A note before you read: this post talks about traumatic birth, a NICU stay, postpartum depression, miscarriage, and a season where I struggled with thoughts of self-harm. If any of that touches something raw in you right now, take care of yourself first — pause, come back later, or reach out to someone you trust. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is there any time, no matter what you’re carrying.
If you’re six weeks postpartum and still waiting to feel like yourself again, or six months pregnant and quietly terrified that your birth won’t go the way you’ve pictured it — this one’s for you. You’ve probably been sold the curated version of motherhood. The soft-focus hospital photos. The “and then he was in my arms and everything was perfect” version. Here’s what’s actually true underneath it: sometimes birth breaks you before it builds you. Sometimes the healing takes years, not weeks. And none of that means you did it wrong.
This week I’m doing something different. Instead of walking alongside someone else’s story, I’m telling you mine — both of my births, and everything that happened in between. My first birth nearly broke me. My second one helped put me back together. And in the middle of those two stories is a season of loss, depression, and a God who was present in both rooms — even the one where I couldn’t feel Him yet. You are not walking through any of this alone.
The Birth That Nearly Broke Me
Here’s what’s really happening in a lot of “smooth” first births: nobody teaches you how to work with your body, so you fight it instead. That was me. My contractions started fast and hard the night I lost my mucus plug, and I hadn’t been taught a single coping skill. I only knew how to brace against the pain, not move through it. By the time we got to the hospital I was six centimeters — active labor, no epidural (needle phobia, not bravery), and about to have my IV missed three separate times before anyone got a vein.
Then came Pitocin. Nobody explained what it was or asked if I wanted it — they just said the doctor wanted to start it, and it went in. I didn’t even know they were supposed to be asking for my consent. I found out years later, once I trained as a doula myself, that Pitocin is synthetic oxytocin delivered at a steady clinician-controlled dose instead of the natural pulses your body releases on its own — which is exactly why it has to be watched closely, since contractions that come too fast and too close together can affect how well a baby tolerates labor.
My son’s heart rate started decelerating. I watched my OB’s face change and I didn’t need a medical degree to know that meant something was wrong. Nobody warned me about the ring of fire, either — the OB just chuckled and said “yep, that’s what we call it” and moved on. I was scared, exhausted, and in a level of pain I hadn’t imagined was possible, and things kept happening to me instead of being explained to me.
Call your provider (or your L&D team) any time an intervention is being started or a medication is being given and no one has told you why — you’re always allowed to ask “what is this, and what happens if I say not right now?”
That’s not a birth story about a bad hospital. That’s a birth story about missing information — and it’s exactly why informed consent isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the whole point.
When the NICU Isn’t What Anyone Warned You About
My son was born with 70% of his lungs full of fluid and was rushed to the NICU before I even heard him cry. What happened was meconium aspiration — he’d inhaled meconium-stained fluid and couldn’t fully clear it on his own. Meconium-stained fluid itself is actually fairly common and gets more common the further past your due date you go — one study found it in roughly 5% of preterm births, close to 17% of term births, and over 27% of post-term births. I was part of that 17%, since I went into labor at 39 weeks. But meconium aspiration syndrome — where it actually affects the baby’s breathing the way it affected my son’s — only happens in about 2 to 10% of those cases.
This isn’t something that went catastrophically wrong because of one decision anyone made. It’s something that can happen simply because a baby was stressed during labor, and it’s uncommon even then.
I got one minute to hold him before a room full of nurses took him to the NICU, and then I was left being stitched up, empty-handed, after all of that pain. We didn’t bring him home for two to three weeks.
Call your provider or care team immediately if your newborn is grunting, flaring their nostrils, breathing very fast, or turning blue or dusky around the lips — these are signs of respiratory distress and are always worth an urgent call, not a “let’s wait and see.”
That’s not a story about my body failing my baby. That’s a story about a body under stress doing something a body under stress sometimes does — and it says nothing about whether I was fit to mother him.
The Hard Season No One Names Out Loud
Coming home should have felt like relief. Instead, no one warned me that breastfeeding wasn’t supposed to hurt the way it did — my nipples were bleeding, and I didn’t know that meant something needed to be fixed, not endured. I couldn’t handle the sleep deprivation. I felt so much guilt over every cry I couldn’t soothe, like it was proof I wasn’t bonding with him, when really it was proof that we were both recovering from something traumatic.
Postpartum depression is real, and it is a treatable perinatal mood disorder — it is not weakness, and it is not ingratitude. A traumatic birth, a NICU stay, and a personal history of depression are all recognized risk factors that raise the likelihood of it. You don’t need any of those factors to end up with postpartum depression — but if you have them, what you’re feeling isn’t random. There’s a reason your nervous system is working overtime to feel safe again.
If you’re having thoughts of harming yourself or you don’t feel safe, please reach out right now — call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), tell your provider, or ask someone you trust to stay with you. You deserve support, not silence.
That’s not you failing at motherhood. That’s your nervous system, doing exactly what a nervous system does after it’s been through something it wasn’t prepared for.
Losing Shiloh
About a year later, we got pregnant again and miscarried. There was no heartbeat at a routine ultrasound, and then there was the waiting — days of not knowing, praying, hoping every day without bleeding meant the baby was still there. I went into labor with that pregnancy between nine and eleven weeks, and because it was 2020, Michael had to wait in the parking lot while I went through the D&C alone.
Grief doesn’t run on a schedule, and it gets heavier when it lands on top of trauma that was never fully processed. That loss brought back self-harm tendencies I thought I’d already healed from — it got serious enough that Michael quietly removed anything in our home that could have been used to hurt myself, because he was scared for me too. I’m telling you that plainly because I don’t want to sugarcoat what grief stacked on grief can actually look like.
When I started healing, we named that baby Shiloh — a gender-neutral name that means “God’s gift” — and I made a shadow box with the ultrasound picture, a cross I painted myself, and my hospital bracelet from the D&C. I think about Hannah in 1 Samuel now, a woman who wept so hard and so long over the child she didn’t have that the priest thought she was drunk. God didn’t rush Hannah through her grief, and He didn’t rush me through mine — and He won’t rush you through yours either. Psalm 147:3 says He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds — not instantly, not on our timeline, but He does bind them.
That’s not a grief story with a tidy ending. That’s a grief story that’s still being held, one shadow box and one Lamentations 3:22-23 morning at a time.
The Second Birth: When I Finally Had a Voice
By my third pregnancy, I’d started my doula training, and I chose a Christian midwife instead of an OB. My husband was hesitant — after everything we’d been through, the hospital had felt like the safer option to him, and he was also being deployed for a year of COVID relief work. But as we both learned more about physiological birth, he grew more comfortable stepping outside the traditional medical model.
This pregnancy came with its own hard season — I was diagnosed with symphysis pubis dysfunction so severe I couldn’t drive, and I was navigating it mostly alone while Michael was away. My son also arrived three weeks early, before my baby shower and before the birth tub I’d planned around even showed up. I labored mostly with my best friend beside us, and this time I actually had coping skills — not because the pain was smaller, but because I finally had tools to work with my body instead of against it. There were no unexplained interventions. My water broke on its own as his head was already crowning.
What made this birth different wasn’t luck — it was the model of care. Midwifery continuity of care means the same provider or small team walks with you through your entire pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, and the relationship itself becomes part of the care. A major 2024 Cochrane review found that people in these continuity-of-care models reported more positive experiences overall and were less likely to need a cesarean or instrumental delivery. That doesn’t mean midwifery care removes risk — it means that in a low-risk pregnancy like mine, it created space for my body to do what it already knew how to do.
I birthed on my back again this time, too — but the difference was that I decided that, for the perineal support, because I had a cervical lip my midwife needed to gently ease over the baby’s head. Same position, completely different reason for choosing it.
That’s not “home birth beats hospital birth.” That’s what happens when a mother is handed information instead of instructions.
What Actually Made the Difference (It Wasn't Home vs. Hospital)
I need to be really clear here, because I never want you to walk away thinking I’m anti-hospital or anti-OB. There is a place for the medical model of care in obstetrics — we need OBs, and we need interventions, at the times they’re actually needed. I support moms who want a hospital birth, moms who want a home birth, and moms who want anything in between. There is no right way to birth.
What was different the second time wasn’t the location. It was that I had more information, more control, and a voice in the room. When they asked if I wanted to start pushing, they asked — they didn’t pressure. I said no when I meant no, and yes when I meant yes. I was present in my own care instead of surviving it from the outside.
My redemption story isn’t that the second birth erased the first one. It’s that the second birth helped me understand the first one differently — and it’s what allowed me to become the doula, guide, and mother I am today. My first birth wasn’t good. Shiloh’s loss wasn’t good. But God can take even those things and weave them into something that becomes good, without ever pretending the bad part wasn’t bad.
The Anchor for This Season
“As a mother comforts her newborn, so I will comfort you.” — Isaiah 66:13
This is the verse I built this whole ministry on, and it’s the one I keep coming back to. I didn’t feel that comfort in my first delivery room, even with my husband and my friend right there trying to give it to me. It took years — a shadow box, a lot of tears, a lot of therapy, a lot of learning about myself and my children — before I could finally be present enough to receive it. Redemption is an event, but it isn’t a straight line. If you’re in the middle of a story that doesn’t look redeemed yet, you are still known, still held, and He is still comforting you, even on the days you can’t feel it yet.
One Small Step
- If you’re pregnant and reading ahead of time: ask your provider one direct question this week about how they handle informed consent for interventions like Pitocin or breaking your water — and notice how they answer.
- If you’re in the thick of a hard postpartum season right now: tell one trusted person the specific truth of what today has felt like, out loud, today — not the polished version.
- If you’re on the other side of a loss or a hard birth, still working through it: consider starting (or naming) one small physical way to honor what happened, the way my shadow box honors Shiloh. It doesn’t have to be big to be real.
I’d love to hear where you are in your own story — drop a comment or send me a message. Your birth story matters, whatever it looks like.
You can listen to the full conversation in Episode 3 of the Beloved Motherhood Podcast. Next week, we’re shifting gears to talk about building your birth team — so I’ll see you back here, mama.