Moriah's Birth Story

We had just got the boys down and were watching the Rangers play in the World Series. Around 9:30pm I had a couple of contractions that caused me to take some deep breaths. I went to bed to see if they would progress. Sure enough, they did. They continued to get stronger but stayed 10ish minutes apart. I called the midwife around 11:15pm and told her they were strong but still pretty far apart. Our doula and birth photographer were on their way. Everyone arrived around 1 am.

Contractions remained 8-10 minutes apart for the next four hours. We turned the lights off and rested for some of that. At 5am I had a contraction that made Carmen jump up and turn on the lights saying “We are about to have a baby!” Amazing to me that she can tell by the sounds you make during a contraction on how close we are to having a baby!! Talk about mad skills and lots of experience!! We welcomed Moriah Elizabeth at precisely 6am on October 29th. I pushed for 9 minutes which was really intense because it went so fast.

It was my first home birth (my other two were at the birth center) and it was beautiful. It was everything I prayed for. One of my favorite parts of birthing with a midwifery team is the after-birth hang-out sesh that takes place, oohhhing and ahhhing over the new life with people who often become your friends along the way. My midwife happens to be a dear friend who has caught all three of my babies. We were all crying after Moriah arrived. Such a sweet moment I won’t ever forget. Shiane and Zep (our little dog) became the best of friends by the end of it!

A little extra information about events leading up to her birth, if you care to keep reading. We were 41 weeks and 2 days and had a lot of sickness in our home the prior two weeks. The morning of October 28th the man who has counseled our family through many many things asked my mom if Moriah was here yet. Mom told him no and he asked what the problem was. She said well we don’t know and began to tell him about the sickness in our home and how it had been a little hectic with us being up a lot at night with the other two boys and a few different things. He said she doesn’t feel like there is a space ready for her. He advised Niraj and I to tell her that we were ready for her to come home. So we did. I cried a lot and processed some of the events that took place. I even went that morning and bought her a special blanket and a little pink bunny. I went into labor that evening at 930pm.

I tell that to share how powerful our thoughts, words, environment, and emotions are specifically, in this situation, relating to birth/labor and the unborn baby. Because we had said multiple times over the 2 weeks leading up to her birth things like “Well good thing she didn’t come yesterday because we were up all night.” Not in any way meaning we didn’t want her here or want her, obviously, but insinuating that it was easier to navigate the situation at hand without a newborn. Therefore, she was waiting until there was a space, made ready, for her arrival.

GI TRACT Structure and Function

Birth Control - Connecting the Dots

Data collected in 2015-2017 from the CDC states that 69.4% of women ages 15-49 are on some form of contraceptive. That is 46.9 million of the 72.2 million women in the United States.

On May 9, 1960 the FDA approved the very first birth control pill. Making it the first prescription drug approved that did not treat a disease. Development of birth control was initially commissioned by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.

There are different kinds of birth control, such as sterility, the pill, IUD, etc. Each of which come with a different set of problems. I am going to talk specifically about the pill because second to sterility it is the most commonly used form.

How birth control works is it prevents a woman from ovulating. A woman should ovulate one time a month and this has to take place in order to become pregnant. Bear with me as we dive into the physiology a bit. The more you understand about how your body works the better advocate you will become for you and your families health. My hope is that you will walk away from reading this article with a deeper confidence about how your body was designed to function. It was made for health not disease. It was made to thrive not to just survive.

Progestins and estrogens in birth control work synergistically to prevent ovulation. They interfere with the release of gonadotrophin releasing hormone from the hypothalamus and suppress gonadotropin-producing cells from the pituitary gland. GnRH (gonadotrophin releasing hormone) is released from the hypothalamus in response to activity from limbic lobe of the brain. A few things the limbic lobe is responsible for are emotions, memory, mood, sensory input, smell, sex drive, and numerous other things. You can start to see how suppressing GnRH has catastrophic effects on the body as a whole. One study noted that it actually changes brain activity after just one treatment cycle.

Now that we have somewhat of a foundational understanding on birth control let’s take a bird’s eye view of how preventing ovulation takes a toll on the body. Estrogen is the hormone that is released during the first phase of a woman’s cycle. This hormone plumps up the wall of the uterus getting it ready for implantation of an egg. It is also our social hormone. Plan all of your social events/gatherings for the first 2-3 weeks of your cycle. After that progesterone comes into play which is the hormone that causes the uterus to either continue growing a baby if the egg implants or to shed the uterus if it does not. This is the time of your cycle where you are more introspective and tend to be more introverted. Birth control pills are overdosing your body on estrogen causing a woman to be estrogen dominant. Just duckduckgo (a search engine alternative) estrogen dominance and see what all comes up. I don’t have time or space to go into that here.

• Estrogen Dominance

  • Irritable Bowel Syndrome

  • Autoimmune disease

  • Thyroid Issues

  • Candida overgrowth

  • Weight Gain

  • Liver Overload - which leads to vitamin and mineral deficiencies

  • Migraines

  • Mood Swings

So what is a girl to do if she doesn’t want all the babies right now? Even though I bet seeing this sweet picture just gave you a little baby fever.

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What to do instead?

1. Whether you are looking for alternatives to birth control or not every girl as soon as they start their period should be handed the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility. It teaches you all the things about your cycle and what a healthy one looks like.

2. Natural Family Planning Method - this is what that book will teach you to do through tracking temperatures, cervical mucus, and other things.

3. Cervical Diaphragm

4. Smart Women’s Choice

5. Beyond The Pill - A book to grab if you have been on the pill and want to get off

There is so much more I could write about birth control I might just have to do a saga to this blog post. We shall see.

Everest Niraj-Jude Patel Birth Story

Starting at 8:00am the morning of December 29th I started taking a tsp of castor oil and rubbing clary sage and jasmine on my ankles/belly. Right before my mom left for her massage I had what I thought could possibly be mild (super mild) contractions. I told her to go ahead and go, and that it wasn’t anything. Probably just some braxton hicks. After the fact, she said she knew then that I was in labor. It was a beautiful day so I took Zion out to play in his sandbox and turned my birth playlist on. I was 2 days past my due date so like any mama who has gone past her due date I was beyond ready to meet that sweet dumpling that had been growing inside me for 9 months.

At 9:30pm I went to bed and Niraj came shortly after that at 10:30pm. When he got in bed I said “I think I have been having some rhythmic contractions since I laid down, I am going to time them.” Sure enough I had three contractions that were eight minutes apart. Right after that my water broke (which did not happen until I was pushing with Zion, so that was new for me) and contractions quickly dropped to two minutes apart and got fairly intense. We called Sarah (the best doula and soon to be midwife on the planet) and she arrived at 11pm. She watched one contraction and said it was time to head to the birth center. So we loaded up and got to the birth center at 11:30pm.

Carmen (God’s gift to all the mamas wanting an unmedicated out of hospital birth in West Texas) took my blood pressure and said I was dehydrated. I pulled out the Ningxia and water and started chugging. At the same time this was happening, Sarah and Britney (birth photographer, friend, and now doula!) started filling the tub.

There are moments in labor that are hard. They require you to dig deep and find strength to see it through to the end. There are also moments of laughter, yes I said it, laughter, in between contractions up until I held the baby in my arms we would laugh, smile, and talk about normal life things. The discomfort of labor is real but so are all the other feelings and emotions. There are moments of pain, moments of doubt, moments of joy, moments of laughter and everything in between.

Pushing Phase

This is where pushing started but first let’s talk about the tub full of warm water and how amazing it is for labor. Studies have shown that water significantly reduces labor pain. It also gives a laboring woman the ability to move more freely. If you have never labored in water I suggest giving it a shot your next go around. It is incredible.

A lot of women really enjoy the pushing phase because they feel like they are able to actually do something instead of contractions just being done to them with no real control. I on the other hand do not particularly enjoy the pushing phase. It is just the most bizarre feeling to me. The pressure in the lower sacrum/buttock area is insane and I am not a fan. People always talked about the “ring of fire”, to me that has nothing on the freight train that passes over the sacrum. I pushed for a little over 20 minutes compared to three and a half hours with Zion. It was magical. We got to the birth center at 11:30pm, had Everest at 1:38am and we were home in our own beds by 4:30am.

These are the moments, right after birth, when it feels like God let me see a small glimpse of what heaven will feel like. When all the hardship, the pain, the birthing pains, the achy joints, seem so dim in comparison to that fresh life laying in my arms. There are so many parallels to birth and labor in scripture. It is one of the reasons (among many others) that I wanted to experience an unmedicated labor and birth for myself. I didn’t want to be disconnected from any part of it. I wanted the messy hair, the crazy eyebrows, no make up because it had been washed or sweated off. That after birth high is something no drug can rival. It is incredible.

In the top picture where Carmen was about to weigh Everest I remember saying “I think he is going to be cold” Carmen said “I have him a heating pad under the weighing thing.” I told my mom, that (along with a million other things) is the reason I choose Carmen and the Heartbeat team. Because they care for not only me but for my baby.

It never really went through my head to do it any other way than with a midwife at a birthing center or at home. I knew I wanted an unmedicated birth, therefore, I was going to choose the practitioner who was most skilled at helping me achieve that outcome. It has been the best experience of our life, both my husband and I. Niraj told Carmen at our last appointment that if she ever moved we would drive to wherever she went to have her deliver any future babies God blesses us with.

This is Everest receiving his first adjustment just minutes after being born. One of his reflexes was a little slow on the exam, Carmen handed him to me and said he probably just needs an adjustment. I adjusted him and he passed it with flying colors. Also, another reason I love Carmen and her team, they get the chiropractic way of life.