EBB 340 – Emetophobia in Pregnancy and an Inspiring Home Birth Story with Kat Sullivan and Ben Winston, EBB Childbirth Class Graduates

• Learn more about Kat and Ben’s EBB Instructor, Emily McMichael, here or follow her on Instagram here!

For more information about Evidence Based Birth and a crash course on evidence based care, visit www.ebbirth.com. Follow us on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok! Ready to learn more? Grab an EBB Podcast Listening Guide or read Dr. Dekker’s book, “Babies Are Not Pizzas: They’re Born, Not Delivered!” If you want to get involved at EBB, join our Professional membership (scholarship options available) and get on the wait list for our EBB Instructor program. Find an EBB Instructor here, and click here to learn more about the EBB Childbirth Class.

(00:01:24) Joyful Home Birth Experience despite Challenges
(00:04:56) Empowered by Supportive Providers for Emetophobia
(00:10:17) Navigating Mental Health in Parenthood Transition
(00:17:53) Navigating Challenges with a Strong Support System
(00:30:10) Unpredictable Transitions in Labor and Birth
(00:35:03) Empowering Decisions Through Evidence-Based Home Birth
(00:36:07) Empowering Parents Through Evidence-Based Childbirth Education

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:00:00:

Hi everyone, on today’s podcast, we’re going to talk with EBB Childbirth Class graduates, Kat Sullivan and Ben Winston about their home birth and also about Kat’s experience of going through pregnancy with emetophobia, the fear of throwing up. Welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. My name is Rebecca Dekker, and I’m a nurse with my PhD and the founder of Evidence Based Birth®. Join me each week as we work together to get evidence-based information into the hands of families and professionals around the world. As a reminder, this information is not medical advice. See ebbirth.com/disclaimer for more details. Hi, everyone, and welcome to today’s episode of the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. I am so excited to introduce our two guests to you who have a really fascinating birth story and pregnancy story to share. Kat Sullivan is a dancer and a writer, and her partner, Ben Winston, is a principal engineer with the Philadelphia Public School District in Pennsylvania. Kat and Ben live with their baby and lovable orange cat in Northwest Philly, where they consume way too much coffee. They’re both graduates of the EBB Childbirth Class with EBB instructor Emily McMichael, and Kat and Ben are here to share their pregnancy and birth story. Kat and Ben, welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast.

Kat Sullivan – 00:01:24:

Thank you so much.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:01:26:

I’m so excited to have both of you here. It’s always fun when we get to have like both parents here to share their story. So I was wondering if you could start off by telling us a little bit about how you found out about Evidence Based Birth® and the Childbirth Class.

Kat Sullivan – 00:01:39:

I think I was the one to find it. I actually, years and years ago, did a postpartum doula training out of curiosity. I learned a lot about home birth, the myriad of ways that hospital birth differs from home birth. And I got really interested in reading a lot of different perspectives. So I think I found Evidence Based Birth® a few years ago, actually, as a solid organization that felt like it was presenting different aspects of birth in such a way they didn’t have a particular political agenda one way or another.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:02:09:

And Ben, what was your introduction to EBB? Was it taking the Childbirth Class or something else?

Ben Winston – 00:02:15:

Yeah, so I hadn’t heard about it before Kat mentioned this as, you know… something that we should do as part of our pregnancy journey and getting ready to have our little one. I was aware of some birthing classes, but nothing really specific. The idea that it’s really following the evidence and presenting the evidence of what you’re seeing and not seeing without kind of having an agenda to be like, okay, I’m going to present the evidence that supports my agenda instead of being like, well, here’s what we’re seeing. You could do it this way. You could do it this way. That’s what we see here. That’s what we see there.

Kat Sullivan – 00:02:50:

Yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:02:51:

I really appreciated that.

Kat Sullivan – 00:02:52:

In either direction, it was important to us be armed with the information that didn’t feel like it was biased towards or against certain interventions for any reason beyond are they medically necessary or not.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:03:03:

That is true. A lot of parents feel pressure, you know, one way or another, or you start to worry, does this person have an agenda? Are they trying to get me to do something? So it gives you that sense of like freedom that, you know, we can make the choices that are best for us. I think sometimes there’s almost a little bit too emphasis on our culture of like following the research because there’s also your personal preferences, right? And your background, which we’re going to get more into in a little bit and how that might impact your choices.

Kat Sullivan – 00:03:33:

Absolutely.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:03:33:

What was your experience for both of you like taking the class with Emily?

Kat Sullivan – 00:03:37:

We loved it.

Ben Winston – 00:03:38:

Yeah, it was a great class.

Kat Sullivan – 00:03:39:

Yeah. Right off the bat, one of the first things we talked about in the class was having a golden ticket provider and how it didn’t make any of the rest of the information unnecessary to know. But if you had the golden ticket provider who respected your boundaries and would give you the information necessary and you trusted to make decisions, that was really like the best way you could set yourself up for the kind of birth that you wanted. We weren’t doubting that we had wonderful providers, but it was just really validating to see that reflected in the Evidence Based Birth®. If you’re so fortunate to have access to a provider like that, then that’s really like the number one tool you can have in your toolkit.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:04:21:

You don’t have to worry so much about some of the other pressures.

Kat Sullivan – 00:04:25:

Right.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:04:25:

You can focus on building a trusting relationship with your provider and just then learning and educating yourself about your options without the fear that you’ll be railroad it into one thing or another.

Kat Sullivan – 00:04:36:

Right. Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:04:38:

Kat, you reached out to us and let us know you had this really interesting experience of having a diagnosis of emetophobia and then having to go through pregnancy as well as labor and birth. So can you share how, you know, what is emetophobia and how did it impact your pregnancy journey?

Kat Sullivan – 00:04:56:

Emetophobia is the fear of throwing up or vomit. And for most emetophobes, it’s themselves being sick. But for some people, it’s a fear of other people being sick. Sometimes it’s both. But for me, it’s very much the fear of myself throwing up. For a long time, it was the reason I thought I would actually never have kids. Because in like sex ed in high school, the like videos they show you to scare you off is the teenage girl waking up in the morning and immediately throwing up. And that’s how she figures out she’s pregnant. What I encountered in the first trimester. I was actually very, very, very much not okay. I never, spoiler alert, I actually never did throw up. But I had a lot of nausea and aversions to food and smells and weird things. I had a lot, a lot, a lot of gagging from acid reflux, which was in the first trimester, at least, was incredibly difficult to manage.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:05:51:

I was just looking up the statistics on vomiting in pregnancy, and I think it’s something like 80% of women vomit, at least, you know, during pregnancy.

Kat Sullivan – 00:06:00:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:06:01:

So how did you get yourself mentally to the point where that was something you were like willing to undergo? Like, did you undergo therapy or what strategies did you use to prepare?

Kat Sullivan – 00:06:11:

Yes, I’ve been in therapy, as you might imagine, for many, many years now. And it was something I talked about extensively with my therapist. I actually had a consultation with the midwifery practice that we used about a year before we even started trying to say like, this is something that I deal with. This is something that has greatly impacted what I think is going to be my ability to handle being pregnant if I am ever pregnant. The midwife was so wonderful, gave me some tools, they talked about the B6 and the Unisom and the ginger and all that. But they were saying, if you want, just let me know whenever you do get pregnant and I’ll just have a Zofran prescription ready to rumble for you. It was a huge relief also then when I did get pregnant, and it was a huge, huge, huge source of panic and anxiety for me to not have to then explain to my midwife. I think I had an appointment with my general practitioner when I was about five weeks pregnant just to check in. And I was saying, I don’t feel sick yet, but I’m really terrified of when that’s going to happen. And the response that people give you who are not emetophobes, they don’t understand the phobia that it’s not a rational thing. They’re like, oh, well, you might be sick, but it’s fine because you’re pregnant. You’re not ill. There’s not something wrong. It’s for a good reason.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:07:24:

Well, I think in some emetophobes also have the fear of stomach bugs and being sick as well, right?

Kat Sullivan – 00:07:31:

Absolutely.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:07:31:

It doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter for you if it was for a healthy reason or not. You just didn’t want to vomit.

Kat Sullivan – 00:07:36:

I was just terrified of it happening no matter what. So it was just a huge relief to know like, okay, this person knows, this person who’s in charge of my care knows they’re not judging me for it. And they’re going to be an active role in helping me manage it in whatever that looks like, whether or not I need to just like talk and cry about it in an appointment or if I need some medication to like support me through this or whatever that looks like. Not having to like advocate for myself and like go through the potential embarrassment of having the person be like, oh, but it’s for a good reason or whatever.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:08:06:

Or the delay in treatment. Because I’m thinking of a friend of mine who had, who did have vomiting in early pregnancy and couldn’t get into a clinic for months and months. She ended up only being able to find help from a home birth midwife was the only one who would help her. The tip you’re giving about having a provider lined up. Like ready to go before you get pregnant would be really important for emetophobia because then you don’t waste time trying to find somebody you have help like lined up in advance. And it also seems like I hadn’t thought about this before, but that the midwifery model of care with the kind of additional time for emotional support and social support would be really helpful for you.

Kat Sullivan – 00:08:51:

Yeah. I ended up being Group B Strep negative, but if I had been positive for the home birth practice that we were in, I would have gotten a prescription for the antibiotics and gone to pick them up. And again, my midwife was like, I’ll just put in a liquid Zofran prescription along with that. So you can go get this together and we’ll just like roll that out for you without me having to like ask for that at all. It was a comfort to me knowing that had I thrown up during labor, if I had needed a moment to be like, oh my God, and like process that then. Everybody would have already understood that already and would have been like ready to support me emotionally through that without just being like, that’s a normal part of transition. Like moving on, we’ll wipe it up and continue. If I had needed to be like, ah, oh my God.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:09:32:

Can you explain a little bit about the panic attacks that go along with this disorder?

Kat Sullivan – 00:09:37:

Yeah. So the first trimester was so rough because I was constantly in a state of panic. My emetophobia is part of OCD, which I’ve also been diagnosed with. My OCD at least is that the themes that it latches onto is usually the things that I care about the most, which makes it really high stakes. And it’s my brain’s way of trying to protect me from losing something that I really care about, but it’s not a very effective support measure for me.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:10:02:

Right. But then you can’t stop the thought.

Kat Sullivan – 00:10:04:

Exactly. Yes. Exactly. And we didn’t want to make the decision about whether or not to have kids out of a place of fear. We wanted to make it out of a place of love, knowing that we were also opening ourselves up to an enormous amount of risk potentially. And we were extremely fortunate that we got pregnant our first try. For Ben, it was like… This is amazing. It was everything that we had wanted. And for me, I was just immediately hit with a wall of panic of, oh my God, okay, it’s real now. The level of panic was high. I mean, I felt like I was constantly shaking. My heart was racing all the time, monitoring every single little symptom, every single external stimuli to see if that was going to set it off. I was also immediately hit with a ton of intrusive thoughts of, well, did I want this pregnancy? Is this me actually wanting an abortion? Maybe I don’t really want to do this.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:10:58:

All your triggers went off for all your fears. So Ben, how did you cope through this and how did you support Kat?

Ben Winston – 00:11:05:

Like Kat said, it was incredibly difficult. We see the positive test and we’re excited, but we’re also like, okay, like, whoa, this is real now.

Kat Sullivan – 00:11:14:

Which I think most people go through that. Especially if it’s their first baby.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:11:17:

You’re kind of going through the normal, like almost shock of this is actually happening.

Ben Winston – 00:11:22:

Right.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:11:23:

But then also dealing with the panic and the phobia.

Ben Winston – 00:11:26:

You kind of have that feeling of like, whoa. And then that sort of ramps back up like, okay, like this is, no, this is good. This is what we want. I’m getting excited, blah, blah, blah. And just to see you kind of fall off that cliff.

Kat Sullivan – 00:11:36:

Yeah, keep falling.

Ben Winston – 00:11:37:

From whoa into like, oh no.

Kat Sullivan – 00:11:39:

Yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:11:39:

This is not good.

Kat Sullivan – 00:11:40:

Yeah. Not even like, is this not good? But like, oh no, what if this isn’t good? It was that like not knowing it was so hard.

Ben Winston – 00:11:46:

Yeah. How I felt. And I was really glad to be able to be home a good amount because for a good part of the first trimester, you were. Unable to do a lot of basic care things.

Kat Sullivan – 00:12:00:

I mean, I wasn’t leaving the house for fear that I would be out somewhere and throw up. I was not showering, I don’t think at all, because seeing the toilet was a trigger. Because again, that like image I had in my head of that teenage girl throwing up in the toilet, I like associated the toilet with throwing up. So it was just hard for me to like be in the bathroom in general.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:12:19:

Everything was a trigger.

Kat Sullivan – 00:12:21:

Everything was a trigger. I was so closely associated the letter V with the word vomit. And I was afraid that if I said a word with the letter V in it, it was going to induce something. It’s not logical, but that’s the level of incapacitation.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:12:34:

That’s the nature of the phobia.

Kat Sullivan – 00:12:36:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:12:36:

Did it ease at any point?

Kat Sullivan – 00:12:38:

Yes. Once I went on an SSRI is what finally got me there.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:12:42:

Okay.

Ben Winston – 00:12:43:

Yeah, I was going to say, there was some help in the easing.

Kat Sullivan – 00:12:46:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was not. I mean, there was a lot of like mental work that I did too, but it was really, that was the tipping point for me. It was rock bottom in so many ways.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:12:55:

It sounds like it.

Kat Sullivan – 00:12:56:

Yeah. I mean, I was completely infunctional. We had put off the first scan. A few weeks because I was unable to leave the house. And I was so, so, so scared that I was going to go to the scan and they were going to confirm the baby and like hear the heartbeat and that I wasn’t going to feel excited. I was terrified that I would have that experience and it would just confirm that I didn’t want the pregnancy. Because of all those intrusive thoughts. I had not tried an SSRI at all before that. Primarily, honestly, because I know that a lot of people feel sick when they’re ramping up on them, and I was terrified of throwing up.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:13:34:

Yeah, it can have some digestive issues. So who did you go to about that? Your midwife or a primary care provider?

Kat Sullivan – 00:13:41:

A psychiatrist who I had already been seeing. At that point, my psychiatrist had told me that if I needed to take the Xanax as needed during the pregnancy, that it was okay, that I was at a low enough dosage that maybe not as a long-term solution, but in the immediate kind of dampening the flames. So she confirmed, the perinatal psychiatrist confirmed that if I needed to do that, it was okay, that the dose that I was on was unlikely to make a huge impact. But I think I stopped taking that once I started taking an SSRI because I started on Zoloft and I got super, super, super lucky that it worked really quickly for me. Within like a week, I noticed a difference. It worked on a really low dosage. I only ever had to go up to 50 milligrams and I had no side effects besides the good ones that you want. But I had no like negative side effects ramping up or being on it.

Ben Winston – 00:14:31:

The whole first trimester was really hard. I’ve also been in therapy for a long period of time and I’m on SSRIs for my own veritable textbook of issues. It’s still very much a trial and error process.

Kat Sullivan – 00:14:44:

Like whack-a-mole sometimes.

Ben Winston – 00:14:45:

Yeah. Historically, you had not wanted to make that choice. Again, you said at least part of the reason being that the adjustment process is difficult and there’s no guarantee that it’ll work the first time.

Kat Sullivan – 00:14:58:

Even once you are adjusted to it.

Ben Winston – 00:15:00:

So I honestly wasn’t sure if… This we were going to make it all the way through the pregnancy. I remember the first night, we found out I immediately bought like, 150 dollars worth of dad books, that’s my love just buying books. Um, as you got worse and worse, I stopped reading them, because I was worried-

Kat Sullivan – 00:15:25:

You were going to get attached and excited.

Ben Winston – 00:15:27:

It was going to become this thing that was absolutely definitely going to happen. And we were going to have to make a horrible choice and it might have been the right choice and if we had to make it if we made it for the right reasons that’s fine but it you know it was certainly not a choice that we wanted to make or that would have been easy to make. Any sort of, negative side effect or misstep there.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:15:56:

Could cause you to spiral further down.

Ben Winston – 00:15:58:

Right, exactly. It was sort of the last straw, so to speak.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:16:02:

Yeah. But in the end, you both found kind of this light.

Kat Sullivan – 00:16:07:

Yeah, thank God.

Ben Winston – 00:16:08:

Yeah, it was amazing.

Kat Sullivan – 00:16:10:

Yeah. My understanding with SSRIs is this is usually not the experience, but it was really like a light switch. It was night and day. All of a sudden, I felt not only that the level of panic, that very extremely high level of panic that I had been operating at for a couple of months had gone down, but I had also… like calmed down past the level of anxiety and panic that I was like normally operating at.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:16:32:

Your baseline level. Yeah.

Kat Sullivan – 00:16:34:

Yes. It dropped like to an even lower level. And it was like, I just remember being like, I feel amazing. Is this what everyone feels like normally?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:16:43:

Not to have the constant intrusive thoughts and adrenaline.

Kat Sullivan – 00:16:47:

I knew, of course, during the first trimester that I was like really, really, really inoperable and like at a bad point. But I didn’t realize that even like my baseline was also like not great either.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:16:58:

Well, sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. It’s like it’s the water you were swimming in. You didn’t know any different.

Kat Sullivan – 00:17:04:

Exactly. Exactly. And then all of a sudden it was like I felt amazing. I felt calm. I was able to do things. I was able to eat. I was able to like let’s go on a day trip to this place was like incredible for me. That was would have been unthinkable. Not that long before I started taking Zoloft.

Ben Winston – 00:17:24:

Yeah. A lot of it was a huge dose of luck. But I don’t think we would have been in the place to be that lucky without the amount of support we’ve had. You have the care team, but the midwife and your therapist and psychiatrist. The fact that I’ve been able, was able to work more remotely so that I was able to more acutely take care. And, you know, I wasn’t just like, well, good luck. I hope you eat something today. I’ll see you when I get home.

Kat Sullivan – 00:17:51:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you’re awesome.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:17:53:

You were like essentially nursing her through that first trimester.

Kat Sullivan – 00:17:57:

Very much so, yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:17:59:

Those supports were, I think, really key too. Enabling us to get to the point where that hefty dose of luck could come in and kind of help us out of the dark.

Kat Sullivan – 00:18:10:

And I think like what really like got us there was we were finally able to get that first scan. I was feeling good enough to leave the house and confident enough seeing the little jelly bean on the scan and hearing the heartbeat was amazing. And it was like, oh, like, yes. Okay. Thank God. Like, I do feel excited. This is, of course, what I want.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:18:29:

Like, I do want to be a mom and I want to have this baby.

Kat Sullivan – 00:18:32:

I do want this experience, even if it means I have to face one of my worst fears.

Ben Winston – 00:18:36:

All of these loud, intrusive thoughts were just that loud and intrusive.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:18:40:

Yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:18:40:

They weren’t representative.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:18:41:

They weren’t you.

Ben Winston – 00:18:42:

Who I was or what I was.

Kat Sullivan – 00:18:43:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:18:43:

Right. Right. Wow. Well, I just want to pause here and honor and thank you for like your vulnerability and sharing this and being open about it because I’m sure it’s going to help other people. Like you said, it’s not talked about enough.

Kat Sullivan – 00:18:58:

I found when I was pregnant, even before pregnancy, but like searching for experiences and resources about people, emetophobics, pregnant, there’s not a lot. So it’s important to me to be able to share what we went through. So everybody else.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:19:14:

I guarantee you somebody’s listening right now who found it from a Google search and is like, finally, someone who understands what I’m going through. Take us to the end of your pregnancy. Where was your mindset? What kind of birth were you planning?

Kat Sullivan – 00:19:30:

We’re planning on having a home birth. And that was something that back from when I did that postpartum doula training, that was something that home birth was talked about. So I had had it in my head that I would like to do a home birth for a couple years prior. And then when it came down to it, if I was able to be in my own environment with my own food that I felt safe with, that that was going to minimize any panic that might come up for me during labor about being sick. We were working with an amazing midwifery practice that’s right around the corner from us. So I could like waddle there at 36 weeks for my appointment. It was amazing. And I did. But so I was feeling at that point like, I’m not going to love it if I get sick during labor. I’m not going to elect to do that, of course. But if it happens, I felt like it wasn’t going to send me off into a spiral of panic at that point. That’s good. The glucose test as an emetophobe was another tough one because I had heard a lot of horror stories about that.

Ben Winston – 00:20:20:

Yep.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:20:21:

Yeah, because it can cause nausea.

Kat Sullivan – 00:20:23:

The midwifery practice that we worked with gave us the option to do a smoothie with like specific measurements of ingredients instead of the glucose, which I opted to do, which was great. But it was like a whole like huge jar that I had to drink in 10 minutes.

Ben Winston – 00:20:37:

Right. Yeah, because it wasn’t the concentrated sugar.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:20:41:

It’s not meant to be. Either way, it’s not something that your body naturally wants to ingest.

Ben Winston – 00:20:47:

I didn’t eat again until dinner.

Kat Sullivan – 00:20:49:

Very uncomfortable afterwards, but not nauseous at least. But yeah, so everything had gone well. So we were all set for the home birth.

Ben Winston – 00:20:57:

I had not had a lot of experience reading about or listening to the research about birth. My experience and knowledge about birth was, what my parents went through. And unfortunately, all the stuff you see on television and movies and the stuff that my parents went through are… You know, that was what worked for them. And that’s what worked for them when I was born.

Kat Sullivan – 00:21:25:

With the information they had at the time.

Ben Winston – 00:21:26:

With the information they had. And obviously what happens on television is and is not, you know.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:21:32:

Real.

Ben Winston – 00:21:32:

In any way.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:21:33:

Right.

Ben Winston – 00:21:33:

In Western culture, birth was something that happened in a hospital with doctors present in case something went wrong, which on its surface makes a lot of sense.

Kat Sullivan – 00:21:44:

And is a great choice.

Ben Winston – 00:21:45:

Yeah.

Kat Sullivan – 00:21:45:

Me being like, I want my toast. Very compelling reason.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:21:48:

Well, and your mental health, like different people, you know, a hospital might feel better for some, home for others, a birth center for others. So it ended up being the right choice for you, I understand.

Ben Winston – 00:22:02:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:22:02:

In the end. Definitely. And so how did your labor begin?

Kat Sullivan – 00:22:06:

It began when I woke up to pee at about three in the morning on October 23rd. And as soon as I stood upright, I felt a little gush, not dissimilar to like when you’re ovulating and you have the really liquidy cervical mucus, it just kind of like falls out of you sometimes. So I had a moment of like, oh, I’m ovulating. And then I was like, no, I’m not.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:22:29:

No, I’m not.

Kat Sullivan – 00:22:30:

Definitely not ovulating. So I went to pee and I didn’t see anything besides pee. Sorry, podcast listeners. I didn’t get any of the gory details.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:22:38:

It is a birth podcast, so it’s okay.

Ben Winston – 00:22:40:

Maybe not with a good note, too.

Kat Sullivan – 00:22:41:

Yeah. You know, got back in bed. And then as I was lying there waiting for you to come back up with the food, I continued to feel little gushes. And then that’s what made me be like, maybe this is my water breaking. And I reached down and was very surprised to find that I had actually soaked through my pants and the sheets. And I think I was still not going to tell you.

Ben Winston – 00:23:02:

No, you weren’t.

Kat Sullivan – 00:23:04:

You came back upstairs with the toast.

Ben Winston – 00:23:06:

Yeah, my experience with this was I got an elbow in my ribs at three in the morning, which was common at this point. You were very hungry at all sorts of times.

Kat Sullivan – 00:23:15:

Yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:23:15:

So you were like, I would like some peanut butter toast. So I went and made peanut butter toast.

Kat Sullivan – 00:23:19:

Yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:23:20:

And I brought it up and I handed you the plate. And then I like get back in bed and I’m trying to fall back asleep. You had like taken a bite, but you were mostly like scrolling on your phone. And it wasn’t like that sort of idle scrolling of like, oh, I’m going to do this until I get tired enough to fall back asleep.

Kat Sullivan – 00:23:34:

It was Googling.

Ben Winston – 00:23:34:

It was more determined scrolling.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:23:36:

Like, did my water break? Google.

Kat Sullivan – 00:23:38:

Yes, best contraction timer apps.

Ben Winston – 00:23:41:

Yeah. And so I was like, oh, is everything okay? And you say, I think my water might have broken. Okay. Well, thank you for telling me. I was going to go back to sleep, but I guess not.

Kat Sullivan – 00:23:56:

So at that point, we called the midwife. This is maybe about 3.30-ish.

Ben Winston – 00:23:59:

Yeah, 3.30.

Kat Sullivan – 00:24:00:

3.30 in the morning. Um, to say, hey, I think my water’s broke. And they said exactly what I expected them to say, which was, you know, great. Glad that the waters are clear. Just hang tight. We’ll check in like later in the afternoon on this day, like kind of just treat it as if like exactly what we learned in the Evidence Based Birth® class to like just kind of pretend like it’s not happening. Think of it like period cramps if you feel anything.

Ben Winston – 00:24:25:

Try to get back to sleep.

Kat Sullivan – 00:24:25:

Go about your day. Yep. Go back to sleep. All of that.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:24:28:

Distraction sleep.

Kat Sullivan – 00:24:29:

Yeah. Which again was exactly what I was anticipating. So we were like, great, let’s try and go back to sleep. And I didn’t want to exhaust myself because I knew that that was one of the main reasons why people who are going for a home birth end up transferring to the hospital because they’re up for so long. Right off the bat, I was getting the adrenaline shakes with every contraction, which we had learned in the class was more of a like transition-y kind of symptom. We only ended up, I think, tracking for the first 15 to 30 minutes after we called the midwife. But they were already coming in every two to three minutes, lasting a minute in length.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:25:07:

Oh my goodness.

Kat Sullivan – 00:25:08:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:25:08:

Wow.

Kat Sullivan – 00:25:09:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The marker that if we were to go to the hospital. Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:25:13:

That you should be going.

Kat Sullivan – 00:25:14:

Yeah, right.

Ben Winston – 00:25:15:

Based on the stuff we read and the stuff from the EBB class, we were expecting the sort of early labor.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:25:21:

Right, slow, long process.

Kat Sullivan – 00:25:24:

I had so many plans for like what I was going to do. I was going to take walks in the woods. I was going to cook a delicious meal for myself. Like I had such, such plans. Right. We were going to set up the birth pool that we had rented.

Ben Winston – 00:25:36:

Yeah, we had lots of plans.

Kat Sullivan – 00:25:38:

We had lots of plans.

Ben Winston – 00:25:38:

Yeah, and it was one of those where like, yeah, it was happening and we were like, okay, like imagine you like, with a textbook, be like, okay, let me flip down. Okay, we’re clearly on chapter eight now.

Kat Sullivan – 00:25:50:

Yeah, right, right, right. And at that point, there was an option on the app to like mark how intense the contraction was. And I was like, like, I was like moaning, not able to vocalize or not able to like speak through the contractions, like shaking and all of that stuff. But I was trying to mentally sort of like get myself in the groove of like, this is early labor. This is early labor. Like it’s going to get a lot more intense. So I would be like, oh, through a contraction. And then Ben would be like. How much? And I’d be like. Mild. I’m like gritting my teeth. That was a mild one. Because when they got the midwife and their assistant, when they arrived, they asked if I was okay with having a cervical check so they could see if I was dilated, what was going on. And I said, yes, dear God, please check this out. I need to know that this is really happening. Yeah, they confirmed that I was five centimeters dilated, 100% effaced. And the baby was at, I think, a negative two station at that point. The baby in that moment was applying to my cervix asymmetrically. So one half was five centimeters dilated, but the other half was already eight centimeters dilated. Okay. So I was like fully transitioning at that point. It was such a shock. I was not afraid at any point. It didn’t feel traumatic, not even close, but it was very shocking to have been like, an hour ago, I was going to try and eat peanut butter toast and now I’m suddenly in transition and labor. And yeah, and I think I was, I mean, I say hours. It was maybe only like two hours that I was laboring in the shower.

Ben Winston – 00:27:14:

Yeah, it was an hour and a half or two hours.

Kat Sullivan – 00:27:15:

Yeah. The midwives were coming in maybe like every 15 minutes to check on the baby’s heart rate. And they were just like, yep, everything looks good. And then they just kind of like took the space or like gave me the space to do what I needed to do.

Ben Winston – 00:27:27:

The midwives did a really good job of like, you know, we can’t make any promises about anything.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:27:32:

Yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:27:33:

We can tell you that everything that’s happening is perfectly normal.

Kat Sullivan – 00:27:37:

Yes.

Ben Winston – 00:27:37:

And you’re doing very well.

Kat Sullivan – 00:27:38:

Yes.

Ben Winston – 00:27:38:

Which was great.

Kat Sullivan – 00:27:40:

Yeah, which was really what I needed to hear. And I knew enough, again, from the Evidence Based Birth® class to know like the symptoms that I was with, the adrenaline shakes and the frequency with which the contractions were coming in and my inability to speak, like all of that. I knew that like things were moving quickly. And then at one point I started to feel like I had to take a massive poop, which I knew was what pushing was going to feel like. So I think much to our neighbor’s delight, having heard the shower running for like two hours, I was like, Mc Page, which is the midwife’s name. I feel like I have to take a huge poop. And they came in and they were like. Like push that’s fine.

Ben Winston – 00:28:18:

We do share a wall with our neighbors.

Kat Sullivan – 00:28:23:

Yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:28:23:

And uh, we were a few days early. So we didn’t get a chance to give them a heads up, that they might hear some interesting sounds coming from our way. And not to panic or call the police or anything.

Kat Sullivan – 00:28:34:

Yeah. I pushed in the shower on hands and knees for a while. And then I moved back into our bedroom. I was going to try and stand for a little bit. But from having been on hands and knees for so long, my legs were not going to support me. So I laid down on my side. I pushed for a little bit on my left side and switched back up to all fours with some pillows supporting me for a little bit. And then on my right side again. And one of the midwives was giving me this awesome low back massage while that was all happening. That was really great. Every time I had a contraction at that point, I was like looking at the midwives being like, am I doing it? Like, is this happening? Is this good? And they were like, yeah, like you’re doing great. It’s happening. They were encouraging me to try and like keep the progress that I made with the baby every time, which I was able to do because I could definitely feel everything not having an epidural. And then I think I managed to finally get the baby’s head out. Yeah, it was on my right side at that point. Um, he had, um, a hand up on his face, which I think was part of why it was taking a little while to get the head out. And they had me pause there. They, um, slipped, um, the cord around his neck. I think it was around like once. Um, so they had me like pause on pushing, which is. Oh my gosh, I just want to get this kid out. And then I pushed out of shoulders and that was it. And it was 8:30, at that point.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:30:00:

In the morning.

Kat Sullivan – 00:30:00:

It’s 8:32. So about five hours from water breaking to baby’s out.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:30:06:

How did it feel when your baby was finally in your arms?

Kat Sullivan – 00:30:10:

It was really magical. Especially even during the labor, the midwives were encouraging me to feel. And they were like, that mask that’s only a knuckle in, that’s your baby’s head. And I was sort of like, okay, logically, I understand. But I’m more just motivated to get through this physical experience. But then like having the baby out and on my chest was so amazing. I think especially because this is my first pregnancy, it always felt sort of vaguely like theoretical that there was a baby. Despite like feeling all the things and hearing the heartbeat and the tests and stuff.

Ben Winston – 00:30:46:

Yeah, we saw pictures.

Kat Sullivan – 00:30:47:

Yeah, we saw pictures. But then when he was like here and in front of me, it was like, oh my gosh, yes. There was a baby in there. This is so incredible. It was a really special and magical moment. They put the baby right on my chest, the midwives. The baby looked great right away. It was picking up really well and was alert. It was making noises and all of that. And it was, really peaceful. Is the main thing that I remember. Yeah, there wasn’t like a sort of like rush to do anything or anything like that.

Ben Winston – 00:31:19:

No, it was kind of the… Chaos is the wrong word, but like all of the intensity of the ending part of the delivery.

Kat Sullivan – 00:31:28:

Yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:31:29:

Or the ending part of the… Baby part of the delivery.

Kat Sullivan – 00:31:32:

Yeah, yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:31:34:

But then, yeah, once he was out.

Kat Sullivan – 00:31:35:

Yeah.

Ben Winston – 00:31:36:

You know, they did their few quick checks and everything. But everything seemed good. He was making noise as they laid down on your chest.

Kat Sullivan – 00:31:44:

Mm-hmm.

Ben Winston – 00:31:45:

Yeah. And it was kind of like that like. I don’t know. Like climbing a mountain and then like getting to the top and seeing the, you know, the plateau and the sunrise. You’re like, oh, wow. That was intense. But now this is like, we made it. This is beautiful.

Kat Sullivan – 00:32:00:

Yeah. I had assumed that my birth would either feel traumatic or like triumphant. And those were the sort of two buckets that I thought a birth story would fit into. And it didn’t feel like mine fit into either immediately afterwards. And that took me a couple of weeks to figure out like what that meant and what that was. My therapist was really great and encouraged me to like take time and not try and put words to it right away. And I think what I ultimately felt was that. It didn’t feel like a victorious euphoria afterwards because I didn’t feel like I needed to overcome anything in order to do it. It just like happened and it was fine. And it felt like in a lot of ways, it was just like, yeah, Monday morning I gave birth. It felt really every day for me, given what I had gone through to get pregnant and have the baby was really like the best case scenario for it to not even feel like. Yes, I overcame all of these incredible feelings to give birth and now it’s over, but to really feel like. I did it and I actually never doubted that I could do it. And it was fun. Like a really like sense of like contentment and like quiet confidence and peace. Yeah, it was really awesome.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:33:10:

Well, thank you, Kat and Ben, both of you for sharing such a beautiful story. It’s like you took us through so many emotions in this last hour from like excitement to dread and fear and anxiety to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And then like this magical, peaceful birth at the end. And I think it’s very inspiring. And I hope our listeners can draw some lessons from it. And are there any final words of wisdom from your experience that you would like to share with anybody listening who’s planning on entering birth or parenthood soon?

Kat Sullivan – 00:33:46:

I think to your point earlier, if anybody else is struggling with emetophobia and either wants to get pregnant or is currently pregnant, I would say, definitely be upfront with your providers and your partner if you have a partner about that from the get-go. I know that it can feel really embarrassing or shameful sometimes. I definitely understand that, but it’s… It was really, really important, I think. My experience to know that everybody who was going to be immediately involved in my pregnancy and birth experience knew the deal and I didn’t have to explain it. And they were all going to help support me in managing that, whether that was like the emotional support or like, we’re going to make these medications available to you if that will bring you peace of mind or whatever it is. Don’t try and like tough it out on your own. Tell somebody, talk about it. I think otherwise I would just say it like a general, like you can do it. As far as giving birth, I also know as a first-time birther that it’s really intimidating. And it’s this big rite of passage that everybody always talks about. And it’s like this huge deal. And there’s so much anticipation leading up to it. And it is a big deal, of course.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:34:58:

And there’s so many different ways it can unfold.

Kat Sullivan – 00:35:00:

Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:35:01:

There’s a lot of unpredictable.

Kat Sullivan – 00:35:02:

So much unpredictable. Especially as somebody who planned a home birth, I found many happy and positive second-time home birth stories of people who gave birth elsewhere first and then went to home for their birth for their second. And not that many people who did a home birth right off the bat. You don’t need to have a horrible experience first to then make a better, like you can have that great experience right off the bat if it’s what would be best for you genuinely. It’s definitely not for everybody. This past, our baby is going to be one in like two weeks. And it’s been a tough year in many ways. It’s I’ve been happier this year than I ever have in my entire life. Hands down. We’ve, we’ve been exhausted, but we’ve been, and I have laughed harder than we ever have. I think in this past year. More frequently than we ever have.

Ben Winston – 00:35:48:

Absolutely.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:35:49:

Thank you for your reminders today of like the joy that we can find. Pregnancy and parenting, even when it’s hard. Thank you so much for sharing this, like this creation of your three person family. It’s lovely.

Ben Winston – 00:36:04:

Thank you.

Kat Sullivan – 00:36:05:

Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Ben Winston – 00:36:06:

Yeah. Thank you so much.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:36:07:

This podcast episode was brought to you by the Evidence Based Birth® Childbirth Class. This is Rebecca speaking. When I walked into the hospital to have my first baby, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Since then, I’ve met countless parents who felt that they too were unprepared for the birth process and navigating the healthcare system. The next time I had a baby, I learned that in order to have the most empowering birth possible, I needed to learn the evidence on childbirth practices. We are now offering the Evidence Based Birth® Childbirth Class totally online. In your class, you will work with an instructor who will skillfully mentor you and your partner in evidence-based care, comfort measures, and advocacy so that you can both embrace your birth and parenting experiences with courage and confidence. Get empowered with an interactive online Childbirth Class you and your partner will love. Visit evidencebasedbirth.com/childbirthclass to find your class now.