The Liz Moody Podcast - The 2nd Pros & Cons of Having Kids Episode: Pooping During Labor, The REAL Cost + Sex & Body Image After Birth

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

I am SO excited to share today’s episode, which is our second episode all the pros and cons of having kids. It came out of an Instagram Q&A where someone asked what Zack and I were doing, and I said we were undecided and then asked people how they decided—and the responses were so fascinating, I knew I had to make it into a podcast. This episode features: TikTok stars Leanne and Allison from Thirsty On Main on what no one tells you about sperm donation, infertility struggles, deciding what religion to raise kids, and body image & sex after birth Dr. Kiarra King, OB-GYN on the one thing women can do that grosses her out, raising an only child, Black maternal mortality, and pooping during labor Plus, dozens of anonymous comments from listeners about the true realities of parenting AND being childfree Obviously, this is a huge and complex topic, and we’re just scratching the surface here. I can’t wait to continue to have this incredibly important discussion with you! I can’t wait to hear your feedback on this episode! Screenshot and tag me—i’m @lizmoody— and my guests—@thirstyonmaintiktok and @drkiarraking and share your thoughts, feelings, and reactions. PS: My foodie preset pack is officially live. You can get all 8 presets, designed to make your food pics look as good as they taste, at lizmoody.com/presets. PPS: Healthier Together is officially a number one best-seller! You can get your copy on Amazon or at lizmoody.com/cookbook. Please keep sending me your creations on Instagram—they make me so happy! This episode is sponsored by Kyoto Botanicals, the first CBD brand I’ve recommended on this podcast! Right now, I’m loving their Warmth tincture, which has turmeric and cinnamon, and the Warmth balm, which is so helpful for headaches and sore muscles. You can get a whopping 25% off your order (AND they always have free shipping!) by using the code “HEALTHIERTOGETHER” at kyotobotanicals.com. This episode is also sponsored by Lavva’s brand new Plant Based Milk. It’s some of my favorite plant milk I’ve ever tried—it’s super rich and creamy and made with pili nuts, which are a complete protein. Go to lovvelavva.com to find a retailer near you! Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthier Together podcast. I am your host, Liz Moody, and I am a longtime journalist and cookbook author. And I am so excited to share today's episode, which is our second episode all about the pros and cons of having kids. It originally came out of an Instagram Q&A where someone asked what Zach and I were doing, and I said that we were undecided. And then I asked people how they decided. And the responses were so interesting. So I knew that I had to make it into a podcast. I have three amazing guests on this episode.

I have Leanne and Allison from Thursey on Maine, a TikTok account with over 600,000 followers, where they share honest thoughts and answer often inappropriate questions about same-sex parenting. They're two of my favorite people on the internet. Their thoughts on parenting are so articulate and interesting, but they also are just completely relationship goals. You can hear how they communicate with each other throughout the interview. I was truly in awe. you will be obsessed with them, whether you're a same-sex couple thinking of having kids, or if, like, me and many of your followers, you're just curious about a life that's different from yours. We talk about

difficulties with pregnancy and fertility, the whole sperm donor process, which is way crazier than I'd ever thought about, how having kids has changed their relationship, sex and body image after childbirth, deciding what religion to raise their kids, and so much more. Then I have on the lovely Dr. Kiara King in OBGYN. I wanted her to speak to being both a mom, she has one lovely daughter, and a doctor who's helped birth thousands of babies. And boy, did she deliver. That's a, yeah, she deliver, it's a pun? Yeah. Uh-huh. We talk a lot about my fears around pregnancy and childbirth, and honestly, she helped us wage them more than anyone that I've talked to before. We also talk about the inequities of black maternal mortality and her thoughts on how to approach

that problem. And then finally, we get into what she thinks when women poop during labor because I just had to know. I also asked you on Instagram to share your stories, which I'll be reading throughout the episode. They're all anonymous and deeply honest, and I want to say thank you to everyone who participated. While I can only fit so many interviews into an episode, these small soundbites help me share the topic in a far more comprehensive way. so appreciative of all of your wonderful thoughts.

I think that my biggest learning from these two episodes is that there is so much to get into about this complicated topic. So I will definitely be back with a part three in the future. Let me know on Instagram if there's anybody that you would like to see featured or any topics that you'd like to see covered. In the meantime, definitely check out part one, which features Megan Down, Sophie Jaffe, and Monique Volz from Ambitious Kitchen. I always love your thoughts on episodes, but especially this one. And there's just so much to unpack here. So screenshot and tag me.

I'm at Liz Moody and my guest. They share their handles throughout the episode and share what resonates, what made you think, what made you laugh or cry. Enjoy the pros and cons of having kids, part two. I had several people tell me that while they love their kids, if they had to do it over again, they would get married, but they wouldn't have children. I had wanted a family. I'm an only child.

But hearing these things repeatedly made me think long and hard about what it was that I really wanted. Before I even met my husband, I had realized that what I wanted most was someone to love who love me, a companion for life. I've had my choice affect my career. When you're the only one in the department without children, they think you can stay late and work on the project because the rest of the group has to pick up their kids or go home and make dinner for their kids. I've even had bosses in the past make snide comments about me being a house with two incomes and no kids. These same bosses didn't fight for raises for me because of that. I wasn't one of those people who felt super strong after labor, delivery, and nursing.

I had a really short labor, got an epidural, and pushed for 30 minutes, so I didn't feel particularly heroic after that. I hated the way I felt while nursing. I was constantly hungry and thirsty, but also still flabby. I could never not think about my boobs because they were always uncomfortable in some way, and I missed the sports bra and workout pants combo that I used to get away with. Over the course of my daughter's first year of life, I wondered more than once whether I was happy I'd had a baby. I don't think I ever got to regret, but I did get to second-guessing, a lot.

With a bit more distance now from the early days, I haven't felt like that in a while. I love taking my daughter places, including traveling with her before COVID. She cracks me up all the time, and I love her so fiercely that I don't choose to imagine life without her. I veer in that direction sometimes, like what would my pandemic experience look like if I didn't have a baby? But now it is more curiosity than the longing it was when she was first born. I love having one child. I love it. Only children need to be destigmatized. My daughter is so social and caring and compassionate. While she might get more attention in toys than others, she doesn't act spoiled. Don't feel like it's no kids or two kids. Maybe I'm a total outlier, but I'm someone who always wanted to be a mother, and I still do, very much. My issue, though, is whether it's a selfish decision for me to bring a child into this world right now. I live in California and the past few years have been increasingly scary with climate change. and wildfires. Aside from climate change, there are also awful political and societal factors to consider. My concern is that I would be making this decision based on what I selfishly want. I want to be a

mom. I want to watch my kid grow up. I want to experience all that love, but I'm scared of the suffering that could be ahead for the next or future generations. My decision is not driven by my own personal feeling of regret or missing out. It is trying to reconcile the thought of adding a human to a world that feels like it is at its breaking point. Would that little baby, have the full rich life that I hope for them with their children. All right, Allison and Leanne. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Hi.

For anybody who's unfamiliar with who you are and what you do, can you just give me a little bit of background? All right. I'm Allison and I am the co-creator of Hey Babe and the head honcho at Thirsty on Maine. But I am actually a travel agency owner and started Thirsty on Maine just for fun and ended up being something much bigger than I thought it would be. I'm Leanne. I'm married to Allison. I'm a lawyer by day. And Allison just kind of asked me to start being in her TikToks occasionally. And I guess it all kind of spun out from there.

Was it awkward at all when she like came up to you? I don't know when you're like working or she's just coming up to you out of the blue with these sort of like pretty personal question. Was that weird? It's surprisingly no. We're kind of used to answering each other's random questions all day long. And just by virtue of being a gay married couple that's been together 10 years, I mean, it's a little bit odd to get those questions from Allison, but I know that they're coming from other people.

And we get them all the time when we're out in public anyway. So it's really not that weird. I know that seems a little strange. I was going to ask about this later, but since you brought it up, I'd love to get into it now. Do you think it's impacted? Like my husband and I were a heteronormative couple. We don't go through the world with people treating our relationship as if it's weird in any way. Do you think it's impacted your relationship that people are always sort of asking you these questions and that now you have hundreds of thousands of people sort of looking to you to be

these answers? That's a hard one. I wouldn't say it's impacted us personally because you kind of know what you're going to take on if you ever decide to come out. So, Leanne, can I jump in? I think that part of what Allison is trying to say, if I can put words in your mouth is that for years before she and I got together and decided to have kids and decided to start posting on TikTok, we were two gay people living in America. And we were both out already when we met. And so I think when you come out, like she said, you, you're subjecting yourselves to all sorts of different questions from strangers basically all the time.

As soon as you tell somebody you're gay, they want to know when you came out. Did you always know? How did your parents react? I mean, people still to this day, people ask us those questions all the time. So I think this is just a natural progression of us being open, honest people and people's curiosity, you know, wanting to know how things work and how we do marriage, families, all of it. Does it annoy you though? Like I feel like I'd be so annoyed to have to be like, all right, here's why I feel like

why I'm in a relationship was back. And here's what my parents thought when I told them and stuff like that, you know? I think the questions that annoy me the most are the ones that people clearly didn't look back to find an answer already. So I wouldn't say a first timer coming in and asking the question is annoying. but I would say it becomes more exhausting, I think is a better word. I think it becomes more exhausting as the same questions get asked of you over and over again. And you're kind of like, okay, there's a TikTok for this.

We make this whole account. I make it very clear on the TikTok videos where you can go and find whatever it is, the answer you want. But we try to answer new questions and we stray away from really, really offensive ones. And then the ones that are offensive, but we're like, we should call this personnel. We will also have those as well. I think those are my favorite ones. I think to add on to that, it's annoying is a harsh word, but I think it's frustrating sometimes when people presume that because we've answered one question a certain way,

that they therefore know the answer to a whole different, a whole other set of questions, which isn't the case. And I think a lot of what we try to do in our TikTok is highlight that we don't fit into boxes. You know, I, this is what I look like. I have short hair. I cut on my hair off a couple of years ago. But I still wear dresses. And I can put on makeup.

And I think people are maybe not used to seeing that or seeing somebody who's so comfortable with that. And, you know, a lot of other things that are kind of along the same lines. People are just curious. And we try to give them the benefit of the doubt. on the flip side you guys have talked about how pretty early on in your relationship i believe within the first few months you were having a lot of the intense conversations about whether you wanted kids and what religion role what the role of religion would be in your lives since i know that um alison i believe you're jewish and lian you're christian do you think that having that constant outside questioning sparked having those more intense conversations early on or do you think that's just the people that you are i think it's naturally the person that i I am. I wouldn't say Leanne started off this way. I think Leanne was really secretive is not the right word. What's the word I'm looking for? Preserve. Procrastinated? I don't like to, I don't want to discuss stuff too early. Like, you're rather just cross a bridge, you know, cross the bridge when we get to

it. And for me, that just didn't work in previous relationships. And I knew I cared a lot about Leanne. And so I took a different approach. And I just out the gate, I was like, look, These are the things that are important to me. This is the price of admission to date me. If you end up deciding you want to marry me, these are the things that I need. And I need to make sure that that's okay with you. And she was like, we hammered them out. We did.

I think you and I both had past relationships. I mean, we can talk about that if Liz, you're into it. But Allison had dated a bunch of people. I really hadn't, but both of us were kind of on this path where we knew what we wanted and we were going to settle for less than that. And so she and I had a really incredible spark, and we knew that something was there. And I think neither of us wanted to really let our guard down

and open up our heart until we knew for sure that this was the person that we could make it work with. And in order to know that we could make it work, we had to, she and I are strong, independent people with beliefs, strongly held beliefs, and we had to get past a couple of those big issues to figure out how we would be able to make a, a long-term thing. So you sort of alluded to the fact on TikTok that one of the issues might

have been maybe if not whether to have kids, how many kids to have. So can you just speak to what your thoughts? Like did both of you always want to have kids and picture yourself as moms? What, what, how did you approach that? I think the timing was different for each of us. So we definitely both wanted kids. That was something we figured out early on. And that's definitely something you should hammer out early on in a relationship because we have seen people get divorced over this issue. And people are not willing to change their minds when it comes to these kind of like really important things. And kids is one of them. So I said, I want to be a mom. I need to know that this is important. And Liam was like, yes, I want to be a mom, but I don't want to be a mom right now. And I was like,

okay, we can revisit it. But that was a lot of things. I was like, I want to get married. I want to do this. And Liam was like, okay, but not right now. I'm not ready. And we had this kind of really a huge turning point in our relationship because I was really pushing marriage. And that was my own insecurity of I was afraid of being abandoned. I was afraid that she was going to leave me for somebody else because that was my previous relationships. And I was so scared that I was going to lose this person that I had an amazing connection with. And she was like, I am never going to leave you. I'm just not ready to get married right now. And I was like, so you promise you'll be with me forever.

And she was like, yes. And that was basically the day I married her. But obviously we got engaged and did the whole marriage thing after that. But it was that day that I was able to really relax and just be like, okay, we're in this for the long haul. I don't need to worry because I trust her. I think on the kids thing, like you said, we decided that this was something we wanted to put on our plan. And like let's make a list of all the things we want to do. Definitely get married, definitely have kids.

And as long as we remain open, we can have conversations about timing as we go. And we did. We had multiple conversations about kids. I mean, we're a lesbian couple. So it's not like it's going to happen on its own. You have to make an affirmative decision and really go out of your way to have kids. So there's a lot of talking that needs to happen. But we kind of made a deal to be open with each other on our feelings.

and the, you know, work out the timing specifically later. So. And how did you decide that Allison would be the one to carry the kid? That's easy. I didn't want to. It's really like not. I think people think it's like some deeper thing. I really wanted to carry. Leanne didn't. And that was like it. I should say I was apathetic. I never had that. I knew that I wanted to be a parent. I wanted to do soccer games and theater, you know, musical theater shows and all that stuff. But I never envisioned myself carrying or breastfeeding or getting pregnant or any of that.

And so when Allison came along and was like, well, I want to do it. I was like, great. No argument here. Did you like being pregnant, Allison? That's a complicated question because I had really difficult pregnancies. My first one was actually pretty easy. I was pretty nauseous in the first trimester, but after that, I was actually okay and I enjoyed it until like week 30 and I started going to labor. So I actually had my first daughter prematurely. She was born at 36 weeks. And I was like, I had a really hard time breastfeeding her and I still breastfed her until 18 months. And like it was like a whole thing. And then when I got pregnant the second time around, I was like, I'm not going to freak out about breastfeeding. I'm not going to freak out about what I eat or blah, blah, blah. But when I I got pregnant with my second daughter. I started bleeding right away. I thought I was miscarrying, but I had it, like, I think it's called a hematoma. And so I had like these, I had bleeding

throughout, I don't know, till 14 weeks or something. And I had hyper-emesis gravdaram, which is like really bad nausea. And so I was throwing up like 30 times a day if I wasn't taking medication. So now I want to preface this because I know people, there's like an anti-nauzia medication, and this is important because of what my daughter was diagnosed with at 20 weeks. But there is an antinazia medication that is tied to heart defects. I was not taking that one. I was taking something completely different. So to put that out there. And then at 20 weeks, our second daughter was diagnosed with transposition of the great arteries. And I just flipped our entire plan upside down. We flew to Michigan. We had her at Mott's Children Hospital. She had

open heart surgery. Was it 12 days long? 13 days after birth. And yeah, it was just, so I ended up pumping for four weeks and then still breastfeeding her, but her breastfeeding journey was much easier than my first daughter. So the bottom line, you can't plan. You can't plan. You try to plan all these things in your life and you're like, ah, this is going to be great. And the second time around, I'm not going to freak out. And the second time around, you have to freak out. So it's like, just completely different experience. So did I like pregnancy? I don't know. I'm not going to do it again. I think the short answer of that question is just as an outsider's perspective, you had, you didn't not enjoy being pregnant, but both of our kids were premature. And then the second one had a congenital

heart defect that basically upended our lives for a year. And so I think it's hard to detach the pregnancies from the experience of all of that. Yeah. So there's a lot to impact there. First of all, are both children doing well now? Yes. Okay.

Good. I guess I'm curious because I'm, I think more like you, Leanne, where I'm just like, I could see myself having kids, but I definitely am not that interested in being physically pregnant. But the difference is that Zach cannot get pregnant.

And I feel like if he could, I would be like, okay, go for it, dude. And I'm curious if in those moments of having like hyper-emesis or having the less comfortable elements of pregnancy, if you were resentful at all of like the fact that this was happening to your body, Alison. So no. I think you almost become a mom instantly and you're just like, you feel guilty that these

things are happening. You feel guilty that like, you know, like I still feel guilt to this day, even though TGA is an anomaly. It's not like tied to genetic stuff. I still feel like the bleeding and the first fifth week or whatever when the heart's developing. I'm like, well, probably messed up the twists and turns of her heart developing. So it's probably my fault. And that's just not true. It's just not, that's not how it happens. It just didn't make the final turn. And that's why she has the heart defect she has. So no, I didn't.

I never was resentful or angry. I was like, this is just part of it. It's interesting because our second child that Allison carried was my biological egg. So I also felt a lot of guilt that I was making her carry a child. I mean, like she said, it's a complete, it's random.

It just happens, like one in 10,000. just have a heart defect. And so we can remind ourselves that it's neither of our faults, but at the end of the day, we are still human and we'll, we still carry that. Like, oh, my gosh, is it something that I did that had an effect on my eggs? Years ago, is it something that happened to Allison? We're never going to know. That's part of parenting, I guess. Yeah. That's interesting. Like, the idea that it almost like prepares you for the perpetual uncertainty that will be the rest of your lives. It's, that's exactly what it is. My friends are like, I'm so scared of this, this and this. And I'm like, welcome to parenthood. You're constantly scared. It's just, you become pregnant and you're like, am I going to miss Carrie? Is something going to happen? What about later on? It's like, if you constantly live in the future, you're never going to enjoy the presence. So I just tried to enjoy the pregnancy as best as I could. And I cried a lot because how could you not? And I was,

feel fearful for her. But, you know, in the end, I just, I trusted myself. I trusted Leanne. I trusted the doctors. And this is where we ended up. Do you feel any more tied to the baby that is biologically your egg? Or does that not matter? Or do you not think about it all? How do you approach that? I think my experience was different because I carried both of them and breastfed them. So I grew them and birth them and then grew them some more with like breast milk. Yeah. So I think I have a different experience. I think this is a, this is a good one for Leanne, though she had a similar experience. She didn't birth either of the kids. So I don't know, Leanne. What do you think?

I remember being really concerned when Allison was pregnant with Ruthie, who's our oldest, because Ruthie was Allison's egg. And so in addition to being a first-time parent, I was going to be a first-time parent to a child who is not biologically mine. Now, growing up gay, I just, I don't think I spent that much time thinking about how I could potentially have kids that weren't biologically mine. Like, it's just not something that you put together kind of when you're growing up and thinking about your future children.

So I didn't know what that was going to look like. And I remember being really worried that I might feel less connected to her. I remember when as soon as Allison gave birth, it was really important to me as part of the birth plan that I would have time to do skin-to-skin contact where you kind of hold them on your chest and things like that because I didn't know how I was going to feel. And after I talked to a lot of my guy friends who were kind of like, you know, as a, as the, I wouldn't call myself a husband, but as the non-gestational spouse, you can't really do much. You're not hearing the baby. You're not breastfeeding. And they all said, just kind of hang in there because enough time goes by it and they really feel like they're yours. And that was true for me. I mean, it didn't take that long at all because you start changing diapers and rocking in the sleep at night. Now, you know, she's almost five. And there is, I know,

it just never crosses my mind. She's 100% my kid. I love. love her so much. She has so many mannerisms that are mine or weird quirks that are mine, as does our youngest, who's biologically mine, there's no difference now. I understand why I was concerned, but I wish I could go back and tell myself, don't be. That like made me tear up a little I do think that the the way parents, this whole type of episode was, it was conceived when, conceived, when I was trying to figure out whether or not I wanted to have kids, which I'm still very undecided about. But the way that parents talk about their kids is certainly persuasive.

It's just a special tone of voice that happens that I think is really beautiful. Okay, can we talk about final sort of like, pregnancy, birth thing, your body changes after you go through pregnancy and birth. And Allison, I'm curious what your relationship is to your post-pregnancy body. Then Leanne, I'm curious what your relationship is with Allison's post-pregnancy body. So I mean, like, I am a woman who grew up in the United States of America. So like most women, we battle with our bodies, especially since I was born in the 80s. And like 80s, 90s, man, they didn't care. You're so pretty. You're you're so pretty. Like, that's what you deal with. And, like, the importance set about how your body looks,

how your face looks, how everything looks, the way that you look is so important that I still have a really hard time trying to reconcile that. Now, to be perfectly honest, I am at my pre-birth weight. So I do not weigh any different than I did before I had my kids. But it took a lot of time and discipline. And I sometimes am jealous that Leanne can still eat whatever she wants. And I mean, I can eat whatever I want. I choose to make other choices. But I mean, we don't need to get into diet culture. Like, I get it. It's bad and it's terrible. But like, also, I'm on keto. I'm being perfectly honest. I mean, I struggle with it. I will probably always struggle with it.

I didn't get stretch marks. I didn't get a lot of the things that I know other people get. And my boobs are never going to look the same. And I've accepted the fact that they're just going to hang to my belly button. And like, there are things about it. But I actually started TikTok to make myself feel better about myself, to make myself still feel worthy. And I did Thursday on Maine because I did.

I thought nobody would ever find me and I could just do like lesbian thirst traps. And I'm like, if you go back, I've actually privated a lot of them. But if you go back, you can still find a lot of them. And it was literally just an ego boost because I did not feel good about myself or my body. And now I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so, I'm worth so much more than my body. I have so much to share with people. And I'm smart and I'm kind and empathetic. And those are the things that I should be sharing with people.

And so those are the things that I've just. decided to share with people. And so people thirst all over Leanne. I'm like, yeah, but she's gorgeous, but I'm worthy too. And so I've decided. And you're gorgeous too. But I'm a good person. And those are things that I've always valued just as much as being pretty or looking good in a painting suit. I also really value kindness and empathy and just having a good heart. All right. And Leanne, what about Alison's post baby body. Well, I have a couple of things to say here. Number one is that she's drop dead gorgeous.

Regardless of whether she got all dealt up and did her makeup for a Thursday on Maine TikTok or the day after she gave or while she was giving birth. She's always been beautiful and always will be beautiful. And like, let's just put that on the record. Number two, I have to share a quick anecdote because the day, We was it, which appointment was it, babe? Was it her one week appointment? Oh, yeah.

We went in, we went into the doctor's office a week after Allison had given birth to our eldest daughter. And she was standing at the checkout thing and I was holding the little car seat with Ruthie in it who was like six pounds. I mean, she was teeny. And the lady behind me goes, oh my gosh, is that your baby? And I said, yes. And she said, how old is she? And I said, oh, my God, you look amazing. Because it was me, and I'm tall and athletic, whatever.

And I was like, there's no way I'm going to take credit for this because my wife just did this miraculous thing of giving birth. So she gets all the credit. So I said to her, oh, well, I didn't give birth. My wife did. And the lady looked at Allison. And she goes, oh, that makes it. And I was like, like, daggers could have come out of my eyes because I was like, are you kidding me? Yeah.

So after that, we had a conversation about it because I never wanted Allison to get that from any stranger ever again. So now anytime anybody makes a comment about my post baby bod, I just say thank you and move on in my day. That's interesting. I wanted to say was I think that I don't even know if you remember this Allison but she after she gave birth we were not allowed to look at your body or I wasn't around I wasn't allowed to be around that area I think you were just really concerned that you look different yeah I just like I needed to I've always been the kind of person that like my the way that I am feeling is really reflected physically.

Like, somebody today commented how tired I look. And I'm like, well, I'm very tired. I don't know what else to tell you, but I have a really hard time letting people in if I'm feeling vulnerable or not great. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, it passed. Yeah.

Okay. And you mentioned that having kids was a very intentional choice for you as a lesbian couple. You're not going to sort of conceive. I love to talk about the cost associated with. that. People often, I think, don't talk enough about the cost of having kids generally. So I'd love to talk about how expensive it is once they're just born. But also, did you ever get resentful of the fact that there's this huge extra expense on you two as a same-sex couple? And what kind of like

expense are we talking about? And how did you fit that into your life? I don't think that we were ever resentful about the cost as a side effect of being gay because there are so many, if you're going to take that avenue, there are so many things in our lives to be resentful of. I mean, Allison was six months pregnant when the Supreme Court ruling came down that made our marriage in California legal nationwide. There are a whole slew of ways that we have been impacted negatively by society. And this is just one of them. Getting pregnant, having kids was always going to cost extra money for us. So what we did was we put a, I was actually in law school at the time and I was working part time as a teacher, like a graduate student instructor,

so that my law school tuition would be paid and my scholarship would be just paid to us as a check. So for two, I think a full year, we lived with Allison's parents while I worked and she worked and I went to school. And every single penny that we earned, we put in savings so that when it was time to get pregnant, we would have a big cash pot to pull from. And then we would never have to talk about it. Because I didn't, I mean, we knew Allison was going to be getting pregnant. I have a thing about money. Money is a hard thing for me to discuss. us. It gives me a lot of anxiety. And so I knew that if I was putting pressure on her to try to get

pregnant because we were running out of money, like it was just not going to go well. We don't know emotionally what that would do to her body. So we made a deal to just save all this money and then use as much of it as we needed. And we did. We used up all of it. And we never, the only time we ever talk about it is when people ask us this question. Because we, what I said to Leanne and what, Leanne and I have discussed is the money never felt like ours. The money was so designated to getting pregnant that it wasn't even a second thought. And I don't know with everybody, like, I feel like that's the only time we've ever done that, that like we mentally put a huge chunk of money towards something. And we were like, we're not even going to think about it. Yeah,

it was like 20 grand and we just never touched it. We just never touched it. And we used all 20 grand for eight IUIs and what was like technically six IUIs. We did. two at home and then we did six in a doctor's office and then we did two rounds of IVF. So my rounds of IVF and Leanne's round of IVF and it was ended up, I've done the math before, but I think it was about 25 grand. So just really, really, really, really fast. The process is you do IVF, you do like an egg retrieval, both of you would and then you select a sperm donor and implant a fertilized egg into Allison's body.

Mm-hmm. And the IUI is the implantation? No, so IUI is a different process from IVF. IUI is they stick a tube through your cervix and the sperm goes in and then you hope that like the sperm and the egg meat. I have some fertility issues. So that was never really going to work for me. But I had to do a certain amount in order for my insurance to cover it. Got it.

So you could theoretically do that to have your biological baby, but you would always need to do IVF to have Leanne's biological baby. We have friends that are a lesbian couple that were trying to get pregnant at the same time as us, and they did one IUI at home and got pregnant. We did two at home, six in the doctor's office, and then our insurance kicked in and we were able to do IVF at a reduced cost. Wow. I mean, I think that's become such a common story that I have friends when they get pregnant. They're nervous to announce it because they don't want to make anybody who's been trying to get pregnant who can't feel. bad, you know, which it's such an interesting dynamic. Well, that's an interesting point because the day that we announced it on Facebook, we had several of our friends who were straight and married to their husbands,

reach out and say, did you guys do IVF because we've been trying to get pregnant for it. I mean, it was clear to them that obviously we had done some sort of assisted reproductive technology because we can't get pregnant on our own. But the fact that so many of our straight friends were coming to us because they didn't know that each other were going. through reproductive issues. IVF is really a last resort.

A lot of people just assume we did IVF because we're a gay couple, but that's the end. That's the end before you move into like embryo adoption. IVF, unless you're doing reciprocal IVF, which we also decided to do. But me doing IVF to have my own biological child, that was due to the fact that I had a stage four endometrioma on my right ovary and PCOS.

that was a result of infertility issues, not because I needed to just for, yeah. And for the sperm, do you just pick, like, the smartest sounding guy? Or, like, how does that work? It's actually a really interesting process because what you don't think about is that in that year that we were trying to get pregnant, you have to go through different sperm donors because people will either stop donating or they'll run out of samples. they can only donate so many times, but they have to agree to donate a certain number of times.

So if you, like us, want to have two kids that have biologically the same biological father or donor, whatever you want to call him, you have to buy a lot of it in advance because you don't know how many times it's going to take to get pregnant. So I think in that year we went through, what, four different donors. Because the first kid was going to be Allison's egg, we chose donors that had characteristics that kind of felt more like me.

So people who liked puzzles, logic-driven people, sporty, athletic. Wait, how much do they tell you about these people? So they actually do provide you a lot of information. It's important here to make a distinction between open and closed donors. So we used an anonymous donor, which is somebody that we don't know, but there are two types, open, which means a child can find out their information if they want when they turn 18 and closed so you can never find out. Now, because of DNA testing, people are still finding out. But we decided to choose an open donor because it was important to us that we not wall that

off for our kids, you know, that we would be open with them about how they were conceived and if they want to find out who he is later on in life, they can. But yeah, I mean, when you're choosing, in addition to getting all of their medical family history, you can find out what kind of music they listen to. People who work at the sperm banks will interview them. So sometimes you can hear their voices. They'll give you their impressions of how they interact with the staff. And it's actually quite a lot of information.

So it also just makes you think about like the nature versus nurture question so intensely. Like because my sperm likes puzzles. Will my kid like puzzles? you know. Neither of us is an artist and our four and a half year old is an incredible, is incredible at drawing. And we were looking at his donor profile the other day. And actually, he mentioned on the other than he liked to sketch people. And we were like, that's it. It's, I mean, it's cool. It is, it's fascinating. It's really fascinating. I'd love to talk about the idea of emotional labor, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it's the idea that moms tend to bear a lot more

of like the organizing and the keeping track of everybody's needs and lives, even if dads end up doing the execution. And it's thought to be one of the reasons why women are falling behind in the workplace so much during the pandemic. They kind of like know what needs to be done. And so they end up being the one doing it. Of course, this is different from relationship to relationship, but I'm curious, since you are both the moms, and there's no notion of what a traditional mom or dad role is that would be applicable to your relationships, if you're freer to define your roles as parents a little bit more and how you sort of decide what role each of you take and who handles the emotional labor if anybody does or any of that.

So, Leanne and I actually talk about this a lot because we read, was it a New York Times article? We both read the article about what you're talking about. We read the article. And we both take on the emotional labor. when people are like, you guys are so exhausted. I'm like, uh-huh. You're like we both get the downside of being a mom. Yeah, we're both making a million decisions and then trying to decide between us

who's going to execute them. I think we've worked harder to not double the emotional labor, but to split the emotional labor. I think we've, because now our home during the pandemic has become both of our offices, and our school and our playtime and time where we all have to find activities that will like, you know, calm us down and relax us in our own individual ways. We've had to within these walls make a plan so that we'd split all the emotional labor because otherwise it's just way too overwhelming.

So what is that plan? Is that like a concrete written out plan? Is that just conversations back and forth? I think it's a mix of both. We don't have a written out plan. but we're definitely, we will text each other reminders or things like, hey, I need you to do this. And we're working on, I'm working on taking it not personally because I know Leanne doesn't mean things. Like, I'm like, well, that's it. She's leaving me. It's the day. And she's like, that is so ridiculous.

And she's like, I literally just asked you to take the trash out. It's not a big deal. It happened today. She was like, hey, do you mind cleaning the bathroom? And I was like, this is it, she's the more thing. She was like, I'm worried you're going to fall in love with somebody else. And I was like, who? Where are I going? How did you get that from the clean of the I'm not even talking to my, I haven't even talked to my sister in two months. Now I'm going to go find somebody else. Well, I think our plan involves a constant stream of communication. Like Allison said, with reminders, we check in basically on a daily basis as to, do I have any work calls that I need the door locked and the kids out?

Does Allison have emails that she has to send by a certain time? Are there times when both of us can kind of be around with the kids? I mean, we're doing that basically every single day. And then the rest of the things that we have to do, we kind of work them in when there's time. That makes sense. Okay, can we talk about religion for a second? We did touch that at the beginning of the episode that Leanne is Christian

and Allison is Jewish and you're raising your children Jewish. How did you decide to raise your children Jewish since you both sort of come from different religious backgrounds? I don't want to put words in Allison's mouth, but out of the two of us, only one of us had a negative experience with Christianity, and it was the one who didn't grow up Christian. And so I think it's hard for sometimes Allison to answer questions involving this on my behalf when she has not a body, bias, but like you have baggage when it comes to Christianity. And, and I don't have the same when it comes to Judaism. And so I think early on when we started dating, we had a lot of conversations because I don't think she expected that she would end up marrying somebody who wasn't Jewish. And when we met,

I made it very clear that Christianity is a really positive thing in my life. And I don't, I'm not going to proselytize and say that anybody else needs to believe it. But that's how I was raised. and it's comfortable to me, and I don't want to have to give that up. If I were to have to give that up, I would be losing something in myself that I didn't want to lose. And so when it became clear that I wasn't going to convert, I think the next thing was, it was really important to Alice and to raise kids that were Jewish, to have a Jewish family. And this is kind of the pregnancy thing. It's not that I wasn't in favor of it or that I had really strong feelings about raising my kids Christian.

just sort of hadn't thought about it. And it seemed like on that issue, the issue of what religion we wanted to raise our kids, Allison felt so much more strongly that it was important to her to raise her kids Jewish than it was important to me to raise my kids Christian. And so we kind of answered that the way that we answer everything, which is on this issue, which one of us is it more important to? And it was more important to her. So on that issue, I was like, I can get on board with raising my kids Jewish. It would have been much, much harder for Allison to get on board with raising her kids Christian because one of the fundamental things that Christians believe is that Jesus is the Messiah and Jews don't believe that. I didn't have to lose anything from my own

faith journey to celebrate Jewish culture and Jewish traditions with Allison and our children. Allison could not say the same about Christianity, I think. You know, there are times in your life, right, where you feel really alienated from something. Leanne doesn't feel the alienation necessarily that I feel. Is that okay to say, Leanne? Yeah. I don't want to make it. Well, I think the way to say it is that Jews don't have a, for better or worse, long history of persecuting people for not being Jewish.

And as much as I hate that that's true with Christianity, it is. Fortunately, I am really, really lucky that I grew up in a church that was pretty liberal. on these kinds of issues and didn't, you know, like I grew up in a very safe community. It wasn't until I was an adult and started seeing how some people who call themselves Christians treat members of the LGBT community that I was like, well, this isn't okay. This isn't my kind of Christianity. And so that was also really hard for me to get over without. I mean, I had to work through that with Allison.

There are people saying that they're the same thing that I am that are treating her completely unlike how Jesus would have treated her. I mean, like, we have these discussions a lot. I think TikTok brings them up with us sometimes, where we have to really sit down and hammer out how to say what we believe and how to say, how to articulate how we can coexist and really flourish together as a family, even with these different beliefs.

And we're continuing to work through it. It's complicated, you know? It's really complicated. It is. Alison, was your negative experience with Christianity around you being a Jew or around you being gay or something else entirely? So both. It started off being a Jew and then when you were really young. Yeah. I mean like really young. Very, very young. And so I mean like my earliest memory I think with it is like four or five where I was. the first time I was told I was going to hell because I wasn't taking Jesus into my heart, like a four-year-old. And that just continued throughout my entire life. And so by people that I

should have been able to trust. So let's just leave it at that. But they used, Jesus was a weapon for them. And they used the Bible as a weapon. And knowing Leanne, she has taught me, like, I think she is open in my eyes what Christianity was to her and how, what a beautiful religion. it was to her. And for me, it just was so negative. And I couldn't, you know, I can compartmentalize enough to support her and love her, but not enough for me to change my religion, something that I so deeply believe in love and fought to be to then go ahead and raise my children, a religion that has really been awful to me. Like, I hate to say it. And it's not the religion itself, obviously. It was people saying that they were a part of this religion and I've learned to find Christians who are

wonderful and kind and giving and all of those things that the teachings of Jesus were. But to try and wrap my head around creating. Yeah. Yeah. It was just, it was too much. And I mean, fundamentally, there are some different beliefs as well between Judaism and Christianity, specifically that Jesus was the Messiah. in Christianity and

just believe that the Messiah hasn't come yet. So that would be, that would be like a whole mind switch flip that I would have to do that I am unable to do. All right, I'm going to do the most natural transition ever and ask, go from religion to asking how having kids has impacted your sex life. Oh.

Oh, you got to answer that one. I mean, what? What? What? The answer, the question is how has having kids impacted our sex life? Not the pandemic. Oh, no. Well, we can talk about that too. I think pandemic sex is like such a weird thing. It's all really weird. I mean, like kids, at first they take your body and then they take your sleep and then they take your sanity. But they also do, they add a lot of really lovely things as well. I mean, Kids definitely outweigh the negative, but they definitely, and our kids, unfortunately,

co-sleep. So there's that, too. So to answer the question, it was, there were a couple years where I think it was hard just because you didn't have the same sex drive that you had before. And I don't know whether that was sex drive or what we were talking earlier with just kind of growing to love your body again. Yeah. But I don't, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think with everything in life, it changes. Sometimes one of us is like down all the time and the other one is like, no, we need to stop. And it goes back and forth. And I think we try to remind ourselves, I mean, I've had to do this too. We have to remind ourselves in those moments. Like, the fact that I don't want to have pandemic sex has nothing to do with Allison. I think she's the most beautiful

person I've ever seen. Before pandemic, I wanted sex with her all the time. But now I'm like, I'm, it's I'm screaming and I'm crying and there's nothing about this that's like, yeah, let's do it right now. Like it changes. It comes and goes. Like everything in marriage, I think. Do you have any tips for anybody who's looking to maybe not like keep their sex life good post-children, but learn to go with to ride the flow of the changing sex life post-children? I'm going to speak because I'm the one who had the babies. I think be really, really patient with moms who just changed their body for a year.

Give them a year to let them feel normal again because they're not going to feel normal for a while. And allow the changes and the, what's the word I'm looking for? So like schedule to start again. And in the end, like you can schedule in sex. We've done that before. I'll be like, how's your Friday morning looking? Great. I'm not kidding. And like, yeah, maybe it's not sexy. But by the end, like, you're like, that was pretty sexy. If I do say so myself. Yeah. And I think to speak for the other parent, like, if we're talking to parents, the parent who didn't have the change in their body, it's okay to be like, hey, I know that you're not feeling super great with everything right now. But I am really feeling. like I need sex. So I'd like you to be a part of it in a way that you feel comfortable with. Or I need you to give me permission to like go watch porn and be alone for 20 minutes.

You know, like it's okay to have those conversations and recognize that you're not always going to be on the same page. But the key is to not make each other feel bad about it. Like I hope that I never made you feel bad because you weren't feeling comfortable in your body. And you never made me feel bad that I needed to go masturbate because, you know, like, that's just, again, communication. It is what it is. I feel like if you're comfortable enough to get naked with that person, you should be comfortable enough to have these conversations with them. I think that's 100%, 100% true. All right. Last question. What do you think is the best part of having kids and what do you think is the worst part? Maybe do the worst part first so we can end

on a positive. I like that. I don't think it's a worst part, but I think the heart of part right now for me is answering their questions and trying to be honest with them because we're raising adult humans. You know, they're going to be adults. They're going to be valuable members of society, we hope. And just, you know, like just try not to make the same mistakes that our own parents did. But the best part for me has been they've given me like a new set of eyes to see the world again and think about how amazing everything is and to enjoy things. We sit in the grass and we look at roly polis and just to take time and really be present. I think my kids have forced me to do that. And they're just so cool. They're just so, they're just so brilliant. Can I ask what type of

questions? Like, are they questions about the state of the world right now and sort of the more negative things going on in the world? Or what are you referring to? Yeah. Sometimes it's like, how does electricity work and just complicated questions like why is fire that color you know and and especially right now we Allison does such a good job of this and I'm trying to be better being so emotionally healthy with them and showing them our feelings they can they've seen us cry and allowing them to feel their feelings and not making them feel bad about it and because of that they saw us really upset with the George Floyd stuff and we hold them honestly in an age appropriate way, what happened.

And they're continuing to, we're reading, we got this whole set of books about ordinary people changing the world. So we're reading about Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman and all these people. And it was the Montgomery bus boycott. And I explained what a boycott was. And she asked if one of the signs in the picture said Black Lives Matter. So the fact that the four-year-old could connect George Floyd to Rosa Parks, it is, It's heavy. It's emotional work that we all need to be doing. I need to be doing, but it's heavy and it's exhausting.

And for you, Allison? I think the thing I'm struggling with the most is staying patient. And I think that has a lot to do with the pandemic because I used to have like the patience of, I mean, I taught school for 10 years. So I was incredibly patient. And learning to be patient with my own children the way that I was with other people's children. Because, like, they're learning the same way that everybody else's kids are learning when they were with me. So why can't I give them that same thing? And it's because, oh, I'm doing all this emotional labor on top of it, right? I worry about them constantly. But I think that's the hardest part is just trying to be patient with. And I literally can insert that in every moment of my life. Be patient because they woke up before I did.

And so now I have to get up an hour earlier. Then I wanted to be patient because they're screaming at me because they're hungry, even though I have dinner getting ready, literally putting on a plate, just trying to be patient all the time. And because I feel so much better at the end of my day, if I'm like, wow, I was patient for 95% of the mishaps that happened. And like, I feel better because I'm like, they get to take that. They're going to grow with that. And they're going to know that they get to also react to situations in that way, right? Because it's their emotions. It's not mine. I don't need to take on their emotions. And so I think about that constantly. On the best part, oh, man, is we are raising humans to be good

little people and they're going to grow up to be good big people and not to go back to TikTok, but I had somebody ask a question today and I saved it actually and they said, well, what would you do if one of your kids married someone who didn't agree with your relationship. And I was like, I think my kids love us so much and we are so good to them that they wouldn't be comfortable marrying somebody who didn't feel the same way that they do about us. And that's because we're raising our kids to be kind, good people. I can't imagine a world in which that would happen. I mean, of course, it could. But I'd like to think that we're doing a good enough job that they wouldn't.

It's never going to happen. They're the kindest, like, they've got good little hearts. You should see them when Allison and I, we do it. We do it now to make them laugh. We'll stand in the kitchen and kiss or hug just because we know that one, if not both of them, will run up as soon as they see us and demand to. be in on the hug and we'll do a family cheer. I mean, they are the sweetest, most loving humans. And once you become a parent, you're like, I didn't even know that I had the capacity

to love somebody this much. Because of course, you love your partner. I am head over heels in love with Allison. I have been for 10 years. But the way that I love my kids, because they came from us and we're in charge of everything about them, you know, as they grow and then they're going to make their own decisions. I should say, we're in charge of caring for them. We're not in charge of them. They're in charge of themselves. But you just don't even know that you have the capability to love somebody in the way that you do a child. It's magical. If somebody wanted to find you and keep up with your journey, where would be the best place to do that? Well, you can find us at Thirsty on Maine on TikTok, Thirsty on Maine TikTok on Instagram. And then we also have our

whole Disney parenting line that's Pixie Dust and Parenting on YouTube and on Instagram. Thank you guys so much for taking the time to chat. It's a weird thing to say, but I'm jealous of your children. I think you guys are incredible humans and it sounds like you're raising incredible humans and I think the world needs more of that. Oh, thank you, Liz. Thank you. You're listening to the Healthier Together podcast. This has been quite a year to say the least. I know a lot of us are feeling stressed and anxious and I am right there with you. While I don't take a ton of supplements, one of my go-toes in getting through this year has been CBD.

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like it was. I come from a long line of addicts and alcoholics, including myself. I've been sober for four years now. I always saw myself having kids when I was younger. I'm extremely close with my mom, and I wanted that for myself. As I got older and slipped farther into my addiction, I started to rethink things. Nearly every person in my family has had substance use issues. and many have died because of it. The pain and agony I went through during my addiction is something I would never wish on anyone. So because of that, I've decided not to have children.

Everyone tells me that I'll change my mind, which is insulting because I've spent so much time considering this, but there's a part of me that wonders if they're right. I think as women, we are conditioned to not trust ourselves and our instincts, so I probably will always doubt this major decision, simply because everyone swears I'll change my mind. I am 32 years old and have been single, despite all of my best efforts for the last three years. No exaggeration, I lose entire nights of sleep on a regular basis, scared to death, that I will miss my window of opportunity to have children.

Personally, I know I only want children with someone I am married to. More power to all the women who are out there choosing to be single moms, but this is not the path for me. It's impossible not to panic and feel incredibly sad and frustrated and lonely. I don't panic over being single forever, but I worry about not finding my person and until I'm older and cannot have children. This also puts an incredible burden on dating. There is so much pressure on every day and every guy I meet because there's the feeling that things are going to have to happen fast.

Pregnancy, labor, and delivery felt like this very sacred, divine experience. I felt inside of myself a lot more. It's hard to explain, but I had this whole other world growing inside of me and I would connect to that all of the time. It was very cool. And watching your body change is strange. Plus, sex was mostly amazing during pregnancy. especially in the second trimester.

I had some kinky fantasies that have not surfaced since. My entire life, I thought I wanted to have kids. So did my husband. We had many conversations about it before getting serious. I've always loved kids, but never love babies. My friends assured me that when the time was right,

babies would start to look irresistible. I waited and waited and waited. But babies never did become irresistible to me, and I never felt an active desire to have a child. Fortunately, my husband felt the same way. We haven't completely closed the door, but I'm almost 37, so I realize time is catching up. I have a firm belief that every child deserves to be actively wanted,

not just brought into this world because all of my friends are having babies, or because I'm afraid I'll regret it later, or because I feel like it's something I should do. But I just don't feel that active desire. All right, Dr. King, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me, Liz. It's a pleasure to be here. Would you mind just taking a quick second and saying who you are, what you do, all of that?

Absolutely. So I am Dr. Kiara King. I'm a board certified ostracian and gynecologist here in the Chicago area. So that means I take care of women throughout their lives with a variety of conditions from pregnancy to menopause and everything in between. I'm also a blogger, influencer, if you will, on the side. I don't know what people call it these days, but I have a passion for fashion. I have a passion for wellness. I have a passion for helping women live their optimal lives. And so I've kind of combined all of that and used my social media platforms to put that combined message out there. I love that. And can you say what your social media platforms are? So if people are inspired and want to come find you, they can. Absolutely. So pretty much across all social media.

I am at Dr. Kiarra King, D-R-K-K-I-A-R-A-K-N-G, and my blog is Dr.Ki-R-Kirrking.com. I'd love to approach this both with your experiences as a mother in your personal life, but also you're a doctor, and I think that informs everything. And I'm also going to use you just forewarning to try and assuage my own fears. So. Just a little foreshadowing there. Did you always want to be a mother? You know, for a long time, like people would always ask, so when are you having a baby? And I would be like, not in med school, not in residency. Because I knew that motherhood is not glamorous. You know, it's not glamorous. Like a lot of times we think, well, people make it out to be. People perceive it to be because that's what that's the images that they see. And I was like, being a mom is hard. I'm not. signing up for this before I'm ready. And there was part of me that was like, I don't know if I want to

have a baby, we'll see. You know what I mean? Like I was, I was definitely not in the camp of I'm having five kids. I'm having, I'm definitely having two kids. I'm definitely having one. I was always kind of like, maybe. And then I got to the point where I was like, I think I want just one. You know what I mean? And so that worked, that worked for me. But I absolutely, just going into it, I have, you know, sisters who both have children, I have other family members, I have friends who have children. And I just, I'm the type of person.

I'm a very, like, I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist. And I was never, and I'm an OB-Gyne. Like, I see people, women have babies every day. And so I was, I was four years out of residence. before I had a baby. And so I had been in residency for four years and then been practicing for another four years. And I was like, for me, it just had to be the right time for me. And you'll hear people say all of the time, there's never a right time, which is true. Like, is there ever really a perfect time? I get, it's relative. But for me, it would,

it turned out to be a good time. But I wasn't always in the camp that I knew I wanted to have a baby. Was there a moment, was it just a timing thing where you kind of like woke up one day and you were like, now I do want to have a baby or what sort of flipped that decision for you? From the obstetric perspective, once you are 35, you're technically considered advanced maternal age if you've ever heard that term before. And so I was literally just kind of thinking, okay, kind of the time is now. Like if I want to somewhat mitigate my risk. risk for, you know, certain things obstetrically. Girl, I was thinking about it all from an OB perspective. I think a lot of people are really nervous about having, they like the idea of

having an only child, but they're nervous that they're denying their kids something or, I don't know. I just know a lot of people have a lot of fears about that. Did you think about that? Do you like having an only child? Do you think your child likes being an only child? How do you think about that whole dynamic? So I will say, yeah, that's a great question. I am blessed in many ways. One, I have two older sisters who both have kids and they're all like little stair steps. And then we also have very close cousins who also have kids.

So literally in my family, there were kids born between 20, not 20, yeah, between 2006 and 2018, almost every year. So all, like when, pre-Corona, like when all of our family would get together, I mean, it's literally like 14-year-old or 13-year-old, two 12-year-olds, two 10-year-olds, everybody has like a little partner. So she's not lacking from that perspective. And for me, I actually, and I'm not an only child. So I don't have that perspective as. an only child, but I'll be honest. I was like, I have to do words right for my sanity. And I know, again, I'm going back to what I said earlier. Being a mom is hard. Like, it's not easy. You go from doing whatever you choose to do, getting up moving, going as you please,

to taking care of this little person day in and day out. Because they can't take care of themselves. And I don't say that at all, at all, with resentment or anything, but it's just, it's just what it is. Like, you're, like, you, like, you got to take care of your baby. And I knew personally, I wanted to be able to devote time to raising my child in a way that they could have fondness of their childhood. They could enjoy their childhood where I didn't necessarily feel I was being pulled in a lot of different directions. And so this works for me. And at the same time, because of the dynamic with my family, she's not lacking social interaction

with other children, do you know what I mean, that are in her age group? And so it works for me. And I hear people all the time, like, they're like, if you can have two, you can go to three or you can go to four. And I'm just like, yeah, you know, but again, that, that is me. And I know people who have three and four kids and are like, ah, it's amazing. Yes, it's hard and it's challenging, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. And I think everyone just honestly has to evaluate what works for them, what works for their family, what works for their lifestyle, their career, and really just put together all the checks and balances. I think that it's something important

to remember two things you kind of said. One, which is there's not a lack either way. Like, I think people are worried they're denying their kids something by having an only child, but you're denying your kids something by having two children versus one children, by having three children versus two children versus two, like everything you're giving something up and everything you're gaining something. So the experiences are just different. Yes. And then the second thing, which I think is really under talked about, is how you can socialize kids. and have that family bond, whether you have direct family around like you do, or you create a family. I had neighborhood kids that I'd have their home was like my home growing up.

And I was an only child half the time. I have like a weird half-siblings situation. But there's a lot of ways to create those social dynamics for kids that aren't just having siblings in the house. And I think what you have with your family sounds amazing. Yeah, I absolutely agree. We even grew up. I have two older sisters. but we grew up with, like, my best friend, we've known each other since I was two.

We were about a year apart. I was two and she was one. I'm now 40. So we've known each other and she has an older sister who's my oldest sister's age. And then I have a middle sister who didn't have her own personal playmate out of that other family. But we literally have our group chat to this day. We text every day multiple times a day. And we are not blood related.

but we're like we're sisters by just growing up with each other. And our families are very close. And we all met when we were really young. We all met in church. And we just grew to this day and we're still very close. So you don't have to have, you know, a sibling in the home for you to feel like your child is going to have that experience with socializing, like you said. And especially nowadays, like, who knows, maybe that was true 50 years ago.

You know, we're just in a different, we're just in a different time and space in the world these days. And I think life is what we make it. Like, you can create and have wonderful, amazing experiences, however you choose to grow your family. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's talk about pregnancy and childbirth because they terrify me. Like, I think the idea of being pregnant is so scary.

It's so scary that you could have a normal pregnancy or you could have hyperamesis. You could like that anything could kind of happen and you can't control that. So let's start with pregnancy and then move on to childbirth. You were you excited about being pregnant? Did you have a good pregnancy? And did you approach it differently as somebody who'd seen a million women go through pregnancy? Yes, yes and yes. No.

So I had, I will say, I had an amazing pregnancy. I have not one, like, regret. I actually just told someone just the other day. I had maybe two times in pregnancy where I was like, oh, okay, this is what this feels like. And I didn't have, I didn't have nausea and vomiting. I was, I worked throughout my entire pregnancy. I was due on a Monday and my last day at work was the previous Friday and we simply,

I simply stopped working because as an OB, like, it didn't really make sense for me to be seeing patients in the office and I could go into labor any day. You know what I mean? It just, then I'm canceling a whole like panel of, it just, what didn't make sense. I had heartburn once. It was horrible. I was like, this is heartburn. Oh my goodness.

It was awful. And I had something called, I don't know if you've ever heard of. of round ligament pain, but it's essentially as the uterus, the uterus is usually fairly small, maybe the size of a pear or an apple roughly. And it usually sits really low in your pelvis. Well, obviously, as the baby's growing, it stretches up and up and up. And there are ligaments that are on the side of the uterus that are stretching as well, and those ligaments kind of connect into the groin area.

And so you can imagine, as the uterus gets bigger, those ligaments stretch. and so many women will have this discomfort when they're walking. Maybe they'll go from sitting to standing. So you're kind of stretching that area even more where they have like a lot of discomfort just from walking, rolling over in the bed, standing up. And I had that one time I was going to work and I was getting out of my car. And I was like, oh, oh, I said, that must be around my ligament pain. And honestly, for my whole pregnancy, that was it. So with that being said, I knew a lot of what to potentially expect.

But I didn't, you know, every pregnancy is different. Like I didn't have a crystal ball where I could say, okay, well, my pregnancy is going to be amazing. This is going to be fantastic. You know, I had no idea what kind of pregnancy I was going to have. I will say, as an OB-Gy-Gyny, there were things I was kind of anticipating, but then they didn't happen. And I was like, huh, what is that going to happen? A lot of moms will experience extreme fatigue, especially in the first trimester. And some women will experience a lot of nausea and vomiting, especially in the first trimester.

And I kind of kept waiting for those things to happen to me and they never did. And so, you know, I just kind of rolled along with my pregnancy. You know what I mean? And I wasn't like worried and, you know, just like on pins and needles expecting bad things to happen. I just, you know, I was very careful in terms of just making sure I took care of myself and I ate well during pregnancy. But other than that, I just lived normally. But I think my perspective as an OB definitely helped to frame a lot of things for me and it frame things that were normal or not normal. frame what I could expect.

But like I said, a lot of things that I expected didn't even happen. Was that true for childbirth as well? Pretty much. Yeah. Now, it was uncomfortable. How much does it really, like, because, okay, you've seen so many births and then you've had a birth. Is it the most pain most people will ever experience?

Is it just like really bad period pain? like how be totally honest with me like how bad does it hurt it hurts now i got an epidural and what i tell moms i tell them i'm like look if you want to go through a natural childbirth honey more power to you and i will tell patients just like that i'm like i love talking to patients and just being real with them i'm like more power to you that is absolutely fine i am never going to be pro or against pain relief during pregnancy. It is what the patient chooses. Now, there are some patients that may be high risk that we may say getting an epidural

at this stage would be safer for you because if there's an emergency, you know, then all these other things. But in general, I say, listen, if you want to go through natural child work, have at it. But I also say keep an open mind. don't go in so caught up with this idea that you have to do it this way and not being open at all that you are in so much pain that you can't even relax your body. And then I also say, listen, you're not winning Mother of the Year award after you have this baby because you chose not to get an epidural.

Like, you're not winning a million dollars. You're not, you know what I mean? Like there's no grand prize other than, you know, ideally your baby being safe in your arms after you, you know, go through your birth. So, but it's uncomfortable. It hurts. I was, I got induced. So I was, I was over 40 weeks.

I was advanced. I was, by that point, I was advanced maternal age because I had turned 35. So typically when women are, um, are advanced maternal age, you know, there's some recommendations that, you know, you can expectantly manage them or meaning you can let them go a little bit longer over their due date. But some people will induce around 39 weeks. Where, of course, me as an OB, I'm like, I want to try and go into labor naturally on my own, all this stuff. And then my doctor, like, she checked me and she's like, you know, if you want, we can have you come in for induction on this day. And my OB brain, this is where the, this is where when you know too much, it goes against you. I'm like, okay, I really just want this to happen naturally. But if I go another week, then she may have maconia and my placenta won't be functioning well. Like, I literally was going through all of these things in my head, whereas if I wasn't an OB, I wouldn't be thinking anything about that. And so I ended up getting induced.

I was 40 weeks, three days. And I got induced with potocin. My cervix was what we call ripe enough that I just needed potocin. and I didn't need any other medications to get the induction process started. And then I think I went at like 7 in the morning. My potocin probably got started around 8. I want to say she checked me maybe around noon and I was like four centimeters. And she was like, if you want, you can get an epidural or I can break your water bag.

And I can't remember. Maybe it was around 1. And I was like, you know, go ahead and break my bag. It's fine. mind you, I tell all of my patients, if you're thinking about getting an epidural, get the epidural before we break your water bag. And of course, I'm like, no, just break my water bag. After that, I was like, what, Kiara, what was wrong with you? Why did you do that?

So when you break the water, it just hurts so bad. It hurts more. So when you break the water bag, now there's there, the water bag was kind of, kind of keeps the baby a little bit more buoyant, if you will. in your pelvis because that seal is still there. Or when the water bag is broken, now the baby's head more actively engages in the pelvis. So with each contraction, you're going to feel, at least for me. And honestly, from laboring with tons and tons and tons and hundreds of women, I've seen this happen before, which is why I always recommend getting an epidural if you're planning to get

one before we break your water bag. But silly me, I was like, oh, no, just go ahead and break it. I probably should have done the opposite. But anyway, but there's just a lot more pressure in your pelvis. And then for me, with each contraction, it was a lot more intense. So shortly after my water was broken, I was like, and I requested an epidural. I was personally not trying to see how long I could endure a ton of pain. That just wasn't in my plan.

When I talk to patients, because a lot of time, especially when it's someone's first delivery, you have no idea. Like, you have nothing to compare it to. You compare it to stories of friends and family and stuff you read on the internet. And everyone's body is different. I have seen women labor with no epidural. I've seen some women labor with no epidural and they're in a ton of pain. I've seen some women labor with an epidural and you would think it was a Saturday at the park. and I'm looking like, are you like, are you sure you okay?

And they're like, no, I'm fine. I'm good. But it just goes to show you, we are all different. Our bodies are all made up, you know, I mean, obviously we're made up the same, but our tolerance for pain, our experiences are different. And so I never want, I always tell patients, don't let one other person's experience kind of color what your experience will be. But honestly, you're never going to know what the experience is like until you're in labor. You know what I mean? I know. That's why I feel like I would literally, I'd be sitting there

the entire 10 months and just thinking this has to come out somehow, like just absolutely unable to relax or enjoy my pregnancy. Yeah. Because the idea of having this day of terrible pain in my future, or even a day of like unknown things that could go wrong in my future is so scary to me. I would just be sitting there like staring at my belly and being like, it's in there and there's no going back. Yeah. And another thing I often tell patients is it can absolutely be very scary because again, especially with like, you know, once you've had one pregnancy, you have some context. When it's your first pregnancy. Yeah, it's the unknown. Yeah. That's exactly it. Your first pregnancy, everything is unknown. Everything from just just everything from, well, you have

cravings to when will you have the baby to, will I have gestational diabetes? You know what I mean? Everything is completely unknown. And so I encourage women to have a good relationship with their physicians. Hopefully you do already. But to be partnered with a physician that you really have a great rapport with, that you enjoy going to see that you can have fun and candid conversations about all of this. Because most physicians, by the time you're seeing, you're seeing, you're them and they're board certified. They have delivered hundreds and hundreds of babies. And for us, this is very routine. But because it's routine, we can also provide you some reassurance. I'm a huge advocate of women advocating for themselves. So going into your appointments with

questions. Can you ask 20 million questions in one visit? No. But you can ask a couple. You know, if you have some really looming concerns, you can ask those questions. Like there's nothing. I always tell my mom's, yes, it can be scary, but there's nothing that you have to actively be afraid of because we can discuss the concerns that you have and try and put your mind at ease. Will we be able to answer every single down to the, you know, fine, fine details? Maybe I can't answer everything about how your birth, every single thing about how your birth can go, but I can tell you some pretty general stuff. I can say, hey, we, we, we? We're just, we, we, We anticipate that most moms are going to have a vaginal delivery.

These are some reasons a mom might not have a vaginal delivery and then proceed to list what some of those things are. We anticipate that once you have your baby, you'll be in the hospital for a day or two, or maybe three, depending on the mode of delivery, whether it was vaginal delivery or C-section. We can anticipate that if this type of complication occurs, we can anticipate, we, we know how to handle it. And these are the types of things that we do to manage this complication. And so I try and provide a lot of reassurance ahead of time with patients.

And I find that they find that to be very, very helpful. Because it just helps put your minds at ease. It lets you know that the physician, you know, you may be seeing a midwife that you have partnered with. They want to put your mind at ease. They want to help you get through this pregnancy. And you can absolutely have a pregnancy where you are enjoying your pregnancy and thriving. Absolutely, you can't. There's no reason that you can't.

Now, don't get me wrong. People do have complications in pregnancy, but the majority of women don't have complications in pregnancy. So you can absolutely have a pregnancy that you enjoy and you thrive. And you just feel, I mean, you're pregnant. Obviously, there's a baby growing, but you feel like yourself. Like for me, and again, I know that like everybody didn't have a pregnancy like mine. It was just super easy.

But I literally felt like myself the entire time. I wore like four-inch heels, probably like the day before I had my baby. But honestly, that's because I always, like, I wasn't just wearing four-and-cheel just because, like, I always wear heels. Like, I'm a heel wearer. So you can absolutely feel yourself and feel confident and not feel like you're just super anxious all the time because you're worrying about. every possible thing that could go wrong.

I like the idea of using the sheer volume of your doctor's experience to kind of comfort you. Like I do that with fear of flying where I'll talk to pilots and I'll be like, oh, they've been on this many flights. So when they tell me something, it just comes with this gravitas of having been on that many flights. So it's kind of using your OBGYN in the same way. I love that.

I've never thought about that with flying. Yeah. And, you know, rightfully so in some instances. I know that people in general and some women, especially black women, can tend to have a mistrust for the medical system. You know, I mean, it's just part of the fabric. Which is fair. Black women have three times higher maternal mortality rate. So why wouldn't they have that distrust, you know?

Yeah. And so what I tried, the last job that I was in, I saw predominantly black moms. And I said as far as I can help, but not that I would want anything to back to happen on my watch in general, but I'm like, I can't let anything happen on my watch. Like, I am taking care of these women and they have to know that their lives matter and are of value. And I think it's helpful when they see a young black doctor come in the room and they're like, oh my gosh, she looks like me, you know, and she's taking care of me. And a lot of times they would flat out, flat out say that. But I think it just, it's just so reassuring to have someone that is not dismissive to your concerns. For us, most of the concerns that the majority of women bring up in the office, I can answer in a matter of a couple of minutes.

But it was something that was weighing very heavily on them. For them, it was a big, huge deal. And for me, I'm like, oh, this is something we see. all the time, only be worried if blah, blah, blah, you know, and I'll insert a couple of points of where they really need to get concerned. But that's also why I like to use my platform, because yes, you know, we know, especially for black women, the maternal mortality rate is higher, and that's absolutely, you know, abhorrent. But we also need to know that you can have a good experience. Like, I don't want to instill so much fear into people that they are scared to get pregnant.

scared throughout their entire pregnancy. And I've told multiple people that I've been interviewed by recently, it's not the color of my skin that I walk into the hospital and that is what makes me at risk of dying. It's racism that makes me at risk of dying. And I don't laugh in a joking way, but it's because it's ridiculous that we're still dealing with those types of things in this day and age. But it's people's biases that let, you know, that allow. events to unfold in a certain way that impact black moms to a greater degree. And so, you know,

I don't want any moms to feel scared or worried about their pregnancy or birth experience. But I think having those conversations in the doctor's office, having those conversations up front can really put a lot of people at ease. So even you, like, don't be, don't be scared. Like, certainly if things come up, you know, those are the times, you know, get informed. And yes, you can absolutely be informed before getting a baby about some things to expect or, you know, some concerns that your friends may have had. And you can kind of be generally aware, but I wouldn't want patients to have it be all consuming, you know, especially when it's your first baby and you have no context. Certainly if you were a high-risk pregnancy and you're now on baby two or three, yes, maybe you may

have those same issues again in your subsequent pregnancies. But you also have the context to know how it was handled. What treatment options? You know what I mean? So each pregnancy is going to allow you to gain experience. But it's just like life, right? You know, like in life, we all have experiences that we go through. And we are able to use those experiences and build on those experiences. So you'll be fine, girl. Well, and just like life, it's interesting because even is you're saying that I'm like spending your whole pregnancy being afraid of your birth is just like something really good could happen on any day of your life or your health and something really bad could happen on any day of your life or your health and spending that your time

and anticipation of that doesn't really do you any favors it doesn't do you any favors at all um I'm curious so you I another doctor that I had on the show also sort of talked about the racism being the reason for a lot of the negative health outcomes for in the black community. Do you, is it to the point where you would recommend a black mother to be look for a black OBGYN or just finding somebody they can communicate with openly, honestly, that they feel like is invested? Did you consider race when you were selecting your own doctors during your pregnancy? I did to an extent.

but then I was also thinking about my doctor actually was not black. I did to an extent, but then I also had the confines of my insurance. My actual partner at the time when I was in my office was another black woman, but my delivering hospital where I actually worked was like almost an hour from where I lived. And so that just wasn't super practical. Like say I went into labor in the middle of the night, like I don't want to drive an hour. Now, I ended up needing to get induced. So, you know, after all of a sudden done, could I have gone and seen my own partner?

Absolutely. But it was something I considered. But then for me, as a black woman physician who has all of this knowledge, I knew how to advocate for myself. And I knew how to advocate for myself in a very specific manner. Like, I knew what I needed for. Like, could I have technically gone without any prenatal care? I mean, other than getting labs and ultrasounds and stuff done? probably, but that's not a good idea. People should not care for themselves because you

you lose objectivity. You shouldn't care for yourself or your family members because you really can't lose objectivity. You'll be like, oh, my leg's just hurting because I was standing at work all day for three days in a row and you have a blood clot in your leg because you're ignoring the signs because you lose objectivity. But it was something I absolutely considered. And when I looked within the context of my insurance plan, of what was closer to me in terms of of proximity. It just didn't end up working out that way. But I found someone that I felt was, I mean, most of us are going to be competent. You've gone to med school. You've gone to residency at this point. You've delivered hundreds of babies. And so for me, I'm like, they know what they're

doing. If they don't know what they're doing, I know I can figure something else out and leave and go see someone else. And I'm an OB. Like, I know how my pregnancy needs to be man. And I'm an OB. I know how my pregnancy needs to be managed. And so that was, that was, that worked for me. Does that work for everybody in the world that's not an obi-giani? Nope, unfortunately. So do I recommend that black women see another black woman physician? Yeah. It's absolutely not going to hurt. However, that may not be something that everyone has access to. Like, I have people inbox me all the time that they're looking for a black obigine, just for their well-woman care. and where they are, you know, in the country or where have you, they're like, there's no black

OBIgiani's near me. Overall, I tell patients, and I say this all the time and I'm talking about patients advocating for themselves. You want to see a doctor that you have a good rapport with, and that's what you just mentioned. You want to see someone who cares about your health and who you can tell cares about your health. They're not dismissive to your concerns. They care about answering your questions.

They're not trying to rush you out of the door. And the majority of doctors I know are like that. Black, white, Asian, Latina, what have you. If I know someone who's a black woman and they have an amazing position who's white and or any other ethnicity besides them and they love their doctor, I do not tell them to switch their doctor. If they have an excellent rapport, they have been seeing that person for a year, or two years, 10 years, however many years, and they love their doctor, there's absolutely no need

for you to switch just because you're black. If that person was taking good care of you and you had a good report with that person, there's no need for you to switch your doctor. But I don't think that it hurts to find a black female physician if you do have concerns. Maybe the lesson is that if you have a doctor that you feel like isn't listening to you and isn't sort of on your side, don't hesitate to just try a new one, even if you can't find a black one or a perfect one, just keep switching if you can until you find somebody who's at least advocating for you. Absolutely. And the one thing I tell patients, like, you don't want to necessarily be doctor hopping. You don't want to, like, see 10 doctors in a matter of two months unless, you know,

you're getting referrals for specialists or something like that. that. But, you know, talk to, talk to family, talk to friends and say, hey, I'm looking for a new Obigine or insert any other specialty or a new family practitioner or a new internist. Do you guys have anyone you recommend? If your family or friends have been seeing their position for an extended period of time, they more than likely have a pretty good relationship with them. And I think that speaks, I mean, how often do we refer people to restaurants? Heck, a cardio dealership. Like, I just bought my car at so-and-so place. They were really awesome. They took great care of me. And we're dealing with our health. So I think that's one way that we can,

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They are so unique and so delicious. I can't wait for you to try them. Now, let's get back to the episode. Can we talk about just in the light of making things less unknown? Some of the stuff people don't talk about with like pregnancy and birth and the afterbirth. Like I found out not that long ago that most women poop when they're in labor. And then I found out from another girlfriend that after you have the baby, you have to like squirt a water bottle on your vagina when you pee because it hurts so bad. I like had no

idea about these things. So can you just, I don't know if anything comes to mind, but you're like, it's weird people don't talk about this. You know what? And what's interesting is I've had a few friends say certain things like that. And because I see it all the time, it's completely normal to Totally normal. But women can absolutely have bowel movements in labor. Most patients are horrified if that happens to them. And we're just like, girl, you're having a baby. So you're not grossed out by it even if you're like down there and poop comes out

and it's so close to you. You're not grossed out by it at all. It's so normal. This is the thing. The muscles that we use to poop. are the same muscles that you're using to push your baby out. So if you... Oh, I can know every part of why it makes sense,

but have poop close to my face and be like, this is gross. The thing is, one, one, we're gowned up and massive. Do I necessarily want to just be sitting next to poop? No. Like, would that, with that, when I wake up and say, you know what, today's a good day to have somebody poop in my face. But at the same time, it's so normal that I, like, you literally, like you literally you see it coming

and like we have all kinds of towels and just different things as part of the labor problem women are on you know those like puppy pads that people have we call them chucks pads like just in the hospital setting so most of the time your labor and delivery

nurses there are maybe one or two nurses in the room the nurse is there with you and you're there you're gowned and gloved and if poop comes out you wipe it away you may wrap it up the nurse may take it like you're not you don't usually to sit there and it's just like sitting there while the baby comes out. But you,

the patient may push and may come out. You wipe it away. You move it out. You go. It's just second nature. Like, you don't even, I would never make a big deal. Like, a more pressing concern for me would be like patients coming for their pap smear after just working out and having on stinky socks. Like, that's something you could have chosen.

I thought you were going to say having a stinky vagina, but having being stinky. You really? Like, it's worse to have stinky socks than like a sweaty post-work your vagina. And not even, no, it's the socks. Like, I mean, if you're sweating, like, people sweating, they're nervous. But, like, you, you came from a workout and you chose to wear socks. You knew those socks didn't smell fresh. You knew that. It's like a respect issue almost. It's like you, this was under your control. It's under their control. Like, pooping when you have a baby is completely out of your control.

Like there is nothing that you can do. And the thing is, not all women poop in labor. Like, I have done a zillion deliveries. No poop. I've done a zillion deliveries when there's poop. If that woman has poop in their rectum, which is where stool is basically stored before you can have an actual valve movement,

more than likely when they're bearing down all that force, the poop is going to come out. If there's no stool there, they're not going to poop. But it's absolutely nothing that woman can control. And I literally tell patients like, like, listen, we see this all the time. There's nothing you can do about it. Like, I want you to, and I tell them, I want you to focus on having your baby.

Don't focus on the poop. We'll take care of it. We'll move it out the way. Your baby's head is not going to be born into like a blob of poop. But you can control what socks you decide to wear to your annual guine exam. No, I'm just kidding. slightly kidding. No, but also not. Yeah, you're like, I'm not going to be kidding. So, I mean, honestly, we see so much. I have patients apologize for not insert waxing, shaving,

whatever method of grooming the bikini area you want to call it, whatever you do. I have people say, oh my God, I'm so sorry I didn't shave down there. Or like in a prenatal visit, I'll say, okay, we're going to do your group B strep test. It's a vaginal swab. We do about 35 to 37 weeks. on moms to check for a certain type of bacteria. Oh my God, I'm not ready for that. I'm not prepared. And I'm like, what do you have to do to get prepared? You know, like, what, but what they're generally referring to is like they haven't shaved.

And I tell them, I'm like, look, I've seen it all. So nothing that you, nothing that's going on down there would make me be like, what in heaven's name is happening? Like, nothing at all. But people are so, people are so. people are so self-conscious and I think that goes along with the fact

that people don't really talk about a lot of this stuff which is why you find out after the fact that people poop in labor. Now, should people just be like shouting to the rooftops like I pooped in labor? I don't know. It's up to each individual person. But I think again, that's why these conversations are so

important that we share like listen, these are the types of things that can happen. I'm trying to think of what else is like something that can happen. You mentioned like the the water bottle. Yeah. If you have lacerations or even if you just even if you just had a baby, it hurts. Like you know that area can

it's it can be very swollen or what we call edematous. It can be very swollen. It can be very sore because you just had a five, six, seven, eight pound baby come out. If you've had a C-section, obviously you have an abdominal incision, so there's a different sensation of pain there. But the squirting water bottle is just kind of like, one to kind of help clean things and just kind of also to be very soothing. I know women that use diapers as ice packs after they've had babies. There's a lot that can go

into postpartum care in general, you know, that you may not think about. Were you surprised by any of it when you had your baby like having had all the professional experience you had where you're like, this is more sore than I thought or like sex does feel weird afterwards or anything like that. I had what we call a second degree tear.

And it's just so it's such a technical term. It's really not like a big deal. But the vagina can tear guys. The vagina can tear during a vaginal delivery because, you know, the vagina is quite elastic, but there can be lacerations in it.

So a second degree tear is, it's just the degree to which the tissues, we recall, like, it's kind of technical, but the posterior foreshed, it's like the posterior opening of the vagina, the degree to which that is torn. And so generally a second degree, a third degree, a fourth degree will absolutely require stitches. A first degree, maybe or may not. without, you know, if it's not bleeding. But, um, so I, so I had needed stitches.

And, um, it was uncomfortable. Now, I, I took just, did I take Tylenol? I took ibuprofen for sure. I can't remember if I took, I think I just took, I took ibuprofen. I just did over the counter ibuprofen for it. But it was uncomfortable. Like, sometimes sitting down and getting up, I knew things weren't going to rip apart. and in my OB-guiding mind, like I knew it wasn't, things weren't going to rip apart.

But in my patient body, I was like, ooh, something feels like it might rip down there. But it was uncomfortable. Like, I definitely was doing ice packs. I was definitely doing, you can do like almost like a numbing spray. A lot of times you can use that on, don't give it to you on labor and delivery and they'll send you home with some. I was definitely doing numbing spray. that felt

and that helped and probably after about I'd say maybe two weeks I know that seems like a long time I kind of felt like it was finally not completely back to normal

but to the point where it was like okay I'm not noticing this when I'm sitting up and sitting down you're not thinking about it all the time and I will say was I thinking about it every waking moment no but it would be the position changes like going from sitting the standing, things like, things like that that you would specifically notice. And I remember one of my attendings in residency, I remember her saying,

I was probably a second year resident, third year resident. I remember her saying, oh, this patient had a second degree. Make sure you give her some stronger pain medication for that. She goes, I have one of those and it was painful. And I remember my doctor offered, she was like, do you want some nork on. I was like, nah, like I'll just take ibuprofen. That was, that was like the doctor of me being like, no, I don't need it. I'm good. And honestly, the ibuprofen was fine for me, but I absolutely, if somebody has a second or third or fourth degree, I'll give them something a little bit stronger if they feel they need it. Because it hurts. I mean, that stuff hurts. Your, your tissues were ripped apart and sewn back. I don't know.

I just made that sound a little dramatic. Don't listen to me, guys. You'll be fine. It is a little dramatic. I'm like, don't listen to me, you'll be fine. When does your vagina feel like totally? Like you said two weeks I wasn't thinking about it that much, but when does it feel totally normal? I always tell women, the vagina is very forgiving. Think of it like the tissue in the vagina is very similar to the tissue that lines our mouth. So if you ever bite your lip or, and you have you ever bitten your lip and you just keep biting it in that same spot?

It's like the worst thing ever. but in a day or so, you kind of forget that it was there. And then two or three days later, it's completely healed over. And you would have never known it was there. Now, I'm not saying a laceration in the vagina is going to heal in two to three days, but that tissue is very forgiving and can heal really well so that patients won't necessarily, like, you're not going to be six months out and being like, oh, my God, it's still not healed. You know what I'm saying?

So I would say most women, when they're coming back at six weeks, if they've had lacerations, they are pretty well, like, I'd say maybe 90% healed for the most part. I mean, you may still, for some women, you may still see that there's a little bit of suture material, or you may see, again, that that scar is still there, but they're usually pretty well healed. All right. This is my last question. And let's start with, it's basically, what do you think is the worst or most? most unexpected in a negative way part of motherhood that you didn't think about. And I'd love you to be as honest as possible. And then what do you think is the best part? And let's start with the more negative. I would say, and I'm going to preface this with you, I told you all before, that I was like,

I have to do this when it makes sense for me. You know what I mean? In terms of I'm not doing into med school and residency because I need to have the time. And so I knew. that motherhood was not going to be glamorous. Like, I was not thinking it was going to be a bed of roses or anything. But I will say the one thing that I don't think people talk about is that motherhood can be, in some respects, very isolating. And it almost seems like counterintuitive to think that. They're like, how can motherhood be isolating?

You just have this new baby. You know, there's tons of joy. etc, et cetera, et cetera. And I didn't have postpartum depression or anything like that, but it can be very isolating in that. I mentioned this also before. Prior to having the baby, especially when it's your first baby, you're just going about your life and you can pick up and you can go and you can do this or that on a whim, you know, again, barring any unusual complications or anything like that. And once you have the baby, you can't do that anymore. I mean, you know, if you're nursing or if you're bottle feeding, you're, like, you are,

you're taking care of your baby. But the people around you, their life goes on. You know what I mean? So their life is, you know, they're doing their normal routines and they're kind of doing what they need to do. I will say I had an amazing support system. So I always had people that were around. My mom would come over and, like, make food.

for me and all of that. So that was fantastic. But then there were times where my family might go out and do stuff that I would otherwise normally be doing with them. And mind you, this is, you know, pre-coronavirus. So, you know, they're doing all kinds of stuff. I'm like, I can't go do that. Like, ugh. Or just like, I'm trying to think of another, like I said, her newborn stage just seems like so long ago. But there were definitely times where it felt it just, it just It just felt very isolating. It felt like sometimes, even though the people that I would surround myself with, they've had children, their children weren't that little anymore. And so they weren't in the throng of newborn life.

Do you know what I'm saying? Well, I mean, if you don't have kids yet, then you may not. But it's just so that part made it just kind of like, and I never felt like I was in it alone. because I have support. So it's hard to explain how you can feel isolated or how motherhood can feel isolating even though you have a support system. I hope that's translating.

Well, it feels like your life changes in this really drastic way and then everybody else's like doesn't. So it's like you're both, everybody's kind of on the same track and then your track like fears. And so I found. when I was, I don't think I was quite a year old. I found some different mom groups online. And again, I still have my family and support system.

So that was always great. But I found that having people from different groups I was in who are now actually amazing friends who had children around that same age was super, super helpful. But that goes back to us even just having these conversations, sharing your story, having these conversations, surrounding yourself with people that are going through similar things because they can relate more so to what you're going through

more so than sometimes your own family or friends who are not exactly where you are. So I think that that's super helpful. Some of the best things I think are that I don't think I ever would have known until I became a mom is how much you grow as a person becoming a mom. And in a really good way, how much I have to become selfless. And I don't say this in a way. Like, I'm like, oh, I'm so selfless. I'm the best mom ever because sometimes I'm looking at her like, girl, mommy is, let's get this

together right now. But, you know, finding ways to communicate with her that don't involve my ego or my emotions. Motherhood stretches you in a way. I tell people all the time, I've been asked, what's my one word for motherhood? And I say, motherhood is a force. Motherhood is a force, man. And in many great ways, it's not just negative at all. There's obviously the sleepless nights and the worry, you know, your child has a fever and oh my God, are they okay?

And, you know, just all those different things. Like, are they reaching their milestones? And all those things that we think about as mothers and parents. But the beauty of how you get to grow as a person alongside your child or your children, I think is just amazing. Like I know 100% that I'm not the person I was five years ago. because she has changed me, you know, and I would like to think, hopefully, that it's been for the better. I was always a pretty patient person before, and I was always a very, like, I'm not too moved by a whole lot. I think part of that is being a position where we have to deal

with a lot of, you know, you have to do an emergency C-section, or you may have to give a really bad diagnosis and you always have to, in some respects, have a kind of even keel demeanor. Not that I don't get sad or I've never cried about a patient. But a lot of times we just kind of have this very like even keeled nature amidst chaos. And so I've always been that type of person. But when you have a kid, I mean, there's definitely been times I've lost all objectivity. I'm like, oh my God, she has a scratch. Is it going to get infected?

And it's like, Kiara. she has a tidy scratch. Keep an eye on it. She's going to be fine. Like, you know what I mean? And so it is definitely, it definitely pushes the boundaries of who I am. It's allowed me expand those boundaries. It's allowed me to be a better doctor. I mean, when you, like, when I didn't have kids and moms would be coming back and saying, you know, they were going back to work in six weeks, I would just sign the form and be like, okay, now I'm like, are you sure you want to go back to work? And I know everybody's parental leave is completely different, which that's a whole other conversation. But it just allows me to just approach them.

And if they bring their babies in the office for some reason, just share with them like, listen, this aid does get better. Like I know right now you're having the sleepless nights and you just feel like you are in this all alone, but you're going to be fine. And I've had to encourage so many moms to lean on their support systems. You know what I mean? So it's made me a much better physician because I can not only give doctorly advice, but I can give motherly, hopefully Seth, I believe sound advice. I mean, I don't try and steer patients wrong. But it's, so it's stretched me in ways I never could have imagined.

And you, you never really know until you get there how much you can grow as a person just on a motherhood journey. So I'm super grateful for that. I've struggled with anxiety for most of my life. The times when I usually had bouts of anxiety was when I wasn't busy, like on vacation in summers when school wasn't in session. I have two kids and I've noticed that, ironically, it was the best thing for my anxiety. The moment my son was born, I realized that my worries had someplace to go and be constructive.

They fill a space near head that, at least for me, offered balance. I was not prepared for the post-birth experience. My daughter was also born right at the beginning of the pandemic, so we were completely alone. We talked so much about the birth of a baby and not at all about the birth of a mother. How we can be both so happy to have a beautiful new baby and also so sad that our old life is over. I felt so much guilt for how I felt early on. I didn't feel that intense, automatic, instant connection to my daughter when she was first born. I loved her, but the connection took time.

And that made me feel like a huge piece of shit, because all you hear people talk about is how instant the connection is. I wish we were more honest about that. Also, breastfeeding is really hard and I absolutely despised it. Around three months, I decided to exclusively pump and it did wonders for my mood. As someone who has lived outside the U.S., I think the U.S. is extremely toxic toward parents, especially mothers. Mothers need a lot of help right now and are not getting it. As a pediatrician, I just wonder, did people forget they were once children? That children are necessary for society?

I have a few child-free by choice family or friends who love children, but they are few. My friends have been paired down to include mostly moms. With my child-free friends, the lack of understanding makes it hard to connect as well as to plan. I recently had a difficult conversation with my in-laws about our plan to adopt to grow our family, specifically because I don't have any reproductive challenges, but that adoption is our chosen way to grow our family. This was a challenging concept for my mother-in-law to grasp. She told me that other women who have trouble conceiving are going to be very hurt. hurt if I were to ever share that it's not because we can't have biological kids. It's because we

have chosen to adopt. I hope you loved this episode. The second edition of our pros and cons of having kids, my mission on this podcast is to help people live their healthiest and happiest life. And I think the types of discussions that we have on these episodes are so important to that end. If you know anybody in your life who would benefit from the things that we talked about, who would maybe want to talk about these things, but it's taboo in her life. Please share the episode with them. I'm so appreciative of just creating a space where more women can have these really, really important and vital conversations. I so appreciate you listening and I love you all and I'll see you on the next episode of the Healthy Together podcast. Look, I'm never going to make everything that I

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