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
Amy Suzanne on Resilience, Motherhood, and Building Pink Stork
Discover the extraordinary journey of Amy Suzanne, the founder and CEO of Pink Stork, as she navigates the trials of infertility, debilitating nausea and vomiting, and life threatening sepsis—all while supporting her husband during military deployments. Amy's inspiring tale of resilience and faith takes center stage as she shares how her battles with hyperemesis gravidarum led to the creation of Pink Stork, a company dedicated to women's health. Through her personal story, Amy illustrates the transformative power of holistic approaches in her own pregnancies, turning her despair into a mission to help other women.
We also dive deep into the essentials of holistic pregnancy support. From the significance of vitamins and minerals like iron, folate, and magnesium, to the benefits of prenatal vitamins and herbs such as red raspberry leaf tea, we cover it all. Learn about the impact of magnesium supplements on preterm labor and the importance of understanding unique nutritional needs, including those related to MTHFR deficiency. Finally, celebrate the beautiful chaos of early motherhood with Amy, who turned her personal challenges into a thriving business that supports moms worldwide with products available on Amazon, Target, Walmart, and their website. This episode is a heartfelt tribute to the community of mothers standing strong together.
Connect with Amy!
https://www.instagram.com/amy.suzanne_
https://linktr.ee/amysuzanne
Find her products at https://pinkstork.com/
Coaching offer
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 Amy Suzanne. Amy is the founder and CEO of Pink Stork, a women-owned and women-operated company supporting women on their journey to motherhood. But more so, she is a wife and a mama to six kids whose motherhood journey has been filled with obstacles, from infertility, severe morning sickness and a deathbed scare, all with military deployments complicating these challenges. The most recent part of her journey has been navigating, raising her youngest, maximilian, who has Down syndrome. Through this she has learned that we can all make a difference in the world and she desires to advocate for the Down syndrome community. Amy, welcome and thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1:Hi, thanks so much for having me on your show. I am so excited to hear I mean, I can't even imagine having six kids too was hard enough for me but I want to hear about your journeys and how that has led to, how you're showing up in the world, your company, the advocacy, all of that and how you manage to balance all of it. I have a lot of friends that are military. I have a lot of friends that have had lots of challenges through their pregnancy. Obviously, I'm a labor nurse, so I've seen all the challenges and my goal in life is to validate everybody's birth experience and motherhood experience and try to help everybody show up for each other. So I'm really excited because you are so a part of that.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to share and hopefully someone can get some inspiration and learn a little bit. But yes, every story is so unique, every body is so unique.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so tell me how it all started out. Did you have the infertility right off the bat?
Speaker 2:So growing up I always struggled with like irregular cycles. And my doctor had told me like you were going to probably not be able to have kids, and so no one really thinks about that. When you're 16 years old, you're just you know, go along your merry way.
Speaker 2:And I obviously got married to my husband. It was kind of like one of those conversations. I was like I'm not really sure if I'm going to be able to have kids. I kind of come to it, except that I guess without much questioning. And anyways, lo and behold, two weeks after we got married I found out I was pregnant. My insurance company called me and said oh, by the way, you're pregnant. I was like I was getting on military insurance. I was like, oh, are you sure? Because I think there must be a mix-up, there's no possible way. My doctor said this wouldn't happen. Anyways, I was and yeah, that kind of started my then journey into motherhood.
Speaker 2:I very quickly found myself in and out of the hospital. I was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, which I believe 1% of the population gets, and I just explain it as extreme morning sickness. So I wasn't able to keep anything down. I had feeding tubes, I had medicine being pumped inside my body just to be able to stay hydrated and stay alive, and then at one point I caught sepsis. My PICC line got infected with a very rare bacteria from Afghanistan. Like I said, my husband was like in and out of the military. I don't know how this stuff happens. I can't make it up either. It's crazy. God works in mysterious ways and, long story short, it was just a very challenging time, mentally, physically, spiritually. I felt like I had no control over what was happening. I didn't have any control and it was just a challenging time.
Speaker 2:I ended up delivering a healthy baby boy. He was premature, but I got through it all and then I very quickly found out that I was pregnant again, like 10 weeks later. So at this point I'm this big around, I have a newborn. I just moved to. We moved to Hawaii, which sounds great. You're getting stationed in Hawaii. You've have a newborn. I just moved to. We moved to Hawaii, which sounds great. You know you're getting stationed in Hawaii, you've got a newborn, you know you're ready to get your life on track and then, like wham, I get hyperemesis again. So I ended up actually doing this four more times. We're just moving all around the country and I get pregnant four times. I have hyperemesis each time, but actually the fourth time was kind of when I was done.
Speaker 2:I was like I was high risk with all my pregnancies. I was in and out of the hospital. I was relying on complete strangers just to help me with my other kids. It was just a hot mess, to say the least, and I just I was so angry, I didn't understand why God was doing this Like what. I. Just I was so angry, I didn't understand why God was doing this Like what. I just I didn't understand what was happening.
Speaker 2:So with my fourth pregnancy, I decided I'm going to do things really differently and I knew what was coming. I knew I just found out I was pregnant and I was like let's. I got with my team of doctors and my mom, who was a nurse, and we were like, let's, let's try something really different. So we started looking at what I was putting in and on my body and basically had just a completely different experience. And for anyone that's familiar with hyperemesis, each time you get pregnant they say it gets worse.
Speaker 2:So, with this being my fourth and having a 180 experience where I wasn't in the hospital, I was able to, like, chase my own kids around, eat my own food, just the little things in life where every day was a win. I knew… I knew God had showed me something and I wanted to help other women that were struggling with their own bodies. I knew the pain that that was, I knew what that felt like, I knew the frustrations. And so, without any business experience or knowing anything, I just knew I wanted to help women that were hurting. I started Pink Stork. So we started with nine different products, kind of just really clean, natural ingredients that were there to help support you through your pregnancy, to give you the vitamins, the nutrients, the minerals that your body would need. And so started Pink Stork. And then I'm trying to think how I kind of marry all this together work and family just kind of mesh it's all one. For me it doesn't really get separated.
Speaker 2:But I had Gloria, fifth pregnancy, again used kind of the ping-strike regime, and another amazing experience when I say amazing, I mean I'm not in the hospital, I'm still you know, I do get some morning sickness, but it's not the extreme that I had had another healthy baby girl. And then, a few years later, I have Maximilian and he is a healthy baby boy. He has Down syndrome, which has been a whole new learning experience, but it's been an amazing experience, something that I'm eternally grateful for for our family. Who's such a blessing. But with all that said, six different pregnancies, six totally different birth stories. Each one has their own. I've done medicated births, I've done emergency C-sections, I've done natural births at home. I've done it all and I think, through it all you learn so much about your body. You learn so much about your inner strength, about yourself, about things that you thought you know you couldn't do. But you can do and it's such an empowering, life-changing experience for women.
Speaker 2:It's hard to plan for, I mean, I always think it's like you know, you hear women talking about their birth plans and how they want to do things and you know, at least for me, it's usually the complete opposite of what I think I wanted. I know, with Maximilian my last one, which is just the one that comes to mind I really wanted a water birth. Like that's one thing I haven't experienced was the water birth, and I was like, oh, I'll do a water birth, this will be so fun. No, it was an emergency C-section in the middle of the night, not at all what I had planned. Buddy Breached, come on, we know how to do this.
Speaker 2:So I just think it's learning to give yourself a lot of grace, learning to prepare the best that you can, but ultimately having an open mind to trust your body, to trust your instincts and for me, that's kind of what I found has been just so.
Speaker 2:I never thought that you would be able to experience something so transformative as giving birth and how empowering that is as a woman.
Speaker 2:So I say all that now, you know, I look at kind of what Pink Stork has done as well, and a lot of it has been through my own personal experiences.
Speaker 2:You know, starting with helping women with morning sickness, helping women with infertility, helping women prepare their bodies for the labor and delivery process, as well as recovering from that labor and delivery process and then into, like, the nursing and breastfeeding journey that can be super challenging on top of everything else that your body just went through.
Speaker 2:So you know, I think it's having a love of learning and an open mind for things to come. Love of learning and an open mind for things to come, and now you know really learning a lot about like Down syndrome and what that means for Maximilian and what that means for vitamin deficiencies as well, and it all, I think, just comes back to I think God has a plan for everyone and that plan is not always anything that we can think of, but I'm a big believer in having faith in God's plan and trusting him for your life and I hope to be. I don't always get it right or do it right, but I hope people can look and see my story and see him and his grace in my life and with the women's lives that we've been able to touch through Pink Store.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and I don't know about that not doing it right. I think those are all lessons that are put in our path for a reason.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, that is true. Sometimes I just have some conversations.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, it's like, okay, this is a challenge and I'm going to learn from this obstacle and move forward and be better for it.
Speaker 2:Definitely that is also wonderful.
Speaker 1:Can you talk about some of the products that helped you actually help with pregnancies that are easier on the system and don't involve uprooting your life to go to the hospital to get IV fluids and medications and all that?
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah, I think you know I always say sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution. So when you think about your pregnancy and your body, your body is obviously doing a lot of work and so making sure you have the right vitamins and minerals in your body to be able to support all the work that it's doing, I think is just kind of like the foundational layer. So you know, we're really that's what our prenatals are for, that's what prenatals are for, and then any deficiencies that you might have within your body. I'm a big advocate of you know, getting your blood work and seeing are you deficient in iron, even before your pregnancy? I think, like testing your levels to see kind of where you're maybe deficient in some nutrients and building it up. Do you need iron? Do you need folate? Like? Where everybody is different Magnesium women are. I think like 80% of women are just completely deficient in magnesium. So you know that's kind of like a baseline.
Speaker 2:And then I think you know we offer herbs as well. So our teas have a lot of herbs and these herbs have been used for centuries to help women's body. Like I said, the simple things like this isn't rocket science here. It's using herbs that have been studied and used for centuries for women's bodies to be able to help with their fertility or their preparation for labor. Red raspberry leaf tea is a great example of that. So you know, toning that uterus your uterus is a muscle to really help strengthen that uterus before pregnancy and also after pregnancy. Again, that muscle has to go back down and tighten up and things need to go back in its, I guess, proper spot. So making sure your uterus is really toned is really important as well.
Speaker 2:Again, herbs for lactation Like I'm not saying anything that I'm sure you know. Herbs for lactation Like I'm not saying anything that I'm sure you know your listeners don't already know. I just think we at Pink historic focus on bringing it all together, which is what I wanted when I was pregnant and when I was searching, there wasn't a brand or a company that you could trust. That was just for women. We call it FPPN fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and nursing. That was just for this season of life, because it is so important and transformative and you want to make sure you're putting in safe, natural, great ingredients during this season of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's so important. I just remember, I mean just off the top of my head, the things that I needed. I needed something to help with the nausea First of all. Hey, buddy, sorry, he's like a nurse right now? No, it's fine. I just think that, oh gosh, you know it was a game changer. Like you were saying, the magnesium, I had preterm well, kind of preterm labor.
Speaker 1:They put me on Procardia which is a blood pressure medication and as soon as I took it I was like, okay, first of all, my baseline blood pressure during pregnancy was like 80 over 40, crazy low. So then to put me on a blood pressure medication to prevent preterm labor, just it didn't feel right to me. And I had a magnesium supplement and so I was like, hmm, maybe let me try this, and it it stopped the preterm labor. It's wild, isn't it? It I mean well, but the thing is, the reason that I thought of it is because obviously I'm a labor nurse, so when people come in at times they will put them on magnesium for preterm labor.
Speaker 1:Interesting, yeah, but it's like iv magnesium and I was like I wonder, wonder, if, like, just an oral magnesium would help. And it really did. And then you know, obviously I drink the red raspberry leaf tea and I wonder, maybe you can. But also toning the uterus, like what is the disconnect there? Like is it? I mean you can have, you can always have too little or too much of something in your system, and so it's always about a balance. How do you advise moms or how do you help people achieve that balance? Do you send them to go get the labs, or do you have like a screening process?
Speaker 2:No, no, we don't. I mean, you know, a lot of what we do is there are certain seasons, right, so like your third trimester is when you want to start taking your red raspberry leaf, and we have recommended dosage on there where we've done tests, and so I think, though, with the vitamins like that's kind of hard for us to be able. We're not your doctors. So if you're meeting folate levels and trying to get to a certain level, or magnesium levels or whatever you kind of need, you need to work that out with your doctor. But for the most part, a lot of vitamins that you take, your body will get rid of the excess as well. So, and you're, you're also needing excess when you're in pregnancy because your body is doing so much extra work, so it needs that support. But we don't do any consulting to like blood levels and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so then you were talking about the folate. What kind of folate are you using? We use the methylfolate Amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So you need and again, that's like another thing. Some people come and they don't even realize that they have this. What is it? Mthfr? Yes, that deficiency to where their body can't absorb folate properly. So a lot of it. Again, it's a learning experience, it's educating yourself, it's learning your body Like this is just that season of life, to have that open mind, and I think a lot of women are transformed during this season of life for this reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And then tell me about your prenatals.
Speaker 2:I know I could not take prenatal vitamins. I had to get those gummies on Amazon. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, we, I mean, we offer gummies, we offer liquid, we offer capsules. So it's, you know, I, the first few months, I couldn't take a prenatal either because I I couldn't take anything. I was lucky to get water down. So right, I think you just kind of have to do what you can during that season of life. That's my opinion is can you stomach, you know, drinking a little? If you can't stomach taking a pill, maybe you know you try the gummy version. So it's just, at Pinkstork we like to offer a variety of options. That way you can figure out what's best for you and your body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. That's amazing. And then hyperemesis. Okay, I am so curious what you guys do to help with that and how that process works? What did you find out? Because you talked about you had to do some research and stuff like that. Can you tell me about that process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, hyperemesis is wild. So what we came to the conclusion of was bacteria in the gut. So this gut bacteria I'm forgetting its medical name right now, having one of those brain moments, it'll come to me like in my sleep tonight H pylori, there it is, h pylori, so linking the H pylori in the gut to the hyperemesis. So if you can basically have a really healthy gut, that would help with hyperemesis or your morning sickness level. So what we would did is kind of is taking one of our supplements it's called monolaurin which would help eradicate the H pylori in the gut. And when you have H pylori you can't when you're pregnant you can't take. They put you usually on an antibiotic to get rid of it and you can't take this antibiotic. It's not recommended for pregnancy.
Speaker 2:So trying to eliminate the H pylori in my gut was what we were trying to do in the beginning, but then not only eliminating the bad bacteria but then putting in good bacteria, so putting in probiotics to get your gut back on, you know, in a healthy realm. So that's really kind of the theory that we take with hyperemesis or even, you know, with some morning sicknesses that are more extreme, is like what does your diet look like? What does your gut look like? What can we do to eradicate bad bacteria in your gut and what can we do to put in some good bacteria in your gut? And it's hard to do that when you're nauseous and throwing up and sick or can't stomach anything. But that's kind of the protocol that we recommend for women. So we have a prenatal, we have probiotics for literally fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and nursing, because it's so important for each season of life, but definitely during that morning sickness or hyperemesis stage.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, because I just feel like you need a different. I mean, you have a different gut during each stage Right.
Speaker 2:So you need different strands to be able to put into your body, and with H pylori. H pylori is really interesting. It builds a protective film around the bacteria and so getting to that film like being able to get to that bacteria and eat away that film is really important because then your natural immune system can eradicate the bacteria. But because of that film it's so hard for your natural immune system to get into that GI tract and eradicate the bacteria.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, because they're not looking at a woman's gut bacteria during fertility, pregnancy, learning about H pylori it's just so fascinating and that the medical community has such a difficult time eradicating it because they don't adopt options that aren't antibiotics or that aren't drugs. Essentially starting to get on board with some of the probiotics. But what drives me nuts is that they're not looking at the strain of probiotic. They're looking. They're going for quantity over quality, right? So they have these concoctions of like 50 million Exactly and they're saying that this is what you need.
Speaker 1:And we all know that in life it's not about too much of one thing, it's about balance and achieving the balance that's right for you at a period of time. And especially women's bodies, which haven't been studied yet, but they should, right, I mean my gosh, and I just love that you took the time to do that to come up with I mean, I know that there's evidence out there. It's not necessarily randomized, controlled trials like you would find in the medical community. We have a lot of centuries of anecdotal evidence that shows that women, kind of Midwives before we had OBs and all that were figuring it out. We kind of figured it out.
Speaker 1:But then, if you know the history of obstetrics. We had this shift where medicine decided to take over and everything we knew from before was shut down, and so this reemergence of the ancestral knowledge that we have from before medicine is what I am so excited to see come back, so that at some point we can bring the two together, like, let's not have these silos, let's bring it together, let's work together, let's study women's bodies, let's make this, let's make it work. Like we don't, it's not, it's not a war.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not us versus them, or like you need both, like there's a time and a place for both, so balance right.
Speaker 1:Exactly yes, I love that you're doing that.
Speaker 2:That's so amazing. Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about? No, I mean, I feel like this. It might be short and sweet, but I feel like you've hit everything, Thank you.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is something that I ask everyone at the end of each podcast, because I feel like, like you were saying, pregnancy and motherhood is such a transformative journey, with so many challenges and obstacles, and it can feel like a time that is very isolating and lonely. Like to have this reflective moment where, if you could just imagine going back in time and talking to yourself at any point or at multiple points during this process, to make yourself feel less alone and less isolated and more hopeful. What would you want to go back and tell yourself, like, where would you go in time and what would you want to tell yourself?
Speaker 2:I'd probably go to the very beginning, like that first pregnancy, when I was literally in the hospital by myself for weeks on end, questioning everything and really angry and confused, and just probably tell myself to calm down and start trusting the process. I thought I knew my body. Tell myself to calm down and start trusting the process. I thought I knew my body but I had no idea what my body was doing. And I would probably say just tell myself, calm down, there's a plan here. You're just at the start of it. It'll unravel the way it's supposed to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is the beginning of your journey. Hang on.
Speaker 2:Yes, this is the beginning. Hold on, you've got a wild ride and it's your journey.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is the beginning. Hold on, you got a wild ride and it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's relevant for all moms, right? We just kind of like get into this beginning stages of motherhood and you're like, oh my God, what have I done? But it just it becomes so expansive and you're like, wow, exactly, no idea, I love that so much. Well, tell me how to send my viewers to your products oh uh, thank you, you could do.
Speaker 2:we're on amazon, which everyone I know, knows and loves um our website's at pinkstorkcom. We're in Target and Walmart as well, awesome, that is so amazing.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited. Well, amy, thank you so much for joining me. I love what you've done with how you've turned your obstacles into opportunities and made your passion helping moms so. I love meeting people in the field just like this that want to get out there and help all their mamas.
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely, thank you.
