The Birth Journeys Podcast®️: Lifting the veil on the birth experience
Welcome to The Birth Journeys Podcast®, a unique space where we share powerful and transformative birth stories that illuminate the realities of childbirth. Hosted by a labor nurse and prenatal coach who specializes in transformational coaching techniques, this podcast goes beyond traditional birth narratives to foster healing, build trust, and create transparency between birthing individuals and healthcare providers.
In each episode, we dive into essential topics like birth preparation, debunking common misconceptions, understanding hospital procedures, and promoting autonomy in the birthing process. We also bring you the wisdom and insights of experienced birth workers and medical professionals.
This is a safe and inclusive space where every birth story is valued, honored, and deserves to be heard. Join us in exploring the diverse and unique experiences of birth givers, and discover how transformational coaching can empower your own birth journey.
Contact Kelly Hof at: birthjourneysRN@gmail.com
The Birth Journeys Podcast®️: Lifting the veil on the birth experience
Amanda Kingsley on Compassionate Conversations About Reproductive Decisions
What if the toughest decision of your life could lead to profound personal growth? In our latest episode, we engage in a heartfelt conversation with Amanda Kingsley, a life and after-abortion coach, who opens up about her deeply personal and multifaceted reproductive health journey. Amanda shares her story of navigating planned and unplanned pregnancies, challenging pregnancies and childbirths, and the emotional labyrinth of abortion, offering listeners a rare and compassionate insight into the complexities of reproductive choices.
Join us as Amanda offers a raw and honest look into her experiences, from a planned home birth that turned into a hospital induction to enduring 17 weeks of bed rest during a challenging pregnancy. Her tales of unexpected twists and the need to let go of control are not just about her personal journey but are reflective of the broader human experience in dealing with life's unpredictability. By examining these pivotal moments, Amanda’s narrative underscores the profound lessons learned and the personal growth that comes with facing such challenges.
Throughout the episode, we touch on the societal pressures and the nuanced feelings that surround abortion decision-making. Amanda bravely addresses the often unspoken realities, such as the illusion of choice in difficult circumstances. This conversation emphasizes the need for compassionate and open discussions about abortion, recognizing the emotional and ethical complexities involved. Amanda’s courage in sharing her story highlights the importance of brave, albeit imperfect, conversations in fostering deeper understanding and empathy.
Connect with Amanda:
https://www.instagram.com/amandastarkingsley
https://amandastarkingsley.myflodesk.com/amandastarkingsley
Join the Bump & Beyond Online Community for moms & moms-to-be!
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Kelly Hof: Labor Nurse + Birth Coach
Basically, I'm your birth bestie! With me as your coach, you will tell fear to take a hike!
Connect with Kelly Hof at kellyhof.com
Medical Disclaimer:
This podcast is intended as a safe space for women to share their birth experiences. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Each woman’s medical course of action is individual and may not appropriately transfer to another similar situation. Please speak to your medical provider before making any medical decisions. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that evidence based practice evolves as our knowledge of science improves. To the best of my ability I will attempt to present the most current ACOG and AWHONN recommendations at the time the podcast is recorded, but that may not necessarily reflect the best practices at the time the podcast is heard. Additionally, guests sharing their stories have the right to autonomy in their medical decisions, and may share their choice to go against current practice recommendations. I intend to hold space for people to share their decisions. I will attempt to share the current recommendations so that my audience is informed, but it is up to each individual to choose what is best for them.
Hello, today I have with me Amanda Kingsley. Amanda is the mother of three, a life and after abortion coach, and she is here today to share her birth journey with us. Amanda, welcome and thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I am in deep gratitude for anyone open to having these conversations in their platforms. It's a big deal.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I have been looking for the perfect opportunity to add this topic to my platform and I saw you on Instagram and I was like abortion coach.
Speaker 2:Brilliant.
Speaker 1:Or scary or scary. There are a lot of ways that you can feel about that. I did dig deeper and I love how we in our pre chat you're talking about the distinction, life and after abortion, coach and making peace with your decisions and living the life that you deserve, that you chose. So, yeah, I think that's super important and I think that is something that kind of translates to all parts of life. But especially when making such a terrifying, difficult, life-altering decision that you're going to have to sit with, it doesn't matter how you came to that choice. Things come up for you after and, just like with birth, things come up that you don't expect because you're just really it's life-altering and anytime you make a life-altering decision, lots of things come up for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will say I'll just start here by saying there's a big spectrum of how this can land. For some people it's not life altering at all. It literally is just healthcare. They make a decision, they move on. There are people who make a decision, it's a procedure, they move on, and then they go to have kids or they have a miscarriage later, or they have struggle with infertility or they get a hysterectomy, or their kids move away for college. There's many, many points that it can come back and be like, oh okay, well, there's stuff here. So I do agree with you that it's life altering. I don't think all people recognize that. Yes, and I'm positive there are people who never look back. But it also can be like a thing where we don't realize that it's really impacted us until some other activation happens and we're like, oh, look at that.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and additionally, I think the more I learn how trauma works in the body, the physical aspect of the procedure, part of the abortion, can come back. I mean, I feel like I feel like those are maybe the unicorns where there's just absolutely no effect. I think what happens is you can't avoid the procedure. So if there's no emotional effect because you are so very confident in your decision and that you know that this is not part of your life, you're still going to have to go through the procedure. And the people that I know that have gone through that procedure are not always anticipating everything that goes into the procedure. And so I mean there's just there's so many points, there's so many touch points where this could be a difficult emotional, physical challenge for people and I don't know that that's recognized.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think the unicorns, right Like the people who never look back like it just wasn't. I do have spiritual beliefs that I can't like not insert, which is just that we're here for some kind of life journey, right, sorry, can I swear? Yeah, stuff happens. Stuff happens Like for us to learn from and grow from and explore, and so maybe the unicorns just weren't meant to learn anything from abortion.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They learned from other things they learned from other things.
Speaker 2:They learned from illnesses or car accidents, or like businesses they started Like it's just not. We don't know what people's stories are or why they're here, Mm-hmm. And as far as the procedure, I'd say like for some people there is some trauma in the procedure. For other people it literally is what they say, it's like a period and so. But I think, beyond any trauma that happens from the procedure just because something's happening to our body, there's also the trauma of, like, the system surrounding abortion, right yeah making the decision, calling the provider.
Speaker 2:How quick do I need to decide? Who am I allowed to talk? And not by allowed right? Who am I comfortable? Who am I allowed to talk to? Who's going to judge me? Who's not going to judge me? The entire experience is one that a lot of people disassociate from to some degree because there's a speed at which it happens. Disassociate from to some degree because there's a speed at which it happens. So, even if it's not the procedure that creates trauma, the entire experience has so many touch points that are just very unique and can be very intense. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, Well, so with every abortion story there is so much more around it and that's why I you know I'm this podcast is the Birth Journeys podcast, but all of the reproductive history plays into the birth journey and comes up at different points just your entire birth journey and how all of this played out, because I feel like there are definitely people out there that can relate, can feel validated and benefit from your story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know I've told this on other podcasts and maybe in my own, but I am like remembering a memory. So I was a birth doula before I moved into this work. So I remember learning that people's abortion histories could have an impact on their birth and I was like whoa, that's so interesting and important. And then I remember and like we haven't really outwardly said like I'm very pro-abortion, like this is, we're not getting to any point where the story twists, which we you wouldn't have me on if it were just to say it out loud- yeah, we're not trying to trick you into thinking that we think that this is bad.
Speaker 1:We're not trying to lead you down a path and then do a bait and switch here.
Speaker 2:So I remember being trained as a birth doula and working with clients, learning that abortion could impact a birth experience and being like totally blown away by it. And then I remember being a new doula and like trying to talk to a client about their abortion, but it was almost as if like if this comes up, it's okay, I'm a safe space, you know, like very new right, like I just didn't have wisdom and experience to understand it. And I definitely didn have wisdom and experience to understand it and I definitely didn't have personal experience to understand it.
Speaker 2:So there are certainly listeners who may have already had that experience or will have that experience where just being like an experience of your womb it can come back up, it can have later effects, effects when I learned that, like I said, I didn't have, I had had children, so I had experienced birth, but I didn't have an abortion. So I and that is why I landed in this work, because it rocked me, like it just showed me this big, gaping hole, that like no, I felt like no one's talking about this, no one's talking about the complexity. So I had already had two kids by then. So my reproductive health journey has been no unplanned pregnancies until 38, when I had this unplanned pregnancy that led to abortion. So I planned a child, had a child, planned a pregnancy, had a miscarriage, then planned a pregnancy, had a child, waited six years, planned a pregnancy, had a child. So I think that's really important because by the time I got to age 38, I had this illusion of control around, like, yes, my body miscarried and that fell out of my control, but at the same time I knew statistically, scientifically, that there was a good chance that I would miscarry. So I wasn't like, I was very sad about it but I wasn't like shocked by it. But when you get to 38 and you've been having sex for, like you know, over 20 years and you've never had an unplanned pregnancy, like it totally shook me. So it was the thing that brought me to this work.
Speaker 2:I've had a lot of reproductive experiences. So I had a planned home birth that I signed a lot of medical waivers for because I was 20 days past dates when she came and that ended up being a hospital induction. So very interesting and transformative birth experience that included, like everything but a cesarean an epidural, antibiotics, fevers like the tub, the narcotics, like everything that was not a home birth except a cesarean. And then I decided to not plan a home birth because I had been through this previous experience, had a beautiful, natural, sunny side up, really intense birth experience, but also very healing. I knew my body could deliver, naturally Beautiful. Then I had this third birth and pregnancy in which I spent 17 weeks on bed rest on couch rest, planned home birth, but then I spent 17 weeks.
Speaker 2:Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. I was a mess. I had two kids. I couldn't even make them breakfast in the morning. They were seven. He was born in 2013. They were I'm always so bad at math here seven and ten, so they were like taking care of themselves and obviously my husband was taking care of everything, like maybe not obviously, but I have one, so him, they were just doing it all. I was on the couch, 17 weeks of bed rest and then miraculously had a home birth Wow, so that's a whole journey. Then I had this abortion experience and I've, since just this in the last year, had a hysterectomy. So I'm like I've got like such a range of birth and uterine story and it all matters and like it all has made me who I am, including the abortion, probably most formatively the abortion but like I've got a, I've got a full spectrum.
Speaker 1:This, this body, has done a lot wow, well, I'd love you to walk through that with me because I think some of the lessons that we learn in the entire reproductive journey, like you said, it makes you who you are, and I feel like there's so much I don't always like to use the word fear, but I definitely think that's something that comes up but just mystery surrounding all of this. All of this, and I think the more we talk about it and the more we normalize everybody's experience and what happened emotionally and physically for them and how they moved through that part of their life is so important and different things are going to resonate with different people and I just I feel like I wish that I had had some more guidance in that.
Speaker 1:Even like with my birth, I was already an OB nurse with my first, but I still had trauma because I knew all the facts and so I think those stories are super important because we don't have that village where we're all in the tent, you know, delivering the babies of our aunties, our sisters, our mothers, and we don't really get to see what to expect or hear what to expect, or really it's not even something that we talk about in regular conversation at any great length.
Speaker 2:So if you're open to sharing just like. Walk us through the whole thing if you have time. Well, as you're talking, I was taking some notes because I was just like. I thought about this a lot, but I've never written it all down. If I had to like very quickly summarize, I think in my first birth the one that was a planned home birth what I let go of at that stage in my own journey was like control. I wanted to control that experience so badly. I wanted it to be picture perfect. I wanted all my family there with me and like we were going to prove how beautiful birth was and how healthy and wonderful it is to go through this together. And I had a total lack of control. I wasn't going into labor. I ended just like everything kept working against me is what it felt like, but basically I was not in control and that I was going to be okay anyway. Right, that feels like the lesson of that first.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's the lesson of every birth. Oh yeah, right, that's the lesson of every birth, that you figured that out in your first is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2:Well, but like, if I keep going, the miscarriage lesson was I'm human, I'm just an animal and like, statistically it doesn't always work. It doesn't matter how much love I have or how much I want this. There were five of us mommy, friends who were all pregnant at the same time and I remember looking at all of us and being like someone's not going to make it Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so true.
Speaker 2:And sometimes I'm like did I sacrifice myself? But of course that's giving me way more power than I think. I learned I'm human, I'm just human. And it was different than losing control. It was just like a biology lesson.
Speaker 1:Well, the fact that you never had it to begin with, Because what control do we really have?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was just like okay, well, this is just how it goes. And then, with my third birth, the words I wrote down was like twist and adapt, like I learned like twist and adapt, like I learned to twist and adapt, which is funny because she literally she was facing you know the right, the healthy direction when I went into labor and she literally turned. Like she turned sunny side up, which is for those of us who know birth. It's sometimes kind of the opposite right, like they twist into the right direction. You don't often twist into the wrong direction, Like it's kind of like a little weird, but I adapted, I stayed in the moment and I stuck with it. I let go of expectations, I adapted as I went and the reward was this incredibly intense physical experience and reward of being like I did it.
Speaker 2:So faith, like being on the couch for 17 weeks. I had to have faith and trust in things that I did not understand, like myself, spirit, my kiddo that I didn't know yet, like I just had to trust that it would be okay. Trust in my mid home birth midwives, but then also trust in my medical obstetric care, trust in the tests. I was like I was in the oncology ward, like I was everywhere. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. I had to trust medicine, but then I also had to trust spirit and I just persevered. I got through it. That feels like trust and perseverance were the lessons there. Then I had an abortion and that pregnancy I had an IUD in place. I thought it fell out without me knowing, which is mind-blowing to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're kind of scaring me right now.
Speaker 2:I call it my immaculate IUD removal, because I'd had an.
Speaker 2:IUD between planned pregnancies and when they took it out, let me tell you I was not comfortable. Yeah, I was okay with the insertion, I was not okay with the removal. So the fact that this IUD could fall out of my body without me knowing just absolutely to this day blows my mind. I'm the kind of human who I remember I think it was with my son. So my last birth I remember watching maybe it was I'm off on dates One of the pregnancies. We were watching Finding Nemo, we were trying to conceive and I remember saying to whoever was in the room I think the egg just implanted, like I felt this twinge and I was like I'm pregnant, I am now going to have a baby. And I did. I had labeled myself, I had believed that I was so in tune with my body, even through everything I'd been through, like I still was holding on to that, and then that I again the immaculate iod removal happened. So again, just summing up all the lessons coming together I it was a lack of control. There was a twisting and adapting. There there was a trust and perseverance, there was the humanness of it all, like things don't work, but what I really learned from that loss was that I can do hard things, because it was very hard for me to choose abortion. It shows that, as a lifestyle decision, I was in a healthy marriage, had a roof over my head, like finances roof over my head. Finances did come into play. We were not at an excessively abundant wealthy place, but we could have figured it out. I was supported, I was healthy.
Speaker 2:There were a lot of reasons I could have kept a pregnancy, but I knew deep down it was not what was supposed to happen. I did not want to have a baby. I'm like I didn't plan for this. I don't want this. I'm done doing this. I'm happy with my family, and so it was the hardest thing I've done with my reproductive body Not physically, physically, my reproductive body, not physically Physically.
Speaker 2:It was very easy my story, but I learned that I can do hard things because it was so hard to make that choice, actively say goodbye and know that two things could be true at the same time. Right? This is so sad. I hate that this is happening and I'm doing the right thing. It's all going to be okay. My reasons for not wanting another pregnancy, for wanting an abortion, are valid and worthy and they matter and they're worth the hard things that I'm going to have to do to get there right. I'm going to have to do this hard thing of having an abortion because of this vision I have for my life that has nothing to do with another child. So I learned that I could do hard things.
Speaker 2:And then if I extended to the hysterectomy, which is so far my last reproductive journey but I'm still like in pre-perimenopause, so there's probably more to come. It was very emotional to say goodbye to my uterus, like I've been through a lot with me, but there was this letting go and keep going, like my uterus has defined me in so many ways on my journey. It's so central to all of my story and my being. And then I was like and now I have to let it go, and so that was just like a letting go and keep going and knowing that, that felt like it defined me all those years. But it didn't really. It was just the thing I sort of centered my stories around.
Speaker 1:I feel you there. Whenever I think about the thought of my uterus leaving my body, I mean I just I kind of feel like I want to be, just like hang on to it. No, that's mine. I've been through a lot with that friend. Yeah, it always has. It hasn't been always the best, but you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's my friend. Yeah, yeah, it was very weird. It was very weird. Also, I think that I do have a moderate spiritual belief that everything happens for a reason, but part of that is that we make the reason Right. Like everything I just told you, someone else could have interpreted all of those births and stories completely differently, mm-hmm. I made those reasons because they feel good for me. They do feel true and right, mm-hmm, but maybe that's just because I made it up Right. They work for who I am and where I want to go. Mm-hmm, right, they work for who I am and where I want to go, and I do help people do that work around abortion is like we're never really going to know why you went through this, or multiple abortions Many people have multiple, but we can decide together what you want to make it mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We can figure that out together. So I think both are true. Everything happens for a reason and we make the reason.
Speaker 1:Also yeah, I have some questions that come up for me and you can either choose to answer or decline to answer, because I don't want to push your boundaries. I have no memories. Okay, cool, so abortion was never part of your plan until it came up? Did you ever think that you would choose that option?
Speaker 2:Was that something that you?
Speaker 1:ever thought was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still have some shame and embarrassment around this because I was very pro-choice and that's why I used that language earlier of like pro-abortion. Now I feel very pro-abortion. I don't even consider myself pro-choice, I like, I think it's, it needs to exist in the world like there's no, yeah, there's nothing like it'll be like.
Speaker 1:As long as pregnancy is not something you can control, yeah, there needs to be a way to make it safe to make it yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like it's like. It's also like this false illusion, the choice piece because so many people come to me and they're like I didn't have a choice, like my relationship was abusive. I was like barely feeding the kids I have, I and so I have really wobbly feelings around the choice because even though it it is our choice like we do get to decide what to do with our bodies it doesn't always feel like a choice. So I think it's just very wobbly for me.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a choice between two bad options.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of times that's the case.
Speaker 1:People don't go in and say, oh, you don't wake up in the morning and think, you know what, I would love to have an abortion today. No, that's not how that works. So if you say pro-abortion, you're not like, okay, I'm going to go get a latte and abortion, and then I'm going to go to Disneyland. That's not how this works. No, this is never easy. This isn't people's life goal.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes it is easy for people yeah, and that's why I'm kind of course, correcting there, but I know it's super tricky language and we've had terrible like there's just not enough people talking about it, so we're all figuring it out together, including me, even though I talk about it all day, every day, like yeah, it's never not important is how I would word it, like yes, it's always a decision that should be respected. Should be again language.
Speaker 1:So wonky.
Speaker 2:But it's a decision that I think we should respect and honor. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's wanted, sometimes it's not wanted, it's just like really messy. It's not wanted, it's just like really messy. And the pro-choice, pro-life binaries as they exist are excessively messy, like really, really messy. I didn't fit into either camp but, to answer your original question, I would have called myself pro-choice up until age 38 when I got pregnant didn't plan.
Speaker 2:I would have called myself pro-choice, because it was like the label you pick when you're a liberal woman and a women's studies major and a feminist and the like, but I didn't understand that. That didn't tell the whole story until I had an abortion. So I was the person who was pro-choice, by language, by intellect, but I also would have told you, probably until my mid-30s, that I would never choose it. Yeah, I was that person, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I would never have an abortion, but I think it should be accessible for other people. I see now and I have some shame and embarrassment because I recognize that that confidence I had in that language was actually just a lack of awareness, like I didn't get it. So it was easy for me to have that touch point. And now I do know, like if I could go back now and answer the question, I would say I'm pro-choice and I have no idea what I would do Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I wanted to say I'm pro-choice, I would never choose it for myself. So it's very, it's tricky. There's no right way to talk about this. My entire body of work is like let's just talk, let's be curious, let's ask a lot of questions. There's no answers in any of this. There's no right way to talk about it, no wrong way to talk about it. But these are all the things I've learned along the way in my story. So I would have said I've known I wanted to be a mom since I was four, right?
Speaker 1:Since you can remember your brain being active.
Speaker 2:So much identity. I love my kids so much. They're all amazing. I love being a mom so much. It's so amazing. My kids are now 19, 17, and 10. I've experienced a lot. It's just too hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I could love something so much and also reject it. Be like no, I say no to this one, so I just didn't get it, and now I get it in a different way.
Speaker 1:I want to offer also that you don't want to put your brain through that unless you have to. You know, like I mean, I in in thinking about today. Last night I was trying to put my, I was trying to let my brain go there, because I don't like to let my brain go certain places you know there's certain experiences that I don't want to pre-live unless I absolutely have to, and that's one of them.
Speaker 1:But in doing this podcast I'm putting myself in that in a lot of people's situations for the sake of trying to understand and because I'm a labor nurse. I have patients that go through a lot of these things and I assist patients through. I mean, I have actually on rare occasions because of the laws and the hospital policies and all of that, but on rare occasions I have given people medications for a medically induced, technically abortion, but because of medical reasons, and that's within the scope of our hospital and our laws and our state. But I have never been a part of an elective abortion where there wasn't a question of the mother's or the baby's safety. So it isn't something that I have to think about on a regular basis, except for now, because in this world I'm bringing up children where that may be the best, safest, emotionally correct option for someone and I want, like you said, I want that option to be available for all of the purposes, for all of the reasons that it needs to happen, and it's not my choice for someone else.
Speaker 1:And also, when you say something like the immaculate removal of an IUD. I am sitting here as a 45-year-old woman thinking, holy crap, that can happen. And also I have friends who have gotten pregnant with IUDs. And I'm sitting here in this world trying to believe it'll never happen to me and thinking, oh my God, what would I do if I found out I'm pregnant tomorrow? And I don't want to let my brain go any farther because it is so. It is so hard for me, and so I completely empathize with that situation for you and what you had to go through, because that is just mind-blowing for me.
Speaker 2:My brother had a baby after a vasectomy, so after my abortion my husband had a vasectomy and I was still like I might need a second abortion. I don't know. Like there's no guarantees here.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Now I am quite confident that without a uterus I will never have.
Speaker 1:I hope not, Because you're blowing my mind with the things that can happen right now. And just because I can't wrap my head around it doesn't mean yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's the thing is like I actually wrote like 40,000 words of a memoir after and I do have a published book, but it's a book of poems, and I'm writing another book now, like now that I've been in this work for so long, but I remember writing that memoir being like there was that I've been in this work for so long, but I remember writing that memoir being like there was a confidence I had in like I understand how to prevent a pregnancy, like I'm just that smart and I'm that lucky and privileged.
Speaker 1:Or maybe it's it's. Maybe it just seems simpler than it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is I mean, I wasn't thinking that then I wasn't thinking I'm so smart and privileged. But I look back now and I'm like oh yeah, you're just. It's like you didn't think it would happen to you and it did, and so like there was just like a righteousness about me that I'm not proud of now when I look back. But, like I thought, I thought I was like in control. I guess I hadn't completely let go of that lack of control.
Speaker 2:Lesson I learned in birth number one yeah, I mean, nobody wants to think that, nobody wants to think that it's possible but you know, I think now, actually, okay, I think now I chose abortion at 38 because I just was so done having babies, that's it. That's like why I didn't want sleepless nights again, I didn't want breastfeeding again, I didn't want all of it. But I think now and now we've had a vasectomy, we've had a hysterectomy, we're not going to have a baby. Guess what? I have two teenage girls. And if they got pregnant and said, I hope they're not listening to this, no, it's okay, we talk about everything anyway.
Speaker 2:But like, if they got pregnant and said, mom, I can't do it, like I can't have an abortion, like I just I don't, I have to have this baby. And then they wanted me to take care of the baby, guess what I would do? I'd show up to the sleepless nights and maybe I wouldn't. Because again I'm projecting something I think I would do. But like there's no guarantees in life, I don't know what's going to happen next. I'm like I might end up taking care of an infant again. I pray that I will not have to do that and I don't want my kids to go through that.
Speaker 1:But like, I don't know what's going to happen. Well, you won't breastfeed again there's that I can tell you that it's just.
Speaker 2:I don't know, though, could I lactate again if I?
Speaker 1:I mean, you could probably like we could go down that rabbit hole, you could take your medic, you could take hormones and you could let it's possible, it's probably not going to be efficient. You would have to supplement with formula.
Speaker 2:It would be like you can plan and plan and plan, and like someone could be say to me like well, you definitely won't have to raise an infant again because you have no uterus, your husband has no like sperm ejection, like it's not gonna happen. But I, that's not even true, that's not, that's not even true. And even like if it weren't my own kid, like if my niece again like please, don't listen to this and send me a radius, because, right, but let's just say like if my niece or you know, my whatever somebody I really love and care about, like I, I, I don't, I might end up taking care of babies again.
Speaker 1:You would step up for somebody you love.
Speaker 2:We don't know, Like. So that was such an important lesson there to be like. We don't know how our births are going to happen, we don't know how our families are going to grow, we don't know how our postpartum is going to happen. We don't know how our parenting is going to go. Abortion is just. It's this opportunity to talk about a lot of stuff that has to do with a lot of life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a very raw, activated, vulnerable way and, like you said, we don't go there because who wants to go there? But everything that has anything to do with abortion is about all of life. The biggest thing I faced in choosing abortion was death and power my own power I could choose to take, and this language. Yeah, you might be like I'm not releasing this podcast. Nope, I am, because it's an important conversation that we need to have I call it a baby.
Speaker 1:You might be like I'm not releasing this podcast. Nope, I am, because it's an important conversation that we need to have.
Speaker 2:I call it a baby, Like I call it like. There's no way, being who I am, that I could say I aborted, I terminated fetal cells. I was like six or seven weeks, so I mean we're talking like.
Speaker 1:If look at science, this is just a pile of cells.
Speaker 2:It meant more to you when that egg implanted in my uterus. It was barely a pile of cells and I was like I'm a mom, I'm pregnant, mm-hmm. There's no way I could then be like I aborted. A pile of cells, like, no, like I chose to terminate the life of a baby, but I don't mean like a cute little baby with arms and legs, I mean like energetically, soulfully, spiritually, like I called it a baby then. I can't not call it a baby now. That language doesn't work for me. So what I had to do was come to terms with saying no to life. I had to come to terms with literally ending life in my own body it's mind-blowing. In my own body, it's mind blowing. So I had to face life and death and my own power in a way that I never could have anticipated.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Ever, ever, ever. And there are so many people who are like what is she talking about? This is crazy. Someone stop her.
Speaker 2:But I think what's missing in the pro-life, pro-choice rhetoric is that we can't just call it healthcare and tissue and we can't call it human life. It is the potential of life and so there is like living tissue there. I can call it a baby because spiritually, emotionally, mentally it was a baby to me, but physically it was just not. We have to find this middle place and the current social dialogue about abortion is so binary. It's all black or white and when you're in the lived experience it's anything but black or white. It's a big pile of messy thoughts and feelings and we have to be willing to sit with all that confusion and mess and lack of clarity and lack of knowing and lack of control to be able to feel good about our decisions. I feel really good about my decision. I love that. I made this choice for myself and my family.
Speaker 2:And there was a ton of grief? Yeah, there was. Am I a good mom? Guilt, there was shame that I got pregnant and I didn't mean to. There was like I had all the feelings. There was no clarity here. There was no like this or that, kill it or keep it. That was not the conversation. It was so much more complex than that.
Speaker 2:And what I hope in my work is that I make more room for that conversation, Because when we pick these really black and white binaries as the way that we talk about abortion, we're causing so much harm. It's a lot easier to create a law about people's bodies when we call it murder. It's a lot harder when we say this is a very sad and hard decision I made in the best interest of my family, and I can't even say that in the hope of the best interest for my family because I also had to come to terms with. I might wish I hadn't done that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't have a crystal ball. You thought you were making the right decision at the time. Yeah, you don't have a crystal ball. You thought you were making the right decision at the time. You stand by that right now. But nobody has a an abortion. They wanted that baby but they weren't able to fully put in all of the time and everything that needs to happen to take care of it. You would gladly step up and help.
Speaker 2:Oh and not gladly it. You would gladly step up and help. Oh and not gladly. Okay, you would. But I can guess now that I would probably Probably and be a really amazing guardian.
Speaker 1:On the table, because nothing is black and white, this is gray, we're just. This is all hypothetical, I know. Okay, well, here's what we can't do.
Speaker 1:Okay, you could do that, but you cannot remove the experience of pregnancy and birth from them like I, will grow your baby for you yes, unless here we go and this is where all of these laws and all this nonsense is coming into play unless you have the cells frozen and then you choose. Right, they were never inside the body, they were always outside, or they actually were inside the body at some point, because we took them out, then we put them together and then we're going to re-put them inside of a body. So what's the difference? Do you know what I'm saying? Choosing to have that life, whatever, or cells, or like potential life, choosing to allow it to grow outside the body, inside the body, if it's already inside your body and implanted, we don't currently have the option to remove it and put it into somebody else's body. So you're forcing pregnancy on someone who doesn't want it by taking away the option.
Speaker 2:It's terrifying to think that that could like if I had been pregnant at 38 and we had that capacity, we had that technology. That is even more terrifying to think someone could have taken that pregnancy from me and then grown it themselves because they were. I mean, this is that's another form of it. There's so much Like. I hate the Handmaid's Tale analogy because it takes away from our real lived experience, but it's getting more and more terrifying because, like I mean, that's like right, so that would have been.
Speaker 1:I just can't even imagine the solutions to the problem are just as terrifying as the problem. There is no good solution. I just can't even imagine the solutions to the problem are just as terrifying as the problem. There is no good solution. So, yes, if you had someone that you were okay with taking that pregnancy and growing it for you, that'd be one thing. But if you don't have that, or if you don't want that or you- know, there's just so much. There's so much there.
Speaker 2:I thought about this when I was pregnant because a lot of people will say just give it up for adoption. There's plenty of people who want babies. That's a really hard conversation that I have not had a lot as a mother. The idea of stopping tissue that was not viable was something I could wrap my head around, but giving up a child, that is.
Speaker 2:Of someone else raising my kid, sibling my flesh and blood, was not a hard I was willing to face. I was willing to face and feel the feels of stopping the developmental growth of a bunch of tissue. I was not. That was a heart I was willing to deal with. I'm going to be sad. People are going to judge me. Not everyone will understand. I might regret it. I'm going to have to convince myself I'm a good mom again, like I was ready for all that heart. You couldn't have paid me a billion dollars, yeah, to grow that baby and give it to someone else. You just, I would have rather died. That doesn't mean someone else can't do it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I would fully support them doing it. It's just like being human is so unique to each of us and so messy. I don't have to explain to you why I could do one hard and not a different heart like someone else will be like well, if you could do that, then if you could feel that, then you could feel this. It's like I don't have to tell you why. That was my line. That was my line. I was not willing to do.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's not like you had a whole lot of time to deal with that decision you know to make. You have to make the decision.
Speaker 2:I mean there's a million ways I could justify my abortion. Like sometimes people want to use my bedrest story. Right, oh, I can see why you wouldn't want to have another pregnancy. You spent 17 weeks on bedrest. It's like, yeah, it did factor in, it was a part of my human experience, but that's not why I chose not to be pregnant. Yes, it was a piece of it, but ultimately that wasn't the thing and that's just.
Speaker 2:The thing is like when we're healing from anything birth trauma, abortion trauma, parenting trauma, marriage trauma, any of it it's never about getting to the place where someone else is at in their story. About getting to the place where someone else is at in their story. It's about understanding your heart and having your own back around why you made the decisions you made. I have to understand and heal my story, not someone else's, not like, oh man, there's so many people. I don't want to listen to this episode, but they probably will. So if my mom's listening, I love you to pieces.
Speaker 2:But I had a birthday two days ago and I was like, really not okay. I was actually worried about my safety at one point and I'm not a person who struggles with depression, but like I was not okay, my mom really loves me so much and like came over and gave me a card and wanted to make me feel better because she's my mom and she said like you have a good, good life, you shouldn't be so sad. It's not how it works. Like no, like I know she didn't mean it in that way, but we can't look at someone else's pregnancy and be like you have a good life, you should have a, a baby. It doesn't work that way. Like you can't understand someone else's experience through your lens, so when.
Speaker 2:I work with people as a coach. It's not about me or anyone else. It's about helping them figure out their unique experience and having their own back and being curious and compassionate about what they decided to do and why. Some of my clients even regret their abortions. But they're at peace with regretting their abortions. That's okay too, like a lot of people regret their marriage. Yeah, it's not. We're capable of regretting decisions we've made and being okay. But when we compare ourselves to other people, or their ideals or their values or their stories, then it's impossible. It's just impossible?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is Well. And another thing that came up for me me and this again is not the whole story is you only have so much time to make that decision. You don't know if you're gonna regret it yeah, if you had the rest of your life to decide what to do about that pregnancy and that was my hard line.
Speaker 2:Right was like I wasn't gonna give myself six more weeks to decide. I wasn't gonna give myself 10 more weeks to decide.
Speaker 2:I wasn't going to give myself 10 more weeks to decide. Certainly wasn't going to give myself 12 more weeks to decide, but I also will love and support someone who's had an abortion at 24 weeks, because of whatever their reasons are. I just knew, with my circumstances, waiting was not the answer. With my circumstances, deciding when I decided was the answer For a lot of us. There is a time crunch that makes this very complicated. We're not thinking.
Speaker 2:A lot of people will say to me like I don't know who that was, who did that. I don't, it was like the whole thing, I don't know, I wasn't thinking straight, that wasn't me, and I get that. I get that we can look back because it is very. There is a time crunch. For many of us it's a social construct that we've. It's a mental social construct that we've put on ourselves, but it does, it's real, like it matters. So everyone's is different. Like some people wouldn't even think twice between 12 weeks and five weeks, some people are like, oh, once you get to 13 weeks, absolutely not. But that's all made up, everyone made up their own numbers.
Speaker 1:Comfort zone, comfort zones yes.
Speaker 2:So you're right, one of the hardest things that I see people struggle with is like having felt the pressure of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, because that's part of your comfort zone with the decision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes that's a moral value thing and then sometimes that's like the state I live in, the amount I have to travel to make this happen, how quickly they can mail the pills to me. There's a million reasons that impact time, but yeah, it is a huge. And if you come to like the definition of trauma, one of it being too fast, that can be the only reason there's trauma is that I had to decide to quit grade, not that I made the wrong decision, but that I'm still processing how fast I had to decide.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's just all really messy.
Speaker 1:It is, yeah, and it's so complex. There's so much that goes into it. There's so many things to consider to be able to just rip the carpet out from under someone and say just know, we're going to take away that option. I mean, we're talking about life either way. You're taking away life either way.
Speaker 2:It's absolutely terrifying and it's like let's eliminate this sadness In order to create so much more In order to create exactly what you just said. No one is willing to look at the trauma they're causing by forcing someone to carry a pregnancy, have another child. They're only willing to look at what they think is trauma. They're avoiding right. It's like the loss of a human life. I've had people write pro-life articles about me, saying she was sad. That's exactly why we shouldn't let abortion exist. We can't have all these sad people we already do.
Speaker 1:Reality check we already do.
Speaker 2:Really bad.
Speaker 1:Well, everybody gets to choose their hard, everybody gets to choose their sad. Yes, and also, we are not eliminating the elimination of life by eliminating abortion, because abortion is something that in some cases saves lives and we don't know whose life we're saving. But there's one way that is going to increase the potential for one life to be saved, and usually that's the mom.
Speaker 2:And what are we saving, though? All we're saving is a physical body Mm-hmm, because there are. This isn't even Like you think abortion is a stigma topic Mm-hmm, this isn't even like you think abortion is a stigma topic. I think parenting, I think raising children I didn't want, is maybe the most stigmatized topic that exists.
Speaker 2:There are so many living, breathing human beings who wish they didn't have children and do. They might still love their children, yeah, yeah, and take care of their children, but ultimately it is, I think, maybe the greatest stigma to say I wish I hadn't had that third baby. So, when we talk about saving lives, there's the physical piece of that, but then there's the. I had that third baby and, like I, emotionally, mentally, emotionally couldn't cope anymore, I shut down. I stayed in my room, my depression got worse, my anxiety got worse. I couldn't you know, I couldn't figure out how to take care of all the children there's. There's so many levels of saving life that we're not talking about, and to prioritize a physical body is just nonsense to me. Just because someone's alive doesn't mean you did right by them.
Speaker 1:Right, I feel like there's so much that's still coming up for me, and there's, I mean, there's just so many parts of this conversation that I guess the most important thing is to just continue the conversation, that it continues to be part of the conversation, because I think that what happens is we're so afraid to bring up those complexities and, just as an example, you keep saying that there's things that you want to edit out or that you don't want people to hear, and I'm thinking the same thing. When I say certain things, I'm just like that's not the word I wanted to use, and so I guess my challenge for myself Is, when editing this episode, leave those words in, because we have to hear how hard it is To talk about things that are so complex.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it all has to stay in the conversation. Stay in the conversation. And we're such an editing society, yeah, that we don't know how to like. There's probably a program out there that could have put an lnd nurse and uh, whatever a mom of three on ai and created a podcast episode. Yeah, I'm like I don't know what it would have said, but like we are too I say this at the end of most of my podcast episodes is like all I want to be is an example of how to talk about it and not have all the answers.
Speaker 2:Still, challenge your own beliefs, challenge each other's beliefs. The talking about it, even when you don't get it right, is the most valuable part. And the scary part about living as a human in 2024 is that people will take one little thing and they'll run away with it on the internet and then they'll use it against you cancel. You use it against abortion access. All of that just is a reality. That's awful and it makes us want to shut down, but that's what they want us to do is just shut down. It makes us want to shut down, but that's what they want us to do is shut down, shut up and step away and like we have to be brave enough to like, say the hard things in the messy ways, because it's the only thing that's going to save us all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think we should edit anything out.
Speaker 2:Again, I applaud you for having the conversation because it's big.
Speaker 1:Well, I thank you for having it with me and I feel like after processing it, I'm going to have lots of questions and probably we should have another conversation at a later date.
Speaker 2:There's so much more I feel like we just scratched the surface. I'm sure listeners have questions too, like I'm happy to come back and answer, answer more questions, not because I have the answer, but I'm happy to come back and talk about more ways to answer questions. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, Amanda, thank you so much for coming on with me and for the brave work that you do. You're welcome.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. It's definitely an honor. It's hard and weird and I want to run away from it a lot, but I'm here.
