Real Stories of Birth told by You!

Birth is truly a mystery in our culture.
.
This mystery of birth spreads across culture, religion, and gender. Men are raised to know a pretty limited idea of how they came into the world and how one day their child may enter the world. While women are raised to wait pretty much to the last second to learn about birth.
For many women, there is a lot of fear of pain, loss of control, and insecurity that comes along with birth.

But what if we could change that?
What if we could share more stories and more photos? What if we could be open about the journeys we have endured and the joy/messiness we have found? What if you could be apart of the change?

That’s where the series Our Birth Stories Matter was born! I’ll be sharing the beautiful, hard, inspiring birth stories of REAL mothers like you. Sharing their birth photos taken by their partners, selves, and sometimes photographers. These mothers are from all over the world in all different walks of life. But they each have one thing in common and that is the desire to change the narrative around birth! To open up the conversations that surround motherhood, birth, and the body in a way that provides healing, education, and inspiration for the mothers who will come after us.

If you’d like to contribute to this project please reach out today! I’m hoping to keep this amazing project running for as long as possible!

Photographer, Mom, Birth Keeper, Blogger and lover of sharing stories of the real and raw journeys of people. I also love playing word games on my phone, coffee and helping others grow both creatively and professionally!

If you’re interested in learning more or what that means, Send me a message! Or check out my “Professional Services” page HERE!

Read Part One

of this Series

Love reading birth stories?

A third-time mom’s first planned home birth story in Florida, USA

The Birth Story of Athena

told by her mom, Mara

Titled “Blind and Powerless: Surrendering to Labor”

A week before my third baby was born, I learned a new term: prodromal labor.

I started noticing regular if mild contractions around 12 pm that day. Around 3, we started prepping for labor. By 6, contractions had been about 6 minutes apart for hours, but they still weren’t very strong. By 9 pm, they decreased and then stopped altogether. After 9 hours of contractions, the show was over.

Apparently, this is not uncommon for third-time mothers and beyond. But it was certainly new to me.

I felt a mixture of relief and frustration: I was relieved that I would not be laboring on into the night, welcoming our baby already exhausted and sleep-deprived; but I was frustrated that we had just spent all that time timing contractions and setting up the space for our home birth (after having our second baby at home accidentally last time!) and, most importantly, preparing mentally and emotionally for the whirlwind that is childbirth.

All that stress and adrenaline and planning for nothing!

But there was another layer of frustration too. During those nine hours of prodromal labor (real contractions that are regular but that start and then stop, not leading to delivery), we were in a state of constant uncertainty: was this really labor? should we call the midwife? when would things pick up? should I rest or try to stay active to encourage the contractions? 

We didn’t want to be too casual about it, because we had learned with the second baby that my labor pattern was not typical: I had moved from having mild contractions for several hours into transition and to baby on the floor of the bathroom in just over an hour. When your baby arrives before the midwife (and you were not planning a home birth in the first place!), you tend to want to take steps to avoid that happening again. This time, with it being my third, we expected labor to be even faster.

So when things weren’t picking up, hour after hour, I began to feel embarrassed, like it was somehow my fault that things weren’t progressing. My husband and doula were sitting around waiting on me, not to mention all the people I had texted to say I was in labor, preparing them to help with our other kids or whatever else would come up.

I felt like I was letting them down or had misled them, and there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING I COULD DO about it.

I couldn’t make the contractions stronger, nor could I make them stop. Nor could I tell with any even remote degree of confidence what was actually going on with my body. I felt a kind of performance anxiety, but I was only a spectator myself, waiting along with everyone else to see what my body and baby would do.

The contractions weren’t particularly painful, so on the surface, there was nothing all that terrible about what was going on. But emotionally, it was miserable. The uncertainty. The lack of control. The excitement and fear and confusion and embarrassment all going round and round in my head and heart.

At some point, when things were still not progressing, a friend texted me some very helpful words: “Don’t try to control or even understand the process. Submit to it. Praying. And knowing that you were made for this.”

As an over-thinker, trying not to understand something is about as foreign as it gets, but that’s what I had to do. I couldn’t make sense of it, and the more I tried, the worse I felt. So I stopped timing, and I stopped thinking about what I should or should not do (or at least I tried to). I tried to humble myself and just let whatever was happening happen. 

And an hour later, the contractions stopped.

***

Reflecting on the experience, it struck me how much this represents our lives all the time, if we would only stop to admit it. Though we like to pretend otherwise, we are not omniscient, and we are not omnipotent. Rather, we see only the narrowest strip of reality—and that dimly—and control only the most elementary aspects of our lives. 

Labor—the great mystery and miracle of the female body pushing a new life into the wide world—serves to magnify that reality. It is a profound sense of powerlessness when your body is engaged in an all-consuming, gut wrenching effort to accomplish something you cannot even begin to control. You are helpless, and worse, you often don’t even know what’s happening. 

Labor—like life—requires that we accept our fate with calm humility. We are not in control. We cannot see what’s coming. All we can do is make the best decisions we can with the limited information we have and trust the process. Submit. Let go. And wait.

***

When real labor started one evening a week later, I was glad that we had gone through that dress rehearsal. The contractions—uncomfortable but not really painful—held steady at four minutes apart. We called our doula and got the tub set up. 

When the midwife arrived after about three hours, she looked askance at me as I breathed through a contraction, then told me that these were not what she would consider “real” contractions yet. But I was four centimeters dilated, and they stretched me to five. 

And then we waited. Normally, this would have been the time for us all to try to get some rest, but my labors had been so abnormal and progressed so quickly before that we knew not to expect a typical pattern. The last thing we wanted was to have the baby born without the midwife present again. So everyone hung out while I worked through several more contractions.

By 11 pm, I wondered aloud if the baby would be born that day or the next, and the midwife said, “Well, you sure don’t look like a woman who’s going to have a baby in the next hour.” For a moment, I felt like I was right back where I had been a week before: everyone sitting around waiting for me to get my act together, wondering if they should go take a nap or maybe just go home for a while. That small, tight feeling began to squeeze my chest again, but this time, I wasn’t taken off guard. 

Looking around at all the expectant yet bored faces, I took a breath and centered myself. I led my husband out on onto our porch, and we stood side by side as I gripped the railing through another contraction, our alone togetherness soothing my soul. The next contraction was stronger. And the next made me feel queasy. This, I knew, was a sign that things were getting serious.

At 12:01, my baby slipped out into the warm water of the birthing tub.

The last thirty minutes had been intense, and I was so very glad it was over. I was also glad that, after two unpredictable and very-different-than-planned deliveries, I had finally made it into the tub, that the midwife had been by my side to whisper encouragement and guidance, that this new life had come into the world in a quiet, calm room where we were all ready to welcome her.

I was no more in control of that labor than I had been of either of the others, but this time I had at least expected the feelings of blindness and powerlessness that had threatened to overwhelm me. And instead of fearing them, this time I was able to accept them. I didn’t have to understand what was happening, much less be able to predict it. All I had to do was surrender to the process and take each moment as it came, no more and no less. 

A first-time mom’s surprise breech home birth in New York USA

The Birth Story of Lila Grace

told by her mom, Kristy

Contractions started around 5am.

Around midnight, the baby’s amniotic sac started to emerge and our birth team arrived shortly after. After laboring in the birth pool for an hour I went to lay down in bed, exhausted and hoping to sleep.

My midwife checked in about poking/slowly draining the amniotic sac and said with a few good pushes, our sweet babe would be here. . They poked the sac and meconium came out.

The baby was breech. We had the conversation about what going to the hospital would look like, a for sure c-section, covid screening, masks, having to choose who could be in the room and many of the things we wanted (delayed cord clamping, immediate skin to skin, to not be separated from our baby, etc) may not happen.

After deciding we’d stay home, our midwife told us it would be slow laboring now to get her butt out, but after that things would move very fast.

I continued to labor for 4+ hours. After what felt like an eternity of her butt being RIGHT there, I knew I had to really just go for it. I had about 3 rounds of BIG pushes and deep vocalization.

The last round of pushes, on the 4th one, her butt emerged. And like they said, everything else happened FAST.

At this point, my body took over. I couldn’t stop her from coming out and I looked back and saw one leg dangling out of me. Limb by limb she came out. Then her shoulders and finally her sweet head. The midwife set her down in front of me and she smiled the sweetest smile.

All of us were so happy and relieved she was finally here, so happy and healthy.

I had a teeny tiny tear that didn’t need any stitching and was happy and healthy too. Mama, baby, daddy, our birthing team and alllll the other powers and forces there with us did it. Our first babe, surprise breech, born at home. No complications. No problems. As perfectly as it could’ve gone.

A third-time mom’s home birth in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago

The Birth Story of Ilya

written for her by mom, Barbara

In october 2018 I found out I was pregnant. We were already blessed with 2 daughters who were almost 7 and 5. I was a stay at home mom and we were living abroad, and I already often felt overwhelmed with managing the household and being present for my kids in the way that I desired to parent. I felt for quite a while that I actually didn’t want to have another child, but my husband really wanted a 3rd one, so we had not made a final decision yet. It took us 2 years of an emotional rollercoaster before getting pregnant with my oldest daughter, and for the 2nd a little less long, but after putting all kinds of hormones in my body, I had had enough, and I hadn’t taken any anticonception anymore. I tracked my cycle, which had been pretty regular for the last 2 years, and we were trying to play safe in that way. We still do not really know what happened, but suspect I had a very long cycle for the first time in 2 years, and Ilya was conceived when I was expecting to get my period. I felt and still feel a lot of shame and guilt about it, but I was not happy when I discovered I was pregnant. But I try to be gentle and honest with myself when it comes to that part of my story. The pregnancy was mainly mentally difficult. Physically I was doing rather fine, even though I was considered ‘higher risk’ because I already was 36 en have a thyroid condition. But I had the feeling that everything was ok, and this baby was somehow really meant for me. Just like in my previous pregnancies, I gained a lot of weight, and because we lived in the Caribbean, my feet and legs were quickly very swollen. I wasn’t particularly happy about that, but I knew it would be coming. Even though I had so much mixed feelings, I still enjoyed the sensation of this growing life, his movements, the excitement of the girls, the preparations, how nice and kind my friends were, etc. 

My girls both were born in a hospital in Belgium. I had been unprepared for my first birth, even though I thought I was prepared, and this birth experience had left me with feelings of inadequacy and failure. My second birth was fast and furious and so healing and empowering. This last birth I wanted to have outside of a hospital. Homebirth didn’t seem possible, or at least, I hadn’t found any option where we were living at that time, in Trinidad & Tobago. But there was a birth center, called Mama Toto, that felt very much like a home setting, and when we did a tour, we strongly felt that this was what we wanted. My husband had had some doubts beforehand, but was completely on board after visiting.  From then on I combined visits at my obgyn with the visits at the birth center with one of the midwifes. They only had a small team of 3 midwifes, so we knew everyone. We also got to meet some of the doula’s they worked with, because they have a doula present at every birth. During every visit the midwife took her time to talk everything through and to check on baby. At one point there was some doubt about his heart rate, and the fact they took this serious and had us checked at the obgyn, was really reassuring too. I felt confident in our choice. Still I often found myself defending myself. Many friends and even people I hardly knew, were questioning the safety and my ‘reason’, and I even got some of the obligatory horror stories that no pregnant mom needs to hear, whatever her choices are. Even my obgyn didn’t seem to approve, even though on the record she would be very supportive of the birth center. She wanted to convince me that she would offer the same approach as the birth center, which didn’t feel comfortable for me. I wanted to switch but couldn’t find another supportive obgyn that shortly before birth, so I stayed but skipped my last appointment before my due date. 

During my pregnancy I recorded affirmations around pregnancy, birth and mothering and listened to those daily before falling asleep. I also discovered the world of birth photography and videography, and have watched these images and videos for hours and hours. It has helped me tremendously in gaining confidence and in standing my ground when it came to my birth choices. And it played a huge part in my own personal story, because I am a starting birth photographer now as well.

When I was getting closer to my due date, I started to get a bit nervous. They only ‘allowed’ me to go 1 week past my due date because of policies that I cannot recall, but it had to do with the obgyn not approving a birth center birth after that time, and then the birth center couldn’t do the birth anymore. With my girls I was 2 weeks and 1 week past due date, so I figured chances were quite high I would do the same this time. I had my mind set so much on how I wanted to birth, that this deadline caused some anxiety and tension. I had some prenatal massage, and went to an acupuncturist several times around 39 weeks. After the 3rd time, when I was almost 40 weeks, I wanted to quit, because everytime I was disappointed when nothing happened. I really felt I had to let go of my anxiety and just take it as it came, but that was easier said than done. On the 1st of July, 2 days past my due date, I had an appointment with my midwife and asked her to check and to sweep my membranes as well. She tried but said my body really didn’t feel ready so it wasn’t really possible. When we left the birth center I was very quiet, and during lunch I burst into tears because I was so disappointed and felt like I finally really needed to look at the possibility of a hospital birth and how that could really be ok too. That evening I went to the playground with my girls, running behind them while they were biking, which was pretty difficult with my huge belly. In the evening me and my husband also tried ‘to get the oxytocine flowing a bit’ to help to at least get my body a bit more ready. I also got very emotional about my deep fear of not loving my son enough because I hadn’t wanted him. About how I was so scared I had ‘ruined’ him already by feeling all these mixed feelings, about possibly not being welcoming enough on a deeper level. I needed to release these fears, and to say them out loud. 

That night my husband had gotten a headache and he went downstairs to try to get better sleep there. I woke up around 2 am with the sensation something was going on. I noticed something that felt like a contraction, but wasn’t sure. I started tracking, but it was inconsistent in both frequency and duration, so I wasn’t sure it was really labor, or rather Braxton-Higgs. After about an hour I decided to go tell my husband something was happening. The contractions intensified a bit, but were still inconsistent. I mentally prepared myself for having a longer labor than I had hoped for. About an hour later it was pretty clear that labor had actually started, because even though it was inconsistent, these were definitely not Braxton-Higgs contractions. My husband called the midwife who was on call, which turned out to be Pati, who was the one I had seen the most, so I was happy to hear that. She suggested we would keep on timing it, to have me take a shower, and to eat something, and to call her back afterwards. So I did take a shower, and just like during my previous birth, this really intensified the contractions. I tried to eat a little, but didn’t feel like eating. We called the midwife back, and agreed that we would come to the birth center in a few hours, around 9am.  

Around 6.30am my husband called our friends who would be taking care of our girls in case we needed it. They were doing a summer camp at school, so it would only be the transport to school probably. But just shortly afterwards, around 7am, I just felt that things were going really fast all of a sudden, and I instinctively knew there was no way we could wait until 9am to go to the birth center. So my husband called Pati again, and then woke the kids up and called our friends to tell them we would bring them immediately. The girls were quiet and didn’t even come into our room to say bye or to have a peek. Before I knew it my husband was back home and we could leave. I had difficulty getting downstairs and during the few minutes from our room to the car, I had several intense contractions. We had to go make a quick stop at our friends again because my husband had forgotten the girls’ shoes, but then we were on the road. By then it was rush hour in Port of Spain, so instead of 20 minutes, it took us a little more than 30 to get to the birth center. I was very much in the laboring zone, but felt we had to get there quickly and asked a few times if we were there yet, while sitting on my knees on the floor before the passenger seat, which wasn’t ideal because I hardly had any wiggling room. When we arrived, shortly after 8am, it was difficult to get out of the car. My midwife Pati and assistant midwife and doula were all waiting on me outside and led me in. First they made me do a toilet stop to pee, which I didn’t like or understand, but I somehow managed to get it over with. I was led to one of their rooms, surprisingly not the room with the birthing pool, but I couldn’t care less at that moment. Later I heard there was another mom who gave birth in that room just a few hours earlier, which was super rare for them to have 2 births at the same time. We even had joked about this during one of our visits! Afterwards the midwife told us there was a total solar eclipse above the Pacific and South-America, so who knows the solar and lunar system helped a bit 😉 

When I got in the room, which was like a bedroom and felt very homely, Pati checked me and said I was already 8 cm dilated. She rushed to call the photographer she had found for us just a week before our due date, and who had wanted to capture a birth. But it was clear chances were pretty high she wouldn’t make it on time, so my husband reluctantly promised me to take pictures because I really wanted to have at least some pictures of one of my 3 births. I could choose my position, but my body just told me I had to stand up. I could not and did not want to lay down or be on my knees or anything else. So I just kept on standing next to the bed, leaning on it and pushing my hands down, while moving and wiggling my belly and body. 

In between 2 contractions I felt super emotional and started crying, talking to my husband again about how scared I was for being a bad mom and not loving him enough and how badly I wanted to be a good mom, how sorry I felt for my mixed feelings, and so on. He comforted me and hugged me, assured me I was a good mom and would be a good mom to our son as well. Shortly afterwards I felt like I needed to go to the toilet, and I felt like wanting to push, a sensation I vividly remembered from my second birth. I tried to communicate this to my doula, because Pati had left the room for a few minutes. But when you are so much into labor, and you have to communicate in another language than your mother tongue, no matter how fluent you are, it doesn’t go easy. Luckily my husband was there to help and the doula rushed out to call Pati to come back. Soon after I found myself pushing and I started to make loud sounds and screams. It was only then that my water broke, with a big gush. I hadn’t even noticed it hadn’t before. After a few minutes my husband ecstatically told me he could see his head and he had blond hair like our oldest daughter. I remember I could hardly believe he was there yet, even though I knew it to be true. I felt his head crowning and then getting out, and in one big push he was born entirely. There he was, at 8.27am, our son Ilya . Pati put him in my arms and I turned around to sit down on the bed. I held him and couldn’t believe it was actually over, I had birthed him and it had gone so well and so quick after all. I felt so relieved. Then I looked at him, looked at my husband, and I could feel the love flowing. I was so in love with this new baby, it felt like all my worries just faded in the blink of an eye. 

We relaxed in the bed, staring at our new son. Suddenly the placenta was there too, I cannot even recall feeling it come out. I smelled my babies head, couldn’t get enough of sniffling and touching him. Soon he started looking for my breasts, and I helped him a little with finding the nipple and latching, but once he started, it went super smooth. I had hoped for this to go easy. With my oldest daughter our breastfeeding start had been super difficult and complicated, and with my youngest daughter it had gone easy but had been very painful for several weeks. This time around we had a good start and while I am writing this story, 2 years later, I can tell I am still breastfeeding him. After about half an hour we cut the umbilical cord, after taking some nice pictures of Ilya still attached to it and to the placenta. Then the photographer arrived as well and she took some super nice pictures of us, that I am so glad I have. A few hours later we were all ready to go home. I loved that I could go home so quickly, be in my own environment, feeling at ease, and be with the whole family together. It was the perfect last birth experience, which I will cherish forever. 

Photography by Natalie Zepp Photography

An unmedicated hospital birth in Pensacola, FL. USA

The Birth Story of Baby Girl

written for her by mom, Megan

This pregnancy was A LOT harder physically than my first birth. I don't know if it was just because it was my second pregnancy but I had so much more pressure in my vagina from really early on. Starting as early as the second trimester I literally felt like she was going to fall out of my vagina at any moment. My midwife assured me this was not the case and that this was normal for subsequent pregnancies. The pressure made me so much more uncomfortable than I had been with my son. Baby was super low throughout the whole pregnancy, when my midwife would check she said she was always much lower than she expected her to be. For this reason and other early signs we had like loosing some of my mucus plug early, both my midwife and I were convinced she was going to come early. My son was born 10 days before his due date so we thought for sure she would be earlier. However, in reality she only came 4 days before her due date. Towards the end of this pregnancy I was so done, I knew this was my last pregnancy because I didn't feel like I could physically do this again.

At 1:00am I woke up from a dead sleep to what I can only describe as an audible "clunk" feeling in my pelvis (I believe this was her head engaging). I got up to pee and had a gush of fluid. This was exactly how my labor started with my son so I was immediately like "oh great here we go again, I'm going to have another slow leak with no contractions and they are going to want to augment my labor again with cytotec like they did with my son". But to my pleasant surprise contractions started shortly thereafter! I went ahead and called my photographer at 1:30am to give her a heads up. 15 minutes later my contractions were already consistently 2-3 minutes apart and I was already having to stop and breath through them as I was trying to finish packing my last minute items. I went ahead and called my mom who lived 5 minutes away and told her to come over to watch my son who was peacefully sleeping in our bed.

Around 2:15am we left the house for the hospital since it's about a 30 minute drive from our house. My contractions completley STOPPED in the car on the way. I was freaking out thinking I jumped the gun in heading to the hospital and maybe it had been too soon. I didn't want to go to the hospital too soon so we considered going to my brother's house and laboring there longer since he lives closer to the hospital. I called my photographer Natalie in the car to explain what I was thinking, she convinced me to just go ahead and go to the hospital saying how unpredictable second babies can be. Once we got to the hospital I was checked for admission and I was only 3cm but they admitted me anyway since my water had already broken. I wasn't worried about being a 3 because my gut was telling me this was going to be a much faster labor than my son. THIS is where my labor plateaued because I became trapped to the bed while they ran several different tests (1 of which was somewhat painful) to determine that my water had IN FACT broken. This part I regret, I wish I would have spoken up and refused the tests because I had NO doubts about my water breaking but they said it was "protocol" to confirm this fact for admission (insert rolled eyes). I even told the nurse I knew without a doubt 100%. THEN the worst part (of both my labors) is the hep lock placement. I have really small and hidden veins, I am not an easy stick. It took 5 different people and so many sticks and digging to finally get my hep lock placed. The IV was NEVER EVEN USED. But anyways, that is another "hospital policy" which I loathe but I do understand in the case of emergencies. By the time the IV was placed it was time to go back on the monitor for another strip so when it was all said in done over an hour had passed since we arrived. I know without a doubt that this stalled my labor because as soon as they were done with all their crap and I was able to get out of that bed it was ON AND POPPING, she was born less than 3 hours later. Once I was free I walked the halls, used the birthing ball, the upright back of the bed, tub, all the same things I did with my son. My labor was going so much faster this time, I could feel my contractions getting more and more intense WAY faster this time and I knew it wouldn't be long before I had the urge to push. I kept asking the nurse to call my midwife and give her a heads up that things were getting real but she didn't believe me. She checked me at 5am because she said she wouldn't call my midwife without a check (I guess because she didn't believe me). I was 5cm. Yes this seems like a reasonable dilation rate in terms of time but I kept telling them that I KNEW it was happening fast, I could feel it and I intuitively knew since I had done this once before. I joked to the nurse that if she didn't call my midwife that she might have to catch a baby. She thought that was funny and even said "it wouldn't be the first time" like she could handle it. HOWEVER an hour later she wasn't laughing when I said I was about to push as I proceeded to begin baring down on hands and knees on the bed, holding my husband's hand for support. She freaked out and told me to lay down and stop pushing. I resisted her and basically said "I don't care" but my photographer convinced me to lay down and wait for my midwife who was apparently not far away. My midwife got there a few minutes later and checked me. I was 8cm so she had me breath through some contractions and resist the urge to push WHICH WAS SO HARD but I did my best. She said I had a lip and asked if I thought I could push past it to which I said "yes I just want to push!!". She used her hand to reduce my cervix while I pushed past the lip and achieved full dilation. This part was pretty painful but luckily did not last long and then I was just happy it was time to legit push how I wanted to, in a squat on the bed with the squat bar attached. I pushed for 10-15 minutes and she was born at 6:47am.

The birth of birth was so euphoric for me. I knew with this baby I really wanted to play an active role in the birth, "delivering" her myself. With my son I was unsure of myself but I knew with her I wanted to do things differently and take more control of that part in particular. I wanted to be the one bringing her into the world with my body and my hands. Once her head was out I reached down and pulled her to my chest. I had envisioned doing this for 9 long months and the feeling was indescribable, just pure joy and elation that she was here and I did the damn thing!! She was everything I had imagined and so much more. She was so cheesy and covered in vernix. She settled with me immediately and opened her eyes to check us out. I was so proud of myself and truly felt like a birth warrior.

The thing that surprised me about this birth was how different I was in this birth compared to my first. With my son it was a long, slow-building labor lasting like 12 hours total. I went deep within myself in labor with him as it built in intensity. I was completely in my own little world/labor land and I stayed that way for 5 hours of active labor with him. This labor was not that way AT ALL. I was completely present in mind pretty much the entire time, I was laughing and joking between contractions. I literally remembered to text my boss less than an hour before she was born to be like "hey I'm not gonna make it to work today, I'm in labor". My photographer said she and the nurse couldn't even tell I was in active labor because of my demeanour being so normal, I just plowed right through it into transition. Which is probably why the nurse didn't believe me, although my words should have been sufficient. Things were definitely more intense this time because of the labor being so much faster than my first. There was not the slow-build of intensity giving me time to adjust mentally and go inward, I was just along for the ride and had to try and hold on, haha. She was READY to enter this world and I respect it!

Giving birth and becoming a mother has been the most transformative experience of my life. I found a confidence within myself that no one can ever take away. I grew and birthed two amazing little humans. My power as a woman knows no bounds.