My Story

I grew up on the plains of Northwest Oklahoma. I spent many long, hot summer days in my grandfather's giant garden pulling and hoeing weeds. It was in that garden that I found my love and connection with plants. I also found out what hard work was at the age of 12.

 

 

After high school, I moved 300 miles to Texas in pursuit of my dreams to play college softball, where I played for two years. During that time, I found an appreciation for my body like never before. I learned new depths of what my physical body could withstand, and grew a deeper connection to my body. Listening to it, and allowing myself to accept what it was asking of me, while also pushing it to limits I had never before seen. I met my amazing husband in my second year of college, he was on the rodeo team, and I was on the softball team. We quickly realized we never wanted to NOT be friends, so marriage was the next best thing.

 

 

We got married soon after we graduated our two year degree school, and then started our first business together, TB Equine Services. Growing a life and a business together was quite a task at our age. But looking back now, it was an incredible chapter in our lives, filled with so many joyous accomplishments and just as many adversities. It was during this time I learned a new appreciation for nature and its wildness. We worked together trimming horses hoofs and I did equine massage. We worked with what many would call wild horses more times than not. There are very few moments in life, relatable to when a horse that was just trying to hurt you moments ago, relaxes and melts underneath your hands and becomes one with you.

 

Two years after marriage I became pregnant with our first son Like most first time moms I had no idea what I was doing. I did as most women do, and that was schedule and appointment with my local OB, and get started on the allopathic version of prenatal care as soon as I received two pink lines. I never felt right doing this, I always left the OB office upset and angry. I would sit in the waiting room for almost two hours and had a 10 minute maximum visit with not even my doctor, but her nurse practitioner. I envisioned much more personalized care, and a much more intimate experience. What woman wants some stranger looking at the most private and sacred area of her body during the most vulnerable times in life. I know I didn’t, and I was furious that people actually treat not just pregnant women, but all women, with such disregard for ones soul and spirit. During the last few weeks of pregnancy my doctor persuaded me I not thinking my baby was no longer growing and I needed an induction in a few weeks, at 40 weeks on the dot. I was ignorant in all things childbirth and obstetrics, so it didn’t take much to make me say “yes ma’am”. Looking back now, and learning what I have learned, it was all a formulated lie, for whatever her agenda may have been. It could have been that the practice she worked under had a policy for all babies to be born at 40 weeks, or simply, she may not have wanted a surprise call at 3 in the morning that she had a mother in labor about to have a baby, we may never know. But I did as she said, like the good girl I was, and went in for my Induction at 1pm on a Wednesday. I cant describe the feeling of uncomfortably and uneasiness that accompanied my soul that day. I knew it wasn’t right, and I knew my baby needed more time. I didn’t know I could just simply say “no” and walk away to go home.

 

 

I walked down the halls, up the elevator, and said to the front desk I was there for an induction. They sent me up right away and got busy with paper work in the delivery room. It wasn’t soon after crossing T’s and dotting I ’s that my induction had begun. It started with some very gruff and rather large handed nurse walked in to “insert a pill close to my cervix”. Let me tell you.... she didn’t “just” insert that pill..... she pried my cervix open with her finger and didn’t even tell me what she was doing. I was crying out and writhing around in pain. I wanted to run away as fast as I could from that hospital and never come back. The hours ticked on, 6pm, midnight, 7am, and nothing knew except for nurses to come in during shift change and introduce themselves. At around 2 pm the next day on Thursday the nurse tells me I have to start Pitocin, I asked if “I absolutely had to”, and to which she replied sternly, “yes” (also another lie). The only thing I knew walking into that hospital was what I didn’t want, Pitocin and an epidural was on that list. But guess what, I walked out with every single wish I had for my birth, blown all the way to the stars never to be seen again.

 

I had a fortunate birth compared to many other women, I walked away having a vaginal birth, but I felt broken and like a piece of my story was missing. After the Pitocin and shortly following the epidural, I was in a lost space of mind. I don’t recall feeling a single emotion after that. Later I learned it was from a low dose of narcotics I had received along side the nerve blocking medication (again, not ever being told what exactly it was being injected into me and passing on to my baby). My son was born high on legal opioid, he was extremely sleepy and didn’t want to feed very well int the days following his birth because of this.

 

Coming home, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to treat sick babies, or how to feed them. I did so much research in the following months and found that natural things is what I felt most comfortable giving him during sick times, along with washing his clothes and bathing him in natural products. I also chose to breast feed him exclusively for the first year of his life.

 

Now here I am, 3 years later, with much more knowledge than I could have even fathomed at that time. With my second son, a beautiful home birth (story in my blog) I now choose to learn from my mistakes and share my story with other mothers as a guiding light to help encourage them too seek what it is that they truly want. Not only in childbirth but also life as a whole.

 

Its my dream to build beautiful strong women’s communities, rooted in faith, with no judgement as to their decisions no matter what they should be. It is through education, guidance, and support, that I will help bring more women together to continue on what I hope to bring to the communities in West Texas.