80. Wild Pregnancy: Intuition, Faith, & Prenatal Care

Embracing the raw and transformative power of wild pregnancy, I walked the path less traveled, serving as my own midwife for the arrival of my third child. This powerful journey is shared in this episode where I transition from a highly medicalized first birth experience to two that honors intuition and a profound connection with the body's natural processes. We discuss how every woman's passage through pregnancy and birth can uniquely chart a course between modern technology and ancestral wisdom.

Our conversation traverses the landscape of prenatal choices, weighing the benefits of traditional healthcare against the trusting embrace of our body's cues. I recount the surprise of conceiving without a menstrual cycle and the truth about LAM (lactation amenorrhea method). We tackle the tough questions about the medical community's reliance on uncertain assessments for labor inductions, and share insights into nurturing health through natural remedies and community-shared knowledge, even as we face late-pregnancy challenges like Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction and managing blood pressure.

As we prepare for the sacred act of childbirth, the value of faith and the strength found in community wisdom become our guiding lights. Through tales of navigating advanced maternal age pregnancies and confronting fears head-on, we champion the beauty of intuition's role in the wild ride of birthing. Join us for a soulful exploration of the untamed terrain of pregnancy and birth, where each story reveals a deeper trust in the Lord and our body's capabilities and an unwavering awe for the miracle of life.

Transcript

Rebecca Twomey: 0:32

Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission podcast. My name is Rebecca Twomey and I am here with my amazing co-host and sister, rachel Smith. Hey guys, we're on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through your life and with your relationship with Christ, and we are currently in a series called God's Design for Birth. And today we're going to be talking about something really fun and that is wild pregnancy. So we're going to talk about what wild pregnancy is, how it's different from traditional pregnancy management and how I became my own midwife for the birth of my third baby with wild pregnancy. So it's an interesting one today. Yeah, it's going to be wild. It's going to be wild. Yeah, we talked a couple of weeks ago about Rachel's births of her third baby and now that my baby is seven months old, it's time to talk about the birth of my third baby. I think my baby was seven months old when we recorded my episode. Yeah, so it's a theme, I guess. Yes, it takes us seven months to get around to talking about it, but here we are. Yeah, I had a wild pregnancy for Bryn. Rebecca, can you define for us what is wild pregnancy? Well, I'm so glad you asked. What a great question.

Rebecca Twomey: 2:07

Really, a wild pregnancy is just a pregnancy that is really on your own terms. Most people, when they're pregnant with a baby, they do this thing called schedule an appointment and it's either with an OBGYN or maybe it's with a midwife at an OBGYN's office, or maybe, if you've been listening along, it's with a midwife or something of that effect at home or at a birthing center. Usually women go places to have people check them for things. A wild pregnancy is none of that. A wild pregnancy means that you are not seeking prenatal care from a doctor or a midwife, that you are basically your own midwife and you are caring for your own pregnancy on your own terms. Simple enough, I guess. So it's kind of like women in the birthing communities call it wild because it's not wild like crazy, but wild as in, like free, right, like saying like, oh, let's go pick wildflowers. Wild as in, they are just natural in a field. They weren't, like you know, rated in a garden, so traditional birth might be, you know, garden landscaped. You mean pregnancy, right, right, traditional pregnancy experienced. But a wild pregnancy is like a field of wildflowers, like there's no landscaping. There's no landscaping, it's completely free and open. And wild pregnancy does look different for different people.

Rebecca Twomey: 4:10

I'm in a number of different home birth groups and some people have wild pregnancies and some don't. Some are kind of in between and it doesn't always look the same for everybody. Some people that have a wild pregnancy they don't do anything at all, meaning like they don't do any ultrasounds, they don't do pregnancy tests either, like they don't pee on a stick or in a cup and test it. They just rely entirely on their intuition for how their body is feeling throughout that pregnancy. So someone who's having a wild pregnancy like you're not going to catch them taking a glucose test, drinking that orange drink or what are they thinking. You know, like, really, just how women you know have been giving birth for thousands of years. You mean how women have been giving birth since the last 100 years? Yeah, yeah, I mean, although I would say like, at least for the pregnancy, births probably, you know, historically were quote unquote wild. But the birth I think there is a historic tradition of having a birthkeeper or midwife, like we even read about it in the Bible that you know, women would come to support women when their birthing time began, sure, sure. But the pregnancy itself was wild. Yeah, we're going to talk about that next week with home birth and free birth and unassisted birth and those kinds of options and what people do and those scenarios and what I did. But I just made the decision when I got pregnant with Brynn that I was going to have a wild pregnancy and what inspired you to do that? I mean I know, but I'm just asking for the sake of this podcast, for those that want to listen back, I would definitely recommend listening back. I should have had this open to the early episodes of my story about Brooke and Brooke's birth and then Ben's birth, which was I think it was episodes eight and nine. I'll look at that. That was really the catalyst for a lot of things in my world when it came to birth and, of course, unassisted birth and all that good stuff. And coming out of my birth with Ben, who, again, be sure to listen back because I share how yes, it's seven, eight and nine. Thank you Seven, eight and nine.

Rebecca Twomey: 6:45

I share the story of how, you know, I had a very medicalized birth of my first, then went the opposite for Ben because the Lord was telling me stay home. So I hired a home birth midwife and I went through that whole process with her and I was meeting with her, you know, very frequently and learning a lot and had a good relationship with her and everything like that. And I was also doing my own research to make sure that I wasn't taking my reliance on the system, which is what I did with my first, and just believing everything they said and like following what they wanted me to do. That second time it was about me learning about the birth process and pregnancy and everything related to it, from my body to how the baby was growing and all that. And then, at the end of my pregnancy with Ben, my midwife dropped me and I had that tough decision to make, which was do I go back into the system or do I keep forging forward? And we made the decision to have an unassisted home birth and it was amazing. It was awesome.

Rebecca Twomey: 7:54

And so, being pregnant with Bryn now my choice was do I hire a midwife again or no, because obviously I wasn't going back into the system, like I was not going. There's no way I'm going to go to a hospital to give birth at this point, now that I've been freed from the system. So it's do I hire a midwife or do I not hire a midwife and not hiring one means that you're having a wild pregnancy basically because you're not being in for care. And it was really like what's the point of hiring a midwife this time when your midwife last time failed you and you did perfectly fine? So it's like why spend money? Exactly exactly because you have to look at what does a midwife do? Mm-hmm, midwives are there to support you, they're there to teach you things, they're there to be there for you throughout your pregnancy and then they're gonna show up when your baby's being born. And I didn't want anybody to show up when my baby was being born, because I've learned I like to birth alone. I like to it just be Me and Mike and mom, and that's it. And my circle is small.

Rebecca Twomey: 9:07

And the thought of bringing in a midwife for my birth gave me a lot of anxiety because, like, what if they were scared? Or what if they got nervous about something or they didn't like the way that I was doing something or they could? Yeah, because it was like last time the midwife was what really caused the drama for you and you already were pretty well versed in your midwife options for your area. You had talked to a lot of them and your desperate hour of need, and nobody would be there to support you. I imagine if any of those midwives would have stepped up and actually attended bad birth and Everything would have gone exactly the same and they really wouldn't have had to do anything, then maybe you would have gone into this pregnancy of like, oh, I loved her, I wonder there, or maybe not, like, who knows, but yeah, yeah, as far as like this the support, your local support, you really didn't have any options and you knew of every option. So, yeah, not to say like you chose this out of lack of options, like you chose it because it's what you wanted to do, but it's just part of the, the decision-making thought process. Totally Just to give some listeners a background in case they haven't heard back on those episodes, there are only a couple of midwife freeze in my town where I live there's literally three and there are more now but all of them are trained by the people that have the ones now and so I know them all and I know their mentality around birth and and when my midwife dropped me, I called the other two midwife freeze in town to see if they would Attend my birth and both of them were like no way, not sorry.

Rebecca Twomey: 10:53

Like sorry, we can't help you, but we it's too late in the game. We haven't built a relationship your case is pretty wild with. So you belong with a wild pregnant state? Yeah, you don't belong with us. So I went in a long curated garden. So, you're right, it's like I'm not gonna go ask the women that rejected me for my from my second birth. Yeah, here, and that was it, even if I wanted to have care, right. But you're right, this, all of the things that I've learned, led me to this because, right, I felt very confident. I didn't need to have someone monitoring my pregnancy. I was monitoring my own pregnancy. Yeah, and a Lot of the big.

Rebecca Twomey: 11:43

The big topic that women talk about when talking about wild pregnancy and free birth is this concept of following your intuition, following what your body is telling you and what the Lord is telling you, because God gave us an intuition and that intuition is a Sense that something is wrong or something needs to be addressed. And it's all about Paying attention to our bodies, because this is the thing we outsource our intuition a lot of times when we are in the medical system, because we're trusting that someone else knows better than us. You know, when I was going to an OB with my first baby, I Trusted that they knew everything Right, like they knew best. I need to get an ultrasound, I needed to, you know, get my urine tested, or whatever it might be. They knew it was best for me and I was gonna just follow them and do what they told me to do.

Rebecca Twomey: 12:54

What I learned between that and my third pregnancy was how to follow my own Intuition, my own body. What was it telling me? Is it telling me that you don't feel good, something's not right, are you? And now am I gonna go jump to call somebody because something's not right and ask them what to do? Honestly, you guys like Every time I ever asked my OB a question, that she was a clueless. I learned more from Google than I did from my OB, so it's kind of like what? And now here's the thing this is not about not taking care of yourself, it's not about doing nothing. It's about only doing what's needed.

Rebecca Twomey: 13:40

And it's also about learning from other women. And that's the coolest thing about all of this is like I want to learn About pregnancy and birth from women that have done it, not from people that have read a textbook. That are men also, yeah, because what do they know about being pregnant? You're not feeling what is going on inside of your body, right? So I was in a lot of groups. Actually Was in a group that was called free birth with Jesus, and it was a lot of women who already free birthed and then some women who were going to, and some of them were assisted, some unassisted, some wild pregnancy, some not. But it was a place for us to come ask each other questions Like hey, I have some extra swelling, you know what do you think about this? And kind of hearing, did you experience this? And listening to other women's Experiences and learning from that.

Rebecca Twomey: 14:35

That, to me, was what wild pregnancy was about, because I knew I'm not gonna go get 47 ultrasounds. That's not true, people don't get 47, but they do get many. I Probably had at least 12. No, well, at least nine. Nine, yeah, with my first baby, with my first and second. Yeah, they did one every single month. Whoa, that's maybe even multiple times a month.

Rebecca Twomey: 15:06

Wow, I know it is kind of crazy and not to get into, like the ultrasound thing, but there has been some evidence that has come out that they might not be as safe as we're told. There are yep, not saying that, it's like super clear that they're definitely harmful, but oh, actually is pretty clear Changes the cells, yeah, essentially doing. Yeah, though the the waves actually like heat up the tissue inside the uterus, and so it's pretty crazy that I had that many and I think a lot of people say like well, they're not that, obviously they're fine because my baby is fine, I. But you know, as a society, our rate of cancer and all these crazy things are so much hard Not saying.

Rebecca Twomey: 15:58

I'm not saying that ultrasounds are what is giving people cancer, like we really don't know, but they're just not as safe as they're Right, like they really should be Right, they really should be something that is used sparingly and it and you know, like you said, some people choose not to have any at all and for some people it's weighing the pros and cons of having as limited as possible. I know I did that in my last pregnancy. I only had the one, two in the beginning and then I did do an anatomy scan Because to me it was really important to make sure the baby's position, and you know all that because I was concerned about breach. But since we're on the topic of ultrasound how did you feel about ultrasound or not in your wild pregnancy? Just like you said, I don't know enough about the research to know exactly what the effects might be on an unborn baby as it's growing in the womb with ultrasound. But I know enough to know that there's no reason to overexpose if I don't need to it's not necessarily to expose the baby multiple times Then why do it?

Rebecca Twomey: 17:24

You know it's like, if you really think about it, it's for the mother yeah, more than anything. And it's used as an intervention. It's used as a way to intercede in the medical world. That's how they convince these women to induce their babies. Because they do an ultrasound, oh, baby's too small or baby's too big, let's induce. You know they, they, oh, you don't have enough fluid, or this or that. And it's all been proven that trying to figure those things out weight of a baby is totally inaccurate. On from ultrasound as a guess, same thing was fluid. There have been women that have been told oh, you don't have enough fluid which regenerates, by the way, you don't have enough fluid. And then they go to have the baby. The mom had plenty of fluid, so it's not a great tool for solving problems anyway. Maybe if someone had a concern about the placenta position or something like that, that's a more valid reason for getting an ultrasound.

Rebecca Twomey: 18:30

But I kind of went into this like I'm not going to use modern technology unless I it's necessary, because I've learned over the years right, like birth is it's a naturally occurring event, it's not an emergency. And so if I don't have to use technology I'm not going to. But I did do one ultrasound. So a lot of, like I said, a lot of people that have a wild pregnancy no ultrasounds at all. Most people, I would say. Maybe some people will do one at the beginning. But mine was really more out of. I wanted to make sure that my dating was correct. Because I work in the corporate world, I have to request maternity leave, like I can't. Just, you know, if I didn't, if I was to stay at home, mom, I probably wouldn't matter to me and I'd be like all right whenever this baby shows up, like it's all good. But I really wanted to make sure that I had a general idea of when this baby was going to come, right, and then the baby's going to come.

Rebecca Twomey: 19:32

The dating was confusing for you because you got pregnant so soon after your second was born you hadn't got your cycle back. So that was the kind of confusion Cause when you don't have your period as a marker of pregnancy. Then it really is like, yeah, it was actually very confusing because I got pregnant when Ben was like three months old and then had a miscarriage and then a couple months later I got pregnant with Bryn and I'd never gotten my period back. So I got pregnant twice with no period. So if you're listening and you think that lamb is an effective method for not getting pregnant, what is lamb lactation something method? I forget what the A stands for. Basically they will say that if you're exclusively breastfeeding and you're breastfeeding around the clock or whatever, then you won't get you.

Rebecca Twomey: 20:28

Yeah, that's not birth control. That is not true. Some people yes, it does work for them. For me it does I still ovulate. I don't have a period, but I'm still ovulating, like I'm not shedding. Yeah, so just an interesting piece of this, because I didn't have a period, but I knew I ovulated, right.

Rebecca Twomey: 20:53

So you wanted to get an ultrasound to confirm the date that you guessed your ovulation. I wanted to make sure it was accurate, right, which is so funny to me because you were exactly accurate on the day, because you guessed your due date. Man, talk about intuition. So that's the craziest part about this. And the other thing was that people were like you're huge, are you sure it's not twins? So I was like, well, let's see if there's twins in there. I'd like to be prepared for twins. That could be a good thing to. I don't know, now that I've done that, now that I've gone through this and did this ultrasound, I don't know if I would do it again. Every birth is a learning experience, right?

Rebecca Twomey: 21:35

So I went to a what are they called An elective ultrasound place. Isn't a medical center associated with a hospital or anything like that? Yeah, they're like ultrasound clinics. Yeah, like where you can go do the 3D ones or whatever, which I wasn't doing 3D one, but I went. How far along was I? Do you remember? I think I was like 13 weeks. You were like 11 weeks. No, I had to be further because it was enough time that if I had done well, maybe it was 11 or 12 weeks actually. Yeah, I think it was 11 or 12, because I remember the tech gave a guess on the gender and you asked me what I thought and I said it's slightly too early because you can guess pretty accurately at 12 weeks, five days. So I think you it was, I think it was for me my calculations. I think it was that far, yeah.

Rebecca Twomey: 22:30

But you know, what was interesting is when I went there I told her my guest date and she put it in the computer and then it changed it from just typing it in the computer to like two days earlier, I think it was, and she was like yeah, your due date is this. And I'm like, because you typed my date in the computer and your computer is telling you that that's the date, and then that's Like that's how we're doing this and that but she did measure the baby and did that change anything? So then she basically told her what was going on and I just wanted to make sure my dating was spot on, or my dating was accurate, at least within the same week or something, or close. And so she was looking at the parts of the baby and being like, oh, the baby hasn't developed this yet and it has this or whatever. I forget exactly what she specifically said, but she said something like you're close, but I think that you might be a little earlier than you think, like you might be two to five days earlier. And so when I walked out of there, I was like I don't care what she says, I'm close enough, so my date is July 7th. And then she was born on July 7th, on the day Because I think that she said I should change my date to the 9th is I think what she said or like the 10th or something.

Rebecca Twomey: 24:07

I think she said that my date should be 7, 9 or 7, 10 or something. And I was like, no, I'm going to go with 7, 7. So the intuition was right, just like you said, and you know, everything else was good. But then when I walked out of there, I did feel like why did I do this? Because there wasn't two. Not that I really was that convinced, I wasn't convinced that there was two but I definitely was way bigger than I have been and my lines on my tests were so dark. And sometimes I have a couple of people that have friends that have twins and they're like, oh, my lines were super dark, it's probably twins and so, just if you're listening, that means nothing.

Rebecca Twomey: 24:56

And the fact that I took pregnancy tests is another thing that a lot of wild pregnancy people don't do. So those were the two kind of medical technology type things that I did do during this pregnancy. I would say the other thing that I did that was considered medical is we were talking about following your intuition and so if I didn't feel right, I would address what is it that's not feeling right, you know, if I am feeling dehydrated or just not feeling good in general, just making sure that I'm getting enough of the beef liver that I was taking during pregnancy. Making sure I'm getting minerals I was taking trace minerals, I was taking fish oil. I was taking.

Rebecca Twomey: 25:40

I'm very much like I'm not a prenatal person. I never have been, because I think that that's kind of a scam. But that's a whole other conversation and a lot of that stuff is so artificial and fake. Your body doesn't respond the same way to artificial, chemical made vitamins or supplements than it does to the real thing. So trying to eat well but then supplementing with real or food-based supplements like beef liver, because I sorry guys, but I just can't eat actual beef liver yet. Maybe one day when I'm stronger. So I tried to treat from that perspective, right like making, making it about whatever my body needed at that time.

Rebecca Twomey: 26:31

So towards the end of pregnancy, I got a ton of swelling and it was like my feet were really swollen and obviously that happens at the end of pregnancy, but I might. I was my own midwife. I had to make sure that it wasn't preclampsia or anything more serious. So I ended up getting a arm cuff to take my own blood pressure and I had urine strips to test my own urine, so those are also considered medical things medical testing. So some people might just follow their intuition with that and be like I feel blood pressure is high and I'm gonna do these things. So, like, honestly, I could have probably bypassed that and done the same things that I did anyway, which was find ways to make sure that my blood pressure was healthy. It was a little slightly elevated, but not super concerning, and you had a lot of good tips for that too, because you are also pregnant and going through some of some similar things or you had just gone through it, right?

Rebecca Twomey: 27:33

Yeah, my blood pressure got a little bit elevated at the end of mine too, and I swell like a balloon in all my pregnancies and I actually had preclampsia in my first pregnancy. So I well, I had pre preeclampsia, whatever the heck that means I don't even know if it was real. It was an excuse to get my baby out, I think is what it was, but that's my point. Anyway, I learned a lot and so, yeah, like you said, just kind of listening to other women who've had, you know, specific issues like that's how we can all glean from each other. Not to say that there's anything wrong with listening to a doctor or midwife, that they, you know, see a lot of things happening with their patients or their clients, but when you can glean information from women who actually personally experience something and what works from them. And for me, you know, the end of my last pregnancy, with my blood pressure just going a little bit high, my midwife is herbalist and so she had like, take this and this and this herb and, you know, do this, and so then I can pass that on to you. And, yeah, exactly, and that's part of the whole community of this right, yeah, is learning from each other and learning from wise women like your midwife, who is an herbalist and knows how to naturally support healthy blood pressure through herbs, and that was a cool thing to learn about too.

Rebecca Twomey: 29:10

So, in all, what I'll say about wild pregnancy is it was awesome and I would do it again. It was way less stressful than it is to have a doctor or a midwife. Both of them come with their own stresses because you have to get in your car and drive there. That's the thing that I like the least about the end of pregnancy, when you have a care provider, is you have to drive there. I would definitely agree with that, even though I love my midwife. I was driving an hour and a half and at the end, oh my gosh, I can't wait for the last time I have to do this drive, and and not only that, I was like you saying that there's stressors that come along with it. Like you said, I love my midwife and she was on my team, supportive, the entire time, but I had like this underlying fear that I was gonna get dropped at any moment and be sent to the hospital, and it was.

Rebecca Twomey: 30:06

She wasn't giving any indication that she would do that, but I think, because of what happened to you and just because I had little health things crop up like high blood pressure, like I was really saying, and I actually said to her multiple times, if my blood pressure ruins this birth I prepared for, and because in my mind it was like she was going to send me to the hospital, like it was like there was a the stressor of something I was afraid of her doing, even though she never she probably never would have done it. I mean, maybe if there was, like a serious health concern. But anyway, I just I get what you mean, that there is kind of a stressor. But you know, when you're using your own tuition and listening to your own body, you know you would make a decision for yourself. If a serious health concern came up, exactly, but you didn't have any, like if I was having anyone else breathing down your neck to tell her, yeah, if I was falling apart, things were not going good and like I was really sick and had a lot of problems, then that would be a reason for me to seek help from somebody that could help me. I'll tell you wouldn't be a doctor, it would be. But and that was the other thing is like I've met, since having been, I've met birth keepers I guess you could use that term which are unlicensed midwives, and even somebody that you and I both know that I'm not going to name who offered to be there for me for support if I ever needed anything or ever wanted to, you know, have any testing done or anything like that. So, like, I had that and I had that available if I needed it. Yeah, this was really about another test of faith. For me, right like right, having an unassisted birth was the biggest act of faith and trust in the Lord, and trust in his body, or trust in the body that he created for me. This vessel I'm living in and having a wild pregnancy was just another extension of that. For me, it was, you know what. I trusted him to guide us through the birth of Ben, and now I'm gonna trust that he's, my body's healthy and I'm gonna be able to get through this pregnancy. Oh man, I should mention this.

Rebecca Twomey: 32:12

I'm also considered geriatric. You guys, I am of advanced maternal age, meaning over 35, and most people would be like, oh my good, you're old and not going to the doctor. But I think that's even more of a reason not to, because you're so pathologized as is. But then for women over 35, you know they're treated like oh, you need to have more ultrasound, so you need to have more tests. We need to check you extra to make sure, and it's like make sure what you know, none of this stuff is really necessary. So, you know, I had someone, someone, I heard someone say recently that over 32 was geriatric. I'm like, oh no, well, they're probably changing it because they need more reasons to run more tests and do more things.

Rebecca Twomey: 33:09

And if I've learned anything, especially from the women in my community who are giving birth at home, I know multiple women, many that are over 40 and having home births unassisted. Some of them have had midwives in the past and they're like I know I can do this, I know my body can do this, there's nothing wrong with me. So I hope that this is encouraging to someone out there that you know, there's a lot of stuff that we just don't need during pregnancy and I wanted to be able to enjoy a pregnancy for once and not be driven by scare tactics. But also, like you said, I also had a lack of resources anyway and after my previous experience, it really led down this path. But there's one piece I haven't mentioned yet that I want to mention real quick that this was the first pregnancy so far that I didn't know the baby's gender until birth because, like you said, I was at the cusp of being able to use whatever that's called the nub theory, the nub theory to know if it was a boy or a girl.

Rebecca Twomey: 34:22

Yeah, the one ultrasound you had and I think it was kind of by design, and then remember, I came out of that in the the ultrasound shots that we had were so terrible like you couldn't have really, yeah, couldn't really tell, yeah, like they weren't good enough to even use, it wasn't clear in that area, yeah, and I kind of felt like that was the Lord being like stop trying to do things that I'm telling you not to do, or you know that you're being led down this road. Like stop trying to figure this out, because I'll tell you. I wanted so badly to post those ultrasound pictures and one of those nub groups and see what people had to say, but I never did it because I'm like I have to get out. I have to get out of this stuff, I have to get out of that mindset. Now, of course, I was looking at it, going like I think it's a girl, but it like it's early girl and it could turn this, could turn into a boy, well, and I so swear by the nub theory.

Rebecca Twomey: 35:19

And then I went to a General, to some place with my second, just for the nub theory, to find out his gender. Because that's how I found out my first was a boy, and they were right. I went to the same place and I had a tech who had never once been wrong and she'd been doing this specifically for like three years and she said, 100% without a doubt, it was a girl. It was a girl nub. And so I had a son already and I say that this was the two weeks that I had a daughter, but then I just it didn't sit right with me. I like I wanted confirmation.

Rebecca Twomey: 36:00

And I went back and the owner of the place was there and she's like no, I get it. You know, people want confirmation. And she put it on the screen and within seconds we saw the little little peener and so I was like, and she told me not to tell her what the other girl said. And then she I was like oh my gosh, wow, it's. She's like what did the other Tech say? And I said she said it was a girl and she went and brought up her shot. She's like I don't know why she would say this is a girl, this is clearly a boy right here. She's like this is crazy. She's never been wrong before. Anyway, all that to say was that I don't put a lot of faith in the nub theory stuff anymore. Yeah, right, when it's a girl, because it's harder to tell. Yeah, and it's also human beings trying to take guesses out what they're seeing in this crazy ultrasound Magnet technology that they're using to take a picture inside of your body, isn't it radio waves? I think it's radio waves, I Don't remember. Anyways, well, I didn't know until she was born. Everybody knows by now that it's a girl baby and Towards the end, I didn't, I honestly didn't really know either way, what, what she was gonna be.

Rebecca Twomey: 37:25

But towards the end I was really feeling like it was a girl, just because I don't know, I just had like an intuition, intuition. Yeah, I just had an intuition that it was a girl, which is funny because I feel like the theme of this episode is really intuition and I was gonna say early on I feel like I have terrible pregnancy intuition. I have thought I have three boys and every single one of them, I was convinced, was a girl. So my pregnancy intuition is not good, right, yeah, I don't know. And Brooke really was like Praying that God would give her a sister. So maybe that's, maybe that's what really did it. Maybe God heard her prayers beforehand. Well, every prayed every single day, that he would get a baby sister. So what happened there then? Yeah, right, so, yeah, it was. So. That was a crazy part of it, though, which we'll share more on the next episode, because we're gonna talk about that birth experience. And so what happened when I went from having a wild pregnancy to a wild birth? Yeah, talk about that next week. Anything else you think we should share on this speed of maternal care?

Rebecca Twomey: 38:34

I guess the one other question I had for you know just the pregnancy aspect of your wild birth is, in general, like what was your mental state? Like how did you feel, you know, from the beginning to the end of emotionally and mentally? That's a good question. I think I went back and forth a lot. It's almost hard to remember because it feels like it was a lifetime ago, even though it was just a year ago that I was right. But I had moments where I was really nervous more about the birth. I think I was the most concerned about going having having another birth than I was about the pregnancy part of it.

Rebecca Twomey: 39:21

Towards the end, I definitely was trying to make sure I was staying on top of the swelling and that I wasn't it wasn't gonna lead to preclam or anything like that. So as soon as I found that I started to experience that, I was going to try to make sure that I got it right. So as soon as I found that I started to experience that, I immediately cut any caffeine which I'm not a big caffeine drinker anyway, but I like to drink a dirty chai latte every now and again and I was done no caffeine and completely was very focused on having a good diet. I was drinking herbal teas. I was taking a beetroot is another. Healthy heart helps you with your blood pressure. There was something else I was taking. I forgot what it was, but just I was trying to do all the right things because I wanted to make sure that I had a healthy birth.

Rebecca Twomey: 40:06

I will say that physically the end was very challenging. I experienced a lot of SPD this time Synthesis pubis dysfunction, and that occurs during pregnancy when your pelvic joints become stiff or they're not moving evenly and it really kind of feels like a like girdle pain is what they say like pelvic pain and it's. It doesn't hurt the baby, but it's pretty painful or uncomfortable for the mom, like when you're walking. It's basically like you feel this, feel this pain in your pubic bone kind of area. And I was going to the chiropractor because I swear by chiropractic care. It's very good for keeping things in alignment.

Rebecca Twomey: 40:54

But I definitely struggled physically towards the end and I'll say that I found something that really helped me a lot and that was a peanut ball. And that was actually something that I learned from your birth. Your midwives and your doula used a peanut ball to have you, and I kind of knew this previously too, but your birth kind of reconfirmed it for me that there are certain positions that you can get into with your legs between a peanut ball that help to open your cervix up and release pressure on your hips. And so I bought a peanut ball on Amazon and instead of sleeping with pillows between my legs because I was only sleeping on my left side and if I had to roll to my right for a little bit, I did, but I didn't sleep on my back at all, I only slept on my left side at the end and I had pillows between my legs to kind of support my hips because I was experiencing a lot of pelvic pain if I didn't do that, but it just wasn't enough. So when I started sleeping with this peanut ball between my legs, that was a game changer. It released all the pressure that my hips had like stacking on each other and on that pubic bone and it, just because it kind of like, allows you to naturally separate in between your legs and that helped me a lot. And it also opened up my cervix. I could feel my cervix dilating. I know what it feels like for my cervix to be dilated now, which is kind of a crazy thing. It's not something that you would think that you could ever feel, but now I know what it feels like and that was kind of a cool thing in this process of learning.

Rebecca Twomey: 42:35

Was it? Was the peanut ball as big as the one that I used in my labor? Was it that size or was it smaller? It was pretty big. I forget what size it is, but I looked online to see what size for my height and everything I should get and that's what I got. But it was big. I'm like sleeping with it between my legs and my legs were like up in the air. That's why I asked. It was hard to get a blanket over it? That's why I asked, because obviously I didn't know about this in my pregnancy but I had a hard time sleeping on my left side because of the hip pain or just staying on one side. I would switch sides because of that and you're right, like I would always sleep with pills between my legs but they squish and my only experience for the peanut ball was in labor and that thing is massive. So that's why I asked of like it was massive. Sleeping with such a big thing every night was it was totally massive. But I somehow managed to get the blanket over all of that. I'd get all situated and then I'd ask Mike to get the covers over me, but it made such a difference. It made me feel so much more comfortable. And then I would say mentally I went back and forth, like there was times where I was nervous and afraid of Again, it was more about the labor, birth than it was about being pregnant.

Rebecca Twomey: 44:00

I felt very confident in being pregnant and that part of it I wasn't too concerned about, but I just this was another test of faith. I had to really put my faith in the Lord through the pregnancy process but then trusting that going into birth things would be okay. I did have to do some kind of mental fear clearing towards the last, I would say, a couple of weeks to try to resolve that for myself, just addressing the fears that I had and then saying like these are irrational fears because I had such a smooth birth with Ben, my biggest fear was that it wasn't gonna go that way Right, like I was gonna have, you know, shoulder dystocia or something that was gonna slow it down, and then that was worrying me that I was gonna freak out An acyclinic head and have to push for three hours because you just watched me do that or that. I was just kidding. Yeah, exactly, you kidding, I was just I was very nervous about the baby's position. I remember I'll tell you I was sleeping on that peanut ball. I was fine.

Rebecca Twomey: 45:06

Yeah, I remember worrying for you that being at my birth not that it was traumatic, but as a pregnant woman, a very pregnant woman at my birth it was, like you know, not fun to see some parts. You know that's actually a really good point worth talking about. Is that it being there and going through that experience of course I was like 33 weeks pregnant or something, so it's pretty far along it made me realize and be more understanding towards what midwives and doulas go through, because it's easy for us to be like, oh, they have fear and they shouldn't have any fear, but when you have had a bad experience, it can sit with you if you don't process it. So if you are a doula or you're a midwife and you watch someone go through something really hard and really challenging and maybe they ended up transferring to the hospital and having a C-section after three days you know that type of situation. I think that it can be very traumatic and something that a woman will carry with her. That could create some additional fear around birth.

Rebecca Twomey: 46:23

But what's important to remember is not every experience is gonna be the same. You know, if you experience an emergency with one person, that doesn't mean the next person is gonna the same problem is going to happen with them. And so I think that that's where it's important that we all address our own fears about the experiences or things that we see or are a part of, and it definitely it was kind of twofold for me with your birth. Watching you give birth to an asyncholic baby was kind of almost resolving for me in comparison to my first birth, which was the same situation, except I was at the hospital. So they C-sectioned me, yeah, and so it was very, almost like full circle to watch you give birth naturally to a baby in the same position, and then at the same time I'm like man, I hope my baby is not asyncholic. No, but that again is why I just then I just leaned on the Lord and really prayed like Lord.

Rebecca Twomey: 47:32

Remember, we asked my nymph wife too, like what can you do to prevent asyncholic? Cause none of us were expecting that with me. And they said you can go to the chiropractor, didn't they say the peanut ball? And so they said stay on your left side, chiropractor, and pray. That's what they said. I did all those things for sure. I think she did say, you know, sleep with some pillows in between your legs, or something like that. But she said stay on your left side, yeah, yeah, well, it worked, it was successful, it did, yes, and thank the Lord, thank the Lord. So Because, yeah, with your just going into that, I could totally see it.

Rebecca Twomey: 48:18

That's just why I asked about if being at my birth like affected you in that headspace a little bit, cause you know, both of us are kind of the mentality that when you're especially in the late stages of pregnancy, to really avoid birth trauma, even stories. So you know cause, like you said, you have to connect that hearing or seeing something that happened to someone else isn't your own reality and it's not going to be your own reality. So you kind of have to work that out in your own head because there is just this pressure that we put on ourselves and that society puts on us that all the things that can go wrong in birth and the thing is is that I've heard this talked about with birth workers whether they're and actually kind of in the more natural world that birth is like nature, it's not necessarily kind, in that anything can happen and that could be positive or negative. You know, sometimes the worst things can happen. It's not that you expect it, but you respect it. You respect that birth is a life altering event. Yeah, exactly, it's wild. That's perfect. Birth is wild, birth is wild. So, yeah, so why not Wild pregnancy and up, Exactly? But you do, you trust in the Lord and you trust your body and you know what, even when not everything goes perfectly like a picture perfect birth, it's still the wildness of it all still can be beautiful and it should be respected. So, yeah, definitely.

Rebecca Twomey: 50:26

One last thing I'll leave with before we go is I did learn something else, and that is something that I'm currently trying to need to be more diligent about is that I think that I actually have some what is the word? Some diastasis, recti, abs separation from my previous births, and that was the reason why my birth was so important, the reason why my stomach was so low, because I was super low, if you remember, yeah and Brynn, like from the beginning hanging down and after having her and starting to read more on abs separation and all that kind of stuff. I think that is what the issue is, cause I still have that now. You know, seven months postpartum, I still have a very like low hanging stomach and that's an indicator of abs separation. So it's all about learning and it's all about learning.

Rebecca Twomey: 51:34

But then what am I gonna do about it? Right, like, am I just gonna ignore this forever? Maybe? No, I'm just kidding. I bought a program that I need to start the last two months. Two months ago, I bought it and I'm like I need to do it, but I just keep putting it off. So this is my no-to-self, that I need to start working on that, cause that's the next piece, the next thing that I need to care for with my own body, cause I'm the only one who can right this is like the only person in this body that could do anything about it. Yeah, now I am Well. Brynn couldn't help me out with that. She's made it worth. Yeah, awesome.

Rebecca Twomey: 52:21

Thank you for talking about wild pregnancy with me. Yeah, thanks for sharing your story and your wisdom and experience. Of course, anytime happy to share. And thank you all for tuning in and for being on this journey with us. If you would like to follow along outside the podcast, join the mission on Instagram or Facebook at the Radiant Mission, and if you're not already watching in video format, you can do so on YouTube. And today we're gonna close with Joshua 1, verse 9. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous, do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord, your God, is with you wherever you go, and we're wishing you a radiant week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everyone.