Claim OwnershipWhat You Didn't Expect in Fertility, Pregnancy & Birth: Real Stories & Expert Insights
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© 2025 What You Didn't Expect in Fertility, Pregnancy & Birth: Real Stories & Expert Insights
Description
Creating a family is a life transforming event that’s a lot harder than the culturally-generated marketing suggests.
Relying on the glossy media depictions of this transition leaves many women feeling like they are broken or failing when their actual experience doesn’t match their expectation.
I tripped over every step of this process: getting pregnant, being pregnant and giving birth on my way to having two kids.
This podcast showcases the really, really of people’s experiences:
* what they didn’t expect when they were expecting
* what they wish they’d known.
You’ll hear shareable insights gleaned from time in the IVF gauntlet, ways to manage the flattening nausea and fatigue of pregnancy, 40 hour labors and much more including expert medical insights to remake our expectations, making them more real, more human and more useful.
194 Episodes
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For this season, I'm going to migrate over to a new show called Making Sense of Pregnancy What Experts Want you to Know about Your Body: This show is meant to be a new pregnancy reference that should fill you with both information that's useful to your pregnancy and awe about the project of growing another human in your body and what science does and does not understand about this amazing process. I'm finding and talking with experts, doing cutting edge work to better understan...
This week, we hear the rest of Julia's story. More endo, a bit older, a shorter menstrual cycle, a medical community that was suggesting the pregnancy was unlikely again. But Julia story should remind us to never bet against mother nature. I'm also including the insights of a functional nutrition and integrative women's health expert who focuses on endometriosis. Endometriosis is one of those topics that highlight how some areas of women's health have been historically. Let's say under ...
Pregnancy involves massive changes, and for some of us, one of the first hurdles is overcoming issues that have developed in our bodies that make getting pregnant and being pregnant difficult. On the road to becoming pregnant, today's guest learned that she had endometriosis, an issue that she'd painfully lived with for years without a diagnosis, and which required surgery before a pregnancy could develop. She also shares how the pregnancy and birth fulfills an earlier premonition. ...
This is the second half of my rebroadcast conversation with Gill, a mother from England who experienced lots of physical challenges with her premature birth, which changed her life. The birth gave her a beloved son, but it also dramatically shifted her life: away from the job she'd had and the life she'd imagined into something entirely different and ultimately completely inspiring. Now: she's an advocate for women who encounter birth trauma and a full time source of inspiration. Today we pic...
Today's guest overcame all the challenges that met her in birth, including a premature birth, a fourth degree tear and a misdiagnosis and a fistula and a stoma. Despite that list, this is an amazing story of resilience. Having had so many elements of her life overturned by her experience of birth, she was reborn in a way she could never have predicted. She's challenging all the ideas that had created limits on her life and in the process, raising awareness and money for others who've e...
Today I finish my conversation with Sascha. We hear about her triumphant home birth with her fourth pregnancy and the challenging outcomes of the two pregnancies that followed: what her experience was with the screening and diagnostic testing, and how she's moved on to her current pregnancy. We pick up where we left off last week: Sascha is being ushered to the hospital by her husband, so as to avoid a home birth with their third child.
In today's episode my guest, who is a therapist, shares her experiences of four births and all the many things she learned things like holding lightly to the birth plan as she's moved from the birth center to a hospital when her cervix is reluctant to fully dilate, holding lightly the plan to return to work three months after delivery when postpartum
Today I finish my conversation with Kristen. This week we hear about: * two challenging miscarriages * drugs for miscarriage versus D and C procedure * Insights on how to think about the miscarriages * Her current pregnancy We pick up where we left off. Kristen is talking about getting pregnant a 4th time, around 9 months after the last birth, and how this time things don't go well... Must Watch video with Elizabeth Banks from the American Heart Association https://www.youtube.com/w...
Today we hear from a woman whose experience ran the gamut from infertility, on the brink of IVF, to smooth pregnancies, quick births, and difficult miscarriages. Throughout this process she learns: * important lessons about the limits of her control over the complicated process of growing another human * the joys of outrunning medical predictions that pregnancy would be very hard to achieve. What follows is the first part of our conversation. Link about inductions https://evidencebas...
Today we hear from a mother of two who has a degree in public health and was trained as a doula before her first pregnancy. She didn't expect her water to break the way it did She didn't expect a retained placenta or the hemorrhage that followed and thanks to both her resilience, and the skillful work of her doula, that experience was followed by a second pregnancy and birth. She also shares great tips about managing the chaos of postpartum with a whiteboard What follows is the fir...
In today's episode I finish my conversation with Jennifer, the Doula in Reno She shares how she managed all the complications of her daughter's tenuous condition: * Born with RDS, a lung condition that has a high mortality rate * How lessons learned from that experience shaped her willingness to go on to foster babies who came into the world with other compromising circumstances and *How her experience in the hospital that first time led her into birth work. We pi...
Today my guest, a DOULA and birth worker, talks about her challenging experience with INFERTILITY: * All the minor surgeries * How hard it was to manage at the age of 19 more or less alone *How challenging it was to go through a regrettably similar process with her grown daughter and how she managed the twists and turns of both the pregnancy and the birth, which included HYALINE MEMBRANE DISEASE (aka RDS) and a PDA. Unequal Investment in Women's Health: Nature, 2023 https://www.nature.com...
In today's episode I finish my conversation with Kim about her experience, both having kids and becoming a sleep coach. NOTE: I should mention upfront that we talk about a full term still birth and how Kim managed that very challenging experience. She also shares WHAT MAKES BED SHARING SAFE OR UNSAFE (generally speaking) and gives TIPS about what's generally considered NORMAL FOR INFANT SLEEP and WHY WE SEE DISRUPTIONS IN SLEEP even after things have been going well! We pick up ...
In today's episode I speak with a woman who worked in the field of mother and infant health before she became pregnant. She shares the challenges she encountered in her birth--going from a planned birth center birth to a C section, what she might have done differently in that process, and how she managed that challenge. She also shares what led her to become a holistic sleep consultant, a story continued into the next episode. You can find Kim here: https://intuitiveparentingdc.com/ T...
In today's episode I finish my conversation with Shri. She shares her experience of birth, and the things that made postpartum a challenge--in particular Covid and the isolation it involved She shares the ayurvedic approach to both the preconception period, and to postpartum to help restore balance in the body including topics on: movement stress management food/herbs in the postpartum We pick up where we left off last week, with lessons Shri learned from her experience of a stroke befo...
In today's episode I speak with a woman who had her whole life turned around by an unexpected health crisis when she was in her early thirties. She shares *what she did to reclaim her health * how it influenced her fertility and pregnancy journey * the wisdom she gained in this effort to regain her health and her life * insights from the ayurvedic approach to life What follows is the first part of our conversation You can find Shri at her: Website : https://vivabyshri.cohere.live...
This is the THIRD and last part of Amy's story. In this episode she talks about * the importance of accurate ultrasound in utero * her experience of navigating a surgery on her newborn * the challenges they encounter in the hospital * her son's amazing recovery. This is a beautiful story of overcoming, and what she learned in the process. We pick up where we left off last week. Amy is talking about an organization that works to draw attention to the importan...
In today's episode we hear part 2 (of 3) of Amy's story--she talks about her induction and her experience becoming the parent of a baby with a significant heart condition, the operation that saved his life, and tips for parents who might find themselves the new minders of a fetus with a congenital heart defect. I also include the insights of a doctor who performs fetal cardiac ultrasound to understand that technology better. And the last thing I'll add in the interest of transpa...
In today's episode I speak with a woman who talks about her experience: * growing her family as part of a same sex couple * her experience with miscarriage and how that changed the way she approached her next pregnancy * issues with breastfeeding when her supply didn't match her newborn's demand * problems with thawed and refrozen sperm * and IUI surprise (not common for same sex couples) What follows is the first part or our conversation.,
This week we hear the rest of Jelena's story: * How she manages a postpartum period marked by the mental and emotional struggles of her partner and a new baby. * Her use of Montessori Parenting We pick up where we left off last week. Jelena was sharing that her partner was really impacted by the birth of the child and how he came to parenting with things that might have increased his risk for developing something like postpartum depression as well.
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