will not admit I was overproducing. They were so afraid to tell someone to reduce their supply they would never give me the green light to do it. They wanted me to wake up despite my baby sleeping through the night so I could pump – because God forbid my body reduce supply in the 8 hours I tried to sleep. 

In hindsight...I 100% would have tried reducing my supply early on. It’s clear I was more than adequately feeding my daughter and I still had breasts full of milk just sitting there waiting... 

Here I was with persistent clogged milk ducts due to overproduction and I was doing the every step to increase production in order to release clogged ducts. 

I’ll wait while you reread that sentence. 

In addition to the above interventions, I drastically altered my diet. The best way to describe it is if keto and carnivore diets had a baby – that’s what I ate.

Thanks to fear from the lactation consultations, I didn’t try to actively reduce my supply. What I did instead was avoid everything that could stimulate lactation. This included:

• Oats

• Beer

• Green leafy veggies 

• Sweet potatoes

• Carrots

• Beans

• Rice

• Pizza

• Bread/cookies/crackers/cakes

• Wheat/gluten/basically anything made from batter or dough

This left me with meat, corn, and potatoes. I ate bacon and eggs for breakfast. I made a lot of Mexican style meals since I could eat corn and corn tortillas. I discovered pork rinds. 

We ordered a Butcher Box subscription to have a constant supply of pork chops, ribs, chicken thighs, and steaks.

At first it wasn’t too bad. I love meat and potatoes, but everything eventually becomes old. I became tired of grease and fat. I avoided tuna due to mercury and I pretty much hate chicken breast – so the majority of the meat I ate was fatty. 

I missed spring salads. I missed beer. I missed cookies and pizza. I missed waffles and biscuits.

I lost nearly all the weight I’d gained from pregnancy. My bowels were regular. My belly wasn’t bloated (beyond the slow abdominal wall recovery from childbirth). Silver lining, right?

In addition to foods, heat, and massage – being in a relaxed state can stimulate production. I would try and do breath work in yoga poses or when trying to repair my pelvic floor and I could feel my milk coming in.

Other times my supply was unexpectedly stimulated included:

• Sex – the hormones and the excitation stimulates production even in those moments you least want to think about your child

• Massages – I tried having a little ‘me’ time and get a trigger point massage which resulted in getting milk all over the massage sheets and table

• Nitrous Oxide – I went to have some dental work and the nitrous (laughing gas) caused me to relax so much I felt my breasts engorging while lying there sky high with my mouth open

Busy days and stressful nights

My days were consumed with assessing for a clog or treating a clog. My days were consumed with pain so severe I couldn’t wear a shirt and I couldn’t hold my baby to my chest. I couldn’t work out because there is some evidence upper body exercises can cause clogged ducts and when you have clogged ducts or infection - the first step is to rest.

I sometimes felt like my breast was going to explode. 

I honestly wanted it to explode. One night I was so unraveled by the pain I saw a knife in the kitchen and considered cutting my breast open with a knife. Not joking. Not metaphorical. I was very ready to do it. Anything to get relief.

Thankfully I did not.

I went to my six week postpartum follow up and they did my annual exam. She attempted a breast exam and failed due to the extreme pain. I couldn’t let the fabric of my exam gown touch my breast let alone someone pressing on it looking for breast cancer tumors.

She said she didn’t think it was mastitis – an infection that occurs when a clogged duct doesn’t release and bacteria can collect – but gave me a prescription for antibiotics to have just in case I needed it. 

I’m glad she did because the next day, I started to notice red streaks on my breast which is a hallmark sign of mastitis. I started the 7-day treatment of taking an antibiotic 4 times a day. The clogged duct and redness resolved in a day or two. 

Remember how my left boob was the slacker? Thankfully I didn’t get as many clogged ducts in my left breast because of this. I eventually stopped pumping the left because 

a) I wasn’t producing very much and 

b) Aspen could get all the milk she needed from the right. 

I eventually stopped breastfeeding on the left side too. I figured why have two potential risks for mastitis when I could just have one? So I slowly let my supply disappear in my left boob – lactation consultant worries be damned. Which was fine other than the grossly obvious size discrepancy. 

One of the perks of COVID quarantine though...no one was seeing me in person so I didn’t have to worry with wearing a bra on my tender tiddies and didn’t have to worry about looking like an episode of Botched Plastic Surgery.

Saved by the Dole

After two months of painful feedings, my nipples finally stopped hurting so much. Yay! Another achievement unlocked. I could breastfeed without holding my breath and without being as still as a statue. 

But I still had 4-6 clogged ducts a week. I’d had 2 episodes of fevers and mastitis requiring antibiotics. Realistically, I was far from pain-free. 

I left a message with the lactation consultants saying I needed help weaning. I’d decided enough was enough and I was done breastfeeding. But I knew I couldn’t just stop because rule #1 of clogged duct prevention is make.sure.you.are.feeding/pumping.frequently. 

Of course when she called me back she tried to talk me off the ledge of weaning. I get it, that’s their job. A big part of their role is mental damage control from the trauma of breastfeeding. I was in the grocery store when she called and I spent 5 minutes telling her each and every intervention I’d done and she said 

“Wow, you’ve really done a lot! But I didn’t hear you mention the supplement bromelain. Have you tried this?” 

No, I had not. So I had Ben look in the supplement aisle to try and find it. He could not find it. 

Now I’m in tears on the phone and she says “Ok, ok, ok...do you like pineapple?” 

*sniffle*yes*sniffle* 

“Great! Bromelain is from pineapples, so go grab some pineapple and eat it!” 

*sniffle*sob*OK*sniffle*

I brought home two containers of pre-cut pineapple chunks and began systematically eating the whole thing in the next 24 hours. 

And it did help. Pineapple and pineapple juice were the one thing that made a huge difference. My episodes of clogged ducts and mastitis reduced by probably 75%. 

But I still got them. No matter how many glasses I drank or how many pieces I ate. I never went more than 5 days without a clogged duct. 

I even purchased $500 battery powered breast pumps so I’d never get caught in traffic or at a restaurant needing to pump. Those pumps were life and time savers – I can’t recommend them enough – but even my boujee vigilance couldn’t 100% prevent clogged ducts.

Pumping in the parking lot between brewery stops (and pouring out in the gutter)

Pre baby my goal was to exclusively breastfeed for one year.

After she was born, my goal was six months.

After clogged ducts and recurrent mastitis, my goal was four months.

And we made it 4 months. And I’d had enough. I’d pumped and saved enough milk to supplement her while I started weaning for about 4 weeks as well. But I knew I had to start introducing formula slowly in order to transition her smoothly and save what was left of my sanity.

I couldn’t eat things I wanted to eat. I couldn’t exercise because of the pain. At one point I couldn’t do anything for 24 hours because of the fevers and chills. I was done. 

Transitions

I did not want to talk to the lactation consultants about weaning again. I knew they would try and convince me otherwise. So I called my OB. Someone who was more focused on me than feeding and more focused on me than on Aspen. My advocate. And she was hugely supportive and reassuring of my decision.

I started dropping one feeding a day (she would eat 6-8 times a day at this point). I went really slow to reduce the risk of clogged milk ducts. I still had 3-4 and one episode of mastitis, but otherwise I felt really good about the process.

It took about 3 weeks to drop down to two feedings a day – one in the morning and one at night. I wanted to try and breastfeed those times if possible for the comfort and closeness it provided us. My OB agreed I had such a large supply (as opposed to the opinions of the lactation consultation), so she felt I could easily maintain only feeding her twice a day for as long as I wanted.

Additional things I did to actively reduce my supply:

Sage/PB bread worked wonders to decrease milk supply

1. Eat dried sage 3x day. I would take a small piece of bread with peanut butter on it, pour 1tsp of sage on top, wad it up and eat it. Didn’t taste awful. Didn’t taste great, but works really well. (A friend told me later there are tinctures you can take if you don’t want to eat it.)

2. Avoid hot showers and avoid running hot water on my breasts.

3. Peppermint apparently reduces supply too so I ate a handful of Altoids throughout the day.

4. I still avoided anything to stimulate lactation (beer, gluten, oats, greens).

5. I would gently hand express milk in the shower to try and reduce clogged ducts from forming if I felt one but also avoiding too much stimulation. I only used the Haakaa silicone hand pump if I felt I needed to pump rather than the stronger pumps for the same reason.

The first day we attempted formula was awful. She refused it, cried, and was straight up pissed I was trying to give her anything other than my breastmilk. Thankfully she had no issue with the bottle part since she’d been on a bottle off and on since she was born. But she was having no part of the formula. 

I felt like a piece of shit for giving her formula. But the one thing that kept me trying was the fact I don’t remember breastfeeding as a newborn. All of the precious memories I have with my mother and not a one of them have to do with breastfeeding. 

I even had to ask my dad if she breastfed me because her and I had never talked about it.

So these thoughts – these fears of abandonment – were my selfish fears. Aspen was happy, healthy, gaining weight, and her and I are thick as thieves. And I knew if we stopped the bonding we may gain during breastfeeding – nothing would change our closeness. In fact, I had hopes it would be improved. I’d have less anxiety and fewer panic attacks. I’d have less pain and no fevers. I’d have more time if I wasn’t in the shower or pumping. 

The technique I used to introduce formula was adding 10ml of formula for every 4 ounces of breastmilk and I would feed her that ratio for 1-2 days. And then added a little more formula, a little less milk.

This took about ten days to fully transition to formula. And by the 10th day we’d both forgotten those rough first days. She was happily gulping down formula and I was happy to not breastfeed as often. 

A few weeks after starting this routine I had to travel for 5 nights two weeks in a row for my new job. I still pumped twice a day while I was away and returned to breastfeeding when I got home. But Aspen didn’t seem as interested in breastfeeding after exclusively having the bottle for a week. So during the second 5 night trip, I decided to wean completely. My milk had started to really thin out, turn a slight gray color and the benefit of it was questionable (in my opinion). 

I dropped one feeding the first night on my trip and by the end of my work training – I was completely done. Aspen was now 5 months old.

I had a feeling in my heart this was probably going to happen while I was home in between trips so I spent extra time, extra intention on that last feeding before I went to the airport. Even though I wasn’t sure it was going to be the last one, in my head I said “this may be it, so enjoy it.” 

And I did. For all the pain and heartache, all the panic attacks and fevers, I was so grateful for the experience with her. 

Grateful and still traumatized.

Guilt and Grace

I’m so glad I was able to breastfeed her and provide my daughter with the “perfect” nutrition. But I also have regret over the lost time, pain, and emotions. I was so focused on learning to breastfeed, learning to pump, storing milk, washing pump parts, and then dealing with clogged milk ducts that I know I missed so many moments with her. 

It was this feeling of always having a project or work looming over my head.

Did she latch? Should I pump? How old is that milk in the fridge? Where’s the soap? Is that a knot? Where is the massager? Who is going to burp her while I pump? Who is going to hold her while I shower? How am I going to pick up my prescription for antibiotics in the middle of a pandemic? Who is going to watch my baby while I lay in bed with a fever?

I know I had my husband there to help. And he helped SO MUCH. But mom guilt is a bitch and doesn’t care about people helping you. Mom guilt doesn’t care if she is burped, held, fed, and cared for by someone. 

Mom guilt only cares that you can’t do it.

Maybe I was too weak. Too sensitive, too tender breasted. Too hysterical (intentional use of patriarchal term). Too lazy to get up 2-4 times a night and pump versus sleep. 

Maybe I was too stubborn. Too hard-headed to throw in the towel and realize it wasn’t working.

Maybe my weakness made me stubborn. 

Maybe my stubbornness made me weak. 

All I know is she won’t remember any of this. She’ll only know from stories we tell her or from reading this blog. I know she’s still crazy about me and lights up when she sees my face when I walk in after work. I know we now get to look at each other in the eyes when she drinks her bottles and I know she loves trying apples, squash, and carrots. 

Sweet potato tasting FTW

I know what I did was good but I don’t know if it was worth it.

I don’t know how long it will take my mental health to recover from it. 

I don’t know how long I’ll need to stay on anti-anxiety medication I started because of it.

I don’t know if I would breastfeed my next baby (if there is another opportunity).

If you’ve made it this far – I appreciate you sticking it through the end. Chances are you are someone who reached out with support, advice, jokes, and love while I was struggling with breastfeeding. I thank you for that. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t have the support I had – even during a pandemic. The late night Instagram messages kept me sane and kept me safe. Having a partner help ground me and support me kept me sane and kept me safe.

Breastfeeding was very hard for me. That doesn’t mean it will be or should be hard for you. It doesn’t mean you should feel guilty for having a great breastfeeding experience. Learning about everyone’s struggles, triumphs, and moments when it comes to feeding their babies continues to show me how incredible women are.

My journey is my own and no one else’s.

I hope this post educates some, supports others, and uplifts a few. So you know you’re not alone. Not alone in struggling. Not alone in hating it. Not alone in feeling like a failure trying to figure this mom thing out.

And maybe give you the courage to tell mom guilt to fuck off. Even if it’s just for the day.

xoxo, Steph

A New Mother’s Identity Crisis – When Your Maternity Leave Ends During a Pandemic

I’m sitting on a plush bed propped up on plush white pillows.

I’m eating microwave cheese dip and salsa with chips out of the bag. I’m washing it down with a beer. The grocery store brownie cookies are next on my list.

I’m eating all of this on the bed while watching Pitch Perfect 3 on TV. 

I’m in the middle of the country, hundreds of miles away from my family, away from my 4-month-old daughter. 

No, this isn’t a sequel to Eat, Pray, Love. I haven’t run away to seek freedom, love, or whatever else Julia Roberts was after.

I knew I had to go back to work before my daughter was born. Not working wasn’t an option and at the time, I was totally fine and eager to return to the workforce and ‘reclaim myself’ after maternity leave.

I don’t know what I thought reclaiming myself meant, but it was something along the lines of “I’m not just going to be a mom”. 

Being a mom was never high on my to do list, and wasn’t even on the list for most of my life. The girls and women who dream of growing up and becoming Mom as if they’ve been called to become one their entire life was also foreign to me. Not that it was wrong or weird or dumb, I just didn’t get it. It wasn’t until I was 33 years old that I really starting wanting to become a mom.

For 32 years before that, I wanted hundreds of other things that didn’t involve surrendering my entire being for another person.

I’d had breakfast while I was pregnant with a friend who was a mother. She said some women are just driven to be Mom. They have their world revolve around being a mom and their kids are their world. Their identity is being a mom.

My friend is not one of those women.

I said I wasn’t going to be one of those women.

Not that anything is wrong with Mom moms. But at the same time, I didn’t want to be constrained by a single identity – I felt like I was much more complicated than any one identity (hello Enneagram 4). 

I have a career as a nurse practitioner and my own copywriting business. I love to travel, I love to fitness with my friends, I love to hang out with my husband and family. And I constantly combat the patriarchal gender roles. 

Then my daughter was born. 

Then I thought about leaving her to go back to work.

And I cried and cried and cried some more. I couldn’t fathom ever leaving her for a second.

So I didn’t. We spent all day and all night together (sleep be damned). 

Then certain things happened, mostly not related to my daughter, which led me to quit my current job halfway through maternity leave. 

Yea, I quit that nurse practitioner job (layer one removed of self-identity).

I then secured a new job that would start a few months later (layer lying over there...waiting to put back on at some later date). 

Then COVID-19 happened and any glimpse of ‘returning to normal living’ went out the front door, never to return. We were together, attached at the hip and tit, day and night, quarantined and socially distanced at home.

Every day. Every morning, afternoon, evening, and night. We were together. 

I didn’t encounter anyone other than my daughter, husband, and the grocery store self-checkout kiosk robot for six weeks. And I didn’t go anywhere or see anyone other than my daughter’s grandparents for two months after that.

Every day. Every morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Every feeding. Every nap. Every smile, cry, giggle, and milestone I witnessed. 

I’m now going from a four hour stretch of time (when I got my hair done in February) to more than 120 hours. 

I’m going from every moment together to “I’ll see you in six days!”

I’m going from my face being the first thing she sees every morning and the last one she sees every night to wondering if she will still remember my face. 

I knew I had to go back to work. I knew I had to have time away from her eventually. But to make the change to my descriptor from Stay At Home Mom to Working Mom and having that mean:

• Fly during a global pandemic

• Stay in a hotel for 5 nights in the middle of the country during this pandemic

• Follow local curfew due to rioting upon arriving to the new city

• Start training for a new job – one drastically different from my previous role

• Return to society after 3 months of relative seclusion (hello public bathroom stagefright)

So many new things.

I haven’t left our home for more than a few hours let alone our state. I haven’t driven more than 5 miles a week as we limit our grocery store trips to 1-2 times a week, let alone obtain a rental car and remember how Google Maps works. 

I haven’t flown in almost a year. I will say the smell of alcohol-based hand sanitizer smells better than farts and body odor on flights these days. I didn’t miss not getting a Diet Coke and pretzels on the flight. I didn’t even really mind wearing the mask and being socially distant. Wearing a mask essentially encourages you not to talk to other people because you can’t hear shit and it’s annoying to have this thing moving on your face with every expression.

Am I smiling? Am I frowning? Am I yawning? Do I have something in my teeth? Nobody knows.  

To me it was baby steps back into society after the majority of my conversations are with my 4-month-old, who doesn’t care what I say, and my husband, who is getting better and better at reading my mind. 

Baby steps into society and into a new identity. But who was I now, exactly? 

My identity was Aspen’s mom because that’s all I could really be. I wasn’t working. I couldn’t socialize or see anyone else because of COVID quarantine. 

Even if I had a trusted babysitter, where would we go? Breweries and restaurants are all closed. Parks and the Blue Ridge Parkway were closed until recently. 

So by all accounts, I was forced into mom solitude. As were many mothers born during COVID. We didn’t get the chance to attend postpartum yoga classes. We didn’t get to go to Mommy & Me coffee/workouts/bitchfests. 

Would I have gone to any of those? Probably not. But I would’ve liked the option to connect in a way that didn’t involve Zoom. 

Have you ever Zoomed with an infant in your lap? The back strain to focus on the screen and prop them up. The distraction of them puking on you or getting hungry and crying. The guilt of exposing them to screen time you swore you wouldn’t dare do until they were two years old.

Even when we had socially distant hangs outs – drinks on the front porch or bring your own dinner ‘round the fire – no one could hold her but me and my husband. No one could snuggle her or squeeze her cheeks. 

Not only were friends and family isolated and distant, so were many other resources.

I had a telehealth physical therapy visit to address nagging pelvic pain postpartum.

When I developed an infection in my breast due to clogged milk ducts, I had to have telehealth visits with my OB to discuss my symptoms and plan. I developed severe anxiety around the concern of not being able to get antibiotics fast enough and potentially having to go into the hospital during COVID. I’d have to go alone, away from my daughter, if that happened.

I had anxiety over the fear of developing an infection the day after our once a week grocery trip as we were trying our best to stay at home.

I had anxiety over the fevers I would get and would cross my fingers and toes it was just another infection and not COVID. In fact, I woke up with a fever the day I would have returned to my previous job. Although I knew it was from mastitis, they probably wouldn’t have let me work because they were checking everyone’s temperature prior to starting work.

I had another OB telehealth visit. This time about my anxiety, not mastitis. I felt the shame and guilt of weaning wearing me down and anxiety and fear around COVID keeping me down. My coping mechanisms were not safe and thankfully I could talk to someone through my MacBook on the couch. 

Telehealth progress may be the second greatest silver lining of COVID.

The first being uninterrupted closeness and time with my new baby. However, the double-edged sword of being a quarantine mom was constantly being forged by the uncertainty surrounding COVID. The forced closeness was something I’ll always cherish, but it was a baptism by fire into motherhood. 

My husband and I were responsible for it all. And I know a lot of families operate like this willingly – I get that. But to have this routine interjected into our lives without asking if we cared, made it hard and at times resentful. 

I hated not getting a small break. I hated that my friends and family weren’t able to enjoy my new baby with us. I hated myself for hating not having a break. I hated myself for feeling sorry for myself for all the time I had with her. 

And now I am far away from her, talking to her through Facebook messenger. Now I am pumping breast milk in the morning and at night and pouring it down the drain.

I went from doing ALL the mom things to doing NONE of the mom things.

I can’t feed her. I can’t hold her. I can’t comfort her. I can’t get her dressed or pick out her PJs. 

But I know she’s in good hands. Hands and hearts that love her and know her.

* * * *

Fast forward 13 days.

Here I am, at the end of my second trip away from my daughter, husband, and home. I am finished with training for my new job and feel ready and confident to move forward.

On my work trip I enjoyed many meals in bed or on the hotel room couch, binge-watching Amazon and Netflix. I also enjoyed seeing my daughter laugh and wiggle like crazy when she recognized me on FaceTime. I loved the updates from my husband about the fun they were happening and also tried my best to help any way I could.

Nothing says ‘working mom’ more than walking down the steps of a plane onto the airfield while talking to your husband on the phone about what to do when your baby just won’t. stop. crying.

She was teething like crazy and he finally was able to help her calm down. And he did so with grace – even providing proof with a photo of a sleeping baby from the baby monitor. 

I’ve had a lot of time and moments on airplanes, in airports, in hotels by myself to think about the last 5 months (she turned 5 months old last week!). What life has become since my daughter was born. What I have become.

Being a mom is hard. Being a mom has radically changed my life, body, and spirit. I left the hospital in January as a new person. And trying to figure out who that new person is has been a challenge on its own.

Forget the whole ‘keep a human alive’ part – trying to redefine me as a person and woman has been a lot to unpack. I still don’t know who that person fully is, and I have a feeling I will constantly evolve and change who that person is as life goes on. 

But one thing I know I will have to do, whatever I define me as, is to know no matter what, I am enough.

This new Stephanie, she is good enough. Whatever I’m trying to do – I am enough. 

And being a mom makes that sentence really hard to say. You simultaneously feel like you’re failing as a mom and no one else can do it but you.

It’s like thinking “I suck at this...but everyone else probably sucks more so I shouldn’t bother them and I better just continue to do everything…really badly”. That sort of thinking really wears you down. This duality of feeling I’m not good enough but not feeling comfortable asking anyone else for help.

It’s like being an island sinking into quicksand, one breath away from being consumed by the sea. 

My bonus grandmother recently told me of a quote Oprah once said: 

Women can do anything but we can’t do it all at the same time.

It’s a saying I wanted to buy into but a phrase I couldn’t really embrace until this work trip. Trust me, I wanted to continue ignoring it even when they told me I had to go Nebraska – I looked up KOA campgrounds so we could bring the camper and stay together on my trips. 

But then reality set in and making my husband stay in quarantine in a camper with an infant while I was at work wasn’t the best idea. 

So I had to come to grips with the fact I would have to leave my baby for not just an hour or a day or ever one night. I had to leave her for 6 days and 5 nights. 

Yes I cried for about an hour once I got the news and then I did what I do best during a challenge – I started planning. Making lists, ordering extra bottles, and organizing schedules. I tried to make it as easy as possible to take care of her, but also not wanting to be a crazy helicopter mom. 

Not sure if I succeeded, but no one complained about my lists to my face lol.

And guess what? My babygirl thrived! Ate well, slept well, learned to roll over even better than she was before, and laughed countless times. She was able to bond with her grandparents and daddy in ways that weren’t previously possible because I was there doing the lioness’s share of work. 

It wasn’t just that I wanted to do all the things, but it was also the easiest thing. 

You ever have someone try to show you how to do something and then they’re like “never mind, it’s just faster if I do it”.

It was like that, but add postpartum anxiety flair to it. 

It’s easy to say it was pride, or doubt in others, as to what kept me from asking for help, but it was mostly the stress of trying to explain how to do something that I actually had no idea how to do well (or at least, thought I didn’t know how to well). 

Asking for help and explaining what worked for me was opening to door to questions and potential criticism to what I was doing. Explaining what I did opened the gates of doubt of someone realizing I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. 

But, guess what? I did explain it. I did know how to keep her alive and happy. And so did they.

They did that while I traveled across the country, during a pandemic, during a civil rights crisis, to train for a brand new job. 

And now we are all back together again. Navigating our new normal. Navigating childcare schedules. Navigating big career moves. Navigating my daughter trying fruits and veggies for the first time. 

Learning what life is as a mom, wife, business owner, nurse practitioner, and woman. Learning how to ask for help. Learning I don’t have to do everything. I know I can anything, but I can’t do everything at the same time. And I know I am enough. 

xoxo,

Steph

Two Weeks Into 4th Trimester

She’s two weeks old today. Which means I became a mom 14 days ago. It’s still hard to comprehend. I’ve taken hundreds of pictures of her. Thank goodness I just got a new phone and opted for the extra storage, Lord knows I’m going to need it.

She’s gorgeous and perfect. I can’t stop looking at her pictures.

I’ve taken several of me, of my postpartum body. To see how my belly changes, as well as the rest of me. I recognize myself. I feel like myself. Don’t get me wrong – my body looks quite different, but it’s been looking different almost daily for the last year – so I’ve gotten used to witnessing the evolution. My pregnancy evolution and now postpartum evolution. 

I’ve taken a few of me and her. Honestly part of it is vanity – the bags under my eyes, the initial bloat of my face, and my hair being less than my usual bleached and proper silver (other than the multiplying gray hairs popping up!) – I didn’t want to ruin her beauty with...me. The other part is I still find it hard to understand, visually, she is mine.

New roles take time, I get it, and 14 days is hardly enough to fall into something as jarring as motherhood. But here we are, literally thrust into it with a few well-timed pushes.

I don’t mean in the “this isn’t my baby, get it away” sense, but it’s all so surreal I’m a mom and I have a daughter. New roles take time, I get it, and 14 days is hardly enough to fall into something as jarring as motherhood. But here we are, literally thrust into it with a few well-timed pushes. Don’t get me wrong – I love doing all the mom things. I love the nurturing, the fatigue, the wonderment of it all. But it still doesn’t compute fully. Visually. 

There’s so much to think about, what’s happened in two weeks. What’s happened to me in two weeks. To Ben in two weeks. We’re new people. As cliched as it is, we are completely changed. Those first few days were the most raw. We were in awe of her and awe of each other. Of who we’d become. 

Mindshift

Those first 2.5 days as a family were spent in a hospital. One room. Two patients. One room, Two attending physicians who came in – one to check on me, one to check on her. Those days blur together for me but something was abundantly clear – I was not the most important person in my life anymore. 

Throughout my pregnancy people would ask “how’s the baby doing?” and it was weird to me. Especially prior to 34 weeks when everything was going so well – I was only going to the OB office every month and then every 2 weeks. The last ultrasound they did was at 18 weeks for the anatomy scan so I honestly had no idea “how the baby was doing”. I knew I felt like shit, but as far as the tiny human in my pelvis, I had no clue. I felt her move – which is a good thing – but beyond that, in my mind, she wasn’t really a ‘she’ yet or a baby. 

She was a concept. This idea, this vision, this potential reality which hadn’t come to fruition quite yet. I knew I would love her but I didn’t even know what she looked like, sounded like, smelled like yet. Everyone asked if we were excited to have a kid and as much as that should be a rhetorical question, it isn’t. So we both said “yea, of course, we’re looking forward to meeting her”. But it still felt rehearsed, like a line you’re supposed to say. Even though it wasn’t a line – I was very much looking forward to it – it still seemed vapid. 

Those last few weeks before she was born, people asked if I wanted them to visit us in the hospital. I happily said ‘sure! Bring us some food!’ or ‘of course! Hospitals are boring and I’m sure we could use some company’ or ‘yea! I’d love to see you’. 

All of those statements are about me. Bring me food, bring me entertainment, bring me friends. I’m ashamed to say my daughter never once crossed my mind regarding those comments. I guess because before she was still only this concept. 

Now she was here, and nothing and no one else mattered. Now she was here, the reality that she was born preterm, in January, in peak flu season sank in. A high school girl died of the flu that same week one town over. The pediatrician said to limit visitors, it’s not worth exposing her. It’s not worth her getting a fever from a cold or bug and ending back up in the hospital. 

Babies less than two months old who get fevers equal automatic hospital admission. That was one of those nursing board questions. Because we all know kids get fevers and sick all the time – but there is a hard line for newborns and fevers. And after spending 5 days in the hospital...I wasn’t going to risk any chance for her to have to come back.

I felt shame in my previous selfishness. My unawareness of what would happen to me at 0251 on a January Wednesday morning. My life and my preferences became second for the first time in my life. And I gave up first place with wild abandon. 

The Shift of Mind and Action

I’ve heard mothers say they lost themselves in motherhood. The self-care movement is probably marketed the most aggressively at moms because to put the priority on yourself, even for an hour yoga class, now becomes an active decision. And I was heading down that road, even at day two of motherhood.

You need to hold her for fun – everything you’re doing now is work he said to me. My husband was referring to me desperately trying to get my baby to latch and for us to figure out this breastfeeding thing. After trying that, it was trying to get her to suck on my finger as I slowly dripped milk into her mouth from a syringe. Then I had to pump, so I had to put her down. 

I was so focused on trying to help her eat I was forgetting to enjoy her just to be enjoying her – like everyone else was enjoying her. Grandparents would come and they could simply hold her and stare at her. Meanwhile in my sleep deprivation, magnesium haze mind, I was so focused on trying to be a good provider and feed my baby I was losing sight of the joy. 

I didn’t care about what I needed or how I felt in those first few days. Yes, I still felt the effects of preeclampsia, but I didn’t care as long as she kept passing the little tests they would do: bilirubin, oxygen, hearing, etc. So much so – going back to breastfeeding – when my milk finally came in and I was pumping, I was met with massive cramping. Like push the call bell, something isn’t right cramping. 

Oh those are the hormones working now that you’re breastfeeding! The nurse explained. Apparently, when you start producing milk and your body is figuring out its new job, even more hormones are released and these can cause uterine cramps. Lovely, right? Here I am, just trying to create this life-sustaining product for my baby and I’m rewarded with severe menstrual type cramping. 

But again – here I am focused on her and doing what she needs. I became excited when I started to have those pains. Ohhh it’s working! I’m making milk! I need the heating pad ASAP...where is the damn heating pad...

I’m so thankful Ben saw what was happening to me and spoke up. Because that behavior is a little atypical of me. Yes, I’m a good and nurturing nurse and person, mostly, but I’m also pretty self-serving. So to shift drastically and only focus on someone else is a new move for me. But he reminded me she will figure breastfeeding out and we will both be just fine. He reminded me to enjoy her for the sake of me. To be a little selfish and self-serving. To look at this little human we made together and be in awe. So I did and so I have each day since. I actively remind myself to simply enjoy her existence and not focus on the many tasks at hand to keep her alive. 

Not only was she now outside of my body from where she lived for over nine months, a large part of my heart and soul now lived outside of me too. 

This former ‘concept’ of her was now the singular most important thing to me.  Which is also a terrifying realization. Not only was she now outside of my body from where she lived for over nine months, a large part of my heart and soul now lived outside of me too. 

Going Home

She was three days old when we went home. Many folks said they had this freakout moment of “OMG they’re letting me take this baby home?! How are we supposed to do this?!” when it came time to discharge home. I was bracing for this stress response walking out of the door but it honestly never came. I think we were both so excited to finally go home after having to stay an extra day because of my health – we were more excited than nervous. 

Getting her in the car seat and strapped into the car was thrilling and surreal. The 20-minute drive home – where I’m mostly turned around staring at her in the mirror making sure she’s still breathing because her ability to work her lungs suddenly became more fragile in my eyes walking out of the safety of the hospital – felt like a rush of endorphins. Ben and I lightheartedly reflected on the last several days and how we were both still in disbelief. 

We got home and were greeted by my Ben’s parents – they’d driven up from South Carolina and were watching our dogs for us while we were in the hospital. We brought her in the house and ‘introduced’ her to the dogs. Two were interested, sniffing and smelling, the eldest was completely ambivalent about her. All three were excited to see Ben and I after being gone almost five days. 

It was great having support at home, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law cooked a great meal for us to have our first night home. But it was also stressful like anyone can imagine. So many emotions, thoughts, hormones – and questions.

So. Many. Questions. While I was pregnant I gave researching and preparing for baby the ol’ college try. I know I didn’t read as many books or blogs or Pinterest lists as some moms. I know I read more than some moms. I would ask myself questions and the internet would oblige. 

• 10 Things You Have to Have in Your Hospital Bag

• Don’t Forget These 7 Tips to Sleeping Through the Night

• 250 Baby Registry Must Haves

• Never Do These 5 Things as You Prepare for Baby

• The Secret Your Doctor Doesn’t Want You to Know About Your Baby...ok that one is a little dramatic.

I would make mental notes, created a Pinterest board, texted with mom friends about these questions. Up until now it was a one way path – me having a question and seeking the answer. Now it was different. This influx of questions now came from Ben, our family, and continued to come from me, all about basic baby survival.

I think I blubbered something along the lines of “I tried to be prepared, but I don’t know everything” which will probably be a running theme for 2020…

I had a meltdown on the couch because I didn’t know the answer to if we needed to boil the bottles after every use or just when we initially buy them. I think I blubbered something along the lines of “I tried to be prepared, but I don’t know everything” which will probably be a running theme for 2020…

Again, Ben coming in with the save and reassuring me I’m doing awesome and great and he’s going to Google the answer. I also texted a friend to see her answer. The answer is no, soap and water work fine. And we all moved on.

I also needed to keep breastfeeding/supplementing/pumping on this narrow 2-3 hour window. Which rapidly approached as we walked in the door having spent the last two hours going over paperwork with the nurse, packing our stuff, driving home, and unloading everything at home. 

This meant I needed my chest exposed, because duh, right? Can’t breastfeed or pump through clothes. There’s probably a device that lets you do this, but I haven’t come across it yet. But there were people in my house and I didn’t know how just pull my boob out. 

It’s an odd thing to be faced with a problem you’ve never had before, one you need to solve smoothly, all while your brain doesn’t really work right because sleep deprivation is a true crime and hashtag hormones. An act this whole time leading up to you’d told yourself “of course I’ll breastfeed in public or in front of whomever, women’s rights n shit, it’s my prerogative to do it!”. Sounded a lot braver in my mind before actually being faced with it. 

It’s an odd thing to be faced with a problem you’ve never had before, one you need to solve smoothly, all while your brain doesn’t really work right because sleep deprivation is a true crime and hashtag hormones. 

So my solution was to go into the nursery with the pump I was renting from the hospital and pump in there. Sitting in a room furnished for a concept and otherwise didn’t have a purpose before we walked through the door with her an hour ago. There I was, behind a closed door. With my brand new baby in the living room, further away than she’s been since she’s existed outside of my belly. 

Annnndd cue sobbing. At the time I didn’t know why I was sobbing – like legit ugly crying. Crying with these two pumps on my boobs making a rhythmic mechanical noise doing their best to milk me like the prized cow Miss Bessie. It’s only now where I can say oh yeah, that was a lot to deal with in that moment, totally makes sense why I was upset.

Ben comes in – he’s not sure if what he was hearing was me laughing or crying – and does his best to comfort me. He also goes and gets our daughter, it was like he read my subconscious mind since I didn’t know why I was crying at the time. He put her in her crib, a crib hilariously gigantic against her now barely 5-pound body. But now I could see her, now she was in front of me, sleeping away while I continued to pump. It wasn’t anyone’s fault this happened, it just did. I was thankful to have family there and not every transition with this new life is going to be smooth. Probably not any of them will be.

First Night Home

Our first night home went as well as a night with a three day old can go as far as I’m concerned. I set my alarm to go off every 3 hours to make sure she was fed, sometimes she woke before the alarm which was oddly encouraging. This meant she was now able to wake to her own hunger cues. After spending the first 24-36 hours of her life sleeping and being very lethargic – her being able to wake on her own and say feed me! meant things were going in the right direction. 

Obviously our bed is a lot more comfortable than a hospital bed. We also didn’t have random people coming in during the night to check our vital signs, ask me my name and date of birth, draw labs, or ask me how much she fed last time or had a wet diaper to document. So the waking part was slightly more annoying for me and Ben, but we managed.

Our house is also a bit bigger than a standard for-profit hospital room. So now having to walk down the hall to the kitchen, get milk out of the fridge, heat it up, walk back...feed her...walk back to the kitchen and return bottle and milk and rinse out implements – oh and grab pumping supplies – was more laborious. I also had the strength of an overcooked rotini noodle at this point after being in the hospital and having a baby. And I was soaking wet.

I wasn’t wet from breast milk – although that happens frequently enough. I was drenching in night sweats. Thank God the discharge nurse told me these were normal or I would’ve had another meltdown thinking I had the flu, or lymphoma, or something else ridiculous. My back was soaked, my hair was drenched, my clothes were damp and cold. 

I’m convinced hormones are the most powerful thing existing in our bodies right now. They cause so damn much to happen! Pregnancy, labor, milk production, hot flashes and now these night sweats. Not only am I wet from sweating, I’m also freezing. I’d spent the last 4 months being really hot. It’s the only time in my life my patients didn’t curse me for having cold hands. I was essentially a furnace. And I was so thankful to have my third trimester in the fall/winter. And now I’m turning the thermostat up from 66 to 73...

Anyways, now the martyrdom picture has been sufficiently painted, the night went fairly well in my eyes. She fed every 2-3 hours and we all got a little sleep. We registered for these neat velcro swaddle wraps which took the art out of swaddling – and they are amazing! They’re all way too big for her, but we make it work. She’s snuggled up like a little peanut or burrito, or some other adorable snack, nice and cozy. I think swaddling is the way to go to help keep her secure and rested at night, in my limited 14 days of experience. 

But I figure if that’s all they do in the hospital – just a diaper and swaddled in a blanket – it’s probably helpful to do. We put some clothes on her under the swaddle, put her on the bassinet next to my side of the bed and she slept. Only 90 minutes to two hours at a time, but she slept. 

F&*king Hormones

You’re probably tired of me talking about hormones. I’m tired of talking about hormones. But the gravity of their effects can’t be understated. When we were getting our discharge paperwork the nurse told me (and more so Ben) to keep an eye on me and my mood. If my tearfulness, depression, despair didn’t start to improve after two weeks, I needed to talk to my doctor about medication. 

A few things to digest from that statement. For one, there is an expectation I’ll feel like hell for two weeks and that’s normal. Secondly, I may need medication to get over the hump if it’s still severe after two weeks, and that is also normal. And finally, the partner usually sees signs of an issue before the patient. 

Pregnancy hormones are like the warm-up for postpartum hormones. Pregnancy hormones are the JV squad, postpartum hormones are the varsity team. I cried because “she’s so pretty”. I cried because the bear on a blanket she was given was “so cute”. I cried because I was scared of scenarios that didn’t actually exist. I cried because I wasn’t pregnant anymore. I cried at the OB office at my one week visit because they didn’t need me to pee in a cup anymore and I felt “unspecial”.

Yep. Hormones will rock your world. I cried in a doctor’s office bathroom because the nurse didn’t need me to pee in a cup anymore. I’d had to do it every time I walked through the door since our first OB visit in July. To check for protein, glucose, blood, infection, etc. Now they didn’t care about my pee. And it was worth crying about in the bathroom. Fucking hormones. 

Another phenomenon that happened (and still does to an extent) are these vivid nightmares or visions of horrible things happening. Roxy, our doula, stopped by and I was telling her how I kept dreaming I’d accidentally fallen asleep on Aspen and suffocated her to death. Or I was having visions of one of the dogs killing her. 

Apparently, this is also “normal”. These intrusive or ‘scary thoughts’ of harm happening to your baby are very common postpartum. Stress, sleep deprivation, hormones can all contribute to this. Roxy said another theory is more primal. Your instincts to protect your offspring can make your brain create all the bad scenarios as a way to anticipate and prepare for anything bad happening. The whole momma bear and her cub thing. 

Now that I knew this was a normal thing and not a sign (yet anyways) of a more severe psychosis, I acknowledge these thoughts but do my best to not let them consume me. I don’t let them interfere with things I need to do like sleep, shower, rest in addition to caring for my little cub. 

Here we are at week two. And I think the hormonal shit storm is finally settling for now. My brain is less foggy and my thoughts are less manic. Still a long way to go in this 4th trimester, but for now, I will continue to honor my feelings and create space for them – but also keep moving forward for the both of us.

Shame, But Make It Oblivious

I wouldn’t have categorized any of my stress or anxiety postpartum as shameful, but in hindsight, I think it may be just that. Something else which made me cry uncontrollably was how I ‘didn’t deserve’ things. I didn’t deserve Aspen. I didn’t deserve Ben. I didn’t deserve to rest until she was fed, supplemented, and I’d pumped. 

But why not? Why all of a sudden am I unworthy of anything good? The pressure I’d placed on myself to perform well at this whole motherhood thing had devolved into me not doing it good enough, not right enough. I was keeping this baby alive for someone who deserved her and it certainly isn’t me, right? 

Very wrong. This is something I know I will continue to work through as she grows and thrives. To allow myself grace to not be perfect but more importantly to be proud of all that I’ve done. Women aren’t supposed to be too prideful. It’s not attractive and pride is a male trait. But a great Avett Brothers song, The Perfect Space has a line in it I need to hold on to:

I wanna have pride like my mother has,

And not like the kind in the bible that turns you bad.

And I wanna have friends that I can trust,

That love me for the man I've become and not the man that I was.

Something So Severe and Yet So Normal

Moms reading this may be shaking their heads laughing at my dramatics. They may be agreeing with me and recalling their own story. Moms-to-be reading this may be in complete shock and terror at my stories. Potentially more at ease or more nervous at what is to come. Everyone else reading may be wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I don’t blame any of those reactions. 

Transitioning between pregnancy, birth, and postpartum is a mess. A fluid-filled mess. Blood, sweat, tears, pee, poo, milk, laundry detergent, some wine. It’s all in there. It’s all so monumental. It’s all so normal. Women have been doing this for centuries – with far fewer resources than I’ve been afforded. And women do this now with fewer resources than me. Women amaze me. 

As someone who was never sure if I wanted to be a mother, I never took the time to marvel at what a woman’s body can do and endure. During my pregnancy, my appreciation and respect for women grew as Aspen grew in my belly. And now on the other side, my love for what is endured grows stronger still. I think it’s time I start including myself in that love and appreciation. Because as much as I still feel all of this is an out of body experience, I have to give myself credit for how far I’ve come. 

I can’t wait to see how the next days and weeks go. As our relationship as two separate beings develop and our relationship as a family of three grows – it’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever looked forward to. 

Our Birth Story - The Birth of a Baby and the Birth of a Mom and a Dad

I’ve been cleaning, straightening, arranging, rearranging. Not very well or fast, losing 18 pounds in less than 6 days, and taking medication to lower my blood pressure which makes my heart beat slower are a few of the things making my efficiency low. I’ve also been existing in a severe protein deficit since July. Oh and I birthed a baby a week ago. 

See I clean and straighten when I’m nervous or anxious. Just ask my husband how many arguments start with me with my hands in the sink washing dishes or folding laundry. I’m anxious because I still can’t understand how Ben and I got so lucky to bring home a perfect little human. I’m anxious because I feel like somewhere there was a mistake and she isn’t mine and someone or something will come take her. Even if that thing is time…Enjoy it while it lasts, these times go by so fast, I miss newborn snuggles, smells, and sounds so much...all echo my social media, text feeds, and ears right now. 

I’m hoping by recalling our birth story I can convince myself we did this. I also don’t want to forget any of these feelings or memories and even though she’s only 7 days old, I already feel so much has happened.

T Minus 5 Days

Friday a week ago I went to the OB for a visit. I’ve been going twice a week since the week of Christmas – since I spent the night in the hospital for elevated blood pressure and migraines. 

My blood pressure had slowly been going up over the last 5 days. At home it was still below the ‘danger’ threshold I was given – below the numbers I was told to call 24/7 if they reached. But it was still going up and staying up. 

Along the same timeline, my workplace has undergone a huge transition. One full of stress, anxiety, and adjustments. All of this piled on top of the already stressful job we were asked to continue carrying on during the transition. I’d decided to continue working up until I went into labor. But the elevated blood pressure meant they were going to induce me at 37 weeks. This is standard protocol to help prevent me from developing preeclampsia towards the end of my pregnancy. The long and short of why they don’t want people to develop preeclampsia is that it’s the last step before a woman can develop eclampsia, or having a seizure in pregnancy. And as I’ve been told more than once in the last 5 weeks – mommas don’t like seizures and babies don’t like seizures. 

Even saying the word seizure makes me cry. Even now. Even with her here, next to me making sweet coos and grunts. 

So back to Friday – the OB I saw that day was shocked and I think saddened I was continuing to work during this. She said your blood pressure is terrible enough as it is, and if work is stressful and your numbers get worse – your baby may have to go to the NICU. And that’s not worth it to me so I’m pulling you out of work as of today. This was only two days prior to when I was planning to leave work, after all my induction day was scheduled for next Thursday. My plan was to work Monday and Tuesday, tidy up the logistics of leaving work for a while, and then spend the day Wednesday and Thursday getting as ready as I can to be admitted Thursday night to have a baby. 

But knowing I didn’t have to go back for those two days really made a difference in my stress level. Not that I didn’t want to work or help with the transition, but my body was physically done. I cried on the way home from work the day before that appointment. I cried because my body couldn’t move as fast as I needed it to find answers to my questions. I cried because my lungs were so fatigued that trying to explain things to patients took all the energy I had. I cried because my head hurt and it hadn’t stopped hurting since Dec 23. 

So I went into the weekend with a newfound peace. A new grace and permission for myself to rest and prepare for this adventure. An adventure I knew nothing about. An adventure everyone around me told me was life-altering and amazing – but it’s just something you can’t explain or transfer to someone else. 

After dropping off the note at work saying I no longer can be at work I picked up Domino’s pizza and headed home for our last weekend as non-parents. We watched YouTube videos and hung out together as we had many nights before. The way I’d been feeling left me with little energy to do much in the evening. 

Preparing – Whatever That Means

Saturday was the day we were supposed to attend an all-day birthing class ‘boot camp’. Due to my procrastination, this was the only class available and I’d registered and paid for it back in November. But due to feeling so poorly, we decided to bail on the class and just cut our losses on the class fee.  Instead, my stepmom came over to do a nice deep clean of our house. Since I was technically on a sort of ‘bed rest,’ I didn’t think I could manage cleaning the way I wanted to before going into hospital. My stepmom graciously said yes when I asked for some help and I’m so glad I did – she made our home feel like a hotel!

Saturday afternoon we went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday at a few breweries and had dinner. The birthday girl had a baby in December and two other women there were pregnant as well so babies and pregnancy dominated the conversations for sure. I loved watching the dads and dads-to-be swap stories and advice. As well as give each other shit of course.

I’ve paid for going out during my pregnancy. I would feel fine and well at the time – enjoy friends and gatherings – and would feel like a dumpster fire on Sunday. Early on it would look like severe nausea for most of the day. Later on, it felt like a massive hangover with headaches and fatigue. 

That’s how Sunday started so I kept it easy and low stress. My girlfriends from work came over to drop off baby hand me downs and even paint my toenails (since I can’t reach them without holding my breath). We picked a bright pink as my ‘laboring color’. 

Monday I did more of the same straightening and preparing – whatever that means. The nursery was put together, Ben had put the car seat in his car, the house was clean.

I didn’t do much ‘resting’ as I continued to feel so poorly. Lying on the couch mindlessly watching Game of Thrones was great for a few hours at a time, but the most restful part was not being at work. Ben did his best to help me out – cooked me food, did household chores – but mostly he was patient with me. 

Patient with my tears. Patient with my fatigue. Patient with my anxiety. He’s the one person I can be completely vulnerable with, but it is still a challenge for me to open up. Still a leap of faith that saying the silly things eating at my stomach to him won’t bring judgment. So I say those things and I exhale. I allow him to share my fears and suddenly they seem less scary and less large. Because he is there with me. 

Should’ve Stopped For Fries

Tuesday rolls around and I’m due for another twice-weekly OB visit to check our baby’s heart rate, check my contractions, blood pressure, and labs. As I said, my blood pressure was slowly climbing. At this visit, it was high enough the midwife called the physician on call at the hospital to get advice. 

They want me to go to the outpatient labor and delivery unit at the hospital to get my labwork done and watch my blood pressure. They wanted the lab results the same day and so I had to go to the hospital to get this done. I was annoyed I had to leave the clinic, drive to the hospital, park in a giant parking deck, and walk to this unit for basic labs.

I should’ve stopped at McDonald’s first to get some fries.

Waiting on results…and hungry

My blood pressure maintained that higher level. My labs continued to be stable, but my blood pressure wouldn’t go down. And when I asked the OB what she wanted my pressure to be in order for her to let me go home...I knew I wasn’t going home.

The face of a woman who knows shit’s about to get real but she’s too tired to care

By about 2pm she decided to admit me to get this party started. She said waiting another 48 hours for my ‘scheduled’ induction wasn’t safe and not really necessary. I think her words were icing on the cake if I could make it to 37 weeks officially, but that my baby is doing really well and I was given steroids in the hospital in December to further help my baby’s lungs develop. 

I was able to convince her to let me go to the cafeteria and get some food before going to the labor and delivery unit. After getting some food in me, I felt a lot more at peace with getting things going. I’d also sent Ben a long list of things to pack because that was the only thing I had left to ‘prepare’ – my labor bag and bag to stay in the hospital for a couple days. I had the baby’s bag packed so that was easy. But my bag...I’m still impressed he was able to get the majority of the things I asked for to me. 

I’d also told him to take his time. The OB told me to anticipate a 24-hour induction process. That didn’t mean 24 hours of active labor, but a full day to convince my body we were shortening the natural delivery timeline. I told Ben the longer he could stay out of the stuffy, dry, gross hospital and the fresher he could be for me/us – the better. So he came over around 6pm – with Sonic in tow, God love’m.

Hanging out waiting on this labor thing to start

Last selfie as a child-free couple! Note the heating pad in place helps ease contractions

Magnesium Toxicity Sucks 

By the time he got there, I’d been placed in a nice big room that even had a tub! A tub I couldn’t use because they were going to start IV magnesium to help reduce the risk of seizures. There’s that word again. And there’s the tears again. 

I give patients IV magnesium all the time. Chemotherapy and side effects of chemo can deplete magnesium. I’d never thought of it having side effects, I now realize that’s because there’s a difference in replacing magnesium to a get to a normal level and inducing magnesium toxicity. 

Magnesium toxicity makes you feel like you’re hungover. But, I already feel hungover, remember? So it was this nice compounding effect when they gave me a bolus (a big dose at once) and then starting a continuous infusion. I felt heavy-footed, light-headed, and the headache persisted. They gave me non-narcotic medications. They gave me a Coke to see if caffeine would help. 

Nothing helped. 

They had also placed a catheter in my cervix and filled a balloon with saline to apply gentle pressure and mimic my baby’s head making her way out. This “gentle” pressure wasn’t intolerable but was hard to ignore. It applied pressure to my cervix making me have mild cramps. It applied pressure to my bladder, so here I am with an IV pole giving me medication causing fatigue and weakness, hobbling to the bathroom every 15 minutes. And lest we forget my amazing belly beautifully in the way. 

When they placed the catheter – around 4pm – I again was reminded the catheter can stay in place for ‘up to 12 hours’ and since this was my first baby, the odds things would last that long were greater. Around 8pm the OB came to check on the balloon. I was told the balloon falls out when you’ve reached 3-4cm dilation. But rather than falling out, the OB tugs on the string and sees if it basically will gently be pulled out. And pull out it did. I’d already reached 3-4cm after four short hours. 

The anesthesia team interviewed me when I first got to the room about an epidural since I said I wanted one. They reviewed my records and risks. They warned and advised me that from the time I request an epidural, I will get one placed and feel the benefits of the epidural an hour later. This is to account for the team being paged, them arriving to my room, giving me a liter of fluid beforehand, carefully placing a needle into my spine, and infusing medication to numb me from the waist down. 

Once the catheter was out, the OB said she would come back in a little while and break my water. I don’t remember how long ‘a little while’ was but it didn’t seem like very long. At this point, I was feeling contractions but they were mostly something I noticed and not something painful. It felt like my belly muscles were tightening rather than period type pain – at this point. It also felt like gas pains and I verified this by asking the nurse after having this gas-like pain if I was having a contraction. She said yep, that was one and I realized I’d been having contractions 3-4 times a day for the last couple days. 

One Small Nick For Womankind, One Giant Leap Into Pain

Using a small tool, I wasn’t too eager to look at what kind, the doctor broke my water as I lie in bed. My nurse had half a dozen towels to catch what she could and save the sheets I was on. I didn’t feel anything when she broke it, but I did feel the warm rush of fluid running down my leg. Was like someone had poured warm water down my right thigh. She said the fluid was clear – which is a good thing. She also said she barely nicked the membrane and my water broke, signifying it was about to break any minute on its own.

At the time I didn’t think much of this moment, but now I can’t stop thinking about it. It was the first time anything touching her, was now outside of me. I felt the warmth pour over me like a sweet, gentle baptism into labor. It was also one of the last times I would feel anything below my belly button until a few hours after she was born so part of me really holds on to that ethereal experience. 

Ok, you’re not going to like me in a few minutes…we are starting Pitocin now and your contractions are going to start to become more frequent and more severe said the OB as she cleaned herself up and the nurse helped clean me up from the watery encounter.

I’m glad she warned me. 

The rate and intensity of my contractions started to increase steadily and quickly. I went from barely noticing them to having to stop talking to Ben and focus on my breathing to get through them. He was able to see the strength of the contractions on the monitor and would tell me how high they were going and then when they would start to level off.

Comfortably Numb

I called the nurse and said I’d like that epidural now. And I’m glad I did because in addition to all the things they normally do to get it placed, they also had to draw blood to check my platelets before they would place it. This is due to another issue called HELLP syndrome which is associated with preeclampsia. If you have HELLP, your platelets can be low, increasing risk of bleeding and complications from, say, putting a needle into your spinal canal. I didn’t have HELLP but the risk is greater if you have preeclampsia so they screen for both.

Thankfully the lab person came in quickly and drew my blood. Thankfully the CRNA who placed my epidural was very chill and clearly had done a few in his career. He walked me through the steps as he was doing it because I couldn’t see him behind me. Ben was able to sit in front of me as I sat on the edge of the bed bent over and hold my hands as well as distract me. 

The lidocaine hurt the most. I knew it would. He told me it would. But it freaking hurt. Big pressure. Big burning. Lasting less than 10 seconds, like he told me it would. Then I had a contraction and had to do my best to be still during this next part – the threading the needle part. My right leg quickly went numb. 

Then I felt like I was going to puke everywhere.

An anticipated side effect of epidurals is a fairly sudden drop in blood pressure. They try and compensate for this by giving you that bag of fluid before in your IV. But my blood pressure still dropped and I immediately felt nauseous. They quickly laid me down on the bed to try and offset the pressure shift which kind of helped. The interesting thing was my blood pressure was now in a normal range for the first time in four weeks. But it still made me feel awful. And it made my baby not feel good either. The OB said even though my blood pressure is now ‘normal’, my baby was used to it being high just like I was and based on her heart rate and other nuances they look for, she could tell that my baby wasn’t really enjoying the drop either. So they gave me more fluid through my IV to help both of us feel better.

Since my right side was numb and not my left, they needed to fix this. They put me on my left side to have gravity help move the medication. This helped a little but I still had sensation in my left lower belly which created very pinpointed contraction pain. He then either gave me more medication or a different medication and eventually, both sides were numb.

My reasoning for wanting an epidural was multifactorial. I’m also aware I didn’t need any reason at all to want one. If I wanted one, no explanation was needed. But for the sake of labor stories – I’ll elaborate on one of the bigger reasons. When I lived in Alaska I had a pretty epic four-wheeler accident which resulted in me fracturing and dislocating my tailbone. The end result of that injury was pretty persistent sacral pain as well as the tailbone itself becoming more tucked underneath me. 

I went to pelvic physical therapy in Alaska as well as North Carolina to address pain and mobility issues and made a lot of progress over the years. I was in a good place when I became pregnant – a place that slowly transitioned into a not so good place. With all the natural Relaxin flowing to help relax my pelvic floor to accommodate a baby in there as well as prepare for birth – the tense and stressed muscles around my tailbone did not move. To me, it felt like when an iced-over river or bay starts to break up and flow but there is one area that won’t thaw, budge, or move. 

This stubborn area led to my severe pain returning. Sitting, squatting, doing basic bodily functions all became tender and sore. So the thought of pushing a baby past this area unmedicated was something I didn’t want to experience. Something I didn’t feel I had to experience to make my labor special. 

Ok, so epidural is working, I am sufficiently numb from the waist down and can’t move my legs. The nurses helped reposition me on my side with this giant pillow called a Peanut (because it’s shaped like a peanut) in between my knees to help my pelvis open. I can no longer feel contractions at this point and I can’t feel my tailbone. I was actually really comfortable. I was 5cm dilated. 

The green barf bag weil within reach

It’s now 11pm. 

Being comfortable is a good thing because the plan was for me (and Ben) to get a few hours of sleep if we could in anticipation of going into active labor sometime tomorrow. Another nice thing about the epidural was I couldn’t get up and go to the bathroom anymore. It’s nice because the magnesium was making me so heavy feeling, getting up and down was becoming more of an issue and definitely interrupted any aspect of rest.

Instead of me going to the bathroom, they would place a catheter to drain my bladder every 1-2 hours. I’ve placed many urinary catheters as a nurse and they aren’t the most comfortable thing to have done – but thankfully I was numb down there! So I felt nothing when they did this. 

Calm Before the Storm

Once my bladder was emptied and I was positioned on my side, the OB team left us be for an hour or so. I was heading to sleep when the nurse and the doctor come in. Again, being a nurse, I know if both members of a team walk in – unscheduled – there’s something noteworthy going on. 

My baby’s heart rate was dipping down when I had contractions. They knew this because the monitors on my belly are showing up on a screen at the nurse’s station in the hallway. This correlation indicates the baby is under stress. In their words, the baby doesn’t like the position you are in...so we are here to move you. Together they rolled my 5ft11in, 221lb body to the left side – peanut pillow and all. And left again for us to rest. It’s now approaching 2am. 

A few minutes later, they’re both back. Your baby doesn’t like being on this side either.

Slight side note here on this statement. Throughout all the complications I have had during my pregnancy from nausea, fatigue, dizziness, and progressing to hypertension and migraines – my baby was always described as that’s one happy baby!, beautiful readings, her heart rate looks gorgeous. Every single time. Every time we went in to check on me and her – she was always thriving and doing great. Every time I was so grateful to hear it.

So to hear that shift to “your baby doesn’t like this” was more than a little distressing to me. It was at this point the OB said she wanted to place an internal monitor to get a better idea of how my baby was doing. I don’t really know what else they can see on the internal monitor but I was glad to get a literal closer look at her and her status. 

The doctor had the monitor in her hand and began to insert it. Then the doctor said Oh, hello. Ok, we’re having a baby. Like right now and we need to start pushing.

Um, excuse me?

I was now 10cm which is fully dilated. My baby’s head was pushing against the OB’s hand at this moment. She then called out for the nurse to go in the hallway and “grab everyone” according to Ben. I said to Ben – call Roxy RIGHT NOW.

Roxy was our doula. She was someone we had met a few times along our pregnancy to help create a plan and to be a support person. Doulas are a group of birth workers who provide many types of support to pregnant people and couples. Roxy came highly recommended by a few friends and I thought having someone there in the room with Ben and I would be helpful. 

Hospitals and procedures, needles and blood don’t bother me. I wasn’t scared to be there. Even my day shift nurse said she could tell I was ‘something’ meaning something medical. She said I had a slightly authoritative vibe and was entirely too calm for the current scenario at hand. But having someone who was there to not provide medical support – someone there to provide emotional support to me and Ben was important to me. 

Someone to be there since my mom couldn’t. 

Roxy had been in close contact with us since I was admitted. We’d talked on the phone a couple times that night and texted a fair bit too. Based on her experiences it would be a while before I went into active labor, so our plan was for her to come around 6am Wednesday morning. After all, I was only 5cm at 11pm and people can hang out at this step for a while – especially first time moms was what the OB said. 

Clearly my baby is an overachiever already. Ben calls her and tells her Hi, uh Steph is about to push and have the baby… and Roxy was quickly on her way. 

In about 2 minutes, we went from a dark room with me, Ben, doctor, and my nurse to the brightest lights I’ve ever seen, 2 additional NICU nurses, and 2 additional labor and delivery nurses. 

In about 2 minutes, I went from lying on my side covered up in blankets to my legs hoisted in the air wide open in stirrups that magically appeared out of the bed. Ben was near my left shoulder closely watching me and everyone else. 

Pushing...

While everyone was getting stage ready, the OB is talking to me. She tells me she needs me to start pushing very soon. This was when I briefly thought shit, I should’ve taken that class, I have no idea how to push.

She either read my mind or I said out loud I don’t know to push because she said, bear down like you’re pooping, and push until I tell you to stop, that’s all you need to do. So that’s what I did. I exhaled while I pushed and she told me to hold my breath next time. So that’s what I did the second two pushes.

People told me pushing is harder when you have an epidural because you can’t feel anything down there. I always found that hard to understand because if you all of sudden couldn’t feel your butt, it’s not like you forget how to poop? I learned the real issue is I needed to push while I was having a contraction – and thankfully – I couldn’t feel them anymore. What we did to mitigate this lack of deep sensation was: I focused and tried to feel any sort of pressure shift in my belly, OB looked at my monitor to measure them, and my nurse had her hand on my belly to feel them. By using these three gauges, we were able to roughly tell when they were happening. 

I pushed three times for every contraction. The OB said I was a strong pusher. Now, no one will ever know except for her if I was actually a strong pusher, but I do know I felt like my head was going to explode and Ben said the veins on my nose were popping out. My heart rate and blood pressure were also spiking during each push, but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t in anyone birthing a human.

Falling in Love with Him All Over Again

The nurse told Ben to hold my leg and so he did. The nurse told Ben to hold an oxygen mask over my face in between pushes and so he did. When we met with Roxy to discuss birth preferences I said I liked music and would like it during labor. So before I started pushing, Ben started playing Mumford and Sons Pandora on his Kindle. He offered me words of encouragement and support. Looking up at him I could see his attentive eyes and face watching everyone and me – doing his best to be our protector. I say ‘our’ because he’s had two people to worry about this whole time. Me and our baby. Two lives he feels responsible for protecting. And he wasn’t going anywhere. 

I laughed when I was admitted because there is an ammonia packet taped to the bathroom door. Clearly smelling salts for those who pass out witnessing labor...Something I knew Ben wouldn’t need. He was there in it for us. 

Say what you will about medicated labor, but I will always be grateful to be as present as I was in those moments. To listen to the doctor guiding me through pushing. To listen to her ask Ben can you see her head? Come see her head, she’s making her way out. To listen to Ben talk to me and watch him become a father. If I had been incapacitated with pain, I don’t think I would’ve been able to take all of those sweet memories in. 

Almost There

After about 10-12 minutes of active pushing, our baby’s head was making her way out. Her heart rate was still dropping when I pushed – again signaling stress. It was at this point the OB asked if she could use a small vacuum to help guide her head out. She said she had no doubts I would birth this baby very soon, but she wanted to get my baby out of this position ASAP. I said yes, I wanted her to come out quickly and get out of distress.

The OB said 3-4 times that the vacuum did not replace pushing and I had to keep pushing as hard as I was to get her out.  So that’s what I did. Three more big pushes and two ‘smaller’ ones (to reduce the amount of tearing for me) later, at 0251am, I heard the most glorious sound I’ve ever heard. 

My baby’s voice. 

She came out crying immediately. Something I was so very hopeful for. I didn’t want to experience a millisecond of pause for them to have to arouse her to cry. The OB pulled her out and handed her to the NICU nurse standing on my left side, next to Ben. The nurse essentially threw Aspen on my chest for us to see her, all while suctioning out her mouth as she cried out announcing her arrival. She cried and I cried. Ben cried. I was awestruck. Her face. Her dark hair. Her voice. It’s still difficult to comprehend. I felt like I was in a movie or in someone else’s body. There’s no way I made such a beautiful and loud little baby. 

60 seconds later, the OB told Ben to cut the cord. And so, he did. 

A New Patient Is Now In the Room

After a few moments embracing our first encounter as a family of three, the NICU nurses took Aspen to check her out. They had a little baby warmer, affectionately called the Panda something...and did her vitals as well as APGAR scores. According to Ben she was acing all the checks. She was only 5-6 feet away from me but I was thankful Ben could be there with her and relay the information.

As far as me, the OB was slowly working on removing my placenta. I think I pushed a couple of times, but it was more of her gently tugging and massaging my belly to get it down. Once it was out, she placed it in a bowl on a table next to her. I wanted to look at it so she held it up in the air. I’d become fascinated with placentas – how they form, what they do, the fine balance with our bodies. I’d created an organ made of 50% of Ben’s DNA, how crazy is that? They also say the placenta is thought to be the root of preeclampsia which furthered my fascination. This bloody jellyfish looking organ kept Aspen alive all while trying to overtake me. 

How bad did I tear? was my next question. She was cleaning me up and removing blood to get a closer look. She said I had a stage II, or mild tearing and the tearing wasn’t near any major openings. I also tore around my urethra which I for some reason never thought about tearing up – all the horror stories talk about tearing down, near your rectum, and all the issues that can happen from that. So that was new to me, and would also be the more painful area in the hours to come. 

She stitched me up – again thankful for my epidural because I felt none of it. They put the urinary catheter in me again to drain my bladder. The nurses cleaned up the OB, cleaned up the floor, and cleaned up me. I never saw any blood, other than the blood on Aspen when she came out, but Ben said it was an impressive volume of blood loss. 

Once she was sufficiently checked by the nurses, they handed Aspen back to us for some skin to skin. They laid her little body on my naked chest and again my heart exploded. It was the first time looking at her face, her tiny squished face covered in vernix. She was quiet. She hadn’t cried out since that initial beautiful announcing cry into the world. She was sleeping peacefully on my chest with her dad watching over us closely, standing again over my left shoulder.

A Doula Walks into a Room

Remember Roxy? This is when she walked into the room. She didn’t see Aspen at first, after all, she was only 5 pounds 11 ounces and 18.5 inches long. Roxy comes in, sees my legs in stirrups and greets us all. She’s mentally preparing to help me labor.

Oh my god, there’s a baby! and we all started laughing. Since she lived outside of town, like we did and many others, it took her a little while to get here. Since Aspen is an overachiever, we were only in active labor for about 15 minutes. So from the time Ben called Roxy to when we met Aspen for the first time – it wasn’t really enough time to park and walk into the giant hospital. 

Even though Roxy had missed our actual labor, her role in our story was still very needed. The time she spent at our house just a week prior going over preferences for both of us, asking questions we wouldn’t have thought to ask, bringing up scenarios we didn’t know to think of – helped us in her absence. Ben knew what I wanted based on that meeting so he filled that role. He had a better idea of how to support me based on Roxy being part of our birth story and that is worth it all to me. 

So now Roxy was here, she was checking in on both Ben and me – as well as enjoying Aspen with us. She helped me try to get Aspen to latch on – which she did! Although it was brief. But the proof of concept – the proof that I made this baby, I have these boobs, and the two may work together – gave me so much hope in that moment.

After a few hours, we were transferred to the Mother/Baby unit. So during my pregnancy, I’ve spent time in three units – Maternal/Fetal the week of Christmas, Labor and Delivery, and now Mother/Baby. Roxy helped wheel my IV – yes the magnesium was still going and was going to continue running until 24 hours after birth. So I was stuck with an IV pole and magnesium toxicity symptoms until roughly 3am tomorrow. Ben is pushing the cart with all of our stuff on it. The nurse is wheeling me to the room. I am holding Aspen. I shakingly was able to transfer from the bed to the chair with a lot of assistance. 

It’s now around 6am and we are all exhausted. Roxy holds Aspen for a while so Ben and I can take a small nap. After some more latching guidance and a hug, she heads out to allow us some time as a brand new family of three. 

First Day Together

Throughout the next day, my dad and stepmom come and visit as well as bring us some much needed breakfast. Later in the day Ben’s parents arrive after traveling a few hours from their house. 

In between visits from the new grandparents and my niece, we meet a pediatrician and the new OB on call stops by to check on me. We also have a great nurse who helps both Aspen and me throughout the day. I’m still not producing much by way of milk, which is an expected response, but the concern is Aspen hasn’t really eaten anything yet. And since she’s small and technically pre-term, they were watching her blood sugar levels closely. They were low, but not dangerously low. 

My nurse said even a droplet of colostrum (the nutrient and fat-rich breast milk that comes in first) would help her blood sugar. I thought she was mostly being encouraging but it did help. We were able to get 1-2 drops onto a plastic spoon and drop them into her mouth. Her blood sugar responded with that and from there on, she maintained her levels wonderfully.

Another thing they were watching closely was her temperature. Since she didn’t have as much ‘brown fat’ on her, she had to work harder to stay warm – working hard burns calories and can make blood sugars drop. So we did our best to keep her bundled and do skin to skin – both Ben and me. 

Skin to skin <3

Once a little more milk was coming in, we were taught how to feed her with a tiny plastic syringe. I had no idea this was a thing – feeding newborns like baby goats. But since she’s small and worn out (the IV magnesium I was getting prior to delivery was affecting her too), we had to help make feeding as easy as possible. Ben became a pro at this and I’m so thankful he had that time to build a bond with her by feeding. He would put the tip of his finger in her mouth and once she started sucking, he would slowly squirt the milk in with a syringe.

He even got fancier and they gave us a tiny tube to attach to the syringe and he taped it to his finger. As you can see, he was a professional and Aspen is locked in on him. 

Tears of Joy and Pain

We spent many moments that day in tears over the enormity of what had just happened. Tears over how perfect she was and how thankful we were to finally meet her. I also spent time in tears because I still felt terrible.

Yep, the whole your pregnancy symptoms magically disappear when you give birth worked for the nausea and heartburn, but my blood pressure was still elevated and my head still killed me. I cried in frustration about how I couldn’t fully enjoy Aspen because I felt so awful. I cried that Ben still had two people to take care of and we couldn’t just focus on Aspen. The staff told me it was probably the magnesium, but the symptoms were so similar to how I was feeling pre-labor, I had hesitations. 

Thankfully within a couple hours of turning off the continuous infusion, I was so much better. Ben said you’re finally you again as I was puttering around the room, cleaning, taking a bird bath, and changing clothes at 6am. I finally was free of a headache and the heavy-footed/hungover feeling had faded.  

My blood pressure was still elevated so they started me on an oral blood pressure medication. They eventually had to increase the dose because they didn’t like how high it was staying. They checked it frequently and told me to ‘relax, chill out, think calming thoughts’ when they checked it. Which is really hard to do knowing if the numbers aren’t what they want – I couldn’t go home with my baby. 

It’s also hard to be calm and relax when you’ve been instructed to feed Aspen on a 2-3 hour schedule. Feeding her meant we had to:

• Wake her up (we had to learn how to wake up a baby after spending months reading about how to get your baby to sleep)

• Try to see if she would latch

• Heat up previously pumped milk and syringe or finger feeding it to her. 

• Pump since she’s preterm and isn’t going to ‘demand’ from my breast like she will a few months from now and it’s all about supply and demand people!

• Wash the supplies in the bathroom sink because I only had one set

Pile of pumping and feeding supples

And then try to sleep? Eat? Take a sitz bath for my ripped perineum? Stare at my perfect baby? 

Thankfully my blood pressure was stabilized at the higher dose of medication and we were scheduled to escape on Saturday after spending an extra day in the hospital. 

Going Home

Here we are – the morning of discharge. The nurse goes over a long list of things to watch for – one list for me and one list for Aspen. Ben had the car seat in the room and the nurse shows us how to get her inside safely. Since she was so small it really swallowed her up but we were able to get the straps nice and snug for me to feel like she wasn’t going anywhere. 

Ben goes and gets the car and we meet him out front. I’m realizing I hadn’t left the hospital room for 4 days when I can barely walk down the hall to the elevator. Up until this point, everything with Aspen was inside a hospital, using hospital things. She wore a cute hospital hat, and the only clothes she wore were a diaper and swaddled with the blue and pink hospital blanket – you know the one. 

But now she was wearing clothes (which swallowed her as well) we had picked out. She was in the car seat we registered for. She was in Ben’s car. And we were taking her home. I could sigh with some relief. Because that anxiety I mentioned at the beginning was highest in the hospital. I felt the least in control while we were there. And now we are on our way home with her. 

The first day home was hard. And not even really to do with taking care of her. She’s made that the easy part. Feed her, supplement her, pump, change her diaper, bundle her up, watch her sleep. Easy peasy. Processing what had just happened to me and her and Ben in the last week – that was a different story. Pile on top that I was given explicit instructions to monitor for worsening signs of preeclampsia which could land me back in the hospital. Yep – not only can it persist, but preeclampsia can get worse postpartum. 

Those first few days will likely make their own blog post as there was so much going on and to process. As will a post about my pregnancy. 

But for now, meeting Aspen has been the most life-altering thing I’ve ever encountered. And if you know me, I’m not one for absolutes. There are rarely the best, the most, the worst thing in life, there’s a lot of gray areas. But I can say without hesitation, meeting Aspen and bringing her home has categorically changed me and its the most beautiful and terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. 

Shared Truth – How Healing From Trauma is Only Real When Shared

“What about your mom? I never hear you talk about her – where does she live?”

I realize my friend has no idea my mom is dead. I met my friend about six months prior to this conversation and we hang out almost weekly at this point. I’d consider her to be one of my newest, close friends.

But she didn’t know my mom had died. How could that be?

Well – it’s kind of a weird thing to bring up to a person, ya know?

“Hey, I moved to here last fall...I’m a nurse practitioner...I’m a writer...I have three dogs...Crossfit is my jam...I like beer...my mom died of cancer in 2014.”

Doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

So here we are, enjoying a nice summer night hanging out at a baseball game and I’m giving her the tragic Reader’s Digest version of what happened to my mom.

It ruined the vibe momentarily until I awkwardly apologize for ruining said vibe (yes, apologize because how dare my mom die, right?) and we move on to another topic.

This scenario has happened where I’m on the receiving end of something heavy – someone shares they’ve encountered trauma and now they’re sharing it with me. Death of family member or partner, miscarriage, sexual trauma, domestic abuse – these are all traumas which have been shared with me – and most likely have been shared with you.  No one makes it out of this world unscathed by tragedy.

It makes me wonder what the best way to share – and receive – traumatic stories with new (and old) friends.

We live in a society where everyone wants to be self-aware, tolerant, sensitive – no one wants to offend or hinder anyone. And that’s great. I think to be aware that the world is bigger than our world can’t be a bad thing. I also think it can create a society where people are nervous to share experiences and even afraid to share messy, authentic feelings about certain things because they don’t want to offend or trigger someone. This nervous and fearful energy can stem from many sources, places which can vary from person to person.

Send Me Your Bio

When we meet new people, we don’t have an autobiography magically sent over to them. There’s no push notification which lists our interests, achievements, goals, and trauma. Being in the internet age of Facebook, Instagram, and online dating – we’ve been programmed to receive these blurbs. I should know where you went to school, what your profession is, who the top five people you interact with, and where you went on vacation last summer.

I’ve found this leads to stunted sharing. We don’t vocalize IRL (in real life) certain things because we assume someone saw it online.

My coworker’s grandfather passed away and this happened during my once a decade hiatus from Facebook. She showed up to my office with a tear-streaked red face and just looked at me. A look I couldn’t interpret without her eventually telling me what had happened.

If I’d maintained my hourly Facebook check, I would have seen that her grandfather had been sick, was in the hospital for several days, and eventually passed away. We are Facebook friends, we engage with each other often. I hadn’t made a public post saying “hey Facebook – I’m gone for a while” so she didn’t know my connection had been momentarily severed.

I felt bad for not knowing right away. I felt bad that she had to tell me why she was upset. But why? Why did I feel like a hindrance in making her share with me directly? What did we do before we could post a status to share heavy shit?

I guess people called.

It’s Not That Bad

Why share trauma? Trauma is something everyone experiences in their lifetime, in some form or another.

Trauma is also subjective – meaning it is subject to change. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum or in little vials that get handed out affecting people equally and objectively. Your past trauma doesn’t affect my trauma – your trauma shapes who you are – not me. Just like family, friends, education, and success shape our lives – trauma leaves it's mark as well. So many people brush their trauma off, and by brush – I mean neglect because they feel it’s not as bad as someone else’s and they don’t deserve to process.

Let that sink in. People will refuse to process their trauma because it’s not the most tragic thing they’ve heard of.

“I shouldn’t complain, there are so many people that have it worse off than me.”

“I should be thankful, I know someone else who is dealing with the most awful thing.”

We’ve all heard it and most of us have said it. But the truth is, saying your trauma doesn’t matter in comparison makes no sense. It’s not a contest. The fact you had a bad day doesn’t make my bad day less or worse bad. You’re allowed to have negative emotions completely separate from mine.

People use this viewpoint to try and lift themselves up, and that can be helpful – but like most things – you can overuse it. Just because the Holocaust and 9/11 happened, doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to feel shitty from time to time.

I see this a lot with my cancer patients. They feel like crap, they look like crap – but most days I hear the familiar “I shouldn’t complain, I sit in the treatment room and see so many people sicker than me”. Sure, they may feel or look worse than you. Their cancer may not be curable like yours. They may have lost their hair when you didn’t because you’re getting a different chemotherapy regimen – but it still sucks to have cancer.

I do my best to convince patients to give themselves permission to recognize their trauma. They’re allowed to be blue, feel bad, and even get grumpy. Fighting those emotions because you feel guilty you’re not the sickest person in the building serves no one and is hella exhausting.

We’ve also been programmed to put that smile on and dust off the tears – no need to burden anyone with your sadness, right?

Social Media Enables Aversion

I know social media tells us to throw a filter on it and make that happy post. We see the Buzzfeed trends that sharing positivity gets more traffic and action. I also know this philosophy creates a lot of unrealistic expectations we put upon ourselves.

We’ve moved the Jones’ out of the suburbs and placed them in our Facebook feed and Instagram story. We’re no longer walking down the sidewalks looking at Mr. Jones’ new car and perfectly manicured lawn. We’re not seeing Mrs. Jones’ perfect apple pie in the window or new china in the dining room.

Now we see the car, the vacation, the new promotion from the comfort of our smart devices. We see the fitness model and perfect makeup contour while lying in bed scrolling.

There has been a recent shift (at least in my social media echo chamber) to being more authentic about our bodies and mental health. But it’s still all through a filtered lens. Even the #nofilter post was a picture taken a few times to get the angle just right.

Social media is great for creating a community to interact with and stay connected to. I’ve made new friends through social media, restored old friendships, as well as found many of the products I use today by way of marketing tools on social media. There’s no denying it brings people together.

But there has to be an acknowledgment this sense of community can sometimes be a false persona.

If I post I’ve had a bad day – that’s really authentic of me. I’ll get some likes, some hearts, and probably some encouraging comments on there. But I may or not get direct messages or texts checking up on me. Even if I do – those people are reaching out to me personally even when I didn’t reach out to them personally.

Posting doesn’t require looking anyone in the eye or even their face.

Posting doesn’t require speaking on the phone and hearing instant reactions.

Posting – although seemingly more vulnerable – is actually less intrusive.

I’m not potentially ruining anyone’s mood by telling them I feel like shit. I’m not forcing someone to directly respond to me when I say I really miss my mom today or I had to have a tough conversation with a patient at work.

By not doing this, I’m not inconveniencing anyone. Because ya know – they may be having a harder day than me, ok? I even find myself preventing myself from sharing a story with someone because if they saw it on IG or FB – I don’t want to repeat myself to them. But the thing is, I never said anything to them. I put it online for anyone to read or not read, to react or not react.

The harm in doing this though is by not sharing to someone individually, you lose the opportunity for an individual and specific response. You can’t get the emotional feedback you actually need. You can’t share the weight of those feelings with anyone. So they just sit there, in your post, collecting likes and well wishes on display.

All Things Real Must Be Shared

Humans are communal creatures. That’s part of what makes us human – we long to share.

Share space, share things, share experiences with others. Christopher McCandless was the young man who ventured to the wilderness of Alaska and inspired the book Into the Wild. He eventually died after being on his own for 114 days, living in an abandoned school bus and eating the wrong poisonous berry. Alaskans tend to dislike him because tourists go looking for that school bus outside of Fairbanks and inevitably get stuck and have to be rescued by the Air National Guard.

Like him or not, he wrote in his journal something which I love:

Happiness is only real when shared.

This was written by someone who spent a year or so on his own, moving around the country and then ultimately lived the last 114 days of his life completely alone. Someone facing their mortality and in their deepest life reflection – acknowledged that it’s all for nothing if not shared.

I love solo adventures and my alone time – trust me as an only child I cherish it. But happiness and joy in life are often the richest and most rewarding when shared with people you care about.

If happiness is only real when shared, wouldn’t the same be true for trauma? I know it sounds weird and I know misery loves company. But that’s not what I mean.

I’m talking about what comes after a traumatic event. You don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting upon experience. Most of us aren’t trying to settle into sadness, cherishing the suck.

We’re trying to heal.

We’re trying to understand.

We’re trying to get back that happiness.

Catch 22

Maybe that’s why we avoid sharing trauma. If we share it, it does become real.

I waited a really long time to tell my friends my boyfriend was cheating on me. I knew if I told them – the fact became more real. I couldn’t hide, neglect, or run away from his infidelity anymore if there were other people who knew. If I kept it to myself, I could recreate a reality that didn’t include him cheating on me.

But we all know burying our heads in the sand only works for so long. Eventually, we need to face the facts – and the realness – of what’s happened. And more times than not, once we share those feelings or events, we slowly start healing. Up until that point, it’s merely hanging there, smoldering, like a black hole that’s nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Emotions stuck in limbo. I’ve found it true for myself and for people close to me that although terrifying – once you share your trauma with someone you trust, you instantly feel less alone.

Phew! There. I said it. I said that no good terrible thing out loud and holy shit I’m exhausted. Aren’t you tired too? Man, that was heavy, sorry.

There’s that sorry again. That apologizing for exposing you to my trauma and sadness. But the thing is – that person wasn’t holding those emotions. They weren’t carrying that burden as you’ve been. Even if it was a shared trauma (death of a family member, accident, etc), their view is completely different and even if they’re tired from their internal grief – you offer a new lens for them. Something they’ve never seen before. They have fresh shoulders and eyes to help take some of the load from you.

And if you’ve picked some good people to be surrounded by, I bet they’re more than willing – and honored – you’d share the weight. The moment you share your trauma is not a moment where you ruin their time or increase their troubles. The moment you show your trust is the moment you deepen your relationship.

If We Must – How Do We Do It?

So how?

How do we safely share and receive trauma as we go through life?

You must not apologize.

Chances are you didn’t wake up one day thinking it was a great day to be traumatized. So why apologize? Your friends and family don’t expect your real life to be filters and happy hashtags. If someone can’t handle your truth or experiences, it may be time to reevaluate that relationship.

You must own your emotions – even if you don’t know what they are yet.

If you share an event such as a parent or spouse dying – be prepared to share how that is affecting you. I used to look away or mumble ‘thanks’ when someone responded to my mom dying with “I’m so sorry”. I didn’t want to face their shock or awkwardness. But that just made everything awkward. Now I do my best to keep my head up and say “Yeah, me too. My mom was pretty awesome and I miss her.”

And in case you don’t know how you feel – not knowing is an equally acceptable answer. Saying something happened and you’re pretty confused and messed up about is valid emotion.

There’s so much focus on deconstructing things and root cause analysis. There’s not enough focus on accepting the mess for what it is – messy. Trauma isn’t neat and tidy, trauma doesn’t empty the dishwasher or take the trash out so why should we expect your emotional response is tied up in a neat bow?

It comes down to two basic facts:

1. When you share trauma, you’re sharing your truth

2. When you accept someone’s trauma, you’re being entrusted

That’s it. Trust is a major building block of any relationship. Trust is built and broken and shapes how we connect with people. If you look at it that way – why wouldn’t you want to discuss something that was traumatic? If you knew it would help build your relationship as opposed to being a hinderance worth apologizing for – maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to do?

There’s No Rule About Sharing

After all the above regarding the value in sharing – please know there is no rule saying you must share. Some things don’t need to be shared with someone or anyone, and that’s ok.

No one is obligated or entitled to your trauma.

I’ve fallen victim to this where I’ll get upset at a friend for not sharing something with me. I would feel like as their friend, I needed to know that so I could support them. But that’s not always the case or necessary.  Maybe it was too traumatic for them to share before now. Maybe their trauma caused them to be more forgetful and not realize they hadn’t actually shared. So many reasons why someone may not choose to share and that is definitely their right.

Finding confidence in knowing you can share if you need to is healing. Finding comfort in knowing you don’t have to share is reassuring.

After Trauma Is Shared

So what happened to me and my friend at the ballgame? We’re still great friends and I’ve gotten better about sharing things. So has she. She’s told me things over the years which were painful and messy. We support each other in the hard and ugly. When we go camping I share stories about my mom growing up and our camper. She enjoys hearing about her and checks in on me when things come up that may be tough – like Mother’s Day and Christmas. She, in turn, shares her troubles with me from time to time and I do my best to be supportive to her.

Should I have told her earlier in our friendship that my mom had died? Not necessarily. What I do know now, is I can’t let the shame or messy of my trauma prevent me from sharing or hesitate.

There’s not a right or wrong time to bring trauma up. But what I hope to continue to be aware of is being hurt is an inevitable and unapologetic truth. How we process pain can’t be a journey of mere solitude. Sharing may come early or later in your healing process – but we must accept that sharing is part of healing.

Welcome to November Blue

October 5th, 2011 was my first blog post ever.

I moved to Alaska from North Carolina the day before and decided starting a blog would be a great way to share my new adventure. Prior to that, my only writing expressions were posts about being a nurse, summer vacations, and vaguebooking about my tumultuous break up the year before.

I’d journaled on and off as well, but never on a public platform. But I knew if I made actual posts for anyone who felt like reading them – I’d more than likely make an effort to keep it up.

But what do I call it? This new expression of my newly adventurous self?

I’d planned this move for about 8 months. I have this habit of making a decision and running with it. So needless to say – this decision to move came up a lot at work. I worked at a hospital on a unit where patients would spend weeks at a time staying on our floor causing us to create nurse/patients relationships which I treasure to this day.

One of these patients was born legally blind, mid to late 70s. He’d never taken disability and refined his other senses to allow him to have a successful career and lived a fulfilling life. He could recognize our footsteps down the hall. He could also hear most conversations occurring within 50 feet of his door. He also never had his door shut for this very reason.

A coworker of mine was expressing concern one night stating something along the lines of:

I don’t really think you’re tough enough to live in Alaska – do you?

This was a fair statement. Before this move, I’d never lived outside of North Carolina. I went off to college, graduated, moved back to my hometown, and got a job at the local hospital. I’d had one serious boyfriend my whole life. I lived in an apartment with my two dogs and drove a reliable Hyundai Sonata.

So...no, I didn’t know if I was tough enough.

After this, I walk into my legally blind patient’s room to give him his evening meds and to check on him before bed.

“You’d make a fine frontier woman.”

“Huh?”

“I heard you talking to someone about your move to Alaska and they said you couldn’t handle it. That’s not true. You’d make a fine frontier woman.”

And there it was – the name for my blog. ‘A Fine Frontier Woman.’

I wrote about my move (3 flights, 14 hours, 2 dog crates, 5 boxes shipped via FedEx).

I wrote about the mystifying beauty of the Chugach mountains and feet of snow on Halloween.

I wrote about it being so cold my tire pressures deflated, my eyelashes froze and my wine exploded in my car.

I wrote about how insufferable my homesickness was and how depressing 18 hours of darkness can truly be.

I wrote about dating.

I wrote about finding independence.

After a few years, my posts were less frequent due to the busyness of life and grad school and then in 2014, I started writing again.

I wrote about my mom’s uterine cancer coming back.

I wrote about my pain, sadness, fears, and hopelessness.

I wrote about how discovering hot yoga helped me free myself of addictive habits and find healing.

I wrote about loss and love.  

I realized at one point that my posts started to always end with a lesson learned. Wanting to share my lesson is what typically prompting my writing – a parable of sorts. I wouldn’t start writing until I had some idea of what my point was, what my discovery was, what my a-ha moment was.

I find the most joy in sharing these experiences when I feel like I can share some sort of insight with people I care about. I find that as I get older, some of those lessons are tougher to talk about, to articulate, to express fully. This realization is what has led to me “rebranding” my blog.

I want to shift to the uneasy – lean into the discomfort. And I want to do that with you.

It won’t be for everyone and that’s ok.

They’ll be longer and heavier. Hopefully, they’ll be more thought-provoking. Hopefully, they’ll make you think of your own story. Your own lessons.

This is no attempt at educating, proselytizing, or counseling. This is me humbly sharing my stories and diving deeper into the feelings and emotions.

But what to call it? For one, I don’t live in the Last Frontier anymore – I live in the mountains of western North Carolina. Secondly, although I will also be adventurous at heart, this time in my life is about setting roots, settling in, absorbing and enjoying this life I’ve created.

A personality descriptor that I would use to describe my mom and myself would be melancholy.

A feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause.

That’s not to say we were or are always sad – but it happened from time to time. I remember my mom crying in the driveway before church one day and I was probably 5-6 years old. I went up to her and asked why she was crying and she just said “I don’t know sweetie, but it’s ok” and hugged me close. And it was ok.

My emotions help define me, quiet or not. We aren’t very excitable people. We aren’t the exclaimers, the screamers, the ooers and ahhers of babies, weddings, or celebrations.

We bring people together in a more subtle, subdued but fierce manner. Our love is true and our actions tend to do more of the talking because frankly, we can get worn out by talking too much.

November Blue is one of the most meaningful songs in my life. As a Type 4 (enneagram), music and songs can be irreparably imprinted on me. This song is by The Avett Brothers, a North Carolina based folk/Americana band whom I’ve now loved for almost a decade.

This song – specifically a live version done in NYC in a high school gym in the early 2000s – came on my YouTube station one night that was I terribly homesick living in Palmer, Alaska. It’s a longer song, over six minutes, and the recording is kind of shit – but I immediately fell in love. The agonal singing, heartbroken words, and enthusiastic guitar playing soothed my hurting soul.

I’ve probably listened to this recording hundreds of times – no exaggeration. When I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I’m lonely, when I’m bored. I’ve often played it over and over again for an hour on a long drive and only stopped when my throat hurt from singing (or my eyes hurt from crying). The song is about love and loss and there’s even a line about how her yellow hair is like the sunlight...

So, needless to say – November Blue is a song which is in the Stephanie Klein life soundtrack – may even be the title track.

So here I have an emotion, melancholy – or blue, and a song.

Well, as it turns out my birthday is in November. And then it just made sense.

Conscious expansion refers to my favorite nursing theorist — M. Newman and her theory of health as expanding consciousness. We are not merely well or unwell, our health and life all play a role in how we see the world and respond to it. The journey isn’t to find the lack of sickness, or sadness, but to figure out how that helps define who we are. This concept has helped me in many situations and saved me from constant anger at scenarios that I couldn’t fully understand at the time. It also helps me find peace when I accept that everything changes — so whatever I am going through — is exactly where I need to be. And this blog is my modest and humble articulation of how I see this journey.

-Steph

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