The beautiful Rachel Bishop with her son Noah James (3) and daughter Ginny May (6 months). Rachel and her husband struggled with trying to conceive for some time before she was able to get pregnant with Noah. They ultimately turned to Clomid and were able to conceive him on the first cycle. She says that her pregnancy and birth experiences were both healthy but quite different from one another. Her pregnancy with Noah was easy and her birth fairly straight forward. She had an epidural and a pitocin drip and says that a long latent phase, where not much happened, made the last hour or two before Noah was born, when things ramped up quickly, quite a shock and she had a fainting spell just after he was born. Her pregnancy with Ginny was more difficult in that she was experienced a lot of joint pain and found herself to be exhausted all of the time. She chose to deliver without medication this time and says that her body had a difficult time coping with the adrenaline. She couldn't stop shaking and she was quite shaken up emotionally afterwards as well and says that she had to talk it out with a lot of people before she began to feel better about her experience.
Rachel knew she wanted to breastfeed but found it challenging with both Noah and Ginny. Noah's latch was excruciatingly painful and she says she was militant about not supplementing. 5 weeks went by before she realized he was loosing weight and she had to introduce formula. By about 4 months of age he began to prefer the bottle and stopped breastfeeding entirely. Ginny also had a painful latch and was determined to have a tongue tie which may have gone undiagnosed in Noah. They chose to have it corrected which improved things quite a bit for Rachel. She hadn't resisted supplementing this time and knew from the start that her daughter was getting enough to eat. It has just been in the past few weeks that they've been able to transition exclusively to breast which she loves it and is so grateful for.
Rachel says that she isn't a very public person, she doesn't tend to put herself out there as an introvert. She wanted to change that with her participation, however, and felt capable of sharing herself and her story as a means of supporting and becoming part of a movement she believes in.