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This is the birth, baby and Life podcast with Kristen Burgess, and we're talking about how to feel stronger. And episode number one hundred and sixty six Welcome

To the Birth, Baby and Life podcast. The tips, tools and straight talk you want for pregnancy, childbirth and bringing up baby. And now your host Kristen Burgess.

Hi, this is Kristen Burgess from NaturalBirthAndBabyCare.com, and today we are going to talk about how you can feel better or stronger or both when you feel unhappy with your last birth. Last week we talked about why you have the right to feel upset about a birth that was difficult or traumatic, or even one that just didn't really go the way that you expected. I definitely do not believe in disenfranchized grief, and I hope as you listened to the episode last week that it also gave you hope that acknowledging the grief and learning to to accept it is a catalyst for healing and for moving forward. It's not something that you stay stuck in. I've had conversations recently with somebody in the birth world that I really love and respect, and trying to figure out differences of thought and differences of opinion and what wanting a natural birth sets a woman up for. Does it set her up for some level of feeling failure or grief that she would not have otherwise felt if she hadn't had this quote unquote expectation of a natural birth? And I guess from working with women, I don't necessarily feel like that's the case. I do believe that if a woman wants a natural birth and she ends up with a birth with a lot of interventions, she may be more disappointed than a mom who didn't have that expectation of no interventions. However, I also believe that a lot of women sense, even if they went in expecting that they were going to have a standard birth, that what was done to them or their babies or what happened to them or their babies didn't need to happen because I have a lot of moms who come to me seeking something different after a first baby, even after a third or fourth baby.

They just say, I don't want to do it that way again because they have this realization that that what happened and what went on wasn't the way it ought to have been. And you also have a lot of women later in life who talk about how their babies were saved and this that and the other by whatever happened to them during birth. But they get upset or defensive almost when somebody starts talking about wanting a natural birth. And that is basically never about the person who wants a natural birth. And it's much more about the other person, the older woman. And I feel like it probably stems from the fact that having somebody who's about to have her baby say, I want a natural birth and this is why it it causes that woman to look back on her own experiences and say. Did what happened to us have to happen, and that's a little bit uncomfortable? So she goes with feeling like because her experience was x y z, clearly natural birth is risky.

So you just see in little ways that even women who were OK or fine with a birth with more interventions don't actually end up quite having the level of peace that somebody might argue that they do. You know, saying that, oh, well, if they go in with no expectations, then they won't be disappointed. Essentially, I don't I don't really think that's true. I think many women have their autonomy stripped away from them, have their voices stripped away from them and end up in a cascade of interventions. And even if they weren't actively trying to prevent it in the aftermath, they realized that, gosh, maybe it shouldn't have looked like this or this felt really rough. It's like, I think I talked about her last week. I was able to speak to a mom on the phone not too long ago. And she said, If you look at my birth from all outward measures, it looks like a good and satisfying birth experience for a standard typical hospital birth. But it didn't feel that way to me. And she's had trouble even expressing it because it doesn't look outwardly traumatic. But for her, it was really traumatic. And you know, where do women go with that? So anyways, what what I want to talk about this week is looking at the fact that yes, when we have a birth that doesn't go the way we want it to go, we have the right to feel grief.

And I believe that again, even a woman who's really expecting a standard quote unquote hospital birth with all the medical procedures and everything often ends up walking away with a sense that this wasn't quite right and there may be grief there. And so women have the right to feel that grief and to explore that grief. I don't think that that grief is at all something that she shouldn't have, and that of her expectations had just been lower. Then she wouldn't have had that grief. And I and the person I've been having this conversation with, I don't think that's exactly how she thinks about it, either. But I feel like it's so important for us to acknowledge that it is OK to feel big feelings, even when those big feelings seem silly to others. And sometimes the truth is we can feel big feelings and we just have to kind of get over it. Like, I tell my kids, you can feel big feelings about helping out around the house, but I still need your help and I, you still have to do it. You're you're going to have to do some work to help out. And there are different things we can do throughout life. Like if you're in a job that you hate, you can get a different job. And this, that and the other so that we don't have to just, you know, grin and bear it.

But the truth is, life can be difficult, and sometimes we do have to grin and bear things. But I believe that we're able to handle difficult realities better if we allow ourselves to have the space to handle that. Which is why I don't believe that disenfranchized grief really ever serves anybody, especially not mothers and fathers. It just doesn't have a safe space to express that grief and to process it, because then it becomes a catalyst for healing. So let's let's talk about that catalyst some because really up to this point, we've just kind of rehashed the last podcast episode. What I wanted to talk about this week is what to do when you do feel unhappy. So last week, we basically talked about acknowledging your right to feel unhappy with a previous birth and exploring what that looks like and and what that might be like and what disenfranchized grief is on all of that. So this week, I want to talk about practical steps towards feeling better. When you've acknowledged that you've had a tough experience and this is really in the frame of your preparing for another pregnancy and birth, which is a time that this grief often comes up. But I believe that looking at this and doing this work, even if you're not necessarily planning another baby right now or ever could be helpful. But the context is going to be more specific towards if you're planning or, you know, planning or actively pregnant again and actively working towards another birth.

I have done a master class recently, it's a free master class called sacred second birth that digs into this a lot more. So if you're interested in that, you can go to Birthbabylife.com sacred, the live classes done, but the replay is still available so you can still register and get the replay. So it is Birthbabylife.com sacred. Or if you happen to be listening to this right before I do another live version of the class, then you'll see the information on the live date and you can attend that as well. So check that out at Birthbabylife.com sacred if you want more. If you want more details on this and also more information on how I'm helping support women, especially one on one right now through this, that's the place to go to get that information. So. When we look at how do we heal and go forward, I do believe that a big part of that catalyst for healing is just acknowledging that something wasn't the way that you wanted it to be or that you expected it to be, or even that it should have been, and that you have the right to grieve that. And one of the things that I talk about in the master class in the healing section is not just being OK with your grief, but also finding a name for what happened, being able to name it.

Because some women struggle because they have this nebulous feeling that maybe something wasn't right, but they have a hard time naming it and naming it could have been as could be as simple as saying something like, I sorry, ladies, I have an alarm going off. Hold on. Ok. Forgive me for that real life, and you can also hear doors slamming because my kids are being super noisy out front, and the truth is is I probably won't even edit all of this out of the episode because this is my real life and it's really busy anyways. So naming things, if you name it, even as simply as saying I was pushed into interventions that I didn't want, that can be really powerful because it helps you acknowledge it from this nebulous sense of something wasn't right, but I'm afraid to name it, which is another way of saying, really, I'm afraid to place blame. I don't want to blame somebody else. They were just doing their job well, doing their job could have involved silencing you, or it's much more likely that their routines and procedures, they were just checking the boxes and that ultimately resulted in you being silenced because you're not an airplane that can just be checked over by a preflight checklist. You're a human being with unique needs and wants, and this birth is unique, different than any other birth that's ever happened, which is pretty phenomenal thing to say.

But it's true there are commonalities, but you're unique, so it could simply be that it's their procedures. And if it feels better for you to say that the system or the procedures hurt me, then do that. But I would not. I would encourage you to acknowledge that yes, something was done to me or pushed on me or I was put in this assembly line that ended up hurting me, because that helps you turn away from blaming yourself, which is what we usually do when we don't want to name something and when we don't want to quote unquote point fingers at somebody else. Usually that that that guilt turns towards us and it becomes the self-loathing. And you've got to get you've got to be able to step pass that and walk through that in order to start to heal and feel better. Now another situation that I've seen with women is that they truly feel like maybe if I had done more such and such wouldn't have happened, and that can take different tracks. So you might feel like if I had been able to do more, for example, maybe you had a fetal monitor strapped to your belly and you were stuck in bed and you feel like if I had been able to get up and move, things might have been different. And then again, you can say if the procedures, if they had not said I had to stay in bed, I feel like I would have handled it better.

And there may also be part of it where you need to just voice something that you're feeling about yourself and then forgive yourself and move on. Which might be that I wish I had spoken up so that I could get up and be more mobile using the previous example. Or it could be. I wish I had prepared better and known more skills that I could have used during my birthing time. So sometimes you may look at it and you might say there was something that I feel like somebody else was at fault or the system was at fault. But I also wonder if I was at fault. And again, it's what we're doing is we're not pointing fingers, we're just voicing what you feel may have happened. And armchair quarterbacking is of limited value, but there is some value in looking back at what happened simply so that you can name it and so that you can learn. One of the things that's difficult about saying it's somebody else's fault is that that makes you feel a loss, you know, you feel a loss of control. But when you say it was me, you may feel angry at yourself, but there's a greater sense of control because you feel like maybe I could do differently next time. From what I've seen in most women's births, there's a combination of factors and there is definitely more that you can do.

But when you think about OK, other people or procedures kind of pushed me around and I got stuck on this conveyor belt. Well, that's not completely disempowering because when you have that awareness, there are things that you can do that help to prevent that outcome going forward. So it's it's ultimately empowering all the way around because it allows you a to acknowledge that something happened that you didn't like and that it's OK to grieve from that. And it allows you not to just put all of the blame on yourself and turn that into a level of self-loathing. And it allows you to say, OK, things did happen last time, and I would like for them to happen differently, and when I've at least named or looked at or tried to pinpoint some things that have happened, I have a way to go forward and I have a way to possibly make things different this time. The next thing, once we move past that healing past, that naming and that that ability, one thing that that naming and the armchair quarterbacking does, it allows you to make peace because you look at the situation, you give it a an exploration on a level and then you say, OK, this is what happened. This is the wisdom and the learning that I feel like I can pull out of this and now I can set it aside, and it doesn't necessarily mean that it won't hurt anymore.

Remember, on the last podcast episode I talked about, you know, if you get a bad cut and you treat it, it's not going to go away instantly the next day. It's going to take some time to heal, and even occasionally it may still ache. I don't remember if I shared it or not, but I broke my arm just before I started my freshman year of high school and I broke it bad. And so the doctors had to put it back together with plates and screws, which are still in my arm to this day. And many, many, many, many, many, many, many moons later that it's still occasionally aches and so a bad a bad wound can cause a lot of acute pain and then pain that gradually lessens. And then every once in a while, even much later, you'll feel the aches. And that's OK. That's just natural. That's just part of life. So when we, you know, when we acknowledge again, it just it allows the healing to begin and and us to move forward with that gleaning of wisdom, as Maya Angelou says, when you know better, you do better. And that's where we hope to get the next place that you have to go is working on finding your voice. Oftentimes, when we've been through a difficult or traumatic experience, we feel like we've lost a level of control.

We've lost some, some aspect of our power and we feel like we don't have a voice or we feel like we didn't have a voice at all in the previous situation. And how do we make sure that that doesn't happen again? Finding your voice is part of healing and part of finding your voice is being able to say or share, even if it's just in your journal or with your therapist or with me if you want to work one on one with me. But finding your voice is saying what happened, but then you want your voice to stay strong as you go forward, especially in particular to prepare for to prepare for a new baby's birth and to move through a new pregnancy. So you want to have a firm foundation on which to to grow the strength of your voice, and that can come from knowing why you're working towards this birth while you're working towards a different outcome for this birth. And that can be many faceted. Often the best and most solid foundation is your baby. This is a new baby and you want to give him or her the best start. And you may also realize that healing from your previous birth or births will help you with your older baby with your older child or children. Because as you find your strength and find your voice, you'll feel more confident and mothering them.

And as you look back on the previous experience and you pull the wisdom and the strength that can come out of going through difficult times and being resilient and moving forward, then that. That helps you to heal from that birth helps you to make space, to let that birth go and any impact that it may have on your relationship. I did a survey as I started preparing this material, and it was interesting to me that one of the survey responses the mom talked about because I asked a question Do you feel like your birth had any impact on how you mother your baby? And she answered something like, No, I, you know, I would never let a birth experience. Or how could a mom ever let a birth experience impact how she mother's her baby? And then in the next question, she answered something like, Yeah, I do sometimes wonder, though, if it if it impacts my mothering. And so it was I. The mom was struggling, almost, it seemed in the survey with a level of guilt that she felt really bad because the birth experience may have impacted bonding with her baby. And that seems, I guess, probably shallow. You know, when you think about it, oh my goodness, it's not your child's fault, and it seems so shallow to let something get in the way with bonding.

But I do want to assure you, ladies, as a small rabbit trail, that human bonding has biophysical hormonal cues just like animal bonding. We're not we don't imprint in the same way as animals. You know, it's not like baby's going to look into the eyes of the first person they see. And that's mom like you might think about, you know, with with geese or something. But there is a biochemical imprinting period and it's not insurmountable, but it's there. So if that early bonding in that early imprinting is missed or interrupted, then a mom, she's human. She's intelligent, she's beautiful, wonderful, incredible creature. But she may still have to overcome some of that, and there may be some struggle there. So again, we're just acknowledging and giving voice to that, and we're also giving voice to the fact that healing from that difficult experience could, in fact, help you feel like your more strongly bonded to this little one whose birth may have been difficult and may have left you feeling like you are like you don't necessarily have a firm foundation or that you're unmoored, you know, like you're just kind of floating around and the things that you thought were going to be tying you together just didn't pan out quite the way that you were expecting and all of that. So again, acknowledging those things is doesn't make you a bad mom. It makes you a stronger mom.

It makes you a better mom. It makes you a human mom to realize and say that things that have hurt me can impact how my mother and when I proactively take care of myself. I am becoming a better mother and I am setting a great example for my child. There's this concept called The Good Enough Mother, and we know that when we have quote unquote good enough parents, not perfect parents, we have a good enough mother. That's the parent that benefits our children the most. Because a perfect parent who is one hundred percent perfectly attentive all the time actually ends up raising a child who has emotional handicaps because the child doesn't learn to deal with stress and separation and other people in a way that they're going to have to for all the rest of their life. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you want to be a basket case, but it does mean that if you have human struggles and if you have your own healing to work through, then that gives your child the opportunity sometimes to learn to relate in a world where people are, people where people are human. And when you take care of yourself and find that healing, you're especially setting a good example for your child. So that firm foundation that I'm doing what I'm doing because it's best for my baby can be a great starting place to find your voice when your baby is your platform.

It's easier to find your voice because you know that I'm doing what is best for my baby and for my children when I am working actively to heal and to find my voice. Also, acknowledging your body is an important way to start finding your voice. This can be so very difficult for women, and I've talked to women at different ends of the spectrum. I've been working one on one with a lot of women, and there are some women who feel really in tune with their bodies and with their feelings. And there are women who don't. And I would I would wager that even women who feel really in tune with their bodies who, you know, who are doing stretching and exercise and mindfulness and all of that. I would encourage them even to listen to this part of the podcast. So when I say I want you to acknowledge your body, I want you to acknowledge the literal signals that your body gives. And the easiest ones for moms to start with are I need to use the bathroom and I'm thirsty and I want you to pay attention throughout the day, even today. How many times you feel thirsty and you don't get something to drink? And how many times you feel like you need to go to the bathroom and you just put it off? Now, if you're pregnant, you may find yourself running to the bathroom constantly.

But chances are, as a mom, those are two things that you routinely ignore because you're busy because life is in the way. Because can't it wait 10 more minutes or when if you're like me, when you feel thirsty, it's like three hours later and you realize you haven't had a sip of anything because life is busy. But that is a way that we don't acknowledge or listen to our body. That we don't give the part of us that knows that we need something voice. And so a way that we start taking baby steps towards building up our voice is listening to those little things and saying, OK, I'm going to honor that even for a few minutes. I'm going to honor that. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I am going to go and get a drink of water. I've as I've been teaching this, I've been trying to pay more attention myself, which is how I know that I don't do a great job with getting a drink of water when I'm thirsty. But I've noticed other things too. So once you've got those basics down, you might start noticing other things like, I feel really stressed and overwhelmed, and I need a moment. But instead of taking that moment, I just get more and more stressed and more and more overwhelmed, and then I end up hollering at my kids or something. And one of the things I've been trying to do is when I'm feeling that way, you know, we have a chair in our bedroom and I say, OK, I'm going to set a timer even just for 10 minutes, and I'm going to go sit in that chair in the bedroom and maybe just look out the window or maybe read a book and just take a few minutes to be by myself.

And, you know, let the kids run around outside or in the den and just take a minute away when my kids were even littler. Sometimes that was just, I'm going to go to the bathroom and spend a few extra minutes in the bathroom just to get away from the intensity of it all. Another thing is with parenting when the kids are really rowdy and going crazy and they're just whining and crying and just driving you nuts. Sometimes it is OK, I'm the parent here and I need to get up and stop this. And so one of the things I've started doing is just, OK, you guys are going to come sit in a line next to me or you're going to sit on the couch or if they're being really grouchy and I'm really overwhelmed, OK, you guys are going to sit in the laundry room, watch our laundry room is off the den and it actually doesn't have the door on it anymore. So they're kind of catty corner from me, but they're not necessarily in the same room.

And you know, you guys are we're just all going to sit for a few minutes and calm down, do a reset, hit, reset here or reboot. And and then we're going to try again because you are willing to acknowledge that you may be overwhelmed. Everybody is overwhelmed and you need a minute. Another thing is, I'm really tired and this one's hard for me because I have it to do list that's longer than I can get done every day. But I've come to realize that I, you know, I'm kind of useless at night. I'm exhausted so I can, you know, read and talk to Scott, and that's about it. I just can't really expect to get any work done. It's much better for me to get up early and go to bed at a decent time. And so again, that's those are just some examples. Yeah, just just ways that in my own life, I've seen that there are cues that my body is giving me that, OK, you're overly tired, you're emotionally overwhelmed, you're thirsty, you need to go to the bathroom and and trying to honor those as much as possible, even those little things on a day to day basis. That helps to grow how you acknowledge your body and listening to your body, and it grows your voice and your confidence and taking care of yourself.

And these are all little things. They don't take you away from mothering your children. They don't take you away from being a wife. They don't take you away from being a good boss or good employee, whatever your career is. They're just little ways of acknowledging that, yes, my body has needs and I'm going to take a minute or two to take care of those, or I'm going to do some preplanning to make sure that those are taken care of. Like I'm going to bring water with me would be one. Or, you know, a bigger project might be. I realized that we're overwhelmed every day and I'm going to work on introducing some structure and routine for the kids and I to help cut down on that. But it's starting to think proactively about we have needs. I have needs that need to be met. And how can I work on meeting those in small ways and maybe eventually in bigger ways? And that just builds and validates you and your strength and your voice. This also helps you to honor and grow your intuition because again, when you're listening to yourself, you start to get used to listening to yourself and you start to trust yourself more. And this can be a difficult thing, especially if you've had birth trauma or other traumas in your past and you feel like you've made wrong judgment calls on that sort of thing. But again, starting to take those baby steps to listen to yourself, starting to take those baby steps to honor your intuition and what your body needs will really help you to grow your voice.

I also want to encourage you to start advocating for yourself early and often, and this can be little things, but things that help grow your voice, especially across the course of your pregnancy. Any time something is suggested in your pregnancy and you aren't sure why it's done or you're not sure you want it done, ask questions. Or even if you feel like you do want it done, let's say that you know that you want to have the anatomy scan done, which is that middle of pregnancy ultrasound, usually from about 16 to 20 weeks. You know that you want to have that ultrasound done, but it doesn't hurt to say, Why do we do the anatomy scan? What information does it give us? Why, you know, why would I choose to do that? And other than your doctor or midwife might joke and say, Well, you'll find out if your baby is a boy or girl, but you know what is the clinical reason for doing it? Because the clinical reason is not to find out if your baby is a boy or a girl. But that's just something that you would ask. Or again, even going back to the beginning of pregnancy when they usually, you know, usually have a prenatal workup done which is having your blood work done for pregnancy.

You know, what are you guys testing for? What are you looking for and when the results come in? How did those results look? What did they say? And you may not want to be satisfied with, Oh, everything looks good instead. Instead, what you're doing is you're setting the expectation with your care provider that you are. You're a thinking intelligent woman. And when you ask about these things that are quote unquote small and you're literally asking just out of curiosity, there's not the emotional charge that might come later. And so what you do is you get used to just asking because you're curious and you want to know and it's your right to know and you're just matter of fact about it. It's a beautiful way to be. So what I like to say to women is sometimes in pregnancy, we get treated like children. You know, you're treated like a baby having a baby. There's this kind of condescending, patronizing way and you don't want that. But I would like for you to think about yourself like, you know, a three or four or five year old who y y y mama y y y have that openness and curiosity and almost an earnest curiosity that again helps you to grow that confidence in yourself and in your right to know. I mean, the reason why little kids ask why all the time is because they're curious and because they also believe that when they ask, they're going to receive the answer.

They're going to hear why. And sometimes, you know, as an adult, you're like, I don't know, because you long since ceased to be amazed at these. Everyday things, but sometimes you find yourself able to step back into that place of awe and respect when your kid asks, so sometimes you know a question that somebody asks in a straightforward manner doesn't have a straightforward answer. But the goal is to learn to start asking questions early and to advocate for yourself often. So you may ask about, say, the 11 to 12 week ultrasound, which is often called the NuCoal scan. And you may make the decision that I don't want to have that done based on the information that you're given. Well, it's a lot easier to advocate for yourself at 12 weeks for this ultrasound. When you're just sitting in your doctor or your midwives office, you're not anywhere near the ultrasound machine. And it's like, No, I, you know, we want to have the anatomy scan, and we don't feel like the nuclear scan is a big deal. We're not necessarily worried it wouldn't change our decisions on this pregnancy. Or it may be that, you know, we've just decided we don't want to have any ultrasounds during this pregnancy and we're comfortable with that.

It's a much less emotionally charged point to say that then it will be at the end when there's talk of induction or when you're in labor and a lot of other stuff is going on. But when you've advocated for yourself, when you've gotten used to asking these questions, when you've gotten used to asking what happens if we don't have the NuCoal scan, when you've gotten used to that and your care provider is also used to the fact that you're going to ask about things and you're going to weigh them and then you're going to make a calm decision, you're setting the stage and building blocks for being calmer going forward. So that's, you know, that's really good. Those are strong foundations to building your voice up, and those are strong foundations that help you to heal from a previous experience because often one of the biggest things is feeling like you didn't have your voice. Now I'm going to run through the these last few things quickly. Again, if you want more detail, head over to Birthbabylife.com sacred Birthbabylife.com sacred. Because in the master class, I go into more detail. But again, when you're looking at how do you heal and prepare for a new birth when you feel unhappy with your last one? There are practical steps that can help you as well. One of the biggest ones is understanding interventions. Why are interventions done? Why are they commonly done? Why do they need to be done? And those may be two different answers.

And what happens if you wait? If you look at different interventions and you have that understanding before you go into birth again, you're learning about this before, it's an emotionally charged thing. You feel much better and much stronger about declining intervention or about saying, You know what? I've consulted with you, and I feel that you're right and I really need an intervention. The either one of those is a much more empowered place to come from than just feeling kind of like you got pushed into an intervention that you weren't ready for. Also, you want to look at handling expectations, you want to look at what you're expecting, what you want, what might happen if that doesn't pan out the way that you want it to? And how will you move forward from that? If you take time to do that during pregnancy, then you feel a lot more confident and a lot stronger and also a lot less fearful. It helps decrease fear going forward. Then there are practical steps like being well nourished, getting in movement, understanding and learning birth skills to help you. If you're one of those moms who feels like maybe I didn't do enough. Then sometimes these learning these practical steps can help help keep you from that feeling and in the future, because you know that you've done everything possible. And so if an intervention is still needed, you're able to accept that intervention with peace because you know that you did what you needed to do and that this may be really is just what you and your baby need.

It doesn't mean you won't grieve, but it means that you'll have a lot more peace and there won't be the second guessing and self-doubt. There won't necessarily be that feeling of silence. Again, letting go of fear is a big part of things, and I think that doing the practical preparation, looking at what you fear, what might happen, how you would handle it if that happened, that's that managing expectations, peace. And when you do that, you can let go of fear. And when you've allowed yourself to grieve what happened before then it is a catalyst for being able to let go of those fears. There may still be. You're never excuse me, you're never going to. One hundred percent be able to let go of all fears, like what if it happens again? But if you've processed it and you've been able to come to terms with, if you've gleaned wisdom and strength from it, and if you've done the practical preparation this time through, you realize that this is a different situation. You're going into this literally as a different and stronger woman and that will help you. I also want you to take some time to consider that you are sovereign.

This is your birth. This is your baby. This is your body. This is your experience. You get to call the shots. Nobody else has the right to call the shots. You get to call them. Now you may work together and consult with your doctor, with your midwife. You listen to their counsel, but you make the decision. And that's what I want you to be able to get out of healing. Is that belief that you are worth this? And I talk a lot more about this in the master class. So if you're listening to this and there's this part of you inside that is going, Kristen, I just don't know that I am worth this. I want you to go listen to the master class again. Birthbabylife.com sacred because I dig into this more and a lot of women struggle with it. So you are not alone. But I want you to realize that you matter and that you are worthy and that you are sovereign. And that sovereignty doesn't necessarily mean stubbornness. It doesn't mean that it's my way or the highway, no matter what's going on. But it means that you come from the conviction that you matter and that you get to call the shots and that you are going to make an informed decision by consulting with all of these people. And ultimately, they may suggest something that wouldn't have been your ideal, but you realize is what you needed, but you still feel like you are the person that calls the shots.

You are a beautiful, strong and powerful woman, and this birth is part of a journey and a transformation that you are on that makes you into a stronger, wiser, more compassionate woman. But you, you know, you get to celebrate that, you get to celebrate you and you get to celebrate that this is your journey and this is your sovereignty. And yes, you're giving birth to another human being who has their own path and their own journey through life. And that is a blessed and beautiful gift and part of your life is being in service to this person for a time. But that is not the totality of who you are. This journey is a journey outside of that person's being. You guys are intertwined intimately and connected in a beautiful way and will be for decades to come. But this is also your journey to an honoring that journey and what that means for you. And the strength and the voice that it gives to you is also a beautiful thing. So again, ladies, I hope that this has been helpful for you. I know I've gone a little bit long, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up again. If you want more on this, then definitely join me in the master class. It is at Birthbabylife.com Sacred. That's where you'll find the master class. Otherwise I will talk with you next week and I hope that you have a blessed week.

Thanks for listening to the Birth, Baby and Life podcast with Kristen Burgess. For great resources and tons more info visit www.Birthbabylife.com visits www.Birthbabylife.com.