Podcasts about OB

On today's episode of The Wholesome Fertility Podcast, I speak to author of “Carry On” @carryonthebook Shea Bart Andreone @shea_andreone . Shea shares her deeply personal journey through fertility challenges, pregnancy struggles, and the emotional rollercoaster of loss and hope. She discusses her desire to become a parent, the difficulties she faced with hyperemesis gravidarum, and the heartbreak of losing a pregnancy. Ultimately, Shea emphasizes the importance of resilience and the joy of welcoming her children into the world. In this heartfelt conversation, Shea Bart Andreone shares her journey through the challenges of parenthood, including loss, the search for control, and the importance of community support. She discusses her book 'Carry On', which compiles true stories of individuals navigating the complexities of starting a family. The conversation emphasizes the significance of hope and resilience in the face of adversity, and the need for emotional support in healing. Be sure to tune in as you won't want to miss our deeply touching and hope filled conversation!   Takeaways   Shea always wanted to be a parent and started her journey with high hopes. Fertility struggles are common and can be emotionally taxing. Hyperemesis gravidarum is a severe form of morning sickness that can lead to significant health challenges. Shea experienced extreme nausea and weight loss during her pregnancy. The emotional toll of pregnancy loss is profound and can lead to feelings of guilt and despair. Shea's journey highlights the unpredictability of pregnancy and the importance of being adaptable. The desire to have children can drive individuals to persevere through immense challenges. Finding peace is possible, even amidst uncertainty. Loss can lead to discovering new activities that provide control. Writing can be a powerful outlet for processing experiences. Community support is crucial for those facing fertility challenges. The journey of parenthood can be isolating without connection. Stories of others can provide comfort and understanding. It's important to seek out community and support during difficult times.   Guest Bio:   Shea Bart Andreone was raised in Queens, New York, but moved west and loves California. She is a writer of numerous plays, essays, and maintains a blog called Twig Hugger. Shea has written multiple articles for mom and parent-oriented platforms (The Next Family, Motherfigure, LA Parent, Your Teen Magazine, and Chicken Soup For The Soul). Carry On is her first book and she hopes that it can provide hope and comfort to those who are on the fertility journey.    Websites: https://sheabartandreone.com/  Instagram: @carryonthebook @shea_andreone  X: X.comCarryOnTheBook   For more information about Michelle, visit: www.michelleoravitz.com The Wholesome FertilityFacebook group is where you can find free resources and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/ Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/     Transcript:   Michelle (00:00) Welcome to the podcast,   Shea Bart Andreone (00:01) Thank you. Thanks for having me.   Michelle (00:04) Yeah, it's a pleasure having you and I would love for you to share your story and what got you inspired to write your book Carry On. would love for you to share that with the listeners.   Shea Bart Andreone (00:17) I would love to. So I always loved kids. I always wanted a younger sibling. I wanted to babysit when my parents decided they were never gonna have another child. I'm the youngest with a big age gap. So I took on all things that could keep me around.   Michelle (00:36) Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (00:45) kids so that I felt like I could be a big sister or a babysat. And I taught kids and ran day camps and stuff like that. I always knew that I wanted to be a parent and start a family. So when I did finally find the person to do that with, I thought, okay, well, when we get to that moment, it's just gonna be easy peasy and   you know, that's so exciting. We make the decision and we go. And of course, like every listener of your podcast and many, many more people around the world, it doesn't always work that way. So it took me quite a bit of time to figure out what to do. You you're instructed pretty quickly to try for longer and   I just, think I knew something was going to stop me unless I got help, but I, I did see my regular OB at the time and she suggested that we do an HSG, where they flush the iodine up your fallopian tubes. And she discovered that, I, I, you can really feel that.   Michelle (02:04) Not a fun test.   Yeah, it's crazy, but I hear so many things, so many stories, and I just wish doctors would just let people know like what's coming.   Shea Bart Andreone (02:19) Yeah, like exactly what you're gonna feel. Yeah, no, we have to experience it for ourselves. So that resulted in finding out that I had a fibroid right at the opening of my uterus. So I had scheduled the surgery to get it removed and somehow in...   Michelle (02:21) Yeah.   Yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (02:48) that, well, not somehow. We know how making babies can work. I guess my husband and I were continuing to try and because of the HSG, it pushed the fibroid a little bit out of the way and I was able to actually conceive. But the fibroid and the pregnancy, they were fighting for the blood supply.   Michelle (03:16) So just backing up, were you about to do surgery for it, but then you stopped because you got pregnant?   Shea Bart Andreone (03:22) Yeah, so I scheduled a surgery and then ended up in crazy, crazy pain. like pain I'd never experienced before, like just shocking, like sharp, sharp pain. And I ended up calling the doctor and she said, go to the emergency room. And it was in the emergency room that I found out I was actually pregnant.   Michelle (03:30) Mm.   wow.   Shea Bart Andreone (03:52) And I was told basically, you gotta just kind of deal with this because they didn't know which one would win out. So I waited and I took whatever I could for pain, but not a lot, because I was like, well, I think I had a feeling like, no, no, no, I'm pregnant. Like, this is amazing.   Michelle (04:06) Got it.   wow, you felt it before they confirmed it?   Shea Bart Andreone (04:22) No, no, no. I definitely didn't know when I went in, but once I was, I was very protective. I was like, no, I don't, you can tell me all you want that like, there's a chance this won't stick, but I'm going to protect this. So I was very, very careful. And then in the end, that doctor was really not helpful. And I had like,   Michelle (04:25) Okay.   Yeah.   Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. For sure.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (04:51) crazy pain on the following Monday and ended up like my sister-in-law said, just go to my doctor, just go to my doctor. So I went to her doctor and I had a very like strong clear line in the sand that I would not go to a male doctor. And I felt like at that point I was like, okay, like we all have things on this journey that we think we're not gonna do. And we think we're gonna like,   Michelle (05:09) Mm-hmm.   Yes.   Shea Bart Andreone (05:19) okay, I'm never gonna do IVF or I'm never gonna do IUI and I'm not gonna, and then like, you're like, well, I'm gonna change that. So I started with him and I really do think that because of that situation, I ended up in the right hands. So luckily for me, like that pregnancy ended up sticking.   Michelle (05:22) It's true.   that's great.   Shea Bart Andreone (05:49) and that fibroid eventually just sort of died off. However, within, I think I felt good for like two weeks and then I started feeling symptoms of hyperemesis gravidarum, which is, yeah, a few weeks in, I started feeling severely nauseous and,   Michelle (06:06) Mm-hmm. You mean early in the pregnancy.   Mm-hmm.   Right.   Shea Bart Andreone (06:18) I thought, okay, well, this will pass. This is what they tell people, like, know, morning sickness, but it's not morning sickness. Hyperamesis Gravidarum is like, if I threw up eight times in a day, that was a really good day. And I broke all the blood vessels in my face daily from the pressure of vomiting. And the blood vessels in my eyes were...   Michelle (06:35) Wow, yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (06:48) Like my, I had bloodshot eyes and just could not remember a time that I liked food. Like it was so awful to me. Like the idea of it, sipping water, anything. And originally, like...   Michelle (07:04) Yeah, that's that's a big thing, too, because people get dehydrated.   Shea Bart Andreone (07:08) Yeah, yeah, and I tried everything. tried like, you know, motion sickness bands and you know, there were lollipops that were supposed to help and ice pops and nothing, nothing, nothing. And I just didn't want anything. And that, you know, began the insane journey of my pregnancy because that led me to lose about 15 pounds.   Michelle (07:18) Mm-hmm.   Wow.   Shea Bart Andreone (07:37) And my doctor didn't quite realize how bad it was. And when he did, he was like, I am giving you medication that is going to stop the, you know, the vomiting for a few days and you have to eat. If you do not gain weight by Monday or stay the same, I have to admit you for a feeding tube. So we took the weekend.   Michelle (07:54) Yeah.   Wow.   Shea Bart Andreone (08:06) And my husband was like, can you think of anything, any food you ever liked? And I was like, pizza.   Michelle (08:18) Ha ha ha ha!   Shea Bart Andreone (08:21) For like kid food, I went to growing up, had, I think was, had Elio's frozen pizza and tater tots. And I was like, I don't even know where that came from, but okay, let's try that. And the medication was so intense that you basically like, you could eat and then you'd fall asleep. And so that started on a Friday and Saturday midday, I woke up and I felt like,   Michelle (08:23) Yeah.   The simple things.   Shea Bart Andreone (08:51) I couldn't stop moving. Like I was very restless. And I felt like this must be what restless leg syndrome is like, but it feels like this for my whole body. And that was crazy because I'd never experienced a situation like that before where you feel like it's out of control. Like you can't say kind of wreaks havoc on your mind because you don't want to keep moving, but you are.   Michelle (08:53) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   wow.   Shea Bart Andreone (09:21) Yeah.   Michelle (09:21) Yeah, yeah. Is that from, was that from the medication side effect? my God, you poor thing. You got tortured.   Shea Bart Andreone (09:25) Yeah.   It's the yeah, it got worse too. Then I got jaw lock.   Michelle (09:31) no.   no.   Shea Bart Andreone (09:37) So like my entire jaw just locked to one side. And once that started, it didn't let go for 16 hours.   Michelle (09:42) no.   my God.   Shea Bart Andreone (09:51) And the only thing that would help is sometimes I could put all my upper body weight over my husband's shoulder and it would like kind of fall. And at one point in that time it moved to the other side, but it was so uncomfortable and so painful. And I remember walking to use the bathroom at some point and looking at the toilet and thinking, I'd actually rather throw up than this. Like, I'm like.   Michelle (10:01) Mm-hmm.   Mm.   poor thing. my gosh. And was that also from the medication? Wow.   Shea Bart Andreone (10:24) Yeah. And it's interesting how your brain can only focus on one thing at a time, because in the back of my mind, I was like, how could I remain pregnant through all of this? my body is going through so much trauma right now. I don't know how. And   Michelle (10:34) Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (10:49) I knew that my husband was thinking the same thing, but we weren't discussing it because I was so distracted by the pain and the discomfort. But I knew that he was calling the doctor and trying to find out like, would this baby be okay? And fortunately he got the answer that like, this, guess what you eat doesn't.   Michelle (11:08) Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (11:18) always and what you what medicine doesn't always go fully like you do filter those things out to a degree. And I remember the next, you know, that was over the weekend and I went back and I, I was able to maintain my weight. So he did not have to send me to the hospital. But I remember, like waiting with bated breath to see that ultrasound on Monday morning. And   Michelle (11:46) Yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (11:46) there was the baby inside with its legs crossed and an arm back and like yeah I've been fine in here.   Michelle (11:55) lounging. That's amazing.   Shea Bart Andreone (12:00) Like, I know you've been in hell, but I'm having a vacation.   Michelle (12:03) I'm sure you tell the story. It's interesting because my mom actually reminded me again. You have stories that you just keep hearing over and over and over again. But truthfully, mean, suffered secondary infertility to conceive me. So I'm kind of a product of secondary infertility. And she's tried and tried and tried. She said every time I get my period, I cry.   Shea Bart Andreone (12:06) Yeah.   Michelle (12:28) And it was really the stories of the people that I treat. It's so crazy how that comes full circle. And I'm kind of like the proof that a woman can go through all of this and still have a baby. And she also had the same thing. I don't know how severe it was, but to the point where she lost so much weight, she was under a hundred pounds and her doctor said, listen, we got to abort this child. You're not going to survive. And she's like, no way.   You know, and it was, it's pretty crazy. You know, you go through this journey and then you advice that you're like, no, no, no, no, no, this is not happening.   Shea Bart Andreone (13:04) Yeah, you get advice and then also like you try again and willingly enter something this crazy because the power and the, you know, the need and the, yeah. Yeah. That desire to have children is, is pretty huge. pretty, it's, it's, it's quite magical and   Michelle (13:10) Mm-hmm.   The belief really, right? The belief in that desire.   Shea Bart Andreone (13:34) wondrous, I think. Yeah. Yeah.   Michelle (13:37) I agree. I think it's meant to be there. Like, I don't think that it's a random thing. People feel that really strong calling and I don't think it's random. It's not just something that was kind of planted there for no reason. I think it's because you're meant to find the baby in one way the other. Like you were saying before about how maybe you don't expect it to be IVF, but maybe it is, and then you can kind of go back and forth. But even with...   egg donor or embryo donor or even adoption. I've had people talk about that and they said I was meant to have that baby. Like it was that calling. just that I was trying to control how it was going to show up.   Shea Bart Andreone (14:17) Yeah, yeah, it's really wild. mean, the things when you listen to other people's stories, sometimes you're like, why didn't you stop? And like, mean, or how did you keep going? How did you persevere? like, I follow someone online who is pregnant right now. And this is the first positive pregnancy test that she's gotten in over eight, like in eight years of trying. While you wait.   Michelle (14:28) Mm-hmm.   I think I saw that one. Yes. It was amazing. It was really, my God, I got the chills with the video that she showed. was like, that was amazing.   Shea Bart Andreone (14:47) Yes, it was amazing!   Yeah, like to see that double line. yeah, that's a long time. And people go through a lot. And it is not something for anyone on the outside to judge or decide or advise on because that desire, like you said, it's pretty wild. Yeah, yeah.   Michelle (14:57) Yeah, after eight years.   Yeah.   It's real.   Shea Bart Andreone (15:22) So in the end, I did get a very healthy baby and a baby girl. did not find out the gender and in the middle of a contraction, my husband, we had names for both a boy and a girl and in the middle of a contraction, my husband goes, I gotta tell you something. I don't like the boy's name. And I was like, I can't talk to you right now.   Michelle (15:45) That's funny. That is so funny.   Shea Bart Andreone (15:52) So for that sake, we were very happy to have a girl. Like we were happy to have a girl anyway. think we admitted to each other we really wanted a girl, but like, obviously we would have been over the moon for anything except that I don't know what we would have named that boy. So, you know, when she was about...   Michelle (15:59) Yeah.   Yeah, that's so funny.   Shea Bart Andreone (16:17) close to three. I wanted some time. I was really, really enjoying just like feeling healthy and raising a baby and not rushed to have another one. And so I thought, okay, well, when she like goes into preschool, then I can try to do this again. And this time I did get pregnant right away. And   was pretty sick right away as well. And my doctor found this team that like sends an IV, like teaches you guys, like a couple to do their own IVs. And I was set up to give myself, to put a port into my belly every morning with an IV that I wore as a pack.   Michelle (17:01) Mm.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (17:16) that was to help me to stop throwing up. And unfortunately,   I feel like, you know, anything I deal with, like there's research that comes out like a year or two later that like, that could have helped me in that situation, but unfortunately it didn't. But the medicine that was given to me at the time is no longer on the market for pregnancies because it can stop the heart from beating. So in...   Michelle (17:33) wow.   Uh-huh.   my gosh, wow.   Shea Bart Andreone (17:55) you know, at our 12 week ultrasound, which I was hoping to celebrate, was, and talk about like power and instinct. That morning, I felt like something was wrong. And I don't know where that feeling came from, because it's too soon at that point to really feel anything, you know.   Michelle (18:15) my gosh.   Shea Bart Andreone (18:24) moving around, but I just felt like something was wrong. And I remember looking at the sky and it was like this perfect blue and telling myself that no matter what happens today, that sky is still going to be blue. And just to hold on to like, not everything is lost. And I don't, I really don't even know why I felt this like foreboding, foreshadowing feeling. but   Michelle (18:43) Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (18:54) know, the doctor was, we were waiting in the room for the doctor and my husband was joking around and I said, I don't know, I don't feel like joking around. you know, when the doctor came in all friendly right away, I said, don't feel, I feel like some, I was very straightforward in a way that I don't think I usually am. And I was right, there was no heartbeat.   Michelle (19:03) Mm-hmm.   Wow.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (19:21) and I was too far along to like have anything done in the office. So I had to get checked into the hospital and yeah, it was really, really rough and awful because I felt like...   I tried so hard to do the right thing and to like keep everybody healthy. And it was awful doing like, you know, the port and injecting myself every day and all of that. And it still didn't work. So we ended up naming that baby, the name that I...   Michelle (19:43) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (20:08) show is with my, what I thought with my husband, but he didn't really like it. And I said, I know you didn't really like this name, but can I use it for this baby? And in that moment, he said, yep, but why don't you give all the other names that we're not gonna use next time. And that was the first time I heard him agree, like, we'll try again.   Michelle (20:13) you   wow.   Shea Bart Andreone (20:34) I hadn't thought that, like, guess it was, like, it was a lot for me, but I knew I wanted to try, but I kind of felt like, like I said about advice that came from others, like, it felt like everything in the universe was saying, you have gone through enough, take your one child, be grateful and move on. And for him to say, we will try again, it just gave me such a sense of relief that we were on the same page.   But we did agree that no matter what happened, this would be the last time because our daughter couldn't live through that again. And we couldn't, you know, do that. So we were gonna, so we tried again this time with no medication and only an IV for fluid. So I...   Michelle (20:59) Yeah.   Mm-hmm. Yeah.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (21:24) It's strange, hyperemesis is a weird thing. Like I definitely got it all three times that I was pregnant, but with the first one and the third one, the time of day that I could eat was totally different. I, with this, the last pregnancy, I could eat something in the morning, but once like one o'clock came, that's it. Like the gate was closed. Like there's no more putting any food or liquid into your body.   Michelle (21:30) Mm-hmm.   huh.   Shea Bart Andreone (21:54) so I did what I can, like I did what I could to eat before that time. and you know, we navigated it and, and I had a healthy baby boy. so I, I am very, very grateful and definitely, I'm aware, especially when I talk to others that are in the middle of their story.   Michelle (22:07) amazing.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (22:24) that   You don't know how your journey is going to end. really don't know how you're going to get to where you get to. But,   I know it's so cliche, like, whatever is supposed to happen, like the end of the story, it works out in the end. Like whether or not you get the biological child or adoption or foster or five dogs.   Michelle (22:56) Yeah. Yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (22:58) you find peace at some point. I, my heart, yeah, my heart goes out to the people that are still in that journey and they don't have the ending yet.   Michelle (23:02) Yeah, I mean that makes sense.   Yeah, it's the ending. It's, things start to make sense at the end. And then you realize, had it not been for that exact moment, the genetics, all the alignment wouldn't be that exact child that you have. And, you know, obviously when you're holding that child in your hands, you're like, I wouldn't change this for anything. but sometimes it can be really scary because when you're going through it, you're walking into like a dark room, cause you have no idea how things are going to play out.   Shea Bart Andreone (23:37) Yeah. Yeah.   Michelle (23:38) And that the unknown, as we know, is like the scariest things for humans. all, nobody likes that. It's just the unknown. And especially when it comes to such a strong desire that is so primal. Yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (23:43) Yeah.   Yeah, yeah. And so universal. mean, it's just procreating. That's what we think we're wired. I mean, we are wired and we think that we're meant to do it and it doesn't work out that way for everybody. So in all of that, for me though, especially in the miscarriage part, I felt like   Michelle (23:59) Yep.   Yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (24:21) I didn't know who to go to and I didn't know where to, like, didn't feel, obviously I had at the time, like a three year old. And so either everyone around me in my circle at the time had a second child already or was trying to. And I didn't, I don't want to go to those people in that time.   So I ended up calling a friend of mine who had also lost several babies at the same week because I needed very specific support at that time. Like someone who really   Michelle (25:00) wow.   Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's somebody who can understand.   Shea Bart Andreone (25:09) Yeah, like understand exactly. And I talked to her and then she maybe led me to someone else. And I discovered that each woman that I spoke to had felt such a loss of control with their trajectory of what they had planned.   that they found activities that they could control to keep them a little bit grounded. It's such an ungrounding time. And one of them was like painting pottery, you know, plant pots. One ran a marathon. One was cooking and started to become a chef.   Michelle (25:45) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (26:06) And I realized that there were these like stories of activities that have, and, you know, hobbies or whatnot that came out of this. And I, I was like, okay, I got to find my, activity. So, and, and like I said, like something I can control, something I can, you know, seek from start to finish and have an outcome.   Michelle (26:07) wow.   Shea Bart Andreone (26:36) because I can't do that with a baby.   Michelle (26:36) Mm-hmm.   That's so interesting. This is the first time I've ever heard anybody put it in that way. I find it so interesting and I think that is really powerful.   Shea Bart Andreone (26:48) Yeah, it made sense to me once I realized this common thread. I was like, I get it. So I took up sewing and realized really quickly that is not going to be my thing. was one of those things I was always curious about and I like maybe took an eighth grade and didn't totally understand it. And so I was like, I'm going to try it now. And I was like,   Michelle (26:57) Mm-hmm.   Which that happens too.   Shea Bart Andreone (27:18) Nope, don't have any control over this either. But I was writing and I decided, that is something that I can do and I really love it and it can be an outlet for me. And so I decided to, because I couldn't think about anything else, to compile these stories from people.   Michelle (27:19) Yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (27:47) and their hurdles and their stories of trying to become a parent. And that is how the book, Carry On, came to be. And it is stories of infertility and adoption and fostering. And most stories in the book have a happy ending, but not all the stories in the book.   Michelle (27:57) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (28:18) And yeah, mean, a lot of them, like when you're in the, if you, before you get to the end of that chapter for that person, you're like, whew. But there, you know, every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. so it's been, it, it, it's been wild to, interview people and learn about people. And you know, it is, because it's.   Michelle (28:29) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (28:47) It's my book and I put it together with all these different people. I thought I was done with it a couple of years ago. And again, talk about control and you think you're going to put a deadline on yourself and it has a life of its own. But I made a fairly new friend in the last few years.   Michelle (28:56) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm. Things change.   Shea Bart Andreone (29:17) And we got to know each other over something completely unrelated to fertility. And it was actually like activism against violence for something. we just connected and realized like, we should be friends, but we were so busy focusing on the cause that it took like a couple of months for us to get together and go for a walk before I like.   looked at her and said, so what do you do? Who are you? And she asked the same of me and I said, you I'm working on this book. And she said, if I had known you before, I probably would have been a chapter in your book.   Michelle (29:49) Yeah.   my gosh, wow.   Shea Bart Andreone (30:05) And it took me another couple of months of getting to know her and realizing that like, actually her story really does belong in this book and it is my book. So even though it's been done for a while, I'm adding it. So her story is one of the chapters in the book and she's the one that drew the line in the sand and said, I am never doing IVF. Like that's as far as I'll go.   Michelle (30:16) Mmm. Wow.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (30:34) And if she didn't do IVF, she wouldn't have her child.   Michelle (30:41) Wow, it's amazing how that happens.   Shea Bart Andreone (30:44) Yeah, and she and her story is really fascinating too because   Like mine, her health was at risk, you know, in order to have her child, but she, you know, went through 20 weeks of pregnancy with twins via IVF and unfortunately she lost those babies. And then, you know, knew what to expect the next time around. But when she wanted a second child,   it was just too much for her to like endure again, but it wasn't an option for her to not have a second child. So her second child is actually adopted from Ethiopia.   Michelle (31:33) my is beautiful.   Shea Bart Andreone (31:36) So it's a pretty amazing story.   Michelle (31:40) That's amazing. That's so beautiful. I had a guest, a previous guest, Dr. Lisa Miller. She wrote The Awakened Brain. She has an incredible story and it was, she was struggling to conceive for years with her husband. She had a voice in her head that kept saying, would you adopt if you had a child? If you were able to conceive, would you adopt? And she kept saying no. And then,   Shea Bart Andreone (31:48) yeah.   Michelle (32:04) one day randomly they saw something on TV. think they were either, I don't know if she was in hospital or a hotel. I don't remember exactly what it was, but like the TV wouldn't change. And it was stuck on this channel of a child that didn't have parents and her heart just blew wide open.   and her husband as well. And they're like, that's it. We're adopting. The second they decided to adopt and they got everything in order, she conceived. And she was meant to have her adoptive child. It was like something was calling her in that direction. She kept putting it off. And then all of sudden, boom, like in the right time, it was like, that was it. And then what happened was she heard that voice again in her mind.   if you were able to conceive naturally, would you still adopt? And she said, absolutely yes. Like after she decided and saw the child and it was just so powerful and she was getting all kinds of crazy signs. There was a duck that left an embryo in her door. It was right after she had a challenge conceiving. was just, it was so crazy. Like all these weird signs and it just tells you that they were part of a very cosmic intelligence.   there's got to be some kind of order that we're part of because it can't you can't explain that otherwise. There's something else. There's some other kind of divine intelligence. Yeah, yep.   Shea Bart Andreone (33:31) Yeah, whatever you want to call it, it's out there. So did she end up adopting a child and having a biological child?   Michelle (33:40) Yep. Yep. And she feels that her adoptive child is her child. Like that was the child she was meant to have. And then also her child and they were also meant to be together. It's amazing. It's just so wild on so many levels,   Shea Bart Andreone (33:56) Yeah, yeah, I just met someone I did a panel for a fertility expo and the woman sitting next to me had dealt with secondary infertility and had no issue getting pregnant with her first child and then her second child just she could not get pregnant, could not get pregnant and they had been on a list for fostering.   kids and I didn't go like she wasn't ever planning to adopt but just to help other people and to take in another child and she was thinking she was going to get like a teenager and somehow they were called randomly like two years ago with a newborn that was available and so she has raised that you know baby since birth and   Michelle (34:29) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (34:52) now is trying to adopt the baby. of course, two years, you know, year and a half into having that baby, she did get pregnant and now has three children.   Michelle (34:55) wow.   Wow. wow. you just don't know how and that's the part of relinquishing control. Like we know we have the desire and the desire is there for a reason. We just, we almost have to rely on that divine intelligence for the how. I think that that's what it is. And when we fight that, that's where I feel like it doesn't stop like you from having it eventually, but it stops the process. It delays it. think when we fight   Shea Bart Andreone (35:17) Yeah. Yep.   Michelle (35:30) that divine intelligence, that flow that's trying to move you in a certain direction.   Shea Bart Andreone (35:34) Yeah, it's really true. And also, I don't know why I keep coming back to this today, but that middle part of the story, you have to find a way to be uncomfortable in that disequilibrium and manage it, because it's not going to stay like that. It won't. Yeah.   Michelle (35:50) Mm-hmm.   Right. This too shall pass.   Shea Bart Andreone (36:01) Even like in every situation, every, like this week, my daughter was expecting to get, she had worked really, really hard for a slot and an opportunity to do something. And they were looking at 10 people and knocking it down to six. And she ended up in the bottom four and did not get that opportunity. And I'm shocked. She's shocked, she's devastated.   Michelle (36:28) Mm.   Shea Bart Andreone (36:30) And as a parent, have that like, don't really want to be more upset for them. Like there's a fine line. You got to balance like your own emotions before you like, you know, and I just like the last couple of days, I've been like, okay, what's going to happen next? Because somehow something is going to make this better. Like, and I know something will happen. Like, but I feel like I'm on the edge of my seat sort of waiting for news.   Michelle (36:37) Mm-hmm.   Yep.   Mm-hmm. Yep.   Shea Bart Andreone (37:00) and that is familiar to me for like, you know, all the waiting and the waiting and the waiting of like, well, what's going to happen? Something is going to happen. Something exciting at some point. And you might have some pretty upsetting moments along the way, but something is going to happen.   Michelle (37:21) Yes, I actually remember hearing, I don't remember where it was, but it was a rabbi who said that there was like a saying that everything in the end works out. And if it's not working out or everything in the end is good. And if it's not good, it's not the end. And I'm like, I love that. Yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (37:36) at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I definitely feel that way.   but we get like, it's so global. It's so like, you know, whatever your politics are, you can feel like, shoot, you know, that happened. You know, like, we feel this universally, like many, many times, and it shifts, things shift. And then, yeah, and the story ends.   Michelle (38:03) They do.   Yes. Yeah. Things definitely shift. I'm also kind of into Kabbalah right now, like, cause it's very similar to quantum physics. And I love that, how Joe Dispenza talks about that. But I find that a lot of like ancient traditions teach about, and these are things that aren't necessarily, you don't need to see them as like a religion per se. It's actually a way of life. It's almost like a science of life. And they talk about how, things do come up.   It is really for your soul to evolve. And sometimes those difficult things, like the second we react to them, then we sort of block ourselves off from the light and that like wisdom. But when we allow them, and this is, you know, they talked about it in Zen Buddhism, that's truly going with the flows. Like even when things are not comfortable, if you just allow for it to move and don't fight it.   with the non-resistance, then it actually helps to grow your soul, your spirit, your personality, your mind, your ability to handle things. It's pretty wild, but in some senses that   challenge   is what helps us. And the same thing if you look at a butterfly or even like a plant coming out of a seed and that hard shell and that fighting and that   challenge   of trying to get through. so it's painful, but they do it in that   That aspect of it, the difficulty, the challenge is really what helps us to become more of ourselves.   Shea Bart Andreone (39:44) Yeah, to get to the other side.   Michelle (39:46) Yeah, it's pretty wild. But like you said, it's universal. It could be applied to anything in your life. It could be applied to anything, to getting a job, to marrying the right partner. And it's very similar and also just any kind of challenges that happen in your life. And I've seen it so many times, just like you, like so many stories of people that had they looked at their history and said, okay, well, since I've never gotten pregnant,   Shea Bart Andreone (40:01) Yeah.   Michelle (40:12) before, like the one we just spoke about eight years of never getting pregnant, you could look at the history and say, based on the history and since it's been so long, that's going to probably be my future. And logically, it makes sense to think like that, but it's not necessarily the case for many people.   Shea Bart Andreone (40:15) Yeah.   Yeah. Yeah, and that belief of holding and hope, hope is like.   Michelle (40:35) Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (40:38) That's such a challenging topic because it is the first thing to go, I think, when you're challenged and faced with a big hurdle to overcome. It's hard to think you can hold on to any sort of hope, but that's pretty much the key.   Michelle (41:00) Yeah, it is. it's so interesting that it's so hard because the journey by itself, you're also faced with a lot of professionals that are giving you stats and numbers. And sometimes when you go into that, that's like a hope killer. It'll immediately say, well, I guess you can't really do it because look at your numbers are terrible. And based on this, it's just not possible for you. And so many people still conceive despite that and have healthy   children, know, births. So it's interesting how also the journey, the fertility journey just happens to be one that you're faced with a lot of hope killers in general. And so having to really stay grounded and really stay close to that desire and keep that like in your heart.   is very challenging. and you mentioned something that was actually really powerful. And I think that that is something that everybody should be given as a resource is just community connecting with people that know exactly what you're going through. And having that support is tremendous. And it's just nowadays, it's getting better than it used to. I feel like it used to be worse. Now we have social media.   We have lots of groups, we're connecting. And I think that that's huge. And I think that people who go through miscarriages doctors should be required to give them resources because you're dealing with a traumatic event and then you're sent home. And I think that that is not right. It's, it's like unethical to not provide support for people going through that.   Shea Bart Andreone (42:44) I agree, and I think that is a big flaw in our medical community, like our medical world. takes, I mean, I don't want to be, put anybody in boxes, but the majority of the people who become doctors are very cerebral and understand the logistics of the physical body and don't always necessarily take into account the emotional side.   Michelle (43:13) Mm-hmm.   Shea Bart Andreone (43:14) I would say most for me of the doctors that I have seen don't handle the emotional stuff very well. And I think we're learning that mental health is such a massive, massive element that cannot be ignored and needs the attention. And I do think when you said it's getting better community wise, it is, from what it start like...   There, know, hundreds of years ago and in other countries still today, community is everything surrounding people. And I would say Western medicine has, you know, unfortunately kind of cut that out. And like even in other countries, I think it's France where you're, once you have a baby, you're, you're provided with physical therapy for the woman who gave, you for you as a woman.   Michelle (43:49) Yeah, it's just true. Yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (44:12) You're given attention to heal yourself. And here we're sent home. You just had a baby. Bye. You're good. Not even 24 hours of any instruction. If you adopt a baby, you have to go through many, many, many hours of training. But on the other side, if you just birthed your own baby, you're sent home. Good luck.   Michelle (44:20) Yeah.   Mm-hmm. Yeah.   Shea Bart Andreone (44:39) So yeah, would say lack of community is still huge. And yes, you can find that online, but...   Michelle (44:49) Right. It's not the same as actually having a physical community.   Shea Bart Andreone (44:52) Yeah, and we still don't provide that for each other. And there's no wonder to me why doulas and midwives and lactation consultants and postpartum doulas are in such high demand. And unfortunately, that's a luxury.   Michelle (45:13) Mm-hmm. Right, right. It's a luxury and it's expensive. Not everybody can afford it.   Shea Bart Andreone (45:17) Yeah, but I understand the need for it. It makes perfect sense to me because it's like we're thrown into this dark tunnel without any light provided. It would be nice for someone to sit by your side and tell you how it's going to go. And yes, mothers and sisters and friends can do that to an extent, but yeah, it feels like there's a need.   Michelle (45:21) Yep.   Shea Bart Andreone (45:47) And yes, you can Google anything and you will find out.   Michelle (45:51) It's not quite the same. Actually, if anything, it gives you more anxiety. It's so important. And I think that it's true. I, as you're talking, I'm like, this is basically the building blocks of society. Like if you have a good foundation that's done with love and wisdom and carries on like traditions and history that people have learned from and can teach it. I mean, it feels like almost there's a gap because   Shea Bart Andreone (45:54) Yeah.   Michelle (46:21) It used to be that way really back in the day. And then there was this gap with industrial age and we've sort of gotten more separated and now we're thirsting for it. And there is a very big demand for that.   Shea Bart Andreone (46:35) Yeah, yeah. So that I, you know, not that a book can can cover that, but I feel like the aspect of why I chose to write this is just if it could help one person not feel as alone as I felt before I started finding these people. That's the goal because   I just, think even people who can find access to other people sometimes are afraid to like make that like leap to go find a support group or talk to other people. Like, you know, I have a friend right now, a very close friend dealing with cancer and she has three kids and there are so many groups available to them to...   Michelle (47:25) I'm sorry to hear that.   Shea Bart Andreone (47:33) speak to others who are dealing exactly with what they're dealing with, but they don't want to go. Yeah. I, you know, whatever way someone can find that community, whether it's through a podcast or, you know, or a group in the park or a Facebook group or, you know,   Michelle (47:37) Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. It's so personal.   Shea Bart Andreone (48:01) or in a book, just hope for people that they find people to connect to so they don't feel alone.   Michelle (48:09) Yeah. I love that you wrote this book. think having stories is so powerful and just knowing these true stories and that people went through them and then you can relate to the challenges and then you can see how it ends for some people. I think that it's so powerful not to feel alone. I think that that's the big key is just not feeling alone. And like you said, the key is hope.   So for people who are listening to this, and I'm sure a lot of people are going to be wanting to look at this book right now, how can they find the book? How can they find out more about you?   Shea Bart Andreone (48:44) My website is sheabartandrioni.com and the book is available on Amazon. It's also available in certain bookstores. You can walk into your local bookstore and order it through them if they don't have it. And the book is called Carry On and the subtitle is True Stories of the Heartbreak and Wonder of Trying to Start a Family.   Michelle (49:15) Well, first of all, I really enjoyed this conversation with you today, Shay. This is really so heartfelt and it just, it was so symbolic of like the power of the human spirit and going through that and just everything that you shared today and opening up and I really appreciate you coming on. I really, really enjoyed   this conversation with you   Shea Bart Andreone (49:36) Thank you. Thank you. was nice to meet you.   Michelle (49:40) same. And also just for the listeners, if you guys want all of the links that Shay just mentioned are going to be in the episode notes, so you don't have to memorize everything that you just heard. You could just go back to the episode notes. So thank you so much for coming on today, Shay.   Shea Bart Andreone (49:55) You're most welcome.  

Abigail's first pregnancy turned into a life-threatening birth experience with undetected gestational diabetes and a traumatic ICU stay. On top of that, she unexpectedly had to move homes just two weeks postpartum. Abigail quickly developed intense postpartum depression and struggled to make sense of what happened to her. She was sure she would never have kids again, but after therapy and healing, she and her husband found themselves wanting another baby three years later. Abigail became pregnant right away, and she knew this time would be different. This time, things would be better. From the meticulous monitoring to the candid conversations, Abigail felt heard and supported throughout her entire pregnancy. Her gestational diabetes was detected and very controlled. While a scheduled C-section seemed to be a logical choice, she knew her heart wanted a VBAC. She was able to go into spontaneous labor and pushed her baby girl out in just 13 minutes!How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Welcome to the show, everybody. We have our friend, Abigail, from California with us today. She is a 27-year-old stay-at-home mom with a 4-year-old daughter and a 7-month-old son. She experienced a very unfortunate, traumatic experience with her first which really left her not really sure that she wanted any more kids. She's going to dive more into her wild experience, but she had a COVID pregnancy. She had a lot of different stresses through the pregnancy, especially at the beginning– gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and so many things with her first that really taught her a lot, and had a wild birth experience. Then the second time, she ended up getting gestational diabetes again, but did a lot of different things to improve her outcome like hiring a doula, getting a supportive provider, and all of that. We are going to turn the time over to her in just one moment, but I do want to quickly in place of the review share a couple of tips for gestational diabetes. If you guys have not heard about it so far, check out Real Food for Gestational Diabetes by Lily Nichols. It is absolutely incredible. It is less than 200 pages long. It is a fantastic read and filled with a lot of really great information and studies. She also talks about prenatals, so I wanted to remind everybody that we have a partnership with Needed who we just love and adore. We do have a promo code for 20% off. You can get your 20% off by using code VBAC20. Definitely check that out.Then we are going to be including a lot of things in our blog today like third-trimester ultrasounds, sizes of baby, and gestational diabetes so make sure to dive into the show notes later and check out what we've got. Okay, my darling. I'm so excited for you to share your stories today. I feel like there's part of your story that I want to point out too before you get going, and that is that sometimes you can plan the most ideal birth scenario, and I'm not going to talk about what this scenario is, but a lot of people are like, “Do this. Do this. Do this.” Sometimes you plan it, and then your care falls short or something happens and plans change. If you guys are listening, I just want you to dive in. As you are listening to Abigail share her stories, listen to how sometimes things change and what she did, and then what she did differently to have a different experience. Okay, Abigail. Abigail: Hello. First of all, I just want to say that I'm really happy to be here today. Thank you for having me today. Meagan: Me too. Abigail: Yeah, I guess let's just dive right in. Meagan: Yeah. Abigail: First thing is I am a stay-at-home mom, so my mom is out in the living room with my babies right now, and at this point, my son is 7-months-old, and we are having a really good time over here. I just want to start by saying that. Basically to start with my story, I got pregnant for the first time in January of 2020. Everybody knows what else happened in 2020. I was, I think, about 12 or 13 weeks pregnant when everything completely shifted. Everything started to shut down. There was a chance that I was going to get laid off of work which I did end up getting laid off of work about a week later. It was not a fun time. My husband and I had an apartment. We lived in a place we had just moved to. We had been there for about 3 years. We had a roommate, and everything was totally fine. Everybody worked full-time. I was working out regularly. We had a pretty chill life. Go to the farmer's market on the weekend. I was really excited when I found out I was pregnant. I was like, “Okay, yeah. We are going to bring a baby into this. Let's do it. I love what we're doing.” So again, everything completely shut down and shifted. Our roommate decided he wanted his own space, so he gave us a 30-day notice. We were stuck in a situation where they were raising our rent because our lease was up. We would have had to re-sign. It would have cost us more and everything, so we were looking at having to move because our roommate was moving out. It was all not a very fun time, so we decided to move back to where we were from, rent a room from a family member, and stay with them for the time being. They had a little bit of extra space for us. We thought it would be totally fine and everything. We moved when I was about 20 weeks pregnant. Up until that point, I had regular OB care at a regular office. I had done all of the blood work and everything and the ultrasounds and the anatomy scan and everything up until 20 weeks. When we moved, I decided, “Okay, I think I want to have the baby at home, especially now since the pandemic.” I don't know that I really wanted to go to the hospital, but I wasn't sure that I wanted to do that to begin with. I grew up in a community where home birth was pretty normal. My mom had my younger brother at home. Several of my friends were born at home and their siblings when we were younger. It was a pretty normal thing to me. I reached out to a team of midwives. I talked to them, and got everything set up. I started doing appointments with them. They were coming over to my house fairly frequently. It was pretty nice doing the regular blood pressure checks and the urine samples with the little sticks, and all of that stuff. When it came time for the gestational diabetes testing, I was like, “Okay, is this something I have to do?” I didn't have my insurance set up at that point or anything because we had just moved so we would have to pay out of pocket for it. I would have to go sit in some lab or office some place. Again, during COVID, while I was pregnant, I was like, “I don't know. If I don't have to do it, I don't want to. If I have to, I will. What are we doing here?” They were like, “Well, you're low-risk. These are the risk factors. If you don't want to do it, you don't have to. You just have to sign this form.”I was like, “Okay, cool. I'll sign the form. Seems easy enough.” I totally skipped the gestational diabetes testing. That was on me, but it wasn't on me at the same time because I don't feel like I was given proper informed consent. There was a team of three midwives plus a student, so a total of four that I was seeing. One of the midwives ended up getting switched out at about that point, so it ended up being the student, the same original two, and then one newer one. Everybody was really nice. They were coming over and checking on me and doing all of the things that I thought they were supposed to be doing. I was not weighing myself. We did not have a scale. Again, they didn't tell me that it is important to make sure that you're not gaining too much weight at a time or anything like that. What happened was, I started gaining a lot of weight, but I didn't really realize just how much weight I was actually gaining. I was like, “Oh, I'm pregnant.” I quit going to the gym. I can't even hardly do anything. It's hot out. It's summertime. I was pregnant from January to September, so the bigger I got, the hotter it got.I didn't do much, so I was like, “Whatever. I've gained some weight. It's not a big deal.” I was a pretty small person to start with. Just for reference, I'm 4'8”, and I was 95 pounds when I got pregnant initially, so really small. It started becoming concerning because toward the end of my pregnancy, and toward I guess not even the end, the beginning of my third trimester, I started getting really swollen. Like, really swollen. My feet and my legs up to my knees– not just my feet, but my calves and everything were pretty swollen. Toward the end of my pregnancy, I had swelling up to my thighs. I'm being told this is normal. I'm 23. I've never been pregnant before. I don't have any support groups or anything going because it's COVID. Nobody wants to talk to anybody or do anything. It was a little frustrating for me because they were like, “Just put your feet up. Soak your feet.” If I soaked my feet, they got more swollen. I was not taking proper care of myself either. I went from exercising and eating right and doing all of the things that you are supposed to do to sitting at home and eating a lot of fast food and not walking. I was not having a great time mentally either. We were living some place I didn't want to be living. It was all of it. I didn't think too much of it. Again, I'm like, “Well, I'm being told this is normal. I'm gaining some weight. It's fine.” At one point, one of my urine tests that they did came back positive for glucose, and they were like, “Well, what did you eat for breakfast?” When I told them, I was like, “I had some waffles. I had some orange juice,” and whatever else I had, they were like, “Oh, you just had some orange juice before you got here. That's fine.”I was like, “Okay.” They didn't think to check it again. I didn't think to get a second opinion or anything. At one point toward the end of my pregnancy, I had a blood pressure reading that I checked myself at home with the little wrist cuff. That was really elevated. It was the end of the day. I texted the midwife. I was like, “Hey, my blood pressure is really high.” She was like, “What did you do today?” I was like, “I didn't really do much. I ate this for lunch. I had some soda.” She was like, “Okay, well that's probably fine. Just rest and check it again in the morning.” I checked it again in the morning, and it was still relatively normal, so they didn't do anything. One of the midwives came over at one point and dropped off some herbs for me that they wanted me drinking like some tea or something like that because I was getting swollen. I was standing outside talking to her, and she was like, “Oh my god, I can see your feet swelling up while we are standing here. You need to go back inside and put your feet up.” Again, nobody thought anything of it. How four people missed all of this, I don't know. I feel kind of like the student may have been more concerned, but didn't really know how to say anything or anything, just looking back on the facial expressions she would give and things like that. I go into labor right at 40 weeks. I am planning a home birth. Everything is set up for that. I've got the tub at my house. We've done the home birthing class and how to get everything set up. We've done all that. There was no backup plan in place. They did not suggest that I have one. Again, I did not know any better at the time. I was told that if there was some kind of emergency, I would go to this hospital. That was as far as it went. I didn't have a backup bag ready. I didn't have a hospital bag ready. I didn't have anything planned. There was no, “Hey, this is what we watch out for. This is what you might go to the hospital for.”I go into labor at 3:00 AM. Honestly, contractions started, and they were immediately painful. I've never done this before. I'm like, “Okay well, maybe we're just starting out harder than I thought. That's fine. Maybe there's not going to be early labor.” I labored for a couple of hours. I was really uncomfortable, so I called the midwives. They came over. They checked, and they were like, “Okay, you're only at 2 centimeters, and this is seeming like early labor.” I'm like, “This really painful. I'm not having a good time. This does not feel okay at all.” They checked my blood pressure. My blood pressure was through the roof. They waited a little bit, checked it again, and it was even higher the second time. They were like, “Okay well, this is out of our care. You've got to go to the hospital now.” I'm like, “What do you mean I've got to go to the hospital? That's not part of the plan here. We don't even have a plan B or anything.” Through tears and contractions and everything, I was having contractions maybe every 10 minutes or so, 5-10 minutes. Somewhere around there, I don't remember exactly. I got a hospital bag ready. I got some clothes for the baby together. I got my phone charger, my toothbrush and everything, and we headed to the hospital. I sat in triage by myself for 4 hours because they did not have a bed available for me. They would not let my husband into triage with me because it was COVID. The entire time, I was so uncomfortable. They had me immediately start on blood pressure medication to try to get my blood pressure down. They started me on magnesium, and they told me that the magnesium was going to make me feel yucky which is the biggest lie I have ever been told by a nurse. I don't know if she just never had it or what, but I felt like you have the worst flu you've ever had. My whole body hurt. It made everything feel worse. I felt groggy. I felt sick. It was not fun at all. At that point, I think I got to the hospital at 11:00 AM. They didn't get me into a room until 3:00 or 4:00 that night. So at that point, I'd been in labor for 12 hours. I was still hardly dilated. The doctors, initially when I got there, said, “Your notes say you are only 2 centimeters. Why are you here?” I was like, “I don't know. I was told to be here. I was told that my blood pressure is high or whatever. I don't know. I don't want to be here.” They did all of the things. They ran all of the tests. The doctor comes back in and says, “You are severely preeclamptic. Why did you not get here sooner?” Meagan: So why are you here and okay, why weren't you here sooner?Abigail: Yeah. I was like, “I'm so confused. I don't want to be here.” I'm freaking out. I'm stressing hardcore. My blood pressure went down for a little bit, but it stayed really, really, really high. They put me on fluids and everything which of course, did not help with the swelling. They get me into a room and everything. Things are moving along. It's going fine. I was okay for a little bit, then it got to the point where my legs were so swollen that I felt like they were going to pop. My legs felt like balloons that were going to explode. They were trying to put compression boots on me and stuff in the bed. Every time I was having a contraction, I was trying to get up and get moving because it felt better to get up and move. They were taking the boots on and off. It was miserable. After, I think, 28 hours of labor at that point, I was like, “Okay. I would like an epidural, please. I really don't want to have to get out of bed. I can't do this. I want my legs up. I don't want any part of this.” They got me an epidural. I don't know exactly how many centimeters I was at that point, but things had not moved very far in 28 hours. The doctor kept pushing to try to break my water. I kept telling her, “No, thank you. I don't want that. It will break on its own. I would like to take a nap.” I took a nap. My water did break on its own. That was nice. The water was clear. Everything was fine. We are still moving. I have an epidural. It's working great. I'm laying in bed. My blood pressure was still high. The swelling was still bad, but other than that, everything was maintaining. We were fine.I continued laboring for a while. I was getting checked pretty frequently because the doctors were uncomfortable with the situation. Again, looking back, I realize why they would be uncomfortable with the situation. They kept checking me and trying to want to do stuff. I was on Pitocin at that point. They had started it at some point, I think, shortly before I got the epidural. I had been on that for a while. It had been from being okay to all of a sudden, I was not okay. I don't remember exactly what hour that happened. It was somewhere between probably 36-ish. I was dealing with some stressful stuff with some family members. I was not having a good time. My phone kept going off. I was just trying to rest. It was a miserable time. They said that I was getting a fever all of a sudden. They were like, “You're getting a fever. We're going to see what we can do.”  They tried to give me Tylenol to bring it down. They tried putting a cool rag on my face. They were trying to get me to eat ice. At that point, they had completely stopped letting me eat because initially when I got there, they were letting me eat a little bit, but that stopped. They wouldn't let me drink anything, so they were giving me ice chips and stuff. I started getting to the point where I was feeling really sick, like more sick than I already felt. They checked me again, and depending on which doctor did it, I was at a 6 or a 7 still. They finally called it. They were like, “You have an infection. You are not doing okay. This is not okay. You need to have a C-section now.” Crying, I was like, “Okay, fine. That's not what I want, but let's go.” They prepped me for the OR, got everything moving, got me back. By the time I got in there, it had been 38 hours. I had an epidural for about 12 of those hours, I guess. At that point, it wasn't working super well anymore. It was not working well enough that they could do the C-section, so they put in a spinal as well. I had both of those done. To my understanding, they are two different pokes. Again, I didn't want either initially, and I got both. I was not thrilled about that. I'm laying on the operating table. I was so thirsty. They wouldn't give me anything to drink. They kept giving me this moist sponge. They said that I couldn't suck on the sponge. I could moisten my mouth with it. They gave me some stuff to drink that said it was going to make it so I didn't throw up. I wasn't nauseous at all the entire time. I hadn't thrown up at any point at all. I was like, “I don't want this. I don't need it.” The stuff that they gave me tasted awful, and they wouldn't give me anything to rinse it down. My mouth is dry. I'm gagging from how dry my mouth is, and the stuff tastes bad. They have me strapped to the table. My arms are down. I just laid there crying. The C-section went fine. They got my baby out. She was okay. She was 7 pounds, 12 ounces. For somebody who is my size, I was like, “Wow. That's a really big baby.” That was surprising. So they get me sewn up and everything. They let me look at my placenta, and it was four times the size of any placenta I have ever seen. It was like a dinner plate sized, but a couple of inches thick, like really thick. I was like, “Okay well, that's really weird.” They moved me and the baby to recovery. My husband was with me. Everything was okay. Everything calmed down. We were okay now. We've got this. It's fine. Then all of a sudden, the nurse was like, “I don't like your bleeding.” This is the same nurse I had for two or three nights because at that point, I had been in labor for 46 hours. It was 46 hours by the time they took my baby out. I started labor initially on the 28th at 3:00 AM, and my baby was born on the 30th at 1:00 AM, so almost a full two days. She's like, “I don't like your bleeding.” I'm like, “Okay.” I'm really out of it. I'm not really paying attention. I'm trying to nurse my baby. I can hardly move. I'm uncomfortable. Next thing I know, there are more people coming in, more doctors coming in, more nurses coming in. They take the baby from me. They hand the baby to my husband, and they shove them out. I'm just screaming, “Please don't give my baby formula.” I don't know what's going on. I don't know where they're taking her. I was trying to nurse her, and I'm so confused now. Next thing I know, there are 10 people surrounding my bed. It's three doctors and seven nurses. I had one IV in my hand initially, or in my arm or wherever they put it. Next thing I know, I had two more IVs. There was one in my other arm and in my other hand. They put some pills up my backside, and I'm so confused what's going on at this point. I'm still numb from everything from the spinal and the epidural and everything, so I can't feel what's going on. She's pushing on my belly. She's changing the pads under me. Everyone is freaking out.Meagan: Wow. Abigail: I am fading in and out of consciousness. I don't know what's happening. My husband's freaking out. My blood pressure had dropped to 25/15 I think. Meagan: Whoa. Abigail: I was about to die. They finally got me stable. I don't really know what happened exactly. All I know is the next thing I know, I woke up and I was in the ICU. They wouldn't let my husband come see me. They wouldn't let me see my baby. I'm with a bunch of COVID patients and everything. They gave me two or three blood transfusions. They put a balloon in my uterus to apply counterpressure so that it would stop bleeding, and they had a bucket attached to it. I'm watching them just empty buckets of my blood. It was so scary. I'm laying in the ICU by myself, and the balloon in my uterus hurt so bad, like, so bad. I didn't end up moving. I laid there for the rest of that night, the entire next day, the whole next night, then I think they moved me the next day. It was a night and a half plus a whole day that I just laid there by myself. Meagan: Wow. So scary. Abigail: It was so scary. The nurses came in at one point and were trying. I think it was the lactation consultant maybe. They were trying to get me to pump and everything. I think I pumped once or twice, but I was not up for doing anything. If they didn't come in and sit me up, they didn't really do it. I finally get the balloon taken out because that was what I kept begging for. I was like, “Please take this out. It hurts so bad. The pain medications aren't helping.” I didn't want to give the pumped milk to my baby as it is because I was on so many pain medications and so many antibiotics and everything else. I get the balloon out finally, and I think they took it out that night then they moved me the next day. They moved me to high-risk maternity, and they let me take a shower and eat some food and stuff before they brought my baby back from the nursery because she was fine in the nursery. That was nice to be able to take a shower and wash off all of the blood. I was so covered in blood and everything. I looked at my C-section scar and everything for the first time, and I realized I had a reaction to the tape that was on it and stuff too, so my skin all around it was all irritated. All up and down my arms had been profusely poked and prodded because they were checking my blood every four hours because of the infection and stuff. Depending on the lab tech's skill and everything, it was not going well for some of them. They kept having to poke me. The IVs weren't working for them to take blood from or something like that so they just kept having to poke me more. Again, I was having reactions to some of the tape, so my whole arms are just completely raw and everything. I was still very swollen. I was very, very, very swollen still. They had compression socks and stuff on at this point, not boots at least. They finally bring my baby to me, and then we ended up spending three days in high-risk maternity, so total, that was two days in labor, almost two days in the ICU, and three days in the high-risk maternity. Total, I spent seven days in the hospital. I get home, and they had me on blood pressure medication for a few weeks until I think my six-week appointment when I followed up, and then my blood pressure was back to normal, so I was able to quit taking the blood pressure medication and stuff. I dropped 30 pounds instantly because it was all of the swelling that just came off. I had still gained a lot of weight, but it a huge chunk of it was swelling which is so bad. It was finally over. I was settled. I'm in bed with my baby, and then the family member we were living with decided that they didn't want us living there anymore, so at three weeks postpartum, we had to move. I had only been home from the hospital for two weeks at that point. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't want to be around the situation. My husband was dealing with it. I ended up going on a road trip with my grandma to go stay with a different family member out-of-state just to make sure my baby wasn't anywhere near anything that was going on. Three weeks after a C-section and almost dying, I was driving and doing a whole bunch of other stuff– going out, walking around, and trying to put jeans on. I couldn't figure out why my clothes didn't fit. I didn't realize just how big I had gotten. It was not a fun time. It was about five days out of town, then I moved into a different family member's house temporarily where I was completely isolated by the people that I was living with. They did not understand what I was going through. They thought that I was choosing to be difficult intentionally, so that created additional problems. I ended up getting pretty bad postpartum depression which is really not a surprise. I still didn't understand what had happened to me. I still didn't understand why I had almost died. I still didn't understand. I didn't know if I had done something wrong. I didn't know what was going on. I spent a lot of time really upset over the fact that everything went wrong, and I didn't know why. Life was falling apart around me. I was not doing okay. It turned into really bad postpartum depression pretty quickly. My husband and I got our own apartment when my baby was four month's old. I was like, “Okay, things are finally going to get settled. Things are going to be okay now.” It did not settle. My depression got worse, and I didn't even know what to do. I was eating a lot because I was like, “I'm breastfeeding. I need to eat.” I basically just sat at home, didn't do anything but eat and nurse my baby. I was very thankful I was able to successfully breastfeed my baby after everything that happened to me. All of the nurses at the hospital were surprised about that and stuff. Meagan: Yeah, with the amount of blood loss and everything, that's pretty rare. It's pretty rare. Abigail: Yeah. I never ended up giving my baby a bottle or anything because I was so scared that if I tried to give her a bottle or something that it would mess up my breastfeeding, and that was the only thing that had gone right. I was doing okay for a little while, I thought, but it was not okay. I was really not okay. I was very, very sad. I was fully convinced for a period of time that they should have let me die at the hospital. I was fully convinced that the doctor did me a disservice by trying so hard to save me. Meagan: I'm so sorry. Abigail: Yeah. I finally started therapy. I started trying to get up and do more and not eat so much and get moving. I think finally around the time my daughter was a year or a year and a half, I started to feel a little bit better, and things slowly did start to get a little bit better for me, but I was fully convinced that I did not want more kids. I was like, “I am never going through that again. I do not want another C-section. I don't know what happened to me, so obviously, I would have to have another C-section because we don't even know what went wrong.” It took me until my daughter was almost three. She was about to be three when all of a sudden, my mindset shifted, and I was getting mad at myself for feeling like I wanted another baby because I was like, “I don't want another baby. Of course, I don't want another baby. I made that very clear.” We got rid of all of the baby stuff. I told everybody I wasn't having more. What was wrong with me? I was fighting internally with myself because I wanted another baby, but I did not want another baby. It was insane. I kept it all to myself. I didn't say anything. All of a sudden, my husband was like, “I think we should have another baby. I was like, “What are you talking about? You're insane.” He was like, “No, really. I think we should have another baby.” I was like, “You shouldn't have said that because I want another baby.” Meagan: Yeah. I have been actually thinking the same. Yeah. Abigail: Yeah. I was pretty surprised that I got pregnant right away. Literally, within a couple weeks, I was pregnant. It was a good thing and a bad thing because it didn't give me a chance to overthink it, but also, it was like, “Oh no, I haven't even had a chance to think about this. This is definitely what's happening.”I started going to the doctor right at five weeks. They started doing ultrasounds right at five weeks. They were checking me for everything every time, all of the time. I had so much anxiety. I made that very clear to them. I think that's part of the reason that they checked everything all of the time and were trying to be more reassuring. They did ultrasounds at almost every appointment. Most people don't even get an ultrasound until 12 or 20 weeks. Meagan: And then that's the only one. Abigail: I had four of them before I even went for my anatomy scan. They were trying to watch everything and make sure everything was fine too because again, they didn't do my care last time. This OB place did my follow-up care afterward. They saw the aftermath of everything, and they were concerned and stuff. That's what we were dealing with. I was dealing with some nausea, so they gave me some pills for that. Come to find out, one of the side effects of one of the medications they gave me was anxiety. I was fighting a losing battle with myself because I was taking these pills for the nausea. I wasn't eating because I was anxious, and I wasn't eating because I was nauseous, then I was getting more anxious. It was a rough first 20 weeks I would say. Then I did start feeling better, thankfully, so I was able to start eating and stuff again. Once I felt better, I was eating ice cream and all of those things that I wanted and all of that. It was fine. I was doing fine. I was doing all of my appointments and stuff, then it comes up for my gestational diabetes testing. The doctor says, “You need to do this,” and immediately, I was like, “Yes, please. I need to do that because that's one of the things I didn't do last time. I need to do everything to make sure I'm good.” I need to backtrack a minute, I'm so sorry. At my first intake appointment at five weeks when I met with one of the– they're nurses, but it's not the nurse who actually checks you and stuff. They have an office at the OB's office, and they check in, and they ask, “Do you have transportation for your appointments? Do you need help with anything? Do you have access to food? Are you in a safe relationship?” I let them know what had happened previously with me, and she was like, “Oh, well then you might be interested in this. This is something new your insurance covers. You could get a doula if you wanted since it sounds like you wanted to have a more natural experience last time.”Meagan: That's awesome. Abigail: Yeah. Immediately, I was like, “Hell yeah. Let's do that.” I didn't have a doula last time. Again, last time was COVID. I was already trying to pay for the midwives. It wasn't something I thought about one, because I thought I was having a home birth with a couple of midwives. I didn't think I needed a doula. Also, I didn't fully understand what they were and the actual extent of the benefits of them. I was like, “Yeah, totally.” The first thing I did when I got home was call. They were like, “Yeah, we take your insurance. We can get you set up. We're taking new clients. Let's get you in for an appointment.” I started seeing a doula sometime in my first trimester. I don't remember exactly when, but I remember I pulled up the office and I got out. I was like, “This can't be right. This is too nice. There's no way my insurance covers this.” I was shocked at the care I received from my doula service. I'm just going to go ahead and give them a quick shoutout just because they are amazing, but it's Haven for Birth in Sacramento, California, and they do amazing work for a lot of different things. I still attend lactation meetings and stuff with them monthly. Meagan: That's awesome.Abigail: It's such a great team of people. I got the doulas that they set up for me because there are two of them. There's a main one and a backup one. My main doula's name was Heidi, and the backup doula's name was Francine. They were both so sweet and wonderful. Heidi has been doing doula work for a good amount of time. She owns a chiropractic business and Haven. She's the main one, and she's the one who has dealt with higher-risk pregnancies and things like that, so she was my main source of support and throughout everything. I would text her if I needed something. She was so reassuring. She was like, “Yep. You can totally have a VBAC if that's what you want to do.” I was like, “Really? I can do that, okay. I'm going to talk to the OB about it.” The OB was like, “Yeah. It's completely up to you. As long as you are fine and we watch everything, that's fine.” I really did feel like they were supportive. It wasn't like, “Well, if you are okay, then you can.” It was like both of the OBs that I had seen, one of them was a guy and one of them was a girl, and both of them were like, “Yeah, as long as we keep everything in check, you are totally fine. I don't see why you couldn't.”I started to feel a little more confident in that. I had a lot of anxiety about it and for a couple of weeks, I did contemplate scheduling a C-section just to ease my own anxieties, but I didn't feel right with that choice. I really didn't. I was like, “I need to try.” It was tough, though, because I was like, “I don't know how I'm going to deal with the feelings of trying and not succeeding,” so that was the struggle of, “Do I want to just have a C-section that way? I get what I want no matter what,” but I didn't feel like I wanted to do that. I worked really, really, really hard to get my VBAC is basically what ended up happening. Back to where I was, I get my gestational diabetes testing done, and the first-hour one comes back really high. I'm like, “Okay, that's concerning.” I texted my doula about it. She was like, “It's okay. You're going to do the three-hour one. You'll probably pass the three-hour one, but even if you don't, it'll be fine.”I failed the three-hour one really bad. My fasting number was fine, but the rest of the numbers were very elevated, not even just a little bit. I was like, “Oh, okay.” This is all starting to make sense. I had a lot of anxiety initially about what I could or couldn't eat because I didn't feel the greatest, and I was letting myself eat what sounded good to make sure that I was eating. It was a rough week initially when I got that, then it took them a minute to get me the referral in for the program, the Sweet Success program where I was actually able to talk to nurses and dieticians there. Once I finally got in with them, I met with them a few times throughout the end of my pregnancy. I did feel very supported by them. They were very nice. The dietician was willing to meet with me one-on-one instead of a group setting because I was having issues with eating and not wanting to eat and feeling very concerned that I was going to hurt myself or hurt the baby.They did a very good job making sure that I was cared for. We completely changed up my diet. I started walking after every meal. I started checking my blood sugar four times a day, so first thing in the morning, then after breakfast, after lunch, and after dinner. I basically, immediately after eating, would get up and do the dishes or clean up the food I had made or pick up the house or start some laundry or something so that I was getting up and moving. Only a couple of times, there was only once or twice where my blood sugar numbers were higher than they really wanted by more than a point or two. I did a really good job keeping those in check with what I was doing and watching what I was eating very closely and monitoring my portion sizes and realizing what I could and couldn't eat. Once I got to the point of 36 or 37 weeks or whatever where they were like, “Okay, this is the plateau. It's not going to get worse than this,” and I realized I was able to keep it under control and things like that, I would let myself have a couple of bites of a cookie here and there. It wouldn't spike my blood sugar or anything because I was doing everything I needed and that made me feel really nice because I was able to eat the stuff I really liked as long as that was within reason.We met with the doula multiple times. She came over and did a home visit at 37 weeks. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions from the time I was 19 weeks because we got COVID. We got RSV, and we got a cold. We got a cold. We got COVID, and we got RSV. Meagan: Oh my goodness. Abigail: Yeah. That was the whole first half of my pregnancy along with dealing with nausea and everything else. I found out I was pregnant the beginning of September. We got a cold in October. I got COVID in November, then in December, we got RSV, and my daughter who was three at that point spent five days in the hospital, so I spent five days in the hospital right next to her dealing with RSV while I was pregnant. I feel like the coughing kickstarted Braxton Hicks contractions almost because at that point, I started having them pretty regularly. From 19 weeks on, I had tightenings all the time. Some days, they would be worse than others, but because I was so active, it definitely– I never got diagnosed with irritable uterus or anything, but I think that's what it was because it would get really irritable when I would do pretty much anything, and I was doing things all of the time. At 35 weeks, my contractions started getting fairly intense-ish. They weren't painful at all, but it was every 3-5 minutes, I was contracting. I drove myself to the hospital. I was like, “I'm fine. I'm not concerned.” I didn't bother my husband or my doula or anything. I let her know I was going, but I was like, “Don't worry about it.” They hooked me up. They checked me and everything. they were like, “You're hydrated. We don't need to give you fluids or anything.” They were like, “How are you feeling? You've got to tell us if they hurt or not because we can see them on the monitor, but you've got to tell us how you're feeling.” I was like, “I just feel annoyed. They tighten up, and it's uncomfortable when they do, but nothing hurts. I'm annoyed.” They were like, “Okay, let's check you.” I was still completely closed with no baby coming down. So they gave me a single pill to stop them and sent me home. It worked. It slowed them down for the rest of the night, then they kicked back up to their normal here and there the next day. But for the next couple of weeks, I kept it fairly easy. If I noticed I started I was having more of them, I would try to go lay down. I was able to have my baby shower at 36 weeks which was wonderful because I had not had a baby shower for my first baby because of COVID. I feel like 36 weeks was almost pushing it because my family had asked if we wanted to have it later to have somebody else be able to join us and I was like, “No, no. Please don't push it later. I don't trust that.” It was like I knew that he was going to come just a little early, but I was doing all of the things and still having the regular Braxton Hicks contractions and everything. They were doing multiple growth scans on my baby because he started measuring small at 28 weeks, I think. At his 28-week scan, they noted that his kidneys were slightly enlarged, so they wanted to follow up on that. They followed up on that at 28 weeks. His kidneys were completely fine. We never had another incident with that, but they noticed he was measuring a little smaller so they started doing regular checks. By the end of my pregnancy, I was having a growth scan every week, so they went from, “Let's check you in six weeks. Let's check you in four weeks. Let's check you every two weeks. Let's check you in a week.” They noticed he was measuring small, and he continued measuring small. Meagan: They were regressing, or he was staying on his own growth pattern but small?Abigail: He was growing but not a lot. Meagan: Okay, yeah. He was staying on his own pattern. Abigail: They didn't want him to drop below the 10th percentile, and if they did, they were going to be concerned. He did get right to the 9th or 10th percentile, so they did start to get concerned. They labeled him IUGR. They were doing non-stress tests on me twice a week. Basically, by the end of my pregnancy, I was seeing the OB, the place for the non-stress tests, the gestational diabetes program, the place for the ultrasounds and growth scans, a therapist, a hematologist because I ended up having to have iron infusions and B12 injections, and the doula's office, so seven places. Almost all of them wanted to see me every week. Meagan: Whoa. Abigail: I was running around, super active towards the end of my pregnancy. I was still taking my daughter out and doing all of the things with her as well. I noticed after my baby shower at 36 weeks that my feet were just a little puffy, and I was like, “Huh. That's funny.” It hit me all of a sudden. I was like, “My toes are kind of pudgy.” I'm 36, almost 37 weeks pregnant, and this is the most swollen I have gotten. It was not up my legs. It was not even in my whole feet. It was my toes and the top of my feet, not even my ankles. They were the tiniest bit puffy. I had this moment of clarity where I was like, “How did nobody notice that something was so wrong with me?” I was shocked because I'm looking at myself and I had gained a total, by the end of my pregnancy with my son, of 25 pounds, and that was it. With my daughter, by the end of it, I had gained 70 pounds. Again, how did nobody notice? I am shook. I thought on that for a long time. I'll come back to that, but I thought on that for so long. I ended up emailing the midwives who had provided me care. I was having a day. I went off on multiple people that day. I was not having it, and I emailed them, and I sent them a four-paragraph email about how they let me down. They should have known better. Somebody should have noticed something was wrong. They should have asked for a second opinion. It was ridiculous. I was shook that they didn't push harder for gestational diabetes testing, and all of the things because clearly at this point, I realized that my blood sugars being in control has made all of the difference. Not knowing, you can't do what you need to do which is why I'm such a big advocate for informed consent and gestational diabetes testing. I know sometimes I see people saying that they want to skip it because they are fine. I had zero of the actual risk factors, and I still had it. I'm just putting that out there. That's my main thing for this. Definitely get checked, and stay active, and watch your blood sugars because it's a really, really serious thing. I literally almost died. Sorry, I keep jumping around. My son was measuring small, so they started doing all of the tests and everything, and they couldn't find anything wrong. They were like, “Your cord dopplers look great. The blood flow looks great. Nothing specifically is measuring small. His head is not measuring smaller than the rest of him.” He was very, very, very low in my pelvis. I was waddling from 32 weeks on. He was low the entire time. I could feel him moving regularly. He was super active. I felt confident in myself. I felt safe. I felt good. they were telling me he was fine. Everything was looking fine. My fluid levels were looking good. My non-stress tests were always good. They make you sit for a minimum of 20 minutes, and if they don't see what they need to see in 20 minutes, then you need to stay longer. I never had to stay longer than 20 minutes. It was always in and out. He was always moving. His heart rate was always good. When they started mentioning induction at 37 weeks, I was like, “I don't want to be induced. I don't. There's really no reason.” They were like, “Well, he's measuring small. Your other baby last time was so much bigger. He is so small. This is such a concern.” I was like, “But I think there was something wrong with me and my baby last time. I don't think she should have been that big for me.” I thought that was the problem. I tried explaining that to them that I think they had it backward. They should have been concerned about how big my last baby was because they didn't check my blood sugar when I was in the hospital or anything. They didn't check it. Everything was fine. I was feeling fine. I was having pretty regular Braxton Hicks still. I was convinced I was going to have him early. I told him that. “I will have him early, and you're not going to have to induce me. I promise you. You're not going to have to induce me.” I told the doula that I promised the doctors and the specialists that I was not going to have to be induced. She was on my side. She was like, “Okay. We can try some midwives' brew if we get to that point. We'll talk about it.” I didn't end up getting to that point, thankfully. I had another scan at 37 weeks and 36 weeks. At 37 weeks, the doctor was like, “Okay, well, I specifically want to see you next week. I want you to come out to my other office next week because I specifically want to see you. I don't want you to see the other doctors. I want to follow up with you.” I was like, “Fine. I'll drive to Rosedale. No problem.” It wasn't farther than the other office I had been going to. I didn't get that far. I went into labor at 37 and 6. It had been a normal day. I had taken my daughter to the jumping place and had gone to the grocery store. I messed up when I went to the grocery store and the jumping place. I parked too far out, and I didn't think it through. I jumped near the jumping door, not the grocery door. Walking in was super close, but then I had to walk all the way back carrying my groceries. The carts didn't go out that far or anything. I'm like, “Oh my gosh. This is so heavy.” I'm still having Braxton Hicks the whole time. I'm feeling fine. I haven't had any kind of mucus plug activity or none of that. There was no swelling in my feet or legs. My blood pressure had been good. I checked it regularly. My blood sugar had been good. I had checked it regularly. I get home, and I'm like, “Man, I'm tired.” I got up, and I kept doing laundry and stuff. My husband gets home from work. He's like, “Hey, do you want to go out to dinner? We can go to the restaurant up the street.” I'm like, “Yeah, it's a beautiful day out. It's the beginning of May. That's a great idea.”It's a 3-minute walk from my house to the restaurant. I'm not kidding. About halfway there, I stopped, and I was like, “Oh. Well, that one was a little more uncomfortable than they have been. Okay. I actually felt that.” It felt like a bad period cramp, but also tightening with the Braxton Hicks at the same time. I was like, “I'm fine.” I kept walking. We get to dinner, and I notice at that point, I'm having mild contractions every 10 minutes. We ate food. I had sushi, and I know that rice spikes my blood sugar, so I try not to eat too much of it, but I was like, “You know what? I feel like I'm going to have them. I just need to make sure that I eat.” I ate my dinner. We walked back home. It was still about every 10-12 minutes that I was having mild contractions. We went about the evening as normal. I put my daughter to bed and stuff. I took a shower. My husband and I were watching some TV. I was bouncing on the ball. I wasn't really telling my husband that I was super uncomfortable at that point yet. It hit all of a sudden. It was 11:00 PM. At this point, it was 6:00 PM when I felt the first slightly uncomfortable contraction. It's now 11:00 PM. I'm like, “Okay. This is actually starting to get a little bit more uncomfortable.” I got up, and I paced around the living room. My husband was like, “Uh-oh. We should probably go to bed.” Yeah, we should probably go to bed. That was a good idea. We went to bed, and I did not sleep. I think I slept for about seven minutes because at that point, it went to seven minutes, not 10 minutes. I started timing them on my phone. I texted my doula. I made sure I had all of my stuff ready just to be safe. I made sure the house was picked up. I tried to sleep. I let the doula what was going on. She was like, “Don't worry about timing them, just get some rest.” I was like, “I'm not trying to time them, but every time I have one, I look up and I see the clock. This is happening.” She was like, “Okay, well I'll start getting up, and I'll be ready to head over if you need me. I want you to take a shower.” It took me a good 45 minutes or a half hour or something like that to actually get from hanging around my house to getting in the shower because I started shaking really bad, and I was starting to have contractions pretty quick together. They started getting closer and closer together. My husband ended up texting her at that point, “Hey, she's int he shower. I think contractions are getting closer together. They are two minutes apart at this point. You should probably head over.” She gets here pretty quickly. My daughter is still asleep. At that point, my doula was like, like, “Yeah, I think you're in active labor. We should think about heading to the hospital.” I'm only 10 minutes from the hospital, but my daughter needed to get picked up. I put my bag in the car. We call family. I get my daughter picked up. She hadn't heard anything. She hadn't noticed I was in labor. I wasn't being necessarily loud, but I wasn't also being super quiet or anything. She gets picked up. She's mad she's awake. It's 2:00 AM. We get ready to go, and by the time we get down the stairs, because I live in an upstairs apartment, so I'd been pacing the whole upstairs in my apartment and everything, I was super afraid my water was going to break in the car so I put on a Depends because I was like, “I'm not going to have to clean that up later because I'm going to be the one cleaning it up later, and I don't want to have to deal with that.” My doula was like, “Chris, get her a bag in case she throws up in the car. Let's go.” She tried checking my blood pressure, but I kept moving and stuff, so we couldn't get an accurate reading which made me that much more anxious. I was so afraid that by the time I got there, everything was going ot go bad. I had convinced myself that it was fine, but there was this nagging voice in my head that was like, “No, no, no, no, no. Everything went wrong last time, so surely, you are going to die this time.” I was like, “Nope. I am fine. Everything has been fine. They are aware. They have blood on deck for me. It's going to be okay. I've got this.” We get to the hospital. It's 3:00 in the morning. It's fairly quiet. We parked in the parking garage which was across the street. We walked through the parking garage. We take the elevator. We take the walk bridge across. We get into the hospital, check in with security and everything. they were like, “Oh, sweetie, do you want a wheelchair?” My doula was like, “No, no, no. She's fine. She will walk.” I'm like, “Yeah, okay Heidi. Walking is a great idea.” I mean, that's what she's there for. It's fine that I kept walking, honestly, because we had to walk from one side of the hospital to the elevator to take the special elevator that goes to the 6th floor. We're about halfway to the elevator, and I'm like, “Oh, I think my water just broke.” My water broke walking into the hospital which was that much more convenient. We get in. We get checked into triage. The nurse is so nice, and she was like, “It's okay if you want to give me a hug,” because they wouldn't let my husband or my doula in at first. I gave the nurse a hug. She was so nice. They were like, “We need a urine sample.”At that point, basically, from the time labor started, I couldn't pee. That was an issue, so they were like, “Don't worry about it. It's fine. Let's get you back on the bed. Let's check on you, and see how you are doing.” They said I was a 4 or a 5 depending on who checked and who assessed.They asked me about pain medication and stuff, and I was like, “I'll get back to you. I'm doing okay.” Contractions are about every 2-3 minutes at this point. My water had broken on the way in. They tried doing one of the swabs to check it was my water and not that you peed, and the nurse was like, “I'm not even going to send this in. It's fine. I know that it's your water.” They got me in pretty quickly. By the time I got into a room, I was like, “I would like some pain medication please.” They were like, “Okay, do you want an epidural? Do you want IV medication?” I remembered when I was in labor with my daughter, the nurse had initially offered me what was called a walking epidural, so I asked because I remembered declining that with my daughter. I was like, “No, no, no. I don't want to do anymore walking. That's the point. I don't want walking. no walking.” This time, I was like, “That actually sounds like I wanted to know more about that.” I asked the nurse more about it. She was like, “It's still an epidural. It's put in your back the same. It's just different medication. It's lower doses or different medication or whatever it is. It's going to provide some pain relief, but you're not going to be numb. You're still going to feel everything.” I was like, “Honestly, that sounds like what I would like. That sounds like it's a really good idea.” I was having a very hard time taking a deep breath. I was having a very hard time relaxing because I was so afraid that something was going to go wrong. At that point, my blood pressure was fantastic. Everything had been normal. No protein in my urine, no swelling, no high blood sugars, nothing. I was like, “Okay, this is going to be fine. I'm going to be fine.” I felt a little weird about asking for pain medication because I was adamant that this time, I was going to do it without it, but they called the anesthesiologist. He comes in, and he says, “Okay, are you sure you want the walking epidural? That's definitely not going to get you were you want to be pain-wise.” I was a little ticked off, but I was like, “Just get me what I asked for, please. If I change my mind, I will tell you.” That's the thing. If you change your mind, all they have to do is switch up your medication. It's not continuous with what I got. It's just a bolus of medication, and the little thing is taped on your back. You're not actually hooked up to medication or anything, but if I wanted to be, all they had to do was hook it up. I was like, “I'm fine. I don't need that. Thanks, dude.” They get me that, and they made me stay in bed for the first hour just to make sure I was okay and my blood pressure was fine and everything. My blood pressure was fine. Everything stayed fine. My blood sugar was a little high at this point. It was two points over the max where they want it to be. My husband ran down to the gift shop and got me some trail mix, cheese, and meat things. I ate that. They checked my blood sugar in a little bit, and it was back to a healthy, happy, normal range, so they weren't concerned. I was like, “I ate rice the night before, guys. That's all it was. You checked my blood sugar in the middle of the night after I had rice. Of course, it's going to be a little high.” At this point, it's 4:00 AMish. I stayed in bed for the first hour. My doula was like, “Okay, let's get you out of bed. Let's get you moving.” I was out of bed almost the whole time. I did spend a little bit more time in bed at one point. I had the initial bolus of medication. That was all I had, so at this point, I can feel the contractions are getting stronger, and I can also feel that the medication is also starting to wear off. It started getting more intense. I was on the toilet for a minute. I was still having the issue where I still could not go pee. My doula kept feeding me water after every contraction, so they were keeping an eye on that. My doula was keeping an eye on that and stuff. It got to where it was 8:00 AM, I think, so at this point, I had been in labor for a total of– from the time contractions actually started being painful at midnight to 8:00 AM– 8 hours. I was on the side of the bed leaned over the bed. They had it at my height. My husband was rubbing my back. The nurses were there taking care of me and making sure I was good. All of a sudden, she's like, “Okay, honey, I think it's time to get you back in the bed.” I was like, “What?” She was like, “We've got to get you back in the bed. With the noises you're making, and squatting down, we've got to get you back in bed.” With every contraction, I was bearing down. Meagan: And they just didn't want you pushing standing up, type of thing? Abigail: I think they wanted to check me and see how I was doing and everything. They had me on continuous monitoring, which initially I didn't really want, but up until that point, I hadn't minded the monitors. It was just at that point because I kept moving, and I was so sweaty. I was so sweaty. My IV kept slipping off. The monitors kept slipping off. My gown was drenched. My hair was drenched. They kept re-taping my IV, and I was like, “Can you please just take the IV out? It's bugging me.” At that point, the IV was somehow more painful than the labor. I was coping with labor, but I kept feeling the IV in my arm because they kept having to poke it and mess with it and stuff because it wasn't staying in. They ended up leaving it in which I was annoyed with, but I was in and out of at that point.They get me back in the bed, and they check me. They're like, “Okay. You're already starting to push. Let's get the doctor in here. Let's do this.”I'm on the bed. I've got the squat bar. I'm up on the bed on the squat bar. I'm kneeling in a lunge position. I've got one knee up and one knee down. Every contraction, they were having me switch my knees which started getting really uncomfortable for me. I felt so heavy, and I was falling asleep in between each contraction it felt like. I wasn't all the way there, but they ended up saying that my son's heart rate was dropping just a little bit, and they were like, “Okay, let's get him out. Let's move this along.” They pulled the squat bar, and they had me on my back. The bed was propped up. I was upright, and they had me holding my own legs. I was having a hard time because I was so sweaty that my hands kept slipping off the back of my thighs. They were like, “Okay, you need to push. Let's push.” I wasn't really listening to them. They were trying to do coached pushing, but if I didn't feel like it, I just wasn't doing what they were telling me. I was more listening to my doula than anything else because I felt like I trusted her and what she was saying more than anything else. I told them, I was like, “I feel like it's pulling up. I feel like it's pulling up.” They were like, “Okay, lower your legs a little bit.” It was really nice that I was able to feel everything. I put my legs down a little bit, and that helped a little bit. I don't know exactly how many pushes it was. I don't know if anybody counted, but it ended up being 13 minutes that I pushed for from the time they got me in the bed and were like, “Okay, you're pushing,” to “Let's get you on your back. Give a couple good pushes.” I think it was two pushes once I was on my back and he was out. Meagan: That's awesome. Abigail: He came right out. I had a small right inner labial tear, no perineal tears, and then I don't think I actually tore up, but I noticed I was sore afterward up toward my urethra, but they ended up only giving me one stitch on my right labia. That was fine. They did numbing shots and everything for that, and I could feel the numbing shots and everything, and I didn't like that. It's uncomfortable, but it was fine. I felt fine. I felt good. They put him right onto my abdomen because his cord was so short that they couldn't put him any further up. I wish they would have waited just a little longer to cut his cord, but they were like, “He's hanging out down here where we need to be,” because his cord was so short, which makes sense that he was head down the entire pregnancy and didn't move. He stayed right there. He flipped and rotated. Meagan: Transverse. Abigail: Sideways. He would put his butt back sometimes and toward the side sometimes, but that's all he would do. His head was in my pelvis the entire time. He comes out. Once they cut his cord, they moved him up to my chest and everything. They got me cleaned up and everything. Everything was fine. I got my golden hour, and he didn't want to nurse right away, but he was fine. They were taking bets like, “Does he look like he's over 6 pounds or what?” He ended up only being 5 pounds, 5 ounces. Meagan: Tiny. Abigail: He was a little, tiny guy. He was barely 18 inches. I had him right at 38 weeks, so he was a little small. He was closer to the size of a 35-week baby. Meagan: Mhmm, and he had IUGR. Abigail: I don't think there was anything wrong with him. I think I'm a very small person, and I think my first baby was too big because when I look at pictures, my daughter's head was coned off to the side, and I know that she did not have room to move around in there. She was stuck where she was stuck. Meagan: That would mean it was asynclitic probably. Her head was coming down wrong. Abigail: Yeah, which is probably why it hurt so bad. I know that now, initially, it started even with early labor. I don't think that even once I had an epidural with her, they were using the peanut ball. They were changing my positions. They were doing all of the things, and she wasn't coming down any further. She wasn't moving, and I wasn't going past a 7. I think that she was too big which I think is from having unchecked gestational diabetes. Even though she was considered an average-sized baby. I'm not an average-sized person. I'm really, really, really small. Me having a 5-pound, 5-ounce baby seems about right.He came out perfectly healthy. There was nothing wrong with him. His blood sugars were good. His blood pressures were good. Everything was great. And now at seven months, he's still slightly on the smaller side, but he went from being in the 2nd or 3rd percentile or whatever he was born into all the way to about the 20th. He's almost caught up. He's healthy. He's chunky. There wasn't actually anything going on with him. I think that says a lot to the fact that I'm just really small and my first baby was the result of an unhealthy pregnancy. I didn't have a postpartum hemorrhage. I didn't need any extra medication. I didn't need Pitocin. I didn't end up getting a full epidural. When they asked me about my experience, I made sure to tell them that the anesthesiologist should choose his words more wisely. It went well. I waited two months afterward to see how I was feeling and everything, and I do not have postpartum depression. Meagan: Good. Abigail: No more anxiety than what I regularly deal with. I have had a great time. Everything is just completely different, and my son is already seven months old, and I am already at a point where I'm like, “I want another baby.” I don't know if I'll actually have another one or not. I mean, there are financial reasons to consider and actually giving birth to another baby and raising another human. It's not just a baby. It's a whole other life. It's a lot, but I have baby fever already. I would absolutely do it again, and I just had him. Meagan: Oh, that makes me so happy. I am so happy that you had such a better experience that was more healing and positive and has left you having a better postpartum for sure. Abigail: It was a completely different experience. I mean, night and day. I'm just trying to make sure that I didn't miss anything. I think the only thing that ended up being different was like I mentioned, I couldn't really go pee. I did end up having to have a catheter at the end of my labo

Manacled von SenLinYu Summary: Harry Potter ist tot. Um die magische Welt nach dem Krieg zu stärken, ruft Voldemort ein Repopulationsprogramm ins Leben. Hermine Granger hütet ein Geheimnis des Ordens, vergessen und versteckt in ihrem eigenen Verstand. Sie wird versklavt und als Leihmutter zum Hohen General geschickt, bis sie ihren Verstand knacken können. Trigger Warnung: In dieser Fanfiction geht es um Tod, psychologische Traumata, Gewalt, Folter, Sex und medizinische Prozeduren. Bitte hört nur zu, wenn ihr von diesen Themen nicht getriggert werdet. Cover: Illustriert von ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Avendell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ---- Unterstütze den Podcast: Besucht unsere ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mini-Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ für Sticker und andere kleine Überraschungen

Nocojšnji večer Društva slovenskih izobražencev iz Trsta bo odprl zanimivo tematiko - sobivanje z duševno boleznijo. Pred nekaj meseci je na to temo pri milanski založbi Meltemi izšla knjiga tržaške jezikoslovke in kulturne delavke Elene Cerkvenič. Gre za dnevniške zapiske, v katerih avtorica opisuje, kako je v njeno življenje kruto vdrla duševna bolezen in kako se je z njo postopoma navadila sobivati do te mere, da jo danes v nekem smislu celo »ljubi«. Z avtorico se bo pogovarjala režiserka in publicistka Loredana Gec, odlomke iz knjige pa bo brala Barbara Rustia. Večer bo uvedel psihiater dr. Bernard Špacapan. Nocoj ob 20.30 v Peterlinovi dvorani v Trstu. V Kulturnem centru Lojze Bratuž v Gorici pa so do 20. tega meseca podaljšali ogled razstave Paole Bertolini Grudina Zgodba o odrešenju razodeta otroškim srcem. Ob delavnikih si jo od 16. do 18. ure lahko ogledate tudi v spremstvu moža Walterja Grudine. Več organizacij je razstavo pripravilo ob peti obletnici prerane smrt tankočutne ilustratorke iz Ločnika pri Gorici.

GCW hat es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, dass was Beyond an Silvester machen, können wir auch. Gekrönt wird das vom Do or Die Rumble. Ob es wirklich eine Krönung wurde und wie allgemein die Stimmung bzgl. GCW ist, erzählen euch Drew und Sebastian in der aktuellsten Podcast Folge. Viel Spaß! Der Catch-Club im Netz: https://linktr.ee/catchclub

In dieser Folge der Produktwerker geht es darum, wie Product Roadmaps in der täglichen Arbeit eingesetzt werden können. Zu Beginn eines Jahres investieren viele Product Owner und Produktmanager viel Energie in die Erstellung einer Product Roadmap. Doch was passiert danach? Die Roadmap, die oft als Ergebnis intensiver Diskussionen und strategischer Planung entsteht, ist kein statisches Dokument, sondern ein dynamisches Werkzeug, das den Alltag von Produktteams prägen sollte. Eine Product Roadmap gibt die Richtung vor. Sie bildet die Brücke zwischen der Produktvision und den operativen Aufgaben im Backlog. Damit wird sie zur Operationalisierung der Produktstrategie und hilft dabei, Entscheidungen fundierter zu treffen. Gerade in Gesprächen mit Stakeholdern bietet sie eine klare Orientierung, welche Outcomes und Ziele im Fokus stehen. Anstatt über einzelne Features zu diskutieren, lenkt die Roadmap die Aufmerksamkeit auf die übergeordneten Ziele und erlaubt es, neue Anforderungen kritisch zu hinterfragen. Im Scrum-Kontext erweist sich die Product Roadmap als besonders nützlich. Ob im Sprint Planning, bei der Formulierung eines Sprintziels oder im Sprint Review – die Roadmap sorgt für eine klare Verbindung zwischen Vision, Strategie und operativer Umsetzung. Sie zeigt auf, wie das aktuelle Sprintziel auf die langfristigen Produktziele einzahlt. Darüber hinaus unterstützt sie Product Owner, den Fokus zu behalten, etwa in Diskussionen über Prioritäten oder neue Feature-Wünsche. Auch im Kontext von Product Discovery bietet die Roadmap Orientierung. Unsicherheiten, die bei der Entwicklung auftreten, können systematisch angegangen werden. Sie ermöglicht es, Hypothesen oder Annahmen gezielt zu priorisieren und ihre Relevanz für das Gesamtbild zu bewerten. Dabei wird der iterative Charakter der Roadmap deutlich: Neue Erkenntnisse führen zu Anpassungen, um sicherzustellen, dass das Produkt den Anforderungen des Marktes gerecht wird. Product Roadmaps in der täglichen Arbeit einzusetzen erfordert Engagement und Disziplin. Sie ist mehr als nur ein Dokument – sie ist ein zentraler Bestandteil der Produktarbeit und unterstützt dabei, langfristige Ziele mit den täglichen Aufgaben zu verbinden. Indem sie regelmäßig reflektiert und angepasst wird, trägt sie dazu bei, die Produktentwicklung effektiv und zielgerichtet zu gestalten.

Große Aufgaben erwarten Lorenz und Annabelle in der 2. Folge des "Geheimnisvollen Drachenstein": Wie um alles in der Welt kann der unfreiwillige Drache Lorenz wieder in Menschengestalt verwandelt werden? Ob da der beste Drachenexperte Armin Skrump helfen kann? (Eine Geschichte von Cee Neudert, gelesen von Christoph Lindert)

Kako svet doživljajo tisti, ki živijo s slepoto ali slabovidnostjo? Slepi in slabovidni si pri vsakodnevnem življenju pomagajo z raznimi tehnikami in pripomočki, med katerimi je najbolj prepoznavna bela palica. Zelo dragocen pripomoček pa je tudi brajica. Louis Braille je slepim dal zapis, ki jim je omogočil pismenost. Slepemu človeku je bila tako dana možnost zapisovati, brati in dostopati do tiskanih virov. Ob mednarodnem dnevu brajice, ki smo ga zaznamovali 4. januarja, se bomo v današnji oddaji Sledi časa posvetili genialnemu izumu Louisa Brailla – brajici, njenemu pomenu kot simbolu neodvisnosti in enakopravnega vključevanja slepih v družbo, ter temu, kakšna je prihodnost tega zapisa z razvojem sodobne tehnologije. Oddajo je pripravila Petra Medved.

Škof razloži pomen praznika Jezusovega krsta, ki simbolizira željo po očiščenju in prerojenju. Povedna je Jezusova solidarnost z ljudmi, ki so čutili potrebo po odrešenju, ter njegova zavezanost k uresničevanju očetove volje. Jezusov krst predstavlja zvezo med njim in grešniki ter njihovim upanjem na novo življenje. Ob tem škof izpostavi, da je krščansko poslanstvo povezano s skrbjo za sočloveka in aktivno prisotnost v družbi.

Novoletne zaobljube, ki se zdijo trivialna opomba v zabavnem tisku, imajo resnici na ljubo za seboj pisano zgodovino. Ob tem pa sta zaobljubljanje in predvsem lomljenje teh zaobljub postali globalen fenomen. Kaj vse se skriva za novoletnimi zaobljubami in kakšen je njihov rok trajanja, pripoveduje Nedeljska reportaža, ki jo je pripravil Marko Radmilovič.

Im fatalen Finale der zehnten Staffel von To be on Pod verschlägt es Björn und Christian an ganz düstere Orte, um in „Mortal Kombat“ von Midway aus dem Jahre 1992 die Fäuste fliegen zu lassen! Ob wir das große Turnier gewinnen können oder am Ende doch zu Futter für Shang Tsung verarbeitet werden? Lasst es uns gemeinsam herausfinden: Fight! PS: Gefällt dir unser Podcast? Dann freuen wir uns über Bewertungen auf Spotify und Apple Podcasts sowie Likes und Kommentare auf Twitter und Instagram! Wenn du uns gerne privat schreiben möchtest, dann sende uns doch einfach eine E-Mail an ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠kontakt@tobeonpod.de⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ – Wir freuen uns auf dein Feedback! Weiterführende Links zu dieser Episode: ⁠Svens YouTube-Kanal Fog Lake Production⁠ ⁠Sven auf Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Unsere Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sprachnachricht senden⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TBOP auf X (ehem. Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TBOP auf Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠TBOP auf Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TBOP auf Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TBOP auf Nostr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TBOP Discord-Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Den Podcast mit Bitcoin unterstützen⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Den Podcast auf Ko-fi unterstützen⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Jetzt unsere zweite exklusive Podcassette vorbestellen und unseren Podcast unterstützen!

Die Zukunft ist jetzt - und künstliche Intelligenz ist der aktuelle Beweis dafür. In dieser besonderen Podcastfolge spricht Jennifer mit Tim Strupat, Ralfs Sohn und Experte für generative künstliche Intelligenz (KI). Gemeinsam beleuchten sie, wie Unternehmen KI gewinnbringend einsetzen können – von produktiveren Meetings bis hin zu neuen Wegen im Fachkräftemangel. Tim erläutert, warum generative KI mehr ist als ein Hype und wie du mit einem „KI-Führerschein“ in deinem Unternehmen durchstarten kannst. Entscheidend sind hierbei nicht nur technische Fähigkeiten, sondern auch das Mindset: Wie überwindest du Sorgen vor neuen Technologien und hinterfragst du die Ergebnisse kritisch? Erfahre, warum kritisches Denken in der KI-Welt wichtiger denn je ist und wie du kleine Erfolge erzielen kannst, um dein Team zu begeistern. Ob du KI schon nutzt oder erst starten möchtest – hör rein und freue dich über Impulse für euren KI-Start. ► Alle Infos rund um KI-Führerschein und KI-Navigator bekommst du hier: begeisterung.de/KI/ ► Vernetze dich mit Tim auf LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/strupat/ ► Tims Buchempfehlung zu KI: Künstliche Intelligenz und echtes Leben von Christian Uhle ► Hier erhältst du Zugang zu unseren gratis Führungs-Tools: https://begeisterungsland.de/begeisterungsletter/ ► Weitere praktische Audio-Lösungen für deinen Führungsalltag findest du hier: https://begeisterungsland.de/audios/ ► Unsere Story liest du hier: https://begeisterungsland.de/unsere-story/ Und wenn dir der Podcast gefällt, freuen wir uns sehr über eine Weiterempfehlung und positive Bewertung!

Normalerweise quatschen die Jungs mit Steffen bei "Moving Panels" über Bewegtbilder – doch dieses Mal bleibt es beim gedruckten Medium! Andreas hat sich den Panini-Redakteur geschnappt, um über einige Comics zu plaudern, die sie in letzter Zeit gelesen haben. Von faszinierenden Biografien über popkulturelle Highlights bis hin zu spannenden Indie-Reihen – diese Folge ist ein gekonnter Rundumschlag. Ob tiefgründig, skurril oder einfach nur unterhaltsam – hier ist hoffentlich für jeden etwas dabei. 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:27 Begrüßung 00:04:17 Low - David Bowie's Berlin Years 00:14:52 Star Wars - Darth Vader Deluxe 3 00:21:51 Marlene Dietrich (Bd.1 & 2) 00:29:34 What's the furthest place from here (Bd.1) 00:35:31 Jim Henson's - Tale of Sand 00:45:15 Verabschiedung 00:45:52 Outro Folge direkt herunterladen Werbefrei auf Steady: https://steadyhq.com/de/pow-ein-comicpodcast/ Link zu unserem Discord-Server: https://discord.gg/8hE9Nt4

Diese Woche wird es flauschig!

Starte bewusst in deinen Tag – mit dieser 15-minütigen Meditation stärkst du deine innere Klarheit, erhöhst deine Motivation und entwickelst eine positivere Ausstrahlung. Ob morgens nach dem Aufwachen oder zwischendurch, wenn du deinem Geist eine wohltuende Pause gönnen möchtest – diese Meditation hilft dir, neue Energie zu tanken und den Fokus zu schärfen. --------------------------------------------- DER PROAKTIV LETTER: Erhalte 1x pro Woche einen anregenden Denkanstoß für dein Proaktives Leben. Jetzt kostenlos anmelden: https://www.proaktivpodcast.de ---------------------------------------------- AMZHackers-Mitglied werden: https://www.amz-hackers.de/ (Proaktiv Podcast erwähnen um Warteschlange zu überspringen.) Zum Buch: amz-hackers.de/bestsellerbuch Code: proaktiv ---------------------------------------------- VentoryOne-Kunde werden: https://ventory.one/moneyback-deal/?via=proaktiv&utm_source=Proaktiv&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_campaign=MB1000 (1 Monat GRATIS und die ersten 1.000€ Moneyback ohne Gebühr.) ---------------------------------------------- Proaktiv Podcast Warmup-Songs auf Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1x7irgorpXgBgQW2RZA7C3si=e7f67904fcbe4f09&pt=0261a59378bea77826b2dce6114e57c6 ---------------------------------------------- AMEX - Optimierter Cashflow für dein Business und 50.000 Startpunkte sichern: https://americanexpress.com/de-de/referral/business-platinum?ref=fLORIBN8Ik&CPID=100514933 ---------------------------------------------- Der Proaktiv Podcast ist auch auf Instagram, TikTok, Facebook und LinkedIn verfügbar: TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@proaktivpodcast⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/proaktiv_podcast⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089226260115⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/proaktiv-podcast ⁠⁠⁠---------------------------- 00:00 Intro 01:47 Erklärung 04:05 Meditation

Ob als Skitrainerin oder Eishockeyspielerin - Schauspielerin Judith Altenberger überzeugt in ihren Rollen nicht nur sportlich.Mit Ende 20 setzt sie gerade zum großen Karrieresprung an.Mit Gabi Kerschbaumer spricht sie im Radio Salzburg Cafe über Skifahren im Gasteinertal, Melken am Bauernhof, über starke Frauen in der Familie und warum ihre Schwester Verena nicht Konkurrenz, sondern ihr großes Vorbild ist.

Ob als Skitrainerin oder Eishockeyspielerin - Schauspielerin Judith Altenberger überzeugt in ihren Rollen nicht nur sportlich.Mit Ende 20 setzt sie gerade zum großen Karrieresprung an.Mit Gabi Kerschbaumer spricht sie im Radio Salzburg Cafe über Skifahren im Gasteinertal, Melken am Bauernhof, über starke Frauen in der Familie und warum ihre Schwester Verena nicht Konkurrenz, sondern ihr großes Vorbild ist.

Rokometašice Krima lovijo končnico lige prvakinj. Včeraj so v 9. krogu tekmovanja gostile Ferencvaroš. Ob evropski sezoni slovenskih rokometnih prvankinj se posvetimo še hitrim disciplinam alpskega smučanja. V Sankt Antonu se bodo tekmovalke po včerajšnjem smuku danes pomerile še v superveleslalomu.

Za rokometašice Krima se bo danes nadaljevala evropska sezona. V 9. krogu lige prvakinj bo ljubljanska ekipa gostila Ferencvaroš. Ob pripravljenosti slovenskih prvakinj na nadaljevanje sezone popoldanske minute namenimo še pestremu zimskemu dogajanju. V Sankt Antonu so se drugič v sezoni pomerile najboljše smukačice. Edina slovenska predstavnica na zahodu Avstrije je bila Ilka Štuhec. Moški del svetovnega pokala v alpskem smučanju se v tehničnih disciplinah nadaljuje v Adelbodnu, svetovni pokal v biatlonu pa s tekmami v Oberhofu.

Alle Beiträge Christoph Martin Wieland  – 1733-1813 Teil 2, Buch 4, Kapitel 4  (Hördauer 17 Minuten) Das Projekt Wir haben ein besonderes Projekt gestartet, das uns in diesem Jahr begleiten wird. Gemeinsam mit vielen unserer talentierten Sprecherinnen und Sprecher haben wir das Buch "Geschichte der Abderiten" von Christoph Martin Wieland vertont. Wir sind begeistert, euch diese altgriechischen Schildbürgergeschichten in zahlreichen Folgen präsentieren zu können. Lasst euch von den faszinierenden, amüsanten Erzählungen aus vergangenen Zeiten verzaubern und taucht ein in die Welt der Abderiten die unseren Schildbürgern in nichts nachstehen; im Gegenteil. Wir wünschen euch viel Spaß beim Zuhören Staunen über den gesammelten Unsinn, den Wieland uns präsentiert! Übrigens, man kann auch beinahe jederzeit einsteigen und jede Folge verstehen, ohne die vorherigen gehört zu haben.  Das Buch Die "Geschichte der Abderiten" von Christoph Martin Wieland ist ein satirischer Roman, der schon zu Lebzeiten des Autors als Abbild seiner Heimatstadt Biberach an der Riß betrachtet wurde. Möglicherweise hatte Wieland einige Charaktere aus seiner Reichsstadt vor Augen, doch in dieser Schrift werden auch menschliche Verhaltensweisen dargestellt, die zu allen Zeiten und an jedem Ort anzutreffen sind. Der formale Aufbau des Romans orientiert sich an antiken Komödienautoren und Satirikern, welche Geschichten aus dem verschrienen Abdera im klassischen Hellas verbreiteten. Christoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813) war ein deutscher Dichter, Übersetzer und Herausgeber zur Zeit der Aufklärung. In dem Buch wird das Altertum einer Stadt namens Abdera in Thrakien behandelt, welches bis in die fabelhafte Heldenzeit zurückreicht. Ob sie ihren Namen von verschiedenen möglichen Quellen empfing oder nicht - das spielt uns keine große Rolle. Immerhin fiel die Stadt nach ihrer ersten Gründung aufgrund ihres hohen Alters zusammen. Erst Timesius von Klazomene unternahm um die Zeit der 31. Olympiade den Versuch sie wieder aufzubauen - jedoch wurden seine Früchte durch feindlich gesinnte wilde Thracier zunichte gemacht. Christoph Martin Wieland war ein bedeutender deutscher Schriftsteller und Übersetzer des 18. Jahrhunderts. Er gilt als einer der wichtigsten Vertreter der deutschen Aufklärung und hat mit seinen Werken maßgeblich zur Entwicklung der deutschen Literatur beigetragen.Wieland war ein äußerst vielseitiger Autor, der in verschiedenen Genres wie Roman, Drama, Essay und Lyrik tätig war. Seine Werke zeichnen sich durch eine klare Sprache und eine tiefe Humanität aus, die bis heute faszinieren.Besonders bekannt ist Wieland für seinen Roman "Agathon", der als eines der ersten Werke der deutschen Literaturgeschichte gilt, das den Begriff des "Bildungsromans" prägte. Auch seine Übersetzungen von Werken antiker Autoren wie Homer oder Vergil sind bis heute von großer Bedeutung.Insgesamt war Ch. M. Wieland ein herausragender Vertreter seiner Zeit, dessen Werk bis heute einen wichtigen Platz in der deutschen Literaturgeschichte einnimmt. Wenn Ihnen dieser Beitrag gefallen hat, dann mögen Sie vielleicht auch diesen.   Hörbahn on Stage - live im Pixel – Autor*innen im Gespräch - besuchen Sie uns! Sprecher und Realisation Uwe Kullnick

In dieser Podcast-Folge ist mein Interviewgast Martin Mader. Er erklärt uns, warum ​gerade das Themenfeld Sport ideal ist, um sich ein neben- oder sogar hauptberufliches selbstständiges Business aufzubauen. Martin ist der wirtschaftlicher Geschäftsführer der Löwenherz Fitness Company. Er betreibt er mit einem Partner und einem kleinen, hochspezialisierten Team aus Sportwissenschaftler:innen in Graz ein state-of-the-art Trainingszentrum, in dem eine Vielzahl von Sportler:innen, vom Gesundheits- bis zum internationalen Spitzensport betreut werden. M​artin studierte Betriebswirtschaftslehre in Graz und den USA. Nach Stationen im Consulting und als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Zentrum für Entrepreneurship der Universität Graz ist er seit 2017 im Hauptberuf Unternehmer. . . **In dieser Episode erfährst du:** - Welche Voraussetzungen du mitbringen solltest, wenn du selbständig im Sport-Buisiness arbeiten willst. - Ob es sinnvoller ist alleine zu arbeiten, oder ob ein kleines Team mehr Vorteile bringt. - Typische Fehler, die Selbstständige zu Beginn Ihrer Tätigkeit oft machen, aber leicht zu vermeiden sind. - Wie das 3 Phasen Modell: "Think - Create - Lead" funktioniert und wie du es am besten umsetzt. - Welche Bedeutung die exakte Positionierung in der Selbstständigkeit hat, ob eher breit für eine große Zielgruppe oder spitz für ganz wenige. - Warum gerade der Sport als Themenfeld großartige Chancen für Selbstständigkeit bietet und viele Megatrends dich dabei unterstützen. - Zu [den Shownotes...](https://wp.me/paMKmo-26d)

Ist das Love is blind oder eine Rom-Com?! Das fragen wir uns jedes Mal, wenn die Kamera auf Ilias schwenkt, wenn er Hanni sieht. Ist es nur eine einseitige Schwärmerei oder ist da von Hanni's Seite doch etwas mehr? Wir schauen natürlich ganz genau hin und fragen uns, in wie weit Zweifel normal sind und was sie bedeuten können. Ausserdem sprechen wir über das Ende von Tolga und Shila, spekulieren was das Problem zwischen Jen und Marcel sein könnte, wägen ob, wägen ab, ob es noch eine Chance für Tolga und Hannah gibt. Ob es nach diesen Folgen für irgendjemanden noch Hoffnung gibt?! #loveisblind #loveisblindgermany #reaction #analyse #psychologie #psychologinnen #reality-tv #trashtv

Beseda in kretnja leta 2024, zbornik o življenju in pisanju Borisa Pahorja z naslovom "Jaz pa nikoli nisem sanjal", ki sta ga izdala Založništvo tržaškega tiska in Slovenska matica, nova knjigarna Šiškla in še kaj v pogovoru z Anjo Zag Golob. Ob tem tudi o mariborskem slikarju nemškega rodu s konca 19. stoletja Eduardu Lindu; pokrajinski muzej v Mariboru ga namreč javnosti predstavlja z monografijo in razstavo. V Ljubljani pa je v Društvu umetnikov DUM na ogled razstava latvijske umetnice Agate Lielpētere. Avtorji prispevkov Aleksander Čobec, Goran Tenze, Vlado Motnikar, Brigita Mohorič in Urška Savič. Urednica oddaje Staša Grahek, bere Eva Longyka Marušič, ton in montaža Vladimir Jovanović.

Ob es Leben im All gibt, weiß niemand. Im Kino gibt es das aber. Gerade treibt das Marsmonster Big-O im Film "Bernard Bär - Mission Mars" sein Unwesen. Agent Bernard versucht es zu fangen. Aber der erste Eindruck täuscht... Daniel hat den Film gesehen. Ob er sich lohnt, hört ihr hier.

The Go Hour with David and OB starts things off as they discuss the CFP game between Notre Dame and Penn State last night, the upcoming Aggie basketball game vs. Alabama, and tonight's CFP matchup between Texas vs. Ohio State. 

Diese Folge ist der Mitschnitt des Neujahrswebinars mit einer Reflexion, einer Ausrichtung und einer meditativen Entspannung. Dieses Jahr ging es um das Unversehrte als inneren Anker. In dieser Folge erfährst du: weshalb uns die Hinwendung zu unserem Unversehrten Kraft schenkt wie wir Wege aus der chronischen Dysregulation finden können was Top-Down- und Bottom-Up-Ansätze sind und wie wir sie nutzen können wie es möglich wird, einen Perspektivwechsel zu etablieren warum das Sowohl-als-auch ein Schlüssel zur Prozessgestaltung ist.  Shownotes: Trauma, Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft // Podcast #332  Trauma und die Suche nach Sicherheit // Podcast #112 Trauma & Sucht // Podcast #81 Wenn Gutes sich bedrohlich anfühlt // Podcast #286 Du bist im Widerstand * 4 Missverständnisse über Heilung // Podcast #106 Du bist genug. Die Heilkraft des Wohlwollens (Wdh.) // Podcast #285 Kostenloser Free Membership Bereich: https://member.verenakoenig.de/  Wünschst du dir mehr Nervensystem-Regulation und Selbstbestimmung? Dann trage dich in unsere unverbindliche Interessentenliste für den Kurs „Nervensystemkompass“ ein: https://www.verenakoenig.de/online-kurse/nervensystemkompass/ Nächste Woche ist es soweit! Meine kostenlose Masterclass "Die Sprache des Nervensystems" startet am 13. Januar! Möchtest du die ersten Schritte zu mehr Balance und Lebensfreude machen? Dann melde dich hier mit deiner E-Mail-Adresse zur 11-tägigen Masterclass “ an: https://verenakoenig.de/geschenke/masterclass-die-sprache-des-nervensystems/  Interessierst du dich für mein neues Buch „Trauma und Beziehungen”? Hier findest du mehr Informationen dazu: www.verenakoenig.de/buecher/trauma-und-beziehungen/  3 traumasensible Meditationen – Komme im Hier und Jetzt an und finde Sicherheit in deiner Präsenz. Trage dich hier ein und wir schicken dir den Link zu den Meditationen zu: https://www.verenakoenig.de/geschenke/3-traumasensible-meditationen/  Kennst du schon mein wunderschönes, neues Kartendeck? Ob in akuten Stresssituationen, als tägliches Ritual oder spontane Inspiration – 56 Impulse helfen dir zu mehr Selbstregulation und Sicherheit im Hier und Jetzt: https://www.verenakoenig.de/buecher/kartendeck-verbinde-dich-mit-dir-selbst/  Interessierst du dich auch für meine Ausbildung NI Neurosystemische Integration®? Trage dich jetzt in die Warteliste ein, um keine Neuigkeiten zu verpassen! https://www.verenakoenig.de/akademie/ni-ausbildung/   Wenn du teilen möchtest, was dich in dieser Folge bewegt hat oder wenn du gerne etwas anmerken möchtest, dann folge mir auf Instagram oder Facebook. Dort findest du jede Menge weiterführende Inspiration.  Verena auf Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/verenakoenig.official/  Verena auf Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/verenakoenig.de   Verpasse keine Neuigkeiten mehr! Erhalte jeden Freitag eine Mail mit dem aktuellen Podcast und interessanter Inspiration: https://verenakoenig.de/tinlanmeldung 

Freitagabend mit Tiefgang statt Absturz 3000 – aber keine Sorge, es war nicht trocken, sondern ziemlich schräg! Fritzin Jule Kaden hatte 99 Fragen am Star. Dirty Fragen? Check. Absurdes Zeug über Essen und Tod? Check. Geheimnisse, die ihr nie ausplaudern wolltet? Oh ja. Ihr konntet einfach eine Nummer sagen und sie hat euch die passende Frage um die Ohren geworfen. Ob tiefsinnig, flach wie ein Pfannkuchen oder komplett daneben – alles ist möglich. Und ganz ehrlich, dieser Freitag war besser als alles, was euch in den ersten 10 Tagen des Jahres passiert ist. Unser Podcast-Tipp "Wissen mit Johnny": https://1.ard.de/wissen_mit_johnny