Podcast appearances and mentions of Meagan Good

This week, Drusilla and Josh discuss Kasi Lemmon's gorgeous 90's gothic melodrama, Eve's Bayou. From wiki: “Eve's Bayou is a 1997 American Southern Gothic drama film written and directed by Kasi Lemmons, who made her directorial debut with this film. Samuel L. Jackson served as a producer, and starred in the film with Lisa Nicole Carson, Jurnee Smollett, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Meagan Good, and Diahann Carroll. The film premiered at the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in theaters on November 7, 1997. The film grossed $14 million domestically on a budget of $4 million, making it the most commercially successful independent film of 1997.[5][3]”Also discussed: may gray, non-ethical non-monogamy, Nashville, Body of Evidence, Disclosure, The Fire Within, The Great Feast, In a Year of 13 Moons, Claudine, and more. NEXT WEEK: The Brood (1979)  Bloodhaus:https://www.bloodhauspod.com/https://twitter.com/BloodhausPodhttps://www.instagram.com/bloodhauspod/ Drusilla Adeline:https://www.sisterhydedesign.com/https://letterboxd.com/sisterhyde/ Joshua Conkelhttps://www.joshuaconkel.com/https://bsky.app/profile/joshuaconkel.bsky.socialhttps://www.instagram.com/joshua_conkel/https://letterboxd.com/JoshuaConkel/  

Meagan Good recently did an interview on a podcast and she spoke about her relationship with her ex-husband, Devon Franklin. Good said that it was Franklin who initiated the divorce, even though she was the one that filed for divorce. Good also does not feel like it was a failure on either of their part. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is Wednesday on The Rickey Smiley Morning Show Podcast. Meagan Good recently did an interview on a podcast and she spoke about her relationship with her ex-husband, Devon Franklin. Good said that it was Franklin who initiated the divorce, even though she was the one that filed for divorce. Good also does not feel like it was a failure on either of their part. Diddy is assembling an all-star legal team as his court case is set to begin next month. Sean “Diddy” Combs has hired Young Thug’s attorney to help his defense team, which he had to get permission to practice in New York. Also, there is a Martin show spin-off coming to BET+. Tommy Davidson will reprise his role as Vernell Hill for The Vernell Hill Show. All of this and more on The Rickey Smiley Morning Show Podcast. Website: https://www.urban1podcasts.com/rickey-smiley-morning-show See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this candid episode of Funky Friday, Jonathan Majors opens up about his journey of redemption, his personal growth, and the pressures of navigating public scrutiny. He shares intimate moments, including his road trip to Dallas with Meagan Good and their backyard wedding, offering a glimpse into the balance between his career and personal life. From facing past traumas to reflecting on his role in Black media and culture, Majors sheds light on what it means to evolve both as a person and as an artist.00:00:00 – Introduction00:00:22 – Welcoming Jonathan Majors00:03:40 – Deep Dive into 'Magazine Dreams'00:04:38 – Physical and Mental Health Journey00:06:57 – The Coffee Mug Story00:09:58 – Strength and Vulnerability00:17:34 – Industry Friends and Support00:24:35 – Navigating Public Misfortune00:30:11 – Cultural Reflections and Responsibilities00:45:22 – Exploring Fear and Anger00:46:15 – Navigating Personal Identity00:46:45 – Facing Past Traumas00:47:55 – Balancing Career and Personal Life00:52:09 – Intentional Media Presence00:55:31 – Public Perception and Personal Growth01:12:20 – Finding Love in Difficult Times 01:24:58 – Magazine Dreams Premiere and Wedding Plans01:25:17 – Road Trip to Dallas and Marriage License Adventure01:26:34 – Premiere Day and Backyard Wedding01:28:28 – Marriage Reflections and Personal Growth01:28:53 – Support Systems and Relationship Dynamics01:37:50 – Future Projects and Personal Aspirations01:42:47 – Honor Culture and Personal Journey01:43:54 – Question of the Day and Historical Figures01:46:33 – GAME TIME: “Happy Wife, Happy Life”01:59:09 – Questions for the Crew

TRACKSTARZ is determined to bring high-quality Godly content to the mainstream. We are a community of creatives who believe that we have a God-given purpose and we are on a mission to make a difference in the world. We accomplish this by providing our community (Trackstarz Universe) with content and tools to equip, challenge, and prepare them for influence. We also provide them with tools (Nectar) to help them get their message out to the world. Subscribe to our Channel: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c… Learn more about us: http://www.trackstarz.com 

Mandi, Yanely, and Chris are celebrating milestones, unpacking celebrity controversies, and diving deep into the relationship between ambition and self-worth. WHEW. Yep. We go there! BTW, why is Jonathan Majors all over our feeds and how is Meagan Good single-handedly holding up his career rn? We explore the fine line between talent appreciation and moral responsibility in entertainment. Finally, we dive into ambition and self-worth. Through personal stories and therapy insights, we reflect on how ambition is often fueled by trauma and can be reshaped into something healthier and more sustainable. Don't forget to RATE and REVIEW the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify! It's essential to keep us growing and let everyone know how they can join the BA Fam. Stay connected: Follow us @BrownAmbition on IG, @brownambition on TikTok, and make sure you're signed up to get our weekly newsletter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three years of Virgo Season and somehow, y'all keep coming back. In this milestone episode, Joyhdae and Ryan reflect, roast, and raise the chaos level like only they can.This week:• A fresh round of “This or That” that exposes way too much about both of them. (Yes, we revisit the sock-shoe madness.)• Joyhdae tells a story so scintillating, Ryan thinks she should have taken with her to the grave. Trust, you'll know it when you hear it.• The Breakfast Club is in shambles: Jess Hilarious vs Loren LaRosa, shade, contracts, and who's really running the show?• Megan Good married Jonathan Majors and the timeline is confused. We get into it.• Drake is suing Universal, and it's giving sore loser energy. Did Kendrick break him?• Sherri Shepherd vs. Megan Thee Stallion sparks a conversation about image, respectability, and auntie energy.• Eric Adams relives his “Far Rockaway shorty” days, and we're wondering what exactly he's doing as mayor.• And Kanye… is Kanye. Again. And we are officially done with him.#VirgoSeasonPodcast ----We want to hear from you:Can you believe it's been 3 years already?  What's your favorite Virgo Season moment?  Who had the wildest takes in this episode?    Sound off in the comments!  LIKE, SUBSCRIBE & JOIN THE VIRGO SEASON COMMUNITY!Subscribe for more pop culture insights, celebrity news, and hilarious takes!Share this episode with a friend who loves juicy trending topics. CONNECT WITH US:Instagram: @VirgoSeasonShowFacebook: Virgo Season PodcastWebsite: VirgoSeasonShow.com STREAM US EVERYWHERE:Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and more!----00:00 Intro00:05 Vibe Check09:36 This or That?30:00 Usher's Mandela Effect30:48 One Last Thi...s or That!33:15 'The Breakfast Club' Drama39:28 Jonathan Majors and Meagan Good are Married43:53 Ye! (With Sarcastic Enthusiasm)47:54 UMG Responds To Drake's Defamation Lawsuit51:46 Teyana Taylor Wants her...Peace!54:59 Joyhdae's Wild Story58:24 What's In Your Up Next?01:04:05 Dad vs Auntie Jokes01:09:27 Find Us On All The Things!01:10:39 One More For The Road...01:11:03 Outro

Let's be real, when you keep failing at dating, it's easy to think maybe it's me. And honestly? Sometimes it might be… but most of the time, it's just that dating sucks! In this episode, I'm getting real about why dating feels so hard these days and how it's not always your fault. I also give my small 1 cent on Meagan Good and Jonathan Majors. EBOOKS: How to X Your Ex: https://rb.gy/3kdiorJust Write the Book: The Simple Guide to Self-Publishing Your First Book: https://rb.gy/dawhdsGet Unstuck When Life Sucks: https://rb.gy/u75tknPHYSICAL BOOKS:How to X Your Ex: https://a.co/d/8YnR2aDGet Unstuck When Life Sucks: https://a.co/d/cMzAkdPSingle Woman Chronicles: An Atlanta Love Story...Kinda: https://a.co/d/6FtWhk6Single Woman Chronicles: An Atlanta Love Story...Kinda Part 2: https://a.co/d/8a33d8ySUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW ME: IG: https://www.instagram.com/singlewomanchronicles/Blog: https://singlewomanchronicles.com/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@singlewomanchroniclesEmail: info@SingleWomanChronicles.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

After #KanyeWest's disturbing comments about #Beyoncé and #JayZ's kids, #TinaKnowles responds with grace! Meanwhile, #JonathanMajors and #MeaganGood say "I do" in an intimate LA wedding.

Ryan Reynolds asks judge to dismiss Justin Baldoni lawsuit against him, Hailey Bieber considers suing online haters, JFK's grandson blasts Trump for not warning Kennedy family about releasing documents, and Jonathan Majors and Meagan Good get married. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on reCappin', we discuss the recent announcements of Meagan Good and Jonathan Majors' marriage; Normani and DK Metcalf's engagement; Cassie is having a baby boy, and Tracy Morgan's health scare (01:00). In Hot Topics, we discuss En Vogue member, Dawn Robinson, living in her car, and the latest The Breakfast Club mess (15:57).   Stay tuned for our next episode on Tuesday, when we will recap Picture This, starring Simone Ashley, which is available on Prime. We are available on all podcasting platforms, but please follow, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify apps. We greatly appreciate the support! Follow us on social media: IG: @recappinpodcast Twitter: @recappinpodcast FB: ReCappin' with Delora and Ashley Contact us: Email: recappinpodcast@gmail.com  

UMG's lawyers go gully in a motion to dismiss Drake's lawsuit; The Hollywood Reporter wonders if Jonathan Majors can mount a comeback; Rolling Stone swiftly responds (Answer: no); Majors and Meagan Good marry in a very private ceremony... the day after he's heard on audio admitting to strangling his ex (WTF, Meagan, WTF?). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

UMG's lawyers crash out in a motion to dismiss Drake's lawsuit; The Hollywood Reporter wonders if Jonathan Majors can mount a comeback with his new film; Rolling Stone swiftly responds; Majors and Meagan Good marry in a very private ceremony, the day after he's heard on audio admitting to strangling his ex (WTF, Meagan, WTF?) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're diving into a little bit of everything—so buckle up! First off, the power of the tongue is real, and some of y'all are out here manifesting L's instead of wins (might be time to speak nicer to yourself, bestie). Meanwhile, folks attacking Tesla dealerships are now being labeled as hate crimes. Kanye is spiraling (again), and at this point, it's like watching a rerun nobody asked for. But on a sweeter note, Normani and DK Metcalf are engaged, and Jonathan Majors & Meagan Good just tied the knot—love is clearly in the air, and wedding season is working overtime! On the flip side, Jess Hilarious had some words for The Breakfast Club, reminding everyone that even when you're the talent, the corporate machine still owns the stage. Let's get into it! Snag your fave lip glosses and oils now with 20% off! Use code WordsWithWista at NouCosmetics.shop. Stay Connected: Personal IG: @itswista Podcast IG: @WordsWithWista

Taylor Polidore Williams Currently leading the cast of Netflix's BEAUTY IN BLACK, Taylor stars as Kimmie, a stripper whose fate takes a turn when she crosses paths with the wealthy, dysfunctional family behind a cosmetics dynasty and a devious trafficking scheme. This past summer, Taylor was seen starring opposite Meagan Good in Tyler Perry and Amazon Prime Video's fan favorite film DIVORCE IN THE BLACK, which topped the Amazon charts for several weeks after its debut. Taylor is perhaps best known for heavily recurring in FX's critically acclaimed SNOWFALL as well as The CW's ALL AMERICAN: HOMECOMING. She is also an accomplished voice over artist, having voiced characters for Nickelodeon, Disney, and Peacock, among others. Taylor is a proud alumna of HBCU Clark Atlanta University and is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. She is extremely passionate about the rights and welfare of young people and is a Court Appointed Special Advocate for youth in foster care. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you are looking for VBAC inspiration, Kelsey's episode is a MUST-LISTEN.Kelsey is a VBA2C mom and speech-language pathologist living in Erie, Pennsylvania. You will feel literal full-body chills as she tells her birth stories on the podcast today. As a first-time mom, Kelsey chose a Cesarean over physiological birth thinking it was the safer, easier route. But after experiencing the reality of two C-sections, she went from fearing vaginal birth to trusting in the labor process even more than her providers did. With her VBA2C, Kelsey got just about every type of pushback in the books. She was coerced, persuaded, questioned, and fear-mongered by multiple providers. Yet Kelsey was able to ground herself by listening to VBAC stories on The VBAC Link Podcast, seeking refuge in her doula and Webster-certified chiropractor, and connecting with other VBAC moms. Kelsey knew her body could do it. She just wanted a chance. Going up against a hospital practice that was saturated with skepticism, Kelsey's labor was beautifully textbook. Her labor progressed quickly, and her biggest baby yet came out in two pushes– “like butter” as described by her doula!VBAC-Certified Doula, Tara Van Dyke's WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. We have another amazing story for you today. And actually, it's stories. We have a VBA2C mama coming your way. And as you know, this is a hot topic because lots of people want to know if vaginal birth after two Cesareans is possible. So Kelsey will be sharing her stories with us today. But guess what, you guys, I have a co-host today and it's Tara. Hello, Tara Van Dyke.Tara: Hello. Hello.Meagan: She is one of our VBAC link doulas. As you probably heard back in 2024, we are going to randomly be having co-hosts from our VBAC Link doulas. I think it's so awesome to have them on. I love hearing the topics and things that they want to suggest to talk to you guys about because again, just like we talked about years ago, we just in Salt Lake City, Utah, can't share enough. And so we want other doulas from all over the world to share as well. So Tara, tell us more about where you're from and then your topic on partners and being prepared.Tara: Yes. So thank you for having me here with you. This is so fun to hear a story live. I'm a doula working in the Chicagoland suburbs. I've been doing that for 20 years and now moving to more of childbirth education as well as like a lower caseload of doula work partly because I just welcomed my first grandchild this week, so I want to be available in a different way in my life. Meagan: Congrats. Very valid. Tara: So I do a lot of childbirth education. But along the way, what's always been really important to me and I feel really passionate about is the partner connection with the person giving birth and their preparation. The research supports it too, that a prepared partner makes a really big difference in outcomes too. I know we talk a lot about doulas and increasing the positive outcomes of birth, and that's been shown over and over in studies, but the actual dream team is a doula and a prepared partner.Meagan: Yeah. I love that.Kelsey: I tell the dads who come to my classes that the doula is important, but we are replaceable in this situation. The partner is so important because of that connection because they bring the oxytocin. They bring the safety. They have that history with you already. And what even bumps that up to being really helpful in the birth room is their preparation and their understanding of what to expect and being completely on board. So theres lots of ways for partners to get prepared, but they get left out a lot. So I feel really strongly that partners are so much better in the birth room when they're not feeling anxious about what's going on, when they know what to expect and they have a few good tools in their pocket for how to help.Meagan: Oh yes, I could not agree more. I always talk about, I make things up, and I call it the doula sandwich. So it's just what I call it in my practice of my doula work. One bun has all the oxytocin and all the knowledge of who you are, and then the other side is the doula who has the education in birth work and the ideas of how to help navigate through the birth space, but also can then support the partner in doing that and educating the partner. So then, we've got two really great sides and then we sandwich the doula. We have great buns. We have really great buns. And we sandwich that mom together and with love and support and education and oxytocin. Like you said, it really creates that dream team. I love that so much. My husband didn't educate himself. He was just, "Okay fine, if you want a VBAC, go do it. You do the research." I did HypnoBirthing with my cousin who luckily was pregnant around the same time, but we did that together, and he just really didn't know. When I told him, "Hey, I want to VBAC after two caesareans out of the hospital," he was like, "Yo, what?" because he was uneducated. I truly feel that it is so powerful. That's why I encourage partners to take the VBAC course with, the mom or an education course in childbirth. Really understand what the mom is going through, but also know how you can help because I do feel like a lot of those dads kind of get shoved aside. They want to help, but they don't know how to help, and they don't really know what's going on. Is that noise good or is that noise bad?Tara: Yes. Yeah. And they're going through the birth, too. This is the birth of their child. So they can also feel, as far as traumatized, hopefully not trauma, but they can feel a lot more dissatisfied or upset by a birth if they didn't know that what was happening was normal. So it's good for them, too, to learn how to take care of themselves as well as their partner.Meagan: Love it so, so much. Everybody, get your partners educated. It is so, so important. Thank you so much for that tip. Meagan: Okay, Ms. Kelsey, it is your turn, my love.Kelsey: Okay, so as you know, I had a VBAC after two C sections which I didn't even know was a thing. You played such a huge part in giving me education and the motivation to pursue this. My story starts in October 2018. My husband and I found out we were pregnant with our first. It was really special because it was actually our two-year wedding anniversary. It was that morning that we found out and we had a special trip plans to Niagara Falls, just up in Canada. It's a special place for us. It was where he proposed to me. It was just a really special time. It was also kind of crazy because up until that point, up until just prior to that, we had been together eight years, and we didn't think we were interested in having kids. I'm so grateful that our mindset had shifted, but it was just kind of a lot at once. We had agreed that we did want to start a family, but it happened really quickly, and it was just a lot to process. I didn't educate myself at all about birth. My husband and I took a class in the hospital, but it was pretty much just how do you take care of a baby. It wasn't how to bring a baby into the world.Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes those can be a little more what to expect after than really what to expect during.Kelsey: Exactly. And, I don't know what it was. I don't know if I just couldn't really picture myself giving birth just because we had just kind of come into this or if I just was not believing in my body, but I just felt the opposite of a lot of people on this podcast. They say, "I never thought I would have a C section. I never expected that for myself." For me, I just went into it thinking I'm intimidated by all of this. A C-section sounds easier and I cringe saying that now. But, I just thought not having to go through labor and not having to push a baby out, I just always had that in my head. That comes into play with how my first ended up. I was told throughout my pregnancy that my baby was big and specifically it was driven home, "The head is big. The shoulders are big." They were telling me about shoulder dystocia, and I didn't know anything. So I'm thinking, oh my gosh, not only am I already intimidated by the idea of birth. I know nothing about birth, but now you're telling me I have this big baby. My OB was really telling me maybe a C-section should be considered. And then she threw it out there. "Well, we could induce 39 weeks and see how things go." And again, I was just trusting her. She had been my gynecologist since I was a teenager. To me, I thought, okay, that makes sense. Baby's big. And again, I hadn't done any research on my own. So we did what I referred to as a half-hearted induction. I feel like it was just done to humor everyone. Like, "Oh, we tried." But I went in the night before at 39 weeks on the dot. Nothing was going on with my cervix. Surprise, surprise at 39 weeks. They did Cervadil and I just lay in the bed. My husband and I watched the fireworks out the window. It was the fourth of July. We were just completely not prepared for anything. Just going along with this and thinking, oh, we'll just have a C-section tomorrow if this doesn't happen. They came in the morning and nothing had happened. So they were like, "Oh, well, we could start Pitocin. We could do this." I just wasn't interested in any of that. I wasn't motivated to have a vaginal birth. I guess that's okay. That's just where my head was at the time. I've accepted that's just where I was at. So we had the C-section. It was a surgery. Just being there and as baby comes out, just hearing everybody in the OR talk about, "Oh, look at her cheeks and look at the hair." It was minutes before I'm ever able to get a quick flash of her around the curtain before they swoop her off. It was just a weird experience, but it was all I knew. I was grateful that it went okay, but it just makes recovery so hard, so painful. When I think back to it, just think about just crying while my husband's trying to do my abdominal binder, not being able to get in and out of bed, struggling to breastfeed, even getting in a position of breastfeed with that searing surgical pain. We struggled, and I ended up exclusively pumping. So it was tough as a first-time mom just dealing with all of that. But again, I didn't know any different. I think that was a blessing that I didn't know what I was potentially missing. For my second birth, we knew he wanted more than one child. You just never know how things are going to happen. We just weren't trying to not get pregnant, and it happened right away. The babies were 16 months apart, so when I showed up to my appointment, my OB, the same one who had said, "You have this big baby, and you should have a C-section or induce at 39 weeks." Oh, the ARRIVE study was hot off the press at that point too. So he was excited to show me the ARRIVE study back.Meagan: Oh, yeah, but you're not even a first-time. I mean, you were a first-time vaginal mom. So the ARRIVE trial, you know. You've been with us. Hashtag eyeball.Tara: Yeah, yeah, it changes. It's changed everything.Meagan: It really has. And I don't know if it really has changed for the better in my opinion.Kelsey: So sorry, that was for my first birth. I forgot to mention.Meagan: Oh, oh, oh, sorry. Yes, that would make sense. Yes.Kelsey: So with the second, it was the same OB, and she's like, "Okay, since your births are so close together, you'll just be a repeat C-section. You can make appointments with me, and I'll do your surgery. Easy peasy." I'm thinking, oh, okay. That makes sense because she's talking about uterine rupture, and they're so close together and I didn't research on my own. Is there another option? How risky really is this compared to a repeat C-section? I just trusted her so much. I had been with her for so long. I figured she must have my best interests at heart.Meagan: Yeah.Kelsey: I didn't even think to myself, my own mother had a VBAC with a 13-month age gap. I was a C-section, and my brother was a VBAC at 13 months 30 years ago. Meagan: Uh-huh.Kelsey: You only know what you know at the time. And so even though I didn't look into it in the ways that I should have, I did know that I wanted the experience to be a little different. So I found out about gentle C-section which I think is a funny term. Meagan: I was happy to see that you could request a clear drape, and you could request not to be tied down to the table. We did implement a few of those things. I had the clear drape. It was nice to see her coming out just for a quick flash before they swooped her away. It was nice not to be completely-- I had one arm free which is funny these things that we consider luxuries when you're having a C-section. So it was a little bit better in that way, but there were things that were also worse. They couldn't get the needle in, and they had a resident doing things. I was having trouble. I was starting to pass out during. They were having to adjust. It was stressful in its own way. I had some things that were a little better. But also, it's just's a C-section. Also, during, my OB made a comment as she has me completely open, all seven layers of me. She said, "Yeah, who was it the did your last C-section?",I told her and she made no comment. I said, "Why are you asking me this as you're inside my uterus?" She said, "There's just more scar tissue than I would have expected." She said, "Hey, you can have another baby if you want, but just wait more time in between. Just not so close together." So that was something that got in my head too. Anyway, we thought there was no way we would ever have a third. It was really hard having two under two recovering from another C-section. It was November 2020, so it was the first COVID winter. It was cold. It was dark. Everything was closed down. Everybody was in masks. It was so depressing. It's like, postpartum isn't hard enough. As if two under two isn't hard enough, then adding COVID.Meagan: Yeah, adding zero support and zero resources. Yeah.Kelsey: Nowhere to get out and do anything. It was a bummer. So anyway, it was a lot, and we thought, no way are we ever going to have three. It was just a hard season. So I donated everything. I put all my carriers and all my stuff out on the porch and said, "Come get it," to the local moms group. I just couldn't see myself having a third. Well, then the years pass, and things get easier. You come into an easier season. All of a sudden, we're not dealing with diapers and bottles. It's like, we could leave the house. Things are opening back up. My husband and I had talked about a third and toyed around with the thought of it, but it's just hard to pull the trigger once you've come into this easy season. The thought of hitting the reset button is intimidating. But all it really took was watching him take down my youngest's crib with her. And it was like, okay, this is something that we want to do. It was a funny conversation that night. I said, "If we were to get pregnant this cycle, we would have a June baby, and that would be really nice." So that's what happened. I was playing it with my third. That's when I realized. I mean, I had thought about it, obviously, but I realized, oh, my gosh, I have to have another C-section, a third C-section. Talk about being years away from it and thinking about how you're all healed. It's been a few years, and to think about them cutting open again and just knowing what that entails, I was just in a whole different headspace. I was thinking, how is there a way that I can avoid this?Before my first appointments, I did a quick Google search, "vaginal birth after two C-sections" just to see if this was something anybody had done or was doing or was even possible. I was so excited to see that people were doing this. It looked like it was actually potentially a good possibility. So I was thinking, I've got to be the right candidate. I didn't even need those first C-sections. I knew this now, reflecting back. Yeah, I had my first screening where they do your intake, and they were asking a bunch of questions. And I had said at the RN, I said, "Would I be able to maybe have a vaginal delivery after two C sections?" And she was like, "Oh, they consider it after one, but once you've had two, you're a C-section for life."Meagan: Oh, jeez.Kelsey: Something about her saying that and the way that she said it, I went from being a little bit curious and oh, this might be good, to no, this is something I'm going to pursue. It just didn't feel right. She didn't know my history. She didn't know why I have my C-sections. So to tell me, "Oh, no. You need to have a third major surgery for sure. No option." Tara: It was this moment when it brings a fight out in you. Like, I am gonna do this now.Kelsey: I'll never forget how I felt at that moment. So I started to have my appointments with the OBs, and I would bring it up. Everything was perfect. It was going really smoothly. So the appointments would be like two minutes, and then at the end they'd say, "Do you have any questions or concerns?" And I'd say, "Yeah, I wanted to see what my options are for delivery." They were like, "Well, we decided as a practice to support VBAC after one C-section, but we actually have a policy against VBAC after two C sections."Meagan: How did I know that was coming? The policy, I swear, every time it's like, "We decided as a practice or as a practice, we--". It's always like, they created this stupid policy that actually is against evidence based care. But okay.Kelsey: I'm thinking to myself, so then what do you do? Anyway, I was just mind blown by that. I went to a couple of more appointments there. You'd go every month and they'd say, "Any questions?" I'd say, "Yes. I'm just really not feeling good about the idea of a third C-section." I said, "The risks of a third Cesarean intimidate me much more than doing a trial of labor." I've never given my body a chance. It's not like I've been through this before and things went wrong. I've never been given a fair chance. They were very nice, but they just look at me and smile and nod and say, "Well, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay," and not even entertain the idea for a second. So I'm thinking to myself, okay. I've gotta figure something out. So at that point, when I had talked to a couple of providers, and they were all very consistent about, "Nope. Nope, not even going to entertain it," I knew something had to change. I'm reaching out. I'm searching in the local moms group about C-sections. Has anybody had a VBAC after two? It was crickets. Nobody was responding. I was looking back years trying to find anybody who had done this, in the area. Wat I was finding is, "No, it's not going to happen in Erie. You need to go to Pittsburgh or try a home birth." And I'm just really not comfortable with the home birth even though I know that's a perfect option for plenty of people.Meagan: It didn't feel right for you.Kelsey: Yeah. It just wasn't what I was feeling like I wanted to do. So I reached out, and I had not known anything about doulas until your podcast. I hardly even knew what they did before listening. I just searched "doulas in Erie." I called the first one I saw. I left a message that was probably pretty unhinged just like, "Help! What do I do? Is this something I can do?" She called back, and it was the first time that I had any validation at all. Up until then, it was just people telling me no, people telling me policies and not safe. It was the first time that I was heard. I was heard. She said, "There's really no reason why you can't have a chance. We'll figure this out." I kept doing my research. I dug really deep, and I found a few people who had referred to providers being supportive. I was reaching out. I was sending people DMs saying, "Hey, sorry to be huge creep, but can you tell me more about your experience?: I found out that at the other practice there were providers who would consider this. So it wasn't looking super promising, but it was better than where I was at. So I kind of took a chance. I switched practices at 28 weeks. Prior to that, I had an amazing appointment at 24 weeks. I had one last appointment at that office with the policy. He was amazing. If you could have just copied and pasted him, he was just like a midwife. I mean, he was very upset about the policy. He said, "How do you even enforce that?" He said, "What are we going to do? What are we going to do, strap you down and take you to the OR?" I wish that he had a podcast episode because he took so much time. He explained to me  the history of C-sections and how, in his words, the pendulum has swung so far from only doing C-sections when they were needed to they're safe now. Let's do them whenever we can. He talked about the whole policy thing and how they met as a group. He said, "Some of these younger JOBs have only been practicing now that C-sections are so common. They haven't seen the success." He said, "You have just as much of a chance of success as a 20-year-old walking off of the elevator because our C-section rate is so high. You have just as much of a chance." He laughed at the fact that macrosomia was in my chart, which I forgot to mention with my first. She was 9 pounds, 1 ounce. She was big.Meagan: Okay. I wanted to ask you though because they had said, "Oh, big baby, 16 months apart." I wanted to ask, but 9 pounds, 1 ounce is actually not macrosomia. It's a bigger baby, but it's not a huge baby.Kelsey: Exactly. It's not 12 pounds, which also, people have done. But anyway, he put so much wind into my sails, and he fully supported me switching. He said, "Honestly, I think this is great. I think this is the best option for you. You need to go for it." He said, "But if you were to stay here, you would face nothing but doubt and bullying and scary." He said, "If you were my wife, I would tell you to switch over to this other practice." So that's what I did. I also forgot to mention in my anatomy scan, the sonographer is going about doing it and she said, "Were your other babies big?" I'm like, no, we're not gonna start this. It was already with the big baby comments. So they had me do a growth scan to switch practices. It was refreshing to be in a place where they entertained the idea. They said that they decided as a practice to follow what ACOG says, but it was also very clear the difference between support versus tolerance. So although I was grateful that they were entertaining the idea, I still had, "Oh, 90th percentile. Oh, you've never labored before. You don't have a proven pelvis."Meagan: Proven pelvis. Tara: Yeah, proven pelvis.Meagan: There's a lot of eye rolls in this.Kelsey: Thank goodness, again, if it weren't for this podcast, all of those little comments would have swayed me. I would have said, "What am I doing? Listen to all these things they're saying. This isn't right for me." Once you know, it's just so hard to listen to the VBAC calculator. "Oh, let's just type your stuff in and see." I think it gave me, like 50% chance. Like, I don't know. So anyway, I'll get back on track. My low point was at 32 weeks. It was with my provider who was convincing me that a C-section or induction was right, and then telling me, "Oh, you'll just be a repeat. We'll schedule it." I was dreading my appointment with her. I knew that I needed to meet with her because she could possibly be the provider who was on call. I wanted to tell her what my plan was, and assess her thoughts. I thought that I was invincible because now I knew all of these things, and I wasn't going to let anybody bring me down. That appointment was pretty terrible. She came in hot. She said, "You're 32 weeks. Baby is 5 pounds, 4 ounces, and he's off the charts." She actually referred to him as massive. She said, "He's massive. He's huge." She said, "Put him in a room with 100 babies, and he is enormous."Meagan: Enormous. Tara: She's comparing him to other babies already. Meagan: And he's not even born. Tara: Can I just add a little tidbit here because there's so much talk in your story about the fear of big babies, and the research has shown that what leads to more problems or interventions in a birth with a big baby is not the actual size of the baby, but the provider's fear of the big baby. They're already getting themselves stirred up, and nothing has even happened. Kelsey: I was really discouraged by that because I had come across those facts too. And looking at the research and looking at what are the real risks of a big baby, that's actually just the providers. Yeah, se was just disgusted with my plan. She said, "Are you sure?" I said, "Yeah." I really stood my ground. I was so proud of how I stuck to my guns. She pulled out all the stops. She just kind of sighed and she said, "Okay." And then she pulled it out of me as I was  trying to justify. I said, "We're not sure how much we want to grow our family." I said, "If I have three C-sections, I'm not going to want a fourth." I said, "I just think it's worth a try." So she took that and she ran with it. She said, "Well, for what it's worth, I would rather do two more planned C-sections. I would do two more planned C-sections on you, and I wouldn't bat an eye. I'd rather do that than have you TOLAC." I thought, oh, my gosh. So again, I stood my ground. She went out. She was visibly upset. I was so proud of myself. But then I spiraled that whole day. It just chipped away at me all day. I came home.  I had been doing nightly walks religiously. That's when I would listen to The VBAC Link. That night, I didn't do my walk. I cried in my bed. I was just so upset. I spent the night then going through the groups I was in for VBAC after multiple Cesareans and The VBAC Link searching "big baby, big head circumference" and screen-shooting all of the success and all of the comments to fuel back my motivation. That was definitely the low point, but I did have some great meetings with providers. I was grateful that where I was living, I was able to find enough support where they would let me go for it. Once I got toward the end, there kept being the comments about "big baby". I had an OB do my final measurement and not tell me what it was. I said, "How is baby measuring? There is a lot of drama about baby being big." She was like, "Well, how big were your other two?" I said, "They were 9,1 and 8,4". My second was almost a full pound smaller. She said, "Oh, if you pushed those out, no problem. You don't have anything to worry about." I said, "That's where the drama was. I didn't push them out. I had C-sections." It was like she saw a ghost. She was like, "Oh, well that is drama." She was just beside herself. I say that story specifically because spoiler alert, she was the one who ended up delivering my baby.Meagan: Oh, really?Kelsey: To give a preface to that. She actually said, "Well, it is what it is." She just was very nervous and very upset. I said, "Have you never seen a VBAC after two C-sections? Have you seen that?" She said, "Well, yeah, but it's usually with people who have birthed vaginally before, and not with a big baby." That's what she said. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Kelsey: I just wanted to talk about that because she was the one who delivered Anyway, time went on. As I got to 39 weeks, I started to stand my ground a little bit more because they wanted to do cervical checks. They'd say, "Okay, undress for the provider." I just was like, "No, thank you. I'm good." I would have been really discouraged if they had come in and checked me. I know that got in my head with previous appointments with things that I didn't think would affect me. At 39 weeks, one of the providers who had been trying to talk about how big my baby was and persuade me to have an induction, she said, "What if we did a growth scan at 40 weeks, and you were measuring 10 pounds. Would that change your mind?" I was like, "No. I'm not doing a growth scan at 40 weeks. I've already done too many scans." So just right up until the end, they were trying to get me. They were talking about the size. Meagan: They were really trying to get you to cave. Kelsey: Yes. So after that appointment, because of my BMI, after 37 weeks and beyond, you have to have an NST and a BPP (biophysical profile) every week. Meagan: After 37 weeks?Kelsey: Starting at 37 weeks, you have to have both of those tests every week. It was just a new thing. I didn't do it with my last. Again, I'm worried about this. I know how the testing goes. Sure enough, I go. This is 39 weeks. I go for the biophysical profile, and they were like, "There is a lot of fluid. You have too much fluid." They were talking about all of the fluid. "Look, here are little flakes." They were talking about the fluid. I thought, I've made it this far. This is something that is going to make it a C-section.Baby wasn't also taking enough practice breaths for her which was frustrating. She even said, "I think he's sleeping, but I want to be on the safe side." I said, "I just had an appointment. She could hardly get his heart rate because he was moving so much." I had driven to Cleveland an hour and a half away the night before to go to a Noah Con concert. I felt him moving the whole time. I was like, "I'm pretty confident that he's okay. I was just checked by my OB five minutes ago." She wanted to send me. I wasn't going to mess around this far on, so I went to triage. They hooked me up to an NST. They wouldn't just let me do it in the office. I'm sitting there. Everything is perfect. The nurse comes in and said, "They're just going to place an IV." I stopped and said, "What did you say?" She said, "They're just going to place an IV." I said, "Why would they place an IV? Everything is looking good. I have grocery pickup in an hour. I'm not trying to be here for long." She said, "Just for access." I said, "No, thank you. Please let me out." That was weird.She said, "Okay. We're just going to watch you a little longer." Then this OB who I'd never seen before who was apparently just newer to the practice comes in. I'm like, "How are things going?" At this point, it had been 45 minutes. I'm trying to get out. He said, "Things are looking really good." I could see his wheels turning. He said, "But, since you are 39 weeks and you've had two C-sections, we can do a C-section for you today." Meagan: Oh my Santa. Tara: Here you go. How did you manage all of this pressure, Kelsey? It's extraordinary. Meagan: It is. Kelsey: I should mention that I had an amazing doula, so after these appointments, I would text her a paragraph. She was constantly lifting me back up. I was going to Webster chiropractic care. The chiropractor I saw, shout out to Tori, she's amazing. She's a doula also. She was pregnant going for her VBAC, so we would have these appointments, and it was a mini VBAC therapy session. We would talk about what we were up against, and just the different providers because she was going to the same practice as me. It was just so nice to have her. I was doing all of the things. The chiropractic care. I was eating the dates and drinking the tea because I wanted to know that if I was doing this, I was going to try everything and then I couldn't look back and say, "What if I would have done chiropractic?" Anyway, I basically tell him, "Get out of my room. I'm going." He just was awful. He did all of the scare tactics and all of the risks but none of the risks of a third C-section of course. Only the risks of the very low uterine rupture that he was hyping up. Anyway, that was bizarre, but again, I stood my ground. I was so proud, but then I got home, and I spiraled. I was packing my hospital bag. I was crying. I said to my husband, "I let them get in my head. I shouldn't even bother packing any of this stuff." I had the little fairy lights and things to labor. I was like, "I shouldn't even bother packing any of this VBAC stuff. They're just going to find some reason to do a C-section. Look at this. This whole time, they wanted to do the C-section." Again, another night of spiraling. As he left, he said, "They're going to want to see you tomorrow and repeat all of this testing." Meagan: For what? If everything was okay, what was the actual medical reason? Kelsey: Exactly. It was just out of spite because I shut him down. They were like, "They're going to want you to come back tomorrow." I'm like, "Okay. If it gets me out of here and gets you out of access to an IV and a C-section, fine." Meagan: Seriously. Kelsey: The next morning, I'm on my way to my appointment. I was on the phone with my mom and I told her, "I'm having these weird feelings I've never felt before. I don't know if maybe they're contractions." It was very strange. It was something I never felt. I never had a contraction and had never gone into labor. So I go to my appointment and passed the BPP with flying colors. I'm like, "Well, what about the fluid?" She's like, "Yeah, there's a lot of it, but it's fine." I got an 8 out of 8 score.  I go for the NST. Well now, baby's moving too much, so his heart rate, they can't keep it on because he's moving, and she kept having to move it. So again, I'm just very frustrated that I'm even there. I'm so close to the end. This is now 39 weeks and 4 days. And so the tech says, "I'm going to bring this to him. He might not like the drop offs, but I'll explain to him that the baby's moving a lot."I said, "Who's he? What OB is this?" She said the OB who was in triage the day before who tried to have me do the C-section and I was just like, "Oh my god. He's going to see my name and have any reason to send me back." Sure enough, he comes sauntering in the room and he says, "We meet again," as if I'm this problem child, as if I wasn't just having all these normal tests. He says, "I can't be confident that these aren't decals. You need to go back to triage." I was just again, so frustrated. It's like just a constant of all of these things coming up and none of it being real. It'd be different if it was like, oh, this was actually a risky thing. But again, I'm so close to the end. I know what I know. I knew that the OB that I had seen the day before in the office, I wanted to talk to her about the fluid because I had searched, and I saw that the polyhydramnios could actually be a thing. If your water breaks, there's the risk of cord prolapse. So I knew that that wasn't something that was completely to be ignored, so I wanted to talk to her more about that. I humored him, and I went in. Well, all the while, I'm feeling these sensations more and more consistently. They get me hooked up, and I explain the situation. I said that I was just here yesterday not really for a reason, but I'm back now also not really for a reason. They hook me up. Of course, everything looks good. But she's like, "Are you feeling these contractions?" I'm like, "Is that what they are?" I was excited. They were just cracking up because she's like, "These are pretty consistent and big contractions." I just couldn't believe it. I was just so excited my body was doing it. I'd only ever, at 39 weeks, been cut off and then never been given a chance. All I needed, I guess, was a few extra days. I'm just so excited that I'm having contractions. The nurses are laughing. "We've never seen somebody so excited to have contractions." Anyway, at that point, my OB comes in, the one who had been trying to get me to be induced. She's plenty nice, but the one who said about if we did a scan of 40 weeks and 10 pounds, would you reconsider? So she said, "Kelsey, do you know what I'm going to say? This is the second day you've been in here in two days." I'm like, "Yeah, but for nothing."Meagan: And because you asked me to come in here.Kelsey: Yeah, trying to humor everyone and see that yep, everything's fine. See? But again, I was having these contractions, and as I was there, picking up. She wanted to check me. I said, "Okay, I'll let you check me," because I'm having contractions I never have before, and I want to see what's going on. I went to the bathroom, and I had bloody show, which again, I had never had. So things are really happening. I come out and I told her, "There's blood and I'm having contractions." She's like, "Yay, let's check you," and I was 1 centimeter. She was one of the OBs who was comfortable with a balloon. So she said, "I'll tell you what. You've got a lot of fluid. Things are happening. Let's work on moving things along."Meagan: So she induced you?Kelsey: She wanted to.Meagan: She wanted to. Okay.Kelsey: So she's like, "Let's get you in. I'll do the balloon. We can get things going because you've got a lot of fluid. It's time, Kelsey." I'm like, "Okay." I said, "Well, I'm gonna go home."Meagan: Good for you, girl.Kelsey: Get my kids off with my mom and get my dog off. She sunk when I said that. I said, "I promise I'll come back. I'm not gonna run it. I'll come back just in a little while. Like, maybe this evening." But she said, "Okay, I'm here till 4:00, and then it's another OB coming on who won't want to do the balloon." So just come in before then. Of course, I wait until exactly 4:00. But as I was home, it just kept picking up, and I started timing. The app is like, "Go to the hospital. Go to the hospital." But I've also know from listening to this podcast that that happens. My husband's freaking out because he would see me stop and pause, and he's like, "Let's go. Let's get out of here." I was grateful that everything maintained through the car ride. I got there, and contractions were still happening. My doula met us there because I hear about people going too early and the contractions stop, and then there are problems there. Yeah, things just kept happening. We got in a room. My doula was amazing. We were just hanging out and just laughing. I couldn't believe just how happy I felt to feel my body doing it after all these years of just, "Your babies are too big, and you can't do this," and then all of this pregnancy saying that. It was just amazing.  I definitely had my guard up. The nurse was talking about the IV and the monitors, and especially with being overweight, I was worried about a wireless monitor. That happens. They can't get a good reading, and then they think baby's heart rate's dropping. I was just so worried about any reason, because I knew that they would. They would take it and run, so I was so grateful that the wireless monitoring worked perfectly. I was on my feet. Things just kept getting more intense, but I'm just laughing and smiling through it all. My doula was amazing. It was just such a great vibe in the room. My nurses were amazing. Every little thing that went right, I just embraced. I was so happy that this was happening. My water broke while I was on a video call with my friend. Again, it just like, "Oh, my gosh, my water broke. That's never happened." There was meconium in the water. So again, I'm like, oh, no. You know, any little thing. I was quickly reassured. It was very light. It wasn't anything to be worried about. I labored and stayed on my feet. My doula was amazing with suggesting things I never would have thought or never would have thought that I would enjoy. I was in the shower at one point on a ball. They had this little wooden thing with a hole in it so that it keeps the ball from slipping out and keeps the drain from plugging. I'm just listening to my guilty pleasure music while my husband's outside the shower eating a Poptart laughing. It was just such a funny thing. I was just so, so excited about it all. Things were really picking up. My water just kept breaking and breaking. I mean, it was true. I had so much fluid. It just was just coming out and coming out. I couldn't believe how much there was. I got into the bed on my side, my doula said, "Try to take a break," and then I felt a water balloon in me. I could feel it burst. Just when I thought surely I was out of fluid, it just gushed out. And then immediately it was like, "Oh, my gosh, this is really intense." I handled that for a while. I was squeezing the comb. I was working through contractions, but I tapped out at about 1:00 AM I'd say. So we got into the hospital around 4:00, and the time just flew. They came to do the epidural, and he put it in. I just kept waiting for relief because I felt like I just didn't have a break. They were kind of on top of each other. It was one of those things that if I knew I was only going to have to do that for a short amount of time, but just not knowing how long, I just felt like I was suffering through them at that point. I wasn't trying to be a hero. I was just trying to avoid what I know sometimes happens and just trying to avoid interventions as much as I could. I kept waiting for this relief because I'm like, "I think I just need to rest. I feel like I'm close." The last I've been checked, I was 5 centimeters, but that was before the water broke and before struggling through contractions for a while. I had no idea how dilated I was. The relief never came. I was hoping to be able to relax and maybe take a nap like sometimes I hear. I could still feel my legs. I could have walked around the room if I wanted. I kept pushing the button. I don't know if it was in the wrong spot or what happened. I don't know if maybe there was something that was working because instead of feeling crushing and just defeated through the contractions, I was feeling like I can survive that. I can get through them. There was just no resting, it was just still having to work through contractions. And then my doula at one point said, "Maybe we should call him in and have him redo it." But then I was in my head, "Well, what if he redoes it, and then I'm too numb and I can't push?" So I just went through it. I'm so glad that I did, because it wasn't long after that that I was checked, and I was 8 centimeters. My  nurse kept checking and there was a lot going on down there and a lot coming out. Eventually she checked me and she said, "Hi. Hi, buddy. I just couldn't believe it." She said, "Do you want to feel him?" I got to reach down and feel his head. It was just also surreal. She had me do a practice push once I was dilated enough, and she's like, "O, oh, okay, okay, okay." She said, "I'm gonna go make a phone call."Tara: Wow, that's impressive.Kelsey: And the OB came in. I forgot to say that when I got to the hospital, the OB who was gonna do the Foley balloon, I totally left this out. She checked me, and I was already 2 centimeters. She said, "Your body is doing it on its own. We're just going to let you go."Tara: That was my question, Kelsey. I was wondering this whole time if they did anything to augment. There was no Pitocin. This was all you? Kelsey: Yes. Yes. I can't believe it.Tara: That's amazing.Kelsey: I got there, and I got the monitor placed. She came in. She checked, and she said, "You're 2 centimeters. We're just going to let you go. We're going to let you do your thing." That was just music to my ears just knowing how things sometimes go. Also, the OB coming on, I had told you, was really nervous about my plan. My husband and I joked that she did something to calm herself down before she walked in because she was just like, "You know what? I'm going to do something crazy. I'm just going to channel my inner midwife and do something crazy and just let you go and leave you alone." My doula is like, "Good. Please let us go." Yeah, I forgot to mention that is not only did I not need the induction, but then I had the OB surrendering and saying, "Go ahead, just let's do it. It's fine." So she literally did not come in. I think was as far away as she could pretending it wasn't happening, I guess. When the nurse called her, she came in and she got her gloves on. I just kept waiting for something to happen still. I'd been so, so scared by providers this whole time. So I'm like, okay. She instructed me on how to push. We did it through one contraction, and his head came out. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. This is crazy," and then, during the second contraction, I did it again, and the rest of him came out. It was unbelievable. It was five minutes from start to finish. My doula described it like butter. He was 9 pounds, 3 ounces.Meagan: So biggest baby. OkayKelsey: Biggest baby, enormous head. I didn't have any tears. I had what the OB described as grazes, like little spots that were bleeding. She put one or two stitches on the walls from where there were these grazes and I can't even describe it. I was sobbing. I was like, "We did it. We did it." He came right to my chest and to get to see him, it was unbelievable. It all happened so fast. Going from not believing in my body and just going for these C-sections, I'm so glad I didn't know what I was missing because in that moment, I probably could have done this before. Again, I didn't know what I didn't know and who knows would have gone? But it was just unbelievable to be in a normal room to have him come out and just right to me where he belongs and getting to see him with his cord still attached and he's crying. It just was such a beautiful moment and I just couldn't believe that had after all of that, here he was. It was beautiful. They asked about cutting the cord, and we hadn't even discussed that. I was like, "Can I do it? I really want to do it." I wanted all the experiences that I could never have gotten in the OR. I cut his cord. My doula got an awesome picture of that. I was considering having that be my picture for the podcast. It was just unbelievable, and I was just so happy, too, that that OB was the one who was there because seeing how nervous she was, I'm so glad that she got to experience. Look what you almost deterred me from doing just seeing how perfect it was. Now I'm hoping that if somebody comes to her in the future, she'll remember and say, "Hey, we had this baby, and it was just such a great experience." I was just so grateful for every second. I couldn't believe how things ended up.Meagan: I am so happy for you. Like Tara was saying, I'm so impressed. Standing your ground the way that you stood your ground after just constant-- I'm gonna call it nagging. They were just nagging on you and trying so hard to use the power of their knowledge that we know that they hold. We as beings, and it's not even just in the birth world, just as humans, we have this thing where we have providers, and we know that they've gone through extensive amount of schooling and trainings, so it's sometimes easy as you said, you spiraled when you got back to spiral and be like, wow, they're just all pushing this really hard. Maybe I should listen. Tara, have you experienced this within supporting your clients or just your own personal experience?Tara: You mean the pushback from the providers?Meagan: Yeah, the pushback, and then for us, should we doubt our intuition? Should we doubt what we're feeling and go with what they're saying because they know more?Tara: Yeah, I mean, that's the hardest thing, because you hire them. Like you said with your first provider, you trusted her. You'd known her since you were young. You've built this trust. She's gone to school. It's so hard to stand up against that as just a consumer and as a person who cares about the health of your baby and your family. But then the multiple times that you had to stand up for yourself even in small things like not getting the IV, not getting the cervical exam, those are not small things. You were protecting yourself from having more of that pushback. I am amazed. We struggle with that as doulas too, because we're helping advocate for our clients. It sounds like your doula was a rock for you and a place to feel validated and heard. I'm so glad you had her.Kelsey: Me too. I say to my husband, "No offense, you're great, but what would be done without our doula?" I mean, she was unbelievable just bringing the positive energy. My husband and I were so nervous and we were so worked up. We were third-time parents, but it was our first time doing any of this. My husband wouldn't have really known. He's never seen it before. My doula, she's done this so many times. She was right in there with the massaging and the side-lying. She did the, she called it shaking the apples.Tara: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. But Kelsey, it's against all odds. I just think it's amazing because we talk about the power of oxytocin and feeling safe and not having stress hormones going on, and you had all of that. You should be so proud of your body coming in in the nick of time and just proving against all of this. I'm just gonna go ahead and birth this baby, and a bigger baby than your other two which is such a triumphant moment.Meagan: Seriously.Kelsey: His head was 15 inches. That was another thing because they had talked about his head circumference being off the chart. That was another thing I had been searching is people who've had the big head circumference. Those groups, this podcast and just groups and having access to so many stories and people overcoming all of these obstacles because every time I came up against something, I had heard it before. I said, "Oh, this is something that I've heard time and time again with these stories. They make you feel like you're the only one with the big baby and, oh, this is a problem. But it's like, no. They're saying this to so many people. It was just amazing going into this being so informed and motivated and having that confidence that I never would have had. I just so grateful for this podcast and for all the information.Meagan: Well, thank you so much. It's one of the coolest things, I think, not only just the VBAC, but to see where you came from at the beginning of, "We're not having kids. Okay. We're having kids. Okay. This is what I'm thinking. I'm kind of scared of this. Let's do this. Okay. Doctor said this. Let's do this." to this. I mean, you came so talking about the pendulum, right? And what that provider was talking about. You came from one side over here to not even wanting kids or wanting a vaginal birth to swinging so far to the other side and advocating so hard for yourself and standing your ground. When we say that you should be proud, I am shouting it. Be proud of yourself. Girl, you are incredible. You are such a great example. Women of Strength, if you are listening right now, I want you to know that you can be just like Kelsey. You do not have to be bullied. You do not have to be nagged on every single time. Know what's right. Know your gut. Know your heart. Do what you need to do, and you can do it. You can do it. It is hard. I know it's hard. It is not easy, but it is possible. Girl, you're amazing. I thank you so much for sharing your story today and empowering all the Women of Strength who are coming after you and needing the same encouragement that you needed not even years ago. How old was your baby?Kelsey: So he is four months old.Meagan: Four months. Yeah, so a year ago when you were listening. I mean, really, so so amazing. Thank you so much. And Tara, it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. I couldn't agree more with your advice. Get your partners educated. Create that true dream team.Kelsey: Thank you.Tara: Congratulations, Kelsey.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lily's VBAC birth story episode is finally here!!! You know and love her just like we do. She not only manages the social media content here at The VBAC Link but also spends so much time connecting with you personally. She has the biggest heart for VBAC and champions all types of empowered birth.Lily walks us through her experiences with ectopic pregnancy, loss, her traumatic Cesarean, and how she persisted through a 66-hour long labor without an epidural to achieve her hospital water birth VBAC.If you followed her pregnancy journey, you saw that Lily was incredibly proactive during her pregnancy. She built the strongest team of birth and body workers. She was specific in her desires, yet remained open-minded. This served her so well in labor and made all the difference during her birth!Needed WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, everybody. You guys, today is a very exciting day. We have recently had two of our VBAC Link team members have their babies. Paige was one with the first Maternal Assisted Cesarean in Korea, and today is the second with Lily. Oh my gosh. If you guys have been on our social media, you have seen our cute Lily. She is just so amazing. She's so fun. She's in the DMs on Instagram literally every day chatting with you. I just absolutely adore her. She's so incredible. Lily is a born and raised Colorado-- I don't even know how to actually say this. Lily is a born and raised Coloradoan.I think that is how you say it.She's from Colorado, living in northern Colorado with her husband, son, and daughter. She is a kinesiologist who works in community health and a dual-certified fitness instructor passionate about movement and wellness. After an unexpected Cesarean two and a half years ago, Lily found The VBAC Link and began planning her VBAC and is excited to share her story today. I cannot wait for you to hear it. This was actually the first time that I got to hear it in its entirety. It's just amazing, and I'm excited for you to hear it. Like I mentioned, Lily is also our social media assistant at The VBAC Link and is truly honored to empower and hold space for all the Women of Strength in our community. You guys, she is absolutely amazing. We love her so, so, so, so much. We do have a review that we're going to share, and then we are going to turn the time over to our sweet Lily to share her stories. This review is by Savannah, and it says, "Started listening to The VBAC Link Podcast around 16 weeks pregnant and continued throughout my pregnancy. It was so good and encouraging for me as a mama who was preparing for a VBAC. It helped me gain confidence, and helped me know what to look for and watch out for in my providers. Hearing other stories was so encouraging and helped me gain so much knowledge. I had my hospital VBAC unmedicated with an 8-pound, 15-ounce baby and I know the knowledge I gained from this podcast played a huge role in being able to advocate for myself and get a better birth outcome." Congratulations, Savannah. We're going to talk a little bit about this today as well with Lily on the podcast how sometimes the thought of going to the hospital is scary because of stories you've heard or things you've heard. But VBAC can happen in the hospital, and it can be beautiful, and it is beautiful. I think it always dials back to me to finding the best provider for you, finding the best location that feels right for you, building your team, and doing what is best for you in the end. So I really am so excited one minute after the intro to turn the time over to Lily. Okay, Ms. Lily, I really am so excited because I was even texting you the day you were in labor. I don't really know all the details, but I've seen your incredible pictures. Oh my goodness, your pictures are so incredible, and I've heard a little bit from you so I really can't wait. So let's talk. Let's talk about these births.Lily: Okay. Yeah. So every Cesarean story is what starts us off, so I will go with that. But I'm going to try to be fast because I feel like my birth was really long. I have a lot more to say about my VBAC, but I always try to really honor our story in that before we had our beautiful, amazing rainbow baby boy, we also experienced a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy prior to having our son. I lost my right fallopian tube. I always like to be the encourager that you can get pregnant naturally with one fallopian tube. It turns out fallopian tubes are not fixed body parts, so when we got pregnant with our son, I ovulated from the side I didn't have a fallopian tube on, and my other tube was able to come over and grab the egg and sense the ovulation which feels so miraculous.Meagan: So incredible, so incredible. I love that message that you're dropping for our community because I think if someone was in that situation as you know, it could feel very defeating and uncertain.Lily: Yeah, it feels really scary. I remember thinking, "I'm at less than 50% fertility if I've lost one tube," but that's not true. Statistically, it's really pretty equal to people with both fallopian tubes, which is kind of neat.Meagan: Yeah.Lily: After that, I started acupuncture. My sweet friend, Montana, we had been friends for years and she's always been like, "You should come see me." She specializes in women's health and fertility and loss and all the things. I started acupuncture then, and I say that now cause it has continued. I always say I'll never not be a patient of hers ever again because she's the best. I started to do that, and then we got pregnant. we found out we were pregnant on the last day of week of prayer at our church, which was really incredible and just felt like such a tangible miracle. We chose to go with a birth center for our care. We did that because I had a lot of hospital trauma. I just didn't think that a hospital was a safe place for me to have my baby. I'm a big believer that we should birth wherever feels the safest. We went for birth center care and had a great experience at our birth center.We loved our midwives and were really excited for birth. I think I hear so many times as women tell their VBAC stories that often we feel underprepared going into our first birth, and it leads to a cascade. I think I was the birthiest nerd of all. I felt like I was really prepared going into birth. I was excited for it. I had a lot of birth education. I had been a birth podcast listener forever and ever. I just felt really empowered in birth and all the things I was doing, chiropractic care and acupuncture and all the stuff. We did get to 41 weeks, and at my 41-week appointment, my midwives gave me a 3-page-long induction protocol because in our state, we have to transfer at 42 weeks. So it was their, "This is the last-ditch effort when you are 41--", and I can't remember how many days, "we want you to do this big thing." It was a daily schedule. "You're going to wake up and you're going to go for a drive on a bumpy road, and you're going to eat this, and you're going to do this." It was really overwhelming. Meagan: Yeah.Lily: Well, the night before we were supposed to do that protocol, the doula who was on-call at the center was texting me and was like, "Hey, how are you feeling?" I was like, "I don't know. I feel really nervous to do this big long thing." She suggested that I journal out all of my fears about birth and see if that did anything. I journaled all my fears, and I burned it in our kitchen sink. As I walked up the stairs, I had my first contraction. I'm also a huge believer that our emotions play such a huge role in our labors. So I was really stoked that my labor started and all the things. That's the same doula that we had for our next birth too, which is really cool. So yeah, I labored all of that night. It was Friday that I went into labor, that evening. Saturday, I labored. My midwives came and checked in eventually. My doula did come over, did some stuff with me, hung out and helped me labor, did some homeopathy, some emotional release work, and all the good stuff. But my labor was really, really long.So by Sunday, my midwives were like, "Hey, you are super exhausted. We want you to take a Benadryl and try to take a nap." I am a girly who does not take a lot of medicine. So this Benadryl knocked me on my booty. I had six really awful contractions trying to take a nap. After I got back up from the nap, I got back on the toilet which is where I was loving to labor. I stood up because I was like, "Okay, I think maybe things are starting. I'm finally getting a pattern. Maybe I can finally go to the birth center." I stood up, and I checked the pad I was wearing. There was a copious amount of meconium. Not water, but meconium which is scary, you know? I knew right then that I was going to have to transferred. It was thick. It was poop.Meagan: Yeah, yeah.Lily: There was no water stained. It was just meconium. And so I called my midwife, and in her sweet midwife voice, I said, "Do I have to transfer?" And she goes, "It's definitely a conversation we have to have." I was like, "Okay. So, yes." She explained that because of the way the meconium came out, she now thought my son was breech because his butt was right up against my cervix, and it just came right out. Soo she came over. Actually, she wasn't even on call. She happened to live in our neighborhood. She came over and checked me and all the things, and she's like, "Yep, this feels really different than a few hours ago. He's definitely breech. We do have to transfer." And so as we're transferring, in my mind, I know that we're probably going to have a Cesarean. My midwives were really great in that they called ahead and they were like, "Hey, we called ahead. No one's willing to do a vaginal breech delivery, or at least they're not trained in it." But my midwives were also really encouraging that, "If this is something you want to do, you have a right to deny a surgery. You have that right. We will be here in support of that." They don't have hospital privileges. They were out-of-hospital midwives, so they had to transfer me. They could go with me and essentially be that emotional support, but we were still kind of in COVID times, so I had to also choose who I wanted to be in there with me. It was 2022. I just felt so defeated. I was so mad that I wasn't going to get the birth that I wanted. I started screaming through contractions. I can confirm that does make it worse. I was just pissed. And so I opted for a Cesarean. It was really tough. I remember as we were leaving my house, asking my midwives, "I can have a VBAC at the birth center, right? Like, you can do VBACs?" They were like, "Yep, but let's get this baby out first." So I transferred. I had my Cesarean. I think it went as smoothly as it could go. I remember there was this a sweet tech who-- I was just in a lot of pain, and she gave me the biggest hug as they put my spinal in and was stroking my back saying, "This is the last one. This is the last one. You can do this." And it was like, "Okay." There was some tenderness there. But post that was a lot of grief, and I think we've all experienced that and a lot of hard. I never saw the surgeon who did my surgery ever again. None of my follow-ups were with her. It was just some random OB. I was so thankful that I had been at the birth center because I got all of their postpartum care, so I had a couple of home visits and a lot of really tender care from my midwives, which was exactly what I needed. And then I found The VBAC Link. I remember finding it on a walk because I had listened to birth podcasts for years, like I said, and suddenly it was grievous to listen to this thing that I loved hurt my feelings to listen to. It was like, "Oh gosh, I don't want to listen to the first-time mom who had an amazing waterbirth, and it was pain-free." It just was grief. Meagan: Right.Lily: So when I found The VBAC Link, I was like, "This is exactly what I needed. This is stories of women that give me hope and not just that trigger jealousy," which I think is a very real and valid emotion.Meagan: Very, very real. Very real and valid.Lily: It's okay to feel that way, but I remember going for all of my postpartum walks and listening to The VBAC Link and crying through every episode and all of the things. And then, just in that postpartum time, I got back into fitness. I have a background in kinesiology and teach a lot of fitness classes. So I got back to the community and finding that, and then I also got to work here which is so fun a year ago in November which is so cool. I think it's really a cute thing that my year anniversary was in November, and that's when I had her, so how cool that I spent a year empowering other women and also getting to plan my own which was really fun. So if you've ever DM'd us on Instagram, you're probably talking to me.Meagan: Yep, yep. She's in there every day a lot of the day because we get a lot of messages. We really do.Lily: And we want to answer all of them. I want you to feel seen and known and all the things. So if you're getting an answer, you're not getting a robot.Meagan: Yeah, you're absolutely not.Lily: You're getting me or Meagan or Olga or Ashley. You're getting one of us which is really neat.Meagan: Yep. Yeah.Lily: Okay. So then we got pregnant again, eventually. So we had planned to start trying when our son was two. We got pregnant a couple months before his second birthday. And again, it was such a redemptive moment of going from having a really hard trying to conceive to me, a girly with one fallopian tube getting pregnant on accident. Are you kidding me? It's crazy. But it was so great. It was really scary at first. We did have some early pregnancy bleeding. We thought we were having another miscarriage. And at the same time, my dad had his appendix rupture, so he was in the hospital septic while I'm early pregnant bleeding. It was just a hellstorm at first and felt really scary. But I knew that I was going for my VBAC, and that was really grounding. I won't share a ton of this journey. My midwife, Paige, and I were on the podcast earlier in 2024, so if you want to listen to that podcast about finding care, but I'll just quickly cover essentially the birth center that I was supposed to be at that I always dreamed would be my redemptive birth again was the same midwives. Oh, Matilda is grabbing my ears.Meagan: Also, the episode is 342 if you want to go back and listen.Lily: Yes. For midwife stuff.Meagan: Yes.Lily: So essentially, my midwives were amazing and I love them, but the birth center just wasn't in our financial capability. They don't take insurance. This time around, it was just not something that we were able to do. I started my care at the birth center and was really grateful to be there because they really knew my story, so they held me through the worry about miscarriage. And then we ended up having to navigate transferring care, so I interviewed another birth center that was in-network with our insurance that was about an hour away. I interviewed my midwife, Paige, and her practice partner, Jess. I told my husband when we went in to interview them, I was so terrified to like these hospital midwives and that I would have a hospital birth. And I did. I fell in love with them. I think that's so important. One thing I get really frustrated with, I think, especially in the more crunchy birth community is that we are often told that hospital birth can't be beautiful and that you can't have a physiological birth in a hospital.Meagan: Yep.Lily: I'm here to tell you that that's wrong. We have to stop telling women that the place that they feel safest is less than in any way. If a hospital is where you end up, then that is incredible and amazing and that's where you should birth if that's what feels right for you and your baby.Meagan: Yeah. It's the same thing with like epidural versus non-epidural. It doesn't matter. You're not any less powerful or strong or amazing if you birth without an epidural versus an epidural or out of the hospital versus the hospital or a planned Cesarean versus not going for a VBAC or if it goes to a Cesarean.We have to start having more love for one another in our community. Even though it might be something really great for one person, and they believe that, and that's okay that they believe that, that doesn't mean it's right for that next person.Meagan: Totally, totally.Lily: Yeah. So we navigated what hospital care was going to look like. At the time, our hospital was under construction, so they were "letting"-- I put that in quotes-- letting you labor in the tub, but you couldn't deliver in the tub at the time. The tubs were home birth tubs that they were blowing up in the rooms and all these things. But by the end of my pregnancy, the low-intervention rooms were open, and they were supporting waterbirths which I think is so neat to see from a hospital. So yeah, we were really excited. This time, I did more acupuncture. I continued to see my amazing acupuncturist. She's amazing. Montana Glenn if you ever need her in northern Colorado. I did switch chiropractors. Last time, I went to just the chiropractor that I'd always gone to. She wasn't Webster-certified. This time, I did go see a Webster-certified chiropractor. Laura is amazing. That really changed a lot of my pelvic pain and things like that.I was way more active in this pregnancy. With my son, I was working at a Barre studio, and the fitness studio closed about halfway through my pregnancy. I kind of just petered off the train of staying active. But with my daughter, we were able to, I say we because she was there. I worked out until the day before I was in labor. I teach spin, strength, and yoga. It's a combo. It's called Spenga. I was there all the time. I did stop on the spin bike at 34 weeks pregnant because I learned that that's not great for baby positioning, and it can shorten some of those ligaments. I stopped doing the spin bike at that point to be really cautious of position. Speaking of that, I had a standard kind of pregnancy. I would talk with my midwife forever and ever. I came in with questions about my birth probably on day one. She was like, "Girl, you're 16 weeks pregnant. Chill, no." But I had questions, and I would come in every time. I did feel like a first-time mom in that sense because the last time, I had a lot of expectations of I knew what the birth center was going to look like, and I had no idea what a hospital labor was going to look like. How many nurses are going to be in my room? Who's going to be up in my space? What does this look like? How do I do intermittent monitoring and all the things? Paige was great about, my midwife, saying, "Hey, this is what the hospital protocol is. Hospital protocol is not a law. You get to do what you want to do, and we support you in that." She was awesome. At 32 weeks, though, Matilda was breech which was really scary as a mama who had a surprise breech baby. I did all the things. If you want to know all of those things, we have an Instagram Live that is saved on our page of literally the kibosh of things that I did for flipping her. We did flip her. I also saw a bodyworker in town and a doula who's amazing. Her name is Heather Stanley, and she's the breech lady here in northern Colorado. I did some bodywork and stuff with her and worked through emotional stuff and birth stuff. It was, I think, really what I needed. Heather said that in our session, and I kind of rolled my eyes. She's like, "I think sometimes babies go breech because we've got some stuff to process." And I think that I did. I thought I processed. I went to therapy after my Cesarean. I did all the things, but I still had some stuff. I think she was teaching me, like, "Hey, let's work through this now."Meagan: Yeah, I mean, I had the same thing with Webster. He kept flipping breech. I had never had a breech baby before, but I was like, "If I have to have a C-section because you're breech, I've done all the things." I was really frustrated. We'd get him to flip, and then he'd go back. My midwife was like, "We need to stop." And I believe that it was the same thing. I needed to work through some things. He needed to be in those positions during that time for whatever reason. We had to gain more trust in our bodies and our abilities and processing. Right?Lily: Yeah, totally. So yeah, so then she flipped, and it was great. And then I just felt so seen by Paige in all of it, because she knew like, "Hey, when you get to the hospital, we'll check with an ultrasound and double-check that she's still head down because I know that's anxiety-inducing for you." I just felt so empowered with all of our decision-making. It felt like a big partnership. One thing that I struggled with with my son was I was at home laboring for 44 hours. I never got to go to the birth center. What I loved is this time, it was my call when I got to go to the hospital. It was my decision, all of it. Paige was so great about saying, "Hey, this is your labor, and we're here to make this happen." I just think she's such a unique human. I don't think care always looks like this in a hospital for sure, but it can. What if we advocated for what we deserve, you know?Meagan: Just talking to her, I love her. I love her so much, and I one day hope to meet her in person.Lily: She's the greatest human being. I tell her all the time, I'm like, "You're changing the world, and so many women need you." Actually, their practice was at one point so full of VBAC patients that they've had to unfortunately turn a couple of people away because their practice is getting full which is really amazing, though.Meagan: Yeah.Lily: And we need that.Meagan: It's a good thing. Yeah.Lily: Yeah. So super cool. All right, I think we've got labor coming. Here we go. I never felt pressure of when am I going to go into labor or any of that. Paige was super great about, like, "Hey, if you're dilated before labor, that's great. If not, whatever. Most people dilate while they're in labor," and it was just super helpful. I knew that there was no worry about when I would go into labor. There was no worry about just any of that stuff. So it was really nice to just be at peace. That's one of the reasons that I actually loved having a hospital provider because I had a lot of anxiety about transferring from a birth center again. Actually, as I tell my story, I think I would have been a transfer again. I remember them saying that in my initial consult appointment. Jess, who practices with Paige, said, "You know, what's beautiful about hospital care is that we can induce you if you need to be induced, and we have the hospital privileges, and you can have the interventions if you need them." And I did. Spoiler alert, and it was great. I got to 40 and 1. I started contractions around 11:00 PM on Tuesday night. I was already felt like it was such a blessing because I finally had contractions that were normal. I didn't have contractions like that with my son. They started out fast and furious and they were seven minutes apart or less my whole 44 hours. With this, I felt the wave of a contraction for the first time. And I remember texting my doula like, "This is already so redemptive just that I can like breathe through a contraction. This is nuts. This is so cool." There were a couple that I had to get on all fours in my bed and sway back and forth and eventually, my husband like leaned over and he was like, "You need to go to sleep. What are you doing?" I was like, "I'm having contractions." And he's like, "Oh." So it was fun. I texted my doula and just said, "Hey, I think I'm in labor," which was weird for me to say. And again, what's so great is Jessie, my doula, had been with us in our first birth and she's also a VBAC mom. It was just like God had His hands on exactly what we needed and the people that we needed even from our first birth to carry into our second. So on Wednesday, Jesse also lives in our neighborhood now, so that's fun. She came over, and we went for a walk. We did some homeopathy, and she gave me a great foot massage, and then she said, "Okay, hey. Let's try to pick things up a little bit. I want you to take a nap with your knees open." She's like, "We don't have a peanut ball," so I grabbed the triangle pillow from my kid's nugget couch. It works really well by the way. I napped with that between my legs and was able to get things to pick up a little bit. My contractions did get pretty intense, but they were still spread out. She went home for a little bit, and then I took a nap and labored. I went downstairs. We live multi-generationally, so my parents live in our basement in a basement apartment. My niece also lives with us. They have custody of her. My parents have a way cooler shower than I do because they got to customize their basement. I went down and took a shower in their shower which has three shower heads and all the stuff. I was like, "This is like a being at a birth center." So I hung out in their shower. I took a two-hour shower. My mom's like, "Our water bill is going to be insane."Meagan: How did you have hot water long enough?Lily: We have that-- I don't know what it's called.Meagan: Reverse osmosis thing?Lily: I don't know.Meagan: I don't even know. That's not the water heater. Lily: I don't know what we have. I don't know what it's called. Anyway, we did have hot water. Meagan: That's amazing, though. Lily: I was just in there chilling and music on and lights off. When I could get into the mental space of labor, my contractions would come way closer together, and things would intensify. But if I did the advice of living life, it was like they just stayed really far apart. So I was like, "I know that some of this is prodromal labor a little bit because I'm not getting into consistency unless I'm forcing myself to be there."So amongst all of this, my husband is not feeling well. I'm looking at him like, "You seem sick." My husband never gets sick. And he's like, "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine." And I was like, "No, I think that you should go get tested for something." Something in my gut was like, "You need to go in." So he went and got swabbed for the flu and all the things, and he had strep. And so I was like, "See? Good thing that we got you tested." So he started antibiotics right away. And then that night, my sweet doula came and spent the night because Jared was just not up for being a labor support and yay for having a doula because I needed someone to be there physically with me, and I needed that support, but he couldn't be there in that moment.Meagan: Wow, what an incredible doula. I love hearing that. Yeah.Lily: So she came and spent the night, and we did some like side-lying releases, which from my first labor, I knew I was going to hate it. It's just the position that, to me, is just the absolute worst when I'm in labor. It's awful. My doula was like, "Hey, so we should do some of that." And I was like, "No, we're not. I don't want to." She was like, "I think we should then."So we did some of that, and then eventually, she drifted off to sleep. My contractions again, were still staying spread out. They would get close together and then they'd fizzle. But they were intense, and that's what's hard is you think prodromal labor, and at least in my brain, it's like, "Oh, contractions are mild and really far apart," but that's just not how they were for me. They were really intense. Meagan: They can be. Eventually, I went upstairs and took a bath because I was like, "Okay, I'm just going to force them to shut down then." I need some rest. So I went and took a bath upstairs, and got them to slow down enough that I could sleep for the rest of the night.Meagan: Good.Lily: That was Wednesday, and like I said, my labor was long. On Thursday, we woke up. My doula was here with me. We made breakfast, and she forced me to eat protein. Yay, doulas. I had already a scheduled appointment that day for my 41-week or whatever it was. 40 weeks, I guess. We went into the clinic and my contractions were, I mean, maybe 30 minutes apart at this point. I remember we drove all the way. My clinic is 20 minutes for my house. We drove all the way there, and I didn't have a contraction in the car. I was like, "Okay." So we went. I was 4 centimeters dilated and 90% effaced. I did ask for the membrane sweep, but I asked for the cervical check. Not one time ever did I get a check that was like, "Hey, we should check you now." It was like, "Hey, I want to be checked now."Meagan: Yeah.Lily: It was so empowering. So 4 centimeters. She was like, "You know what? You're doing it. Yes, prodromal labor, sure, but also, your body's making progress. You're doing something."Meagan: But also not prodromal. It was a prodromal pattern and acting that way, but progressing. So, it was on the cusp.Lily: Yeah. It was weird but encouraging to hear that, okay. I've done a day and a half work. Yeah. But at this point, I'm like, ticking in my brain, like, "Okay, how long has this been?" Because my first labor was 44 hours, and I was 10 centimeters when we transferred to the hospital. I had told myself my whole pregnancy, "I can do anything as long as it's less than 44 hours." It was not. It was not. Spoiler alert. So we went home, and then my sweet chiropractor actually lives in our neighborhood. I texted her and was like, "Hey, I don't know if this is a positional thing. She feels really low and engaged, but can you come adjust me?" So she came and brought her table to my house and adjusted me. She did this thing called adductor stripping.Meagan: Oh.Lily: And so I had done an actual membrane sweep with my midwife, and then my chiropractor took her knuckles and went on my inner thighs and pushed all down. It hurt so bad.Meagan: I'm doing it to myself barely, and I'm like, oh.Lily: It was awful. But she was like, "This is the big hip-opener thing." So we did that. She even taught my doula how to do it. I looked at my doula and I said, "You're not doing that to me. So glad you learned you can do it to another client, not me." My doula went home again. I got back in the shower and was moving around. And at 4:00, I decided like, "Okay, I'm exhausted. I am ready for a change." I am the type of person who likes to go somewhere and do something. It's part of why I didn't ever feel like a home birth was the right option for me because I know that I get stuck in a space. I like the idea of going somewhere to have my baby. It felt like a good change. So I was ready, but I wasn't having contractions that were there. And I was like, "I also don't want to go to the hospital and be stuck there for a million years." So I decided to go upstairs and put myself into labor. I'm like, "Okay, I'm doing this." I turned off all the lights, and started to labor, and my mom came up and gave me a back massage. It was also cool to see her shift because in my first labor, she was super anxious. And then in this labor, she was really trusting of my process and was more just like, "Hey, what do you need?" So she gave me a really big back massage, and I listened to music, and I finally got my contractions to six minutes apart. I texted my midwife and I said, "If these stay this way for an hour, I want to come because I am exhausted. I'm ready for a change. I need this." And she's like, "Great, awesome. Let me know. Keep me posted." So I did have some bloody show, and I thought maybe my water broke. It had been an hour, and I was like, "Hey, we're going." My mom had just made dinner, so I'm scarfing meatloaf on my way out the door. Great last meal.Meagan: I love it.Lily: And then we head to the hospital. I got to the hospital, and I was 4.5, maybe a 5. So again, earlier that day, I had been a 4. So I had made a little bit of progress, but not a ton. But Paige was great. She's like, "Great, you're here." What I love about their practice is their direct admittance, so you don't have to go through triage and have some sort of evaluation to decide if you're supposed to be there or not. She was the one who made that call, and we made it in partnership with each other. I was like, "I feel like I need to be here." She's like, "Great, you're here."Meagan: Yeah.Lily: And so I chose no IV and to do intermittent monitoring which will come up in my story in a little bit, but that's kind of where I was. We started to fill up the tub, and I was laboring in the tub, and then I started to get nauseous and throwing up and all the things. In my head, I'm like, "I'm in transition. This is very transitiony." I'm watching as the baby nurse comes into my room and starts to set up the bassinet. I'm starting in my head to tell myself, "I'm so close. I'm in transition. This is happening." And as I talked to my doula afterward, she was like, "Yeah, we all thought you were in transition, too, dude. You were in it." I started to get frustrated and say, "I want to push." Not that I felt pushy, but I was just like, "I want, again, a change. I want to have a baby." And so I asked for another check, and I was 6.5 centimeters. I cursed so much, and I was like, "I just want to have my effing baby." I screamed that so loud. My poor, sweet doula and midwife. They dealt with my sass, and it's like my body knew, "Okay, we're defeated now." Everything shut down. My contractions spread apart to 20 minutes apart again. They had been 5 minutes. My mental space was not ready, and my body was like, "Okay, we're going to rest." Meagan: Yeah. Lily: And so I get out of the tub and dry off, and we decide that I'll do a little bit of pumping. My midwife put some clary sage all over my belly, and she does try. I asked to rupture my membranes because we thought maybe they had not ruptured when I thought they did. She was like, "They're definitely intact." She goes, "Nice protein intake girly because these are hard, and I can't rupture them." She's like, "You have a really strong bag of water." And I said, "Thanks, Needed, for all of the amazing collagen that I took."Meagan: I was going to say, collagen protein right there.Lily: I'm terrible at protein intake, so really the collagen from Needed was one of the strongest ways I got protein in during my pregnancy. So pat on my back for my protein intake and things to need.Meagan: Very, very good job. Very impressive. Well, because really, a strong bag of water, it is hard to get that protein and that good calcium in. It really is. To the point where she can't even break it, that's pretty cool. Pretty cool. Good job. Lily: Yeah. So then at this point, it's later in the evening, like 9:00 or 10:00. And so I started to just be exhausted. I started falling asleep between contractions. My doula is like, "We're going to wind down. Let's turn the music just to instrumental. I'm going to go take a nap." Our birth photographer is napping on the floor. Paige goes and takes a nap, and they tell my husband to curl up next to me.That was such a sweet moment of disc connection that I needed of, "This is my person and we're here. We're doing this together." We snuggled up on the bed and got through contractions together all night long. I did at one point ask to try the nitrous oxide because, in my head, that was the only pain relief that I could think of that was available to me in this low intervention room because the way that the hospital works is if you're not going to have a waterbirth, if you decide to get an epidural, they will transfer you out of this room because there are two of them, and at that point, you can't use the tub. So I was like, "Okay, I think nitrous might be my only option." So I tried that. It sucked.Meagan: You didn't like it.Lily: She was like, "You know, it's really not helpful for people that are coping with contractions well." And she said the same thing when I started asking about an epidural later on. She was like, "You're coping well, and you're relaxing." These types of things can be really helpful for people that are in the fetal position in between their contractions, but you're not, so it's probably not actually going to help because you're already relaxed. All it did was make me feel a little dizzy,  and then I was like, "Well, this is silly." I got in the shower again there. It was not as good as my parents' shower, so I did get right out of the shower. It was very cold. And so the next morning, now it's Friday. So reminder, labor started on Tuesday. Meagan: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Now we're here. Lily: Thursday morning. And so Paige comes in, and we had a really long talk about options. At this point, I am mad, and I'm just feeling like I can't do it. I keep having contractions and saying, "I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore." In my head, I'm like, "Well, at least I'm going to get a VBAC. Hopefully, I can get an epidural," and then rest and those stories. I'm trying to be really open-handed because I think that's what you have to be in birth is really surrender to the process. Paige comes up with this idea to do some therapeutic rest to which I had never heard of before. I think I was texting you during this and I was like, "What is that?" She's like, "We can give you some morphine. You can either stay here at the hospital or you can go home, and hopefully, you'll nap for 4 or 5 hours. Typically, people wake up in active labor." I was like, "Sweet, sounds awesome. Give me that nap." My doula was like, "Why don't we go for a walk, first? Let's remind ourselves that it's daytime. Let's go on a walk. We'll talk about it together, and then we can come up and do our next steps." So we went out for a walk in the parking lot of the hospital. It was cold, and I threw up a couple of times. Yay. I was like, "I think I really need this. I can't continue to do this without any progress." She's like, "Great, I'm excited for you." So we went up, and they put an IV in cause I didn't have an IV. What was great was that the hospital staff was so accommodating. I was really nervous about nurses being like, "Hey, we don't like this," or whatever. Paige was also great about choosing my nurses to be the ones that are going to be more supportive. But they put an IV in. They gave me the morphine, and then they took it out. I didn't just then have an IV.We did that, and then we decided we would break my water and try to get things progressing. She did end up being able to break my water because I could sit still. I was way more relaxed with the morphine. It was supposed to be a 4-hour nap. I woke up 20 minutes later. We had sent my doula off to go run errands thinking that we had hours. I wake up 20 minutes later with really intense contractions that are peeking through the morphine, and they're super close together. I was like, "Well, crap. Let me call my doula back and get her to come back." And so that really picked things up again. It was kind of discouraging because I was expecting to get to rest, and then to have intense contractions again was like, "Oh gosh, okay. Here we go." But we did it. We labored the whole day doing that, but my contractions would never get closer than 5 minutes apart. They would stall out at that space. At 2:30ish, I asked about morphine again because I was like, "Can we do that again? If that was an option, can we try that again?" The nurses were like, "Hey, we actually think maybe you should just do some IV Fentanyl." My older brother is an addict, so I am someone who was super cautious. I had actually said it when I got there that my preference is no opioids. But this felt like, "Okay, maybe it's an option." When Paige came in and we talked a little bit, she was like, "Why don't we do that? And would you be open to doing a low dose of Pitocin?" And I was like, "Absolutely not," because in my brain, Pitocin means epidural. Pitocin is scary and hard. My contractions are already intense. I can't imagine Pitocin. Like, absolutely not. And so Paige said, "Hey, what's cool is you're already in active labor, so Pitocin is not likely going to make your contractions more intense. It will likely bring them closer together.Meagan: It's what you might need.Lily: "You might be able to wait it out, or this might be an option. Let's do the pain medicine so that you feel mentally like you can handle it." I was like, "Okay." So they placed another IV because I didn't have one in, and they gave me Pit. We started at 2 at 3:30, and then we upped it to a 4 at 4:00.Something that I will mention while I have the IV thought in my brain is I had said I was doing intermittent monitoring, and I ended up hating that. I was just irritated by people coming into my space. It felt like it interrupted my labor pattern. They had to reach down into the water if I was in the tub. I was moving, and I felt like I couldn't move or they wouldn't get it. They were just in my space a lot more. So when we started the Pitocin, the hospital policy was continuous monitoring, but they have the wireless monitors that are waterproof. They were like, "Do you feel okay with that?" I said, "Yeah, I think so, actually. I think I'm ready for people to stop touching me," because at one point, I looked at a nurse and I was like, "I understand why this is important and why you're here to check on my baby. Please go away." I hated it, but I also felt like I wanted some sort of monitoring.Meagan: I can see that though.Lily: Yeah, it was just disruptive. It's funny because in my brain, I thought that the continuous monitoring would feel disruptive, but it was great because they just put these two little dots on me. I had a belly band that went over. They were wireless. I could still move all around. It was great. Meagan: That's nice.Lily: Yeah. So at this point, I'm hooked up to Pit on the little IV pole, but I can still go wherever I want. I decided to go labor in the bathroom. This is the part of my labor that gets a little fuzzy. I was really thankful to have had a conversation with my acupuncturist prior to labor because she had a great labor experience, but she was actually a home birth hospital transfer too. She had talked about how I had said, "I don't want to do medication because I want to be really present. There's so much of my son's birth that I don't remember because of the medication." She had told me, "Hey, there is a place sometimes in labor land that your body just naturally goes fuzzy, so don't be taken aback if that's your experience." That was really helpful to know that in this transition time, things feel a little fuzzy, but I'm at peace with that versus my son's birth where it felt invasive to not have those memories.Meagan: Yeah.Lily: So we were laboring in the bathroom, and then I remember at one point yelling for Paige because my doula is in there with me. I was like, "I'm feeling pushy and ring of fiery." She's like, "Okay." We came out of the bathroom. They unhooked me from the Pitocin. They did keep the hep lock in. And again, they were really respectful and asked like, "Hey, since we've already been doing Pit, we've already put two in. Do you mind if we keep the hemlock? And we'll wrap you up. You can do whatever you want." And I was like, "That's fine. It's already there. Let's not bruise up my arm anymore." We came out, and I was laboring on all fours. I had gotten sick of the tub, and I had actually said, "I don't want to be in the tub anymore," at some point during the day, because this thing that was so great, and it is helpful, but every time I get in, I get discouraged because my contractions pick up. But then, it seems like I have to get out. My doula is looking at me, and she's like, "Hey, are you sure you don't want to get in the tub?" This was your goal. This was your goal. Are you sure?" I'm laboring on all fours, and I'm feeling pushy, and she's like, "We can fill up the tub so fast. Do you want us to just fill it up? This was your goal. Are you sure?" I was like, "Okay, yeah. Fill up the tub." The one other thing that I think was funny is that I was wearing a really ugly bra because I had had two black bras that I really wanted to wear, and they had gotten wet over two days of being at the hospital. I looked at her, and I was like, "I'm wearing my ugly bra." She was like, "Change." So my birth photographer ran over and grabbed my black bra that I wanted to have on, and I changed really fast which was really funny, and then hopped in the tub and started to just labor there. My doula and midwife coached me to wait for the fetal ejection reflex. So they were like, "If you can just breathe through these contractions, let's wait and see if your body just starts to push." I was like, "Okay, I guess we'll be here." I was in this really deep, low squat. I have 20 years of dance in my history. I teach Barre. I'm on one tippy toe. Paige told me after, "I have never almost broken a mirror trying to get so low to see what was going on because you were in such a low squat." I did deliver my daughter on my tippy toes. It was like, if I put my heel down, it hurt more. I don't know why, but my tippy toes felt great. Meagan: Interesting. Like pointe in ballet?Lily: Standing on my tippy toes.Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Oh my goshLily: Yeah. I was in a lunge with one leg up on a tippy toe.Meagan: With bent toes, yep.Lily: I was laboring there, and these contractions felt different, which again, is so cool to have gotten to experience. At this point, Fentanyl wears off after 30 minutes, and so I really feel like it was perfect because I got it for the hard Pitocin part, which actually wasn't bad at all, by the way. It was exactly what Paige said. It just got them closer together. They didn't hurt anymore.Meagan: Increase, yeah.Lily: Yeah, it was awesome. So I highly recommend if you need it at the end to know that it probably won't increase intensity. It just can help. I was fully unmedicated at this point. I would feel the beginning of my contraction. I could breathe through. And then when that fetal ejection reflex hits, man, it is crazy. I had heard someone describe it as the feeling of when you have to throw up and you just can't stop. That is exactly what it feels like. Now I'm pushing.My body just did it by itself, and I didn't have to worry about, "Okay, how do I breathe? How do I do?" There was no counting. I pushed for 52 minutes on my tippy toes. It was so cool. My husband really wanted to catch her, and so he was right there. He'll joke forever that I bruised his hand in labor because I was death-gripping it.I remember feeling the ring of fire and all of the things. And then she just came out and her whole body came out with her head, and it just felt like the biggest relief in the world of, whoo. And then I grabbed her. So Jared's like, "You kind of stole my thunder." I was just so excited, so both of us had our hands on her and got to bring her up to my chest. What we realized is I had a really short chord. The theory is that so much of my labor was probably held back because she didn't have a lot of bungee room to descend. It kind of explained a couple of things. Yeah. She was on my chest in the tub and hanging out. And then we got off and got to the bed, and she was hanging out on my chest. And then as the cord stopped pulsing, she forgot to breathe.Meagan: Oh.Lily: And so they had to cut the cord really quickly, take her off my chest, and take her over to the warmer, and she was fine. They called in the neonatalist and all of the things, and she did eventually just come back to me after I had delivered the placenta, but that was the only scary moment. The theory is that she was still relying on the cord, and then it stopped pulsing, and she was like, "Oh shoot, I need to breathe now. Got it. Okay."Meagan: Yeah.Lily: It was great. I got to see my placenta, and I did have a marginal cord which we knew, which is when your cord is kind of off to the side of your placenta. Again, we knew that my whole pregnancy, and it was never like, "This is going to prevent you from having a VBAC" conversation. But yeah, we got to do the thing and catch a baby, and it was just the coolest thing ever. I can look back and say gosh, yeah. I probably would've been a transfer because of how long my labor was. I'm so thankful that I took the interventions when I needed them and that I had a provider who I trusted was in my corner. Never once did I think, "Oh, she's recommending this so that it goes faster," or "Ohh, she's" bothered or anything. And Paige actually had specialed me in that she wasn't on call that night, but she came in for me which was really special. I don't know. I never expected that I would have a hospital birth. I never expected that I would have Pitocin or pain medication or any of the things and yet feel so at peace with how it played out. It was absolutely beautiful and absolutely physiological in all of the ways that it needed to be.So that was her birth.Oh my goodness. I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy. I can just close my eyes, and I can see your picture. So many feels and such a long journey. Such a long journey for you to keep shifting gears. But going back into your team and all the relationships that you established working up to these days and this moment, you had all of those people come into your labor too, at some point whether it was mentally thinking about something that they had said or they physically came down the street and we're able to serve you and touch you and adjust you and work with you that way. There were so many things along the way that it's like, wow. You should be so proud of yourself for building that team, for getting the education, for having this big different experience, and for trusting your instincts. I do think in the VBAC world, in all birth world, but for the VBAC world, we do sometimes get into this, "Oh, Pitocin can be bad. Epidurals can be bad. Hospitals can be bad. This can be bad," You know, all of these things, and a lot of the times it's based on negative experiences that one has had.Lily: Or stories that you hear.Meagan: Or stories that we hear, yes. Because, I mean, how many stories have we heard about the cascade? Lily: Absolutely.Meagan: We've heard so many. But like you said, these things needed to come into your labor at the points that they did, and they served you well. When you said that you didn't expect to have these experiences, and then find them healing and positive, but I truly believe when we are making the decisions in our birth experience, when we have our birth team that we trust and know are there for us, for us, and in our corner, like Paige is and was, it's very different.Lily: It makes a world of difference.Meagan: It's very different. I mean, I have had clients where I've had providers actually say with their words, "I like to manage my labors. I like to manage my labors." So if we hear that, and then we hear the experience, you guys don't do those things because they led down a negative path. But those are so different, and so we need to remind ourselves as we're listening to stories about Pitocin and epidurals or hospitals, have a soft part in your heart for them because you never know. They may be something that you need or want in your labor. Lily: Totally.Meagan: And if we can have the education about those things and then make the choice that feels right for us in our labor, I mean, here you are saying these things. You're saying these words. "I had these experiences. I experienced Pitocin. I experienced Fentanyl that I didn't know I wanted. I had all these things, and it was great."Lily: It was beautiful. Yeah. And Paige was like, "I've never seen someone dilate to a seven with such an irregular contraction pattern."Meagan: Yes. Yeah.Lily: What I love is that a couple of days before I went into labor, someone had posted this quote. We posted it just recently to our page, but it was from the Matrescense podcast. And it says, "For every birth video that you watch where a woman calmly breathes her baby into the world, make sure you watch one where she begs, pleads for, swears, doubts, and works incredibly hard to meet her baby." I know I cried.Meagan: That just gave me the chills.Lily: "So that if that is your experience, you are not caught off guard by the intensity of birth." I had seen that before I went into labor. Someone posted it in The VBAC Link Community on Facebook. And that is exactly my experience. I screamed and I begged and I roared. Oh my god. There was no quiet breathing during my pushing. My throat was sore the next day so much so that I had them swab me for strep because my husband had strep and I was like, "Did I get strep?" But my throat was just raw from screaming. Not screaming. I would call it roaring because I wasn't high-pitched screaming. It was just the natural, primal thing.Meagan: Guttural roar.Lily: It doesn't make it less than. It was pretty dang cool. So, yeah, so that was all the things. And then in this postpartum experience, it's been so great. Paige is awesome. We've been chatting over the phone, and we had a two-week postpartum visit. I just have the best community. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the community that I have this time compared to my first and sweet friends who literally right before I came on were like, "Hey, update. How are you? What's going on? How's Tilly? What do you need?" That community has made a huge difference, too. And also, I feel like I could run a marathon because I didn't have a C-section, you know? Holy cow.Meagan: Yeah, your recovery is feeling a lot better. Lily: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And I was super active prior to having her, so I think that helps too, you know?Meagan: Yeah.Lily: Just feeling that strength is there and resilient. So, yeah.Meagan: Oh, my gosh. I love you. I'm so happy for you. Seriously, I can't wait to even go back and re-listen to this once it airs. You're just incredible. You're such a ray of sunshine. And truly, it is an honor to have you here on our VBAC Link team and then to be part of this story. You had said before that you haven't really even shared it in this entirety, and so I feel tickled that I get to be one of the first to hear it in its entirety.Lily: Well, thank you, friend. It's an honor to be on the team to get to hold space for everyone else's stories, and I have a squeaky baby, but it is just a joy and a dream to get to be here. So thanks for holding space for all of us who have needed it for years. We love you.Meagan: Oh, I love you back, and thank you.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!This week we're joined by Raven Smith (@writeravenwrite.bsky.social) to talk about Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-in-Law (1977) - a blaxploitation comedy by Cliff Roquemore, starring Rudy Ray Moore as the titular Petey Wheatstraw.Be sure to check in with us next week, when we'll be talking about Def by Temptation (1990) by James Bond III.Also, all this month, we'll be re-releasing episodes about movies from Black directors, so be sure to subscribe on your podcatcher of choice and catch up with us @ProgHorrorPod on BlueskyMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight,Directors featured this month:Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorrorSupport our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrified Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join Susan on our podcast today as she shares her journey to a beautifully empowering CBA3C! Susan had three C-sections that didn't have anything to do with her body. They just happened to be circumstantial. All three of her births had been traumatic emotionally and did not go how she wanted at all. As far as making decisions for herself and doing what she really wanted to do, that was not present. But with her fourth baby, Susan had a lot of firsts. It was the first time that she was really able to voice what she wanted. She was able to make decisions out of peace and being educated instead of making decisions out of fear and being told what to do. That was the first truly empowering step in her process.Our mission at The VBAC Link is to make all births after difficult Cesareans better, and Susan's episode shows exactly that. Coterie Diaper Products, Code VBAC20 for 20% Discount How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. It is Megan, and I am joining you with my friend Susan. Hello, Susan. How are you?Susan: Hi Meagan. I'm doing great. How are you doing?Meagan: I am so great. You are from South Carolina, and at the time we're recording, even though this is now going to be in February, South Carolina has had crazy weather. How has everything been with you guys?Susan: Everything has been great. We're actually extremely blessed with the area that we are in. Initially, I thought it was something to talk about because I had a tree fall in the back of my house, but once I saw everything else going on in the area and just seeing the devastation that people had gone through, we are incredibly blessed with, the minimal damage with it just being a tree.Meagan: And this was Hurricane Helene?Susan: Hurricane Helene. Yeah. So all of our neighbors are pretty rough right now, so keep them in your prayers and help out where you can.Meagan: Seriously? Oh, we will be. We're actually recording right now in October, and today is the day that Florida is scheduled to be hit with another really crazy hurricane. So, yes.Susan: I've been thinking of Florida non-stop too.Meagan: Seriously, if you guys are listening, even though this is in February, oh my goodness, I hope all is well and everybody is okay.We do have our Review of the Week, so I definitely want to get into that before you share your four CBAC stories. We have people question, "Why is it called The VBAC Link, but then you share CBAC stories?" But I think the solid straight answer is because not every birth ends in a vaginal birth, and not everything always goes as planned. And you know what? Also, sometimes VBAC isn't desired, and CBAC is something that we don't want to forget about. In fact, if you didn't know, we have a CBAC Link Community. We have The VBAC Link Community on Facebook, and we also have a CBAC Link Community which is just the most amazing group as well. It's actually run by Paige, our transcriber, who I absolutely adore and just had her fourth Cesarean, which was a Maternal Assisted Cesarean. I still can't even believe all of those things happened. It's so amazing. But you guys, if you are looking for a CBAC support group, go to The CBAC Link Community on Facebook, and we'll make sure you get in. We have a review. It is by Jamie Poor. It says, "The absolute best." Thank you. That is so sweet. It says, "After having a scheduled C-section in 2016 for my son being breech, he flipped between 38 and 39 weeks, so he came as quite as a shock. I knew I wanted to VBAC for my next birth. Fast forward to 2019, my second pregnancy with our daughter, I found your podcast and obsessively listened to every single episode. It motivated me and educated me leading up to my due date. It even made me look forward to my long commutes to work. I hired a doula. I drank red raspberry leaf tea, ate the dates, did the Spinning Babies and really did all the things. And guess what? With the help and the education and advice provided on this podcast, I got my VBAC. I learned how to ask for what I wanted and advocate for myself with my doctor and when my body cooperated and went into labor, I felt prepared. My daughter was born in January 25, 2020, and I have to say her labor, delivery, and birth was the most healing, empowering experience of my life. Thank you, ladies, for providing this podcast for all women preparing for birth." Thank you so much, Jamie Poor, for your review, and congratulations on your amazing, empowering birth experience.Women of Strength, no matter how you birth, we want you to have a better experience. That is our goal here at The VBAC link to make birth after Cesarean better. A lot of first Cesareans are unexpected, undesired, unplanned, and do sometimes bring trauma. That doesn't mean even future Cesareans have to have trauma or be unplanned or be unprepared for. We want to learn all the ways we can make birth after Cesarean better no matter how that ends. Okay Susan, ending that review, we were just talking about no matter how birth ends. When you filled out your form, there was something that you said that things sometimes don't go as planned, but learning how to advocate for yourself and know that every birth is different is going to leave you feeling better. So I'm excited for you to share your four stories with us today, and I am excited to hear how you learned and grew and had better experiences with each one.Susan: Okay, so the first birth, I was 19. I was really young, and I didn't know a whole lot about birthing in general. I just did what I was told. I went to the hospital. I did what the white-coat man told me to do, and I didn't question anything. I was just a good patient all the way around. I had an amazing birth. I walked 8 miles before my induction date because I was a week over just trying to get things going and nothing was going. But you know how they are at the hospital. You know, as soon as you hit that 40-week mark, they want something to happen as soon as possible. So around, 41 weeks, I went "overdue" according to the medical standards. I went into the hospital and was super excited. They started the Pitocin drip, and my baby did not respond to that well at all. I was actually watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and I was laughing so hard while the Pitocin was going that his heart rate actually dropped to zero, his fetal heart rate. I remember all of the nurses came rushing in. They were freaking out, and they were pulling on stuff and readjusting me. It was really scary. They stopped the Pitocin and then they restarted it, and then it happened again. So his fetal heart rate dropped scarily low two times. The doctor came back in and he said, "You have two options. You can probably go home and labor for days and days and days, or don't know how long it's going to be."Meagan: He made it sound hard though.Susan: Yeah. He made that sound not appealing at all. And then he said, "Or we can just go to the back and get a C-section and get this baby out." And I was like, "Let's do the C-section. Let's get him out asap," because I was just scared, and I was young, and I just wanted him to be okay. So we went back for the C-section, and it was a perfect recovery. I didn't really think much of it. I was just glad that I had a healthy baby.The second birth came along, and I was actually in a pretty tough situation at the time. I was faced with a choice of what am I going to do with my pregnancy? A choice that many women face. Whenever you're not in the most ideal spot to have a child at the time, no decision is easy. The decision that I chose for myself at that time was to do an adoption. I chose to go the adoption route. Whenever they had asked me about what I would want to do as far as the birth goes, I was just thinking of the adoptive parents and what would be best for them. It was a completely sacrificial thing that I did. I didn't think about myself at all or what would be best for my body or my health or anything like that. I just wanted to make sure that his adoptive parents would be there. To assure that, I just elected to have a repeat C-section. Fast forward a little bit later. I'm starting to learn a little bit more about natural birth and what that can mean in a woman's body and the benefits of it. I don't know too much, but I went to my provider on my third birth, and I mentioned, I said, "How would you feel about me trying to have a natural birth?" He just looked at me with disgust, and he was like, "Absolutely not. We're not gonna do that." I just really didn't know too much, and I just felt so defeated and like that really was the only option, and I wanted to do the right thing. I really didn't fight for myself. I think I may have mentioned it to one other person just briefly, and then I just dropped it. That was the third C-section. So at this point, I've had three C-sections that really didn't have anything to do with me or my body not progressing or anything like that. It just happened to be circumstantial. It really wasn't empowering. So far,  all three of my births had been traumatic emotionally and did not go how I really wanted at all. I mean, thank God the three babies were healthy, of course, but as far as me making decisions for myself and doing what I really would want to do, that was not present. So, fourth baby. So the fourth baby, I had a lot of firsts. So it was my first baby with the marriage that I'm in now. It was my first girl, and it was the first time that I was really able to think clearly and be able to voice what I wanted and be able to make decisions out of peace and being educated instead of making decisions out of fear and being told what to do. That was the first step that was super empowering in this process.Meagan: Yeah. I think when you start feeling empowered, that's where it begins, the second you start that. Yeah.Susan: Yep. So I went to my first appointment just to have the pregnancy confirmed. They were just pushing. The only thing they were really doing was making sure I got vaccinated. "Oh, your blood pressure's high, so you're probably at risk for preeclampsia." They're already putting me in all of these little boxes on my first visit. They're telling me to take aspirin because I had high blood pressure. I had high blood pressure, a lot of it due to white-coat syndrome just due to the trauma of being in the hospital. I was completely not at peace. I hated being there. I did not want to be at that doctor's office. And so I got in the car and I immediately am talking to my husband. We call his cousin because he comes from a family where it's really common to have home births and to use midwives and to use alternative ways. I was so blocked off that I really just couldn't see, but we started talking to his cousin and she was telling me, "No, this is actually totally possible. I know some midwives who are able to do it." I'm still clenching up with fear, but I want to let it go. I'm on Google and I'm like, "vaginal births after C-sections three times", and your podcast was actually the first one to pop up. I went on there, and I specifically looked up a story that had to do with a woman having a vaginal birth after three C-sections.  I just started to listen and my heart started to open and the fear started to dissipate. I was like, "I can do this. I can at least make a huge attempt to do it." And so I started to call different midwives and see what their availability was like. A good portion of the midwives don't want to work with you if you've had over three C-sections because they're contracted with the hospitals and are contracted with the state in some way to where they can't legally do that. It was really hard because I called around and called around, and either they weren't available or they just couldn't do it. But I finally found a midwife that was willing to work with me. Me and my husband met with her, and we sat down and talked. It was the first time I had ever had a conversation with "providers" where they actually believed in me, and they believed in my body, and they believed in my ability to give birth. It just meant so much to me to be looked at as a human and as a woman that can do this and not just as a patient who you want to push through and make money on and just get the C-section and be done and not have any risk involved. But there is risk involved having a C-section after three C-sections. There's risk doing it any way, and it's just like, what risk do you want to take?Meagan: Yeah. It's interesting, but what you were saying, "I just wanted someone to sit me down and talk to me like I'm human and have this feeling." I mean, I interviewed multiple providers, and it took me a long time to find that, too. That is what breaks my heart about this community. We have to go into these situations where we're searching for support that feels like a diamond in the rough.Susan: Yeah. And I want to just point out that even though this did end a Cesarean, and we all know that. There's no suspense there. There are so many points along the journey where I did have that healing. I did have that empowerment. It doesn't have to lead to a Cesarean in order to have that healing is what I really want my story to say. You can still make decisions and advocate yourself for yourself in a way where it doesn't necessarily have the VBAC.Meagan: Yes, yes, yes.Susan: Because I'm in the Facebook Community, and I see stories of women being so defeated and so sad when it doesn't end in the VBAC. I just want to inspire people that it doesn't have to be that. The empowerment can come in so many different forms. I was just completely elated after I spoke with her, and I just felt like it was meant to be. I loved her. I loved her energy. She had been a midwife for over 26 years. She had over 1100 home births and not a single maternal death.Meagan: Wow.Susan: Yeah. I just felt totally confident in her, so I went ahead and hired her to be my midwife. Just being able to go to her house and have the prenatal visits was so nice. That was another huge thing that was just amazing and not having to go to the hospital and fight every time. We did all of our prenatals there.She didn't beat around the bush. If there is an issue and I needed to address it, I would address it. I had a little bit of issues with my blood pressure, so I tweaked my diet and I was able to monitor that that way. Towards the end of my pregnancy, I had issues with my hemoglobin being low. I tried everything in the book, by the way, and the thing that helped me, just in case anyone's having issues with their hemoglobin, is I actually froze raw beef liver. I froze it, and then we cut it up into little tablets. I took this raw beef liver every morning because it gives you energy. Don't take it at night before you go to bed because you'll have trouble sleeping. But I took it in the morning and my hemoglobin went from like 9 to 11 within a week which was amazing because nothing else was working.Meagan: Yes.Susan: Yeah.Meagan: And I was going to say that frozen wheatgrass shots is another thing that can help with that. Yeah.Susan: Oh, I did not try that. I said I tried everything, but not that. Meagan: Liver and wheatgrass. Make a delicious smoothie.Susan: The things we do to stay healthy. So, yeah, sometimes people will try to make you feel like you're being irresponsible by not doing it the way that they've been programmed to do it. I'm just saying, it was totally responsible. If not, it was even more responsible because she may have picked up on things and was able to give me advice from a nutritional standpoint which is usually always the issue. It's something to do with your nutrition in your diet that someone in the hospital wouldn't tell me because all they wanted to tell me was to take an aspirin. Yeah.I went over. I was 42 weeks and 4 days, I think.Meagan: 42 weeks and 4 days?Susan: Yes.Meagan: Okay.Susan: So another thing I want to tell people, if you're planning on doing a home birth or doing a natural birth, even if you're planning on going to the hospital, I would recommend saying your due date is actually a month after it actually is to people just so you're not hounded at that like 39, 40-week mark because that was really hard mentally. Especially if you're planning to do a natural birth, it can be such a mental battle especially right there at the end and to have to deal with people know, being like, "Is she here yet? Did you have the baby?" It's just another thing to have to deal with. I would recommend saying it's a month after your actual due date. Yeah. I did absolutely everything you can think of to be the perfect student as far as home birth goes. I read every single book I can think of to prepare you for a natural home birth. I went into HypnoBirthing. I practiced the meditations and the exercises. I had the birth ball. I did all the exercises on the birth ball with my pelvis. I took all the right supplements. I did the pre-birth tincture. I was doing it beyond. People would try to talk to me being like, "You could die. You could bleed out," and I would cut them off. "I'm not having fear-based conversations. I'm not entertaining this. Yes, I'm going to do this because I want to do this. I'm not committed to this to the point of death for me and my child. If something goes awry I have no problem going to the hospital but this is what I'm doing. Leave me alone."Meagan: Good for you.Susan: Yeah. Yeah. So I was really proud of myself because they say it's like preparing for a marathon giving birth. So I really prepared. I had my mucus plug come out around maybe 42 weeks exactly. I was like, "oh my goodness, something's happening," because previously, I haven't experienced any signs of labor. I don't know anything. I've never had a contraction before.Meagan: Right.Susan: Even though this is my fourth child, I have no idea what any of this feels like. So I'm really excited. I'm like, "Wow, this is exciting." Actually, my water broke really shortly after that. I was sitting down on the couch, and I just started having gushes of water and gushes of water. I was talking to my midwife the whole time being like, "This is what's happening. There's so much fluid. There's so much." I had never had my water break before, so that was all new. I was scared. I was excited. She just reassured me. She goes, "No, this is just your water breaking." And she had told me that she's going to treat me like a first-time mom because I never have actually had a baby come through my birth canal. So a lot of times you can expect a long, strenuous labor when it's your first.Meagan: Yeah.Susan: So she said, "Your water has broken. That could either mean that it's going to speed things up and the baby will be here soon, or it could mean there's still a long road ahead." My midwife was really good about keeping my expectations very low as far as when the baby would be here.Meagan: Hey, I think there's something to that. We know that labor sometimes can be slower.Susan: She just didn't want me to stress out about it not happening sooner than later. She was just so good, so calm, so peaceful, and confident. I love her. She's the best midwife ever. I recommend her anytime I hear about people in the area wanting to have a home birth.I was starting to have contractions and then it would be like, go, go, go, and then everything would just stop. Because my water had broken, the chance of meconium was there. I had some meconium in my fluid, but it was yellow. It wasn't a high-alert type of meconium. It was just like, "Okay, we kind of need to get things going." So we talked and we decided to drink some castor oil. So I drank a tincture, the Midwives' Brew if you look it up on Google. I did that.Meagan: A lot of midwives will suggest that.Susan: Yes. So I did that, and it did throw me into really intense labor. We just got things going. I had my contraction timer going, and I had my sister and husband here. I really didn't want many people there at all at my birth. It's just such a private and intimate thing. That was just what I felt comfortable with. It would just be that. It would be a series of contraction after contraction, and then things would die down a little bit. I did every type of position you can think of. I went to the bath. I took baths. There was so much stuff I would do. I even found if I put my feet in really hot water, it would help take away from the pain of the contraction because I hate my feet being hot.Meagan: Oh, okay. Yeah.Susan: It would help me think more about my feet being hot. I would just do anything and everything I could to just help the process and help my body relax. As much HypnoBirthing as you do and as much meditation you do, every birth is different. At that point, I was like, "All of that is BS. All of that is crap." Hey, if it works for some people, great. I really tried to do it, but I had a lot of pain happening no matter what meditations or affirmations I was giving myself. I was talking to my midwife about that too. That's another thing I want to point out is that we all might have this vision of this really peaceful birth where the baby just slides out into your hand and you catch it and yay, everything is great.But also, I just want to everyone to give themselves permission to have a chaotic birth. If that's what your body needs to do, if you need to scream, if you need to shout, if you need to look like a hot mess, if your hair needs to be frazzled, let yourself do that. Sometimes just allowing yourself to let go a little bit can really help. I was laboring for three days.Meagan: Oh wow.Susan: I got to 7 centimeters dilated. I was so happy because my cervix was folded under.Meagan: Folded under?Susan: Yeah. So it was like a posterior cervix.Meagan: Oh, it was posterior.Susan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Meagan: Oh yeah. It starts posterior and through the labor process, it comes anterior and aligns well with the birth canal and opens and dilates and all that. Yeah.Susan: Yes. So, by the time I got to 7 centimeters, that had finally come forward.So we checked myself, and I was 7 centimeters. My cervix had come forward, and I was so happy and I cried for joy. I was like, "This is it. I'm at 7 centimeters. It's go time." And typically, that's when they have-- what do you call it when there's that shift?Meagan: Well, active labor. When active labor kicks in, is that what you were thinking?Susan: Well, I had already been in active labor. But the shift when you're at the final stage, almost? Because you know how labor will get to one stage, and your body will adapt to that, and then it'll get to another stage and another stage?Meagan: So from 6 centimeters on is statistically like that active labor stage.Susan: Okay.Meagan: I'm trying to think of what other word you're meaning, but it turns into active. Transition? is that what you're thinking?Susan: Just the most intense part. Yeah. Maybe.Meagan: Yeah, so you transition into that stage. Susan: Yeah. Okay. So, I did not go into that transition. I stayed at 7 centimeters. And even though I was having extremely hard contractions, they were not productive contractions. There was a point where I was on my toilet because that was my most comfortable place to be. I felt the safest on my toilet because I was scared of pooping. That was a fear of mine, and I wanted to be on the toilet just in case.Meagan: Were you having back and butt labor at all?Susan: I was having some back labor. I mean, it was the most pain, and it was such a journey because  you're in so much pain, and you're like, "Wow, this is the worst thing ever. How am I gonna do this?" And then the contraction goes away, and you're like, "Wow, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful to be here. I'm so grateful my baby's almost here." And it's just an emotional roller coaster.Meagan: It is. Yeah.Susan: So nothing was really happening as far as the progressing. My midwife comes to me while I'm on the toilet, and she goes, "All right, Ms. Madam. Let's get your pretty dress on, and let's go for a walk." I looked at her like, "Are you crazy?" But I did it. I got my dress on, and I went for a walk through my neighborhood. I walked probably 2 miles, contracting throughout my neighborhood trying to get something going.Meagan: Wow. Susan: Yeah. And then I come back in the house, and there was two midwives there. One of them said, "If I could do my labor over, I probably would have just walked and walked and walked until the baby got there and would have tried my best not to be scared of the pain or let the pain stop me from really pushing into the contraction." So that's what I did. I started walking circles around my house, and I was telling myself, "No pain is too great to bear for my baby to be here." And I was even talking to my baby like, "Let's do this. Let's go to the next phase." I got to a point where I looked at my midwife, and I just said, "I'm exhausted. I have to lay down." I lay down, and I woke up, and my sister was lying with me. I started to just feel shivery, like really shivery. I started to get chills. It was just like I felt like I had nothing left in me. As soon as the shivers and the chills started, I knew I probably had a fever. I was looking at my sister and I just said, "I really don't feel like I can keep doing this." She said, "Well, is there something else on your mind?" I said, "Yeah, I need to go to the hospital." I'm about to start tearing up. The midwife came in and I just told her. I was like, "I need to go to the hospital. I feel like that the next step is that I just need to get in the car, and if on the way there I change my mind and I want to come back home, I'm going to give myself permission to do that."She goes, "Well, let me just check you, and let's see what's going on." It was 12 hours since my last check. It was 12 hours, and I was still at 7 centimeters. I hadn't progressed at all. I immediately just got out of my bed. I put my dress on. I don't think my husband was quite ready to go, but my midwife was, so I just started walking to her car. I'm like, "I'm going to the hospital now." I just had made up my mind, and that's what we were going to do. It was a very peaceful ride to the hospital. I had my little Depends on. She put a little pad under me. I remember asking her, "So has anyone ever peed in your front seat before?" Everything was just starting to get a little haywire. I just couldn't hold it in at all.Meagan: Yeah, yeah.Susan: We were just having a fun conversation on the way there. We got to the hospital. Well, the farther we got to the hospital, the more at peace I felt. The thought of going home was terrifying to me. As soon as we got there, I saw the nurses in the ER, and it was like beams of light were beaming through their heads. I knew I was at the right place. I got there, and they were just so sweet and so supportive. I still wanted to entertain the idea of having a vaginal birth if possible. It was just that I had to get an epidural because there was nothing left in me. I had nothing else to give in my body.Meagan: Yeah.Susan: I wanted to entertain that. And they go, "Well, yeah." They were like, "Were you hoping to have a VBAC?" And I go, "Yeah, actually I was hoping to have that," but I wasn't so committed to it to where I wouldn't have had a C-section. I already knew that I'm just going to do what's best for whatever the situation is after they assess me.But they were actually willing to let me have an epidural and have a VBAC. They were like, "Yeah, that's totally fine if that's what you want to do." And I was like, "Really?" And this was a separate group of providers that I had never experienced before. So yeah. It was absolutely amazing being talked to and being actually asked what I wanted to do.Meagan: Yeah.Susan: So they were doing all of my vitals. And as soon as I got to the hospital, that's when everything went berserk. My blood pressure skyrocketed. My heart rate went up. I was preeclamptic, and I was septic from meconium being in my uterus for that long. As soon as she was checking me, my daughter, Carrington, actually had scooted her head up a little bit to kind of show us what was going on, and the meconium was green. So as soon as I saw that there was green meconium, I was like, "Take me back for a C-section right now," because we all know that's infection. They were so relieved when I was totally fine with having a C-section. They gave me the spinal, and I just remember that being like the best feeling ever having no pain after being in such turmoil and in pain for so long.As soon as they pulled her out of me, she took another massive poop. So if I would have waited any longer, she would have been in that as well, and her chances for aspirating on it would have been really, really high. So yeah, that was it.I felt really great about the C-section. It was empowering because even up until that moment, I still was making decisions for myself and making decisions for my daughter. The decision that I made at the end was to save myself and her. To know that I made that decision and wasn't so committed to an outcome that I was able to make the right decision was like, "Wow. Yeah. I did that." Even though this is something that I wanted more than anything, I was able to let that go and save myself and her.Meagan: I love that you pointed that out of like, I had this empowering healing experience because I was really able to make the decisions along the way. You made the decision to get in that car. You made the decision to continue laboring. Then things changed. You made the decision to call it. And I think that is where a lot of the healing and growing comes from, is when we are able to make the decisions. The trauma, the fear, the hurt is when providers are coming at us and telling us what we are doing. "You are going to do this. I will only allow you to do this. You can if..." and then they give their restrictions. I think that you just nailed it on the head. You were able to make your decisions and be in control of your birth. And no, it wasn't the original outcome that you wanted. You wanted that vaginal birth. You were going for that vaginal birth. Things were really looking great, and when they weren't, you changed your mind. I just think, Women of Strength, take this with you today and know that you are in charge of your birth. Yes, babies and births can throw twists and curves and hurdles and all the things along the way, but you are the one who can make the decision for you. You do not have to be told what you do and do not have to do. Now, we also know that there are true emergent situations. There are true, true, true emergent situations where we maybe don't have a lot of time to sit and think and ponder and wonder what we should do and then follow that. It's just we have to say yes or no right then because it's an emergency situation. Susan: And being able to trust yourself that you are going to know if you need to call it and when to call it.Meagan: Yes.Susan: And that your intuition and your ability to just be in tune with your body and your baby is there.Meagan: Yeah. Absolutely.Susan: Yeah. And you'll know.Meagan: You will know. We talk about the intuition all the time. I mean, I don't know. I would say if not every podcast, probably every other or every couple other, we talk about this intuition. It is so real. I mean, Susan had this intuition. She felt it. She really did. Everybody listened to her. It's so important to be heard and to trust that intuition. So I applaud you, Susan. I'm so grateful that you were able to follow your intuition and be heard and call the shots of your own birth because you did deserve it. I am so happy for you. I know everybody else in the world cannot see your sweet baby, but I can and she's beautiful. I'm just so happy for you that you're able to have these experiences, and you have grown through each one.Susan: Mhmm, mhmm. And just the preparation of having a natural birth and what goes into it physically and mentally is worth it in itself to just give it a try if that's what you're wanting to do. And then allowing yourself to go into labor so all of your body's hormones are released in active labor, even if you do end up having a C-section, that's super valuable for your health and your baby's health.Meagan: Yeah, I was actually going to ask you that question. Yes, it ended in a Cesarean, but would you still have gone for the VBAC?Susan: Yes. I wouldn't have traded any of it for anything. I 100% would have done it again even if I knew what the outcome was going to be.Meagan: Yeah.Susan: Yeah.Meagan: Well, thank you so much for sharing your stories today.Susan: Thank you for having me here and thank you for doing this podcast and being in the business of releasing fear among women because it's like a pandemic of the mind almost.Meagan: Seriously though, we are being told that we have to be scared day in and day out. I mean, we hear these stories. I recorded a story earlier today and it was just like constant fearmongering every single time she was there. That stuff gets really tiring and it's hard to stand up to. But again, it comes down to education, learning these stories, learning your options, and then again following that intuition. So yeah, Women of Strength, you are amazing.Susan: Thank you. You're amazing too, Meagan.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Greg Burnham joins Emily, Ben, and Jeremy to talk about Mr. Crocket (2024).Also, be sure to check out Greg's new comic at Platform L7All this month we're talking films from Black Directors - with a re-release of older episodes coming out every week day as well as the three new films we'll be discussing every Friday.This month we're talking about:February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond IIIOther movies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight,Directors featured this month:Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH PounderIf you enjoy the podcast, you can support us Patreon and receive bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrified#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cannon is running his mouth talk about his past on a recent podcast. Cannon said that Meagan Good was the first person to break his heart. Nick Cannon told him and Good were friends since children and that she invited him to his first Hollywood party. But she did not give Cannon any play and he was heartbroken because of it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In order to honor Black History Month, every February Progressively Horrified only covers horror movies by black directors. Over the past several years, we have covered quite a few movies by black directors. This year, in addition to our three new episodes, we're also rereleasing all of the previous episodes discussing films by black directors. We believe that, now more than ever, it is important to highlight diverse films by diverse creators.New Films this month: February 7th: "Mr. Crocket" by Brandon EspyFebruary 14th: "Petey Wheatstraw" by Cliff RoquemoreFebruary 21st: "Def by Temptation" by James Bond III Support our Patreon for bonus episodes, essays, short stories, and stickers! https://www.patreon.com/progressivelyhorrifiedMovies featured this month:Horror Noire, Eve's Bayou, Tales from the Hood, Blacula, The First Purge, The Other Black Girl, The Blackening, Sorry to Bother You, Saloum, Master, His House, Bad Hair, An Angry Black Girl and her Monster, Candyman, Nope, Us, Get Out, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Directors featured this month: Nia Dacosta, Jordan Peele, Justin Simien, Mariama Diallo, Xavier Burgin, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Kasi Lemmons, William Crain, Gerard McMurray, Nefertite Nguvu, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Tim Story, Boots Riley, Jean Luc Herbulot, Remi Weekes, Bomani J. StoryActors featured this month:Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Ken Foree, Keith David, Tony Todd, Paula Jai Parker, David Alan Grier, Rachel True, William Marshall, Jada Pinkett Smiith, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jake Smollett, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Clarence Williams III, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee, Thalmus Rasulala, Gordon Pinsent, Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Steve Harris, Mugga, Luna Lauren Valez, Rotimi Paul, Mo McRae, Jermel Howard, Derek Basco, Rashida Jones, Sinclair Daniel, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Karina Willis, Cassi Maddox, Carcelle Beauvais, Zele Avradopoulos, Shakirah DeMesier, Langston Kerman, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker, Rosario Dawson, Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba, Bruno Henry, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, Ndiaga Mbow, Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Judith Scott, Vanessa Williams, Kelly Rowland, Tiffany Black, Usher, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Edem Atsu-Swanzy, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Madison Curry, Napiera Groves, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Lil Rel Howery, Billy Zane, CCH Pounder#BlackHistoryMonth, #BlackDirectorsMonth, #BlackFilm, #BlackHorror, #HorrorNoire, #BlackDirector, #MonkeypawProductions, #Shudder, #Hulu, #DiverseHorror Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.