Being Mom Ali Kozoll

#010: This week's guest is Liz Baghaei, who lives in Burbank, CA with her soon-to-be 5 year old son. In this episode, Liz shares her incredible story of becoming a single mom. She talks about her unexpected, yet healthy, pregnancy, how pregnancy positively impacted her relationship to her body, and her easy, unmedicated, doula-supported birth. Liz describes the loneliness and anxiety of her first year as a mom and what helped her stay connected to herself despite having very little support. S...

#009: This week's guest is Jennifer Sterling, who lives in Manhattan with her 8 year old son. In this episode, Jennifer gets honest about her experience of being pregnant, which lasted 44 weeks and included pregnancy-long nausea and trouble gaining weight. She also describes her traumatic cesarean birth experience and shares the difficulties she faced during the postpartum period, which included flashbacks to her birth, her divorce, and a period with homelessness. She reveals what she finds r...

#008: This week's guest is Erin Pace, who lives in New York City with her family, which includes her husband and their 2 year old son. In this episode, Erin shares the beautiful story of her son’s birth via surrogacy, a decision she made with her husband after several disappointing rounds of IVF which did not result in pregnancy. Erin’s 8-year story of perseverance, faith, surrender, gratitude, and love is inspiring. She even explains how she and her husband remained connected to each other a...

#007: This week's guest is Kirsten Zinchuk Haley, who lives near Princeton, NJ and is a mom of three children, two daughters (13 and 11) and one son (7). In this episode, Kirsten talks through all three of her birth stories, one cesarean after her breech baby was undetected by her doctor, a successful VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean), and finally, a wildly free unmedicated birth using the hypnobirthing technique. Kirsten shares her perspective about the heartbreaking joy of motherhood, the...

#006: This week's guest is Nina Restieri, who lives in Connecticut and is a mom of four children, Andrew (23), Jenna (21), Matthew (19), and Jamie (16). In this episode, Nina shares the unique choices she made with her ex-husband toward becoming a beautiful, blended family, how her motherhood journey has evolved over time, the process of learning to take care of herself, how she feels about becoming an empty-nester, and what she worried about unnecessarily when her children were younger. Nina...

#005: This week's guest is Saba Homayoon Hopkins, who lives in Los Angeles, California with her family, which includes her husband and their two kids, Lily (9) and Alex (5). In this episode, Saba talks about how pregnancy helped dramatically change her view of her body and tells the story of her hospital birth. She then discusses the loneliness of pumping breastmilk and shares how she prepared her daughter for a sibling. Saba also talks about the experience of learning that her son has Sensor...