Across the Continent

Ohhh how I’ve missed writing. I’ll have to be very careful not to spew out a whole year (or more)’s worth of content at you.  This is my revival post.

Now that the second child is out in the world and we are done making babies (!), I’m picking this baby back up.

The former blog had over 500 posts and I’ve found myself actually missing having that resource to shoot clients articles here and there that they would find helpful. Things like: great protein sources, proper portion sizes, snack ideas, hormone tips, dead lift tips, injury information, running plans… I had a lot of stuff.  When I deleted my previous websites I felt compelled to let go and start fresh. The videos were old, some of my form cues have shifted, some nutritional guidance has changed with my expanding and evolving understand of hormones.

My point is, although I felt maybe it was better to re-write a more current approach to alllll those blog posts, man what a task I have ahead for me. On one hand, I’m excited to explore all of these helpful topics with you. On the other, time is just tricker with two very young children.

The kids are 4 months (Otis) and 2.5 years now (Hugo), and we’re busy. I see around 5 clients a day outside of childcare. This means, Guillermo watches the kids while I see 3x 30 min clients each morning, and 2x 30 min clients each afternoon.  I’m fulfilled and grateful to be able to be present as a mother the remainder of the time, and to continue my first love (career) alongside.

Career continues to evolve. I am strictly virtual at the moment, and loving it.  It’s working. Clients are focused, consistent, diligent with following their programs in my app in between our sessions, and it’s a very successful arrangement. I do welcome in person clients to our new home in South Bay, Los Angeles, and am also happy as can be with my current arrangement.

Up next for me in terms of education will be more mobility training and Eldoa courses.  For those who don’t know, Eldoa is an approach to high tension myofascial stretching, intent on straightening the spine and creating symmetry in the body.  This is the simple explanation.  It leads to better biomechanical function, therefore fewer chronic injuries brought on by imbalances. The effects have been dramatic for me, and I’ve only scratched the surface.  My clients have been equally excited (in a roundabout way, because the poses are TOUGH) about this new avenue. They can feel the challenge, and they can feel the difference in their bodies directly after.

We are loving our new home - the warm weather, the year-round colour, the proximity to the ocean.  All of our reasons for this move were primarily health-focused. I wanted to spend more of my life outside, especially as a mother.  It was hard as hell, but we made it happen.  I am planning a more specific post on the details of our international move - the pros and cons, the hiccups, the process - at a later date.

Let’s start here. It feels good to be writing again.  I hope I can stifle my inclination to babble and to be most helpful for you in your health journey.

Love.

My One Year Old

Here I am, tail between my legs because SO MUCH TIME has passed since I last sat down to write on this platform.

Motherhood is wildly more time consuming than I expected. Guillermo and I often laugh about how I insisted during my pregnancy (pre-pandemic) that I would be back to seeing a nearly full client load at 6 weeks postpartum. Here I am, a year later and squeezing in as many virtual sessions as I can, which is still only about 10 sessions / week. I work both Saturdays and Sundays, and every weekday morning before Guillermo starts his work day.

During Hugo’s naps, I scramble to tidy, or workout, or nap if he’s gotten us up at 5am so that I can make it through the day. It’s physically much harder work than I ever thought it would be, I’m carrying him most of the time. The ol’ spine is crying out for alignment!

Now, it sounds like I’m complaining, and I am a little bit. I’m complaining just a little given my surprise at how little time there actually is to do independent Jessica stuff. Even like work! However, he is growing fast. And the fact that I have the privilege to spend as much time with him as I do is something I do not lose sight of, nor do I fall short on gratitude.

I am hoping to revive some presence here, to share more health-related tips moving forward. This is my goal.

Today’s post is a life update.

I am currently working on my ACE Personal Training certification course. Yes, I’ve been a certified personal trainer for 20 years, however with the Canadian company CanFitPro. ACE is more widely recognized, the recertification process and courses are much better — for these reasons as well as simply having a great refresh, I’m completing this course this summer. I don’t have an ego when it comes to this work, the more education the better, even if it may seem I’m going back to basics. I have a bit of a plot for a growth platform, so this is the first course for that broader plan :)

I chip away at this on weekends and after Hugo goes to bed.

Hugo had his first birthday party this past weekend! By party, I mean we had a small group of vaccinated friends over to play with bubbles, entertain the dogs and eat cake. After a very long year of lockdowns and limited socialization, I was really feeling the blooming love of community.

Here are some shots from the weekend:

My little toddler-in-the-making is about to wake up now, so I will leave you with this for today.

I hope you are all keeping well, finding ways to see the light and the joy in most of your days as we continue wading through the pandemic, difficult news headlines and challenging days amid work and family life.

No matter what you are feeling today, your feelings are valid and please remember that change is the only constant. The tide never ends, and with each wave it brings some new and takes some old. We continue to shift, our lives continue to shuffle. There is absolutely always a way forward, there is always a clearing ahead.

Feeding A Baby From Day One

Feeding a baby was sort of the last thing on my mind in preparing to be a mother. I was ready for sleep challenges, for crying… I was completely unaware of the extent of challenges we could face in just getting this baby fed, if I’m being honest!

Because I had a couple of breast surgeries (one reduction, lift and augmentation at age 23 and one explant at age 35 - see here for more info on this), I was prepared to have some trouble breastfeeding. I knew there was a possibility that I wouldn’t be able to. And all things considered, I’d say I did a bit better than I expected to. However, we faced numerous challenges getting Hugo fed comfortably. Here is how it all went down for us.

Hugo was born a healthy weight of 7lb 9 oz. I found breastfeeding challenging for the first few days, as most new moms do. I certainly couldn’t tell how much milk he was getting. When the midwives weighed him on day 4, he had lost 10% of his weight. This, too, can be common, but the midwives do want to be cautious. If the baby gets to a 10% or greater loss, they may recommend supplementing with 30ml of formula at each feed, and this is what we were recommended to do.

Within a few days, his weight was coming back up very well, and so we were advised by a different midwife that we could then remove the formula again and carry on. Well, in came a confusing event. I remember distinctly on day 8, I began to cut back his formula. I also had a few slices of pizza for dinner. This is relevant because to this day I’m not sure if it was the cheese, the tomato sauce, or the drop in calories that caused this - but Hugo ended up hysterical for most of day 9. He wailed and wailed, broke out in full-body rash, and barely slept. For a newborn, this was alarming. The rash kept spreading and finally around 6pm we decided we didn’t want to chance anything and went to emergency.

For brevity’s sake, I’ll skip some of the details of this horrible emergency experience. In short, we were turned away everywhere and told to get to Sick Kids. Guillermo couldn’t come in with us - I had to be the one despite having a minor panic attack, because I had the only means with which to feed Hugo (my breasts). We were put in a hot room. I didn’t have any diapers, and neither did they. The nurse was harsh with me when I asked for one, saying they did not provide them. Nor did they provide water to drink, not even to breastfeeding new mothers. I stayed in this room from 8pm to 5:30 am, Hugo screaming. He had to have a catheter put in for testing, more screaming. We went from roasting hot to freezing cold, no blankets. We were checked on about once every 1.5 hours. Just another little story for the pandemic experience, I guess. The result of this visit was “We don’t know what the rash is from. Go home and monitor it.”

I kind of had to tap into my gut, and I wondered if Hugo had gone into a panic from the drop in calories when we removed the formula. I worried that he wasn’t getting enough milk from me. I decided we’d move from a syringe of formula to bottles, and continue to supplement every feed. I wasn’t taking any more chances. I also worried that he had CMPA (cow’s milk protein allergy). He did continuously react, in the form of gas and stomach pain when I would consume dairy, so I wrote it off pretty early. If you’ve ever experienced an innocent baby in pain, you know you no longer want to take ANY chances of providing something that could be the cause of that pain.

Next we entered many months of horrible gas pains, colic (an umbrella term for what is basically unexplained excessive crying, see my other post here on that experience), green feces (a sign of allergy) and my agony in trying to pinpoint the causes of the problems. We bounced around trying different formulas - from cow’s milk then to soy (NOPE!), then to a goat milk European formula. Hugo was slowly rejecting breastfeeding during the day, and preferring bottles ever since that hospital visit. This resulted in me pumping 3x / day or more, to try to derive as much milk as possible for his bottle feeds. I wanted Hugo to consume mostly breastmilk, but I could never quite produce enough, probably because both of us fell back on the formula out of fear too early on. Maybe I could have produced more if we had stuck it out a few more days, but after the rash breakout I was just too afraid to risk him not getting enough.

So, we ended up doing a combination of: accepting donated breast milk from other mothers who overproduced, an organic goat milk formula, and as much of my own pumped milk as I could muster. And the word “muster” is probably an understatement for the aggression I applied to this task. I was constantly chasing his appetite.

I ate the milk-production cookies, I got a tincture from my naturopath, I eventually went on Domperidone at the max dose (9 pills / day) just to make enough. The pills did finally work, or perhaps a combination of the cookies, drinks and pills - to this day, I have no idea. Something was increasing my production, and I didn’t want to risk it dropping so I just kept doing all of the things. Ummm, it sucked. That feeling — that pressure. If I had a low pump session, it would put me in such a bad mood. If I had a higher pump session, I would feel so proud. I was constantly evaluating what I was eating, what I might be doing wrong or right. It’s ridiculous, as I’m revisiting it all! And sure, I would have just put Hugo on all formula had his stomach been able to manage it. But he would spit up more, have more discomfort and constipation when we did.

Guillermo just walked in as I’m writing this and asked why I look so stressed - haha.

Here we are now at 9 months. A little over a month ago, I stopped pumping. I weaned off the pills, stopped eating the damn cookies and my milk production came down to a halt. With tremendous gratitude, we continue to collect donated milk from overproducing mothers, and Hugo’s bottles are about half donated milk and half formula now. Only 3 more months to go, and this wild journey will be over.

I wanted to share this rather complicated experience because breastfeeding, or FEEDING, no matter what route you choose can be incredibly hard. It can be overwhelmingly stressful. And that stress, especially as I look back on it now, can be very toxic and such a spoil to what is in so many ways one of the most beautiful experiences of life. Growing with, and growing a new baby.

Nothing is as simple as it seemed ahead of having a baby. None of it. But, and I really do mean this, the highs are the highest I’ve ever felt and the feeling of being a mother outweighs anything I imagined life had in store for me. Through my fatigue, I am grateful for this every day.

A Rested Baby!

I want to share our journey with Hugo’s sleep habits.

I’d like to start by mentioning that you never know what kind of mother you’re going to be. I love structure and control. I’m a personal trainer - duh. I assumed I’d be back at work after 6 weeks, after Hugo. That we’d follow a sleeping plan. That I’d be able to dial down my emotions to follow a system that would make our lives easier. Well… Here I am at almost 9 months postpartum. I can’t imagine leaving Hugo for full days, and I really succumbed to my tenderness and let the baby take the lead for the most part of motherhood. As an aside, parenting will absolutely present you with the challenge and change that you will recognize, perhaps in retrospect, that you deeply need.

So. Here I was thinking Hugo would be in his crib in his room after a few weeks. And low and behold, we co-slept for 6.5 months. You begin to learn as a mother that your gut is your strongest attribute. You have to move along in a way that feels right for you. Dial down the outside noise, turn up that gut volume. I don’t have any regrets about sleeping beside Hugo for 6.5 months. It worked for us… until it simply didn’t. Sure, I was feeding too often during the night. He was waking frequently. In the beginning, your magic hormones somehow have you powering through your days on very little sleep and not terribly affected. But I guess they start to dwindle, that and the whole frequent-feeding-on-demand system feels no longer necessary, and just like a habit. I knew he wasn’t needing these feeds, and it was time to start to establish a better routine.

I didn’t know where to start. There are dozens of reputable specialists and programs to choose from. But from my experience, purchasing a high-profile plan does not work well for me. I wanted to speak with a human, I wanted a customized path. An adaptive, empathetic approach.

(A client couriered me the Taking CaraBabies manual, but I stopped reading at “your child may cry for 140 minutes the first or second night.” Much thanks to him, but it just wasn’t right for us.)

I needed a grey area between crying it out and co-sleeping. I needed my approach to align with my gut, but with professional direction. I didn’t want an e-book, and I didn’t want a full on consultant who comes and takes over, and costs in the thousands. I posted on the Rebel Mamas Facebook Group and got more responses than I could manage to investigate.

Maila of Sleep Secrets wrote me a message, and her introduction touched on the details I was after. Little to no stress for the baby. No crying it out. It is perfectly doable. Here are my packages. “This is the one for us,” I decided.

We had an introduction call, and had instant rapport. She was calm and confident, and clearly experienced. She aligned with my feelings about keeping stresses low and transitions courteous. She knew I wanted to be responsive, for Hugo to know we were always there and he didn’t just have to figure this out on his own. We chose a $250 package that featured a customized plan and 4 weekly phone calls.

We filled out a questionnaire answering all about our current routine and habits, as well as outlining our goals.

We had been:

• winging it!

• no solid bedtime / sleep routine

• skipping a third nap, following Hugo’s lead (he didn’t know what he needed!)

• waiting for his evening energy to die down before bed

• co-sleeping

• feeding on demand

Our goals were:

• get him sleeping in his crib

• get him sleeping in his own room

• fewer night wakings

• to feel as little stress and separation as humanly possible

We recruited Maila days before Christmas, and Hugo had his first full night in the crib on Christmas Eve. At my parents’ house, no less! How nice it was for Guillermo and I to wake up Christmas morning having had the bed to ourselves for the first time in about 7 months, and to a very rested, happy baby!

Maila helped us to identify that Hugo’s evening energy was a result of being overtired. His wake windows were too stretched out. By making sure he was tired for bed, we were in fact setting ourselves up for failure. The more rested the baby is, the better the baby rests. Hugo needed customized wake windows because he tends to need more sleep in the first half of the day. But by adding this third nap back in, following recommended wake windows to a tee and establishing a solid wake routine, we saw a complete change in our baby.

Before every nap and every bedtime, we read 3 books to Hugo, turn on the sound machine and sing 2-3 songs. Because of the wake windows, we found his sweet spots for naps and sleep and the process worked surprisingly seamlessly. I believe that by having co-slept for so long, we established a great feeling of security and stability in our son. He was happy, confident and felt safe. So when we transitioned into promoting independent sleep, he felt ready.

By two weeks, Hugo was sleeping in his crib, in his own room.

These days, he is going to bed between 6pm-7pm, and waking once for a feed around 4-5am. I am okay with this, as I think it’s difficult for most people to go 12 hours without a feed, let alone tiny, rapidly-growing humans! He is using a soother to get to sleep. This is another “sleep crutch”, but one I didn’t feel right taking away. I tried for two naps one day, and he was choke-crying wondering why such a sudden change. He is still a wee guy who seeks some extra comfort, while sleeping alone in a crib and alone in a room. We left the soother for now, and just hope we won’t have a terrible time removing it at a later date. He often spits it out after falling asleep, but does pop it back in when he wakes throughout the night. Again, Maila can coach to having zero night feeds at this age and to avoiding the use of a soother, but she worked within our comfort level with zero judgments about what we preferred to do.

Recently, Hugo has started transitioning to 2 daily naps and I had no bloody idea how to shuffle things around. After a couple of clumsy, disorderly and grouchy-baby days, I got on a follow-up call with Maila and she ironed out our windows and plan for us again. Boom - it worked.

This is our experience so far with Hugo’s sleep. I can’t stress enough how dramatically his personality changed when he started sleeping better. When he’s grouchy, I have an underlying stress and difficulty getting through the days. When he’s rested and relaxed, life is a dream. If you’re feeling a bit stuck or stumped, I definitely recommend reaching out for some professional guidance.

Happy baby, happy life. For real.

Our "Colic" Fixes

For about a month, Hugo had these bouts of the hardest crying I have ever witnessed. It would last about two hours, every night around or after 6pm, and he was unconsolable. We tried everything I could think of.

“Colic” is an umbrella term that refers to hard crying lasting 3 hours or longer. It does not explain the source of the crying, the emotion involved, or the discomfort. Another term for it is “purple crying.” (Accurate, as their faces almost turn purple.) My niece, a preemie nurse sent me this article about purple crying, meant to help us feel better in that a) he won’t hurt himself and b) we were not doing anything wrong. It was helpful, but I still felt uncomfortable accepting that given how common babies are (uhhh we’ve all been one, so many of us have or will have them), we understand so little about these frantic expressions of discontentment.

I read about 100 articles. I searched and searched every chance I got for any new information. How can we have so many solutions to so many things in life, and not this agony? Watching your sweet baby scream until his eyes are red is a certain form of hell.

Now, the biggest thing I’ve learned while being a mother in this short time is that no one thing that works for one mother works for every mother. So although the community and the forums share their tips, it doesn’t mean they will work for your baby. Every baby is so vastly different, and the grey area of baby care is the most vast area of real life I’ve ever witnessed. Truly. It is the least black and white area of all. THERE ARE NO TRUE ANSWERS that you don’t have to try out, flop around with, fail with some and hopefully win at a few, too.

That said, I’m going to share what attempts we made to soothe his crying spells. On some nights, some of these things worked. Some of the nights, none of these things worked. I cycled through all of my “solutions” until something clicked. After visiting the naturopath and sticking Hugo on a homeopathic, the pattern more or less stopped. Coincidence? Who knows. But at 12.5 weeks, Hugo no longer has this habitual crying attack in the evenings.

1) I made a playlist of cello or piano music, brought us to a dim-lit room and tried to soothe him with side-lying feeding. It makes sense that the colic was spurred, on some days, from a complete overwhelm or overstimulation. Every day things are brand new for a developing baby, and the parents are the only reassuring constant. Imagine living in a world where your stability shifts every single day? Your vision changes and sharpens, shapes appear… How terrifying. Having a ritual of soothing music, the mother’s scent and warmth, and fresh food proved a helpful interruption to his upset.

2) Guillermo would lightly bounce on a stability ball in the evenings. We still do this sometimes. With my prolapse, I sit this out. It also allows us to share the duties - essential because the crying is so exasperating, and both parents will need a break to recollect their cool.

3) Speaking of keeping your cool, this is a point of its own. On days where I felt more stress, discomfort in my body, anxiety of any kind, Hugo’s crying was noticeably more intense. Pass him to the more calm parent, and work on easing your own psychological discord to bring down the baby’s intensity. Trust me, you’ll benefit too, so do the work for yourself.

4) Obviously, gut pain is a real thing for babies. We did a lot of playing around with what he was consuming to make sure it was optimal and he wasn’t too agonized by gas. My milk production is mediocre, so figuring out feeding took quite a while. The balance we eventually struck was: I take domperidone and eat lactation cookies to boost production/speed, and pump a few bottles per day. I also breastfeed exclusively overnight, so that he’s not chugging bottles and then going right back to sleep (all overnight feeds are dreamfeeds, he doesn’t full wake up). I avoid gluten and dairy - and spicy tomato anything. We learned that the hard way! It was proven time and time again. We’ve supplemented with donor milk for the days when he rejected breasfeeding during the day, preferring bottles - and I couldn’t keep up with him. Since our donor has a bit of dairy, we also kept Holle Goat Milk formula on hand. His allergies and intolerances are still a bit of a mystery, but I’m almost positive now that dairy is a major issue and gluten isn’t awesome, either. I’ve always more or less avoided dairy and gluten, but had some flexibility. Now, I’ve had to become more strict for his sake.

5) My naturopath, Rachel Schwartzman, is a mother of 3, a doula and an absolute natural healthcare wizard. She is supremely experienced and educated. We followed her advice of castor oil belly rubs daily and giving him a homeopathic. The day after we started the homeopathic (crushed up and soaked in milk), the consistent screaming attacks stopped. Seriously. I also drink fennel tea, even though I hate the taste. Anything for Hugo!

6) We take a bath with him! This has been my favourite. A friend recommended this ages ago, and I wasn’t keen to try. It was only when I desperately and unthinkingly turned on the tub tap during a crying episode, noted his IMMEDIATE calm, that we decided to try it. Guillermo did it first. Hugo not only calmed, but delighted in the experience. I now do it every few baths :) and he’s the cutest little guy learning to splash around in there now.

Once you have a screaming baby, you know you will try anything to bring them back to peace & happiness. Just in case any of my ideas may help you, I felt it best to share. If you have any ideas for others, please leave them in the comments section! And best of luck to my fellow parents. This shit is so beautiful, and it’s also no walk in the park!

6 Weeks of Hugo

Whoa. What a hurricane of emotion the past six weeks have been!

First of all, the love. Man oh man the love for this human who never used to exist before, then was the size of a poppyseed, then kicked and kicked his way to 9 months. Watching him change and develop over the past six weeks has been mind blowing. He really does have a personality.

I keep feeling in such awe of reproduction in general. It feels so insane, the wildest thing that exists in life to GROW a LIFE inside your body. Sustain it with your body. Watch him become, feel and think. And yet, it’s the most common thing there is - it’s how all of us got here. It blows my mind still, every day.

I know many struggle with reproduction and I assumed I’d be one. If not physically, I at least assumed I’d be held up psychologically. I have a history of sexual assault, and had a difficult time in some relationships. More recently, after a pretty bad relationship in my early 30s, I really struggled with dating and couldn’t for the life of me imagine being comfortable enough to share a bed, let alone a life with someone. I figured I’d be crippled in this area for life, so I went on focusing on my love for training, and floundering in my personal life. I always worried, during this time, that I’d never be able to be a mother. I’d never get the chance because I’d never feel at ease alongside a partner ever again.

Long story short, a few sessions with a wonderful therapist helped me to untangle the discord I had within. I became increasingly honest with myself, and also self-compassionate which had always been amiss on a deeper level. When I met Guillermo, we were both warm and kind, present and honest, transparent and ready to give life our all. I have to say, we’ve had about two arguments in our relationship, which in my experience is pretty damn good. Great things can happen when you really face your own sh*t (we’ve all got some), and get optimistic and forthright.

I felt uncomfortable at first sharing my pregnancy, and my experience with birth and motherhood because I know that there are couples out there, and women especially, who are unable to carry. I tend to anticipate this kind of reception early enough to keep me from celebrating things in my life sometimes, and I realize that’s not really helpful either. It’s important that we all be earnest. That we be empathetic toward one another, and also as happy as we possibly can be. In short, to always feel it all.

What a perfect segway to direct this post back to early motherhood: FEELING IT ALL.

Hormones, yep - sure. But I haven’t quite come to grips with the pain I feel when the baby is screaming with gas pain. When I can’t perfect my approach to make sure he feels 100% delightful at every moment. When he is crying in pain, I try my best to stay strong, sweet and calm. But occasionally, I thrust him at Guillermo and break down completely. What am I eating that is ripping his gut apart like this? How do you possibly deal with the guilt of physically hurting a tiny, vulnerable, sweet little human? Man, it’s tough. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been through.

His smiles lift me higher than anything, his cries feel like absolute torture. This is, I’ve decided, what is the most exhausting part of motherhood.

ALL. THE. FEELINGS. All the time.

Well, I did decide this platform could be more of an unbridled ramble than a concise and well-written fitness blog. Here we have it.

Early motherhood is not a straight road, there are no clear and sure resolutions. Every win is flimsy and short-lived, and thus the path is jagged, staggered and as fussy as Hugo is. There is no thesis.

There is so much beauty in the wild, though. So much.

{Speaking of beauty, my next post will be on the 3 min makeup routine I’ve discovered that perks me up in the one long, never-ending frumpy day I live while tending baby :) }

Birth

Welcoming my first baby boy

Welcome.

In the weeks leading up to the birth of our son, Hugo Elliot Garcia, I wanted to give myself a new platform on which to share. The main reason being that I knew with the morphing of my life, I could expect my business to become adaptive as well. Rather than swarm my business site, thechangetraining.com with a ton of more personal content, I wanted to create a new space that felt more representative of my personal life and family space. Over here, I will be unbridled and unrestricted, allowing my personal and business lives to merge and evolve as they will naturally.

I went into labour on May 26th around 7:30pm, ironically at a last-minute midwife appointment. I had asked her to check my amniotic fluid. On the drive there, I was having cramps. On the way home, they intensified and were swiftly 5 minutes apart. Over the next few hours they edged 3 minutes apart and became incredibly painful. This was surprising, as I figured given my excruciating menstrual cramps pre-pregnancy, I expected to excel (!) at pre-labour without much fuss. Now, how to make a long story somewhat short? With the addition of strange bleeding, Guillermo and I went to hospital forcing the midwife to meet us there around 11:30pm. Despite being at about a 7/10 for pain, I was only 1cm dilated! The midwife gave me a shot of gravol, told me to go home and try my best to sleep, and page again in the morning. I was in so much pain I vomited in the parking garage on the way back to the car. Oops! The gravol helped me to sleep for 2 minutes at a time, in between my 3-minutes-apart contractions, until 8am.

At 8am on May 27th, I was in so much pain I decided to go to the hospital and start pain meds.

Now, the funny part is that I was completely prepared for an unmedicated, birth centre birth! I had read so much information and so many birth stories leading up to Hugo’s birth, planning my brain to handle the “waves” of labour. For whatever reason, pre-labour contractions were intolerable. I had never felt anything like them. I describe them to Guillermo as some stinging, shrieking, metallic pain. Now, I know for a fact that this is not common. Most people hit hard pain around the 6-8cm point.

So here we are, the morning of May 27th, 2 cm dilated and getting an epidural. I felt like such a wuss! But man - once the epidural kicked in, I was so glad I had gone to hospital. And it’s a great thing that we did, because there were a few more problems that followed over the course of the day.

Guillermo and the midwife and I kind of hung out, for hours. We chatted, waited, watched as things shifted. Unfortunately the epidural slowed the dilation, so the midwife applied some oxytocin to get things moving. By about 4cm, she opted to break my waters. And low and behold, the baby had had his first bowel movement in the amniotic fluid, called meconium. This can cause lung and breathing problems after birth, so we had the Resuscitation Team on standby to come help him once he arrived. The oxytocin used to counter the epidural began to slow the baby’s heart rate, so we had to shuffle meds for the right balance to move things along, but to keep the baby healthy.

Around 5:30pm, I was 9.5 cm dilated and it was go time. I was suddenly super nervous, but I couldn’t feel any pain. Zero. I was surprised at this, I assumed I’d still feel SOME pain! We started to push. I was cued to tuck my chin, untuck my pelvis, push and hold my breath for 15 seconds. This went against everything I read about effective pushing. I wanted to use my core, use my breathing, open my pelvic floor. These cues went against my understanding of physiology, and I had a terrible time following instruction in a way that felt progressive. His head would come down, and whip back up, over and over. Not only that, I felt like my head was going to explode. I had so much head pressure, that my heart rate was up at 165bmp and I started throwing up suddenly. Guillermo, by the way, could see everything. He was helping me push, watching me bleed everywhere, catching my vomit in a small bowl, and being an overall impressive hero who had formerly been terrified of the tiniest splatter of blood!

I initiated trying other positions to push, but the fetal heart rate monitor kept sliding off and the midwives were irked by my attempts. And gave up and persisted under their direction. (Ugh.)

Finally, Hugo came out! However, this moment wasn’t the glorious moment we see in the movies. His head was badly cone-shaped from the may failed attempts, but more importantly his head was purple and his body was limp. He was barely breathing, barely grunting. They got him to the RT right away, and I watched my baby in the corner struggle to breathe. Guillermo and I tried not to panic. I had seen this scene in tv shows and in the movies. The baby can be okay. He will be fine. But, I couldn’t celebrate. They tried to pass him back for skin-to-skin, but he still was grunting for breath and the midwife was asking me to push my placenta out at the same time. I asked them to take the baby and help him.

The most physically uncomfortable part of the day had yet to begin. My placenta, after 40 minutes, was still not detaching. The baby was in another area with the RT, on a CPAC machine. Guillermo was checking on him, and I was trying to focus on getting my placenta out. Sadly, it had to be removed by an OB fellow (no one else was available, and even he could not arrive until 2 hours after birth).

Two hours after birth, I had an OB fellow reach his entire forearm inside me and begin manually removing my placenta. Um, it did not come out easily. He struggled, and he was surprised. Blood everywhere.

Without a doubt, this was not what I expected for my birth. In fact, nothing in early motherhood has been what I expected. I will share the first month of motherhood in my next post. But what I will say is that I was ready for challenge, I was ready for a life-changing love. And a life-changing love in the greatest capacity is exactly what was to come of this day.

May 27th, 6:27pm, my favourite new human turned me on my head (almost literally). Welcome, sweet boy.