About this episode
“There are a million paths to motherhood and there is no right way or wrong way. It is just your way.” Jesse Truelove with @movewithtruelove joins us on the podcast today and drops some serious truth bombs about birth, fitness, social media, and motherhood. We couldn’t be happier to have her with us and for you to hear the important messages she has to share! Our mission at The VBAC Link is to empower ALL women in their birthing choices, whatever they may be. We applaud all women for choosing the birth path that is best for THEM. There is no right or wrong way to give birth! Additional links Instagram Live with Jesse and TVL Birth Words: Language For a Better Birt h Podcast VBAC vs Repeat C-Section Blog Move with Truelove: Jesse’s website AB Rehab course Move Your Bump Full transcript Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Meagan: Happy Wednesday, everybody. You are listening to The VBAC Link. This is Meagan. Julie is on with us and we have a special guest. Her name is Jesse Truelove. We are excited to talk about her episode today because this is something that is actually a first for The VBAC Link. We were just chatting a little bit before. We were like, “Why haven’t we had this happen?” because this is totally what we talk about, what we teach about in our courses, and this episode is where she had an emergency C-section, ended up recovering from a really difficult delivery and had very little support. And really, for her next child, when all was said and done, she decided to have a repeat C-section. And I love this. I love this because as The VBAC Link, as Meagan and Julie-- yes, I am talking for you, Julie. We are all about everybody making the best choice for them. That may not be a VBAC. Some people may not choose to have a VBAC. One of my best friends has had three C-sections. The first one was unexpected, two were scheduled. I love and support her in that even though that is not what I chose to do. I chose to VBAC. I support her in that and I am so grateful that she had that opportunity. So we are really excited to dive into this episode today and hear her story. She has done so much good in the world. After her births, she decided to dedicate her focus to helping moms recover fully from their pregnancy and delivery. We are going to talk all about that in the end because she has got some pretty cool stuff that she is in charge of. Review of the Week Meagan: But of course, we have a Review of the Week before we dive right into it. Julie: All right, yes. The Review of the Week. This is kind of a long one, but I really feel like it goes in line with this episode. I’m going to tell you about how I shamelessly stalked Jesse after this. But this review was actually an email. We got an email from Christina T. We really love getting emails from people who we have helped along the way, and so if you want to reach out to us through Messenger , or email , or Instagram Messages , or leave a review on Apple Podcasts , or Google , or Facebook, or wherever you want. We reply to all of the email messages and DM’s that we do get. We love talking to people and hearing their stories. This is a long one, so bear with me, but I really like it. She says: “I wanted to tell you about my repeat C-section. On the podcast, I have heard that term so many times. ‘Hold space.’ For me, that’s what you ladies have been preparing me for these nine months without me knowing it. For holding space. “For nine months, I prepped for the VBAC of my dreams. I listened to every podcast, was a member of the Facebook group, did ‘all of the things to prepare for the birth I thought I so desperately needed. I was ready to have an unmedicated birth and to roar my baby into this world. At 32 weeks, we found out baby was breech. I had been going to the chiropractor twice a week and felt confident he would flip. He did not flip. I then started to kick on my Spinning Babies®, got acupuncture, did everything online I could come up with and he still would not flip. “Around this time was the week you guys had your repeat C-section podcast and for me, it was a sign to start mentally preparing for what might not be. I spent the next few weeks switching my mindset from feeling sorry for myself and switching it to feeling strong. It was during those weeks I thought to myself, ‘What am I missing? All of this education and research can’t have been for nothing.’ “That’s when it clicked for me. I had been preparing to hold space for what won’t be and I have the tools to do that. We scheduled my C-section and when March 8th came, I was as ready as I was going to be. The anesthesiologist came to the room and I knew it was going to be a wonderful experience. Prior to this baby, we had suffered two losses in a row. We needed to have a D&C for the second loss and all day, different staff members asked me to state in my own words what procedure I was having. Each time I would break into tears as it was a very difficult thing. “My doctor came into pre-op and instead of asking the same questions, he simply said, ‘I am sorry you are here for this procedure. Are you doing okay?’ The same kind, genuine man was going to be my anesthesiologist now. When I first walked into the OR, my stomach dropped. It was bright, cold, and sterile just like last time. My doctor must have sensed my heightened awareness and said, ‘Your baby is coming.’ And with that, I was ready. “We were able to drop the drapes, watch our son come into the world, and have skin-to-skin right away. It was night-and-day from our first experience. It was joyful and blissful, and I left a feeling like a mom and not a patient. I left feeling confident and like a bad-ass. I left holding space for my experience and for our story, and I will be forever grateful for that gift from you ladies. “Birth doesn’t always go as planned. Sometimes it is better.” And now, that gives me chills at the end. “Birth doesn’t always go as planned. Sometimes it’s better.” Meagan: I love that. Sometimes it’s better. Julie: I’m going to make that into an image. Meagan: Yes. Let’s make that an image and quote her because that same thing. I just got the chills. Julie: I know. I have goosebumps. Meagan: I was like, “Yes.” Sometimes it doesn’t go as planned, but it’s better. Yeah. I feel like I can connect to that even with my second C-section. I didn’t want that second C-section, but guess what? It was such an amazing experience and it healed my first birth experience. Julie: Yeah. I love that. Meagan: I love it. Awesome. Julie: All right. Well, let me tell a little bit of a funny story and then I promise I won’t take up much more time. Jesse, we did an Instagram Live with her on her Instagram page. Jesse: It’s still there. Julie: Yeah, @movewithtruelove , right? That’s what it’s called? It was really fun. This was a long time ago. We followed her and I just love her content. She has great content. Super fun. Her reels are amazing. I just love seeing her bright, beautiful face as I scroll through our feed and everything. I just have really enjoyed following along with her Instagram. I knew that she had a Cesarean and that she was pregnant again. I don’t even know this whole story, but at some point along the way, Jesse decided that she was going to have a repeat Cesarean instead of attempting a VBAC. I was like, “Oh my gosh. Okay, this is really cool. I need to follow along and see how this all ends up,” because we haven’t ever had a story on our podcast about somebody who had decided to have a repeat Cesarean. Meagan: Even though there are tons of people out there. Julie: Even though there are lots of people that do all the time. Meagan : Tons, yeah. Julie: All of our C-section stories-- Meagan: In fact, a large chunk of people, the majority do. Julie: Yes. Yes, and we have had three VBAC stories where people have tried for a TOLAC and then ended in a repeat Cesarean, but we have never had somebody that has decided during their pregnancy that a Cesarean was the right way for them to go. And so I was so excited. I am like, “Oh my gosh. I need to follow up with this. I need to make sure she’s on my radar,” and then she announced her cute little birth story was on a little reel on her Instagram page. You need to go find it. It is the cutest thing ever. I knew that she had her baby and she had a C-section, and then I was like, “Oh my gosh. I want her to share her story on the podcast, but I don’t know if she will be open to it,” because I know, from what I picked up from the reels, it wasn’t an easy decision to make. I didn’t want to overstep my boundaries. She is super cool and way bigger than us on Instagram. I feel so small and tiny, but one day, I am like, “Okay. I’m just going to reach out, and I’m just going to say how much I love her, and how excited I am that she had a really good birth experience and that I would love to share her story on the podcast if she would like to.” And she said, “Yes.” Jesse: Oh my gosh. I only got good vibes from our last conversation and I literally wanted you guys to do my VBAC. That’s what I wanted. Julie: Yeah. Jesse: It was a big change for me. It was definitely a mind shift, but it wasn’t as big of a deal as I realized it was once I put it out there on social media. Julie: Well, and I’m sure you got a lot of support. I don’t know. Maybe there were some people, but I mean social media. As we are getting bigger, there are people that argue with us and disagree with us all the time. But I just love that you were confident in your decision. You just radiated that security and that confidence. I think that that’s what we all want going to birth is just being confident and feeling supported. That’s the vibe I got from you when you were talking about it and sharing your birth story and things like that. Julie: Without taking up too much more time, first of all, thank you so much. I’m so excited to have you share your story and to listen to you share about that decision that you made. Then we are going to talk a little bit afterwards about when it might be a good idea to choose a repeat C-section, and then Jesse is going to share some of her really awesome resources. Meagan: Awesome stuff. Yeah. Jesse’s story Julie: Yes. She has lots of really cool stuff. So hang in there with us because this is a really really good story and you want to hear what she has to say at the end. All right, Jesse, you’ve got it. Jesse: Okay, thanks so much, guys, for having me. I am actually really, really honored to be on your podcast. I had such a good experience chatting with you guys. It felt so, so natural the first time we did it, so it was a very easy “yes” for me. So I guess I will start out with my first C-section which really has paved the way for everything that I am doing now. Really, everything about motherhood has shaped everything that I do now. With my first pregnancy, I was working out really hard. I have been a personal trainer since 2014 specializing in women’s fitness. I have taught in multiple states boot camp, and circuit classes, and personal training for abs, and all kinds of stuff, but it wasn’t until my own delivery really, because I had a fairly easy pregnancy in respects to working out. I was very active, and so I thought in my head, I had this very clear picture of what my birth story was going to look like. It just seemed really, really easy to picture what it was going to be. I thought if anybody could, this is a really weird thought to have, but if anybody could have a natural birth and if anybody could do it successfully-- it didn’t even cross my mind that a C-section could be in my future. Meanwhile, I am the oldest of six kids and my mom has had four kids via C-section. So pretty interesting that I never thought it was going to cross my path. I went Into my delivery, like I said, with a very clear picture of what my birth story was going to look like and it quite literally went the exact opposite. I was in labor for 26 hours. I was bleeding. I got a uterine infection. I had a fever. My placenta was failing. Heart rate was dropping for the baby. They broke my water. I got Pitocin. It was literally my worst nightmare and I was so, so exhausted by the time that my doctor-- well, I couldn’t have my midwife anymore who had been with me the entire time. By the end of the 26 hours, I had the OB come in. He was checking me for dilation and I just wasn’t dilating. They gave me Pitocin and they broke my water. I think I got to maybe an 8 or a 9 and it just wasn’t happening. And then contractions slowed down and I really was so exhausted. He came in. He was checking me for dilation and he asked me to push. I was just so out of it. I didn’t even know how to push. I feel like if it’s such a medical experience, you go in and you are hooked up to these monitors, it just doesn’t feel natural. It feels really really medical. Julie: Yeah. Jesse: Especially when doctors are coming in and nurses are coming in checking your blood pressure, and you’ve got those monitors, and beeping, and honking, and all of the stuff going on. You don’t even know what’s actually happening with your own body and then I had an epidural by that point as well, and so you know how an epidural feels. You could kind of feel the contractions coming and going but it’s not even close. So your doctor asks you to push and you have no idea what he’s talking about. Push what? Most women don’t even know what the pelvic floor is and I was one of those women. Before my pregnancy, I was lifting and pushing some heavy weight. I was deadlifting 255. I am a five-foot person. That is a lot of weight for a tiny person and I didn’t have the mindset of function. I had one picture of what fit looked like, one picture of what strength looked like, and it was not anything of what strength really is. Motherhood taught me that. He asked me to push and I didn’t know what he was talking about. He goes, “Oh. You can’t do this. You are going to need a C-section.” Julie: What? Jesse: “ It’s going to be C-sections from now on.” Meagan: Whoa. Jesse: I laid there completely drugged out of my mind. I look at my husband and tears are just welling up in my face. I could cry just thinking about it. My husband is-- you know, we think that we are the strongest people we know. We love each other so much. He wanted to take that whole experience on himself and it was killing him that he couldn’t. He put on a brave face. It is hard for husbands too. They go through this with you and it is so much. He looked at me and he was like, “It’s going to be okay. We just have to do what we have to do.” In my head, I am already thinking of the future. I’m like, “What do you mean? All my next pregnancies are going to be a C-section?” I feel like it was the worst possible time to lay that on me and it’s just the standard of care. It’s just not there for moms. So the OR doctor left. He was assembling his team and the anesthesiologist had to be called in. We are in the middle of nowhere out here in the Oklahoma Panhandle so they have to call the team in. They’re not just there waiting for you if something goes wrong. So we are waiting for the team. I am laying there and all I could think was, “I have totally and completely failed before I even got to start. My body has totally failed me and I don’t even know. I am supposed to be able to do this. This is what I was made to do and he just told me I can’t now and I’m never going to be able to.” That stuck with me forever. And then, we are getting ready for the C-section. I have never had any kind of surgery ever. Never, ever, ever, and so I am terrified. I was already terrified to give birth and now I am terrified to go be cut open. And so they had me hunched over-- oh no, this was after I had my epidural. So they changed it over to where they just have to keep pumping the epidural in, so it wasn’t a spinal tap. They put me onto the new table. They strapped me down to the table, which was another thing I didn’t expect to happen either. It is all such a mental hurdle to get over. You’re like, “Wait. They don’t tell you any of this going in.” Julie: Yeah. Jesse : But that just all adds to the mental trauma of, “You have no control in this. We are strapping you down. You are numb. You can’t have your baby the way you wanted to. You are getting wheeled out of the room you just got comfortable in. Your husband has to wait out here.” It was hard. It was so hard. And so, anyways. We get rolled into the OR room. Just like your mama said previously in that story you were sharing, it was cold. It was sterile. A bunch of people that you don’t know are in there. Your husband is not in there. You get placed onto the table. You get strapped down. You get the blue sheet at your neck and it’s an emergency situation because the heart rate is dropping. I had a fever of 103 because they had checked me so many times. Meagan: Wow. Wow. Jesse: I had gotten an infection literally while I was there within 24 hours in my uterus and that’s why I was on antibiotics for probably-- I was in the hospital for five days. I was on antibiotics the whole time which, you know. Antibiotics, just the additional medicine. I’m not one to even pop an Advil for a headache, so it was just a lot. So they are doing the surgery. It was all very fast. It was a ton of pressure. A ton of pressure, relief when they took the baby out. They sewed me up pretty quick. Again, I had no idea what was happening afterwards, so they took Radley out and I could hear her screaming. In that moment, it is all totally worth it. It is all worth it because even at the end of your emergency, traumatic, C-section, you still get a baby. The baby that you have been dreaming about for nine months, the baby I’ve been dreaming about-- for me, it was since I was a teenager. Me and my husband have been together for 12 years, since high school, and we had been talking about our kids forever. So in that moment, I am like, “Oh. I could do it again. I could do it 1000 times the same exact way. I would go through everything the same because at the end of your really shitty experience if it is shitty-- which mine was-- it’s still worth it. So they brought the baby over to Shane. Shane just put her on my face because that’s the only skin I had accessible. They didn’t tell me about skin-to-skin. They didn’t drop the curtain. I didn’t get to see anything and I felt like I missed out. I felt like I got gypped in my birthing experience, which I did. I think that’s okay for moms to feel. I feel like there’s so much judgment around feeling what you feel about your birth. I feel like a lot of moms, and myself included-- I didn’t talk about my first C-section for a long time and I didn’t feel comfortable in sharing the fact that I wasn’t just grateful for my baby being alive, but I was really pissed. I was mad about my C-section. I was mad about how I was spoken to. I was mad that I felt like my body had failed me. Nobody made that feel valid for me. Nobody asked how I was really doing. Because after pregnancy, I feel like a lot of moms can attest to this, it stops being about you and it goes all to the baby. You get one check-up postpartum and then that’s it. At my six-week check-up, they didn’t even check me internally. I got the magic check at six weeks like, “You are good to go to back to whatever you were doing before you got pregnant,” and so I went back to doing those things. I realized quickly that my idea of strength and my idea of being fit was so terribly wrong. I had never felt like more of a stranger in my own body. I got home with this new baby that was beautiful and perfect and I had a brutal recovery from being in labor for so long, and the infection, and all of that, and then recovering from a C-section and major surgery. They don’t really explain that to you in the respects that you should be getting rehab postpartum to be rebuilding connections with those muscles, and movement patterns, and muscle recruitment patterns, and all of those things. And so I went into my recovery pretty blind. I realized quickly that moms don’t get much support at all through anything postpartum. And then I got really educated and I built courses for moms to rehab their own bodies postpartum, everything that they need. I realized that moms don’t need a six-pack, even though if you want one, it’s totally possible. What we need to be able to do is sneeze without peeing our pants and nobody could have told me how to do that. There wasn’t that information really out there. It was really just Kegels and if Kegels don’t work, get a surgery. Another surgery. There’s just a lot of room for improvement out there for the standard of care for moms and that’s what I get to do now. And so I love that. And then in my interim between my next pregnancy, I had a lot of focus in my mind and talking with my family, and talking to you guys that I wanted to have a VBAC, that I was confident that was just a one-off thing, and that I was going to be able to have a VBAC, and it was going to be successful, and that’s what I was going to try for, and all of those things. And then once I actually got pregnant, we did experience one loss after my first baby and we had a miscarriage. I got pregnant pretty quickly afterwards. I was discussing with my husband what we are going to do because you just don’t know what you’re going to do until you are there. So once I was pregnant and thinking about where we were going to deliver, who was going to do the surgery because the OB that did my C-section the first time didn’t live here anymore, which probably was better because this doctor that I got this time is just amazing. And then after I met him, I felt a lot more comfortable with choosing another C-section. After going over my options with him-- which I think is super important. If you want to choose a C-section just because you want to choose one, you have those reasons in your mind about why that is a better choice for you and that should be okay. Those should be valid reasons. But I did ask him some things trying to get his medical opinion on what was the best choice for me even though in my head after I was sitting in the hospital, I was like, “I really don’t want to be stuck in the same position that I was last time. I don’t want to be in labor for 26 hours to get stuck again and to have to go through another labor, the C-section, and a surgery, and then have to go home and take care of two babies.” And that, in my head, was really important to me to still be able to do everything I needed to do and not have such a tough recovery because I remember my recovery being so, so hard from basically going through two deliveries. The 26 hours of labor and feeling all of that, and then going through my emergency C-section. So when I was talking to him, he basically gave me some options. He did mention uterine rupture. I know the odds are very low, but like I said, we are in the middle of nowhere. He personally had seen some uterine ruptures happen and you just don’t know that they are happening until baby’s heart rate is dropping and for us, that risk of not having a team on staff because the hospital is so small, that risk of having to call a team just wasn’t worth it to me. I had to weigh the options and weigh the risks between a repeat Cesarean, which there are risks and the risks of trying to labor and then ending up in the same position that I was in last time. And so we ended up choosing a repeat Cesarean and I felt really comfortable with that knowing that I was going to be scheduled, knowing that my mom was going to be in town, and being able to watch my other daughter. That was really important to me. My daughter’s experience through us being gone because we have never left her with anybody before. I just had a ton of stress surrounding that. Not to say that the second C-section didn’t bring me a lot of stress too. I don’t know why I had this irrational fear, and moms are really good at this, that I was going to die. I had this irrational fear that I was going to go into surgery and not come out for my toddler. You don’t have that fear going into the first one of not getting back to somebody, so that was really hard for me. I was shaking like a leaf laying on the table going in for our scheduled C-section for River, my second daughter. It’s funny because just like the mom that you mentioned earlier in the beginning of this show, you can get really lucky with the staff that you have for your experience and I totally lucked out. My anesthesiologist felt like family. It’s funny to say because you meet them, and they come in and tell you the risks and stuff for the spinal block and all that, and they talk to you, and you are like, “Gosh, I am so scared but for some reason, you just are calming those nerves.” I think it is so important to have that type of support team. You can just tell this guy had daughters. I went into the OR room. They were in there. I’m leaning over my nurse’s shoulder and she is just holding me. They are putting in the spinal tap and they laid me down. Again, you’re in there without your husband. The lights are all on, cold, sterile, they are strapping you down, and I just had this fear that I was going to die. They are working and they get her out. I hear her screaming and again, it was the most beautiful noise and sound I had ever heard. They bring her over and in that moment, it was just peace. It was so much peace and again, it was just all worth it. They clean her up and they sewed me up. My doctor was really, really careful with my C-section scar which was really important to me too for adhesions and making sure that everything was sewed up very carefully. They took dad and baby out. I went to recovery and it was probably 30 minutes. I feel like that’s something they don’t tell moms either that you are going to be in recovery by yourself which is always a little bit sad. It was for me. I had both situations where I was in the recovery room by myself, but the feelings that I had surrounding my second C-section were not failure, were not that my body had failed. I had so much power in the choice that I had to be able to know my outcome and it did heal me from my first experience as well because I mourned that delivery. I mourned that experience that I felt like I missed out on. Even though I didn’t get to have a vaginal delivery, I didn’t get to have that experience, I still got to experience something beautiful and everybody came out okay. Birth words matter That’s not always the most important thing to bring up to a mom too. She is proud of her baby. She is proud that her baby is happy and healthy, but it is also really, really important to let her feel everything else. I feel like that’s what this world needs more of. Instead of-- well, I didn’t realize how much judgment there was around choosing a repeat C-section until I put it out there. And I was, oh my gosh. I got shamed so hard by a doula. She told me that I was saying I was too good for labor. Julie: Oh my gosh. Jesse: That labor was beneath me. Meagan: Whoa. Jesse: I thought that this was such a dangerous position for that lady to be in as a women’s birth support person and her personal feelings around C-sections to a person that she does not know. She is a mother herself and to shame a mom-- I literally was trying to rationalize in my head during my own time of choosing a C-section that this was really the best thing for me and for my family. We don’t have family here in town that can come and take care of our house and our baby, so we needed our family to fly in. That was a really big thing for us. We needed to make sure our toddler was taken care of. That alone could have been my only reason to choose a C-section and it should be okay because I do have other kids to take care of. Regardless, I have my own mental health to take care of and my first experience was crippling. There’s nothing like looking at your body after you have this beautiful baby in your arms and thinking, “Gosh. I feel like a failure. I feel like my body failed. I feel like I can’t do the one thing a woman is supposed to be able to do. I don’t recognize the body that I am in.” I am supposed to be this strong fitness person. I put all this pressure on myself to bounce back. I didn’t know how to do that. There’s so much pressure. It is so much pressure from not only ourselves because moms do that. Women do that. But especially with social media, it can be a blessing, but it can definitely be a curse with how easy it is to access people and access very vulnerable parts of people’s lives. This whole C-section conversation that I have become so passionate about talking about really stemmed from that doula’s comment to me because I didn’t realize that women were getting so much shame from this. It wasn’t until I put my own experience out there that women were like, “You know, yes. That is me. I got shamed by my own mom. I got shamed by my best friend.” People telling me that I didn’t really birth my baby. That stings as a mom. Our words quite literally carry weight to the people that we say them to whether it’s a stranger, or a friend, or somebody on social media, or somebody in your family, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, all the things. There just has to be more support all around because at the end of the day, we are just moms trying to get home with our healthy baby. Julie: Yes. Jesse: And there’s no shame in that no matter how you do it. Meagan: Right. We are honestly-- yeah. A healthy baby and we are wanting to stay healthy, but we are also wanting a good experience for us. Jesse: Yeah. Meagan: When I was choosing to do VBAC, I also got the backlash of, “Just schedule a C-section. Why would you do that? Why would you chance it?” I mean, it goes both ways. Jesse: You just can’t win. Meagan: Literally, it doesn’t have to be about birth. Vaccines, masks, no masks for COVID-- Jesse: Totally. Meagan: No matter what it is, it is this battle. I wish so badly to this day that people could just take a step back, take a deep breath and say, “Okay. I know where I stand. I support where you stand whether it is the same or not.” Jesse: Yeah, totally. Meagan : Because if we could just be validated in our own choice and not be questioned and put down for making the choice that we feel is best, this world would be so much happier and less battley and snarky, right? I chose to VBAC. You chose not to VBAC. Do I think you are any less of a person? Do I think you birthed your baby any less? Hell no. That’s the answer. Julie: Meagan just said “hell” on the podcast. It’s the first time. Jesse: I was going to say something worse, but I didn’t know if that was acceptable. Meagan: I know. Jesse: Yeah, I know. It can get a little raw in motherhood, okay guys? It’s pretty crazy. There are a million paths to motherhood and there is no right way or wrong way. It is just your way. Meagan: Exactly. Julie : I love that. There are a million paths to motherhood. Hold on. I need to make some notes for some social media posts later. Hold on. Jesse: Write it down, Julie. It’s pretty crazy. We are the largest population. There are so much more that connects us than what divides us. We let those, they are really just subtle and big differences, but we let them divide us. If moms would just come together, like you said, it would just be so much nicer because there is already so much pressure from other moms. We say that we want to support. We said we want to be validated, but it is usually moms that are so vicious to other moms and it’s mind-blowing to me. Meagan : Which breaks my heart. Jesse: Yeah. It really is heartbreaking because we have all got the same goal and that is to raise these little people with love. Everybody has a different way to either get to motherhood, because that is a journey all in itself and one to be very cognizant of, again, with the comments. When you are going to have another baby, you really don’t know the lengths that either a couple is going to be having to have a second baby or even to have their first baby. Meagan: Exactly, yeah. Jesse: Even a birth experience can really change the way if you want to have another baby or not, and recovery. If you don’t feel supported for the first one, it’s going to be really hard to feel supported in the second one unless something changes. I think that’s what we in this field are trying to do. We are trying to change that. We are trying to change and raise the standard of care for moms because we are the population that raises the next generation, that keeps the world going. If you help moms, you help the future and that’s what we are trying to do. That’s what every mom deserves. Meagan : Wow. Yeah. I’m going to roll back even to what your provider said. He was like, “Oh, you’re going to have to have a C-section because you’re not doing this and you’re always going to have to have a C-section.” My doctor said, “You were going to for sure rupture. I’m glad you didn’t do it.” Right? Those things stick with us and they impact us, and they do impact the decisions that we make and the ways that we view things. This is totally not a sponsor of ours, but Sarah Pixton has a podcast called Birth Words. It is called Birth Words: Language For a Better Birth and just like you have been talking about, these words stick with us. Even though you, as a person, may be sharing something with someone based off of how you feel or whatever, remember that that might stick with them and impact them substantially in either a positive or a negative way. And so when we as people are speaking, we need to be aware of what we are saying, how we are saying it, who we are saying it to and be respectful of everybody’s decisions, and choices, and views, and like you said, what they have been through. There are a lot of people with infertility stuff who don’t even talk about it because they don’t feel like they can. Jesse: Yeah. Everything pretty much about motherhood, I feel like, if you don’t feel like you’re going to be supported, you’re not going to share, and then that creates a situation where you are not going to reach out to the right people and get the support that you need-- Meagan: Right. Jesse: -- which creates more unsupported moms, which creates more chances of not getting the experience you wanted because you didn’t have the knowledge, and the information, and the support that you needed to possibly have the situation that you wanted to happen actually happen for you. I feel like like you said with the words that he said to me, that pushed me into this prideful position of, “Okay. I am for sure having a VBAC next time.” You know? Like, “I’m going to show you I can have a VBAC.” And then once I got there, I was like, “I don’t know.” Meagan: That’s actually not what I want. Jesse: That’s not actually-- I don’t really want to try this again because of this, this, and this. Part of that was the mental space it put me in, the mental position that I put my husband in. It’s just, and now we have another baby to take care of, so that was something else to take into consideration. So yeah. Your words carry weight, so be mindful of them even if you are a stranger. Meagan: Yeah. And remember there doesn’t always have to be a “because”. Jesse: Yeah. Julie: Yes. Meagan: You don’t always have to say, “Well, because this.“ Julie: And you don’t have to justify it. Meagan: “ Well, because I want it because this or I don’t want to because of this.” There doesn’t have to be a “because”. Because is because. Do you know what I mean? Jesse: Right. Meagan: That is the reason and it’s okay and you’re confident in that. So yeah. I feel like a lot of people feel like they have to defend their reasons and it’s like, no. You shouldn’t have to defend your reason. If you’re making a choice that is best for you, that’s all that matters. That’s all that matters. Jesse: Yeah. If you make a mom question her decisions, question her parenthood, question her ability or reasons as a mom, that’s not support. That’s not advice. It’s just mean. It’s just mean and it’s unwanted, unsolicited, not advice, but just unsolicited speaking. Meagan : I love it. Jesse: Yeah. Moms need support. Maternal mental health Julie: Yeah. It’s important. Well and not only that, but I want to take it off on a little tangent. We have a serious maternal mental health crisis in our country, especially for women one to two years postpartum. When we create this environment where women are scared to share their feelings because they feel judged and they see these comments flying around on social media or wherever about which way is the right way to give birth or all those different things, it makes them more afraid to show their feelings. It also makes them feel like their feelings are wrong. When you are in a mental state where you feel guilty about your thoughts and you feel like you can’t share them without being judged, then they are going to sit inside your head and your mind, and fester, and grow. It can lead to really long-term complications. I think we all know that mental health affects our physical health as well, and so we are having moms that are literally getting sick because they are not supported in their decisions. I am sure you have seen this too, Jesse. You have a big social media presence. Our social media presence is getting bigger all the time. I find the bigger that we get the more we get these people that seem like they just want to argue with whatever we say, or they take one little thing and pick it apart, right? I know I have texted Meagan a couple of times because I have anxiety over here. I’m working on it, but sometimes some things really upset me. I will text Meagan and I will be like, “What do you think about this?” Meagan calms me down and lets me know that there are 500 positive comments and one negative one. Jesse: Right. Julie: But I really still even get worked up about those types of things. It’s something that I have to actively work on and I’m still learning coping strategies and stuff for, but my anxiety did not start until after I had my VBAC baby which is really interesting because I had what I would describe as a perfect, textbook VBAC. It was a perfect birth and everything was as I wanted it to be, and I had really severe postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety. It was my worst mental health after any of my pregnancies. I had this beautiful birth, but I had all of these expectations I set myself up as a mother based on what other people thought and what I perceived to be the right way to be a mom. And because I could not fit this mold that I had set for myself and because I felt like I didn’t have a group of people I could talk to because all of my people were in this little mold, or so I thought, right? I kept it inside and it really did a lot of damage to my mental health. I know I’m not the only one that feels like that. That’s why we share stories from all different types of people in all different types of births, in all different types of decisions, from all over the world even, because we want people to know that they are not alone. It’s always okay to share your feelings. It is always okay to get help and it’s never okay to judge somebody else based on their decision. It’s never okay. Jesse: Yeah. I can totally relate to the comment stuff. I honestly can’t even go to my comments. I’ve got a really strong group of moms here and, like you said, it’s usually not even from people that are following you. They’re not even coming to your page because they like your content. Julie: Oh yeah. They see one post. Jesse: Yeah. They’re not coming because they like you. They’re coming because you’re triggering them. Because the people that I do see, I end up blocking them because I don’t want anything negative that they say to affect a mom on my page. Julie : We do that too. Jesse: Or to read the comments or see it, so I will block them. But they are not even following me and I find it so intriguing, like, “Why are you here?” Julie: Yes. Jesse: Why are you here? What are you looking to get? It’s usually because just they don’t feel supported in their choices in their life, so they are attacking you for your choices or whatever. But yeah. The comment section is a dangerous place to be especially if the post has been up for a while. So every once in a while, I will go back and then I’m like, “Why did I do that?” Because you know? It’s just toxic. But I think if I had one piece of advice for a new mom, it would be just to not read every book, not ask everybody what they did because moms have an intuition and they just need to feed into that a little bit more. Just trust your gut. If you have got a stomachache about something, it’s your second brain trying to be like, “Your first brain is not listening to you. I am going to make you throw up over it and I’m telling you, something is wrong here. Something is not right.” If it doesn’t sit well with you, the mom, you get to be the deciding factor and if somebody is giving you advice and it doesn’t feel quite right, it’s not good advice for you. Meagan: For you. Yes, exactly. Jesse: For you, yeah. And that’s exactly it. Just because you’re getting advice from your mom, just because you’re getting advice from your best friend who also has a kid, you’re probably also going to get advice from your friend that doesn’t have a kid that’s imagining how they would be as a parent-- which that always is great-- just because you’re getting all that advice, it doesn’t mean it is the right advice for you, and your situation, and your kids, and you as a mom. So my advice is to take what you need and ditch what you don’t. If you like something that somebody is doing if you like something that your mom told you, or your friend, or your grandma, or whoever, take it. And if the other parts of it don’t align with your vision of how you see yourself being a mom, or how you plan on birthing kids or all of the things, just ditch that. It is going to feel so much better if you have that confidence to just put your foot down and be like, “No. I am the mom. This is how it’s going to be.” I feel like we need to support moms in those decisions also. Because for some reason, we feel like, “I don’t want to be rude, so I’m just going to let this happen.” But it’s either your feelings or their feelings and I don’t think the mom should have to sacrifice her feelings around her kids, around her birth experience, around everything else because, at the end of the day, it’s your experience. It’s your journey. It looks a little bit different for everybody else. Julie: And if you see some content on social media that you don’t agree with, just scroll along. It’s okay. Jesse : You do not have to comment. You don’t. I promise. I promise you don’t have to leave your opinion. Julie: Well, we hate to cut it off short. I feel like this is something we could talk about forever. But I did want to say that sometimes it is a hard thing to decide whether to try for a vaginal birth after a Cesarean or to schedule a repeat Cesarean. Neither choice is a bad choice, but we did write a blog about how to decide if an elective C-section is best for you and your baby. Jesse, you said, “Don’t read all the books,” but you can read this one blog. We are going to drop a link for that blog in our bio or you can just go to our website, to thevbaclink.com , and just search for “elective C-section” and it will be a link there. It will list medical reasons for repeat C-sections and also reasons why people might choose to have an elective Cesarean. There is no right answer for you and like Jesse said, there are a million ways to motherhood. Meagan : There’s no wrong answer. Move with Truelove Julie: There’s no wrong answer. But before we go, we do want Jesse to share a little bit more about some of the stuff that she does and how you can find and follow her, because we know you love her by now just as much as we do. Jesse: Aw, thanks, guys. Meagan: Well, and I think that this information that you are going to share is so powerful because it really isn’t paid attention to enough. So tell us all about what you have got your toes and hands dipped into. Jesse: Okay, perfect. Yeah, so I have got my own page. It’s Move with Truelove . You guys got plugged into that at the beginning of this, but I am also very deeply connected to Nancy Anderson and if you are in the prenatal/postpartum field or realm or if you are a mom, you need to know what we are doing over here. So I am the Program Director and Head Coach for the Move Your Bump app and that is our prenatal and postnatal fitness and nutrition app. We’ve got over 400 on-demand coached follow-along workouts of every style, every fitness level. We have got multiple, multiple expert coaches that always have your bump in mind. We focus on minimizing excessive diastasis which is the ab separation, which became this really hot topic on social media, but there are about a thousand ways you can get it. We really focus on the prevention of that during pregnancy to help you have a more comfortable pregnancy, but more importantly, we are training you for labor because it is the hardest workout of your life. Whether you are a vaginal delivery mom or a C-section mom, it is going to be a fight and you want to make sure that you are training properly. We also prepare you for a faster recovery and we do that through the Move Your Bump app through workouts, through breathwork routines, through focusing on posture, troubleshooting issues that we see most commonly in prenatal mamas. We also have challenges throughout our app with private Facebook group communities, with thousands of other moms throughout the world that are connected through their sharing bump pics and checking in for progress, and then also the ability to win prizes there. So it is super fun. Meagan: And there’s something starting on the third, right? You guys are doing a challenge starting on the third. Is that right? Jesse : Yes. Yeah. We have a bump challenge. Julie: The third of what? Meagan: It’s the third of May. Jesse: Of May. Julie: Well, this episode isn’t going to air until June. Meagan : But do you do those often? Jesse: We do. We do them every single month, the first Monday of every month. We do multiple challenges. We have a Before Your Bump challenge, which is our trying-to-conceive challenge and we have got all kinds of information on stress management, fertility, hormones, nutrition to optimize your fertility, as well as fitness. We want to make sure that we are staying nice and strong and focusing on the things that are most important to not only support a pregnancy but also recover from your delivery. We also do through the Birth Recovery Center , which is our umbrella company that is going to be having multiple courses including things like sleep support, lactation consultants, mental health, all kinds of stuff that moms are going to need through their journey. So the hero product there is the AB Rehab course . That’s our 12-week postpartum recovery course. It helps you to recover and heal fully from your delivery whether you are a C-section mom or a vaginal mom, whether you delivered 10 weeks, 10 months, or 10 years ago. This program is basically for everybody with a pelvic floor, so that’s everybody. We focus on the foundational work, on the reasons why diastasis happens in the first place. Pregnancy is definitely something to recover from as well as your delivery because so much is changing in such a short amount of time. Birth is basically a lot of trauma to the body which takes a lot of rehab and a lot of specific coaching, specific protocols to make sure that we are addressing everything that happens during pregnancy and during delivery. So we will focus on postural imbalances, posture habits that happen during pregnancy, and then even pre-pregnancy, probably a lot of these muscle imbalances you have had before you were even pregnant. Pregnancy just has a really good job of showing us where our weaknesses are because we are trying to support a big bump growing out in front of us and our balance changes. Pressure changes, so imbalance, and muscle weaknesses, and compensations tend to really present themselves in the forefront during pregnancy and then stick around postpartum if we are not actively working to correct them. So through the 12-week course, we focus on posture. We focus on breathing patterns which are huge. We focus on the pelvic floor, not only function but the ability to connect with the pelvic floor and lower abs, which we really don’t have a lot of access to during pregnancy if you are not actively working to keep that connection. That’s why a lot of moms are left with a lower belly pooch or feeling like you can never really turn on your lower abs. That’s muscle dysfunction. We have thousands of moms. We probably have about 5-8000 moms join our course every single month, every single challenge. We coach all of them through video communication, through our course, through video assessments. We have a whole entire team of course specialists that help customize the 12-week course to specific needs because like we said, there are a million roads to motherhood, there are a million roads to recovery too and that can’t be done with a one-size-fits-all course, which is why we are so passionate about the ability to customize this course with troubleshooting videos if you have a hypertonic or hypotonic pelvic floor or whether you have developed prolapse. There’s a lot of things that are happening postpartum and we address a lot of them. We also have an in-house DPT on our staff who can work to coach you through some more difficult things that need a higher level of expertise. So we really are just helping to raise the standard of care for moms postpartum. Moms deserve all of the support and it really does take a village to do that, and so that is why we have got our hands in all the cookie jars with lactation, and sleep, and birth path, and mental health, and of course, our 12-week AB Rehab, as well as nutrition. We have a little bit of everything and we are working to be the top providers for that since we are already doing that with AB Rehab. Meagan: Love it. Jesse : Yeah. We are really proud of it. Meagan: Oh my gosh. So much goodness in there. So awesome. Oh, well thank you so much for sharing your story, and your wisdom, and, obviously, that awesome course, courses. So we really appreciate you. We love your face and we just can’t wait to continue our relationship. Jesse : Right back at ya. Thank you so much for having me. Julie: Absolutely. Thank you. Closing Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Head over to thevbaclink.com/share and submit your story. For all things VBAC, including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com . Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands