 I had a really intense contraction. My body started to shiver, but this time I could not calm down. Like I could not stop shivering. So we called the doctor in and it turns out that I had a fever of around 102, I believe. And that was where Jared was so instrumental to me in having a reassuring partner because Jared was like, listen, I'm going to tell you something right now. I know that you're going through it and your body is in shock, but in addition, because you have all these monitors hooked up to you, in addition to my fever and my discomfort, the baby's heart rate was elevating to a very scary rate. So he said there's nothing more important right now than you focusing and being calm and calming your body down. And that message really resonated with me because I can't tell you guys. I went into a pure catonic state. I just was like a gargoyle. I'm like, no matter what, I will not allow my own fear to get in the way of a healthy delivery. This video is sponsored by carob, a wellness brand that makes it easy to get the right vitamins, supplements and protein for your needs. Whether you're looking for glowing skin, more energy, better sleep, or someone to support your health and fitness routine, carob helps you build and stick with a plan that's right for you. Now I just started using carob as I nursed my postpartum body back to full health. So carob was right for me because they source their research, pride themselves on premium, clean ingredients, and they create a plan that is specific for you and your health priorities. So do me and your body a favor, take the five minute quiz that I took to see what they recommend for your specific wellness goals. This is my personalized daily pack and it's made with eco-friendly, compostable film. Okay. So once again, go down to the info box, click that link, take the same quiz that I took, and then see what vitamins and supplements carob recommends for you. Best of all, if you want to take them up on their recommendation, you get 50% off your first order with my promo code, Shambudi. Hey there, lovers and friends. Do you notice anything different about me? It's just me, baby. Yes, it's back to being just you and me in videos. I've had a guest star for the past nine months, but that individual has left the building and now they are their own person. Our daughter, Raiu Shia Brady, was born on November the 12th, 2020 at 723 AM, a beautiful seven pounds and 20 inches and healthy and happy and radiant in a sleep right now. She eats like a maniac and that essentially means that my breasts are working triple time as I'm sitting here right now. Actually, I'm catching milk because I drip all the time and if you notice a stain on my shirt, yes, it's a breast milk stain. That's just a part of what the new thing is for me. Now, if you have not been pregnant before, you probably think a lot about labor or you've heard a lot about labor, but it is a fraction, a small fraction of what it means to be pregnant at the time that you are pregnant. And that I think was something that I wanted to emphasize for people. I did not personally have a birthing plan or a labor plan. I did, however, have a pregnancy plan because that's what you have more control of. So for nine months, I looked after my body. I took lots of supplements. I ate raw and healthy food. I worked out really diligently. I prioritized my happiness. I prioritized sleep. I prioritized hydration and in the end, I said, I've done what I can do. Body, you take it from here. November 3rd was my actual due date. It's the 12th. So it's nine days overdue. And essentially, my doctor said on my appointment after my due date, you should book your induction. An induction is something that you do to force labor to happen because sometimes the body doesn't kick into play as it should. And my doctor expressed to me that after two weeks of the baby being fully developed, which is 40 weeks pregnant, after two weeks of that, the benefits really aren't there anymore. Now it's increase of risks, increase of risk to the baby and to yourself as well too. So she said, you know, if it's not coming naturally and because the hospital that I went to, they do what's called an in hospital induction experience, which means that they start really slow. So it can take you two days to actually go into labor after you start your induction experience. And so she said, come in, book your appointment for Wednesday, 6pm. If you go into labor sooner, bonus, if you don't, you'll start and then maybe by the weekend you'll have a baby. So kind of a bonus thing that happened is Wednesday morning at 2am, call it wishful thinking or just call it divine timing. I started to get contractions. By 5am, I was like, we should probably go to the hospital and see what's up because they're basically three minutes apart at this point and they're getting more and more intense. And so maybe I'm going to have a fast labor. So we'd go to the hospital and I kid you not as soon as I got inside, contractions, who? Contractions where? Like I felt normal. And so the doctor was like, are you experiencing pain? That was like, I promise you I was before, but now I'm like, I'm such a hypochondriac because like nothing is happening. And she said, okay, we'll just check you anyways. And so she checked me and she said, okay, the good news is, is that you are in labor. The bad news is you are in super early labor. Like you are one centimeter dilated. You have to get up to 10 centimeters of dilation and this dilation process can take hours. So when you hear somebody say like, I was in labor for 50,000 hours, it feels like they were pushing for that amount of time. No, that essentially means they're just going through the process of contracting and the cervix was opening up. And then eventually that led to the push or led to the C-section that hopefully resulted in a healthy baby. So in theory, I was in labor for a day and two hours, 26 hours. But in truth, I was actually probably in labor, like really painful labor for like seven. And then I pushed for 10 minutes. So anyhow, we're in our room and they said initially we're going to leave you alone for a bit and see if labor progresses naturally. And so by 11am, they came back in, I was listening to flowetry, I was dancing and the doctor did not look pleased. She was like, are you here for the free French toast? Like, why are you here? And I was like, yeah, I'm having contractions, but they're not that like, you know, I wasn't debilitated by any means. I've had worse period cramps and such. Okay, let's let's check your cervix once again. So she checked my cervix and five hours had gone by and I was still one centimeter of dilation. Very discouraging moment. So they were like, okay, either you go home for real because you're just here eating our food or we start this process and get a little bit more aggressive. And we had already committed to the more aggressive thing. So we said, okay, let's let's what does that mean? So we started off with something that's called a folly balloon catheter, or it's a balloon folly catheter. I don't know, like it's, you know, what the order of words are, but essentially it's something that is placed into your cervix and then they blow it up with water and it's designed to sort of stretch out the cervix naturally. Now in success, when you put the balloon in, it will fall out naturally within a few hours, but you can have the balloon in for up to seven hours, I believe. It can be quite the process to actually get to that place of three to four centimeters of dilation, which is known as more active labor. So they put the balloon in and I've had IUDs inserted and you know, I've had my fair share of checkups and of cervix stuff. I've had my membrane, my mucous membrane swept twice before I actually even got the appointment for induction because they were trying to move things along. So I've had people, you know, uncomfortably tamper with my cervix before. This was next level pain and not, you know, just not tears pain, but like this is that kind of pain. And then they actually ended up taping something to my leg. So every time that I moved my leg, it would stretch my vagina open or stretch my cervix open a little bit more. And so in about six hours at around like six or seven PM, I woke up, they actually saw that the dilation had worked. So now I was four centimeters dilated. So that was a success. But what also ended up happening is they gave me another drug that is called mesoprostol pronunciation, not really quite sure, but this drug in essence is designed to help start contractions, but in less of an aggressive way than another drug called pitocin, which they were planning on giving me later on. And pitocin is like pure oxytocin, which can cause very extreme borderline violent contractions. So once I had this first drug in, the M drug, I didn't notice a little bit more activity, a little bit more discomfort, but something else happened that was a lot more uncomfortable. So I ended up developing a fever. So what was happening even before I got to hospital is when I had really intense contractions, like a particularly intense one, my body would go into shock and I would start to shiver. So I had a really intense contraction. My body started to shiver, but this time I could not calm down. Like I could not stop shivering. And then I could feel myself getting colder and colder. And then I asked Jay, I was like, Jay, can you like touch me? Do I have a fever? And he was like, you feel like you're burning up. So we called the doctor in and it turns out that I had a fever of around 102, I believe. And my shivering would just not subside. And that was where Jared was so instrumental to me in having a reassuring partner because Jared was like, listen, I'm going to tell you something right now. I know that you're going through it and your body is in shock, but in addition, because you have all these monitors hooked up to you, in addition to my fever and my discomfort, the baby's heart rate was elevating to a very scary rate. So he said, there's nothing more important right now than you focusing and being calm and calming your body down. And that message really resonated with me because I can't tell you guys. I went into like a pure ketonic state. I just was like a gargoyle. I'm like, no matter what, I will not be the reason that this child's heart rate gets out of control. I will not allow my own fear. I will not allow my own worries or concerns or my doubts to get in the way of a healthy delivery. So I just went into the zone, like a meditative state, a vegetable state and just laid still for hours and hours. Now the heart rate of the baby went up to 205 beats per minute. Now in my research afterwards of the balloon folly catheter, I learned that some of the major side effects or common side effects of utilizing that method for induction are fever, infection and something called non reassuring fetal heart tones. So I genuinely wish that one of the nurses or doctors would have said to me, what you're experiencing right now is a abnormal, but a possible side effect of the induction method that we use. They said nothing to me. So I was just like, how the hell did I get infected? What is happening? Why is my body betraying me in this moment? But more importantly, I can't focus on the why I have to focus on the, what is my job right now? And my job is to control my body as best as possible so that hopefully the body within my body has the best fighting chance. Now what happened once the fever broke and once the infection was cleared and the heart rate started to go down, you know, you have a little bit of a sigh of relief, but then I was like, I'm in extreme pain. And during all that time of everything else, I guess, because I went into that state, I was either ignoring it or my body was just choosing not to express that because there was other concerns at hand, but the contractions were now really bad. And I thugged it out for a little bit. Both of my parents work in the medical field. My dad was a paramedic. My mom, a labor and delivery nurse for decades. And they both had a preference. I did not take an epidural, but at this point it was like now 11pm at night. I had been in the hospital since five in the morning. My body had gone through extreme stress already. Now the pain was super high. Then they informed me that in addition to antibiotics, they also started me on Potosin. And again, Potosin creates really strong contractions. And so it was all making sense as to why I was in like a living hell. And I just thought to myself, why are we doing this? And especially because they had not checked me for dilation. So as far as I knew, I was still only at 4 out of 10 centimeters of dilation at that point. So I called in the anesthesiologist and I was like, hook me up to the good shit. I'm actually really grateful that I waited until that long. So I did not get the epidural until midnight. And up until that I was still able to get out of bed. I was able to do exercises. I had one really great nurse who taught me different ways to relax the cervix. And so Jared and I were doing different yoga poses and I also took a nice shower in the hospital. But the time was done. Now it was time for sleep and for some bodily relaxation and as much as the epidural kind of hurt and I didn't look and Jared didn't look. But I did notice afterwards that there was a lot of blood on like a cloth. So my back had blood I guess from the injection. It was uncomfortable, but it was bearable. And the contractions were still pretty painful at that point. But the doctor stayed with me until they completely subsided. He said to me at one point, like, this is going to be the last heavy one you're going to have. And so when you're hooked up to the monitor as well, so you can actually see how severe your contractions are. So my scale went from zero to 12. And I was starting to have repeat back to back 12s. So when it was tolerable for me, it was when it would be like a four, a six, a four, an eight, a four, a 12, a four. So it was like a mix up. So you weren't constantly being bombarded with these really aggressive waves. But towards the 11pm, 12pm time it was like 12, 10, 12, 12, 12, 10, 8, 12, 12, 12. So I was experiencing some 12 after epidural. And I was like, buddy, this is not what I signed up for. And he was like, just waited out. And sure enough, it just went away. It was literally like a magical thing to happen. And then I got some really beautiful solid sleep. So I woke at 5 30am to chills. And now I'm starting to get a little not panicked, but concerned again, because I'm like, has the infection come back again? You know, are we back in that same scary place that we were before? So we called the nursing and I told them I was having the chills and they said, sometimes the chills are an indicator that you have moved to another phase of labor, not necessarily that you have a fever again. So she goes and checks me and she was like, Oh, you're 10 plus two dilated. Now to this day, I don't know what 10 plus two means, but I do know what 10 means. It means it's go time. I sobbed like I soul sobbed. Just this, this feeling of relief washed over me relief that this hot ass mess called pregnancy was about to be over relief that we were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel that we were almost there. And I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. And she left the room and Jared was there with me. And then when I finished sobbing, I looked around and I was like, no one's here. Now what? No, like that was it. Like we're 10 centimeters dilated. Shouldn't we be doing something? So we called the nurse. We're like, Hey, I think we're, I think we're ready to have this baby, but you know, nobody came in with like a table or something and she'll come right in. So she comes in and she breaks the news to us that unfortunately there's other people who are in labor right now. And so all of the labor teams are tied up. So you're going to have to just wait, like, wait. And now, whether it is placebo or whatever else, as much as the epidural does numb things, one, I could still move my legs to I could still feel the baby moving. I couldn't feel contractions, but I could feel the pressure. So I could tell that the baby was like pressing down. And as well to the woman who'd checked me said she could actually see the baby's hair. Like that just like the baby's head was just there right to come out. So now you're just sitting there waiting and then half an hour passes, we call her again. And she's like this, the teams are still working hard. Just please wait longer, the longer you wait, the less you'll have to push. So don't stress out, but I'm like too late. And then another half hour passes and still nothing. And so now we've gotten to 7am. And I have been 10 centimeters dilated now for quite some time. Who knows how long, cause I was only checked at around like 5 36am. So 7am comes and Jared calls them like, so we're going to push. I don't know if you guys want to be there to catch it, or if you want to just coach me, but we're going to start pushing right now. She feels a lot of pressure. It's time to go. So thankfully they were able to find the people or Corral and they came in. I also knew that this was my time to shine, because the things that they said that you have to be great at in order to push a baby out is one, you have to have a really strong core. So it'd be great at doing crunches and abs. I've been doing that since I was like my teens. And number two, you've got to be strong at pooping. And those are skills that I have hands down. And sure enough, we were able to without going into this long drawn out thing. With the help of the epidural, I did not feel the pain of stretching. I didn't feel the pain of the contractions. Again, I could just feel the pressure and I could feel the experience. I did feel like I was lucid enough and I was in the room. I was with it. I knew it was happening. Jared was saying like I kept trying to make jokes in between because you only push during contractions and those come like about 30 seconds apart. So you do have these pause moments. And within 15 minutes, we had a baby. Why did I talk so much? The story was not that riveting. But yeah, we had a baby and it was, it happened so quickly that you don't have time to really think about things like Jared watched the entire birth. Like he watched the baby come out of my vagina. He watched and saw like the skull morphing because the plates of the head are malleable. And so that was kind of freaking for him to look at. So I didn't have time to think about like, oh, is that, you know, how do I feel about that? And I just, but even if I did have time to think about it, I want to change the thing. It was just really beautiful to have my husband there like just coaching me and being a part of the team. The staff at Kaiser was really loving and very transparent at one point in the pushing process. They asked me if they wanted me to have a mirror so I could see the baby coming out. And I was like, I don't think so. Let me just focus on my job, which is doing an ab crunch right now and like bearing down and you focus on your job, which is catching the baby. I don't need to like watch and oversee this process. The good thing about my labor is that I didn't tear at all. So I was able to take a number two afterwards immediately. I was able to pee immediately afterwards. I was able to walk and coming home, there's no limitations in my mobility. Now there's been discomfort and the discomfort has been residual effects of the infection that I experienced. So I got a full torso rash. So now nowhere else in my body, but my breasts and my stomach developed a rash or hives that were really uncomfortable. And I have to wear a pad, which everyone does probably for the next six weeks. I'm on an ongoing period. I do experience night sweats right now and the boob thing, which is a whole other story of like now I produce milk and that's not that comfortable at first. You know, that adjustment period has been something, but all in all, I'm really proud of myself for the way that I did pregnancy. And when I looked at her for the first time, it was like looking at my Olympic gold medal. I worked my ass off for you. I trained for you. I sacrificed for you. I made some hard choices for you. And now here you are. You're healthy. You're a great weight. You got color in your cheeks. You've got life in your eyes. And don't get me wrong. There is an element of luck in the form of genetics, in the form of environmental factors you have no control over. There is an element of luck when it comes to having a healthy baby or whatever you healthy even means to you. And so I'm not saying that it's 1000. It's all me, by myself, all my back, my choices. It's not. There's a billion other things that works out in my favor that I had no hand in, but the things that I did have a hand in, I was diligent about and I am proud about those things and I am proud of the life that we brought into this world. And I am excited to help to set an example for that life by continuing to prioritize wellness by continuing to prioritize health for myself and hopefully that rubbing off on her as well too. And so that's where we're at right now. And if you want to join me on this journey of wellness and devoting yourself to wellness, do me and your body a favor and go down to the info box, click that link to take the five minute free quiz to see what care of recommends for you and your specific wellness goals.