Birth Journeys: Lifting the veil on the birth experience
Did your childbirth experience go as planned? Then The Birth Journeys Podcast® is for you! 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
Birth Journeys: Lifting the veil on the birth experience
Childbirth Attorney Gina Mundy's Guide to a Safer Childbirth
Embark on a transformative journey through the landscape of childbirth with our esteemed guest, Gina Mundy, a childbirth attorney and author, whose insights promise to arm future parents with the tools for a safer and more empowered birthing experience. Imagine entering one of life's most significant events, not with fear, but with the confidence of a well-rehearsed plan, as Gina guides us through the essential steps of preparation and the importance of establishing open lines of communication with your healthcare team. Her experience in the courtroom and stories shared in "A Parents' Guide to a Safer Childbirth" serve as a beacon, illuminating the path towards avoiding trauma and ensuring the well-being of both mother and child.
Together with Gina, we navigate the often underappreciated intricacies of selecting a birth team that resonates with your personal birth philosophy, the indispensable emotional support provided by labor and delivery nurses, and the empowering role of doulas during labor. Our conversation uncovers the sheer importance of asking the right questions—be it about interventions like Pitocin or understanding all possible outcomes. Gina's book has become a touchstone for medical professionals, spreading within the community, advocating for practices that honor the natural labor process while safeguarding against potential complications.
Closing the loop, we celebrate the shared triumphs and challenges of parenting, from packed lunches to the profound joy of welcoming a new life into the world. We are reminded that the tools and knowledge we share are not just for the delivery room—they are the underpinnings of a healthy family life. Our listeners are left with an inspiring tapestry of stories, advice, and heartfelt reflections that transcend the podcast, influencing real-world decisions and outcomes, and contributing to a world where every childbirth is a story of informed choices, safety, and joy.
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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 Gina Mundy. Gina is the mother of three and an attorney that specializes in childbirth cases. For over two decades, she has analyzed the mistakes that are made during labor and delivery. Drawing on this knowledge, she has authored the book A Parents' Guide to a Safer Childbirth to help parents prevent these mistakes and have a healthy baby. Rather than merely getting involved after an unfortunate mistake was made, Gina has taken a proactive approach by getting involved before childbirth. Today, Gina will be sharing about her new book and giving tips on how parents can have a safer childbirth. Gina welcome and thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2:Kelly, thank you for having me. I gotta tell your audience we just had the best pre-show chat ever. You are amazing, so I am super excited to be here today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and I was. I really enjoyed getting to know about what you're doing. I kind of feel like we're kindred spirits and kind of approaching this before birth time, where parents can really take advantage of the knowledge that they can gain by truly preparing for childbirth so that they can enter this space confident and calm and really knowing what they can do and what choices they have.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, 100%. I mean it's such a big day. It's a day most moms dream about their entire life, from when they're a little girl, playing with their baby dolls. I know I've played with my baby dolls and always thought of that big day. It's important to be ready 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I always think about how much planning goes into a wedding. I wonder to myself, why are we not planning the birth as much as the wedding, but in the sense that we need to not necessarily plan the twinkle lights and the lavender oil and all of this stuff, but really understanding all of the things that go into the birth and all of the options and how we feel about all of those things? You would have an opinion of roses versus lilies right, you would know if you want them in your bouquet or not. But why aren't we looking into pitocin versus a cook's catheter or whatever it is and really learning what the pros and cons and when you might want to have those introduced to your birth and what circumstances would have to happen for that to be okay, in really working through our emotions on that situation?
Speaker 2:Well, you are so right on. I love it. And I think in my book I don't say wedding, I say, hey, you plan everything in life vacations, financial plan, you name it. So why are we not doing it for the birth? And let me tell you in my book, chapter one, all of the lessons from the baby cases whether it's a lesson from the family that was involved, whether it was from a delivery team or the medical experts on the case these are the lessons that we can learn from the baby cases and keep in mind as a lesson you're learning from it in order to prevent it from happening in the future. But lesson number one by far is the most important lesson and it is from the families. You must prepare for childbirth and you're going to be able to make better decisions when you're ready and you're going to have that streamlined communication with your delivery team. There's so many different benefits to being ready for the big day. You know the families.
Speaker 2:I hope your audience understands what a childbirth case is. I did not know my profession existed until I got into it 21 years ago. So, just so your audience understands, when I'm saying childbirth case, this involves a case that has to do with the birth of a baby, and baby is not born healthy, permanently not healthy. Something went wrong, a complication, a mistake. Sometimes baby may pass away during childbirth and sometimes mom will pass away during childbirth.
Speaker 2:So these are what I have seen over 21 years and this is this is important stuff. So when I and I can tell you the families in this case, it's like they have like the minds that we're all guilty of bad things only happen to other people and you don't prepare. You're already in a very vulnerable state of mind anyway, given childbirth and everything else, but it's just. It leaves you in a position where you can't make those good decisions. And let me tell you, in my cases, the families are one decision or minutes from a healthy baby. So having an understanding of what you're getting into working with your delivery team by far the number one lesson you can learn from a childbirth case.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I feel like, as a healthcare professional, I can tell when either the preparation hasn't occurred or the preparation occurred but the emotions surrounding that haven't been addressed, and so then there's beliefs that will prevent that person or family from being able to make those decisions in an emergency situation. And I feel like, even if things turn out okay, the trauma that occurs because of the lack of preparation or the lack of really exploring what comes up for you when you think about some of these interventions and getting clarity on that, having not done that and not having a thorough understanding, that is what leads to trauma. And if it doesn't lead to a lawsuit because there's no adverse event, it certainly will lead to the patient complaining about their experience in the hospital. And so I feel like if we are able to get to the bottom of what makes people feel out of control in the labor and delivery space, we can all kind of come together and solve a lot of the problems that we're seeing, come up with the patient's satisfiers and also what may lead to those minutes that turned into a bad outcome.
Speaker 1:And I think it all comes down to communication and understanding each other, and what I'm seeing is a trend of healthcare professionals going into one corner and saying I'm just trying to help you have a healthy baby, and doing things and communicating in ways that are somewhat manipulative in order to get the patient to do what they want, and then I see the patients resisting and becoming incredibly defensive and not being open and honest with their healthcare providers, and that really sets up the scene for nobody getting what they want. So if we're not working together as a team and we're both just trying to push the other person to get what we want instead of understanding how to come together, that is a huge reason. I think that plays into the maternal mortality rate in this country and the neonatal mortality rate in this country, because something is wrong. We have the top mortality rates for both maternal and neonatal deaths in the developed world, and it shouldn't be that way.
Speaker 2:You know, callie, when I was hired into this field 21 years ago, literally my first case was February 2003,. I was hired into a team of over 20 of us. That's all we did with these cases. So you know, sometimes when I talk to somebody like you and I hear the whole the doctor, patient issues, with doctors trying to do the right thing, patients defensive and then just not working together. It's just incredibly hard to hear. So my book is very work together with the team to make good decisions because your delivery team they're so important, along with your doctor, your doctor head to your delivery team. I mean, ultimately you guys talking to Callie are responsible as delivery team bringing babies safely into this world.
Speaker 2:You know, when I have the childbirth case, it's typically the delivery team's care. You know that's at issue and it's analyzed more than any other aspect of the case. But it's important to understand now and I can also throw out there I love my labor and delivery nurses. You guys are absolutely amazing humans. Most of my labor and delivery nurses, even from my cases, are amazing and I've met very few who are not. But I am just a huge respect to labor and delivery nurses. You guys are the ones at the patient's bedside and I can tell you, in my cases my labor and delivery nurses show more human emotion than any other witness in the case from the medical side. So you guys have all. You guys always blow me away and there's always so many times we're hanging with a nurse and it's like her first lawsuit. So they're always few and far between.
Speaker 2:But going back to the delivery team and here at issue, your doctor heads your delivery team and your doctor is typically not at the hospital. It's your delivery team that's bedside with you. So just doing whatever you can, I think even during your pregnancy, and making sure that you have a good doctor, a good doctor that's going to communicate with your delivery team, a good doctor that's going to communicate with you, is just so incredibly important. I have a chapter on how to pick the good doctor, so I have been analyzing or BGYNs, because they it's really, I say the delivery teams care. At issue, the doctor is the head of the delivery team. Okay, they had it, so they're captain of the ship. So you know, constantly in our field we have to say, okay, is this a good doctor or a bad doctor? And we have to do it because you cannot stick a bad doctor in front of a jury. You're going to get pummeled in court room, cannot do it. So I have a whole chapter on how to pick a good one and what to look for.
Speaker 2:But yeah, a huge part of that is how your doctor talks to you, how your doctor communicates with you, because you can guarantee you how they talk to you and how much time they give you and understanding. And how they communicate with you is likely how they communicate with their delivery team. So you want a doctor Kelly for everyone who cannot seek Kelly. She is shaking her head up and down in agreements but it's important because, again, your doctor Captain of the ship is not at the hospital. He's relying on the labor and delivery nurses or residents or midwife to communicate how you're doing with that. Then she or she makes the recommendation. It's kind of screwy when you think of it. I mean, the lead person is not even at the hospital, but it is what it is. So it's really important to want a team that's going to have a really good synergy with your doctor Picking that doctor.
Speaker 2:I just cannot emphasize enough how important that is that you're comfortable. Then you guys all get along on that big day. You have to be comfortable enough with your doctor to work with them, not be defensive, because that's when things go wrong. Trust me, I've talked to the families over the years. It's the hardest part of my job. It's the reason I wrote the book is to spare all their families from what these poor families have endured in the work of therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Part of the coaching program I'm doing is helping people find a provider that they align with and helping them come up with questions because there's so little time in the visits. If you are meeting with a provider and insurance is paying for it, it's essentially you get like 15 minutes face time with your doctor per visit and it's not a lot because the doctor has a lot of things to talk about and they have a lot of assessments to do. So if you want to get in depth on what their delivery philosophy is, that's really hard and short of looking at their C-section rate, which I'm not even sure how to find.
Speaker 2:But people always talk about it. Yeah, you got to ask your doctor. They don't even tell me that stuff. And so the hospital reports it because the doctors will get shit if it's too high.
Speaker 1:Exactly, but it's not even the C-section rate, it's the. If you have a provider that's like, and it's okay if you align with this, if you want to schedule your induction, you want to get pitocin, have your water broken, get your epidural, have a baby, great, that's fine. But if you wanted to do things a little bit more naturally and you have a provider that likes to move things along, well, you're probably not going to have the best experience and then if there's a negative outcome, you're going to blame your provider because you felt pushed towards these interventions that you originally didn't want, and it doesn't matter if they're interventions that are for that specific purpose. If you didn't feel like you were a part of the team in coming up with that birth plan, then there's going to be some negative feelings and if there's a negative outcome, that's just, it's all bad. So I think it's really important. The first step would be to find, like you said, find a provider that you align with and also talk to them about how they manage their births. You can interview multiple providers and multiple teams, because it's not always the provider that you choose that's going to be the person that delivers you if you wanted to have a natural birth, because if you go into labor when your provider is not available, then you're probably not going to get that provider. So you really kind of have to do your homework and talk to everybody about will they support your preferences and under what circumstances. Would then they start to recommend other interventions that you may not be comfortable with and under what circumstances are you comfortable with them?
Speaker 1:Because I, going into my first birth, don't think that I had my head wrapped around the possibility that there could be a fatal outcome for me and my baby. I knew it, but it just you know. Like you said, it won't happen to me, that happens to other people, and I never really considered that I might need a C-section to save my life or my baby's life. I knew it, but it wasn't something that I fully understood. I understood it for my second because I was a labor and delivery nurse, but also that there's other reasons that C-sections are recommended. It's not necessarily an emergency and it is such a spectrum of reasons and everybody's comfort level is different. So you may have a provider that pushes C-section. They feel more safe getting the baby out under certain circumstances that may not align with your preferences.
Speaker 1:You may want to try some different things before you go to the C-section. You may want a little bit more time for your delivery, for example. They're and I'm saying this because there are moms that I've taken care of that have that opinion they would prefer to. As long as everybody is safe, as long as the baby looks good on the monitor. Category one is what we consider good. We know that everything is neurologically intact, as long as mom is safe, vital signs are good and there are no extenuating circumstances or underlying medical conditions. There are many birthing people that would prefer to continue to labor, and there may be providers that don't want to do that, and so it doesn't make anybody wrong. It just makes them wrong for each other. And so it's really, really important that you don't have that dynamic in your birth, because it's not possible to feel safe with a provider that doesn't feel safe proceeding with your wishes, because you're not going to feel safe and the provider's not going to feel safe, and that just sets up the situation for failure 100%.
Speaker 2:So at the end of that chapter I throw in 20 questions that everybody should ask their doctor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, check them out and you know what those are 20 questions that we ask a doctor in every single case. So if a doctor's ever been involved in a lawsuit with me, they've been asked these questions, no matter they're an expert or a defendant doctor, whoever it is. But we ask these questions to again figure out who stick them in front of the jury and their answer. Sometimes, you know, I'll use to discredit them, depending on the doctor. It's obviously that would not be a doctor on my side if the case used it to discredit them or maybe even bolster their credibility in case. So these are really important questions that everybody should ask.
Speaker 2:Now I was just asked in a podcast earlier and they were like OK, great thing, I've got this list of questions, but are you going to be worried about offending the doctor? And I'm like what? No, these are not offensive questions. I mean, yeah, you're not deposing him. You know I may be in a situation where I'm deposing a doctor, so I'm like you know an adversarial proceeding. So, yeah, I may be offensive, but the patient, this would not. If a doctor is offended because you're asking them these questions, ok, red flag right, right.
Speaker 1:That is your answer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's a red flag. The doctor is probably not right for you, but you and listen. Here's the deal too, and I said this in another podcast. I'm like take my book in, throw me under the bus, be like I read this book from a childbirth attorney. She only sees the things that go wrong. She has the knowledge and the understanding on how to make it go right, and this is what she wants me to ask you and I've listened to a podcast with Kelly and Gina Mundy said if you don't like it, email her. Yeah, email on my website, GinaMundycom says email Gina. It goes to my phone. I will have it, likely in an hour or two. I will be responding to your doctor. So that's what I say, because there's a lot of things in there, because I do. You just talked about interventions.
Speaker 2:And interventions are incredibly important. Listen, we haven't talked about this. Chapter 11 of my book goes over the most common facts and issues in a baby case. The number one, most common fact in my cases when there's a mistake and complication and baby does not do well is the drug ketosin. That's a huge decision. So I've seen ketosin induction has gone wrong since February 2003. And I mean I've traveled the United States many times, meeting with delivery teams, going over this drug, researching this drug, cross-examining our experts on this drug. I know the drug pamphlet for ketosin, the insert. I know that like the back of my hand. Okay, I know a lot about the drug, so I can tell you exactly how to have a safe ketosin induction. Now listen, doctors universally agree that ketosin is safe during labor. What they don't agree on is how to administer it, and you had said earlier some doctors may be more aggressive with it. Yep, those are my cases. Yeah, so that chapter. I'm a slow and steady, hit your sweet spot kind of chick with ketosin. I love how we're in the same page, though, and it goes over that Like that's what you want and it tells you why.
Speaker 2:Ketosin is a very individualized drug. How you respond to it depends on you. You're going to respond to it differently than somebody else and if you've never had the drug, nobody can tell you how you're going to respond to it. And listen, if the pit goes too high too fast, guess who it hurts? Baby, this is not okay. Anyway, again, you're going to go through my chapter. If you do choose to have an elected ketosin induction, that's your decision. That's fine. If my kids decided to have that, I would be like great sweeties. Just read chapter 14 and talk about it with your doctor. Your doctor may look at that chapter and be like this is great, or your doctor may not.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing Take my book in. If you're kind of nervous or you know you're not, I'm obviously. You can listen to me on the podcast. I'm a huge advocate. I'm an advocate by nature. But if you're not like me and you're like, okay, I want to have a healthy baby and a pertussin induction, take my book in, feel. This is what Gina said. This is how I will. Am I pertussin induction rock? Do you have a problem with this? And if they do, or anybody does, include a different doctor, you can again, you know I'm not a medical professional if you get to see the good and the bad. I only see the bad. So that's why I wrote the book to make sure the stuff's not happening to parents who want to have a healthy baby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and speaking of pertussin, Talking about one of my favorite topics in a word oh my gosh, yeah. So at the hospitals that I work at, we have to document why we're not going up on the pertussin. What?
Speaker 2:okay, start documenting this in your charts. Gina said so. Patient had. The patient had a copy of Gina Mundi's book. I didn't up it. Yeah, oh, and. And at the end you can put in the baby was born healthy, right?
Speaker 1:right because, like you said, when you do hit the sweet spot, the baby is born in the right amount of time and healthy.
Speaker 2:And okay, can I just tell you something, kelly, I don't know if you've read the drug insert, just so you understand. And that drug insert. Number one Big bull letters we do not recommend using pertussin for 39 week induction. Doctors do it anyway. Number two you only need to go up to six to be equivalent to spontaneous. I just I wish you can't video this next time because I wish everybody could watch holy when I talk. It's so fun. She starts like jumping up and down. Somebody else knows within her brain. Okay, kelly, kelly and I again are on the same page. Six is the equivalent to spontaneous labor. There's no reason to go over 10. Okay, this is right and just everybody understands that.
Speaker 2:The pertussin induction is a really easy to understand. Let's just say, you know it's like one and they, you typically have an order to go to 20, so you can do one. Go by one, one, two, three, four or some doctors like to go up by two, two, four, six, eight. So it's actually a very simple discussion that you can have with your doctor. And then, just so you understand, your doctor writes the orders and then nurses, like Kelly, insert. Kelly's amazing at doing a good Pitocin induction. Kelly runs, you run the induction for your patients, right, yeah, so and then you can't. You can net. Oh my gosh, my blood is starting to boil. You know it's, it's hard. I'm like do do? Do hospitals not understand that this is the most my hospitals do? I jump up and down all the time about this and I advocate for just one nurse with one pitocin induction. I don't like one nurse who has two pitocin Inductions. That's too much. Eyes off the prize when that happens. How are you? Are you at your hospital? We?
Speaker 1:go up by two and then we usually have two pitocin inductions per nurse, not because we want to, but because it just what. One of the hospitals that has been actively keeping track of patient acuity and Counts the acuity higher if you have a pitocin induction in the equation. I can't remember how. It's been a while since I've been charged nurse at that hospital but we would have to keep track of the acuity versus the number of nurses and whether that was safe and Justify our staffing. But also then we would talk about do we need to go on diversion? Because we don't have safe staffing ratios and that kind of stuff and so pitocin was considered a one-to-one thing. So if nurses had two patients on pitocin then that started kind of messing up our staffing. The other hospital I work at I don't know I've not been charged nurse at, but we regularly, just because we don't ever go on diversion, since we're Just really a community hospital and people just come in.
Speaker 1:We labor people in the pack, you. We labor people in the Triage area. People come in whether we have a bed or not. It gets to be pretty crazy.
Speaker 1:But I know that the insert is that six is a natural, spontaneous labor and that ten. You shouldn't go past and I, if there's, if we've gotten to ten of pitocin and nothing is happening, we need to do something else. We might want to consider if it's safe to break their water and Kick into natural labor and then perhaps back off of the pitocin, because the body would Pick up where the pitocin wasn't able to, because there are natural Labor hormones that are stimulated when your water breaks and when the baby's head is up against the cervix and you know, your body starts to learn what to do with some of these interventions and we don't need to be cranking the pit All the time. And I just start my. My red flags start to go off between six and ten. I'm like what's going on? What are we gonna do? And then, after ten, I'm like I don't like this, I don't like this anymore.
Speaker 2:You're gonna just die when you read my book. No, no, no, ready, no, I'm not getting you. And again, this is where this is what I'm talking about For audience. You're expecting a baby and you're choosing to have elected the totes an induction. This is where you're gonna take my book to your doctor. Yeah, your doctor's not gonna like this. I know that for sure. Kelly. Kelly will confirm it once I say it.
Speaker 2:I have like these pro tips in my thing, and one of my pro tips is Talk to your doctor about having a maximum dosage of ten in their order. Doctors don't like that. They like a maximum dosage of 20. Yes, so I am like. No, you're gonna tell your doctor that the maximum dosage is 10.
Speaker 2:So that nurse that way, you know, unless you're really super lucky, you had a great nurse like Kelly and there are a bunch of great nurses. But if you don't, you have a newer nurse maybe isn't familiar with the totes and inductions. A lot of my cases are newer Nurses and they're not familiar with the drug and they're just literally following the doctor's orders like a robot, like they're supposed to. They don't understand. Yet it takes time for a nurse to be a good labor and delivery nurse. But so it's important that in my book I'm like nope, I'm capping out 10 and listen, if you did need more or whatever, that nurse can't give it to you without talking to your doctor. Now your doctor has to write another order, but you know what happened then.
Speaker 2:At 10, doctor and nurse have a discussion about your labor and delivery. How are you doing? It Also forces them to read group and see what's going on with your labor. So there's a million reasons why just stuck. I call it magic number 10 in my book. I'm like I I wouldn't go over 10. If you want to, that's fine, but have your doctor stop that order and literally, if your doctor has not had a patient yet, he's read my book and tell them that they're probably gonna go wide-eyed. Just be ready for it. And again, that's why you just fold my book and you know, tell me, you know me, if they haven't yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I feel like every labor and delivery nurse that listens to this is gonna be cheering. We all know that. You know there's other things that need to be done. For if you're at 10 a pit probably. The next steps would be, you know, find other ways to stimulate labor. Often the next steps are break your water.
Speaker 1:But if that's not something that the patient wants to do at the time, you know we could talk about position changes and like moving, and there's there's so many things that your labor and delivery nurse Can help you do, or if you have a doula that can help you do to get your labor Moving. But then, like you said, what is holding the baby up? If we're, if we're at Potosin of 10 and you're not feeling the contractions and we're not adequate and all of that stuff, what's? What's going on? Is the baby too high in your pelvis? Is there an anatomical structure that's in the way? Like we need to maybe start considering what's going on? So, yeah, it just raises a lot of questions whenever, whenever we start going past 10, at least in my brain.
Speaker 2:No, I love it and I loved your comment. I you know so much. I just love it because after they say, after 10, your body. So you have your natural Axi-toesin that your body produces, and then you have this synthetic drug, you know the toast, and that mimics the axi toast and you put the toast and then your system that activates your body to release Axi toast. And so they say there's a big study that came out as the last thing I published in my book that basically if you go over 10 You're on oxytocin, the toast in overdrive again. That's not good for baby.
Speaker 2:But listen, you said a couple things that I'd want to comment on because they are important decisions, but chapter 11 again goes over common issues, common facts in a baby case. One of the most common issues in my cases are facts. It's a maybe different point issue, but a fact is that when there is a mistake, where there's a complication, it is Typically almost always after mom's water breaks, so that it's actually a an incredibly important decision because Until that happens, your baby is chilling out, they're pretty comfy. When you drain the water out of their home, they're the uterus. Then it changes that environment that the baby's in and then they become more vulnerable to something happening. So just keep that in mind, that if your doctor makes that recommendation, you want to ask them why and make sure there's a medical reason for it. And again, if your doctor's like, what's the big deal? Show them chapter 11 of my book, gina Mundi. That's a huge decision that people don't realize unless you're in. You know my profession. And then another thing that you'd say you said the community hospital and you guys don't turn anybody down. You're now. You're making me shake and like. And Again, this is chapter 11 of my book. This is so incredibly important when mistakes and complications occur.
Speaker 2:It is also a very busy labor and delivery unit, so everybody's running hard. They're thinned out. I mean, if you roll up to labor and delivery and they're jammed and you get stuck in an extra bedroom or an extra room, I mean at that point you just got to be really careful and that's why it is I Just so you know. Also, you said a magic word that I love. I love doulas. As a child birth attorney, I have never had a doula involved in a case. I have reviewed millions of records. A doula's I have never been, ever even mentioned in a case. And listen. Just so everyone understands A doula would be effective in a case is if she even spoke to the mom during pregnancy or childbirth, let alone step in a room. So doulas are amazing advocates. Especially if you roll up and that unit is busy, I mean you have this person. If you have a good doula man, there's nothing that needs a good doula.
Speaker 2:And obviously when the childbirth attorney knows nothing. Well, I do now, ever since you know publishing a book and whatnot, but I did not know much about doulas before publishing my book. And that is huge. And the childbirth attorney only sees the band stuff. There's another thing about doulas. Yeah, doulas are helping to bring babies safely into this world. So if you have access to a good doula, to me childbirth attorney no brainer, like my kids, I've already picked out the doulas Good, I'm just saying you cannot be a good doula and they will help you. Now my book, chapter seven. I do have a baby advocate that could be a doula. If you don't have access to a doula, or you can't find a good one, or whatever the reason is, I do recommend designating somebody to be your advocate. Have your husband do it, have your mom do it. Grandmas, grandmas make the best advocates because I wrote the book so I have healthy grandkids. Yeah, so, grandmas, you should read my Amazon reviews and grandmas, they just love my book.
Speaker 2:That makes sense because I kind of don't get my grandma perspective right, yeah, but ever since I've been doing the packgast too, a lot of people are like, well, the husbands don't really know what to do and they're just confused. And I'm like, okay, so your husband just curls up in the corner in the fetal position during a childbirth. Sometimes that is not hot. Okay, no, listen, instinctively a husband should want to protect his wife and his baby, and I can tell you I mean, I get it Up until this point. I don't think there was a book that told them how to do it. My book does. My book will help guide them so they can be there for you and they can help you make those good decisions. And you know what you are going to look in so much more if he's there protecting you and not sitting in the corner rocking back and forth. Yeah, you know the tangent I keep. That's what moms keep telling me or passing out Knock that off, man. You guys play this for your husband. Gina Mundy said that is not hot, it's not.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness. Yes, the ones that are at the bedside, like going through it. That's amazing. All too many of them are just like chilling, playing Candy Crush or just passed out in fetal position.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's a fact to the families in these cases, when after the birth of their baby, and then they have to meet me, it's a hard day, and when I talk to them it's even harder because they know every single thing about childbirth and what happened to their baby, to the point where they know and I know If they would have known this before their baby was born, they wouldn't be sitting there talking to me. It's absolutely heart-wrenching.
Speaker 1:Right Before I became a parent, I didn't know how much free time I had. You know that's great. That's great. Gina and Kelly want to remind you that now is the most time you're ever going to have in your life. So please prepare for your future because your baby is your new career. Most people don't know that going into it, but you are starting a new career and it's going to take more time than your current career and you're going to not know how you're doing it and I guarantee you you don't want to deal with birth trauma or anything even worse than that physical trauma or fatalities because you tried to bring a baby into the world. You want to be able to get to that next chapter of your life because you have prepared fully and you understand the process. And then you've also prepared for parenting as well. But for the scope of this podcast, we're talking about preparing for your birth. I'm also advocating preparing for parenting as much as possible and picking out your pediatrician, just like you're going to pick out your OB, and making sure that they know their stuff and that they're going to be your advocate. All of that is so important. But you wouldn't prepare for a career with just going to a three-hour class and seeing your boss 15 minutes every week. That's not how you prepare for a new career. So why would you prepare for your new career in parenting or in birthing a child and then parenting, by going to a three-hour birthing class and seeing your OB 15 minutes a week? That none of that makes sense. If we're talking about a hospital birth, you wouldn't, for instance, go into get treatment for cancer without knowing your options and fully deciding and having empowered decisions and figuring out how the next steps of your life are going to go with this new life-altering diagnosis. Well, birth is life-altering. You're going to have a new human to care for. You've never done that before. So why are we not putting the same amount of thought and consideration into that as we would if we were going in for a life-altering medical diagnosis and not to medicalize birth? But if someone is preparing for a home birth or for a birth center birth and they're going to see a midwife, the level of preparation that will be expected of them is so much more than what you would do to prepare for a hospital birth, and it's like you give away your power to the hospital to go ahead and just do the birthing thing and you'd go in not knowing what you're signing up for, whereas if you're going to prepare for a natural birth, that is a marathon that you need to physically and mentally prepare for and people that have made that choice physically and mentally prepare for it and they spend hours and hours, and hours and hours and months doing that and they have to demonstrate that accountability to their birth team so that they can all work together and stay safe. Why are we not doing that for hospital birth? It's a different mindset that you're turning over all the authority to the hospital or the provider or the team and then suddenly what I see are people wanting to take back that authority because they don't feel empowered. But they don't know how because they haven't empowered themselves. So it's so frustrating to see people who have obviously not prepared have a horrible experience when it totally could have been prevented, whether or not there's a negative outcome, because you can have a completely normal birth and I'm an example of that.
Speaker 1:My first birth and my second birth are very similar, but my first birth cost me trauma. My second birth did not and I had more interventions in my second birth, but they were empowered. I made those choices versus the choices were made for me in my first birth, and I look back at my chart and I agree with the choices that were made. It wasn't what I wanted, but I wasn't fully knowledgeable, and when I realized what happened with my natural labor process and all of those other things in the cascade that led to the interventions, I understand how that occurred in my second birth, and when it started to happen again, I knew what needed to happen in order to keep me and my baby safe, and so it felt empowered and my brain could keep up with what my body was doing, versus my brain couldn't keep up, because people were doing things to my body that I didn't understand, and that's what causes trauma Wow.
Speaker 2:You look at dream come true Now, thank you. You're freaking brilliant and doing all of these amazing things for your listeners. Okay, everybody realized Kelly's like busy mom, busy working with her delivery here and has this amazing podcast. So people like you can have healthy babies.
Speaker 1:So my good new home. Thank you for coming out with this book, because I didn't get a chance to read it. But you know what I was waiting for? The audio book, because I'm a audio book listener. But I'm going to buy it and bring it to the unit.
Speaker 2:Oh thank you.
Speaker 1:You know, I had six of kids.
Speaker 2:You can point to her, to the doctors.
Speaker 1:How do you sell books to nurses? You tell them that six of pit is optimal.
Speaker 2:Six is perfect. That's all you need done Adopt. So I have a labor and delivery nurse and it was funny. She I have no idea who she is. She's actually absolutely amazing. I was just going through Instagram and she tagged me I think that's why it was in my news feed and she's doing a review of my book and I wrote down. So it was a good review.
Speaker 2:She says not only should patients read it, but everybody on the delivery team doctors, nurse everybody should read this book. So then I wrote like hey, thank you. Yeah, then you know, then it's so sweet, I really appreciate it. And so she actually messaged me personally and she was like listen, I make traveling labor and delivery nurse. She goes, I take your book to every single hospital and she goes and I leave it at the nurses station so we can all go through it all the time. And I'm like stop, and yeah, she takes it to. She doesn't leave her. Like, if she goes to work, she takes my book with her. So, yeah, I mean take the book, show it to your hospital, show it to your doctors. You know, this is why I'm not increasing the fatigues in right here, and this is why I don't want to go about 10 right here. Again, email me if they have an issue and, by the way, the audio book should be on hearts 15.
Speaker 1:So if you, do that, yeah, but even it sounds like I need to like be highlighting some things, so it's like what kind of book is it? Is it a workbook? It sounds more like a workbook. And here you go.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's going to be at the nurses station. I'll be buying two copies.
Speaker 1:And I love travel nurses. They know their stuff because they have to protect themselves. Their entire career requires them to consistently protect their license because every hospital is just so different and so you know, if you walk in and you're brand new and you only get like a couple days of training and then you're expected to be like a top notch nurse, you have to protect your license.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she's doing it. And you know what I bet I even asked her. I should ask her, like, have you had to like pull it out and show a doctor, show a hospital, and why you're not doing something in my book?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I heard the thing about the six of pit being the optimal level that mimics the body's spontaneous labor. Yes, but I didn't know that it came directly from the drug insert. So I need to get. Because we don't get the drug insert, we don't have just Google and print it out. Okay, well, I'm going to Easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah no, you can just literally Google the pitosa and felicitin moms. That's a great point. There you go. If you were going to I actually you know what, don't read it. I, I, everything you know from the drive, you know like a sun I read it. It's kind of eye-opening.
Speaker 1:You may not get an electric induction.
Speaker 2:If you read it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:If you want to, you can Google it. I went to the drug insert. I pulled out everything I thought was important and then wrote it more in my plain language. So everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's probably better. Yeah, well, I'm going to be printing it off, but because this is an argument you know, I mean this is what goes around and around with the nurses, because we're like, why are we pushing this? Like, why are we going faster? Why, because I work at. It says like 20 to 30 minutes is how often we go up on the pitocin, so they're a little bit of the way. The other one is 15. Stop it.
Speaker 2:No, you know what I? I may start just heading straight to these hospitals. That's great Audience, pure insanity. That's pure insanity there and I have it in there Again. This is where this, I bet you this is why that but first takes my book everywhere so your body it can take. Oh, I hate to quote it because I it's not 15 minutes. Your body has to take time to react to that pitocin and kind of hit that steady state of the pitocin is, I think what they call it. It's way more than 15 minutes, it's like an hour or something, I don't know. I quilt the study. I cite the study because I did like, and there's a few studies that have been kind of all of it aborts. I actually I think I cited a couple of the studies but no, the 15 minutes is not enough time and that's going to take your body into oxytocin, pitocin overdrive and that is just really, really bad for baby, as I've seen in my cases for 21 years.
Speaker 1:Well, and to kind of get off on a little bit of a tangent, there's some other reasons that it's not great to be pumping somebody full of pitocin. One is we know that it increases their risk for hemorrhage afterwards because it tires out the uterus. I've heard a lot of comments about it overloading the pitocin sensors, but I'm not. I haven't been able to find evidence of that, and what we want is uterine tetany after delivery. But what happens is if you are giving too much pitocin, it causes uterine atony, because you can't throw more pitocin at a tired out uterus that's already got its pitocin sensors full and so then it causes problems. Then we have to do more interventions, like the medications like methadone, hemivate, mesoprostil. We use tranhexamic acid now just to continue to clot what's already clotted, and then we have the potential of needing a blood transfusion or going back to the OR for a DNC or a hysterectomy or, if you're lucky, you're at a hospital. They do uterine artery embolism. Now we have things like the JEDA that help stop the hemorrhages and that's stopping things a lot faster. But they're expensive, they're invasive and let's just not get there. Yeah, why, when we could just be doing optimal levels of pitocin and then asking what next in that situation.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing is that I've heard, when I've interviewed midwives for my podcast before, they've talked about the endogenous pitocin and what it does to the brain and the connection with the baby versus synthetic or exogenous pitocin.
Speaker 1:So endogenous is internal pitocin, like your natural body secreting the hormone in a response to the natural occurring labor processes and also afterwards having that contact with your baby. There's thought in, I believe, studies that have started to realize that having that external pitocin or the synthetic pitocin can kind of mess that up. And so then we end up having issues with breastfeeding and bonding and all of that stuff, because it doesn't necessarily affect the brain in the same way that the internal or endogenous pitocin does. So it's a drug Just like every other drug. There's benefits in their strawbacks, and so why are we overdosing? You wouldn't give somebody a maximum dose of Tylenol for a little bitty headache. So then why would we do the same thing for an induction if we just waited to see how the patient responded? So I just don't really know why we're cranking things as much as we are forcing things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, after I published the book and then I've been on the podcast talking to a lot of people about my book. I keep hearing about these postpartum issues and the breastfeeding pitocin. I don't know anything about that but I'll just let your audience know. I mean, this is I keep hearing this a lot Like people keep asking me about it. I'm going to look more into it, but it's done just making a form decision and I think something that's important we haven't talked about.
Speaker 2:We keep talking about interventions and something that is so incredibly important is spontaneous vaginal birth is rarely in my cases. So if you can do that, I may spontaneous vaginal birth kind of check because of what I've seen Rarely, rarely do I have a case Again for the past 21 years. I need to keep saying that, but I've been around a long time doing this that involves a spontaneous vaginal birth. So that is. That's a great option. As a childbirth attorney, definitely I would be telling my kids that is number one. That is what I prefer for my grandkids. Obviously, you have to have the post-in. You go to chapter 14. But those interventions, man, that's. That's what stuff goes wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not. Yeah, it's not by leaving the body alone. Usually, I mean, unless you have a medical reason, like if you're preclamatic and your blood pressures sky high well, we don't have a choice. So there's a lot going on there, but I think, for the most part, what we're talking about is elective inductions that go wrong, and then the other ones that are medically necessary because we're trying to save the mom and the baby's life. You know, it is more, a little bit more important to move things along, especially if we're talking about high blood pressure.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's why it is so important, if you're pregnant, that you do learn about the TOSEN, maybe listening to this podcast and being like heck, no TOSEN is not coming anywhere near my baby. Listen, that might not be the case. That's very hard to plan out childbirth, pregnancy or anything. You have to be ready to pivot if you need to. I tell a story is the introduction to the book. But my niece, she was 38 weeks pregnant. Her mom calls me, which is my sister named Kelly by the way, aww, I know that.
Speaker 2:And so he said Kelly and Gina. And I'm like that's why I grew up with only 15 months of care. Aww, and now yeah, so we're really tight. So Sam's like my other daughter, she's having the first baby of our next generation at you know two. She's actually the reason I stopped in my tracks and moved to Florida.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And. But she was 38 weeks pregnant and she was really sick and I am like they were like should she go to an IV clinic and get an IV, or should she go to the hospital and get an IV or get checked out? I'm like to the hospital, I get it, she's not feeling well, but I want baby checked out because if she's she was doing, she's in pretty bad shape. I'm like I need baby on a fetal monitor immediately if she is that bad, because your baby's inside you. It's hard to tell how baby's doing. You know mom. You look at mom and you're like, oh, you're in pain, you can talk, mom communicates, you guys make a plan, it's all good, baby's much different. So I'm like, go up, check on baby. And they did. She did.
Speaker 2:She's 38 weeks pregnant and baby was not doing well and she was given the oxygen, c-section or pitocin induction. And then obviously, at that point my phone just started going crazy because of those two accidents. But no, she just wanted a spontaneous vaginal birth and she was just, she was not ready for anything. She's like what's pitocin? I'm like what's pitocin? And I'm like, oh my gosh, you know and I just my case is this, yeah, and it was a scary birth. Yeah, we actually, at the end of that, went about 20 minutes not knowing how the baby was going to be. Okay, it played out just like my case is.
Speaker 2:It was awful and it stopped me in my tracks and basically initially, when my sister had called, we thought she was it was March 17, 2022. I couldn't drink because then it was the same padding stay right, couldn't have my back to home or green beer because I was waiting for her. So I'm like, yay, five o'clock, my phone ran, perfect timing, right and I have my cocktail. And instead it was my sister hysterically screaming on the phone and I am like I ran outside, away from my family, so they couldn't hear her.
Speaker 2:I knew and I went from like this legal analysis of what had happened during labor to like the human analysis, because when I talk to the family, they always describe this transitional period. They have their before life, before their baby was born, and they have their after baby was born, like their two separate lives and it's that point in time where their life changes forever and I'm like this is how the families feel is this our transitional point or is our lives going to be changed forever? And obviously we got news that baby was going to be okay, but it was that minute that stopped me in my track. It took me out of my legal head and it went into this human experience, human emotion, and I'm like I got to start writing this stuff down. I don't know too much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and it's just. I think the most important part that you mentioned was, yes, the normal, spontaneous vaginal delivery is the best. That is the best option. That's what I want for. I wish that on everybody. However, there's a moment sometimes when that gets taken off the table. And if you've continued to plan for a normal, spontaneous vaginal delivery but not considered what your backup plan is if that gets taken off the table and not gotten really comfortable with those options and understanding what your comfort level is with some of those options like we're talking about, like the six of pit, and then we'll have a conversation, or the 10 of pit, and then we'll have a conversation. Or let's talk about whether it's medically necessary to break my water or whether we're doing this to get the labor moving. Let's talk about the position of the baby's head in my pelvis before we break my water, because that makes a difference, because the higher up the baby is, the more likely to have a cord prolapse. Or let's talk about how far I am in labor and whether or not we think that I might end up having my water broken for too long and introduce infection risks and that kind of thing. I mean it's nothing is 100% benign. So it's important to know how these tools can help you and how these tools can hurt you, because they're all just tools that your doctor is using to progress your labor. But you get a choice on how you want to utilize the tools as well, and you and your doctor should be having a conversation. It should be informed.
Speaker 1:Consent is really important. Shared decision-making so that everybody is on the same page and feels comfortable. And while the doctor is the head of the delivery team, you also are the head of the delivery team. You are the patient, the consumer. It's your body. You have autonomy. You get to say yes or no. But in saying yes or no, please don't do it arbitrarily. Please don't make it fear-based. Please make it educated, so that you know exactly what your limits are, what your desires are, what your goals are, and you've really sat with a lot of these possibilities and decided how you're going to handle them. Because that's how you enter the birth space empowered, not by kiting from them and trusting your doctor so completely that you think that they're going to make the right decision for you. Yes, you should trust your doctor, but because they've proven that they're trustworthy and because you've had conversations and you understand how they plan to react in your birth. I just think it's so important and I think that so many people unfortunately don't take the time to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't even know how to respond to that. I don't even know if I can. That is so well said. So you know I wrote also. You haven't talked about this, but I did do a chapter on having a plan. My spin on it as the attorney is obviously different because, you know, this is not your normal pregnancy book. Having a plan is one of the big lessons in the cases.
Speaker 2:So you can understand decisions you may have to make, you can marinate in those decisions, and it's important that you do that in the comfort of your own home where you can listen to great podcasts like this. I mean, I can't even I haven't listened to all your episodes but you must be just full of information. These are decisions you may have to make, and so knowing the good, knowing the bad, is so incredibly important. But to read my book, you listen to podcasts like this. Maybe you have a doula or doula I love them, they're just great educators and you have somebody, a coach or whatnot, and you just go through and you understand and you take the time.
Speaker 2:You know when we say create a plan, how long does your wedding take to Exactly Plan? Right, or take some time, yeah, plan it, get it all out. And that way you're not going to be a deer in the headlights if you have to make a really big decision. Because that element of surprise, it's like you cannot focus. Well, you can't focus. You're going to be careful, you're not going to make great decisions. And fear. Fear is the unknown. How do you overcome fear? Understand something, you learn about it, you take the power of knowledge, and that will get rid of your fear. People will be like oh, isn't your book going to instill fear into people? I say listen, fear is the unknown. I am trying to provide them with information so there is no fear. They can make those good decisions to have a healthy baby.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, I did have six pregnant beta readers read my book before it was published and my number one question to them was is this book scary?
Speaker 2:All six pregnant beta readers who finally all had their babies, by the way all had nice, healthy babies and they were like Gina, this is not scary at all. Even in the book I talk about, I took to pregnant people all the time because of what I do. I get phone calls from labor and delivery. So I can tell you really, in my career, how I talk to somebody who was expecting is completely different than how I talk to them now. I was very just matter of fact Well, you can't really be exactly matter of fact when you have somebody carrying a baby. So I learned very quickly on how to speak to them without getting too scary or whatever, because what I'm trying to tell people is so incredibly important it could literally save their babies. So I obviously talk in a way that's more preventative, proactive, and that's also because my book is not about what can go wrong, it's how to make sure it goes right.
Speaker 1:I've started to encourage people to have birth preferences rather than a birth plan, because I feel like it's a misnomer.
Speaker 1:Because nobody can plan. You can consider your options, but you can't plan for how everything is going to go. But if this happens, then I'd like to go with this option. If this option is not available, I'd like to go with this option. You have to be able to make those decisions and you have to know what they are before you make them.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I think is really important is to ask yourself get really honest with how you want to feel in your birth. Because if you say that you want to feel calm and empowered and joyful, how does that happen? If you feel fear, if you feel unconfident in your decision making, if you feel like you don't know how it's going to go, if you don't feel comfortable in that space, you're not going to feel calm, confident, empowered and joyful. You're just going to be scared. So why would you go into the birth space not prepared and setting yourself up to feel those negative feelings? And then, if you were in a position that is that vulnerable as you are when you are exposing your private parts to deliver a baby, that is, up until the time they come out of your body, essentially part of you, and then that part of you has to live on the outside of your body. I can't think of anything else more vulnerable than that. So then, if you haven't really focused on how you want to feel in that space and what steps you need to take to feel empowered and not so vulnerable and to be able to continue to use the frontal lobe of your brain because what happens is that part checks out when you're in labor and all of those things are happening and you get so primal you can't actually focus and think. You need to have thought that through before. It needs to be an instinct when you make those decisions.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that I think is so important that I actually did an episode on is stress and labor do not mix. So if you want to have that normal, spontaneous vaginal delivery, you have to feel safe period. There is no way that your body can do it. It needs to do if you feel terror, if you feel like I mean, your body is not made to run away from a tiger while you're giving birth. It doesn't work.
Speaker 1:You see animals go find a safe space to deliver and then they'll stop what they're doing if they no longer feel safe and they'll move to another safe space. But humans are mammals and it works the same way. If you have a doctor that's scaring you and increasing your cortisol levels and making you feel stressed out, your body's not gonna feel safe enough to put itself in that vulnerable position where you are going to deliver probably the most important human in your life. You're not gonna bring that child on the outside of your body where you no longer feel like you're protecting it. Your body's not gonna do that. So you have to plan to feel safe in that space and if you haven't gone through all the options and something comes up that scares you, your body's not gonna be able to do what needs to do.
Speaker 2:Those are such great points. That's so true and actually just so, baby lawyers typically have C-sections for that reason because we can't unsee what we've seen, we can't unknow what we know, so we typically have to have C-sections. So in 2004, when I had my first baby, my friends that were also giving birth, that were baby lawyers. So back then, just so you understand, elected C-sections were still looked down upon. So my friend was like I talked to my doctor, I'm like I'm just not gonna be able to relax, I just want a C-section. And they're like no, that's not a reason to have a C-section. And I really did. Like my doctor, he was very conservative and he's like Gina, you can do it. So I'm playing this mental game in my head and whatnot. And then my girlfriend's like just tell your doctor, you have herpes. She's like back in 2004, you had herpes, they just sectioned you. So I'm like I don't have herpes in my medical records, I don't have herpes. She's like well, I told my doctor I had herpes and I'm getting a C-section. And she did. She got her lactate C-section at 39 weeks, whatever. Then there's me. So my doctor won't schedule it. And he's like Gina, let's just see, let's just see.
Speaker 2:So I wake up April 4th 2004. So 4404 in hard for labor with my first baby and I was always an exhausted person because I was wearing a heart always run hard and so I don't know why, I didn't feel any actual contractions. But I woke up and straight up wanted to push the baby out, breathing through contractions and we had went to the hospital. If that was convinced, I was literally gonna have the baby in the car. And I get there and yeah, just everything just started freaking me out because again, just of what I know, it's very different.
Speaker 2:But babies are great, dr. Couple of times the doctor is like oh, what is section you? I don't think you can have the baby Gina vaginally because you can't relax and I'm like I'm sorry, do you know what I do? I know it's a problem, I get it. Even after that it's obviously and actually I have a male birth trauma. It's a journey and he had his wife do an elective cease. Now they're more acceptable. Obviously His wife had an elective C-section Like he couldn't handle it even as the husband or dad.
Speaker 2:He's like no, no, yeah, you have to be comfortable in order to do that. You cannot be stressed out and cannot be in fight or flight mode with her Mm-hmm, and just to clarify, we're not recommending elective C-sections.
Speaker 1:However, if that is your choice, no, we're not. We're supporting your choice.
Speaker 2:Yeah it was, how you know, that comment was off. Stress plus labor doesn't mess. Yeah, yeah, mental psychies of baby lawyers is.
Speaker 1:But I'll tell you.
Speaker 2:So you know it was nice to go into labor because if you were anything like me, you look down and you're like ah, or apathy has to come out of me.
Speaker 2:And when you, when I woke up that day and hard for labor, I'm like the baby out, just get the baby out, just get the. You know like it was this weird feeling. You know it's like you're having contractions, your body response, but mentally you want the pain to stop eventually. So you're just like get the baby out, get the baby out. It's interesting because then I had two scheduled elective C-sections after that and I definitely because I definitely could not to be that vaginal birth after C-section, just because again me, and so I had the scheduled C-section, so I would go into the hospital have a C-section and it was so eerie that was.
Speaker 2:It was like you know, you're just like, okay, they're just there, do surgery and cut the baby out. Okay, so you?
Speaker 1:know it is.
Speaker 2:It was definitely mentally like it was nice to go into labor because you're just like get the baby out. It was definitely harder to you know have an elective C-section mentally because you don't have those normal body tubes.
Speaker 1:The baby out.
Speaker 2:Actually I wrote that in my book that the mental psyche, because I do have a chapter on C-section and I did do the difference of the mental psyche and going into labor versus not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, and there's benefits and drawbacks to everything and it's so important to know where you land on all of that and so that you knew what you want was great. And I know people that I don't know very many, but I know people that choose an elective C-section just because that's their comfort level. Now, there's definitely risks to a C-section. It's a major abdominal surgery, you're gonna use anesthesia, but that doesn't mean that you're wrong for wanting one. So just knowing where you land and where your comfort zone is really, really, really important. And that only comes from knowledge and looking for that knowledge and seeking it out and wrapping your head around it and processing and all the things you need to do to make informed decisions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. And you know my kids too. I would never tell my kids to have an elective C-section.
Speaker 2:You know that's because of what I know, not ever tell them so same thing with your audience. I would never tell you guys to have it. It was just me. You know me personally, but you know again, that's just a bring. That nieces-straightful circle that day on the PORKS really stuck with me. And then the thought of not being around my kids, you know, for the birth of my grandkids sat in because obviously how I would prepare them is completely different than how like a normal family would prepare. So that's what happened is I actually was like for my kids, I'm like what if I'm 1100 miles away from them that day? That's how far I was, 1100 miles from Sam that day.
Speaker 2:I don't know if they said that, so I couldn't get up to the hospital or anything. So that's what happened. And then I'm like, once I'm writing, and then that's when I'm like, oh my goodness, I know a lot of information that is not out there that can help families have a healthy baby, and it's all stuff that just right in line with what you're saying, kelly. So I just absolutely love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, Gina, is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that we didn't cover?
Speaker 2:No, we've covered a lot. Yeah, can I tell your audience that chapter one of my book is on my website for free.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:No, I couldn't, did I, and I'm like that was a little over an hour ago.
Speaker 1:So I came over.
Speaker 2:No, I think that last that is so incredibly important, that chapter, that I just keep it up there that way, if you just want to go through the lessons and then each lesson is a subsequent chapter. So chapter one learn about labor and delivery. So then chapter two then is what I believe is important about labor and delivery. That will give parents a good basis to help them make some good decisions during labor. So go there and then you can check that out and definitely in the subsequent chapters like that's really where I here's the lesson you can learn from it, but then the chapters will go through. Okay, this is how to make sure you have a healthy baby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just as a reminder, where can they find that? What's your website?
Speaker 2:Oh, ginamundicom, g-i-n-a-m-u-n-d-ycom, and these days, if you just Google it, yeah. I'll put it in the show notes as well you know if you Googled me one year ago today, like nothing popped up, like they Google, like who the heck is Gina Mundi? Now you know, you know you publish a book. You're out there advocating for healthy babies. Google's like this is Gina Mundi. But then again, I guess I didn't have my website back then. But no, just being like, I think, a lot of shows and podcasts and just books and out there, just kind of changed some stuff.
Speaker 1:Absolutely healthy babies.
Speaker 2:I would prefer not to have a job.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly Like. It'd be really lovely if we could just like retire on a beach, knowing that everybody has a safe and joyful and non-traumatic delivery. That'd be great.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm good, please put me out of business. Yes, do it. I'd be so incredibly happy if I did not have a job.
Speaker 1:So no, gina and Kelly want to retire together in Bali. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:There you go right. Yeah, no, I'm still a partner in a law firm and I checked my email today and I got records in on a new case.
Speaker 1:So it's still happening. Yeah Well, I hope the case slowed slows down because the book purchasing has gone up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will watch me. I'm keeping track, yeah, of the correlation. I'll tell you. And then, if you go to my Amazon reviews, like I read one on Tuesday, february 6th 2024, you can look it up. But I woke up 3 am. I get up every day at 3 am, by the way, and I yeah. You need to talk to you about how you do that Because, yeah, you know what? I ended up loving it. Well, I had to write the book in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2:I'm still a partner in a law firm. You know I'm still in my husband's busy business owner. This week my kids like I don't want her out lunch anymore. I'm like we don't have any food here. You know it's like walk to the store. You know we have leftovers Right.
Speaker 1:What do you think we're gonna take? This isn't a store.
Speaker 2:Right and I had to pack cold wine so I was like I can't put one more thing on my plate. But no, so I woke up at 3 am on Tuesday and there was a review from that day. So I don't know where she is and I don't know anything about it, but she basically was like you know, I had a healthy baby, a perfect baby girl, yesterday. So she had the baby the day before. She went through in that review how my book helped her and it's a pretty long review and I just I actually or you can go to at Gina Mundy on Instagram I actually posted that review on Instagram. It has to be three, whatever. It's a video, but I just cried, yeah, and she's just like everybody passed day of this book, but it was. When you're out there doing it. It's amazing to read those reviews. I get a lot of dad reviews, by the way.
Speaker 1:Because of that chapter, the ones that are in the fatal position?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the ones that are not. The cool dads yeah, cool dads, leave me reviews. So I'm going to actually go over the dad reviews. And then grandma reviews yeah, grandma's folks.
Speaker 1:Definitely Well, gina. Thank you so much. It has been so informative and eye opening and enlightening. I'm really glad that we connected and I'm really glad that my listeners got to hear what you have to say about having a safe hospital birth.
Speaker 2:Well, kelly, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed today's conversation and I just love how we're on the same page Out there trying to help families have a healthy baby, and you are awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1:Welcome to you.
