033 - How God Gave Us Indiana (with Christopher Heeter)

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SHOW NOTES:

A tale of two stories, Parosmia and Pregnancy, and how they affected each other. This story is a very emotional one for me. I know I forgot to mention some things and yet it’s our longest episode to date. I missed details here and there, and likely missed some feelings that would have helped add to the context of the story, but I pray the Holy Spirit speaks through my husband and I, and that He’s able to work through this very vulnerable piece. Thank you in advance for your patience and grace as I navigated telling this story in full for the first time. 

If you'd rather read the story, or if you like seeing pictures to go with what you're hearing about, check out his story (and all of my children's birth stories) by clicking here.  

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Surrendered Birth Stories.

Birth Stories, Birth Education, and the Pursuit of Surrendering It All to God.

Let's get started.

Today's the day, it's finally here, which is crazy, crazy, crazy to me.

My son, Indy, will be six months tomorrow.

Well, if you're listening to this, the day it comes out, which just blows my mind.

How does time move so fast?

And I feel like the more kids you have, the faster it moves somehow.

What is that about?

I don't know, but it's here.

And this story, it was so hard for me to tell.

And I know I did not tell it perfectly.

And I know that pieces and little details here and there are missing.

I just had a really hard time telling it.

I had a really hard time writing it because I wrote it first.

And I just have this tiny, tiny, little blog that literally only has my children's birth stories on it.

And that's it, just because I needed a place to house them.

And you can read that.

I put that link in the show notes.

So if you're more of a reader and you like to read stories rather than listen, their birth stories are there.

And now Indiana's is there too, especially if you like seeing pictures.

Because I do have pictures of their birth stories on the blog where you can read it.

So that's always fun.

But I had a really hard time writing it, and I knew I was going to have a hard time telling it.

And it's not that I was so overly emotional while I was doing it.

It's just like, I have this story in my head and in my heart and in my soul, and I cannot figure out how to tell it the way that I feel it, if that makes any sense at all.

And even after Chris and I recorded it, which took a long time.

I mean, it's a long story.

But even after we recorded it, I just felt like, no, that's not it.

Like, I know I told it in its entirety to the best of my ability.

But I just, I don't know.

Maybe it'll just never feel right or never feel perfect.

But I don't know.

There's just something different about them.

This one feels differently than all of my others telling this story does.

It was not as easy to tell, and it was not as easy to get out.

And it still just feels incomplete somehow.

And it feels like I just didn't get my true heart across somehow.

So with all of that being said, I appreciate your grace as you listen to this.

It's just not maybe what anybody expected, especially, especially me.

So thank you all.

Thank you for everything.

My sweet baby is six months old, and today you will finally be hearing his story.

And I pray that somehow the Holy Spirit can speak through it, in some way, shape, or form, and then God could use it for good somehow.

Hi, babe.

What's up, lady?

Welcome back.

You know, it's good to be back, quite honestly, especially considering the subject matter of today.

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

No birthy questions for you today, just a story.

Just, yeah, recollection.

And also, I just like sitting across from you.

Oh, I can touch your foot.

Yeah, some people don't like hearing that.

Little known fact about Chris Heeter, his feet don't smell.

They don't smell.

It's so strange.

I don't know the phenomena.

Like, I don't understand, but I figured it out when we were dating, and we went to Cedar Point in Ohio for the day.

And, you know, you're walking around a theme park all day.

And we even, I think, went on one of those like log rides and got wet and, I mean, wet socks, stinky shoes.

I mean, and you took your shoes off, and your feet didn't smell at all.

And mine were terrible, but yours didn't smell.

Yeah, that's a strange phenomenon, I guess.

I count myself blessed, I suppose.

And me too, because I married you.

Okay, this is honestly going to be the first time I have ever told this story, which is crazy to me.

But here we are, it's finally here.

I don't know if I'll cry or what, but let's do it.

We could play Cry Me a River by Justin Timberlake.

Oh, my 14 year old crush.

And then I came along.

And then you came along and said, who's JT?

Who's that?

I want Chris Heeter.

I brought sexy back.

So my birth stories tend to pick up where the last one left off, meaning like after the birth of my last child.

So you know, if you've been listening to this at all, that we have four kids.

And after our fourth one, his name is True.

After True was born, that whole pregnancy, I had been very vocal about the fact that he was absolutely our last child.

But I also was pretty vocal about it with Milo and Jensen's pregnancies as well.

So I guess I was like crying wolf at that point.

But I mean, I even like declined my rogamp shot.

Like I was just like, nope, this is it.

We are done, no more babies.

Primarily because of the misery of pregnancy for me and just how awful and hard it is on my body.

So it was about two days postpartum after I had true.

And every time I have a baby and my milk comes in, I have that huge rush of hormones and I just sob for two hours about something insignificant, like no big deal or I don't even know why I'm crying, but it's always like, oh yes, here comes my milk.

Here come the hormones, the emotions, it all comes together.

And this time I was in the bathroom, just changing my depends and using my Peri bottle, the whole glamorous life of postpartum.

And I started uncontrollably sobbing to the point where my kids rushed in and thought I was throwing up because I was crying so hard.

It was just uncontrollable.

And I was crying because I was grieving the fact that I would never get to do this again, that I would never get to have another child, never get to be pregnant again and deliver that child and birth that baby again.

And yet I had a two-day-old in the next room, but I was already grieving it being over.

And I think that was my first indicator that it wasn't over.

I slightly remember that.

But anytime that you go into a bathroom and cry around the time, like whether you're pregnant or just had a baby, maybe I just, my husband intuition kicks in, and I'm just highly concerned trying to figure out what's going on.

But I think that you just wanted to be by yourself.

I did.

I definitely wanted to be by myself in that moment.

It's not something that I can come out and say to you, I want to have another baby, when I'm two days postpartum.

Anyways, so that happened.

Now, this is really, I'll say, a tale of two stories.

These are two stories intertwined.

Not two births, not two babies.

But this is how Indie came to be, how God gave us Indie intertwined with the most difficult thing I've ever dealt with in my life.

That what we had true in the spring of 2021, April of 2021.

So fast forward to the end of the summer, it's August.

And I ended up getting COVID for the first and only time to my recollection.

And I didn't get that sick in terms of like sickness.

I had some allergy symptoms one day.

And then I was just super stressed out.

So I was going back to work after maternity leave.

My daughter was getting ready to start school.

And there was this whole debate of whether or not she was going to have to wear a mask, which was a big deal in our family.

It was going to be True's first day in daycare.

And when I got to the office, it was the air conditioning was broken and it was like 90 degrees in the office.

And I mean, it was just, it was a hot mess of a day and I was so stressed and I wasn't sleeping like at all.

That's when True was going through his four month sleep regression.

He was sleeping 45 minutes at a time.

And so I was sleeping about 20 minutes at a time and it was terrible.

It's like one thing piled on top of another, on top of another.

Yes.

And it was awful.

You were so stressed.

I was so stressed.

And so, and I didn't know that I was sick.

Like I didn't know that I had COVID, but apparently I did, you know, but I was just really stressed and really sleep deprived.

So I don't think I even recognized it.

Well, Milo threw up that day at preschool.

And so I ended up staying home the next day.

And it was funny.

Cause it was like, I went to work for like one day and then I, you know, was already staying home with a sick child.

Well, I took like a detox bath and I took a nap, which was amazing cause true was that daycare.

And I ended up getting out of that bath.

After that nap in that bath, I felt so much better.

I got up, I made dinner.

And the way we figured out I had COVID was I could not smell or taste our super garlicky dinner that night.

Wow, I'm giving too many details.

I'm going to speed this up.

So, okay, so I got COVID.

Okay, lost my taste and smell.

But the important thing is, is that I lost my taste and smell not just for a day, not just for two days or a week or two weeks, like all of my other friends who had recently gotten it, mine just didn't come back.

And so I was like, huh, this is really strange.

Like it's been a month now and I still can't smell or taste anything at all.

And at first it was cool because it was like, I'm just going to eat really healthy and I'm going to have green smoothies that taste nasty in real life.

But to me, I can pretend it's a milkshake and just that kind of stuff.

And I didn't mind changing poopy diapers or dealing with trash or dirty dishes.

It was, you know, I couldn't smell anything bad.

So it was cool.

But, you know, another month and another month and another month, and it just kind of becomes like, oh, am I ever going to get my taste and smell back?

Like, is this ever going to happen?

So then it was like right after Thanksgiving.

Let's see.

Yeah, I was making pancakes Thursday night, Thursday night pancakes.

That's what we do because you're always at rehearsal.

So we always do breakfast for dinner.

And I just habitually licked the batter with my finger that like got on my finger.

And I was like, whoa, that's so sweet.

Like it just tasted so sweet.

And I was like, this is it.

My taste and smell are coming back.

I'm so excited.

This is amazing.

And over the next week, I started noticing that I could like taste and smell certain things, but I just figured, you know, my body's trying to figure out how to do this again.

And it's coming back slowly, but surely here it comes.

Well, then came the night.

The night.

The night when I knew something was seriously wrong.

So we were having-

Elizabeth's pizza.

Yes, Elizabeth's pizza.

This is the second time that this has reared its head and on the podcast.

We talked about Elizabeth's pizza?

Yeah, this is the second time we've talked about Elizabeth's pizza.

Wow.

You and me.

I don't remember the first time, but okay.

So we had ordered in takeout for like a date night in, and the kids weren't my moms.

I remember except for True, of course, was in the other room.

And I went to go dip my bread in the garlic oil from Elizabeth's pizza.

And I was like, oh, this oil is rancid.

Like it's so nasty.

And just kind of was like, that's too bad.

Our loss.

Okay, whatever.

Well, then I went to take a bite of my salad and it was like a house salad with ranch dressing because they have really great house dressings.

I tasted it and I was like, oh, oh, this ranch is so bad.

Like it must be expired, you know, like it must be old, whatever.

Well, then I went to take a sip of my wine.

I took a sip of my wine and I was like, this tastes like gasoline.

Like this is terrible.

And at that point you were like, um, what?

I'm gonna taste test these things.

So you started tasting it all and you're like, tastes fine to me, everything's fine.

And so I was like, huh, okay, maybe this is just part of it.

This is part of my taste and smell coming back.

Some wires are crossed.

They'll figure it, we're shaking it out.

It's gonna be fine.

Like, cool, I'm getting it back.

It's gonna be fine.

It's gonna be fine.

It was not fine.

So over the course of the next month, I started not being able to eat more and more and more foods.

More and more and more foods were tasting horrible.

More and more and more smells were smelling terrible.

And I did not know what was going on.

I didn't know that what I had had a name.

So we had gone to visit our friends.

It was New Year's Day.

And so this all happened like over Christmas and stuff.

At New Year's Day, we went to visit our friends.

And I remember we got chipotle for everybody.

And I couldn't eat any of it.

Not even the tortilla chips.

Like I couldn't eat any.

I was just drinking water all day.

Oh, I do.

Just drinking water all day.

And mind you, I'm nursing, true.

So like I was a hungry woman, but I'm just drinking water.

And I was trying to explain to our friends what was going on.

And she said, oh my gosh, I know somebody who has what you're dealing with.

She said, I follow her on Instagram.

Why don't you go ahead and here's her profile.

Check out her stories.

Maybe she can tell you like, you know, how to get better or what you have and what's going on.

I was like, oh, yes, this is great.

This is amazing.

Okay, so they live like an hour and a half from us.

The whole way home, I'm reading this girl's highlights.

Her name is Hannah Higgins, okay?

And reading this girl's highlights.

And she's going to be on the podcast next week.

Actually, yes.

Hannah Higgins is going to be on the podcast next week, which is actually very intentional that I'm budding these two episodes next to each other.

So I'm reading her stories and it says, I mean, like months worth of stories that I'm reading here.

And I have all this hope.

And I'm like, yes, this is exactly what I have.

This is the same thing.

It's called Parasmia.

In the beginning, I was calling it Parasmia, because I didn't know how to pronounce it, but it's called Parasmia.

I was like, okay, it has a name, cool.

This is what I have.

It's like a smell and taste distortion.

And it is from COVID.

It's a long COVID symptom.

And so while my COVID sickness was insignificant, this long COVID symptom was very significant.

And I'm just reading, reading, reading.

I get to the end of her stories only to find out she still has Parasmia.

It hasn't gotten any better.

And she's had it for nine months.

And I'm like, what?

I mean, I came to you, Chris.

You were coming like, we just put all the kids to bed.

I just finished nursing true to sleep.

And I met you at the threshold of the garage door.

And I just fell into you and started sobbing because I was like, this isn't going away.

And this is my life now.

And I'm devastated.

Like I spent the next two weeks in bed under the covers, crying.

I couldn't eat food.

The only food I could eat in the very beginning was naan bread, like that Indian milk bread or whatever.

You know what I'm talking about?

I mean, I would eat like two to four pieces of that a day.

And that was it.

That was all I ate and just drank water.

And mind you, I'm nursing true, who does not take a bottle.

Like literally, we tried, trust me, fourth kid, I tried all the things, okay?

He refuses the bottle.

He will just go hungry.

So kid doesn't take a bottle.

He won't eat any solid food because his tongue ties so bad he can't swallow it.

So I am his only source of nourishment.

So he is like sucking me dry all day every day for him to sustain life.

And all I'm eating is naan bread and drinking water.

It was terrible.

I lost 40 pounds in less than two months.

It was, you know, okay, I had baby weight to lose.

So there's that.

So it's not like I became bones.

But at the same time, that's not at the rate at which you should lose 40 pounds or the way you should lose 40 pounds.

And I lost my period.

So my cycle went away.

I lost my sex drive.

I had like no libido left because I had, I think my hormones were so out of whack from just not eating food.

And I just, I was just sad to be alive almost.

Like it was the hardest, hardest thing that I have ever dealt with.

And it wasn't like, cause you know, when I had no taste and smell, at least like I could eat anything and I could be around anything, even though like it wasn't super fulfilling, like it wasn't terrible, but this was so much worse.

I was like, take me back, take me back to no taste and smell.

Take me back to when I couldn't smell anything at all.

But I think people also, they think it just affects food and that's it.

Like it's just your food that's affected, but it was every part of my life.

I could not brush my teeth with toothpaste because toothpaste tasted terrible and would make me throw up.

I could not wear deodorant because all deodorants smelled so terrible that I would make myself nauseous all day if I wore deodorant.

I couldn't kiss my husband because I know it was awful.

I couldn't kiss my husband because everybody's breath was so rancid.

It didn't matter whose breath it was, but it was everybody's breath.

So when my kids would run up to come and hug and kiss me and I'm like gagging, it was, I mean, it was terrible.

I couldn't do any sort of, now we don't do scented like laundry detergent or soap or any of that kind of stuff.

We took out fragrances from our house a while ago, years ago, but other people, like if other people had any sort of fragrance on them, I mean, it was awful.

Oh, you know that person who walks in, you can tell that they use heavy fabric softener.

Yeah, it smelled like, honestly, and it still does to this day, smell like stale cigarette smoke.

But it's funny because I couldn't smell cigarette smoke.

So that was just like a really strange thing.

I could not smell, I still cannot smell fresh cut grass, the smell of rain, all that kind of stuff.

So it was like, those smells just didn't have a smell at all.

Well, now kind of, some of them have smells now, but they're not right.

They are not the correct smells.

So it was like, it wasn't just food.

It was all smells, all tastes, everything.

And it like, Chris, at night, I would have to put body pillows between us and turn the other way.

I do remember that.

Yep.

I felt so far away from you.

I know.

I mean, it was terrible.

And like people did not get it.

Like people did not understand.

And I think a lot of people still don't.

What were some of their responses?

Well, they would be like, oh yeah, like I lost my taste in small too.

And yeah, it was weird when mine came back too.

Like, I mean, I couldn't catch up.

It was so strange.

Or like, yeah, coffee tasted weird when it was like.

But for you, it's like literally everything on the spectrum of edible or scented is completely off and distorted.

Yes.

And it's never, I mean, usually never a good smell.

No, never a good smell.

And it was, I mean, it like, I would describe it as like hot sewage, burning flesh.

Like, I mean, just like the nastiest smells and tastes you can imagine.

Literally death.

Literally death.

Like, that's what, I mean, yes, the smell of death.

I mean, putrid chemicals, like just chemical, chemical, chemical smells all the time.

Yeah, I mean, it was, is, was, but is terrible.

But in the beginning, when I didn't know how long I was gonna have this, what I was dealing with, if there was anything I could do about it, I'm nursing this baby.

I'm like scared and like calling my midwife saying like, hey, am I gonna be okay?

Can I sustain him when I'm not eating anything myself?

Like it was just one of the darkest times in my life.

Yeah, it's because you don't know if it's ever gonna get better.

And it affects your-

Every part of my life.

Exactly, yeah.

Cooking food for my family.

I mean, like every part of my life.

And I'm hungry all the time, okay?

So that does not help anything.

So the one thing though that Hannah was able to help me with when I was reading Hannah's stories is she said, hey, join this Facebook support group.

There are other people dealing with this and we can all kind of help each other.

So I got on this Facebook support group.

It was a Prasmiya's support group.

And I will say that, as cheesy as it sounds, that support group was definitely, I don't want to say a turning point, but definitely like a milestone in the journey, finding that group.

It's because you weren't alone all of a sudden.

You weren't alone in this.

And you were able to compare notes and be like, hey, these are things that are really bad for me.

And here's some things that I got back.

Like you'd be able to compare notes with other people who have Prasmiya.

I remember you were on it like every day.

Like on the edge of your seat.

I was on the edge of my seat reading everybody's posts because people would say like I did this and I got better or I took that and it helped me.

So I was trying everything, like every single thing to get better.

We spent a lot of money that I wish we had back because nothing worked for me.

But we tried literally everything that we could, except I did not get my septum pierced.

I didn't try that one.

That was kind of a funny suggestion, but it worked for a lot of people.

It worked for a lot of people, but I did not try that one.

The thing is, though, that group took me to a point where it helped me find a couple of foods that I could eat that wasn't just bread.

So that group, they would say, hey, you know, these are some safe foods for me.

We call them safe foods.

And I figured out through that group and through a lot of experimenting that I could eat mashed potatoes, like no garlic, just like plain mashed potatoes with butter and salt, that was like it.

Then green grapes, specifically green grapes.

Something about green grapes.

And fruit was always kind of funky.

The fruit is always terrible, but like all fruit.

But that one works.

But well, at that point it did, at that point in time.

So mashed potatoes, green grapes, sourdough bread, which is actually what started my sourdough journey.

But sourdough bread with butter, plain milk, so just like, and these bland foods, we're talking very bland, starchy foods, cheese, string cheese, just the string cheese though, not the smelly cheeses, not anything else, just like mozzarella string cheese, and buttered noodles.

And that was it.

That was my, every single day, I made huge batches of mashed potatoes.

And people who I worked with at the time would remember this.

I used to bring two string cheeses, a cup of mashed potatoes, and like a bag of green grapes to work every day.

And I ate it every single day.

And every single night, I had buttered noodles with salt for dinner.

And sourdough bread was my snack all day long.

That and water.

I mean, that was it.

That was all I could do.

I know it sounds like we're focusing on this a lot, but like I just have to get you to understand what life was like and sometimes is still like, but what life was like for me in order for you to understand the depth of this story.

One other thing the group helped me find was the use of a nose plug in order to be able to eat a bigger variety of foods and get more nutrients into my body.

So I first found like the over the nose clip nose plug and I hated it.

It hurt.

It hurt my teeth.

I choked and gagged a lot while I was eating.

I put it on.

It was very uncomfortable.

It was very uncomfortable.

And so I was like, nope, not going to do this.

Well, then Hannah Higgins comes to the rescue again and says, don't use that nose plug.

Use this nose plug.

And it was like called the sinus saver.

And it was something that like swimmers put inside of their nose when they would swim.

And it was clear.

So stick it in my nose.

And that was so much more comfortable and so much more, I don't know, just functional.

And I was able to expand what I was eating when I would wear the nose plug.

So I started adding like broccoli and chickpeas to my noodles.

And I started eating like oatmeal in the morning with like cinnamon and stuff like that.

Even when I was wearing it, there were still a lot of foods that I could not eat.

Like garlic, onion, mint, chocolate, peanut butter, all fruit, like all that kind of stuff.

Still, even with the nose plug, it was a no-go, a hard no, a hard pass.

But it would help me tolerate some other foods.

And so with that, I was able to gain 10 pounds back, which was I think necessary, especially considering I was still nursing true around the clock.

So that was just so you had a clear picture of what I was dealing with.

Now we're gonna go backwards just a little bit to December, actually, when my prosmia first started, we had scheduled a vasectomy for Chris.

He had felt pretty confident that we were done with biologically having children.

And I was still having that kind of like a little bit of sadness from what I'd felt early postpartum with Drew.

I kind of was trusting him and felt like if he felt like we were really, really done, then okay, I could get on board too.

So that week that it was scheduled for because we had to schedule a few months out, ended up being like his most stressful week at work.

He was having like 14 hour days every day and he was there at night and it was just, he was, I could tell, completely overwhelmed and just had so much on his mind.

And so I said, do you want me to cancel your procedure on Friday?

So that's like one less thing you have to worry about.

And you were like, yeah, yeah, actually that would be great.

It'd be one more thing off my plate.

I don't have to think about it.

That'd be nice.

I said, okay.

It's like, hey, here's a bunch of things you have to do for work and let's tag on some surgery at the end of that.

So I said, okay, just let me know when you want me to reschedule it.

Like just tell me when you want me to reschedule it.

And so like every couple of months, I would check in and say like, hey, do we reschedule it yet?

You know, not yet.

Like just sort of casual.

We didn't really talk about it.

It was just like reschedule?

No, no, okay.

And I wasn't really concerned with getting pregnant because I didn't even have a cycle anymore.

And we were not really having sex because I couldn't even be that close to you because of my porosmia and the smells and I mean, it was not a fun time.

I don't smell bad.

I know you're generally speaking, you smell great.

It's just, you know, porosmia stinks, literally.

So backtrack just a little bit more.

A few months before that December, when all of that happened.

So like probably September of 2021, we had read a book called Take Back Your Family.

Jefferson Bethke.

By Jefferson Bethke.

And it really shifted a lot of our vision for our family.

And really had us thinking and just kind of changing perspective and changing gears.

And we listened to some podcasts that went along with that book.

And that led to us listening to some other podcasts, which led to us reading some other books.

And it was just sort of this domino of a journey of a lot of prayer and a lot of thinking and a lot of researching.

And by spring of 2022, we really felt that God was telling me that I needed to come home and that we were supposed to be homeschooling our children.

Coming home as in?

Coming home from working full-time outside the house.

Because at this time, I was still in full-time ministry working at our church, like 40 hours a week.

So it was like a call that I needed to be more present at home and more present with our family than I was at work.

And so this was right around True's first birthday in April of 2022.

Yeah, that book was really pivotal for us.

It kind of shifted and changed our whole view on what family long-term should be.

And what's really interesting is it was so timely when we read it, because we had the vasectomy scheduled and then we canceled it.

But in the limbo time, we read the book and we just, I mean, I personally came to this conclusion and I shared it with you.

I most certainly did not want to seal the deal, quote unquote, while we were revamping our vision of what our family should look like.

And I didn't know it would necessarily mean more children, but I didn't want it to stunt the growth of our family if we decided that having another kid was a part of our family's vision.

And so that was just, it was really helpful to go through that book because it helped us kind of understand and realize that we weren't complete in designing our family.

So being able to say, hey, we don't know if we're going to have another kid, so let's not go through with the vasectomy.

I think by that summer, like summer of 22, I think that it was very clear to both of us.

I remember talking about it on our anniversary date, and I think it was very clear to both of us that we were going to have another child.

And at first, we were debating whether it would be biologically or adopting.

Soon, it got made clear to us that it was going to be a biological child.

And at the time, our biggest concern was my body.

I mean, not only did I not have a cycle, so I couldn't even get pregnant, but I couldn't eat enough nutrients to sustain myself, like let alone another human.

And so we knew that there were going to have to be some improvements and some changes and some things were going to have to get better before I was going to be able to even get pregnant and then sustain a pregnancy.

Okay, so now we're in fall of 2022.

And I am working part time now and mostly remotely, which was a huge blessing, that transition.

I was homeschooling the two older kids.

And my perosmia was still like super, super present.

But I was doing, my body was doing a little bit better.

My period came back because I was able to use my nose plug and eat more food and a bigger variety of foods than I was before.

Then we ended up getting to go on a trip randomly last minute.

Like it was the most last minute trip we've ever, I think, done like that.

To Texas, so basically, in a nutshell, what happened is we found out very last minute that we had these plane ticket credits that were about to expire left over from 2020 when we were supposed to go on a trip during COVID times.

And they said use them or lose them.

And you got a book like now and you have to take the trip like now.

So we like scrambled, I remember, and planned this trip and we went to Texas.

We went to Dallas and then went down to Waco to do the whole Magnolia, you know, trip in Joe.

It was amazing.

Anyways, when we get there, we go to Gateway Church, which was so much fun because Pastor Robert Morris in Gateway Church is one of my favorite pastors to listen to.

He's just so wise.

Man, his Biblical interpretation knowledge is just, it's like, it is literally God sent.

Like I do feel like he is anointed by the Lord to interpret the Bible.

But anyways, so so excited to go see him.

So we go to this church and we're pumped up.

This is great.

I'm so pumped.

We get there.

This woman approaches me.

She ends up sitting next to me and she asks me what's wrong.

Like she knew something was wrong.

And then I was explaining what parosmia was to her.

So she just starts laying her hands on me and praying for me right there in the moment.

Like the service hasn't even started yet.

And she's already just like praying this huge prayer over me.

It was incredible.

Well, she sits next to me through the whole service, ends up laying her hands on me multiple times through the service, praying for me.

And then at the end of service, prays for me again and tells me that God is going to heal me that afternoon.

And I was like, I wanted to believe that so badly, but I had been prayed over by so many people and had been praying endlessly.

It what felt like, you know, ever since the start of my prosmy, because it had been almost a year at this point, we were almost at the year mark of my prosmy.

And still, I'm just like, chilling with my nose plug and eating very minimum things.

So I was, I wanted to have her faith, but I honestly didn't at the moment.

I was like, yeah, that would be great, but we'll see.

Well, then this other woman, they, you know, offer prayer after services.

And I was kind of hanging around, we were checking some things out, and she came up and she's this real sweet lady.

And I really, really wish I've recorded her prayer.

Always record a good prayer, man.

Voice memo, get your voice memo out and record it so you can listen to it over and over again.

But she prayed over us for so long.

Like I just remember her hands were around both of us and she just kept praying.

And you could just tell she had been doing this for a long, long time.

And it was so sweet.

She prayed over our family, she prayed over our kids, but she prayed over my prosmia as well.

So that was just super impactful.

Well that afternoon, we go to the, what are they called?

Fort Worth Stockyards.

Oh yeah.

The Fort Worth Stockyards.

Didn't even know they were a thing, but they were.

I forgot they were a thing until we were trying to figure out what to do that afternoon.

And then you remember.

And then I was like, oh my gosh, we have, that's what we're doing.

It was so fun.

There was like just bulls everywhere and cowboy hats and boots and all this like, I don't know, rodeo life.

Very yeehaw culture.

Yeah.

It was, but it was fun.

It just felt very like, yeah, we were tourists.

It was fun.

We had a good time, but I was starving.

I was so hungry and eating out at restaurants had been so hard for me with perosmium because everyone puts garlic and onion in everything.

And there's such a small amount of foods that I can even eat that.

So it was just really difficult for me to go out to eat while we get there.

And I would usually just order my, you know, bread and cheese, which is what I could typically have.

Sorry, waitress.

And so, but instead, I thought, you know what, Sarah, Sarah was the name of the woman who prayed over me during the service.

And I said, she said, God was going to heal me this afternoon.

And I feel like I need to step out in faith, just step out and just try something like just order something that I would never order with perosmia and try it and do it without my nose plug.

And so I ordered what I would have ordered had I not had perosmia, which was a turkey club, you know, like turkey, mayo, bacon, tomato, the whole thing, and fries with ketchup.

None of which I had had during perosmia, none of those things.

So she brings it out to the table.

I have my nose plug is sitting beside of me and I don't have it in.

And I just was like, here it goes.

And I don't remember if you prayed one more time before we ate, because we always pray before we eat, but picked up a sandwich, I took a bite.

And I did not spit it out of my mouth.

Like I normally would have.

I chewed it, I swallowed it.

And I remember thinking, wow, that's the first time I've had meat in a year, almost a year.

The first time I've had a tomato, you know, or bread that wasn't sourdough bread, like all these things.

And it did not taste exactly like a regular turkey club.

It didn't.

I could tell it was off.

It tasted off and it was funky, but it did not taste like hot sewage anymore.

That wasn't there.

And I was in shock and in awe.

And I ended up crying at the table, holding the turkey club in my hand, just like in disbelief, in denial, in shock, but also in awe that this had just happened, that this like miracle of a, I would say, huge step forward in my healing journey had happened.

Because I was, you know, every day that goes on when nothing is getting any better, you like, you lose more and more and more hope that it ever will.

Do you remember that?

Sitting in the restaurant and eating my first piece of meat that I've eaten, that I'd eaten in what, seven years, because I was a vegan for a long time.

And so we both kind of branched out.

But I remember, I mean, I was like, Lord, please do it.

Please do it, Lord.

So essentially what we learned from that is I ended up getting meat back as a safe food.

As long as it wasn't coated in garlic and onion, I could eat meat.

And that was super important, because if we were going to get pregnant, and I was going to sustain a pregnancy, I knew I needed protein.

I knew I needed a lot of protein.

And for me, that's going to come through meat.

And so it was just super important.

I also got eggs.

I was able to eat eggs on that trip, bacon, which is meat, I guess.

But just all these things that I hadn't been able to eat, and now suddenly I could eat them.

And sometimes I still had to have a nose plug on for it.

But it was like so much more doable than before.

Now all the heavy hitters were still out.

Still couldn't do garlic, onion, chocolate, peanut butter, mint, fruit, et cetera.

However, getting meat back was like monumental in this journey.

It was a very big deal.

Sorry, vegan husband.

OK, another thing that happened on that trip was the birth of this business.

Surrendered Birth Services was born on that trip.

So at that trip, when we went on that trip, it was November 2022, and we knew I was about to be home full time.

So I started off part time for like six to eight months, stepping down from work and working remotely.

But it was about to be completely gone.

Like I wasn't going to be working at the church anymore.

And so that was going to open this capacity for me to dive a lot harder back into birth work, which I had done several years prior and then had done on and off throughout the years I was working in ministry.

But it ended up being like, oh, well, you love birth and you're so excited.

But now you have a lot more time and you can be on call for births again.

And you can, you know, so it just sort of all kind of came during this trip and we were brainstorming colors and logos and brands and and just all the different stuff.

It was so fun.

I remember just we were dreaming and it was like, oh my gosh, I can eat this and oh my gosh, I can, you know, we're going to build this business and oh my gosh, let's have a baby.

Like it was that trip was just love that trip.

It was a trip of many decisions.

Yeah.

And of yes, I agree, many dreams arose from that.

So after that, we began trying to get pregnant.

And so that was November.

So we got pregnant at the end of January.

And we were so excited.

I mean, although we were also extremely cautiously nervous knowing how I get hyperemesis each time.

So that was a thing.

And so we were trying to mentally and physically prepare for me to be sick for a while.

However, I don't think there's anything that could have prepared me for being first trimester pregnant with pyrosmia.

It was the devil's combination of combinations.

Like horrible tastes and smells with an extreme heightened sense of taste and smell, with extreme nausea and vomiting.

It was absolutely awful.

I had to wear my nose plug 24 hours a day because the air inside or outside, the air smelled like I was sitting in a dumpster.

And it didn't matter where I was.

Inside of my bedroom, outside in the front yard, in the car, the air smelled like a dumpster.

And it was terrible.

Which, of course, when you have HG, then that makes you throw up.

Because everything makes you throw up.

But here's the thing.

In my other pregnancies with HG, when I'd be craving something or just want something to settle my stomach, I could be like, Chris, get me that lemonade, or get me those french fries from Chick-fil-A, or get me that hard piece of sour candy that I want for some reason, or get me whatever it was.

You could go get it for me and give it to me, and it would make me feel better temporarily at least.

But this time, anytime I had a craving like that, I couldn't have it because it tasted awful.

So I'd be sitting there being like, I just wish I could have some lemonade.

And then you would bring me lemonade.

And I just spit it out because even with a nose plug, I'm like, all I'm drinking is nasty chemicals.

This tastes terrible.

Even if it was just fresh lemon in water and sugar, like no actual chemicals in it, it tasted like chemicals.

And I mean, it was with every single thing we tried.

I remember you would bring home all these things for me to try and thing after thing after thing was terrible and awful and awful.

And I don't know why I even made you bring anything home because I'm like, I'm not going to be able to eat it.

I'm not going to be able to taste it like I want to taste it.

It was infuriating.

It was so, so frustrating.

So I mean, women out there, just imagine you're sick, you're pregnant, you're craving the one thing.

And if you just have that one thing, then at least you would get temporary relief.

And there was no such thing as temporary relief for me.

It was terrible.

I mean, it was...

Prorosmia on top of HG was the worst thing I have ever felt physically.

Ugh.

And I never want to do it again, babe.

Just saying.

Prorosmia with HG.

I mean...

But we discovered...

So I was desperate, okay?

And I'm on that Facebook group for people with prorosmia, and they have a subgroup called Pregnant with Prorosmia, because it's own special layer of hell.

And so...

So I get on the Pregnant with Prorosmia page, and I'm like, girls, like, I'm dying.

I cannot take my nose plug out for anything.

If I do, I immediately throw up.

Like, I am so sick.

I can't have anything I want to eat.

Like, what do you do?

I was...

Because when I get nauseous like that, I do not want water, which is terrible, but it's like, I don't.

And I know so many of you girls out there can relate to me, but you don't want water when you feel that way.

You want anything else, bubbles, flavor, but you don't want water.

But the thing that was for me is anything with bubbles and flavor tasted terrible.

So it was just awful.

So then they said, try Dr.

Pepper.

And I thought, you're crazy.

No, I'm not trying Dr.

Pepper.

First of all, I don't even like soda anymore.

Like, I don't even drink soda.

I haven't in years now.

But I'm Dr.

Pepper, of all things.

No, like Coke was terrible and Sprite.

I remember trying that with nausea.

It was awful, like just chemicals.

I'm like, why would Dr.

Pepper taste good?

And they're like, no, just trust us, just trust us.

Just taste Dr.

Pepper.

I promise it works.

And I'm like, gravy.

It's just a bunch of chemicals.

Like, that's what it's going to taste like.

But I made you get me a Dr.

Pepper, and you brought it home.

And I still have my nose plug in because I couldn't take it out at all.

But I drank that Dr.

Pepper, and I was like, oh my goodness.

This actually tastes, with a nose plug, like Dr.

Pepper.

And it was this moment of like, I just found what's going to get me through the rest of this trimester and into the second.

Like, no, I will say regular Dr.

Pepper gave me a stomach ache, because I was just not used to having that much sugar.

So then you brought me home diet Dr.

Pepper, which we all know kind of tastes almost just like Dr.

Pepper.

And I drank so much Dr.

Pepper, oh, weeks and weeks and weeks of Dr.

Pepper.

And it makes me wonder how this baby even survived, because that's all I was drinking.

I was like having barely any water, and then just mainly diet Dr.

Pepper.

It's what got me through.

And Pringles.

That was the other thing.

Plain Pringles.

We figured out I could eat plain Pringles.

We had to hide them from the kids in the closet.

Not any other chip.

Just plain Pringles.

Which again, I don't ever eat Pringles, but when in HG and when with Prosmia, it was like you are surviving, and that is all you were doing.

It's so weird because when you're in that state of desperation, and you don't even want anything that you can actually stomach, finding the silver bullet is like finding a treasure chest.

Yeah.

But you're always kind of like, why couldn't it have been like herbal tea?

Or why couldn't it have been like kale salads?

It was diet Dr.

Pepper and Pringles.

So anywho, that's what I ate probably until 23 or 24 weeks along, which is awful.

But what are you going to do?

I would say probably about halfway through or 23, 24 weeks.

That's when things started getting a little better.

I was a little less nauseous.

I didn't have to take the anti-nausea medicine all the time.

I could take my nose plug out in between meals.

No, I still had to keep my nose plug in for every meal for the rest of the pregnancy.

So like things that before I got pregnant, I was able to eat without a nose plug.

I could no longer do that when I got pregnant.

I had to have a nose plug.

You definitely reverted pretty severely when you got pregnant.

I took this giant leap in November of like, I can eat meat and I can do this.

And then it was like as soon as I got pregnant, it was like, nope, everything sucks times 10 million bajillion, a trillion, whatever number that is.

I want to know how many zeros that is, honestly.

It's an endless amount of zeros.

It's to infinity and beyond.

So pregnancy definitely made it so much worse.

So nose plug the rest of the pregnancy for every meal, every supplement, every drink, I mean everything for the rest of the time.

So, oh, something we didn't mention is since we had a home birth with True, there was no way I was going to do it any other way.

I was, you could say, hooked on home birth.

And so we were planning another home birth, and this time we did no ultrasounds.

So we didn't get any sort of ultrasounds done, any sort of testing at all.

I felt very confident and safe that, you know, the Lord was growing this baby just the way he or she needed to be grown.

And we decided for the very first time not to find out the gender of this child, which was a really big deal because we had found out the first four times.

So we decided no gender.

We will just find out whenever he or she arrives.

But I will say in all transparency, we were all pulling and praying for a daughter.

That's true.

And I think that was part of our reasoning to not find out with an ultrasound or a blood test because I think that we thought that when the baby was born that the moment would be so precious and special that regardless of the gender of the child, we would just be so pleased.

Right.

It was just going to be this super exciting moment.

So instead of being disappointed at an ultrasound that it was another boy, like in the middle of pregnancy, we're like, but once that moment is here and I just finished labor and the baby's out of me, it's not going to matter.

We're just going to be so excited and here's the baby.

So that's why we decided not to find out.

And our daughter, Brinkley, continued to pray night and day, day and night, multiple times a day.

From before I even got pregnant.

She actually claims that she's the reason I got pregnant.

Because she prayed for me to get pregnant.

If you listen to the bonus episode, the first bonus episode that was ever released, it was featuring our oldest two kids giving their thoughts on the upcoming arrival of their baby, Sib.

And she mentioned, it was so funny, she said, I got mama pregnant.

That's what she said.

I got mama pregnant.

Anyways, it was funny.

So that was sort of our idea and philosophy behind why we didn't find out the gender this time.

Because we have one girl and three boys, and so we were like, oh, we're praying for a girl.

She run into sister so badly.

And we have had a girl's name picked out since I got pregnant the second time, like since we got pregnant with Milo.

So it's been seven, almost eight years now, eight years now of a girl's name that we've held onto with no reason to use it.

But there were so many prayers that I was specifically praying over this labor and delivery.

Very specific things I was envisioning, very specific things I was hoping for.

First of all, I just wanted it to be Chris and I while I was laboring.

So I didn't want a bunch of people in the room.

I didn't even want other friends or a doula or anyone with me.

I just wanted it to be Chris and I, because I really wanted it to be a time for the two of us to connect without anybody else being around.

That was my thought process, because labor can really bring you so close to your spouse.

And so I just really wanted that time to connect with him.

I also demanded that I would have a water birth.

I told everybody who was going to be there, I told my midwife, her assistants, my husband, I said, when I start making the pushing sounds, if I am not in the tub, you are to pick me up and put me in the tub.

Those were everyone's direct orders.

Because I had three natural births, and there was a tub every single time.

And every single time, for some reason or another, I did not have the water birth.

Which if you listen to the other stories, then you know all the reasons.

But another thing I was praying over, and that we wanted for this birth, was for Chris or I to catch the baby when the baby came out.

We wanted to be the ones to catch the baby.

So either, I said, you know, it would depend on the position.

Like if I was, you know, sitting, I could probably catch myself.

If I was hands and knees or something, then he would have to catch it.

Like we just kind of said, you know, whatever the position is, one of us is going to catch this baby.

And then I also, of course, we also prayed for it to be a girl.

So there was that.

And then that wasn't something we were making public knowledge.

We weren't being like, we're praying for a girl.

We're pulling for a girl.

But it was just something between the two of us that we were able to be honest about with each other.

And then the last thing for me that I was praying desperately for, and I did make this clear to a lot of people and asked for their prayers for this, was that I wanted to be able to smell my baby's head.

I wanted to be able to smell the newborn smell, the sweet baby smell, that everybody knows what I'm talking about, that connects you and bonds you with your baby, because pyrosmia had taken that away from me.

And not having my taste or smell took that away when True was four months old.

So once True turned four months, I lost the ability to smell him, and then I never gained it back.

And so I was just desperately praying that somehow, by an act of the Lord, I would be healed, at least in that way, by the time this baby was born, so that I could smell them and bond with them and connect with them and just, you know, smell.

I also wanted to be able to eat my postpartum meal without a nose plug.

That was my other, that was my other prayer.

But anyways, just lots and lots of prayers and visions for this specific birth.

All of this time, I was continuing to follow Hannah Higgins online, on Instagram, in her parasmia journey.

Now, her and I had tried all the same things and they had all failed.

She had tried, just like I did, something called the stellate ganglion block, which is a nerve block that is typically given to patients with severe pain or with PTSD.

But they actually discovered that it was helping people with long COVID and specifically people with parasmia.

It was helping them heal.

And they had a success rate, and still to this day, have a success rate of 80 to 90% of people who had parasmia.

Once they got the stellate ganglion nerve block done, they were either significantly improved or like totally improved.

So it was one of the things we had tried back the year before, the most expensive thing we tried for sure, and it did not work.

And I tried it twice.

And because the second time they made like adjustments and added some different medications, and it still didn't work.

Well, it didn't work for Hannah when she did it either.

But it worked for so many other people.

Well, Hannah ends up doing like a year of something called EMDR therapy.

And I'm not going to go into what that is, but you can look it up, EMDR therapy.

It is like a trauma processing therapy, basically, that you do with like a professional therapist counselor.

So she ended up going back after that, getting this nerve block done, the stellate ganglion block, and it worked for her when she went back.

And then that same story was told with a few other people in our Prorasmia Facebook group saying, like, they had done the nerve block, it didn't work, and then they did all this EMDR therapy, and then they went back and got the nerve block again, and it did work.

And so I was like, okay, it's definitely one thing I have not tried, what is this, you know, type of therapy?

I had never, well, that's not true.

I had seen a virtual, like, I did, like, therapy online at the end of True's pregnancy for some crazy issues I was having.

Well, not crazy.

I don't know.

I think I talked about it in True's episode a little bit.

But I hadn't tried this EMDR therapy.

So specifically, I feel like it's more of a trauma-related therapy, and in my mind, I had not experienced trauma in my life, like what I would consider, like, big trauma, like big huge traumatic events, but through the encouragement of some other people and through the encouragement of Hannah and through, I mean, it was just sort of like God was just layering upon layering upon layering, telling me, like, you need to try this EMDR therapy.

So I thought, okay, I will do it, even though we could not financially afford it, I will just say that.

And it was only $25 per session for us, but it's still, we're in a place where we cannot afford that.

Because I'm the only, we're a one income.

Right, one income family with a lot of kids.

So it was a huge sacrifice for me to do this, but Chris was willing to let me because if it was going to give me this chance of healing my parasmia before this baby came, like that was the biggest blessing he could ever give me.

It's all about the nervous system and healing your nervous system and all this fight or flight.

Like there's so many things if you look into it, and there's so many theories as to why this is happening to me and why it's not getting any better and all this different stuff.

But this is one thing I hadn't tried.

So I ended up doing it that whole summer.

I went every week and did this therapy.

And I was blessed.

We were blessed with the incredible opportunity to go back and get this nerve block done again free of charge.

And it happened to be like an hour and a half away from a free beach house that we were blessed with for the week, which was just like crazy.

That's a whole other story that I don't have time to tell.

So anyways, I do this therapy all summer.

I go down, we go down to the beach.

We take our family.

This is huge, incredible experience.

And it was like, it's not going to happen.

Oh, yes, it is.

Oh, no, it's not.

There was so much back and forth.

And then finally I went in it, and I went to go get the procedure done.

And this is like the most hope I've had.

And then it does not work.

Like not even a little bit, not even a hint of change.

And I like did not know what to do with that at first.

I remember driving back to the beach house, and you were there with the kids and getting out.

And I had just held it in.

Like the entire drive back just held it together.

And then as soon as I hugged you, I just lost it.

I just started sobbing.

Like, here we go again.

Third time, third try, failed again.

I'm due in like three weeks with this baby.

And here I am.

I still have parosmia.

It still, it still sucks.

Thankfully, we were at the beach.

And thankfully, I have an incredible husband who is also an incredible father.

And he would keep the kids for me and allowed me just to go walk on the beach and to just really process and pray and worship and just really work my way through that disappointment and kind of pray my way through that with the Lord and just really reconcile in what had just happened.

All this hope I had built up, all this money I had invested in my healing and this treatment and all this stuff, and then it still just, it just didn't work.

I felt and still kind of feel, I don't know what the word, inhealable, that's not a word, unhealable, unable to heal, broken.

Like, I don't know.

Perpetually with ailment.

Yeah, definitely, definitely felt that way.

So great beach trip, huge disappointment.

Like, anyways, when we got back from the beach, we were on the countdown to baby.

It was 37 weeks.

I was doing all my end of pregnancy stuff.

I was taking my evening primrose oil, which I always do.

Take my red raspberry leaf tea capsules.

I take the capsules because I don't like the tea.

And hello, porosmia.

I wouldn't be able to drink the tea anyways.

Sitting on my ball, like walking, doing rounds at the miles circuit, all of the things.

I've said this before, and I'm going to say it again, but I've known no desperation like that of a woman at the end of her pregnancy.

It is a different kind of desperate than other desprets.

There's a shift for me that I experience typically around 36 weeks, and I reach this point where I'm just like, done.

I am done.

I am done with the aches and the pains.

I am done with the very tiny bladder.

I'm done with all the heartburn, the varicose veins, the round ligament pain, the waddling, the insomnia, the awkward and uncomfortable sex positions.

Like, I am done, and I'm exhausted, and I'm emotional, and I don't even want to be around myself.

Like, it's just, it's not a pretty color on me.

My friend Louisa, she says, I just don't go around Kayla at the end of her pregnancy, which is a wise, wise decision.

I don't really have a choice, although I will say that I still don't want to be away from you when you're like that.

But at the same time, I see what you're saying.

We all get like that to the point of like, oh gosh, I wish this was over.

And I don't like what this thing is making me become, but it kind of is just a reality, even though I'm trying.

Just like between your physical state and your mental and emotional state, and it's just a hard place to be for me.

Other women are glowing through 42 weeks, but not I, not Kayla Heeter.

She gets to a point at the end, which makes her very relatable to other women.

When they say, I'm just so tired of being pregnant, I'm like, I completely understand and relate, and I feel for you terribly.

So I'm not sure why.

I really don't know where this came from, other than I think the just like very selfish desire to have a September baby.

My due date was October 8th.

And I just really, for some reason, was like, oh, I could just have a September baby, a birthday baby, because my birthday is September 29th.

And I thought, oh, this would be so fun.

And then it was a girl.

That would be cool too.

It was like twin girl birthday, and it was so much fun, it was going to be great.

So I just had this vision, like, oh, I could go early.

It would be amazing that I wouldn't be pregnant this long, and the baby would be smaller and easier to push out, and just kind of all those things.

Now, I teach these classes for a living.

I know how unrealistic that is, especially for me to happen.

But yet, you're a pregnant woman, and you get this thing in your mind, and then hormones get involved, and you're all emotional.

And I would just say 38 weeks came and went, and 39 weeks came and went.

And I was like, well, there goes going early.

Like, you know, and just like each day you get.

And not that 40 weeks means anything, because it literally means nothing.

40 weeks is just a day.

Like, it doesn't matter.

But, you know, you just get it in your head, and you're all pregnant and emotional, and that's what happens.

And I'm, gosh, it's like I wish my non-pregnant self could talk to my pregnant self at the end and talk her out of all the crazy thoughts and feelings she's having that are all hormonal.

Ugh.

Anyways, I will say something that happened this time is I craved being alone, like completely alone, at the end of my pregnancy.

Yeah, that was very out of character for you.

It was.

And I've never, I mean, never in my life have I wanted that much alone time.

Like, I really enjoy being with friends.

I really enjoy being with you.

I really like, you know, yeah, a couple hours of alone time to myself a week is really nice, just because I'm with the kids all the time.

But like, I mean, I didn't want to be alone and I didn't want to be around anybody.

I wanted to be by myself, like in my room or in my bath or on a walk.

Like, I didn't want to be around anybody.

And I wasn't trying to accomplish anything.

I wasn't trying to like get a task done or read a book or like, I just wanted to be alone.

Like, I just didn't want to be around any people.

And that was very, very strange, very strange for me.

I was literally just like staring at the window, like out the window and looking at the trees, which is something you would do.

Kind of reminds me of that scene in Up in the very beginning where the lady, oh, Ellie, she finds out that she can't have babies.

And she's just kind of sitting in this chair looking all inquisitive, looking out a window with the flowing drape curtains.

Like, I felt like that was you.

Like, that was very much you when you were pregnant just wanting to be alone.

That's essentially the picture that comes to mind.

This time.

And it was this time in particular.

Like, I don't remember being like that with the other pregnancies.

No, you were not.

No.

It was just this time.

Like, I would take my nightly baths or stuff, but like not like this.

This was like, I don't, I just, I got to go.

Like, I can't be around anybody.

Now gets to the part of the story that's very hard for me to tell.

And it's part of the reason why I haven't actually shared my birth story with anyone yet.

And my baby is six months old.

I'm going to be pretty vulnerable here.

And it's something that's just really hard for me to admit, honestly, and it's something I've really had to work through.

I was in a low place.

I was sad.

I was disappointed.

I was at the end of the pregnancy.

I was feeling all of the things, all of my emotions, all of my physical ailments.

And one night I even had like a complete and total breakdown.

My husband was not home.

You were not here.

And my sister and almost brother-in-law had to come and just be with the kids for me.

I was like not doing well.

And no one knew besides Chris because it was embarrassing.

And it's not like anyone could have done anything to help me is the thing.

Like I was just in a place.

And I just wanted to birth my baby.

I wanted to meet my baby.

And I made some decisions that I would not have made in my normal, rational, non-hormonal state of mind.

And I only told my husband.

I only told you.

I didn't tell anybody else.

And I wish I could like lie or admit the truth and just skip right to the birth.

But that would not be part of the story.

And this is a big part of the story.

So I had just spent the whole year of 2023 building a business around surrendering your birth to God and surrender.

Like I've mentioned in my other birth stories, which is why this is called Surrendered Birth Stories or Surrendered Birth Services.

That is the lesson God has had to teach me over and over and over again in all of my births and a lot in life, but especially in my labors and births.

And after four babies, I still really hadn't fully learned my lesson, which is really hard for me to think about.

I started this podcast, Surrendered Birth Stories, and the tagline, if you ever listen to the full end of the podcast, if you ever make it all the way to the end, it says, learn all that you can, make the best plans, and then leave it in God's hands.

But I didn't.

I wasn't leaving it in God's hands.

Again, it was like I couldn't surrender.

I couldn't do what I was telling other people to do.

I couldn't practice what I preached.

I was so hypocritical, which is why this is so hard to admit.

But I'm being very transparent here.

I'm telling everybody else how important it is to let God be in charge of their births and that He knew what was best and He would choose your baby's birthday and all those things.

And instead of simply waiting and trusting in the Lord and just having that peace, especially because there was nothing wrong, I was healthy, my baby was healthy, like everyone was good, everyone was in a great place, physically speaking.

And I just took it into my own hands and I induced myself.

I can't believe I just said that.

Only you know that.

Now everyone else knows.

All right.

I know birth is not a big deal to everybody.

I realize it's a passion of mine and not the world's, but it's huge to me that I did this.

So it was something I toyed around with at 38 and 39 weeks.

I would like get all geared up and try and then like chicken out.

I feel like, no, I can't do it.

Like, where am I going to keep doing this?

Nope, no, no.

But, you know, for some reason, when it came to the 40 week mark, I was like, this is it.

This is the day.

I'm done being pregnant.

This is the day.

And I was not going to chicken out this time.

I wasn't going to stop.

I was like, I am inducing myself, and I'm going to keep doing it until this baby comes out.

Like, I'm not stopping.

So it was a Sunday.

It was actually, you know, my due date was a Sunday, October 8th.

Chris was at church.

I say Chris like you're not in the room.

You were at church.

And I had asked my sister to come and take the kids to church for me, because again, I wanted to be alone, and I do not like going to church at the end of my pregnancies, because I don't like the questions that people ask in the comments that they make.

So she came and got the kids for me and took them to church.

And I just had a slow morning.

I was just cleaning the house and tidying up.

And then, you know, I did the mile circuit.

I went on a really long walk.

I went up and down like major hills, just trying to engage the baby into the pelvis.

And I was using a wrap to lift my belly.

So like if I was having any contractions just to like help the baby get into the pelvis.

And when I came back, I pretty much had an empty stomach.

I did my first round of my own personal midwife's brew or midwife's cocktail.

Because you know me with prurasmia, there was no way I was going to get that nasty thing down.

Like it was not going to happen.

That would have been absolutely rough for you.

Blending all that stuff together.

So instead, I had my nose plug on, and this is what I did.

I took the two tablespoons of almond butter and I put them on like the thinnest possible piece of sourdough toast you've ever seen.

Like it was just a shell of something.

And I ate that very quickly.

And then I had a ready to go iced mason jar filled with the two tablespoons of castor oil and the apricot juice.

And I would shake like shook it up and down vigorously so that it was like as mixed as possible.

And I had a straw and then I would shove the straw in and then I put it as far back in my throat as I could without gagging so that I couldn't taste it even with my nose plug.

And I would just chugged it as much as I could and literally talked myself through it.

So I would like take a break and be like, Kayla, you are in Spain right now and you're walking in the streets of Spain and there's a fresh market with fresh fruit and there's a mango smoothie and someone hands you a mango smoothie and you take it and you're drinking it and it's glorious and it's delicious and you're eating something super healthy and good for you and it's so fresh and it's going to make you feel amazing.

Doesn't this taste wonderful?

Like, that's what I was doing.

I was like in the bathroom by myself, looking up at the ceiling, talking myself through, taking this drink.

So anyways, I got it down.

Somehow, miraculously, you did with porosmia when you couldn't probably have gotten it down even without porosmia.

That's true.

Well, but I did have my nose plug in and I did have it like super, super cold and all the way in the back of my throat.

You know, like I did everything I could to make sure I didn't have to like taste this at all.

So I kept it, it's a texture thing more.

So when you have all that going on.

So I kept it down.

Nothing happened like at all.

So an hour and a half later, I took a second dose because I know some, like if I had taken like a double dose at once, I'm sure something would have happened, but I also didn't want like the stomach cramping and all that stuff.

So I took a second dose like an hour and a half later.

And then I said, you know, if nothing happens again later this afternoon, I'll take like a third dose.

You came home from church, and you can cut this out if you want to, but we got all the kids occupied, entertained, and went into the bedroom and had one last cervical ripening session.

I hope you call it that in the future.

That's just like, in my mind, when you're trying to induce yourself.

It's definitely what happened.

Yes, that's what happened.

And trying to get the oxytocin flowing and all that.

And then you went out to be with the kids, and I said, I'm going to take a nap, like in the mile circuit, try and get some rest in case this happens.

And it was while I was napping that I started having very mild contractions.

They didn't even really feel like crampy contractions as much as they just felt like kind of like a pressure tightening situation.

So I didn't really sleep as much as I just rested.

I may have dozed a little bit, but then I got up and realized, you know, True was awake from his nap and was like, okay, let's go on a walk, like everybody.

So we took the whole family on a walk or on our neighborhood.

It was a beautiful day, gorgeous day, you know, October, so pretty.

And I wore my, you know, I had to wear like a support band around my belly for most of the pregnancy, because I had really bad SPD again.

Yeah, you wore that thing out.

I wore, yes, I wore that out.

I would need another one if we ever got pregnant again.

I would need a new one.

So we go for a walk.

And as we're walking around the neighborhood, I'm like, hmm, yep, these are still coming.

And I still feel them.

Again, mild, I can walk through them.

I can talk through them.

No big deal.

But I just noticed them.

I'm like, okay, there, you know, something's stirring.

But I had had contractions before on and off, you know, over the last couple of weeks.

And then, you know, they'd fizzle out and they'd amount to nothing.

So you don't, you can't get too excited because until they get like really intense and really close together, you don't know if they're going to stop.

So, so we get back to the house and they're still coming.

And I had a snack and I looked at you and I said, I'm going to go take a bath because I'm going to see if these are going to stop or if they're going to keep going.

So.

Because that's the, that's what you do.

You want to find out.

You take a bath.

That's what you do.

So I called my mom and said, hey, can you come over?

Things might be starting.

And if they are, I want your help with the kids, you know, while Chris could be helping me.

Like if things intensify or something, like I just want Chris to be available for me if I need him.

So she came over, helped you.

You guys were doing bedtime with the kids.

I was in the bath.

I was just reading a book.

And the contractions honestly didn't change.

They just kind of stayed the same.

They were about five to seven minutes apart.

And they weren't really getting any more intense.

And I was just like, hmm, hmm, no change.

Okay.

And again, like I didn't have like crazy diarrhea.

My stomach wasn't hurting.

I didn't even get nauseous.

Like I didn't throw up.

And so I think, you know, it was like it was working.

So it's having contractions, but I had none of the nasty side effects, which was the plan and the goal and the hope.

So I got out of the bath.

And I remember I got in the ball for a little bit and just kind of like wiggled around.

And then I was doing another, I just thought, well, might as well do another round in the mile circuit.

Like, here we go.

And so I was laying, doing like the laying on my left side part.

And my mom comes in and she's like, hey, kids are down.

Mostly Chris is getting Brinkley down.

How's it going?

And I was like, well, it's weird, you know, because I can talk through them and they're coming.

But, you know, as soon as I go to bed, they might just fizzle out like this.

I don't know.

Like I just I don't know what's going to happen.

And of course, I didn't tell her that I had induced myself.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

I didn't tell anybody but you.

You're the only person until this moment.

Who knew that?

And so I'm sitting there like, I don't know what's going to happen.

I mean, mind you, I had been checking myself, like giving my own self a cervical exam, like in the weeks leading up, just to see if I was dilated at all, because I'm usually an early dilator.

And I'm not a trained midwife.

But I read a lot, looked up a lot, tried it a lot, and I knew I was dilated some, probably a couple centimeters, which is pretty typical for me.

So I knew that my cervix was like soft, squishy, thin, and dilated somewhat.

So I knew I had a better chance of working.

And I was 40 weeks, so that helped too.

But I hadn't had any other symptoms.

Like I hadn't lost my mucus plug.

I hadn't, and my water hadn't broken, obviously, like all those things.

So my mom's like, well, what do you want me to do?

And I'm like, well, I don't want you to stay here all night if nothing happens, like, and waste your sleep.

So, but, you know, I feel bad sending you home and then calling you back.

Like, what do you know?

So we just kind of talked about it for a minute.

And as I was talking to her, I was starting to go, you know, just kind of make some of those noises.

And she was like, well, are they getting, I was like, I mean, I'm fine.

Like, I'm fine.

Like I was just laying there talking to her, like, like you and I are having a conversation right now.

And so I was like, why don't you just go home, but just keep your phone on.

Like just keep your phone on and I'll let you know if anything happens.

She's like, okay.

So she leaves and I, I mean, it was like the moment she pulled out of the driveway, I was like, oh, yep, this is, mm-hmm, we're changing.

We're shifting.

Things are shifting.

And that's when I shifted into active labor.

It was like, I don't know, like 945.

It was almost 10 o'clock when she left.

Not quite 10, like 945.

And I was like, okay.

They started coming more like three or four minutes apart.

They were definitely more intense.

I was starting to have to breathe through them.

I jumped up out of bed, got on the ball, got my heating pad out.

And then you came in and I just kind of gave you the look.

I was like, mm-hmm, start prepping.

I know that look.

Start getting ready.

So I call my mom or text her and I'm like, hey, you can come back.

Sorry about that.

I'm pretty sure she had just pulled in her driveway because she lives like 40 minutes away.

So she turned around and came back.

I texted the rest of the birth team, which was my midwife, her assistants.

And then I also had one of my one of my best friends, which is one of our our children are blessed with two godmothers and two godfathers.

This is one of the godmothers from her name is Kelly.

And then her sister Rachel, who is a photographer, they were coming together from about an hour and a half from here.

So I knew they had like a trip to make.

So we reached out to them and said, hey, it's happening.

Go ahead and head this way.

Rachel was going to take pictures, and Kelly was just kind of be like prayer warrior over the situation.

And so in that, it was like everyone, okay, get ready.

This is happening.

I didn't tell my midwife to come yet.

I just said like, hey, this is, it's happening.

Just, you know, be ready.

I'll let you know when to come over.

So I was laboring.

I was fine.

Like it wasn't crazy or anything.

It was just like kind of normal and just having some contractions, no big deal, listening to worship music and telling you what to do.

I remember saying like, okay, get this out, do this.

We're going to blow up the tub.

We're going to do that.

Like, so we're getting the tub ready.

And for some reason, I guess I just must have been in labor land, but I was like, go ahead and fill it up because I didn't want to miss my water birth opportunity because, you know, True's birth had lasted about four hours and Jensen's birth was like two hours.

So I thought if this goes quickly, like this tub takes like 40 minutes to fill up, you know, so it's like, I need to go ahead and start filling it.

You never know how long this is going to be.

So we started filling the tub and it was, gosh, I don't even know what time necessarily, but it, you know, it just takes a long time to fill up.

So once I knew I was in labor and I wasn't like in transition or anything, but once I knew I was in labor and that this was, I believed it was going to keep going, for the first time ever, I gave myself an enema.

And this was because I did not want to poop in the tub.

And I will just say there is nothing wrong with pooping during labor.

I've done it in two out of four of my deliveries.

I have pooped.

It happens.

It's very, very, very normal and biologically accurate for what you're doing.

But I was just like, you know, I was envisioning this water birth, my first water birth, and my friend Rachel is going to be there taking pictures.

And I really just don't want poop like floating out in the tub during the video.

Like I just like, so I was like, so I'm going to clear everything out of my system, you know, before so that that doesn't happen.

And, you know, that's something they used to do to all women in labor back in the day.

But that's definitely not like a practice anymore.

But I did it and it was not terrible.

It worked like a charm.

And I honestly think like it made my labor progress even more because now I had more room, you know, down there for the baby to move down.

So I'm not saying everyone should give themselves the enema in labor.

I'm really not.

I promise you I'm not.

But I'm just saying if you decide to do that, like it's not going to hurt.

It's not going to hurt anything.

Like it's fine.

It did great things for me.

So, you know, I was at the point in my labor where I felt like I could still handle that.

Like you get to a point in labor, you're like, yeah, that sounds like a terrible idea.

I'm not doing that.

But I was, you know, it was earlier on.

I think it was while you were doing tub stuff and getting the tub situated that I went in the bathroom and did that.

So we're laboring.

Nobody's there yet.

And this was honestly, I don't want to say the only part of my labor that I liked because that sounds terrible.

But because it's like true labor, I just loved every minute of it.

So but in this one, I remember you came up to me and you knelt down next to me because I was on the ball and you kissed me.

And then you kept kissing me.

And like I was having a contraction and you continued to kiss me through the contraction.

And it just totally shifted what I was thinking about in the best way.

And it made for a wonderful contraction.

And in my mind, I'm like, wow, we should do this for every contraction.

But I forgot about something.

So something I somehow managed to forget.

I'm not sure how I this was a complete oversight for me.

I don't know how I did this, but I always get really bad back labor, at least with all the boys.

I did it with Brinkley, but I get really bad back labor.

And then I need counter pressure on my back pretty much like until the baby comes out.

Like from once it starts, which is like some halfway through active labor or something, I need someone pressing on my back through every single contraction.

And so as much as I wanted to continue kissing you through every contraction, and as much as I wanted that time to be a time of connection for us, I needed you to push on my back.

And it was like I wanted you up by my face, and I wanted you like emotionally connecting with me face to face, holding hands, like engaging with me.

But I needed you at my back.

And I don't know how I didn't think I would.

But well, you live and you learn.

It's funny, this is baby number five, and I still, I've learned multiple things in every single labor.

And I'm like, well, next time, blah.

You know what I mean?

Like you just, you always have something you would change or I don't know.

I don't know.

Although True's birth was pretty perfect.

I don't think I would have changed anything about True's, but sigh.

Anyways, so at this point, my midwives and my friends and my mom, like everybody was there.

My midwives were just very quietly, almost like not even existent.

Like I knew they were there, but they weren't really doing anything or saying anything because I didn't need them to.

And my mom was on lasagna duty.

I had made a lasagna ahead of time to bake while I was in labor so I could eat it afterwards.

A parasmia-friendly lasagna, by the way, something that I would be able to eat.

No garlic, no onion, all that stuff.

So my mom was doing that.

And then Kelly and Rachel were there.

Kelly came in and she prayed over me, which was so wonderful.

And it was like during contraction and everything as well.

And she's just such a prayer warrior, and it's always so encouraging to have her prayers.

And so that was good.

But it was just brief.

It was just a very brief time.

And then they were out with my mom because they knew that I wanted to labor, which is Chris.

And so that's what I was doing.

But it was like things suddenly, well, not so suddenly, but they began to get really intense.

And I knew that I was not in the best head space.

I didn't feel like eating, but I was getting tired.

I needed a boost.

And so I had Chris get me some like real salt and some honey, and I just put it on my tongue and then kept sipping water, just trying to hydrate myself and get my blood sugar up a little bit.

But I was second guessing myself because I still hadn't had any bloody show.

I hadn't lost my mucus plug.

And I'm the only one besides Chris who knew that I put myself in labor.

I didn't tell my midwife.

I didn't tell anybody.

And I knew I wasn't in danger.

So let me just say that.

I wasn't like making an uneducated, stupid decision.

Like I knew that this was going to be fine for the baby and I.

It wasn't going to put either of us at risk, like safety-wise and health-wise.

It was just wasn't necessary, but it was an emotional decision.

But it wasn't like I was making a reckless decision.

So let me just say that.

But I was starting to second-guess myself.

I was like, well, I put myself in labor.

So I haven't lost my mucus plug.

Is this going to go on all night?

How much longer is this going to go?

And it hadn't been a long time necessarily, but it did start to get very intense.

And in my head, I'm thinking, oh, the thought that we all have right near the end where we think, I don't know how much longer I can do this.

But I'm not saying that out loud.

I'm just thinking it in my head.

So I look up at my midwife and I'm like, hey, I haven't had any bloody show and I haven't lost my mucus plug.

Is that normal?

Is that regular?

Does that mean I'm not progressing?

Just kind of having that.

And she said, well, do you want me to check you?

And then I thought about it for about a second.

And I was like, nope.

No, I absolutely do not want you to check me.

I hadn't been checked the whole pregnancy by anyone but myself.

And I was like, no, that doesn't sound like what I want to do right now.

I don't want anyone's hands up inside me.

I'm good.

So she was like, okay.

And we just kept going.

Well, in that moment, I shifted.

And instead of sitting on the ball and rocking back and forth, which is what I had been doing, I had heating pads.

You had a heating pad on my back with counter pressure.

I had a heating pad on my front for contractions and just rolling around.

I decided I shifted up, and I went and laid on a pillow leaning over the bed.

So I was standing on the floor next to my bed, but I was leaning over my bed on a pillow, and the pillow was kind of supporting my stomach.

I kid you not.

That is all it took.

That next contraction I had after I did that, I felt a sensation that I had never felt with any of my other labors, because it was like in my other labors, I just went from like, oh, I'm in transition to, wow, here's all the pressure, and now I'm pushing.

But like this one was like I physically felt the baby shift down.

Like I felt the baby move through the birth canal and like slide down.

And I was like, whoa, like I felt that.

And I didn't say that, you know, out loud, but in my head, I'm like, whoa.

So what you're saying is that it was more than the typical advanced retreat, advanced retreat until, you know, the baby comes, like the slow movement.

No, like I'm not saying that at all, actually.

Like I wasn't, it wasn't even to the point where I felt pressure yet.

Like I didn't feel pressure yet.

I wasn't pushing yet.

It was just a contraction where when I made that position change, which, you know, don't duel it yourself.

When I made that position change that I should have made probably an hour before that, the baby just shifted down and like slid down.

And I felt it.

I felt the baby shift and slide down my birth canal.

That is wild.

It was, it was wild.

And I was like, whoa.

So then I was in that position, and I was like, well, I don't, I don't really want to move from here now.

So then the next contraction comes, and that is when the pressure hit.

It was like all of a sudden, I'm having contraction and my noises, because I'm a very vocal laborer at the end.

I breathe really well through most of active labor.

And when I get to transition, that's when I start getting vocal.

But I know to do the low cow, whale moaning noises, and that's when you go from, oh, to like, oh, like, it's like this, your body takes over, and it just...

That was very accurate, by the way.

It is very accurate.

I do that in my class.

It's very accurate, and it just shifted, and I had no control over it at all.

I was doing absolutely nothing.

I was not pushing, but my body was like, it's time.

He's here.

There's the birth canal.

Here we are.

We're coming out.

It's time right now.

And so, yes, the fetal ejection reflex was taking place.

My body was pushing the baby out.

I wasn't doing it.

And in my mind, in my head, I know I'm like, okay, I know the midwives are like running around to my backside now.

And you're still there pushing on my back.

And in my head, I'm like, this is happening right now.

Why aren't they picking me up and putting me in the tub?

Like, that's all I could think.

I'm like, they're supposed to be picking me up and putting me in the tub, but I couldn't say it.

Like, I physically could not speak.

But in the same moment, I'm thinking, oh crap, nobody's in here.

Like, Kelly and Rachel aren't in here.

My mom's not in here.

So it's not being filmed.

There's no photographs being taken.

The kids, because my mom was supposed to go get the kids and bring them down so they could see the baby being born.

But none of that was happening.

And all I could do in that moment was shout, mom, mom, mom.

And I was just shouting.

And it was like, I wasn't saying anything else.

I was just shouting mom.

So then they all start running in.

And I remember you saying, you're like, Kelly, can you take a video?

And she was like, yeah.

And then Rachel just starts snapping pictures.

And so Kelly is doing that.

And my mom's like, do I need to go get the kids?

And I'm like, yes.

Yes, it's happening right now.

So I went from that moment of, I can't do this for much longer.

This is getting really intense.

How much longer is this going to last till the baby is coming out of me in a couple minutes or less?

It was going so fast that it took me by surprise.

And so, I mean, fifth baby in, I should know what that sound is.

But it's happened so suddenly that it was hard to really tell.

She's making a new noise.

I was like, oh, that's new.

Oh, cool.

I guess we're progressing.

But I had no idea how close it actually was.

So this was not a long pushing phase by any mean.

I mean, I think if you look at the picture, like the timestamps on the picture, and from when my body started that first noise to his whole body being out was two minutes.

In that first whole minute, no one was even in there.

I mean, the midwives were in there, but Kelly and Rachel and them.

So by the time Kelly and Rachel got in, it was like by the time Kelly started recording, his head was already out of me.

Yeah, no, it was like you can see it on the video.

Like his head is already hanging out of me.

And then I can see like Brinkley runs in the room as his body falls out.

So she didn't see it because she wasn't, you know, on the side where I was.

So Brinkley runs in the room, his body falls out of me.

I can see my mom and Milo running down the stairs because my door's open in our bedroom.

I can see them running down the stairs and I'm like, they missed it.

Like that's all I can think.

But while simultaneously thinking, why am I not in the tub?

Why am I not in the tub?

Like that it's just like all these things like running through my brain, but I literally can't say anything out loud.

Like I can't speak.

It was like I was muted, but I wanted to speak, but it's like I couldn't.

It was so strange.

And he's here now.

I remember my midwife saying, put your feet down, because I was standing on my tiptoes.

I was on my tiptoes this whole time, leaned over the bed, standing on my tiptoes.

And she says, put your feet down.

Like I think in her mind, like you can't have a baby on your tiptoes.

Like she wanted me to get more grounding, like more leverage.

But I, you know, he slipped out just fine on my tiptoes.

And I think part of that was because he was still in the sack up until, so like his head was born in the sack, and then it burst as his shoulders were born.

So when he slid down me, like he really did slide.

Like it was definitely a sliding sensation, so much less friction.

And that was the first time that it ever happened for me.

Like with True, my water broke right before I started pushing.

But with this one, it was like I wasn't even pushing.

Baby was just sliding down.

Here he is coming out of me.

You know, it was just like, it was just happening.

So at this point, I'm leaned over.

I don't even know which midwife caught the baby.

But I am leaned over so I can't see anything.

And I can just hear, and I just hear this one little cry.

And it sounded so feminine, which is funny because it's a baby.

Like, you know what I mean?

Not like an adult or a child.

But it just sounded like a feminine cry.

And Brinkley even said it.

She said it in the moment.

She said, that sounds like a girl's cry.

And in my head, I was thinking, yes, it does sound like a girl's cry.

And you know, other people who don't find out the gender until their baby is born, it's like, oh, they forget about it.

Oh, we forgot to look.

We forgot to check.

We were just so happy the baby was born.

And then it's like this afterthought, oh, yeah, what's the gender?

That was not me.

It was like that baby came out, and the first thing I was thinking was, okay, I need to see this baby.

I need to see what the gender is.

Like, that's my first thought.

And so I'm fixated on the gender.

And I remember someone, I don't know which midwife it was, someone passed the baby through my legs, and you were standing over me still because you had been doing counter pressure on my back.

And they put them between my legs, and I looked and I said, and literally I said, it's another boy.

Like, I saw the package and said, it's another boy.

And those are my friends.

I mean, it's an announcement, but I didn't say, it's another boy.

It was more like, it's another boy.

Like, it just, it was not, I don't know.

It was a moment, that's for sure.

So of course, you know, in that moment, everybody is, you know, like, oh, yes, oh, oh.

Like, because what else are you going to say?

Like, oh, I'm sorry.

Like, no, everyone's celebrating, but I was having like so many emotions in that moment, so many feelings.

Like in this one moment of like seeing that my baby is a boy and laying him on the bed in front of me, but I did not feel the freedom to express any of those emotions.

I just felt like everyone is looking at me.

I cannot like say or act how I'm feeling right now.

And so I'm just staring down at this baby, and I'm just trying to focus.

I mean, those emotions, I wouldn't be able to process for weeks, but I'm just staring at the baby, and okay, he's a boy, he's here.

Okay, all right, it's done, and he's here, which is not the feelings that I had after all of my other kids were born.

I think about the first, like every single one of them, it was like the moment they were born, not only was it this relief feeling, like physically, but it was this emotional, like celebration feeling.

And even with Milo, even though he was delayed and getting on my chest, because they had to give him some oxygen or some breaths, but like even then, it was still just like, oh, he's here, and it's Milo, and here he is, and you know, but that was not what was happening.

And it may not have looked like that to everybody on the outside, but on the inside, I was like, okay, and now he's here.

It was very abnormal and very, so different from anything, you know, from the other four.

I definitely sense that you were just different than you normally would have been.

And I basically knew that I knew the reason why.

And now as we look at him right here staring at us, six months old, it's like, oh my gosh, like wouldn't trade you for anything.

I wouldn't have traded you for anything, you know, in that moment either.

But, you know, because, you know, Brinkley had been praying for a girl.

We had been praying for a girl.

And I think the difficult thing is like, so right in this moment where you're going to discover whether or not your prayer was answered the way you've been praying, you discover that it hasn't been answered.

And that's just a, I mean, that's tough news even though it's a happy moment.

So with, I mean, very quickly, my after pains kicked in very quickly.

And I felt like I needed to deliver the placenta.

And I, this was, I mean, I will say it was the easiest pushing because I didn't even push.

And the easiest placenta delivery because I didn't even push.

Like, gravity really worked my favorite.

This was the first time I did not push on my back, which I think made a huge difference.

It definitely made things faster and not pushing the placenta out on my back either.

Like, all I did was stand up and it fell out of me.

So I think that, I mean, that was really good.

Like, just not being on my back was super helpful.

But, I mean, everything just kind of went normal after that.

Like, they checked my bleeding, there were no tears, everything was fine.

Got my heating pad on, got all cozied up and cleaned up, you know, skin to skin.

Rachel took pictures, the midwives did all their checks.

They helped clean up.

We ate lasagna with a nose plug.

But we ate lasagna.

And the baby nursed and latched and, you know, and then Jensen even woke up because he had been getting up at the butt crack of dawn every day.

It was like 430 in the morning and he's coming downstairs.

We weighed him.

He ended up being nine pounds, two ounces, and 22 inches long, which was like so similar to Jensen.

A medium.

A medium baby.

And around 5 a.m.

everyone left.

Oh, did I say what time he was born?

He was born at 2 44 a.m.

So, and labor really didn't start, like I looked back through my notes, it didn't start till like 10 45 p.m.

So it was about four hours, just like trues.

But 2 44 a.m.

was his birth hour, minute, time.

And my mom stayed, praise the Lord.

And Chris and I, you know, just laid in bed with the baby for a couple hours.

But I keep calling him the baby because he did not have a name.

We had not chosen a boy's name ahead of time because, first of all, we had a girl's name picked out forever.

And we really all were praying and hoping and wishing and banking on it being a girl.

But then we would try to discuss boy's names during the pregnancy.

Like we couldn't agree.

We didn't like any of the ones that the other people suggested.

We didn't like a lot in general.

And then it was just my brain didn't have the capacity to think about it anymore.

And my rationale was, you know what?

Let's not think about a boy's name.

Let's not come up with a boy's name.

Because if it's a girl, that all would have been for nothing.

So I don't want to get attached to another name and then like not be able to use it.

So I said, so if it turns out to be a boy, we'll think of a boy's name then.

Hindsight's 2020, I would never do that again.

I'm with you.

Yeah, so I would never, after this experience, personally, this is a personal thing, not a like, I think everyone should do it this way, but personally, I would never not find out the gender again.

And personally, I would never wait to name my baby until birth again, because you and I just did not get any time alone and awake together for like the first five days.

That's very true and made it very difficult to have the conversation as to what we think the name should be.

Right, we couldn't talk about it, because we didn't want to talk about it in front of the kids.

But the kids were pretty much always around, and then whenever they would go to bed, you would go to bed or we would go to, you know what I mean?

Because you're just tired and taking care of a baby all night.

So it's like, we just didn't have time to have that conversation.

And even when we tried to have the conversation, it was not efficient because we were just kind of lumpy.

We were like, oh, yeah, is that what you think?

Oh, yeah, I really like that.

It was not coherent.

But when he was five days old, we did choose a name.

We landed on Indiana Watson Heeter.

That's a good last name.

I'm glad we chose that one.

Indiana Watson.

So Chris came up with Indiana.

I came up with Watson.

Watson was really the only boy's name I liked the entire pregnancy.

And I really wanted it to be his first name, but Chris was not digging it as a first name.

And Watson, just like who you're thinking of, Sherlock Holmes' sidekick, Watson, his right-hand man.

I love that character.

In all the Sherlock Holmes movies and adaptations, Watson's always my favorite person.

I'm like, he's just the best.

And I just like the name, Watson.

So that's his middle name.

And then his first name, Chris came up with Indiana and swears that it was just popped into his head one day.

For real, it did.

I was driving down the road.

I don't remember what road it was, but it's for real.

So it doesn't have anything to do with the state or the school or the team, like none of that.

But I think it was in your subconscious because we watched Indiana Jones, the whole series, all four movies at the time, that summer, like last summer when I was pregnant, we watched them like every Saturday night, I think for like four or five weeks.

So I think maybe that was probably where it came from, but I know you don't think that.

You never know.

So his name is Indiana Watson, and we call him Indy a lot.

Indy is his nickname, I-N-D-Y.

So here he is.

Okay, so early postpartum was really strange for me because especially coming off of True's birth, so thinking about the last one, baby number four, after True's birth, I felt so connected with God and so connected with my husband and so connected with my baby.

And I was just on such a birth high, and I wanted to tell everybody the birth story, whoever wanted to hear it, I wanted to tell it to them in all of its glory.

But this time, I did not.

I felt shame.

I felt guilt.

And then I just started feeling numb.

I felt totally cheated, and yet like it was all my fault at the same time, simultaneously feeling all of these things.

And then I felt badly for feeling these things, considering that comparatively speaking to other people's experiences, like my birth was totally smooth, and my baby and I were totally healthy, and we had nothing to complain about, and nothing to be upset about.

I have a perfect healthy child.

I had a perfect home birth.

Nothing went wrong.

There were no interventions.

I wasn't suffering.

Everything just went really smoothly.

Everyone was there.

Everybody made it.

We got pictures, blah, blah, blah.

It all went really well.

So then I'm feeling terrible for feeling all these things when I know it could have like, you know, something really traumatic could have happened.

I could have like, you know, and he could have gone transverse and I could have ended up at the hospital with a C-section or you know what I mean?

Like it's like so many things could have happened and they didn't.

So like nothing traumatic happened.

But I was just feeling so many things.

I was feeling like a hypocrite.

I was feeling like a liar.

I was feeling, I mean, just, and instead of like sitting there and bonding with my baby, I was just kind of sitting in these feelings of like, I can't tell anyone the truth right now.

I'm not ready to tell anyone the truth because I'm still processing this myself and trying to figure out what I'm feeling.

So like for me, this is what I was thinking.

I had prayed for a girl again and had a boy again.

I had wanted and desperately demanded and prayed for a water birth again, and then I didn't get one again.

Neither Chris or I got to catch the baby like we had desired.

I really didn't get to connect with my husband or God the way that I had envisioned and the way that I did when True was being born.

And my prerasmia was most certainly not healed, and I could not smell my baby.

He smelled like nothing, and if I ever did get a whiff of anything ever, the only little tiny whiff I got, it smelled like a sterile hospital.

A couple days after he was born, Chris was kneeling by my side at the bed, and without thinking in like total innocence, he smiled and he said, don't you just love that newborn baby smell?

I mean, I just started sobbing.

And he was already saying sorry before the first tear even fell, but I could not hold it in.

Not being able to smell my baby was and is crushing.

I was already struggling to bond with him because of his gender and his lack of a name and the birth not going how I envisioned.

But now I couldn't smell his sweet smell either.

It was devastating for me.

I cried the first several days.

I was very emotional.

But I felt like I couldn't be honest with anybody except for Chris about how I was feeling because he was the only one who knew all the ins and outs of everything.

So, I went to the Lord, I lamented, I lamented so hard over not getting my prayers answered for this birth, a birth I had prayed over and envisioned for so long, and yet none of my prayers for it came to be.

But again, I felt at fault for a lot of that.

I wasn't patient, I didn't wait on the Lord, I took things into my own hands, I had to have control.

And so I did some of that to myself.

I also repented for my hypocrisy and forever being angry with God for how things turned out, because I was, initially I was angry.

And then I repented for that, because it was like, who am I to decide those things?

It's okay to desire, but without surrender, we are teetering on the line of control.

And that's when supernatural peace leaves, and all of the negative feelings from the enemy rush in to take its place.

Not being able to share my birth story was so hard for me.

I mean, I love birth stories, like listening to them, sharing my own, like, hello, this is what this whole podcast is about.

But yeah, I feel like I could not tell anybody my birth story because I couldn't be honest, because I didn't want to lie, you know, but I felt like I couldn't tell the whole truth.

And I was just sad about it, so I wasn't excited to share it.

So when people would ask me about it, like point blank, I either just tried to change the subject or just like gloss over it and be like super vague and quickly talk about something else, like never going into detail, which is obviously so counterintuitive for me because I'm a details girl.

So it was just a very strange place for me to be in.

But I was in that place for a while.

Like I was grieving.

Whether or not I had the right to grieve, like I was, I was grieving.

I was processing.

I was regretting.

I was wishing.

I was hoping.

I was praying.

Like it was not the postpartum that I had envisioned.

Now I didn't have postpartum depression.

So let me just clarify that.

I was not like postpartum hormonally depressed.

This was like a direct result of my own actions in my gender disappointment.

It was like all me.

It was not, I mean, yes, hormones probably like flared my emotions, but I think, you know, had I had no hormones in my body and everything turned out the same, I still would have felt all these things.

There was a moment that I had in my early postpartum days that did give me a glimmer of hope.

I knew I had the baby blues, you know, and the hormones were going wild, but just like normal and what happens, and you know, like my milk coming in and all that kind of stuff.

But it was actually something my mom said that ended up making me smile, really, like a real smile for the first time, at least on the inside.

She was over, I think, a couple days after he was born.

She was visiting, and she was gonna help with the kids, and I think bring dinner.

And I told her when she came, I said, yeah, I had to make Chris put all the birth stuff away, because looking at it was just like making me cry.

I get really emotional with the space where my babies have been born.

Like, I remember when Brinkley, you know, we had her at the hospital, and I remember when we got home from the hospital, I was crying, yes, because I had hormones, maybe blues, but I was crying because I missed the hospital simply because she had been born there.

And then the same thing happened with the birth center, with the boys, it was like, I was crying because I missed the birth center because that is where they were born, and it was just such a special place to me at that point.

But at home, like with Trues, I didn't really have that because I was, I had him sitting in my bed, and I was literally sitting in my bed with him.

So that didn't happen, but this time it was like looking at the birth tub and looking at the birth stuff around me.

I was just like, it was just making me sad because the birth didn't go how I wanted it to.

And so I just, I was like, I made Chris put it all away so that I didn't have to look at it.

So anyways, I told my mom that, and I just started crying a little bit and not trying to, I really tried to hold back my tears, but it was like she knew what I was feeling in my heart as I was grieving over just like this whole process being over and like, you know, all nine months have come to an end.

And she said, it's okay, you can have another one.

And for some reason, man, her saying that, it just sort of like I was filled with hope and like happiness, at least like temporarily.

This was the first pregnancy since my second that I hadn't said, this is the last one.

Like I'm not having any more kids because you know, pregnancy is so hard for me.

So every time I was like, this is it, I'm done, I'm done.

But I didn't do that this time.

I think I just secretly thought like, well, maybe if I don't say I'm done, then maybe I really will be done.

And that would be great.

But so anytime anybody asked, I would just say, I don't know.

Like we're just leaving the door open.

Like we'll see, I don't know.

We'll see what the Lord has in store.

Like, I don't know.

And that's still my answer.

So I don't know why what my mom said, you know, had brought me so much comfort, but it did.

And it was the first thing that anybody had said that made me feel any better than how I'd been feeling.

And I just cried.

And she has no idea.

I never told her any of that.

Because I don't know, like, that kind of stuff doesn't really happen that often between my mom and I.

That would be something that would happen a lot more often between you and I, my husband and myself.

But that did, that had like a huge impact on me.

And I didn't want to tell you about it, especially in the beginning, because five kids is a lot of kids.

So saying another one, like, you know, considering our income and considering how our pregnancies go and considering we already have five, it's like saying like, one more, like, you know, it just, anyways.

And it wasn't, when she said that, my heart just like soared in the best way.

And it wasn't just because I wasn't happy with how things turned out, but there is a sacredness to birth, like unlike anything else in this world.

And it's not something you can do forever.

Like one day, I will be too old to have babies.

But for now, if God still allows me to get pregnant, then I still want to, even though it sucks sometimes.

But like, there's just nothing more precious than a newborn baby.

There's nothing more miraculous than the process of God knitting them together in our wombs and allowing us to be the vessel which brings them into the world.

So, Indy's like six months now.

And obviously, we are totally in love with him.

And he is absolutely adorable and precious.

And the thing is, I was in love with him when he was born too.

I was, I would have done anything for him.

The moment he was born, I would have died for him.

But it was different because I was grieving, I was grieving at the same time I was falling in love with him.

So it took some time to bond with him, like longer than it did any of my others.

And I think part of that is definitely not being able to smell him for sure.

And part of that is, you know, the gender disappointment.

But something that did help with that was taking baths with him.

I ended up doing that weekly once I started.

Yeah, you'd never done it before.

Uh-uh.

Every week I would take a bath and instead of giving him his own bath and like a little baby bath, I would just bring him into the bath with me.

And I would lay him on my chest.

And it was just so special.

And it made me, that was like when we did that, that's when I felt like, okay, yes, this is going to be okay.

I'm going to love him as just, you know what I mean?

Like not that I didn't love him, I did love him.

And I do love him.

But it was like that just really helped bring us a lot closer together.

It's not that you don't love your baby.

It's like, it's just that sometimes bonding is harder than others.

Yeah.

I mean, and he would fall asleep on my chest in the warm water.

And it was, oh, so it was just so precious.

It was so, like, just restorative for my soul.

I needed that.

It's crazy, because it's been six months.

Like, I can't fathom that it's been six months.

I keep referring to him as a newborn, but he's not a newborn.

He is a half a year old now, and he's huge.

Like, he's following Milo's footsteps.

Even though he wasn't as big as Milo was when he was born, he is growing at a Milo rate.

So he's like 16 and a half pounds, I think, almost 17, which is like what Brinkley weighed at her first birthday.

He's in 12 month clothes.

He's so chunky.

He has like the biggest cheeks.

And that's what everyone talks about.

Every time someone sees him, they're like, look at those cheeks.

He's just thick.

He takes up like a, I mean, he's a, he's a third of your height, probably.

Yeah, he's long too.

His skin is so sensitive.

I think he is definitely going to be our palest child, or maybe is our palest child.

He started out with this strawberry blonde hair, and now it like fell out.

Now it's growing in definitely like blonde, blonde.

His siblings love him to pieces, especially Jensen.

Jensen smothers him all the time, and Brinkley loves him too.

She really does, but she still prays for a sister all the time.

She's still hanging on to that prayer.

That was a long story.

It was a tale of two stories, my perosmia and Indy.

And if I could just, I'll let you speak to this in a minute too, just to say your two cents, but in summary, like thinking back to from when True was born, which was almost three years ago, he'll be three on April 30th, three years ago, it's like from that moment to now, we have been on quite a journey between changing, me not working full time outside the home, coming home, homeschooling, letting the Lord decide how many kids we have instead of being like, no more, no more, no more.

Parasmia, that's actually, you know, I feel like been the biggest change and impact in my life, even more so than having another baby.

Like having another baby is huge.

For anyone who's done it, like changes a lot, but parasmia, I feel like has changed and affected me a lot more, like a lot more.

It's been, you know, kind of wild and also, you know, we're just raising our other kids throughout this whole time, as they're changing and growing and us figuring out how to guide them and shepherd them and discipline them and help them become really good humans.

Hopefully one day, really good adults.

But my parasmia is, I feel like maybe slowly, finally getting better a little bit.

There are still so many things that are hard nose, like anything with fragrance, any sort of perfume or anything with fragrance in it at all is terrible.

And still the garlic, onion, mint, chocolate, peanut butter, fruit, like all that's still terrible.

And I still have my nose plugged now.

I don't wear it as much though.

Now that I'm not pregnant, I don't have to wear it very often.

So coffee was always on the bad list forever.

And that's a whole other story that's on my personal Instagram that you can see.

But I am drinking coffee again without a nose plug.

And there's a whole story there.

It doesn't taste like it's supposed to.

I'll just say that.

But it no longer tastes so horrible that I can't swallow it.

So I'll say that too.

Will I ever be healed?

I hope so.

How long will it take?

I have no idea.

At this point, people have had it for four years.

Like people have had prosomia for four years and still have it.

Others have been totally healed.

So time will tell.

Time will tell.

But I feel like every time I'm tempted, okay, maybe not every time, but a lot of the times when I'm tempted to feel bad for myself, for like what I've endured or what I'm going through, or they still have prosomia, or this didn't happen, or that, whatever, I try to look to others whose faith in God is even stronger than my faith and whose trials are like way worse than my trials, more deeper, longer, more painful.

And I'm just reminded of the sovereignty of our God in all things and how much He really does love us and how much He really does care about the details of our lives and how He really does work it all together for our good and how He sees this bigger picture that we can't.

He sees what's going on in everyone else's lives as well as ours and He knows into the future, unlike us, and I just always come back to if He does nothing else for me for the rest of my life, He gave His one and only Son for me, and that will always be more than enough.

I'm honestly just so thankful that God has given us another chance, and maybe not even another chance, but that He has added, to sound somewhat cliché, added another arrow to the quiver and given us another responsibility in raising a little human and being entrusted with that.

That's such a huge responsibility that I don't take lightly.

That's kind of easy to take lightly in the day to day, but then when you zoom out, you see, oh my gosh, like this is, it's insane that God would entrust a human with a child.

And it really is such a gift.

And so I'm just, I'm thankful that, you know, even through all the difficulty, even through this whole journey, and I will say watching you go through the tough stuff is not the same as you going through the tough stuff.

But at the same time, it is difficult to see you go through the tough stuff.

And but all in all, I mean, it's so easy and clear to see that this little guy, this Indie boy, totally worth it.

Totally worth it.

And he's such a stud.

And you look at him and it's like, goodness gracious, like that smile, that head.

And our kids will probably never know exactly what we went through.

They'll hear stories.

But just to be able to see and know and understand that God still trusted us and trusted us with this baby.

And he is, you know, he was worth all of it.

He's worth all the pain, all the struggle, all the weird smells, all the nausea.

And for me, all the times where I had to, you know, manage four kids all by myself and be single dad for a while, while you were in the bed, you know, during the first trimester.

And so God is a good God.

And he provides just what we need in the moment that we need it, even when it doesn't feel like it.

And just as much as you had to surrender a lot of the stuff that you're talking about, I've had to surrender a lot of the stuff that comes along with the dad side of things with pregnancy and delivery and newborn life.

So, but it's good.

Praise the Lord.

PTL.

Well, I think we may have had a record for longest birth story.

Over two hours.

But it wasn't just a birth story.

And I think that is, but I couldn't tell it.

Like, I can't tell Indy's birth story apart from my parasmia journey because they are so intertwined.

It's like they're one and the same to me.

Even though parasmia started way more before Indy came along, it impacted that entire journey of his being, like of his coming to be and his being born.

Like, it's such a huge part of it that I had to tell it all together, or you wouldn't be able to grasp, you know, the weightiness of what was really going on.

So if the Lord ever blesses us with more children, you know, biologically, when, how, whatever, I pray, and I need everyone to keep me accountable, that when I get to that, you know, desperate end of pregnancy state, that I will just continue to surrender, and that I will continue to wait on the Lord, and that I will rest in his peace instead of, in his plan, instead of trying to make it all go my way.

And just trust that he knows what's best for me, and that ultimately that is what I will see as best for me as well.

But my biggest prayer is that I won't have parasmia if that happens.

If the Lord blesses us with another child, I just pray to the Lord, Lord, please hear me.

My deepest prayer is to not have parasmia for that experience.

Please, pretty, pretty, pretty, please, with a non-parasmian cherry on top.

I got you, babe.

I'll be your accountability.

Thanks.

Hey, babe, just surrender it.

Just surrender it.

Do you think that will do okay?

No, I think you're going to have to stop me from buying castor oil.

That's probably what you're going to have to do.

Say this though.

Is that bad though?

Is it bad?

Is what bad?

Inducing yourself, drinking the midwife's cocktail.

You're talking about it like it might be bad.

No, so no, it's not.

And I've had plenty of clients who have done it.

It's not that I think it's bad.

I think it's bad that I did it because I talk so much about not inducing labor and letting your baby come when your baby is ready to come, when God says it's time instead of you saying it's time.

Or a doctor.

Or a care provider.

But we talk in other episodes about legitimate reasons for induction.

This was not a legitimate reason for induction, which is what makes me feel so crappy about it.

But I'm trying to forgive myself and move on and make better choices in the future.

It's just, honestly, it's embarrassing.

It is embarrassing that I am this far into birth work, that I'm this far into my business, this far into teaching childbirth classes, this far into this podcast.

And yet still, I made that decision.

And it's like, I mean, I know we're all human, but that is a decision that I have regretted.

So that's something I have to live with and learn from, and move on, and do things differently in the future.

Well, I will go ahead and speak for myself, along with all of your listeners, and just say, we love you, and you're the best.

Thanks for being you and for being honest, even though it was hard.

It took me six months, but yes, here it is.

I love you too, babe.

Thanks for doing this with me.

Thanks again for joining us today.

You can reach me at Surrendered Birth Services on Instagram, or email me at contact at surrenderedbirthservices.com.

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If you're interested in taking my childbirth classes, birth consultations, or having me as your birth doula, please click on the link in the show notes to take you to my website for online and in-person options.

Just as a reminder, this show is not giving medical advice, so please continue to see your personal care provider as needs arise.

Also, if you'd like to be a guest on the Surrendered Birth Stories podcast, please click the link in the episode show notes to get in touch with me.

We hope you have a great week, and remember, learn all that you can, make the best plans, and then leave it in God's hands.