 My first pregnancy was perfect. My obstetrician recommended a cesarean. There were no complications at all. I did well, my son did well, and we had a really uneventful recovery. And sure enough, about a year later, I got pregnant with my second son. And I ended up developing a severe complication called placenta accreta. So placenta accreta is when the placenta attaches too deeply into the uterine wall. The placenta can become invasive, like a cancer. I had access to some of the most experienced and talented surgeons in the country. And to hear them speak with respect and awe of a placenta accreta delivery, one of them actually even said to me that placenta accreta deliveries are predictably unpredictable. We had gone into my delivery preparing to do a cesarean hysterectomy and expected bladder repair. But once the team was able to get in there and see how severe my case actually was, they determined that it was too risky to proceed. So the decision was made to go ahead and close me up with the entire placenta intact and untouched. And I spent two months post-partum in the hospital. My son spent a month in the NICU and my stay had multiple surgeries, most dramatic of which was where I required 26 units of blood products. My husband was a huge support system for me. He spent every night in the hospital with me and my older son, Everett, moved in with my parents and my whole family really just became all hands on deck to help me get through this. Leo's amazing. He's feisty and strong. He's like a little powerhouse. And he's such a gift. I can't imagine my life without him. A cesarean can be a lifesaving intervention. The goal is not to eliminate cesareans. The goal is to make decisions regarding cesareans appropriately and to recognize that even an uncomplicated cesarean and recovery can still put the mother at significant future risk. So coming out of my experience, I just couldn't believe that more people weren't talking about placenta acreta. And it's great to see that the data was getting out there about how high our cesarean rates are and that we need to start decreasing them. But most of the conversations were about decreased recovery times and lower cost. Nobody was saying that there is a significant patient safety impact to our high cesarean rates. And that's where I really felt compelled to start sharing my story and to start educating people on what the downstream risks of a cesarean can be. There are too many cesareans now, one in three births. And researchers estimate that as many as 50% of those are unnecessary. And since a prior cesarean is a significant risk factor for developing a future acreta, that means that there are women developing a acreta when it could have been prevented. So the easiest way to decrease the amount of acreta is to reduce cesarean levels. I can't say if I would have done anything differently if I had known about acreta, but I can say that the decisions that we made surrounding my first birth were not fully informed. Women are dying from this. And mothers are dying from this. We need to take the risks of a cesarean seriously.