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Welcome to Birth, Baby!, your go-to podcast hosted by Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly, seasoned birth doulas and childbirth educators from Austin, Texas. Join us as we navigate the intricate journey of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care, offering invaluable insights and expert advice. Through candid interviews, personal anecdotes, and evidence-backed content, we aim to empower families with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. Whether you're seeking guidance on prenatal care, birth planning, or navigating the early days with your newborn, we've got you covered. Tune in to Birth, Baby! and embark on your parenthood journey with confidence.
The information provided on this podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your qualified health provider with any questions you may have.
Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast.
Reliance on any information provided here is solely at your own risk.
Welcome, this is Birth, Baby.
Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.
Ciarra is a birth doula, hypnobirthing educator, and pediatric sleep consultant.
Samantha is a birth doula, childbirth educator, and lactation counselor.
Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey.
Thank you to our listeners for your continued support.
If you enjoy our content, please be sure to like, follow, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts.
This helps us gain visibility to other people that could benefit from listening in.
Hey y'all, today we are joined by Diamond Williams.
Diamond is a mother turned poet from a small town in Texas.
She lives in Austin, Texas now, and recent released her book titled The Lost Trimester.
She was inspired to write this book after her experiences with pregnancy and loss, and we're so excited that you're here today to tell us about your journey, Diamond.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for having me.
It's a nice space to be able to talk about it.
It feels safe here.
Oh good, we like that.
We're so excited to have you on, and thank you for being willing to come on and share this journey that you've been through.
To start us off, can you tell us a little bit about your pregnancies and birth experiences?
Yeah, so as of right now, I am 30 years old, but I had my first son about two weeks after my 20th birthday.
So I was very young when I first started having my babies.
And for about seven years, I thought I was going to have one child.
And then I just decided I think I want another baby.
So after my first son, I kind of had the idea that getting pregnant was just something that was going to be so easy.
And I was on an IUD after I had my first son for many years.
And I decided to get off the IUD.
And I got pregnant fairly quickly, extremely quickly actually.
And I just thought, piece of cake.
And then that's when I had my first miscarriage, which was a little bit after I had actually gotten married in a time where I was like riding this high of life that I, you know, nothing could like slow me down at this point.
I was young, my career at the time, I was a jewelry designer, and I also modeled in Austin for every other jewelry designer that you could think of at the time.
And I was really secure with myself.
And then after that miscarriage, I just, it's like everything started to go off the tracks.
It was not something that even crossed my mind until it happened to me, even though my mother had experienced miscarriage as well.
So it just wasn't something that it just wasn't something that I even thought about, even though this is resonating with me like so hardcore, because I don't I think you've listened to our stories.
That was me like seven.
I have a seven and a half year age gap.
I had a new husband, so happy, you never even considered that it could happen to you.
And for us, my mom hadn't experienced it either.
It was like new for all of us.
And all of a sudden you're like, whoa, this is fragile.
Like, yes, you didn't think it was fragile.
And then it's gone in a second.
And yeah, yeah.
So that was my first experience with miscarriage.
That first one really threw me because I was still pretty young at the time.
And I was just like, why is my body not doing what it's meant to do?
Not only that, but at the time, because I had gotten pregnant, we were living in an apartment.
And then we found a house in Austin that was a four bedroom house.
And you know how rare that is to come across in Austin, Texas.
We found it.
We immediately started renovating our house, getting this nursery ready.
And I was there every single day renovating and everything.
And then, you know, we ended up moving like 10 days later into this house that had an empty nursery.
And I went through like the ups and downs of just never leaving my bed to then being angry at everybody.
And I went through, you know, we like took a vacation to California to be with family.
I thought that was going to help me and help me reset.
And what I did was take out my anger and my frustration on other people in my family.
So I just went through all these emotions that I didn't want to face myself.
And eventually, that led me to deciding that I didn't want to have any more kids.
Like I said, it was a roller coaster.
I was doing, I was at these high highs and then these very low lows.
And I was taking fertility to try to get pregnant again.
When I decided to move to Atlanta, Georgia, with my husband, who he's in construction.
So we move all the time.
Everybody assumes I'm a military wife, but I'm not.
I'm a construction wife.
And so we moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and I was on fertility and in really close contact with my doctor who is a doctor at the Women's Center in Austin.
And we finally decided as a team that I don't think mentally I was ready for that.
I got off of the fertility.
And then that's actually when I got pregnant with my son right before I moved back to Texas.
Isn't that crazy when it happens like that?
It really is because I was just convinced that I was convinced that I needed the fertility.
I just thought my body was not going to do it.
And I think that also came from a place of fear and worry because of the lack of pregnancy.
If you think it's not going to happen, then it's not your fault.
And you already protected yourself.
You already put up that wall.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think it also was, I thought, well, this medication, this will make sure that I get pregnant and then it will make sure that it sticks.
In my young mind, not knowing much about the world of pregnancy and fertility and birth, that was just what was in my mind.
And that's what I thought I needed.
And then I did get pregnant.
And the first little bit of that was really rough because I had all of these emotions of, oh, my little miracle, my little rainbow.
And then also not wanting to attach just yet, which I know a lot of women can relate to that part of it.
And that was a pretty smooth pregnancy up until my birth, which I ended up having at the same hospital in Austin because we had moved back and I had the same doctor.
But ironically, my doctor isn't the one who delivered either one of my sons.
He was my doctor, but it was always a female on call who delivered my babies that I met for two seconds.
They delivered my babies.
An on call rotation will do that to you.
And it was an overall great experience.
Well, not great, but it was a good experience.
Like the hospital itself, I don't really have any complaints about.
But I did have a shoulder dissociation with my son that we were not anticipating.
So that was, and I might have said this earlier, I didn't know anything about, I wasn't the girl that took the birthing classes.
I was not the girl that made my husband.
In fact, I just wanted him to stand over there and let what my body did do.
You know, I always thought that my body was going to just do it.
And it might have been a little bit lazy on my part, but I didn't do the research at that age.
So when I didn't know what was going on and in the rush of things, they don't yell at you what's going, what's really going on.
They're trying to handle it as best they can.
And luckily, we were able to get through the shoulder dystocia.
I had a really great doctor who was calm and like really great nurses who, you know, did all the pushing for me and rotating me.
And they did everything that they could to get my son out safely.
I can't help but I have to ask because I'm a birth worker and I have to die.
How much did your baby weigh?
You know what?
I think he was 8'11.
I'm just curious because everyone's afraid of these giant babies because they think that they are going to have shoulder dystocia.
But what's funny is it doesn't actually matter.
It's a lot of it is positional and the baby's anatomy.
It's not necessarily the actual weight.
I always tell people, that is squishy.
Because I'm a very small person for size reference.
I'm like 5'5, and I've always been somewhere around like 115 to 125 pounds.
And I'm just a petite person.
So this is not really his weight.
Yeah.
So I just was curious because of that.
And his shoulders.
When you looked at him, he looked like he was just...
Did you have a little linebacker?
Yes, I wasn't surprised at all because my husband, speaking of linebackers, he was a linebacker in college.
Oh, that's funny.
He's like 6'1, and he is like at the time, you know, I mean, his average weight is somewhere in the 270 range, 275.
He's a big man.
So I wasn't surprised.
I've always had, you know, more heavier babies.
I think my first son was 7'9, and then each baby from there just got a little bit bigger.
So we came out of the shoulder dissociation.
I didn't know what was going on at the time.
My husband's across the room staring, and then I don't know how graphic this is going to sound, but it just was...
It doesn't matter.
This is a birth podcast.
Yeah, I figured as much, but I could see from where I was laying still with my legs up that as they're working on me and as they're trying to stop my bleeding, there's just so much blood, and I'm starting to see it pull out on the floors away from the table.
So I didn't really know what was going on.
They weren't talking much, but I knew that right before I had him, they were telling me, you have a little bit longer before we have to do an emergency C-section.
They were kind of hyping me up in a way, getting me prepared to, you can do this.
Let's get this baby out.
You don't have to have this emergency C-section.
You can do it.
So once I did do it, I thought everything was fine, and then they were more concerned about me.
And you don't feel it.
You have all that adrenaline.
So I didn't really know what was going on.
I knew that someone's arm was all the way up inside of me trying to fix whatever was happening.
And I knew there was a lot of blood, and I knew my husband was looking like he was about to pass out.
And after the whole journey was over, he said, it looked like all of your guts were still in you and touching the floor at the same time.
And it was just this crazy situation that I think nobody anticipated, especially me.
I think sometimes, too, people don't realize that dads are partners also from that.
So I don't know if he worked through it or not, but that goes with you into subsequent births.
We have a VBAC after two cesarean, actually we have two VBAC after two cesarean mamas that are with us right now.
And those dads, it's tough for them to work through some of the experiences they've seen.
We always think about how it affected mom, but it affects dad, too.
And if they're sitting there seeing all of this happen, and this is coming from a man who, he's a year older than me.
So when we had our first son, he was up at my head.
I didn't want him involved in any of that.
In fact, they were short staffed when I had my first son and my poor, traumatized 12-year-old brother was leaving the room as the birth was starting because he wanted nothing to do with it.
My husband seemed like he was about to pass out.
So I yelled at my brother.
I said, I'm sorry, but you have to hold my leg.
This epidural, like my mom's on one side.
There's one nerve.
Your 12-year-old brother held your leg?
My 12-year-old brother held one of my legs.
Oh my God, he's the next guest on the podcast.
He's the next guest on the podcast.
We brought it to him.
He was probably traumatized.
He and my husband were looking at each other in the eyes.
And they were saying, right here, man, look in my eyes.
They were trying to keep each other from this traumatizing situation.
These poor boys that were not ready.
And I say boys because my husband was 21 years old.
We were all so young.
He stepped up.
He helped me out.
I don't think he saw anything that was going on.
And if he did, at least maybe he knows what we go through.
I don't know.
I know he's an amazing father.
And I know he was extremely supportive through his wife's birth.
You're like, I'll take credit.
Maybe I'll take credit for that.
But yeah, with my second one, it was definitely scary.
They never went into detail afterwards about what exactly it was that had happened to me.
I don't know if they put everything in my file.
This was something that I had to talk about with my doctor, with my next pregnancy as well, so that we could decide, are we going to do this again, depending on the baby size?
Are we going to do a C-section?
It was not something that I wanted at all.
But before I get into that, I guess, to sum up my second, or my third pregnancy was also a miscarriage.
So I had my son, my first son, and then I had the miscarriage.
Then I had the successful pregnancy and birth of my second son.
And then a couple of years after that, when my second son was around two years old, that is when I had, I got pregnant again unintentionally, very unintentionally this time.
Isn't it funny how it all works out?
It does.
You tried so hard one of those, a couple of those times, and okay, never mind.
It does.
And every time I feel like I've always thought, why is this happening to me?
Like with my third, or with my second C-section, I mean, with my second miscarriage, I kept thinking like why this can't be happening to me again.
Because again, I never thought in my wildest dreams that this would happen to me again, you know, or in my nightmares, I guess, because I never-
Like statistically, I've already done it.
Yeah, it was something that I was like, this is horrible, and this happened to me, and this happens to women all the time.
But I was not thinking, after another successful pregnancy and birth, I was not thinking again.
I wasn't thinking, oh, I'm going to miscarry, but I did, and I miscarried, and this was right after I had decided, I can't believe I'm pregnant again, I don't know if I want this, and then right when I decided this is what I want, this is good, this is happening, I'm happy about this, right after we got excited about it and talked all the names and everything, that's again when it happened to me again and the rug was completely pulled out from under my feet again, and I just went through this whole grieving process all over again.
That's when I, I've been writing since my first miscarriage, but this is when the writing really went from writing to really writing in order to keep my sanity and in order to heal.
I did like writing workshops with one of my favorite poets, her name is Allie Michelle, and she is an amazing poet.
She's, I believe she's from like the Los Angeles area, and I did a workshop with her and all these people that I didn't know at all, all these strangers, and we had a section where we were to sit there and write silently for an extended period of time.
And then she asked if anybody wanted to read and a lot of people read.
And then I just thought, you know, this is uncomfortable for me, but I think maybe in my healing journey, maybe I just read what I just wrote, and maybe this helps me close a chapter.
So I did.
And I got all this compassion and essentially like virtual hugs from all these strangers that had no idea about my story or anything.
And the response was really good.
So I just kind of kept writing from there.
And I went back in for my checkup to make sure that everything was good.
And then I passed everything on my own at home because my first miscarriage, I actually had a DNC.
So this time I was hopeful that I could do it on my own and not have to go through that again.
So I go in for my checkup and they're checking everything.
And somehow I am four to five weeks pregnant.
Surprise.
Surprise.
You and I have so many odd parallels in our stories because I miscarried on February 26th with our rainbow or our baby that passed.
And my son was conceived March 17th.
Isn't that crazy?
That's so interesting.
So many things you're saying.
I'm like, this is weird.
I feel like you have so many similarities.
It definitely is weird, especially when it's such a specific circumstance, when you can relate to somebody else.
But how beautiful is that, though?
What a surprise for you.
I know.
Well, when they said it at first, I thought, to be honest with you, this was a whole other box I needed to unpack.
Because as soon as they said it, it took a lot of convincing for this doctor to convince me that this wasn't my baby, that I was already pregnant with.
I don't know if it was just maybe a little PTSD mixed in there or something, but in my mind, I thought, well, there's a chance.
It's so close that maybe there's a chance.
And, you know, scientifically, factually, there was just no way that it was the same baby.
So that miscarriage and pregnancy back to back like that, it left me for months not wanting to attach to this new baby, not being excited.
In fact, I went into almost like a depression, which I already suffer from depression and anxiety.
I think that's a lot that a lot of women, you know, relate to that.
So in regular life, in happy everyday life, I already struggle with that.
And then you add something like this on top of it.
And I could not wrap my mind around it for a really long time.
And then every now and then these bursts of happiness of, yay, this is happening.
I'm having a baby and then right back into, I can't believe it had to go like this.
Like, why did the last baby not work?
And why did this baby stick?
Like, why did this happen again?
And I think that's a common experience that people have.
It's not uncommon to have a miscarriage and then get pregnant really soon after.
And all of those emotions are so hard to process.
So I think that you're, I know that you're not alone in that experience.
It's almost whiplash.
Like, okay, well, I'm just grieving.
Now I'm going to try to be happy, but I'm still trying to grieve for this baby.
I wasn't done, but also I still want to try to be happy about this baby.
It's just like the back and forth ping pong ball of your brain.
It's hard.
And never knowing what that's going to be, what that's going to look like when you wake up.
You know, never knowing if the morning sickness is going to be something you're resenting because of pain or if it's something that you're happy to feel because you know that it's solidifying what's happening in your body.
It's like just so many emotions throughout the whole process.
And because of this, it took me a really long time.
I want to say, and obviously I was not sad to be pregnant.
I was happy that I was pregnant.
I was happy that I was having another baby, especially when I found out that I had already had two boys and I found out that this was a girl.
But I also went through these emotions because the previous baby, it's like, and anybody who's been pregnant can relate to this.
You make this dream world in your mind when you're choosing names for a boy or when you're choosing names for a girl.
And in your mind, whether you like to admit it or not, I think everybody has this idea of what the sex of their baby is going to be before they have it, before they find out.
And you build up this, I mean, I go through scenarios where I'm playing out my daughter's whole life.
This daughter that I don't even know is a daughter yet, right?
And I'm playing out what her name will be, what she will look like.
I'm making up all these scenarios in my head of what my life's going to look like with her in it.
And I had already done this with the baby that I had lost.
And that's something that I didn't do in my first miscarriage.
It's not something that I had really thought about as much.
But because I already have children now, I had made up this whole dream world of this dream baby, who I thought was a girl.
And I'd always wanted to have a little girl named Juliet.
I was such a Shakespeare buff when I was younger.
I always wanted to have a little girl who named her Juliet.
So this baby that I had lost, that's kind of what I wanted to name her Juliet Capri, because I heard this song by Colby Kelly, and it talks about this pretty baby, this sweet baby that this mom's growing.
And so then when I did find out I was having a little girl, I was like, I can't name her that.
That was this baby's name, and that baby was very much my baby, and that can't be her name.
So I went through all these names, and I was going to name her all these things.
And ultimately, by the time I was like six, seven, eight months, I really did start to bond with her, and I really started accepting that it was real and that I was more safe and that I was probably going to be able to, to have this baby.
And I just thought, well, I've wanted this my whole life.
This is what I've been manifesting before I even knew what manifestation was, before I even gave it a thought.
And this is what I wanted.
So I did have my little girl, and she was, both of my sons were four days early, and my little girl was 10 days early.
I went in for my checkup, and the doctor was like, you have no amniotic fluid left.
This girl is coming today.
And I said, can I call my mom?
She's two hours away, and I can't bring all these kids with me.
Hospital, and I need my husband, because this is when I knew I was having a C-section that I wasn't excited for.
And so my mom somehow got from Austin area all the way to Dallas, in like an hour and 45 minutes, or like two hours.
She was booking it.
It was like two hours, probably.
That's awesome.
I was like, I don't know what you did to get here, but thank you.
The Catholic gods were with her that day, my goodness.
And so then I just, you know, I went through the C-section and everything, and that was horrible.
A lot of people say, oh, it's a C-section, it's planned, you know what's coming, it's so great.
And I just, I trusted them.
I trusted these people that told me that it was just a walk in the park.
And for me, the anesthesia never works well with me.
I was vomiting while the C-section was happening.
I was shaking.
I was on the border of passing out.
Halfway through it, I started to feel things, and I was like, nope, nope, just stop what you're doing right there.
And then she came out, and it was like the biggest thing I've ever seen with the thickest umbilical cord I've ever seen.
And everybody was ecstatic, and I was just throwing up in a bag.
So that wasn't the best experience.
How big was she?
You can't just say that she's the biggest thing you've ever seen and not tell us how much she weighed.
Oh, she was eight pounds and six ounces.
She wasn't the biggest.
At 37 weeks.
She was a pretty large baby.
At 37 weeks?
That's pretty good.
Yes.
And she just looked thick.
Does that make sense?
You know how she might have been shorter too.
She was 21 inches long.
Okay.
It's a good size baby.
I wish I just had a reference for you for this umbilical cord, but it was the doctors and the nurses all took photos after my permission because they said it was the largest umbilical cord they had ever seen, like the thickest one they'd ever seen.
And I just was after, I don't know, after the C-section was over, I was just so happy for it to be over.
I feel like I didn't really relish in that moment very much.
You know, I was still so sick.
Like as they were sewing me up, I was still vomiting.
And it was just an absolutely terrible experience.
And I actually wanted you guys to enlighten me on this and maybe other women that are in my position.
I don't feel like I was handed the education early enough in life, or maybe I didn't open myself up to the possibilities of having a birthing advocate of some form or different birthing options besides a hospital.
I always knew you can either have the epidural or you don't have the epidural.
But other than that, I was so young when I started having children.
And I'm also from a family that's very southern, and I came from a town that's very small.
We didn't have the resources or the options behind us.
So I would love to know what you guys would tell someone that was in my shoes of how to advocate for yourself or find someone to do so or find a doula or find someone that can help advocate because I don't feel like I had that.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's important for people to know that doulas are not just for unmedicated deliveries.
We are for every kind of delivery, whether that's a planned C-section because of a previous shoulder dystocia like your third or whether it's just an unknown experience.
We don't know.
Whatever it is that you're planning, doulas are for every kind of birth experience.
And that is what we're there for.
We're there to help you to know what questions to ask and to advocate, help you advocate in those circumstances and help your partner know what's happening.
In your second birth when he was watching all of that, as a doula, a doula could be there kind of explaining what's going on and helping him through that part of it because it is very overwhelming as a partner.
And so I think that's number one, that's the biggest thing is that doulas are gonna be for every kind of birth experience, it doesn't have to be an unmedicated birth in the middle of a field with just a midwife and a doula where it will come wherever.
And then I think too, the education piece is really big, knowing all of the options so that when something crazy happens, if something crazy happens, it doesn't feel as traumatizing because you know the benefits and the risks and all of these different things ahead of time, if that makes sense.
So it wouldn't be like all of these things are happening and they're just kind of happening to you, but you know what's happening and why they're happening and what the different options are in those experiences, as well as ways to make those things less likely.
And I would argue that our role is not easier depending on any of the types of labor because, or the intended type of labor.
It really just changes.
So, you know, way more hands on support of like hip squeezes, lower counter pressure, acupressure, all of these things in a planned unmedicated birth, whether, no matter where you are.
In a planned epiduralized birth, you know, we still want to get you, we help you with the physical stuff to get you to the point where you're getting, you want the epidural, but we help put it off as long as possible so that all of your, if you want, so that all of those hormones and everything can flow and you can have, you know, that cascade of hormones that is a positive benefit to your body.
And then once you get the epidural, we're still helping switch you from side to side.
We're still listening to what the provider says when they're doing the checks based on what part of your cervix is kind of left to help with positions that can help melt away the cervix faster, if that's what you want.
You know, helping you with the information.
If they say, oh, well, your labor slowed down because you got an epidural, now we need to add Pitocin.
We can help you with, okay, sure, you could do that.
There's also this, this and this option if you want to try these first.
But if you want to get Pitocin, do it.
Like, you know, we're there for you.
C-section, whether it's planned or not.
You know, we're in there helping the dad understand what's going on, helping the mom understand what's going on or the partner, whoever.
And helping remind everyone kind of of your wishes as you're going through there because your partner is in an emotional state as well.
You know, taking pictures, that sort of thing.
And induction, where they're not right when you're getting induced because you don't need us yet physically, but we sure are on the phone with you, having you check in, let us know when they're doing a cervical exam, when they're offering a medication to be added or changed or increased or whatever.
If they're offering an intervention, like wanting to, quote unquote, break your waters for you, we're giving you the pros and cons of those situations.
So, you know, your doula doesn't even have to be in person yet to be of insane value to you.
And so our job isn't necessarily easier, it just changes or it's just different, depending on what's happening.
And you may go into it thinking you're having a non-medicated birth and they need to be induced at 37 weeks and now the plan changes, you know?
So I think that is kind of a misnomer that some people think about doulas is that we're only there, like, oh, you don't really need one if you're gonna get an epidural or you don't really need one if you're getting a C-section.
I have a client who had a C-section with me last time.
It was a VBEC trial and it didn't work out and she had another C-section and she's having a C-section again this time but she's hiring me again because she wants to have me there.
She was like, it was so much easier, it was so much more seamless.
You guys could explain what was going on and they're not all the same, you know?
Yeah, just like an overall enjoyable experience.
Now that I have had three children and if I could go back and give some advice to my younger self or anyone in the position of not being educated on just pregnancy and birthing in general, the one piece of advice that I could give is not necessarily like get a doula, but just to, I mean, you don't have to go take the breathing class, you need an advocate.
Those, all the classes that they offer, they are great.
They're there for a reason, they're great.
But you need an advocate, whether that actually be, you know, I think that should be an enjoying time and like a pleasurable time for you, yourself and your spouse or your partner, as well as even your family members.
And you need someone that's going to advocate for you.
And I do think that doulas do a beautiful job of doing that because they kind of marry those two worlds of what you want and what you need.
They do a beautiful job of being there for you emotionally, but also factually and just helping you get through a process as best as they can based on what you're wanting and based on your birth plan and everything.
And I think that's something that I didn't realize I had the option of, is to have someone there to advocate for me.
And your partner isn't able to do that if they don't understand the whole process, right?
So that is where education comes in.
But even still, if you're in the moment and your doula is, you know, you don't know what you don't know, so you don't really know what to listen to.
And I say doula, but whoever is the birth worker, birth companion, whatever, they're gonna hear things that might not ping you, but it pings the doula to go, hey guys, they're wanting to do X, Y, Z.
And that to us is what advocating looks like.
It's that we're not sitting there, he said she doesn't want that.
We're going, hey dad, y'all mentioned y'all didn't want this.
And I hear them mentioning this.
This is what that means.
You still want to do that?
No, she said no to that.
But he wouldn't have known that that's what this is if he didn't have the extra explanation.
Right?
Yeah, definitely.
So that is a really big piece of it.
Yeah.
And I think with something that other people don't realize, and I know I keep going back to miscarriage or child loss or pregnancy loss.
That's what this series is about.
Yeah.
And the reason I go back to it is because when you are birthing, say you do get your baby after your loss, right?
And you are in the birthing process.
And really, when you look around the room, you see a room full of people that truly do have your best interest.
But maybe they don't know your story.
Those nurses that are there helping you, they don't know why you're saying no.
Maybe you have a trauma that they don't understand and it's something that you can't get past.
And maybe that person, your advocate or your doula, maybe they are there to help bring that to the forefront, to everyone else in that room.
And not just with miscarriages or and not just with losses, but any type of trauma.
These doulas, they know you, your other advocate, anybody that you choose as your advocate, they do know your story and they know what you've been through.
And that can be any form of trauma that alters your thinking in a very dramatic and a very intense situation.
Your mind is altered and you need someone with a clear mind in order to help you through that situation, whatever that looks like, I feel like.
That fight or flight can be really tough to get past.
It can be really, really hard to get past.
And this is a series on trauma, you know?
And having a doula statistically has been shown to reduce the likelihood of trauma because you're understanding more of what's going on.
You're feeling like you're a part of the decision-making process.
Someone is making space for you to be able to stop and think versus everyone just making decisions around you and you just rolling with it.
Yeah, making decisions for you, essentially, and you're feeling like these are my medical professionals.
They know best, but you truly can't know best if you don't know the entire situation.
Because you don't know what it's going to be like.
That's what we always tell our clients.
When we're doing an interview and people are like, well, what is the role of a doula?
What is that going to look like when we hire you?
We always say, we want to be, our goal is to be your best friend when we're walking into that room.
We want to know you really well.
We want to know your dreams and expectations and fears around this experience.
And we want you to be excited to see us.
And we've done it.
We've done it hundreds of times.
We've had a lot of babies with people.
And so we know what to expect.
We know what's in the realm of normal.
And we're not medical professionals.
We are not going to overrule anybody by any means, but we can help you to make the decisions that are best for you.
Because yes, your provider has all of the medical knowledge, but there's a shared decision making that goes into all medical decisions.
And just because your provider knows that statistically, this is what would need to happen, that doesn't mean that that is what is best for you in that situation, because you are a complex individual with complex past and a different pregnancy than any pregnancy they've ever had before.
So it's a very individualized experience.
And I think sometimes that gets lost in the system that we have in place, because it can be very much of a cookie cutter approach of, well, she's got this, this and this, so therefore she has to do this.
Well, no.
And I want to make sure, like that at all.
It's so intricate.
It is so nuanced for sure.
I want to make sure that I, what Samantha said about, you know, we want to be your best friend walking into that room.
I also want to make sure that that is heard correctly and that there's no ego in that.
We're not saying we want to be your best friend because we want to be important.
We want to have you feel like a good friend is showing up so that you feel supported, so that you feel like somebody's coming into the room is on your side first and foremost.
Not because we just want you to think we're the best.
That's really important to have somebody that you trust.
We want you to trust us as doulas when we walk into the room that we're not going to make decisions for you.
We're going to give you all the options because we want you to be the one that's actually in charge.
You had one live pregnancy, one miscarriage, one live pregnancy, one miscarriage followed by immediate another live pregnancy that was a very huge surprise.
Yes.
And was that after that baby, were you done having babies or were there more stories?
I am done having babies.
Okay, I just wanted to make sure we didn't miss anything.
So I have my 10-year-old son and then I have my 3-year-old son and my daughter who is 16 months old and my 3-year-old is about to be 4.
But right after I had my second son, before he even turned 1-year-old, my oldest son was diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic.
And for anybody who knows anything about Type 1 diabetes, I always say it's the equivalent of having a newborn, but for the rest of your life.
Because at 25, 8 year-round, you are functioning as a reminder of a pancreas.
And so that in itself feels a little bit like, it's almost like having a little bit of an extra...
A forever baby.
And he's been incredible about it from day one.
And he's so mature and he takes care of it so well.
But the night times of...
Newborns are nothing when you have a type 1 diabetic because you're up all night and you're worried about that blood sugar.
Those alarms going off and juice running in and all the different things.
It's almost a joke at this point.
It's when people say they have a newborn and we just laugh because if I could just go back to the newborn days, it would feel like a cakewalk.
And that's not to diminish anybody's experience with newborns because I've been there also three times and that is very, very difficult.
But it's just a very similar experience as far as what you're going through.
So that was also something that I, the reason behind the unplanned third baby was because we didn't know if we wanted to do that.
And not only that, but the likelihood of siblings also having type 1 diabetes, we just weren't sure if we wanted to open that door for another child.
And ultimately, like everything does work out the way that it's supposed to, I feel like.
But that doesn't diminish all of the losses in between and all the losses of other babies or the traumas that you go through with other children.
Having more babies is not ever going to make that go away.
I like to say that maybe it softens the blow, but time does not heal all wounds.
It just softens the blow a little bit, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
So after all of those pregnancy and birth experiences, how did you get to the place of writing this book?
What did that journey look like for you?
Yeah, so like I mentioned a little bit earlier that I did a workshop because writing has always been something that I enjoyed.
I've always written poetry since I was young.
But never like taking it seriously because in my mind, I always thought, oh, poetry is so specific, like you have to have training, right?
Well, really, I mean, I don't want to make this taboo, but anyone can write.
And every single one of us have things that can flow from our brain to our hand onto a page.
And it might be things we don't even realize, you know, that we're going through.
So I really did it to start out with because I had friends and people and therapists that were saying, write about it, you know, write about it.
I'm a very creative person.
I love to paint.
I love to draw.
Any form of like creative outlet is something that's big for me.
And I thought, why can't I do this in a way that makes me feel good and a way that I feel is beautiful?
And then over the years throughout both of the miscarriages, I always felt myself looking for books because I enjoy reading.
But I was looking for books and I wasn't the girl that read What to Expect When You're Expecting.
I was the girl that found pregnancy and birth poetry because I'm an aesthetic person.
I like aesthetically pleasing things and it just does something for my endorphins.
So I was always looking for beautiful ways that people express themselves about miscarriage.
And I wasn't finding that.
I was finding the scientific facts behind it.
I was finding the medical books.
I was finding everything I didn't want.
In fact, it was almost like something would put me off about it.
What do the TikTokers say?
Like the itch?
It gave me the itch because I just thought this is not something that is just factual.
This is something that's extremely emotional and affects you in that way.
And so I just kept writing because I couldn't find what I was looking for.
So I thought, I'll write what I'm looking for.
And my son being the, you know, nine or 10 year old that he was at the time, always looking over my shoulder, like, what are you writing?
What are you writing?
And then one day he just says, Mom, you should just, you write so much.
You should just write a book.
You should just put it in a book.
And I don't even think he really knows.
Yeah, he just doesn't even know what I'm truly writing about, you know?
So he just says, you should do it.
And I said, I don't know.
It's kind of sad, buddy.
It's kind of morbid.
It's pretty dark.
And he said, I don't know, maybe you could help somebody.
And then it was no other thought in his mind after that.
And it was a thought that I couldn't get out of my mind after that.
Because in a way, I thought, this is so vulnerable.
I could never do this.
It's so raw, especially because I come from, like I said this before, I come from the South.
I am from a really small town.
And this kind of stuff doesn't get talked about very often when you come from a place that's rooted in tradition.
And I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with it.
But I do think that it needs to be talked about more.
So this was stuff that tugged at me.
And I was going back and forth between what will my friends think?
What will my family think?
And then ultimately, what would my husband think?
Because a lot of the poems in here are my rawest form.
They are me at my most vulnerable.
They are me when I am absolutely ugly on the inside.
And it was all out on paper.
And I knew that if I put it out there, like, will he think differently of me?
And really these were just fears that I had because I knew deep down that there's nothing I could do that would like make him think ill of me or think differently of me.
But it was really just coming down to like the amount that I was thinking about it and thinking that I could help other women or other people going through this or families, husbands.
I knew that I just needed to do it.
So I started exploring options of publishing houses and, you know, agents and this and that.
And I was getting really discouraged because it makes you really question yourself and your ability to do something.
I went to cosmetology school.
I didn't go to UT.
I didn't attend a prestigious college.
I kept thinking, you're not a writer.
And then I thought, well, I put my pen on this paper and I wrote 300 pages.
So I guess I damn sure am a writer.
Why can't I be a writer?
And that's when I was like, I'm going to self-publish because I'm not going to wait for a publishing house or an agent to tell me that my deepest truths that so many other women go through.
I'm not waiting for someone to tell me that it's not good enough.
Amen.
I love that.
And I just thought that...
Mom boss.
That's what mom bosses do.
I just didn't want to wait for anybody's approval.
And once people are going to be...
They're either going to think that this is great or they're going to think that I'm crazy and that it could really take the validation out of what I did.
But in all transparency, I started thinking about this at the end of 20...
Like in the fall of 2023.
And that's when I printed out every poem I ever wrote, threw it all on a table and started organizing my thoughts because I started realizing when I looked at it that I was writing in a journal form.
So I was writing in the process of trying to get pregnant and then falling pregnant and then being excited about it and then losing it and then grieving and then trying to heal from that.
And so I wrote it in basically like story form and I just organized all of my poems that I had written over years and years and that's how the book came about.
It's like you had already written the book.
You just had to organize the book.
The book was there.
I just didn't know it was a book.
It was there.
I just didn't know it was a book yet.
So I just printed it all out, organized it, and once I realized I had more than enough, then I started eliminating ones that I felt like wouldn't relate to everyone that were more sacred to myself because I definitely knew that I wanted to put out stuff that was vulnerable and like very me and related to me, but I also just wanted it to be something that could help people overall.
And I knew that the only reason behind doing this is because I needed it to be in the hands of someone like myself looking for the type of healing or the type of work that they needed to put in, and that's what I wanted to give them.
So I designed my cover.
I painted the background of my book.
I drew every single bit of graphics on a piece of paper, took photos of it with my iPhone, and I turned them into graphics myself.
I found an editor.
And once I found my editor, she's amazing.
Her name is Sarah Durkey, and she's actually she's like a graphic designer.
She mainly works with websites, but she's done plenty of books in the past.
And she really opened my eyes to the formatting process and how difficult it is to publish a book.
And every little thing that we talked about changing, ultimately, she gave me the reins and said, like, this book is really important to you.
And there are reasons that you want this book out there.
Like, for instance, I have a page in my book that says the word red over and over and over and over.
And the reason I wanted it in the book is because I had a journal page that in one of my darkest days, I wrote the word red down because I was tired of it.
I was tired of seeing blood.
I was tired of seeing red.
I didn't like the color red.
I didn't want anything to do with it.
And I thought to myself, like, this is all I see.
I can't see anything else.
It's like when you are buying a car and that's the only car you see, all I could see was red.
Just...
Oh, you're making me cry.
I don't cry very often, but this week must be a week because I cried on another one, too.
That is so powerful.
It's probably just because you relate to it.
But I'm so glad that you did that.
That it, you know, that that was just authentically you, that you put that in there because those are the things that are the most powerful.
Those are the things that people are going to resonate with.
And the vulnerability to put out the information that you put out because, you know, you could write a fiction book and it's vulnerable because it's your ideas and people might not like how you did it.
But it's not who you are.
And you put out a raw, vulnerable experience that was hard for you in your life.
And now anybody who reads it knows your story.
Just like you're like, well, my husband, what is he going to think?
You know, and I don't know about you.
Like, my husband is a super private guy.
So, you know, anything that I.
Oh, man, he's like, I asked the neighbors to bring their dogs in yesterday morning.
And because they were barking incessantly, and we have recorded four podcasts yesterday.
And Kyle goes, that's it.
We're moving.
Where do you want to move?
We need a realtor.
Oh, this sounds exactly like my husband.
My husband is a really private guy as well.
He's like, that's it.
We can't live here anymore.
You embarrassed us in front of our neighbors.
All I asked is that they bring their dogs in because they were like barking and I'm recording.
They're the cool dads.
So private.
So anything that lets anybody know anything about what he's thinking or what we're feeling is really just vulnerable and he just doesn't like the...
Not the confrontation, I don't know if that's the word, but like the exposure.
The vulnerability of all of it.
And that he knows now how you think and how you feel and what's on the inside.
And even though that's your husband, there are still things that we don't say.
There are still things that you keep inside.
So I just love that you put it out there because that really is like the rawest, most vulnerable thing that you can do is write something that's truly about yourself.
Yeah, especially the ones about...
Not necessarily about him, but the ones about my feelings towards him.
I have some poems in there basically explaining that I feel like he didn't deserve it and in a way that I failed him, even though I know I didn't.
And I know he doesn't think that at all.
It's just in the moment, that's things that you're thinking.
I have some poems that are dedicated to my family as far as like, how do you tell these people?
How do you tell these people that love you so much that this life that you were growing, it's not going to happen now.
And little things like that.
So the way that...
Another thing about just being...
I like to push for an open dialogue about stuff like this because it is not something...
It's very uncomfortable for other people.
And in return, it becomes uncomfortable for the people suffering through it.
Like the women that feel like they're dreading going back to work because they want things to go back to normal and they don't want people to talk about it.
But a man will put their hand on your shoulder and attempt to tell you how sorry he is, or a woman will tell you how sorry she is, or someone with faith will tell you it's God's plan and you just want to scream in all of their faces because that's not the things that you want to hear in those moments and they truly mean well.
They truly do.
And so you're protecting your own feelings because you're protecting their feelings.
And if we all just got a little bit more open and created an open dialogue around this, we could avoid some of that altogether.
And then we could also bring some of it to the forefront.
Like I was really worried about my family and what they would think or especially my father because I don't talk about stuff like this with my father, but he's a very emotional man and I get my feelings from him as well and my emotions.
And I was really worried about what he would, not necessarily what he would think of me, but him seeing this side of me, of his little girl, that even to this day, I think he showed me a song not that long ago about a little girl with brown hair swinging in the front yard.
And I know that's how he sees me.
I know he sees me as his little baby girl and this little girl, that's the image of me in his mind.
And I knew that as soon as he read these pages, he was gonna feel my deepest pain.
Sorry, I'm getting emotional too, because I just knew that all these people that loved me, they knew how much it bothered me, but they were gonna see it in a really raw form.
Some of it's really dark and some of it's really in your face and telling how I felt about it and not just how I felt about it, but how other women felt about it.
And I just, I didn't know how they were gonna take it and how it was gonna be received.
And once it came out, I guess I should have known that these people that love me so much, not only was it well received, but it was like something that they all expressed that even though we're all very different, this was like, it's needed.
And they validated everything, all the work that I put into it.
They validated it because so many women that I know have went through it.
So from family members to friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers, the feedback that I have got from people saying that it helped them through a current miscarriage, it helped them grieve a past miscarriage, they didn't realize they needed to grieve.
From men messaging me saying they originally bought it for their wives, and they read it too, and that it opens up a whole world for them of understanding what their wives are going through.
Oh, that's cool.
In a way that they never would have understood.
So that's ultimately, I guess to answer your question, like that is what led me to do it.
And now I'm really glad that I did do it.
And even if I never make another dollar off of this book, I am positive that I made the right decision.
Yeah, I love that.
I love that so much.
So if someone wanted to find your book or more information on you, where can they find it?
And we'll, of course, also link it in the show notes.
So I am exclusively on Amazon currently.
I was on Barnes & Noble and ultimately decided that I have just a much wider reach on Amazon.
So I've switched it over to exclusively on Amazon.
And then, of course, I am going to be putting it in local bookstores in Austin and Denver.
It's going to be in Huntsville and Knoxville.
So everywhere that I've lived throughout my life, I am going to be reaching out to local bookstores and putting it in local shops and on my social media pages.
I'll keep you guys updated with that.
But I am on most social media handles as DN Williams Poetry.
And yeah, I am also, I'll put a little plug in here, but very soon I am working on a self-care community called Bay Bridge.
It is short for Beyond Bridgid, which if anybody is familiar with Celtic heritage, it's, Bridgid is a very powerful goddess in Celtic heritage.
And that's my daughter's heritage.
So basically it's going to be a self-care community for women and mothers to differentiate between their self-identity and then motherhood and being a spouse or a partner as well.
And it's just going to kind of be...
Cool.
I'm going to focus on miscarriage and try and help guide people through that as well.
I love that.
So powerful and so necessary.
And I know you can't see it on here, but if any of these clips show this, it's what the book looks like.
Yeah, and I'm actually putting that on your little cover photo for your episode so that people can see what that is.
And we'll link it in the show notes.
Thank you so much for being here with us today, Diamond.
Thank you guys so much for having me.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, we'll talk soon.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby.
Thanks again to Longing for Orpheus for our music.
You can look him up on Spotify.
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