Wow – the video below was taken 2 weeks before Sunny was born, recorded April 30, 2021. When other people remember Sunny’s birth, they sometime say it was “traumatic”. I do not remember it this way. After my initial shock, I accepted the course of things, and thought that I felt only excitement and resolve. Motherhood felt natural in every single way. (Doing the rest of the things in my life wasn’t as easy). But as I look back, I’m trying to curiously examine why it didn’t FEEL as traumatic to me as others might have seen it. After all, I ended up hospitalized for 16 days, had to undergo an emergency c-section, had my first 23 days of parenting happen in the NICU, and might have suffered longer-term damage to my heart. So maybe it’s time to re-examine this event. Not to look for the trauma, but to look for the ways that I may have compensated for any of it, and to examine which of these coping mechanisms may still be lingering around.

Early in my pregnancy, I had booked OB-GYN services with a woman who had a billboard off of Mount Rushmore Road, only 5 minutes from my house in Rapid City. She had a vibe of “power doc”… tough, no bullshit, kind of busy and fancy-looking, somehow. She had gotten good reviews when I researched her online, and the fact that it was so close to my house interested me. But as the pregnancy went on, I started researching other options, and happened upon something that immediately captured my attention. There were a set of midwives in the Rapid City area who practiced home births. Their pictures exuded so much warmth and love. The mothers featured on their website were absolutely glowing, even while floating naked in their bloody afterbirth (lol). I was immediately captivated, and emailed right away to inquire about their services.

To further solidify my feeling that this was meant to be, the two midwives were currently partnering with one of the hospital OB-GYNs to open a new birth center, also 5 minutes from my house! It would have all of the advantages of being able to have a “natural” birth, but they had a great partnership between them, hospital privileges, and even if an escalation of medical needs were to occur, the midwives could still be very involved. Their partnering doctor was very respectful and supportive of upholding women’s’ birth plans, integrating doulas, and supporting other deviations from standard hospital births. It was meant to be!

Fasting forward, I had gone through the whole pregnancy working with Cassie, and very excited about the idea of a birth in the new birth center my midwives and doctor had built. I had read Ina May Gaskins book “Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth”, envisioning how I would channel my inner goddess, find strength from within, not fall prey to the fear that western culture had instilled in conventional birth stories.

Then one day, I went in for a biweekly check up, and had a high blood pressure reading. If I remember correctly, I had to come back the next day to recheck. I tested high the second time as well, and when that happened, everything changed. My midwife’s face sunk into a sympathetic but resolved look, and she said, “You’re going to have to go to the hospital, right now”. And then, she said, “Unfortunately this is going to preclude you from a birth at the birth center”. The details here are blurry, but the next thing I remember was racing down to the hospital (ok, I’m sure I was actually going the speed limit), calling my sister, and crying, thinking that my chances of that beautiful, birth-center birth were now flushed down the toilet. It felt so final, like a sentence. I also immediately felt shame (not in any way from Cassie and the other midwife, who were fantastic and supportive the whole time!).

Let’s go down this rabbit hole for a moment – I’ve only gotten a little more skilled at identifying the “shame” feelings lately, as in, the past few months. I’ve realized that for whatever reasons, I have a lot of internalized shame and self-negativity surrounding weight, fitness, and health. My “sentence” to a hospital birth immediately made me feel ashamed – that I was over an ideal weight for most of my life and hadn’t lost enough to eliminate risk factors (I was about 175 and 5’4”), that I hadn’t exercised enough (though I tried hard to walk every day, do prenatal yoga, and more), that I hadn’t eaten healthily enough (though I tried hard to, read multiple books and never drank and rarely ate processed food), that I handled stress poorly and thus was causing my own gestational hypertension. The list goes on and on…

Reflecting now, driving down to the hospital, I may have felt more shame than I noticed at the time. That “something was wrong with me” for not being healthy enough to evade a medical pregnancy. In reality, the concept of being “healthy enough” has always evaded me in thought. I know this is the wrong mindset to have. A moment comes to mind when I was pursuing my masters degree at University of Miami. I was scuba diving every day, exercising a good amount, energized with the vibrancy of living my dream life as a marine biologist, and handing my friend a pair of pants to try on that had become too big on me. I swore to her they would not be too small on her because in my mind, she was skinny and I was fat. I remember handing them to her and her saying, “Megs, you’re crazy, these are not going to fit me… they’re going to be too small”, and me being genuinely perplexed. Even during this period which was likely the most physically active and healthiest in my life, I was unable to see myself as a heathy person.

The idea that gestational hypertension, and any additional health complications, as something to be ashamed about, is deeply flawed. So many factors may affect the development of complications during pregnancy, and yes, there are some risk factors (meaning correlated conditions prior to pregnancy, with no understanding of whether those relationships are causal, coincidental, or whether the “factors” and “results” may be both rooted in something else entirely). The truth is, very little is actually known about what causes the disease, or even what the mysterious placenta, the organ that seems to cause it, does. But as I’ve learned to quiet the external noise in my mind these last few years, I’ve become more cognizant of the MEAN little inner voice that says “you’re too fat”, “fat means bad”, “fat means shameful”, or, “you’re worthless if you don’t look a certain way.” OUCH!

Does True Meg believe that fat = shameful, and that body size dictates one’s worth? Hell to the fucking no!! So why am I feeling/hearing this? Why is SHAME the resounding negative feeling when I look back on my pregnancy, and any how did I cope with the shame I was feeling, to the point where I didn’t even notice it at the time???

So today, in 2025, I’m trying to approach that mean little voice with curiosity, learn to tame it, and earn its trust before I can turn around and interrogate it, “Why the hell are you saying this stuff?! Why don’t you shut the heck up!” JK – that’s probably not the best way to “heal” this inner part of myself. I’m not really sure what I’ll do when I find it, but I know that right now, just being able to HEAR it clearly is an advancement for me.

So now, let’s watch a video of my first day or two in the hospital. In the end, I was hospitalized for 16 days. Sunny was born by c-section at 32 weeks, weighed 3.5 pounds, and spent 23 days in the NICU. But that is a story for another time. We ended up being just fine. We were remarkably lucky that she had no health complications, and that we got to go home when she was around 35 (gestational) weeks old.

There are plenty of other things to process in looking back on this event… How terrified Mack looked in this video, and how I seem to be barreling through with positivity. How my sisters, mom, and nieces showed up for me. How friends showed up. How relatives (Mack’s and mine) all visited and helped us prepare the house and care for the dogs, while barely getting to see Sunny because the NICU restrictions (and our own anxieties during COVID) were so strict. How I entirely missed the third trimester… and still long to experience a full pregnancy. My sadness that our marriage has not survived the years of early parenthood, and how where we both are now is different from where we thought we’d be then. My lingering concerns over health problems, especially related to my heart.

But right now, I’ll leave it here. I’ll consider it an improvement that I’m able to look back with a bit more clarity, see if I can start working on that little meanie voice inside my head, and thank my lucky stars every day that my little monkey arrived safe and sound.