Interview with Chelsea Hobbs: An Intimate Journey of Motherhood

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hey guys, welcome back to Preview Lions podcast. This is Sarah and we have a very special guest. You guys know her from TV land, movie land, but I have kind of got to know her from this maternal mental health land, as we share a very similar story. She's Chelsea Hobbs-Neat and you guys are going to love her story and experience and we're so excited to have her on, chelsea welcome.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm honored.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Well, when you I'm not going to lie when you reposted something of ours, I was like, oh my gosh, a fangirl for a minute. And then I dove into your story and I'm like we are so much alike, it is wild.

Speaker 2: 0:52

Yeah, that's. It's really crazy because you hear of these rare conditions independently and it is hard to find people that have been through something so similar to what you've been through. So it's nice to meet you.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Yes, same. So why don't you give our listeners a little background of your pregnancy motherhood journey, because you have a younger motherhood journey and then now kind of a different chapter motherhood journey.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Yes, I do, and it's unique but it's not uncommon. So I was married. I had two kids I was living in California became a mom. I think I was pregnant at 20. So I became a young mom. I was very infiltrated in the film and TV industry and did the craziest thing and decided to stop it all for a bit and dive into motherhood at a young age, which I think was a really good thing for me. And then, yeah, when my daughter and son were about two and seven, we moved to Canada.

Speaker 2: 1:54

I went through a divorce. I'm from Canada, I wanted to be back to where my family was to raise them and knew that I would be a full-time single mother at that point. So, of course, wanted to do it with, with the family support. And then I was a single mom for quite a while. I dated and did that a bit, but more or less was a single mom and met my husband. Now when, gosh, how long has it been? It's only been. We're in our fifth year. So when we met we did everything very quickly. When I dated I said this is it. I've had two kids. I have a boy and a girl. I'm done. I'm not in that season of my life anymore and met him and went oh man, I'm definitely doing this again. You wanted kids and I loved him and I felt that was the utmost way to you know, to go through that with somebody as beautiful, if you can. So I told him I kind of wanted to be done by 35 and I think I was 33 at the time. So we did get pregnant, luckily right away, faster than we thought. I actually had an IUD in for 10 years, didn't menstruate for 10 years, took the IUD out and got pregnant before my first period came. So, yeah, I didn't even know it was possible. I, you know stupidly, but we were very grateful.

Speaker 2: 3:19

We got pregnant with my son, who's three now Jones, and then we kind of felt like he was a little bit of an only child in a sense, because his siblings were at that point my goodness, when my daughter is 17 now and my son is 12. So yeah, 14 and nine at the time, and it felt like this generational difference between the two kids. So yeah, so I said, okay, I guess let's do it again, let's see if we can do this again really quick, and I kind of had a feeling that my body wasn't ready. So when we had Jones, he was overdue and I had a friend who sadly lost her baby and the baby was overdue by a couple of weeks and then she lost her baby. So I was really terrified of going over and I did the castor oil trick. I gave birth within half an hour at home and, yeah, yeah, on my bed height of the pandemic we had full PPE. This is May 2020.

Speaker 2: 4:23

So we had paramedics in my bedroom. I had never used a midwife before and I said I think I'm going to need a midwife because of COVID. I just had no idea. Everything inside of me felt like I was going to need a midwife and sure enough I did. And they all got there just literally in the nick of time. He came out on my bed and it was a pretty violent and aggressive and fast labor and afterwards I just felt like he broke me. It just felt like my inside. It wasn't anything but my insides, it just felt like my body. Just it was so fast and furious. So where this is going is I did get pregnant again and it was gosh. I feel like it was within six to nine months after having Jones and I just felt that something didn't feel right about it. My body hadn't healed yet, so I did suffer a miscarriage at that time, and then we let my body heal a little bit longer and I got pregnant with Lucy, and that's when the rest of the story begins.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Just want to pause for a second at the mismatch because I'm reading a post of yours about you were on set, yes, and I think people sometimes get in our minds that dresses celebrities. You guys kind of are immune a little bit as silly as that sounds but they kind of just don't get that the show must go on. And I remember reading your post about you kind of, if I remember correctly, you didn't tell a lot of people because it was early about your pregnancy and then you started bleeding and having to carry your losing a baby and no one really gets it or understand it. I know that personally from two losses. That was one of the hardest things to experience.

Speaker 2: 6:20

Yeah, I mean it was terrible because I was filming it like a love story. A Christmas, a happy it wasn't homework, but homework ask Christmas love story. We were filming on location with porta potties. We were like in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 2: 6:38

And what I find interesting about this experience is I know very well that there is no shame associated with Miss Carritch. I know, as an educated, grown woman, that there is nothing that I should have felt wrong or ashamed about or that I should have felt like I needed to hide it, but I did Like I was filming and I felt like I had to. When in my job, I can't have a sick day. If I'm sick, I'm on set, I'm still working. Covid changed that a little bit, but not really. There's a lot of insurance. You look around at 200 people and they're all paying their bills. I feel responsible as the lead actress for their livelihood as well.

Speaker 2: 7:19

So, yeah, there was that, but there was also this sense of feeling like I needed to be private about it. There was a day, though at kind of the crux of it, where I realized I needed to tell people because of just what I was going through. So I did find a couple of females on set that I like in wardrobe or hair, and I said I need to tell you what's going on right now. And they were amazing. They told the producer, they didn't tell the director, which I also thought was interesting, but they just kind of facilitated, making sure that I had what I needed, that I could take breaks if I needed to for a moment set of time, but for the most part I was miscarrying, like I was going to the bathroom and then I was filming and smiling and doing my dialogue and getting through it minute by minute, and it's pretty crazy what us women do.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Well, I'm so sorry. That is your experience and it's just here. You are filming this love, happy thing and you're going through one of the most heartbreaking, horrific things to lose a child and this is-.

Speaker 2: 8:34

Well, the director said to me, he said the editors are telling me that you're looking very sad. And he was like can you try to like? He's like we just need like it really has to be. It's so happy you're falling in love. And I was like, okay, I'm sorry. And now I wish looking back, that I would have told him well, I am sad I am going through this, but yes, yeah, yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Thank you for sharing that that's. I still remember my miscarriages. I'm still every year around the time it happens. I get a certain feeling it's reminding me, but I think our miscarriages. I know my miscarriage. I had to have a DNC afterwards because I couldn't pass it, naturally. And then that leads us to our next step in both of our journeys, where we had rare issues with our placentas. How did you find out something was not right with this last pregnancy?

Speaker 2: 9:35

So the pregnancy started as what I thought was another miscarriage I was spotting which I did have with Jones as well and I thought, okay, this could be the same, I could just be having a little like implantation bleeding or whatever, if that's what some people do experience. So I wasn't sure. There was then a day where it was so much blood that my husband and I looked in the toilet and we both started crying and we were like, okay, it's happening again. Then I went to the doctor because it kind of slowed down and I just wasn't sure. And they did the ultrasound and there was a heartbeat and so it was a subchlorine chematoma in the beginning. Yeah, subchlorionic, I think I said that wrong. So it was. I don't know if our viewers are aware of what that is. I think a lot of people are but it's a blood clot essentially inside of you that can pass. So that was great because we were like, okay, but I knew it up to the chance of miscarriage as well. So cautiously moving forward.

Speaker 2: 10:39

And then I went to my 20 week ultrasound and the tech said she kept telling me she wanted to do more scans of my placenta. So she did more scans of the placenta. It was taking longer and I kind of got that feeling that there was something not 100% right. So I asked her. I said where is my placenta? And she said it's low. I said okay, how low? And she said it's I don't want to say, but it's looking like it's complete, so it was fully covering. So she said please, just really take care of yourself. And so she was acting really odd, like I felt like she had seen more than obviously she could tell me because she wasn't a doctor. So she kept saying, like, be really careful, just really take care of yourself. So I said okay, and I called my doctor afterwards and said it looks like they found something with my placenta.

Speaker 2: 11:34

I think it might be placenta previa and I thought this was really interesting. Everything that I learned about placenta previa after was all pelvic rest and I had a toddler at the time that I was lifting a lot and things that I found out on my own but nobody had told me I needed to be really careful of. So I thought it was really interesting that I had about a week or two before I went into the doctor before anybody told me to take a pelvic rest, before anybody told me to be really careful. I do hikes, I lift my son. I mean, I'm a very, very active person. So that's what happened. I kind of put myself on a pelvic rest, went to the doctor and then she said that they had thought that maybe there was another issue with the placenta that they needed to further scan, and that's when the visa came into play.

Speaker 1: 12:26

And for listeners to hear this. So placenta previa, if it is, that is something that we know, which we very cautious because of the bleeding and it could rupture. And then we talk about bays of previa. That's a different level of how is it? It was explained to me so was if I started bleeding, me and my baby had 10 minutes to get to an OR for us to survive, and I never forget they looked at me point blank, just like somebody was taking my order for dinner, and it was just like this is it and I'm like you the rush of wave. I felt that I'm sure you did. It's just, you are helpless, you're scared to death Again, like a ticking time bomb was inside of you.

Speaker 2: 13:13

Yes, that's exactly the term that I used was I feel like there's a ticking time bomb and I don't know when the bomb is gonna go off. And for mine it was really interesting because I had my placenta at the bottom, of course, and then I had an accessory placenta and I did as well. Wow, really wow, that is crazy. And so it was the VESA was connecting the accessory placenta and so I explained it, like to people, as there's a highway of my baby's blood supply that she's essentially sitting on, like she is sitting on her exposed blood vessels, like a highway of it. So we went through just a learning curve with the rest of just the next few weeks was okay. We have to be careful. How careful do we have to be? So we can't be intimate at all. I really can't be lifting my baby at all and having the older kids explaining to them the seriousness of the situation, without wanting to scare them too much, but that they needed to help more.

Speaker 2: 14:14

And one night, when I was 27 weeks, we went to the Christmas market. We went just strolling around this like German Christmas market in Vancouver, and everything was fine, there was no issues. I went home and we were watching a home renovation show and I said to my husband, I'm just getting another piece of chocolate. And I got out of bed and my daughter had come in the room at this point my 16 year old at the time and then I just felt I felt a trickle and I said I went to the bathroom. And I went into the bathroom and I was hemorrhaging quite a lot and I said to James James, I'm bleeding. And as soon as I said it, he like jumped out of bed.

Speaker 2: 14:58

Wiley, my daughter was like what do you need, mom? What do you need? I said get me a pat, get me something. Like you know, you don't know what to do. So he said Wiley, you're watching the babies, or your brother and your other brother he grabbed. I mean, I had nothing. I grabbed my purse, I was in my pajamas, I think. My daughter threw me a fresh pair of sweatpants and my husband basically carried me out the door and it was a 22 minute drive to the hospital and we got there in six or seven minutes. He drove so fast. We called 911, they followed us, you know, just in case they were, they sent an ambulance to follow us, cause at that point I mean for people who haven't had these two conditions, and you know this. We don't know if it's my blood or the baby's blood, so my husband's like either my wife's dying or the baby's dying right now, you know, potentially right now.

Speaker 2: 15:52

So, yeah, we've pulled into the ER and this is a little hospital where we live that is not a level four hospital. It's not at all equipped for a premature baby below 30, I think it's 34 weeks, nor do they have the real. They don't have any MFMs, you know maternal fetal medicine doctors that are really equipped for this situation. It's a lovely hospital. It's just not the level of care that I needed.

Speaker 2: 16:20

So we get there, I tell them quickly what my conditions are and they said, okay, they put me in a bed, they right away go to listen for the baby's heartbeat. And there was no heartbeat for three minutes. So for three minutes we were just shocked and numb and I'll never forget looking at my husband's eyes and us just being like, okay, like we, this is what we're doing right now. We are losing this baby. And then we heard it and it was like the most beautiful sound and relief to hear that she was in there, but also the fear of we need to get her out. Maybe we don't know who's blood it is and we are not anywhere where this can happen right now. So you're elated, but you're also. You're very protective, and anybody that's lost a baby, I think, knows that you protect yourself to a certain extent in these situations. I'm sure you did as well.

Speaker 1: 17:21

I think you said two things there. I will never forget the look on my husband's face One time, our first miscarriage. He knew the baby was gone before me. He's a physician and so he could read the ultrasound and the look in his face. And you said the look in your husband's, and it is something I tell people. I never wish that upon anyone to see their husband with that look. And then we had the same look that morning where I started bleeding. That was the last look I got of Bill as I was being rolled into the OR.

Speaker 1: 17:57

Was that same kind of look of like? Exactly what you described? Like? I guess this is what's happening Like you both have. It's almost flight or fight. And it's this like you said you, once you've lost a child, it is automatic coping mechanism that you go into a certain state. It's almost like the. I describe it to people. It's like you can almost live in bliss when you've never had something so horrible happen and experience a devastating loss. But once that's taken away from you, that's just how your body responds to trauma.

Speaker 2: 18:28

Yeah, it is, yeah and it's. I guess it's what we have to do, but I think and we'll talk about this when I finish the story but, like, I think, that in healing from trauma, it's very important to then try to peel it back and go back and allow yourself to feel everything that you went through and felt and yeah. So after that they said, okay, baby's heartbeat's okay, but we don't know what's going on with you. We need to get you to a level four hospital, and so they had to call and find one, and the one I wanted to go to, which was BC women's, where my daughter was born, where I was born, where my husband was born it is like the top care, in my opinion it was, and they didn't have a bed. So they sent me to another level four hospital, which is also amazing, called Surrey Memorial, and it was a 40 minute ambulance ride.

Speaker 1: 19:21

Chelsea, I just, I am just dying to hear in your story because minutes count so much in this. Seconds count.

Speaker 2: 19:30

Yeah, but at this point, like so I was trying to be very analytical about it I was like, okay, so the bleeding started 15 minutes ago. There's a heartbeat, it's faint, but it's there. They monitored me and the ambulance the whole way there and it was a infant support ambulance like some sort of yeah, I can't remember the exact name, but they were able to like deliver and care for the 27 week baby if they needed to. So they had all this like equipment on board and they were monitoring the whole time. And so I started to feel more positive that it was my placenta bleeding, not Lucy's, and it was so when we got to the hospital and they were able to do an ultrasound right away and assess the situation. They don't know why I bled, but the bleeding did settle down and they then admitted me.

Speaker 2: 20:21

And then the rest of my journey is me being in the hospital for six weeks and I did eventually get transferred to women's maternal fetal medicine doctors.

Speaker 2: 20:32

Five of them would come in every day I'm sure you went through that as well and they would assess the situation. And what was very challenging for me was I learned that the system here in Canada at least, like every doctor, they work as a team, but every doctor does sort of have their own comfort level and their own opinion, and what it taught me was how much I had to be educated and an advocate for myself. You want to trust your doctors but you also have to go. Okay, this is what I'm comfortable with. Like I don't want this pregnancy to go to 36 weeks. You know what I mean. Like they're telling me I can walk up and down the hallway. Like I don't know if I feel comfortable walking up and down the hallway so much every day, or just yeah, like with the doctor's opinions of every doctor had a different. They all had a different comfort level of when they wanted to get her out and that to me was very unsettling.

Speaker 1: 21:27

I really so much. Where I delivered. I think there was 16 MFMs on in the department. I saw most of them, like you said, and I had the exact same thing. I had one I called Dr Death because straight face said no matter where you are, if you bleed hospital home, whatever you and will not make it, just straight face said I don't see why it matters for you to be admitted or not. Essentially they're like what's going to happen is going to happen. And I had another one say I think she could go to 40 weeks. The same thing and I don't think people understand. This is just you are carrying again the weight of the world for trying to do the best for your baby and I'm a nurse, my husband's a physician.

Speaker 1: 22:18

We understand everybody has different opinions, but you want to find that alignment, like you said, with your comfort level and to be every day almost told something slightly different or someone else's take on it and no one's saying this is what it is.

Speaker 1: 22:33

It adds this emotional trauma and roller coaster and you almost have to say I had an incident where there was one MFM. Dr Sinki had her on the podcast. I owe my life to this woman because she fought for me and she was one of the younger attendings at the time and so sometimes it was the older ones who were like set in their ways a tad, maybe not as up to date on research as she was, and she had actually had days of previa herself, so she had this tie. She was pregnant at the time. She was caring for me and I remember another physician making a comment that well, maybe it's just she's being emotional with her hormones about you, wow, wow. So it is so interesting You're in Canada, I'm in the United States, where both these academic huge centers, right, and it's like we're still having to fight and advocate and educate ourselves and you're so vulnerable at this time.

Speaker 2: 23:36

Yeah, you are, and you also don't want to read and be on the Facebook group Like I don't want to be Dr Google.

Speaker 2: 23:44

I don't want to be that person. I want the professionals to put my mind at ease and let me know that they've got it under control. But something that a friend who's a nurse told me in labor and delivery is she said we are terrified of you when you come in people with your conditions. And I said well, I suffered PTSD. And she said so did all of your nurses. And she said it's the one thing that absolutely terrifies everybody in the ER, labor delivery or any of those care facilities or places. So I think that there was a lot of fear as well.

Speaker 2: 24:18

Like you said, the older doctors who are, they've maybe seen it a little bit more and so maybe they're desensitized, and the younger ones maybe don't want the blood on their hands, they don't want to take the risk.

Speaker 2: 24:30

And it was a younger doctor that eventually, when I so I went into early labor but it wasn't with my son I had a sensitive, like an overactive uterus. So I had contractions through my whole pregnancy with my son and they actually put me on like a light rest during my third pregnancy and so when this was happening during this, it was a very different situation because I was like, well, the contractions aren't hurting, I'm not in labor. And there were doctors that sent me to the labor and delivery room for eight hours and then brought me back to my hospital room. And there were doctors that said let's just monitor them and didn't send me. But the last time that I went to labor and delivery it was like a nine or 10 hour period of the contractions happening. She eventually just said I'm not comfortable with this on my shift, we're going to take her out. And and that's when she came out. That's what ended up happening.

Speaker 1: 25:24

So how many weeks was she?

Speaker 2: 25:26

So we were 31 weeks and a couple of days, and so the rest of the story of getting her out was after they sent me to the room and I had a feeling that it might be happening. I was still shocked that it happened, to be honest, because I'd been sent back to my hospital room so many times that I didn't actually think that it was going to happen and I had so much anxiety and fear, so we did not know about the accreta. I had a feeling, though, just had a feeling, and didn't want to put it out there, didn't want to ask too much because I didn't want to seem neurotic and you know how we can feel or be made to feel, but I just had a feeling. And so they gave me the bolster, the magnesium, and I have a very soft heart, a very soft pulse. My heart rate dipped below 60. And I completely the nurses, like I don't know how you were still conscious, but I felt myself going after they gave me the magnesium I'm very sensitive system and I fought my eyes. I stayed awake. She flipped my bed upside down to get my legs up in the air and I somehow stayed awake through it. It was terrifying, but they decided they couldn't give me the rest of the magnesium for Lucy after that. So the magnesium is to protect their brain from bleeding.

Speaker 2: 26:44

So then they put me in surgery and it was an hour and almost two hour surgery, I believe. I lost, you know, quite a bit of blood and I could hear them saying, I could hear them talking about how much blood I was losing through the surgery. So I knew something else was wrong. But I didn't ask, I just kind of you know, you just get through it. But the anesthesiologist I think I lost 2.3 liters of blood and he said I want to push her to 2.4. So they had blood bags on standby and he decided that it was too risky. He just didn't want me to get a transfusion if he could help it. So, yeah, he pushed me to 2.4 and we didn't do any transfusions. But I did start to like heal things through surgery.

Speaker 2: 27:33

I had nightmares for weeks after that surgery. Just I wasn't prepared for what I'd be experiencing and that long and being awake for it. I mean it was literally like a nightmare come true, like absolutely. So I started to feel and he said I think we should put you out. And I said I don't want to go out and I just felt like to stay alive as dramatic as it sounds, but to stay alive I needed to stay awake. And so he gave me what he called a gin and cocktail, which made me really high, but I wouldn't feel things as much. And then, yeah, we got through it and they said I was still bleeding. They put a drainage tube in me after they sewed me up and they said you're still bleeding. We don't know where the bleeding is coming from and we may need to open you up again. Yeah, so they didn't, they didn't. It slowed down over the next couple of days, but it was like, yeah, Literally a nightmare, a complete nightmare.

Speaker 1: 28:34

I, you know I is. So I tell moms this and I said, call me crazy. When I was the nurse I had a gut feeling about patients sometimes and I knew so with Will, the days of previous they did the emergency C-section and they I was out completely with James. I felt that it was attached. So I listened to his attach and I had a creda and I told I said that to a couple of different physicians I said I think it's attached. I told some of my friends and family, I told my husband and everybody was like you're just thinking worst case scenario, you're being neurotic, you're being crazy about it. You know like I got that, oh, it would show. You know. And when they I want it, I was I'd tell people I'm like C-sections are very traumatic and the fact that you're even just strapped down, you're hearing, you're seeing everything You're shaking.

Speaker 1: 29:29

I started shaking uncontrollably, like there's not enough discussion about that. And then when you're hearing things like I heard you heard with Will I heard no heartbeat. Before I went under Like you're thinking the nightmares, I would wake up in the night and I'd relive the birth and I would hear no heartbeat constantly. My trauma also presented physically, so then I'd have like physical pains with it. You know it could be. I learned all this through EMDR therapy was the smells could trigger me. Yeah, certain words, you know the steel sometimes have a hard time going by the hospital that both boys were born in. But the feeling, I tell, and I've talked to so many moms and like I had a feeling I thought and I'm like we're always right and we don't give our women motherly intuition enough credit and physicians don't no, they don't they don't, and maybe because there's no scientific explanation for it.

Speaker 2: 30:29

I mean, there's no way to explain how and why we have these feelings, like this mother's intuition or whatever. This connection is to our body Once, not just once we become mothers. I mean, women experience it all the time. But yeah, there is really something. It is really something to it that you know there's. It's bizarre.

Speaker 1: 30:48

You know in your heart, and every time someone says that I'm like please, let's just all hear this a thousand times. Don't second guess yourself.

Speaker 2: 30:58

Yeah, it's true and it's important for us to. You know, I've heard about women who have had breast cancer say I just felt like something was wrong and I went to a doctor and I got tests and they said it was fine. And then I got a second or third opinion and finally they discovered what I knew was there. So we really have to be our own advocates. We have to be our own advocates for our health.

Speaker 1: 31:21

We really do. What would you share with Chelsea pre-pregnancy About going through this that you wish you could have? Maybe no.

Speaker 2: 31:32

What would I share? I don't know that I could or would share anything. I think that All I would say is you're stronger than you think. I mean the fears. I think that if somebody would have told me what I would have experienced going into this situation, I would have never had a baby again and I would have been too scared. And I think that life throws things at you and it's amazing how capable we are and I think that I just felt so much appreciation for myself and love for myself. I think that I was just amazed that our bodies can be pushed to this absolute edge and survive. And then, emotionally, I would say, maybe I would say to myself give yourself time and be easy on yourself to heal, because that part of it I mean being away from my kids in the hospital for six weeks sucked, having a baby in the NICU for six weeks sucked, like pumping, trying to get the milk come in, all the things that you know happen after that. But I think it's the emotional side.

Speaker 1: 32:44

So you're thinking to Chelsea pre this. I can do this, or you just don't want to know.

Speaker 2: 32:51

I would say it would be a hybrid of I don't want to know. I think that it would have been very scary for me. I, in my younger years, had anxiety and struggled with anxiety and had overcome it. So going into this situation knowing exactly what it looked like, I think it would have triggered a lot of anxiety for me, and it did throughout. But it also taught me that I knew something really scary was happening. I knew the risks and I think I just knew I had to be strong for my baby and for my kids that were in the world already. I knew that there was absolutely no way of getting out of this situation and I just had to go through it, to get over it.

Speaker 2: 33:33

But to give yourself the grace of healing and I think so many women don't allow themselves I had someone who followed me recently tell me that she had a stillborn and she said I'm pregnant again.

Speaker 2: 33:48

And then she wrote me a couple of days later and she said I'm miscarrying again and it, it, it broke my heart and I get a lot of messages like these from women. I think that I want to be someone that people feel they can share things with and talk to and be open with. I love that I can be a safe space on the internet or in the world for people, and my advice to women is to talk, to find people to talk to. It's hard for your partner to talk, and that was something that I felt resentment towards my husband for, because I just wanted to relive it with him and I wanted to talk to him about it all night long and he didn't, and his way of coping was different than mine. So I think I wish that I would have maybe put a little bit less on that and found a professional to talk to in that time instead, because I think allowing yourself the grace to heal and not feel guilty about it, and however long it takes, whatever you need, is really, really important.

Speaker 1: 34:50

I had a therapist say I was like I should be over this, right. I was like this has been five years for Will and she said no, it's just been yeah, and I'm like that is key and I appreciate you being honest about the resentment part two, because I had a lot of resentment, not with just Bill, but I think people my support because I'm like I was the same way. I'm like I just need to talk about this. I need to do like I need you to like, yes, like we got to talk about, like I lived through something that was life or death and it's just wild because I know, you know everything I've thought and felt and it's just, it's comforting, Like you said, just to find someone who gets it and I had to realize, bill, he saw me almost die twice and he saw our oldest almost die, so that was his, you know, he had trauma of himself and he had PTSD of himself and what he had to work through.

Speaker 1: 35:50

Like you said, it's not the same as me, but you want that and I feel like Ms Carriage, we did the same kind of healing and coping issues where I wanted to talk about it a certain way and he kind of didn't.

Speaker 2: 36:01

Yeah yeah, different, for men do, and not to like generalize, but men do tend to, you know, deal with these things differently. They'd like women talk, we talk and we talk, and we talk to each other and we talk to our husbands, and men tend to internalize and work through it differently. But one thing that did really help me in my healing and was so when I went to my six week follow up was when I found out I had a trauma, which I thought was insane. Nobody came into the room after surgery and said this is what happens, this is what we found. It took the six week appointment, so that's six weeks of trauma and meeting, like what happened was horrible.

Speaker 2: 36:40

I was trying to fill in the blanks myself and this lovely MFM that met with me at women's hospitals said we're going to debrief right now and he said he sat down and he said you went into labor and he went through the whole thing like notes and very clinically and he debriefed the entire surgery with me like from a doctor's standpoint.

Speaker 2: 37:04

And then he said to me trauma is like. He said you have to imagine a train getting into a train wreck, and this has helped me so much. And he said if a train gets into an accident and then you pick the train up and you go to put the car back, the train back together again. He said some of the train cars are missing and so he said you might try to put it back together again, but you're going to be missing some pieces. And he said some of them might be put back in different order and then there might be some pieces that weren't there to begin with. And he said that's trauma. And he said the PTSD that you're experiencing we're going to debrief as many times as you need so that we can put that train back together again the best that we can and help you with that. And it made me feel so much better, it helped my road to healing so much, just to go okay, I'm not crazy, okay, this isn't what happened. This is what happened. This is what happened.

Speaker 1: 38:07

I am so happy you had that. I think that is such a rarity too to have someone say that too, because I felt the whole entire time. There was this one resident with Will that it was the first rotation she had Lord Helper and she came in. She met me. She was terrified. They hear their diagnosis like you said, the PTSD. She was like you have what? No, that's literally what people said. Then when I started bleeding, she was the one, she was the first one in my room. She had to go After. Everything was okay with Will. We had a debrief, but it was more for both of us because we had experienced it together. I was just like did that happen? She's like did that happen? It was very like I don't know, there needs to be more like that. That you had that. They sit down, I. That is such this is my French bullshit that they did not tell you what happened during that.

Speaker 2: 39:10

Yeah, it just it made the healing so much slower because then my hormones are dipping the milk's coming in. I've got a baby in the NICU that I'm making milk for in the middle of the night, no baby in my arms, and I'm dealing with the trauma of that and also trying to grasp why I was bleeding so much and what happened. And just, yeah, I needed a doctor to come in the room after and say are you okay? This is what happened. And there was a doctor that came in briefly and said a few words to me but I was very drugged up still and there was no conversation of this is what happened, yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:47

And that's the thing too is like you know everybody's, like, oh well, you know this is what happened. I think it's because we've went through either with the way you deliver a child. That is a lot on your mind and body. You are not at a place to receive information. Like we have had anesthesia, we've had drugs, we've exhausted, like that is not the time we are going to receive anything and hold it and remember it. And honestly, our partners don't either.

Speaker 2: 40:11

No, no, absolutely not. And yeah, he's going on no sleep and, like you said, with your husband, like he's staring at me during surgery, going my wife's dying right now, and then the baby comes out and she's three and a half pounds or whatever and is she okay, and she gets wrapped in a plastic bag and it's like the trauma from his side. You know of that. It's something that also, like, we talk about how women's health has some holes, but there's really no support for the many, there's no support at all for the men, like at least we have a little bit of support, but the husbands there's no support group for them that they're directed towards. So that's also a very, very real thing, because then we as wives expect a lot from our partners because of what we've just been through. But who's there for them? Right?

Speaker 1: 40:58

Yeah, it is. It is such a care gap, but I hope of having these conversations and saying you know the takeaways from your story and my story is that unfortunately, we're not unique or rare. You know, like there's so many moms that feel this way and thank you for being open about your trauma and just how that presented and how you had to heal and how you had to advocate, and that you're sharing on social media. We have this platform of people who they love you from you know the movies and shows, but then they love you even more because they know what you're about.

Speaker 2: 41:34

Yeah, well, it's really important to me to just be as authentic as possible and I, you know, whether I had a platform or not, this is what I would want to be talking about. So, thank you, I think it's great that you're doing what you're doing and when I saw what you were doing, I was so excited because there is an alliance and we don't feel that. And once you have your baby, and the Facebook groups kind of die down and everybody's living their life and they've got their babies and they've made it through. That's kind of it right.

Speaker 1: 42:07

No, you, just the way you describe that, and I think that's two of you even think about. We see, like I know we solve our OB's and MFM's like weekly, daily and so much, and then you have the baby, and then it's like crickets, right, and it's like then it's all about the baby. And then here you and your partner are and you've just like keep falling deeper, deeper, deeper, and you're going am I the only one? No one's checking on me and, like you said so beautifully, it's like then we're leaning to our partner who's going through their own, and you just kind of spiral.

Speaker 2: 42:41

Yeah, and I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of and like. Also, I know that we've come a long way in this regard, but therapy is so important and for anybody to think they can go through any type of trauma or any type of pregnancy loss or pregnancy difficulties, or just having a baby and their relationship to not hit bumps and for them to not need each other in different ways that they don't necessarily. It's not intuitive and we don't know how is crazy, like there's. We just don't have the tools, naturally, for the most part, to deal with this type of situation. You know, on our own and then with each other.

Speaker 2: 43:21

It's crazy to think that we'd be able to, so I think it's really, really important.

Speaker 1: 43:26

Well, we're trying to normalize being open therapy. Let's talk about postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety. We're just like, let's talk it. You know previous, which we had, is in front of right or before, so that's the name with our podcast is we're trying to be in front or before the moms filling the trauma, the shame, the guilt, the mood, anxiety disorders. We're trying to be that voice. So when you are God forbid experiencing something, you remember us as a resource and we connect with people like you through that, which is amazing. But thank you so much for your time and your story. I know some days, telling your story can feel harder than others, so I hope this has left you in a good spot and we're huge fans and you know Christmas is upon us season, so we hope we get to see more of you and we'll tag everything in your Instagram and, again, we're huge fans. But thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 44:24

Thank you. I'm huge fans of yours as well, so I really appreciate what you're doing, and I think so many other women are going to feel a little less alone, so thanks.

Speaker 1: 44:33

All right, guys. Thank you so much. We guys just download and share and let your friends know they're not alone. Thank you, chelsea. Thank you Access tips and suggestions on dealing with your own challenges as moms. You can also browse our podcast library and listen to previous episodes at any time. Please know you're not alone on this journey. We're here to help.