Becoming a Chimera

Matrescence; Blood, guts and glory!

Why has this been the hardest piece for me to write, to bring forth, to finish?! Why do I feel so compelled to write this? Frankly, it terrified me at first. I know I don’t have to. So, why?

Writing about my journey of matresence the past 3 years through the birth of my 2 sons is the most vulnerable I will have ever been. Exposing the true duality of it all is a very vulnerable thing to do. I have started and stopped this piece many times, with a novel’s worth of notes, and too many thoughts for a single piece. It’s impossible to “summarize” or come at this piece with a sense of being fully formed from my experience because I’m so in the heart of it. So, I’ve reframed my approach. 

Instead of attempting a singular piece “On Motherhood” I want to make this an on-going practice to write about, reflect, ruminate and express my formation in this process of Matresence. I don’t have some great amount of wisdom to share, I just have the willingness to be honest, reflective and vulnerable about the experience. I’ve found comfort and camaraderie with other women who open up about their experiences. There are stigmas that are still so pervasive in our society around maternal health that I think we have to actively work to unwind and bring from the shadows into the light.

I think the complexity of matresence is not exposed in first person accounts often by women because it is so fraught. I wish I was more prepared for the complexity of it all by having been exposed to more stories from other women I could relate to. If I had been more exposed, or had more frank conversations with peers, maybe I would have navigated the hard times with more ease? I wonder, so here I am hoping that by sharing, I might ease another woman’s journey and she might not feel as confused or alone as I felt during periods of time. Maybe this is eye opening for the partners of pregnant/ postpartum women and helps partners contextualize and better support their loved ones. 

Also, this must be said as it’s a huge part of why I feel compelled to write and speak honestly on this topic. Pregnancy is dangerous. This has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done a lot of really hard things in my 34 years of life so far. There were times I didn’t feel I could do it. I questioned my strength, I questioned my sanity, I questioned my marriage, I questioned everything through postpartum my first time around and through my second pregnancy. I experienced postpartum depression after my first, and perinatal depression in the third trimester of my second. The foundation of who I am was shook substantially. We are in the midst of a social regression in which a woman’s ability to choose her fate and guide her fertility choices and her physical/ mental health is no longer in her hands. 14 States now have total abortion bans, even under the most dangerous circumstances a woman does not have access to abortion. An additional 8 states ban abortion after 15 weeks, half of those ban an abortion after 6 weeks. I didn’t know I was pregnant until about 6 weeks with both my pregnancies. Living in a different state, I would have had no time to digest and decide if I was fit to carry a pregnancy, arguably the most serious decisions of her life. Almost half of our country now does not have access to safe and legal abortions. It’s critical to repeat over and over; if a woman needs an abortion, criminalizing it does not prevent it from happening, she will find a way. Criminalizing abortion simply puts women into very dangerous situations. So, that is part of why I want to write as honestly as possible about my personal experience. 

This part one is focused around my first 2 pregnancies and births. It feels like the foundation of this start of the story. It’s been cathartic to write about it all for the first time. I hope it doesn’t seem indulgent, because ultimately I hope that there is something or some things in here that provide information, context, or helpful tools. Most importantly, I hope it encourages permission to be open and vulnerable about these hard experiences that might ease the shame or loneliness some women experience in the midst of the complicated and layered journey of matresence.

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Chapter 1: A Rockstar Pregnancy, a near death first birth. 

When we learned I was pregnant in the Fall of 2020, I couldn’t have been happier. It had been a hell of a year. Our farm lost 80% of it’s business in the spring due to all our restaurant accounts having closed and then slowed during COVID shut downs. By pure grit we pivoted the business to sell our produce to grocers (not simple) and wondered how we would plan for the uncertain future of the farm. My Dad had been diagnosed with Stage 4 esophageal cancer in the Spring, had a horrible summer battling it and there were moments of feeling like we had little time left. By the Fall, the treatments had proven effective and he was looking good again with energy enough to come visit us on the Farm. When November came and it was time to tell family we were expecting, it felt like we had all just made it through the eye of the storm. Hesston, my first pregnancy, was the joyful harvest baby born in the year of resilience. 

I had what I considered a rockstar pregnancy. The hormones actually suited me and I felt a state of steadiness, I described the baby as “steady presence” and I was in awe of all my body did for 9 months to grow a human. I accomplished a lot that year, I wrote, submitted and was awarded a VAPG Working Capital grant for Casad Family Farms. I began to dream up and then take the first steps to found Range Revolution that December. I was crushing it with Havstad Hat Co, sold out of custom commissions, workshops and the income from that business was holding us up while the farm survived the massive pivots required of us due to COVID shut downs and the start of our irrigation water cutbacks. All the while, Hesston grew inside my body and my journey of matrescense began. I wouldn’t hear the word “matrescense” until years later, looking back now I wish that at the start I had been exposed to a more ritualized way of understanding the process of becoming mother. 

COVID times as a first time mother was strange and it made the hospital setting something I was not interested in. I found a midwife, read a few books on home birth and unmedicated birth and given my confidence, good health and the nature of the times, decided that was the best choice for us. “If anyone can do it, I can,” was my thought process. What unfolded was nothing like what I had imagined or prepared for, and the decision I made almost cost Hesston his life. Without going into all the details, we had a very difficult 36 hours of laboring at home before I made the call to transfer to the hospital.

 I was a wreck. Upon admittance to the hospital my heart rate once they got me calmed down was 160 bpm. I was severely dehydrated and disassociated. Hesston’s heart rate was decelerating with each contraction, a sign of stress, and he was not descending. Once in the hospital we found out the midwife had been wrong about his positioning and also my dilation. In retrospect I should not have been pushing the way I had been for so many hours. This midwife let us down hugely and had I continued in her care, Hesston would have died at birth. After an epidural, fluids and rest at the hospital and the incredible care and advocacy of the nursing staff at St Charles, they let me try again for a vaginal birth but I was prepped for cesarean and was in the operating room so if Hesston began to show signs of severe stress again we would change direction quickly. I was able to deliver him, but due to the long and stressful nature of the labor, there was a lot of meconium in the sac and he inhaled this sticky substance and came out unable to breathe.

Within moments of delivery, I waited to hear him cry and have him put on my chest, but what I heard was doctors and nurses moving quickly, cutting the cords and taking my baby to the warming table. I didn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t hear him crying, and I looked into Chris’ eyes for assurance, answers, and he looked back doing his very best to hide his fear. He squeezed my hand tight and told me, “He is going to be ok, they are helping him.” I don’t know if it was seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes or 20 minutes; those moments were eternity and I, in very rare form, prayed hard. At moments my mind went to the worst place, but my mind couldn’t handle the potential of losing my baby, so I’d squeeze my eyes tighter and return to repeated prayer. I’d never experienced fear like that in my life.

The doctors and nurses cleared his passages, intubated him and for the first hours of Hesston’s life he needed a machine to breathe for him. Our rural hospital does not have a NICU or the same resources as the Bend hospital, and so once he was stabilized he was airlifted to the Bend Hospital, and I, his mother, the person he had just emerged from, had to stay in Madras as they stabilized me. He was born at 10 pm at night, and I didn’t hold him until 11 am the next morning which was the fastest we could be discharged and get to Bend. I don’t remember anything from the moment he was wheeled away from me until I walked into the NICU in Bend that next morning, I was in a zombie like state. It all hit me the moment I saw him, I crumbled into 1000 pieces and a guttural cry emerged from my body like I’ve never experienced. We had made it, we almost didn’t make it, and it was all my fault. That was the pain and shame I carried with me for much longer than I realized. 

Everything I prepared for, didn’t happen. I was so sure I could will an empowered birth, a peaceful birth, my mind in control. What unfolded was the opposite of what I had prepared for. It was violent, scary, and I ended up out of control and at the mercy of modern medicine and luck. 

There was a pivot moment I will never forget, one of the clearest moments in the vortex of those 36 hours. I was in the shower, trying to slow the contractions, and Chris was sitting on the floor of the bathroom with me. I asked him what he thought we should do. It wasn’t going well, I was losing confidence in our midwife quickly. He said he supported me in whatever I choose to do, keep trying at home or get ourselves to the hospital. I scanned my body and my mind hoping for some indication “I can do this!” What I heard, what came through when I asked for clarity was, “You don’t have to be superwoman, Cate.” I needed help, we needed help. That message was perhaps the message that saved Hesston’s life. We embarked on the worst 10 minute drive of my life and got the help we needed at the hospital. For me, this is perhaps the most important lesson of matresence, that we we either surrender or be dragged. 

I recount my first birth because it was a significant trauma, but I avoided acknowledging it as such. I was not treated for or informed as to how trauma will impact a person or a next pregnancy. I’ll never know if I experienced Postpartum Depression because of the trauma, or if it was tied up in the process of my Dad’s health declining quickly once I gave birth and his passing 3 months after Hesston’s birth. For a solid year postpartum I can best describe myself as living in a fog. When family and friends checked in, I told them I was doing fine. I wasn’t lying, I was telling myself I was fine to push through. This trait I have to endure really hard things and power through, it has served me well in many facets of life and career, but in this circumstance my capacity to suffer and push through ended up not serving me. 

Trauma can manifest in a lot of different ways. I started to learn more about trauma in my third trimester of my second pregnancy, 2 years after Hesston was born. I had to finally deal with it because it manifested as severe anxiety in my 3rd trimester with Crosby. I didn’t know until then that trauma can manifest as hypervigilance in some, and looking back I can see how this impacted me in the years after Hesston was born. Sleep was difficult for a long time, I worried if Hesston was breathing at night and would check many times a night. In circumstances where before I’d be able to let go of control or not focus on something negative, instead I fixated on what was wrong. I was sad and my immune system was depressed so I got sick often. My cortisol levels stayed high which made losing the pregnancy weight slow and difficult. My brain wasn’t working like I was used to, and I had never been introduced to the data about how significantly a woman’s brain changes during pregnancy. I didn’t know so much, and looking back if I had known then what I know now, I would have had more empathy and compassion for myself. Instead I pushed through until finally, my body and my mind simply stopped allowing me to exist in survival mode. 

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CHAPTER 2: Crosby, the illuminator, the breaker of chains, a return to Joy. 

When I found out I was pregnant with Crosby, in all honesty I was terrified. I did not feel ready to lose myself again, I had just very recently begun to feel like “myself” again. I still wasn’t on solid ground but some things were feeling sturdier. I felt I needed a little more time. It was hard conversations between Chris and I and our marriage was tested. I found words for some of my fears, but many still lay buried deep inside, unresolved fear and trauma lingered like dread in my bones. Slowly, I regained some of my confidence and decided I could carry this pregnancy. 

The first two trimesters were similar to my first pregnancy, but things changed suddenly in about week 30. Two things happened that I believe are very interconnected; I developed insulin resistance aka gestational diabetes, as well as perinatal depression and anxiety. I had little understanding of gestational diabetes, previously I thought of it mostly as being diet induced, but I was eating the same as I always do. High quality proteins, vegetables, minimal processed foods, lower in carbs. Yet, my glucose levels were erratic and my fasting glucose was high in the mornings. I tried all the holistic interventions, was careful with my diet, limited food at night, walked a lot, maintained strength training as best as I could. Still I was not controlling the peaks and valleys of glucose response through the day and night. I wanted to understand this phenomenon so I wore a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) and learned more about diabetes. In some women, the hormone changes in the third trimester caused by the placenta can lead to gestational diabetes. This was not my experience with my first, but it was with my second. I was considering taking metformin, even thought I was so adamant to not take pharmaceutical drugs. After a few weeks I found with the CGM I was keeping it into an “acceptable” range of glucose numbers that I read and was advised were safe levels for baby, but I believe it added to if not caused some of the anxiety and depression I experienced. I’ll never know for sure which came first or what is correlated, or what is just coincidence, but I have a theory that erratic glucose levels are correlated to anxiety and depression. You can find scientific studies that support that and which claim the correlation is not proven, but as a citizen scientist, my observation through my experience is they are connected. 

This was one of those times that Chris did his best to hold steady even though he couldn’t understand why my brain was working the way it was during that time. I had intrusive thoughts, dark thoughts that no matter all the tool in my toolset, I couldn’t shake. Worst case scenarios lived rent free in my mind, despite my normal state to be relatively optimistic. I had overwhelming fear that something was wrong with the baby. I ended up showing up at the family birthing center in Madras many times in the final months for Non-fetal stress tests, just to hear his heartbeat and be assured he was ok. I’d cry and the incredible nurses made me feel safe and not ashamed that I could not control my mind and my emotions. 

In the midst of this really hard time, something happened that is too tender to write about, but someone said about me, “She’s sick.” I was so hurt and ashamed, something was happening to me that I felt totally not in control of, just like the trauma of my first birth. It was my fault. I’m sick. I’m harming this baby. I was failing again. I was hiding this from all but my closest people, and I found the help of a psychologist the hospital provided. Thank god for Dr Tippet. In Dr Tippet’s office, I could release the ugly, the vulnerable in the safe space of non-judgement and walk away lighter and with shame lifted. She is the one who finally got me to look straight on at the unprocessed trauma of my first birth and postpartum experience. She said to me in our first meeting, “Cate, of course you’re experiencing this anxiety, what you went through in your first birth was terrifying. You lost your dad shortly after. What’s happening now is not your fault and it happens to a lot of women who experience birth trauma.” I walked out of her office knowing, I am not “sick,” I’m experiencing unprocessed trauma. 

A friend recommended I try hypnosis training and I purchased a hypnobirthing course and was diligent with it for the 6 weeks leading up to birth. It helped, but it was still a rocky time I chose to manage without medication. Honestly, I considered antidepressants for the first time in my life, but ultimately we were so close to the finish line I decided I could manage as best as I could with holistic interventions. Maybe it would have been less fraught with medication and I sincerely support anyone who chooses to take antidepressants to deal with peri or postpartum depression. I had a script at home and I told myself that if the perinatal depression persisted into postpartum depression, I would reconsider again after birth. I was so afraid that I was doomed to have postpartum depression again, but Dr Tippet encouraged me by making it clear that it’s not a given as the hormone shifts once the placenta is out can restabilize a woman. 

Thankfully, she was right in my case. I actually wore my CGM through labor and delivery and it was fascinating to study the glucose responses through the stress of labor and then as soon as the placenta was out, the mountains and valleys of my glucose levels stabilized into the gradual rolling hills of a healthy metabolic response. Poof, gestational diabetes was gone in an instant. CRAZY!

The placenta, it’s insane! It’s so much more than just an organ that nourishes and provides oxygen to the baby. The placenta is a significant hormone producing organ that we make from scratch in the first trimester of pregnancy, live with for some months, and then deliver it removing it from our body. I’ve done it twice now and I still can’t get over how insane that is. 

There are few things I will tell a woman to try, each situation is so unique, but I will say that hypnobirthing really helped me through labor this time around. Things didn’t go as planned again, but this time things were calm in my mind and in our preparation being at the hospital with nurses I trusted. One of my nurses, Bethany, was present for Hesston’s birth and was one of the few who helped clear his passage ways and supported his breathing in the first minutes and hours of his life. Bethany helped save Hesston’s life and though I barely remember who was who in the delivery room, I know she was one of the nurses who held my hand or my leg and helped me in my hardest moment. It was a gift to have her as the night nurse for 3 nights in the hospital through labor and after delivery. We tried, we tried, we tried. After 24 hours of labor and my water breaking, Crosby was still not descending low enough to get the final cm of dilation. At the very end of trying to deliver him vaginally, Crosby made the decision very clear. I felt him back himself out of the birth canal and he repositioned himself diagonally across my abdomen. His head was now pushing into my right hip. I’d had an epidural but I still could feel everything just with less intensity and it was very clear he was not fitting. The pain in my hip was sharp, and I was given the gift of calm surrender, a decision with a clear mind, and time to prepare for cesarean. The tools and training I had learning through the hypnobirthing course served me all the way through labor, into preparing for surgery, and into the operating room and eventually into the NICU again. For this reason, I recommend it to any woman who wants a tool in the quiver for managing the mind through birth.

As I’ve learned, we can do all the right things and be a very healthy person, a strong person, an informed person, and things may still not go as planned. The only thing we really have control over is our mind, and actually sometimes we may not even have control over that. So really, surrender is the only option in birth. 

Crosby was delivered safely by the same doctor who delivered Hesston, with Bethany the same nurse who was there with us, I felt safe. Still, in the time between making the decision and being rolled into the OR, I did something that still surprises me. I wrote a sort of will and testament, a letter to my Mom, my sisters, my husband and my sons, just in case. Things happen, birth is dangerous, and I felt it was something that would help me feel calmer for what was ahead. What a sobering half hour that was. 

The cesarean went pretty smooth, I didn’t know until after but I did bleed significantly and my blood pressure dropped to a dangerous level so my Dr used extra fluids and a medication to stabilize my blood pressure. Technically I hemmoraged, but the medical team handled it calmly and I was unaware despite being as sober and present as could be. Chris held my hand and kept the steady eye contact with me when I needed it. I used the cues of hypnosis training “peace” and “ease” to keep my mind calm and I was so proud of how I surrendered. This was my chance to try again. To take a situation out of my control, and control the one thing I could, and rewrite my birth story from trauma (out of my control) to surrender (informed and empowered.)

Crosby was delivered a 10# baby, but he didn’t show signs of being a “gestational diabetes baby” which is often marked by a lot of fat rolls. He was long and just large all around. He appeared totally healthy and we got to rewrite those first precious moments I didn’t get with Hesston. That moment, when your baby is placed on your chest and you lock eye for the first time, there is nothing I will ever be able to compare to that moment. I got to hold him on my chest while the medical team stabilized me, they checked his vitals, and we even got a delayed cord cutting. 

He latched and breastfed quickly after birth and all seemed well. Once we were settled back into our recovery room for some time, Bethany our nurse noticed that Crosby was laboring to breathe, evident by the contractions seen in his chest and the flaring of his nostrils. It’s not something my eye is trained to see, but her attentiveness caught it. Listening, she could hear there was a lot of fluid in his lungs. This is not uncommon in cesarean births, the journey through the birth canal helps to squeeze the lunges and expel some of the fluid that is inherently there from living in amniotic fluid. Crosby didn’t get that squeeze so Bethany tried what she could to get him to cough or cry which can help the lungs. Nothing was dire in that moment, but we were monitoring him closely and several hours after delivery the decision was made again that he needed more support than the rural Madras hospital had and he’d need to be transferred to the nearest NICU which is in Bend.

Again, we were given the chance to re-write this moment. This time, the decisions was made calmly. We had time, he was much more stable that Hesston was upon transfer, but it was still devastating. I was going to have to be separated from my baby again, I couldn’t leave the hospital until the next morning at a minimum due the surgery I’d just had. Again, my doctor and nurse Bethany were there, they knew what a blow this was and the fear and primal pain of separation. I spent those hours while arrangements were being made for his transfer holding him, nursing him, and using all the mental tools to stay calm, present and decidedly ready to surrender. Again, I had a chance to re-write this moment. If I surrendered I was empowered, and this would not be a trauma out of my control.

We spent 8 days in the NICU this time, Crosby’s lungs needed time to catch up to the rest of his big body, they said. He needed supplemental oxygen during that first week and eventually we convinced the medical staff to let us take him home on a very small amount of oxygen he had graduated to. We held on the hope that getting home to Madras, a slightly lower elevation and getting away from the stress of a the NICU would only help him. While not what I hoped for, this time was significantly less stressful for a multitude of reasons, largely because I knew how to ask for help this time.  

I needed nourishing food. I sent out the bat signal to my extended farm family. My doula with my first and one of my soul sisters, Mariah, called into action several women who brought to us at the NICU baskets of nourishment. Bone broth, stews, medicinal teas, homemade salves, electrolytes, sourdough and comforting healthy sweets. Megan included homemade frozen breakfast burritos, things that were easy for me to grab walking out the door of our room at the Ronald McDonald house to walk early in the morning to the NICU to spend all day with Crosby under the hospital lights. Allison, another soul sister to both Chris and I, was the first to come to the NICU and sit with me and Crosby and let me weep to a friend, and then with perfect timing fall into a cadence of playful jokes and lift my spirits. She and Clairen walked the parking lot with me, and Martha showed up with fancy fermented meat sticks and sat in the sun with my Mom and I. She told me I looked great, even though my legs were wildly swollen from the surgery and fluids they used to keep my blood pressure up as I hemorrhage and lost a lot of blood. Any snippet of the outside world while in the vortex of the NICU is therapeutic, so always ask your friends who end up in the NICU if they want company for a walk, bring them food, and perhaps a good story to take their mind off the vortex of NICU life.

One of the biggest differences this second time around, I didn’t hide the ugly and the vulnerable, I said “Please come see me, please bring food, please walk with me, please help me.” It made all the difference. 

This time around, I also had my mother with me lock step through the worst of the last weeks of my pregnancy when my anxiety was debilitating, and she was with me for many days in the NICU as well. In my first postpartum experience, she was caretaking my Dad and it was where she needed to be. It was a relief to have her with me this time. One morning as she helped me put compression socks on my painfully swollen legs, since I couldn’t bend over to do it due to the gaping cut across my abdomen, I laughed and thought, 34 years later and you’re still mom-ing so hard. This is it. This is what I signed up for, this gig never stops. 

While Chris was with us as much as he could be, he was driving back and forth from the farm in Madras, back to the NICU in Bend, keeping Hesston relatively stable at home with his Nana and to tend to the animals. Chris was amazing and holds his ever steady presence in the rockiest of times. He’s not perfect, the challenges I faced he faced with me and the weight partners carry in pregnancy and postpartum can be very heavy. I thought many times about women who face any of this without a solid partner and I do not know how they might manage, how the load is not spread out and shared, and I can only hope that one day I might find a way to support women more in this time. 

While in the NICU, I decided to share some of our birth story on instagram and it opened up for many women to write to me and share their birth stories, to connect, to empathize and commiserate, to send thoughtful words which were a comfort. I attribute staying connected to the outside world and not hiding this time to an easier time in the NICU. A lot of women expressed gratitude for being open and vulnerable, it allowed them to open up and share their experiences which most had kept private. Many women expressed holding onto shame for how their births went “wrong” or how they “failed” and developed gestational diabetes, or admitting unprocessed traumas. It really struck me then, so many women carry shame related to birth.

Crosby is now 7 months old and doing fantastic, Hesston is 3.5 years old and also doing fantastic. I had a relatively easy recovery postpartum and did not experience postpartum depression. There is plenty more I want to share about the evolution as mother on the other side of birth. I’ve decided I want to be open and write about the good, the magical, the transformative, the challenging and the shadowy of it all because I think a more raw and nuanced conversation around motherhood is a good thing for all. Blood, guts and glory; this is the hardest and most significant chapter of life so far. I’ve discovered a new version of myself while negotiating with what I want to hold onto from the past. Sometimes that is beautiful, sometimes that dynamic is fraught. In retrospect, I’m so proud of how I endured some of the darkest moments of my life in this chapter, even though in those moments I felt like the weakest version of myself. There is a new empathy I carry for any woman who has walked the path of pregnancy successfully, through miscarriage, through birth trauma, through a totally empowered birth, through perinatal or postnatal depression, through sleep deprivation, through trauma induced hyper-vigilance, through stigmas around mental health, through strain on the marriage, through loss, through any burden carried in the shadows. 

Hesston just walked up to me with an egg he just found in the planter on the porch, freshly laid and he is telling me about how, “The chicken just [ fart noise] the egg!” What a perfect little raucous reminder he is of the lighthearted joy that lives side by side with the shadowy contract of becoming a chimera. 

A chimera in biology is an organism made up of multiple genetic tissues. Biologically speaking, us women become chimeras with each pregnancy, carrying the genetic tissues of our children and the thus the DNA of our partners too. Fundamentally the “I” becomes “We” forever. I also love that in mythology this term refers to a fire breathing monster with 3 heads and a serpent’s tail. It was probably a man who wrote that myth, homie has no idea. We can’t expect men to ever really get it, they can support us to the best of their ability, but community with women and open dialog without shame about the complexities is important for that very fact. Men can’t ever really understand the depths of complexity and biological changes we walk though in matresence. Expecting them to is asking to be let down. Goes without saying, it’s also why the opinions of men should have no say in the rights of women’s health. Period.

So hopefully, by starting to share, I’m taking a first step to develop more community and connection amongst women walking through matresence, considering motherhood, or reflecting back on it. I can feel in my bones there is a part of my life that in the future will be more dedicated to maternal mental and physical health. I’m not sure how but this felt like a right way to start.

I believe that in the next decade scientific study will be illuminating more and more about the profound biological and psychological changes that are a part of pregnancy, birth and postpartum. The term “baby blues” deserves so much more nuance and resources. Uncontrolled gestational diabetes is having a significant impact on women’s mental health and also on the next generation’s metabolic health. Maternal health and maternal care needs a lot more resources and funding to study it. I’m so grateful for the many female medical providers who helped me navigate my challenges, the women who fed me postpartum, who walked with me and checked in on me religiously without judgement or shame when I was in the darker times. Hesston and Crosby are the greatest things I’ve ever done. I’m obsessed with them! I’d do it all again. It’s incredible and it’s hard and things aren’t going to go as planned and I hope anyone navigating it can also find ways to surrender and find peace in that which is not in our control. When things are hard, we will need one another, and community care is the heart of it all.

From the windy plains with my husband I’ve walked through the fire with and love more now than before, with my two wild and funny sons, 

Cate the Chimera