What You Didn't Expect in Fertility, Pregnancy & Birth: Real Stories & Expert Insights Paulette Kamenecka

Today's guest shares her experience of an unintended pregnancy. With almost every pregnancy women are expected to narrow range of reactions, from excited to ecstatic.But stepping into pregnancy is such an enormous change that the limits to what we are expected to feel doesn't make sense. In the first part of our conversation we talk how today's guest managed the mass of feelings that probably many of us feel in making this transition.Living Compassionhttps://centerformsc.org/https://www.cnvc....

This week I finish my conversation with Becky. She's a fertility mindset coach using hypnosis to help women who are struggling with their fertility, a technique she was drawn to learn after it helped her get pregnant after six years of infertility. At first blush, this may sound woo woo (Becky's term), but when you dig into some of the details, it's understandable how mindset could affect physiology. We pick up where we left off last week. Becky has decided to pursue an alternative route...

In today's episode I talk with a woman about her very intentional trek through infertility--not intentional in that she was looking for it, but in the ways she managed all the OB, fertility and surgical issues that arose for her. She talks about the importance of educating yourself and advocating for yourself. These are both lessons learned when the absence of both education and advocacy had real consequences for her. She shares both what didn't work and what ultimately did work (spoile...

In today's episode we hear the rest of Emily's story. She shares how she ultimately managed her first birth--a home birth that became a hospital birth, and tells us about the art her experience inspired, and how it's helping other women who unexpectedly experience a C section. We also hear briefly from Dr. Young, the OB/scientist who is working to better understand and measure uterine contractions. We pick up where we left off last week, Emily has been brought to the hospital a...

In today's episode I talk with a woman whose pregnancy was straight forward, and who was aimed at a home birth with a midwife. She talks about why she decided on a home birthHow the home birth was progressing and her strategies for managing itWhat sent her to the hospitalthe ways that she managed the unexpected progress of her labor.We also here from an OB/scientist who is working to decipher how the uterus creates contractions and how these contractions can be measured. What follows is ...

Today we'll take a bit of a dive into the mechanics of how a uterus contracts. This is actually really important because drawing meaning from patterns of uterine contractions is how many doctors and midwives manage labor. I'm talking with Dr. Roger Young today, an OB scientist who studies, among other things, the details of how a uterus contracts.Dr Young's paper on Uterine contractions (with illustration):https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002937822008602#fig1