The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Faye Evarts & Alexis Haines Get Real About Giving Birth, Postpartum Depression & Anxiety, & C-sections

Episode Date: December 13, 2019

#234: Lauryn and her little sister, Faye Evarts, sit for a roundtable with Recovering From Reality’s Alexis Haines. Faye and Alexis are both moms so they give Lauryn the real deal on what’s going to happen during and after labor. They talk postpartum depression, anxiety, mom truths, what happens to the vagina, c-sections, the works. Get ready for a wild ride! To connect with Faye Evarts click HERE To connect with Alexis Haines click HERE To read Alexis's new book click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by the Peleton Tread Discover the immersive and challenging total body training you can get from Peloton Tread. Peloton is offering listeners a limited-time offer. Go to www.onepeleton.com, use the code “SKINNY”, to get $100 off accessories with the purchase of a Tread. This episode is brought to you by RITUAL Forget everything you thought you knew about vitamins. Ritual is the brand that’s reinventing the experience with 9 essential nutrients women lack the most. If you’re ready to invest in your health, do what I did and go to www.ritual.com/skinny  Your future self will thank you for taking Ritual: Consider it your ‘Lifelong-Health-401k’. Why put anything but clean ingredients (backed by real science) in your body? Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. not get the vitamins and minerals they need on a daily basis, so Ritual created a smarter vitamin with the nine essential ingredients women lack most. Go to ritual.com slash skinny today to choose clean ingredients backed by science. Sign up now at ritual.com slash skinny. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. If you feel supported, if you feel supported in your birth experience, start to finish. I've had mamas that have ended up in C-section but felt empowered throughout the whole experience.

They ended up consenting to a C-section and walked away really happy with all of their choices and felt empowered and supported. If you can harness into that divine femininity, that divine energy inside of you, it does transform your life in really powerful and magical ways. Hello. Happy Friday. You have just me today. Well, not just me. You have my sister,

Faye Everett, who's coming back on the podcast. She initially came on the podcast probably a year and a half ago and talked about her struggle with drugs. I decided to bring Faye back on with Alexis Haynes, who also came on the podcast to talk about addiction. But instead of talking about addiction today, we do talk about it a little bit. We talk more about birth, okay? We're talking birth, we're talking doulas, we're talking pregnancy, and we're getting real. For those of you who don't know, Faye and Alexis are both moms. Very good moms. I respect both of them.

And I wanted to bring them on the podcast to give a real life look at birthing and motherhood and pregnancy. And I thought that they were the perfect people just because we're all so comfortable in the room. So they came on and we talked about doulas. We talked about labias. We talked about boobs. We talked about nipples. We talked about boobs. We talked about

nipples. We talked about everything. And they kind of scared me. I'm not going to lie. Like, I'm a little scared. You know what I mean? I'm over here eight and a half months pregnant about to burst. It was a lot of information, but it's good. It's good for me because I didn't know this world before I got pregnant. So if you're looking to get pregnant or you are pregnant or you're a mom, I think you'll enjoy this episode. And if you're not looking to get pregnant, I get that. I feel like there's a ton of different episodes that you can listen to if pregnancy is not on your radar. And trust me, again, I get it. All right. With that, let's welcome Alexis. Alexis Haynes is a podcast host. She hosts a podcast called Recovering From Reality, which just partnered

with Dear Media. Very excited. She's an author. Her new book just came out. That's called Recovering From Reality, which just partnered with Dear Media. Very excited. She's an author. Her new book just came out. That's called Recovering From Reality 2, and we'll talk about that. And she's a mother. She's a mother of two, and she's really passionate about helping people in their sobriety. My sister is also super passionate about helping people in her sobriety. She's been a sponsor to many women, and she's been seven years sober. I'm so proud of her. And she is a mom to the cutest little boy named Daxton Gray. He's three. He's my nephew. And I just thought that this was a cool conversation to bring to the show. Like I said, we discuss everything. You're ready? This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. We are here. We're live. This is an exciting episode because not

only do we have Alexis from Recovering From Reality, who's been on the podcast before with Michael and I, we also have my little sister, Faye, who's here. She drove up from San Diego, and she's also been on the podcast. She's talked about addiction. So if you want to go back and listen to those two episodes before you dive into that, you can. And today, we're not talking about sobriety or addiction. We're doing a plot twist. We're going to talk about birth. We're going to talk about holistic remedies. We're going to talk about everything that goes into a birth while you're birthing.

Because I have a lot of questions. So I think just to kick it off, I'll let you guys do a little intro of yourself. I feel like I should say, this is Alexis, by the way, I feel like I should start off by saying that while I am a birth doula, I'm not a medical professional. And what I have to say here is I'm going to give you information and try to keep my opinion separate. So if something's an opinion, I'll make sure that that's clear. And then if something is like this is actual scientific fact, we'll keep it there. I also think this is like a nonjudgmental space. And if there is opinion, that's fine.

My whole platform is like take what you like and leave what you's fine. It's not. Yeah. This my whole platform is like, take what you like and leave what you don't. Yeah. A hundred percent. And so, Faye, just give your background with Dax, like to explain how your mom you've been in recovery for seven years. Give us a little spiel. OK, so I've been in recovery for seven years, like she said, and I really had no intention of having a kid. I wasn't married. You know, it was very non-traditional, but I always really wanted a baby ever since I was little. And when I did finally have Jax, I thought like, oh, it won't be that hard. It'll be easy. Like I was working throughout my whole pregnancy. And towards the end, granted, I was very tired. And let me mention that I had morning sickness the entire time.

So it wasn't the easiest pregnancy. But because I was sober and I was working my program, I thought that I would be fine. And once I did give birth, I had horrible postpartum and horrible anxiety. There was days that I couldn't even get out of bed and I couldn't care for Dax the way that I wanted to. And I just had no idea how hard it was going to be. I thought that the pregnancy was going to be the hardest part. And then like the baby was going to come out and it was going to be over with. And it actually ended up getting worse. And

then eventually I started doing therapy and I got on antidepressants and I started doing a lot of different holistic things and it did get better over time and I stuck it out clearly. And it definitely wasn't what I was expecting. But as of now, I think I'm good with just one. So what I think that is important to talk about here, I want to talk about postpartum anxiety. And I also want to talk about because I was around for my sister's birth. I think that it didn't go the way she wanted it to go. And if she could go back and be more informed and have more knowledge, she would have made different decisions. That's what I saw as her sister. Yeah. So I think, and the same thing that happened with you too, your first one, you sort of were thrown into it, I feel like, and didn't. So I've always believed that motherhood is like one of the most important roles in society and

that if we want to change the world, it starts with parenting, right? And right now in the US, we have the highest maternal mortality rate of any westernized country, which is insane. And it's rising. It's not like plateauing or getting any better. And it disproportionately affects women of color. Although I was almost one of those statistics because when my second daughter was born, I almost died from a pulmonary embolism, which is a complication of pregnancy. So I had three

blood clots in my right lung. And my doctors just kept saying, it's breastfeeding pain, it's breastfeeding pain to the point where I could not breathe. And I went into the ER and sure enough, like I was dying from a blood clot. So, but backtrack. So I always knew that, that because for me with my background in recovery, and I know we were saying this is not going to be a recovery podcast, but I know that you guys, your mom committed suicide and you have had so much that you've had to overcome. And here you are embarking into this journey of motherhood. Right. And it's like, we want to do it differently. Right. We want to create the best lives for our children. I think every parent out there feels that. But for my husband and myself, my husband grew up in a

background where his dad was an active alcoholic, his mom committed suicide when he was 14, and then obviously my crazy parents and all of that, we both wanted to be really intentional about the way that we parented. And I knew it started with birth. Here's where I went wrong. I planned with my first daughter a perfect home birth, water birth, midwife. Everything was quiet. No one was, you know what I mean? Like all hands off. When you say that with your voice. Super relaxed. Perfect, holistic. Perfect, holistic home birth. It never goes that way. That's what I wanted. It does. As a doula, I've been honored to support a lot of moms and a lot of the times it does and then there's some times where it doesn't, right?

And here's one of the things that I say to all the mamas I work with. So I got into what ended up transpiring was I ended up having an emergency C-section with my oldest. I pushed her butt out at home. We transferred to the hospital and I ended up having a C-section, right? So what I tell all of the moms that I work with is we don't have a birth list. You know, we have birth preferences. It's not a birth plan, right? Because you can't plan the way you give birth. You can say, oh, I want to have X, Y, and Z, and that might be your preference. But anytime you get so attached to the outcome when things change, which they probably will, you know, even a small thing, like I attended a birth last October

and the mom wanted to have an out-of-hospital birth and she achieved that, but she wasn't able to deliver in water. Baby had his arm up over his face and wasn't descending and she needed a full episiotomy on the bed. So it was episiotomy. I got a lot of questions, guys. And episiotomy is where they manually cut your vaginal opening from the bottom. They cut your perineum, right?

That space between your vaginal. No, not your butthole. Your vaginal opening down towards your but butthole which is not ideal it's a lot of it's can't they stitch it up tighter at least so you don't want that because it can cause painful sex after the fact your vagina is actually a muscle that can expand and contract evan and i know this is tmi but whatever this is this is the Skinny Confidential. We're not TMI here. No, give it to us.

Evan says my vagina feels like a thousand times better now that I've had a vaginal birth than I've had before. Evan, let's see you guys have sex. Do a porno. I've heard tits are better after too. It's, yeah, like my nipples,

I have so much more sensation. It's like amazing. I'm going to come on here and give everyone a full of my vagina and my nipples after you guys are done. I love it. But what I'm saying is that was hard for her, right? Because she had this envision of her birthing her baby in the water. And when that didn't transpire, it led to feelings of loss, which are very real, which is why I always encourage people don't be so set on the outcome. Go into it making informed decisions. Okay. I'm going to play devil's

advocate here. And also don't go into it thinking the doctors just got you. And the reason that I say that is because that's what happened to Faye. Exactly. She went into it and she tells me, we talk all the time about this, she tells me she would have done it really differently and been her own advocate and her own guru had she just kind of,

my sister just left it to the doctors. Exactly. If you can kind of speak on that and tell her how your birth transpired because it was not the way you wanted it. Hold up. Wait. Need to tell you about my prenatal. This is the perfect episode for that, isn't it? So you guessed it. I am taking a ritual. I have taken ritual essential for women for like two years. And then obviously I found out I was pregnant seven weeks in and I had to switch to a prenatal. So the prenatal that I switched to

was ritual. And this was a really easy decision. I had already done so much research on their essential for women. So to switch to the prenatal was a no brainer. They're so obsessively researched. And if you go to their site, everything is streamlined for you to see exactly what's in it. There's no shady ass ingredients, no additives, nothing that can do harm to your body. You know what I mean? Also, this is important to note, the essential for women tastes like mint and the prenatal tastes like lemon. And lemon and mint are my two favorite things. So I'm very much about them tasting like this instead of like fish. You know what I mean? So here's what I do. In the morning when I wake up. I tongue scrape. I drink my water, have a little mint in the water. Then I have two

spoonfuls of raw almond butter. That's what my body's been craving since I was pregnant. And then I take my ritual prenatal. If you're looking to get pregnant or you just want your hair and nails to grow, because mine have grown from this, then definitely check it out. It has folate, omega-3, vitamin B12, iodine, biotin, D3, so many things in it. You can see it all on the website, all the good stuff that you need. My doctor told me I needed iron and magnesium while I was pregnant. That's in there. So go check it out on their website and you can see everything. Also, you should know Ritual is delivered to your door. So it's a subscription, really easy to start and stop. So you don't have to go to the grocery store or anything.

It just shows up in a pretty package right at your door, ready to go. Better health doesn't happen overnight. And right now, Ritual is offering all TSC Him and Her listeners 10% off during your first three months. Fill in the gaps in your diet with Essential for Women. Or like I said, if you're trying to get pregnant or are pregnant, the prenatal. It's a small step that helps support a healthy foundation for your body. Visit ritual.com slash skinny to start your ritual today. That's 10% off during your first three months at ritual.com slash skinny. All right, let's get back

to Alexis and Faye. Yeah, I wasn't as holistic as I am now. I wasn't as informed. I've always, you know, tried to be healthy and been interested in it. But when I got pregnant, looking back, you know, hindsight's 20-20 or whatever they say, I wish that I would have done it differently. Like if I was to have another one, I would, you know, want to do the at-home water birth, the birthing center or, you know, no meds or no epidural and try to do it at-home water birth or the birthing center or no meds or no epidural and try to do it as natural as possible. But when I first had Dax, I just called a bunch of doctors and tried to get in there and get the ultrasounds and do all the testing. I I just, I wasn't like, I didn't know what to do. I didn't have, you know, any guidance. I didn't have a mom and I hadn't told my sister, my family yet. So

I just wanted to make sure the baby was safe and the baby was okay. And my gut told me to, you know, go, go to the doctor. And so when I did go to the doctor, I ended up getting a doctor that was very dominant and controlling. And she kind of just took charge and took hold of my birth and told me what to do and how much weight to gain. And, you know, just she kind of dictated the whole process. And, you know, I had fainted throughout the pregnancy and she wanted me to go to the ER and get my blood drawn and do all these kinds of different testing. And I was just doing what she said. I didn't know what else to do, in other words. So during the birth, Dax was 41 weeks. And to her, that was like, oh, my God, he's not coming out at 40 weeks.

He's late. We got to get him out. And she proceeded to suggest Pitocin. And so I did that because I was heavy and I wanted him out and I didn't know any better. And I didn't know how bad it was for them. And I took the Pitocin and he still wasn't ready. It was taking a really long time. I think it took about two days for him to actually come out.

But, you know, after 15 hours, I'd say he wasn't dropping. He wasn't coming. He wasn't coming out. The cord was wrapped around his neck. His heart rate was dropping. He wasn't coming. He wasn't coming out. The cord was wrapped around his neck. His heart rate was dropping. And the doctor was like, oh, my God, like it's been so long. Like we got to get him out. Like this is an emergency. I think we're going to have to do a C-section. And I was like, I don't I didn't want to do a C-section. I wanted to do a natural birth. That's what I had in my in my head. That's what I had planned. Like Alexis was saying, I was really, really scared to do a C-section, but they were also freaking me out

and they weren't making anything better. They were like I didn't have a doula or a midwife that was like calming me down or showing me different positions or showing me how to do this or that. And I had just gotten the epidural, which I learned later how bad that was. And I had to do the emergency C-section, of course. And he came out and everything was fine and everything was perfect. And the recovery was really, really bad. It was really, yeah, it was painful. It was like, I was trying to nurse my brand new baby and like love on him and like be amazing, like take it all in how amazing it was. And like I couldn't walk.

So it's just, you just know like deep down that it's not the right thing. It's not what's meant to happen. I just wanted to bring you guys both on because I think that you don't want to have expectations, but you also want to be able to be your own advocate. So that's what I mean by informed consent, right? So you should absolutely be prepared and knowledgeable about every single option that is going to be presented to you throughout your pregnancy, whether it's blood work or testing for GBS or

testing for your blood sugar levels. You had just gone on Instagram and said that you were drinking that nasty drink. And I wish we would have talked before because I would have said, oh, my God, there's alternatives. You don't have to drink. I think that's close to like 90 grams of sugar or something. Just a side note. So if anyone's going through this, you're talking about the diabetes test. And I was told by the doctor that you need to drink this stuff. You have to do it. But I found out there's other alternatives. There is alternatives. Can you just speak on that? Yes. So there are alternatives. With my midwife, midwives are always going to tend to be more holistic than doctors. With my midwife, I was allowed to eat one and a half bananas and chug a

16-ounce orange juice, which was far better than that nasty syrup drink. The syrup drink is disgusting, you guys. With my traditional OB, with my second baby, we had a high-risk pregnancy, and I was going for a VBAC, which is a vaginal birth after C-section. And we should talk about that too, because it's so important to know your options. I did 24 organic gummy bears after I ate breakfast. So I didn't have to do it on an empty stomach. And then the other alternative is you can test your blood sugar at home for two weeks with a home testing system. It's a prick of the finger and you can write out what your blood sugar is. I'm not. The thing is that maternal diabetes is a very risky situation. It's something that needs to be tracked. But that disgusting drink that they make you consume, which is just basically,

I believe, like corn syrup and chemicals like you don't need to be. I think that gives you diabetes. Good point, Faye. There's this test I read called the fresh test and I haven't looked into it enough, but it's like celery and lemon and mint and like it has like a natural sugar. So if you don't if you didn't want to eat what like what you were saying, that's an option. I just think what I what I want to do with with my platform and the podcast is just give people all the information we can possibly get. Absolutely. And I think it's so important because here's the thing is and Faye, I hope that you still don't feel that the I don't know if remorse is the right word, but the feeling I have the same feelings about my birth and that some of the you know, like that I just didn't know. I didn't know my options. And to have regrets about that doesn't benefit anybody now, right? It's like,

okay, so what are we going to do from now on? And so after my first birth, that's why I decided to become a doula because I was like, okay, now I've got to go out there and help support women and make informed decisions. So whether it's, you know, the diabetes test or GBS, which you haven't done yet, it's coming up at your 37 week appointment. They're going to take a swab of your anus and vagina and they're going to send it off to be tested for this thing called group B strep. Excuse me. It's not GBS. It's group B strep. Isn't there a certain probiotic that I should be taking to avoid that? So here's the thing. Group B strep is a very real issue. If you have it, they recommend antibiotics. I personally would not take the antibiotics because your group B strep status can change from day to day. So one day you can have it and one day

you cannot have it. So the things that I did to reduce my rate. Okay. I don't know if you're ready for this. So graphic, Alexis. I took probiotics every day. Starting at 35 weeks, I began taking whole clove, one clove of smashed garlic orally every day. And then three days up to the test, I inserted garlic vaginally for three days. I've heard this before. Okay. I've heard this before. It kills all the bacteria. I can handle

it. By the way, this is a podcast. A lot of people are like, you're going to put garlic in your vagina. It kills bacteria. I mean, I really truly have not gotten a UTI once. I used to get them all the time since using Woo because it's coconut oil yeah so i'm i'm antibacterial i'm fucking putting like a fucking tampon with garlic whatever the fuck i gotta do no tampons you can just do the garlic that's what my midwife had me do and i was negative for both pregnancies so that's something that's coming up and important to be informed about. Michael, can you give me oral sex after I'm done with this? And another thing Michael should be doing is perineum massage. So that should start around 32 weeks where he takes oil and actually massages.

Did Evan do that for you? Evan did not. He refused. That fucker. I did it to myself. And so you take to your pointer and your middle finger and you'll begin to gently start stretching the perineum. So that way you reduce your risk of tearing.

Let's go back to the difference between or the benefits of naturally tearing versus episiotomy though, because that's something that everybody thinks they want to be cut and stitched right back up. But I'm here to tell you, you don't. Imagine a white t-shirt, right? Just like one of Michael's just basic tees, like the one I'm wearing right now. And you're pulling it as hard as you can possibly pull it. Taylor, don't pop a bone in. You're pulling it apart as hard as you can possibly pull it, and you get a little tear, right? It takes a lot of effort to get that white shirt to tear. And when it does tear, it's usually a small tear versus if you took a pair of scissors

and you cut up the shirt. How easy after you've made a cut in the shirt would the rest of the shirt tear? Really easily. That's the difference between an episiotomy and a normal vaginal tear. And so I'm here to say as a tear survivor, you will be okay. And I had what they consider, I believe it's called like a stage four. My entire right labia fell off basically. So top to bottom, my labia had to be

sewn back on and in my perineum too. And I'm here to say that everything is perfect. Which part is the labia? Is the labia the lip? So the labia is like your inner lip. It's attached to your clitoris, right? That piece that comes down to your vaginal opening from's attached to your clitoris right that that piece that comes down to your vaginal opening from the top when you say it tears off is it like hanging it was i didn't look but it tore i had stitches from the top up towards my clitoris down to the bottom okay i have a really real question what does your vagina look after that? Perfect. No, no, no. I know it looks perfect now. I mean, right after.

Right after. Like, are you taking a mirror? No, no, no. Do not look. So I always advise my mamas, do not look for the first three to four weeks. So at the hospital before you leave or before you leave birth center at home, get those extra peri bottles. They're these bottles that you squeeze as you pee because it

does burn and hurt after you give birth. And so you'll fill it with warm water or room temp. You'll keep it on your bathroom. Do not look. Do not wipe. Squeeze the water after you go to the bathroom. And that is it. What kind of bottles are these? It's called the peri bottle. You'll get it at the hospital. Ask for extra. And they'll also give you ice packs, which is just like crushable and it turns cold. Definitely. You're going to want extra. How is this fair that women have to do all this and men are just like sitting there doing their hair? I know. I mean, this is like very like how is no one talking about this is a whole new culture for me. This is like Ariel, like a whole new world. Like I'm like, what is fucking going on?

Taylor's back there eating chips, like just chilling with his fucking feet up. Yes. But you know what? There's such power. And this is the thing that I want to reiterate to all birthing people, right? Is that there is power. If you feel supported, if you feel supported in your birth experience, start to finish. I've had mamas that have ended up in C-section but felt empowered throughout the whole experience. They ended up consenting to a C-section and walked away really happy with all of their choices and felt empowered and supported. If you can harness into that divine femininity, that divine energy inside of you, it does transform your life in really

powerful and magical ways. Quick little break to talk about Peloton. Okay. So this is not another treadmill. Okay. This is legit guys. The New York Times is saying the Peloton tread is like having a personal trainer come to your house whenever you'd like. So it's basically bringing you everything the gym has, but to your home, which is amazing if you're looking to save time. And you know, I'm always looking to save time. So what is a Peloton tread? So if you're looking for specifics on the Peloton tread, it's basically live motivation. You can pick your instructors. So if there's an instructor that you really like and you were feeling their energy, you can pick your instructors. So if there's an instructor that you really like, and you were feeling their energy, you can actually work out with them whenever you want.

They have like world-class instructors who are running, walking, stretching, lifting right by your side. So you're not lonely. You've got a community on there. You know what I mean? It also shows your metrics and workout history. I am obsessed with that because you can see how many calories you burned, your distance. I love to count my steps personally, and it shows your heart rate. And it's also variety. So some people don't like to repeat the same workout over and over, and the Peloton Tread has all different kinds of classes. So they have runs, boot camps, strength training workouts. It's kind of everything. I just had a friend on the podcast khalil and he said he got his girlfriend one of these and she is absolutely obsessed it's also efficient because the classes

can be 10 minutes or 60 minutes or anything in between um so you can't really make any excuse not to work out and sweat anyway if you're like me and you like to save time and you need a little motivation but you don't want to go to the gym this is for you discover the immersive and challenging total body training you can get from the peloton Tread. Peloton's offering all TSC him and her listeners a limited time offer. Go to onepeloton.com and use code skinny to get $100 off accessories with the purchase of a tread. I don't know about you, but I cannot wait to work off all this corn pudding from Thanksgiving. All right, let's get back into the episode. Okay, so this is a question and and this is a question selfishly for myself,

and hopefully it'll provide value to the audience that I have for both of you. And maybe you can speak first, and then you can play off of it, Faye. Okay. If you were to be pregnant right now, and you were about to give birth, what would your birth plan? And we're not setting up expectations. We're going to call it a birth preferences, birth preferences B. And I want you to get so specific down to like the I go. Yeah. Okay. You know, that's a great question. So I would have an out of hospital birth with my second. Like I said, I had an in-hospital birth. And here's the thing. Depending on who your doctor is and what hospital you deliver at, and we can talk about Cedars

in a second because I know all about that. I've attended many births at Cedars. You are, doesn't matter what you want, you're still subject to hospital policy and procedure. And so that kind of looks like this. After your water has been broken for 12 to 24 hours, depending on the hospital, they're automatically going to start pushing for antibiotics, IV antibiotics. Where you're at home, that's not something that's necessary. And the risk is because you're in an environment that's not your natural microbiome like your home is, right? You're being subjected to lots of other people's bacteria, which can enter.

And not to mention the amount of routine vaginal checks that they do. Every time someone sticks their finger in your vagina, you're introducing bacteria, whether they're wearing gloves or not, right? That was another thing. They broke my water manually. Oh, yeah. Horrible. So I would have an out-of-hospital birth, probably at a birth center, right? And I would choose to deliver in water. The reason being is because I did find for me personally, it did create a lot of pain relief for me. And I felt really good about that. I would like to deliver my baby again. I did deliver my second myself.

So basically, after head was cleared, I reached down and was able to pull my baby out and get her up on top. That sounds like something I would like to try to do. I mean, I don't know. Good luck at the doctor. I don't know. Well, I don't know how it's going to go. My doctor was really great about that. We talked about all of this beforehand and he was super

supportive. And the second head had crowned and head is the hardest part to get out, right? It's the hardest. So once that's out, the rest of the baby just kind of glides right out. And, you know, as long as your baby is within like a good size, if your baby's really large, passing those shoulders can be hard. But you're not going to have that issue. So I'd like to deliver her myself again. And then no checks. No checks. I don't want weight or anything until he or she is at least an hour old. I was talking to my doula about this too, the umbilical cord. Are we cutting it right away or leaving it on? So I left for four minutes and then collected the rest because we did do cord blood banking.

I thought that that was important for us to do. And so we did decide to go ahead and proceed with that. But we wanted to wait until the cord, you know, all what happens is imagine pushing through basically like the tightest thing that you possibly can. All of the blood is being pushed towards the feet, right back towards the placenta, towards the back, because as you're moving forward through the birth canal, all of that blood is being pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed. And so it's important for baby to receive that blood back from what gets pushed back from the placenta, right? So I would wait

on cutting the cord and then uninterrupted skin to skin for at least an hour. And there are just countless benefits to that. The first is milk production, right? So what happens is baby's born and then placenta is delivered. And after your placenta is delivered, it sends a signal like, okay, it's time for cholesterol to start being produced. So baby's still kind of tired and out of it from coming out of the birth canal. And after about 30 minutes or so, they will actually uninterrupted, if you don't even help them, do a breast crawl and find your breasts on their own and attach their mouth to your nipple. You can watch videos of this online. That is wild.

It is the most incredible thing you've ever seen. So here I have a question like i want you to keep going through the story but i just have a question specific um so when the baby's on you there's no checks or anything like i don't want i mean we can check obviously if there needs to be a section there can be a section but when they take the baby away and do the footprint and the weighing and the all of that stuff no okay. Okay. On me, you can check after an hour. Skin to skin is a real thing. It's like grounding. Yeah. You can check after the first feed. Okay. That's my big thing. So go on. After the first feed, you can

check. And so I breastfed both of my children. I think it was, you know, the right choice for us. And there's just countless health benefits, you know, all of those antibodies are needed because when baby is in utero in the last trimester, they're receiving some antibodies from you. And then when they're born, they're not really able to fully successfully create their own antibodies until a year old. And that's why when they do do shots, they do two-month, four-month, six-month, and hopes that every time maybe they're getting a little bit of antibodies. So there's that. So the benefit to that cholesterol, which is not milk, first your cholesterol, which is a very sugary substance, comes in and it's super thick. And that's all

baby needs. Baby's stomach is only the size of a tiny cherry for those first couple of days. Doesn't need like a whole bottle or tons of milk. A lot of moms think that. They don't. It goes from cherry to about a walnut and shell to an egg at one month. So your baby's belly is so tiny. Doesn't need frequent feedings, not lots of milk. And so I personally chose to breastfeed. I would skip the eye ointment. So that eye ointment was meant to, it's an antibiotic, and they place it on baby's eyes to prevent if you had, say, like gonorrhea or something like that this is what my doula said she said that they used to use this this igoo back in the war yeah to um when babies came out

because there was so much gonorrhea and chlamydia yes let's hope that my husband doesn't get any fucking gonorrhea i think you'll be fine i think you'll be okay but But here's the thing. Part of baby's antibody response, right, is what they collect from your vaginal opening as they're coming out. So that's actually beneficial for their bodies. And so if we start throwing antibiotics all over them, it's kind of like, what's the point, right? And so I would skip that. There are instances where vitamin K is necessary. I think a lot of people think because I am so into alternative health that I'm like, never get an epidural, never. And that's not the case. There are very real circumstances where I've transferred to hospital when mom has been in labor for 30 hours,

needs a break, and needs that epidural. And guess what happens? She's been at six centimeters for five hours, and we've been working and hustling. At the birth center, we transfer, she gets the epidural, and she's at 10 centimeters in 20 minutes because she's finally able to relax. The thing with the epidural is that it's not something that you want to get before five to six centimeters because your baby's working with gravity. The second you get that epidural or at Cedars, you can do a walking epidural. So you can have it a little bit earlier if you want, where you can still stand by your bedside and be moving even with an epidural, even with the pain relief. But most hospitals don't have that. You look excited. Do you want a walking epidural or

you want to be on? You do. You do. So here's the thing. You want to be walking around? You do. You need to be moving. That's the thing. Laying on your back. Imagine a baby coming out, right? It's working with, it needs to turn. It needs to adjust. It needs to pull back. It needs to move back down. It needs to be able to move. So needs to pull back it needs to move back down it needs to be able to move so if you're just laying there on your back are you helping they had me laying there yeah all the time are you helping her was laying there the entire time i had no idea about any of this when she so your doula will be rotating you when you finally decide to get that epidural and and like i said you want to get it closer to when you're in active labor. So you're in early labor from zero to about four and a half centimeters. And then active labor kicks in. That's when they say like the whole like

five, five, one, right? Like five minutes apart, five contractions for five minutes apart for one hour or something like that. So you want to have, that's not right, but I can't think of what it is. That's kind of when you're able to tell like, okay, we're in active labor now. So, so Faye, is there anything that you would add to this that you would do differently? Or is this sounds like what you would, if you could do it all over again, you would do do i would do exactly what she's saying i mean it sounds like you guys are pretty in line yeah it all sounds really good to me i mean besides i want the birth plan because i'm super controlling and anal and and and that's

the thing is like you can make a list like these are my ideals and I'm hiring a doula to help me stay on this track. OK, but then there's sometimes curveballs that are thrown. And for our mental health, we can't be so attached to one outcome because we feel disappointed and let down and sometimes left behind when that thing doesn't happen. That's how I feel about breastfeeding. So when someone on Instagram messages me and says, are you breastfeeding? My response is, I've never done this before. I've never gone down this journey. Let me get there and let me see how I feel.

I have no idea. I don't know if I'm going to breastfeed. I don't know. And I support you. So here's the thing, informed decision. So you need to really look at non-biased sources of information to go, okay, what are the health benefits of nursing versus formula?

Like what is the milk composition of breast milk versus formula? What are the, you know what I mean? You got to look at all this stuff and then make an informed decision. And if you choose to bottle feed or breast feed or formula feed, I support women making whatever decision they want as long as it's an informed one. So same thing with vitamin K. Vitamin K is not a vaccine. However, it does have things in it like formaldehyde that are preservatives to keep it fresh. So you can do oral vitamin K, right? You can give oral vitamin K. They won't let you give it in the hospital,

but you can give it the second that you're discharged at home. And you can ask if you want to your pediatrician about what the dosage would be for your baby. I gave oral vitamin K. There are circumstances though when vitamin K is absolutely necessary. If your baby comes out with a severe cone head, hematoma on the top of their head, right? That's an instance where vitamin K would be necessary, where I would agree that vitamin K is something that should be given. Is it ever not necessary? Yeah. For most normal vaginal and C-section deliveries where there's no issue. If you're going to circumcise your child, and that's a whole nother topic that we won't go down on i mean i don't have a penis

in here so yeah we don't have that's my sister but if you're gonna circumcise you need to give vitamin k because the thing is vitamin k helps us clot fast and for whatever reason and i believe nature intended us to have low vitamin k for whatever reason because we didn't survive this long without it you know what what I mean? So, but people, there are circumstances where vitamin K, which helps you clot is necessary. And one of them would be if you're going to circumcise before, I think two weeks old, you would need to have vitamin K. So you had to do vitamin K. I didn't have to, but I did because like I said, I wasn't informed and I was doing whatever the

doctor told me to do. And we did end up circumcising and I wish I would have researched and informed myself better on that subject. And these are all things that I learned, you know, later. That's okay though. I think that knowledge is power. Applied knowledge is even more power. So that's why we're having these conversations. And also, I think it's important to like what you said earlier. It's it's there's no there doesn't need to be like this mom shaming of no because someone doesn't breastfeed like no it's to each its own. Everyone's different. If you want to give your baby vitamin K, great. If you don't, then that's your like, you know, everyone has their own prerogative and their own

path. Just make sure you're fully informed about whatever you decide to do. And then the last thing that they're going to offer you in the hospital, well, there's two things. One is a test where they prick the baby's foot and they take a blood sample. I would absolutely do that. They check for jaundice and a number of very life-threatening abnormalities that your baby might have. So I would do that. Actually, one of my dear friends, Nikki, did the test. She didn't want to, but she did it. And it turned out that her baby has this very rare issue where if he goes into ketosis,

he'll die. And so if she doesn't feed him every two hours, she needed to know that. So I'm all about that test. I think it's great. And then lastly is the hepatitis B vaccine. Talk about this with your pediatrician. I personally, the conversation I had with my pediatrician was this. My husband doesn't have it. I don't have it. It's a sexually transmitted disease. What is the chance that my baby could get this in the first year of life? The chance was none, right? Like not going to happen. And so I made an informed decision. And then we also talked about when, you know, when your baby's born, they're actually not really capable of creating

antibodies. So the point of a vaccine is to create an antibody response. So that way your body builds immunity to these things, right? Well, a newborn baby is actually not capable of that. So I took all of these things into consideration and then made my decision. And like I said, so I've had all kinds of birth now. I had the home birth, pushed the butt out, ended up having a C-section. I had the VBAC, a vaginal birth after C-section in hospital, got the epidural, didn't end up working, pushed the kid out, and it was fine. We moved on with our days. And then the last thing to talk about is pitocin. There are times when pitocin is necessary, especially after birth. If mom is hemorrhaging, so pitocin is synthetic oxytocin. Oxytocin is the love hormone. That's what our bodies are dumping into us to create contractions,

right? That's why women usually go into labor at night when they feel safe, they're at home, right? Lights are low and then labor starts. That's the norm. And so, yeah, so, you know, synthetic oxytocin is pitocin and there are situations where pitocin is absolutely necessary too. I mean, so these are all things we can say we don't want. But I mean, if you're getting an epidural, you're going to get pitocin. Before we get into that, I want to tell you about the coolest cleaning company on the planet. Now, since I have become pregnant, I've even been more psycho about my cleaning supplies. So I was on the lookout for a non-toxic cleaner. And Enter Truman's, it came into my life at the perfect point because not only

is it non-toxic, you guessed it, it gets delivered to your door, which gets me so excited. And at this point, at seven and a half months pregnant, it gets me real excited, more excited than it should get me. To get started, order your Truman Starter Kit and try all four non-toxic sprays, like Lauren said, all non-toxic, great ingredients for 45 days, risk-free, and like she said, free shipping. And so what you do is you get this Truman Starter Kit and it comes with these four reusable bottles and four amazing refill cartilages. And I really like this because I also think it's good for the environment. So you're not throwing a ton of stuff away. There's like an all-purpose kitchen cleaner.

There's this glass and technology cleaner, which I cleaned my iPhone with and Michael's. I've gotten a little crazy, like I said, since I've gotten pregnant. And then there's an all-purpose bathroom cleaner and a floor cleaner. And that's going to work on all hardwood flooring surfaces, which is amazing. Guys, you just drop these little cartridges straight into the bottle, add a little water. You can reuse them over and over. And it really is a life changing, world changing idea. If you don't believe me, just check out Fast Company. They say the same thing. And Michael and I, this is going to sound weird, but if you think about it, you'll start to fixate on it. We have chihuahuas and they're five pounds and

they're so close to the ground. So if you do have small dogs or any kind of dogs, you want to make sure you're cleaning your floor with non-toxic ingredients. Babies, chihuahuas, me if I have a couple too many drinks and I'm on the floor. Yikes. To receive 50% off your Truman's Starter Kit plus subscription, visit trumans.com and enter promo code skinny at checkout. That's T-R-U-M-A-N-S dot com promo code skinny for 50% off your starter kit and subscription. Truman's, a better cleaning experience. All right, let's get back into the show. I'm pretty sure I want an epidural. But listen, when I first got pregnant, I was like, I'm getting a C-section. So this is my last question to wrap this up. I feel like we might have to do a part two, but, and maybe after I give birth, you talked about

mental health, Faye, you talked about postpartum anxiety, kind of walk us through exactly what that felt like. And then I would love to know if you experienced that Alexis, and like, if you guys have any preventative tips or tricks, because I think prevention is really important here. So I think first things foremost, you should have a support group and a therapist. And if you can afford it, a doula. And I know you're getting a night nurse, which most people don't have the luxury of doing.

My sister wants to kill me that I'm getting a night nurse. I think talking to people who have been through the experience themselves, like you're doing right now is preventative. I think you're, you know, that that's not something that I did at all. None of my friends at 24 years old were having kids and I had to make support groups and join mom's clubs and all these kinds of different outsourcing activities after I had the baby. And I was literally going through hell. And I felt so depressed. And I didn't want to be suicidal. And I wanted to do everything for this baby and protect him with my life and be the best mom that I could possibly be. But I couldn't help the way that I was feeling. And I didn't want,

like Alexis was saying earlier, to be like my mom. Essentially, I didn't want to go that deep. I didn't want to feel that depressed ever. And then after I started getting the depression for the first six months to a year, I started getting panic attacks. And those were really scary because I felt like I was going to go into psychosis. And I felt worried for the baby that I had to take care care of him and I was scared and I didn't, you know, feel like I was going to kill myself or kill him or anything like that. But I just felt like I was an unfit mother and I was too unstable for him. And but then at the same time, I felt nobody else can watch him better than me and nobody else can take care of him. And I can't be away from him.

That guilt from the birth and the birth experience and the pregnancy really did eat me up. And it still does at times if I'm not staying on top of it. There's a lot of guilt like, oh, maybe he wouldn't be like that or do this if I didn't do this. And, you know, just just. It's mom guilt. Yeah. Sounds like a lot of mom. We've had a lot of moms. We have no matter what. Like, I just want to validate everything you're saying and to say that we all that aspect of it, we all go through. It's brutal. You're always going to worry so much about your children. And oh, my God, if I hadn't yelled that one time, would she not be anxious right now? It's like that's like my constant. Like you're always

thinking crazy shit like that. So what are some things that you could leave us with that would help anxiety and postpartum depression? Yeah. So I had postpartum depression, anxiety with both of my children. My second was definitely better than my first. right? But after both pregnancies, I did become suicidal. But one, I knew the symptoms coming up and I immediately took action. So there's a difference. Most women experience baby blues, right? For the first three weeks or so, you feel really weepy and sad and tired and exhausted and all those things.

There are things that you can do immediately. Take your ritual prenatal vitamins, up your magnesium substantially and a bioavailable magnesium, like a magnesium glycinate over a citrate, right? Is there a brand? Not off the top of my head. I think I take like the now, I don't even know, like just whatever. We'll put it in the show notes. Okay, people. So those things are really helpful, like making sure that our nutritional deficiencies, because we're so we're feeding these babies, we're up all night, we've lost so much blood and so much fluids, right? And it's like, now we need to replenish. And so much of we know our mental health has to do with our nutrition. So that's a huge aspect of it. I definitely think having a doula

really helps. I think that having a therapist and support groups and other non-judgmental moms that are just like, I've so been where you're at. Tonight, after we go to lunch, I'm going to dinner with a girlfriend who has a three-week-old who's going through it. And I'm like, let's just sit and talk and like, let's feed you and I'll hold the baby. And that's another thing that I will say, don't, and I'm going to leave it with this. And I know this is opening a whole nother bag of worms, but I just want to stress this for you, Lauren, for every person that you have in that birth room with you, add an additional hour to your labor, right? Because I was just talking about how oxytocin is what creates contractions. And so when you have a bunch of people in there that are watching, and actually, if you look at gorillas or apes-

I'm going to be watching. No. If you look at gorillas and apes, the men stand and hold space for the women and don't even look at them with their backs turned the whole time because that's how we're meant to labor. So you don't want a bunch of people in. And then afterwards, everyone feels like, oh, I want to come see the baby. I can't tell you how many people wanted to come see my baby and then walked in with Starbucks, left their Starbucks on my coffee table, and didn't even offer to, like, bring me one. It's like unless you're going to come and fold my laundry, do my dishes, hold my kid while I shower, allow me to get a two hour nap. Don't come to my house.

I also want to say this and Taylor, we're rounding it out. I just want to say this. When you are not in a position like you guys have been in, like when you haven't gone through it, it is hard for someone else to understand. And I actually called my sister after I got pregnant and said, I'm really sorry that I wasn't more available for you. I had no idea. It is, I think sometimes you have to go through things to really understand because you say the Starbucks thing and it's like, I'm thinking, oh my God, have I brought in my inulin coffee and left it? You start to think that's yeah that's again knowledge is power exactly so I think this was like amazing you guys both have to come on for

part two we'll do part two after I have the baby like give me like what four months what do you think three months if you can if you can I mean the benefit of a newborn right is that they sleep all the time so if you can podcast with that baby strapped on you that would be amazing i'll teach you how to baby wear i'll teach you how to stick the tit in the mouth in the baby carrier so you never even have you can be hands great maybe the baby can have a room here like kylie yeah yeah maybe they can pull out her tit and breastfeed. Yeah. I had surgery on mine, so I won't be able to feed your baby. But sorry. You're gonna be fine. Where can everyone find you guys's Instagram? Faye?

At Faye Everett. At Faye Everett. F-A-Y-E Everett. And? It's Alexis Haynes or Recovering From Reality. And pimp yourself out. Your book's coming out. It's out. It might be out. The book might be out.

It comes out December 3rd. You can buy it on like Amazon. And we are so pumped about it. I spent the whole entire weekend reading your book. I read it from front to back. It was so good. You guys are going to be obsessed with it. And I think that it's a must buy.

I'll leave it in my Instagram stories when this episode is out. Thank you guys both for coming on. We'll definitely do a part two. That was super informative for me. I'm going to go back and listen to this episode and take notes. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Wait before you go.

To win a copy of Alexis's new book, Recovering from Reality, head over to my latest Instagram and tell us your favorite part of this episode. I read her book in one weekend. It is juicy. It is informative. And it's also super heartfelt. So if you're looking to check out her book, you can head over to Amazon too. Be sure to follow her on Instagram. It's Alexis Haynes. And then my sister is at Faye Everett's. And with that, we'll see you guys on Tuesday. This episode is brought to you by Ritual. You guys know I'm a human guinea pig, and I'm still here taking Ritual and loving it, okay? It's filled with iron, vitamin E, magnesium, folate, and omega-3. Kind of everything. It's made in the USA without synthetic fillers. 95% of women do not get the vitamins and minerals they need on a daily basis,

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