The amazing Natasha Sullivan with her daughter Alessandra (2). Natasha is currently pregnant with her second, a son, due late July. Natasha says that if she has any advice for other mothers it's that every child is different and someday, things will get easier, or at the very least they will be different.
Natasha's first pregnancy went well for the most part but she felt that her body worked against her a lot. She didn't have a lot of energy and she had a lot of water weight that she carried around making a lot of other things more challenging. She had always imagined she'd have an unmedicated vaginal delivery, like her mother had with her made sure that she was well researched and prepared. Her water broke before labor contractions started and as soon as they did, things became very intense from the onset. She went to the hospital after about 4 hours of labor and about 8 hours later, she couldn't take it anymore and asked for an epidural. She was given a narcotic first and made clear that she really just wanted the epidural already. Natasha was very upset over having needed the intervention but her mother continued to encourage her and she was able to get some sleep. Labor stalled and they decided to start pitocin as well to speed things along. She wasn't dilating fully or symmetrically and they eventually called in a OB consult (she was seeing a family practitioner as her provider). She was worried the OB said they were going to need to deliver via cesarean but he actually recommended turning the pitocin down to allow her uterus to rest for a while. After a rest she was ready to push and in just 45 minutes Alessandra was out, she says that this was the first point in her entire labor that she felt she and her body were working together. Natasha held her baby and says that it was such a blur she didn't feel that surge she expected but was more just in awe about what had all just happened. Her placenta didn't detach fully and she was given the option of going to the OR for a D&C or having her doctor manually extract it. She felt she had done so much to avoid the OR she told the doctor to just take it out but it was so excruciatingly painful she never would have consented if she knew how brutal it was going to be. Breastfeeding went very well and she had every expectation of tandem nursing, however, she and her daughter made the decision to wean when she 15 weeks pregnant. Natasha says that this pregnancy couldn't be more different than her last and she is hopeful that her labor and delivery will perhaps go differently as well.