The beautiful Perrin Schilling with her daughter Juliet (5) and son Finn (4). Perrin had very difficult pregnancies. She had two early miscarriages prior to conceiving Juliet. With both of her successful pregnancies, she had severe hyperemesis gravidarum that caused her to lose a lot of weight, as well as well as prenatal anxiety that got much better after delivery. Perrin had planned on a fully natural childbirth. However, the hospital she delivered Julia was not supportive. After 16 hours of labor, she gave in to an epidural after she was encouraged to use Pitocin and Juliet was born very quickly after. For Finn's birth, she entrusted her care to midwives because she was not happy with her first birth experience. She had high hopes for a natural delivery this time but labor stalled and her midwives called the OB on call who told her that the room needed to be available for inductions in a few hours so she needed to hurry up and have her baby. At 6cms dilated, she checked herself out of the hospital and went home to labor on her own. She went back 2 hours later at 9.5cms and in transition. Unfortunately Finn got stuck in her pelvis and she was in transition for 3.5 hours. She consented to an epidural and Finn was born shortly after. His cord was wrapped around his neck and he wasn't breathing, but started breathing very quickly thereafter. She had to work very hard to breastfeed Juliet and has struggled with low supply but was able to nurse until 1 year. Right before Finn was born he turned breech and was found to have urinary reflux. His severe reflux required lots of testing and surgery at 14 months old. Juliet had planned to wean post-op but Finn had a bad reaction to anesthesia and went into full renal failure. She wasn't able to nurse for a few days and started pumping every two hours but was only producing an hour a day. The experience was very traumatic to the whole family and Perrin refused to let that be the end of their nursing relationship so she continued to nurse until Finn was 2.5.
Perrin has struggled with eating disorders for a very long time and said that she hates her body. She says that she is very mean to herself in her head, but forces herself to say positive things about herself out loud in front of her daughter. She chose to participate in the project because she wants to learn to be okay with herself and show her children that differences in bodies are all beautiful.