BrainCore of Duluth

Here's the gag: I tried EVERYTHING before I let that Pitocin take over. 😩

Ni**le stimulation. ✅

Walking those hospital halls at midnight. ✅

I wanted a water birth you all.

I did NOT want to have my baby in a hospital.

Hospitals are for sick people.

I still believe that to this day.

My plan was a birthing center.

Peaceful. Natural. No interventions.

Then insurance said absolutely not. 🙃

So there we were.

In the hospital.

On Pitocin.

And when it kicked in there was no breathing in between contractions.

None.

But you know what we did before all of that?

We baked chocolate chip cookies for the nurses. 🍪

The Bradley Method taught us to come bearing gifts because it is not often that nurses care for a mom who wants zero medication, zero epidural, zero interventions.

We wanted them on our side.

And honey, we got the royal treatment. 👑

Two and a half hours later I delivered a healthy baby girl.

4 pounds, 10.8 ounces.

36 weeks and 5 days.

No NICU. Just petite and perfect. 🙏🏽

Here is what I want you to take from this:
→ You can do all the planning and still get a different path
→ Your body knows more than you give it credit for
→ The goal was never the perfect birth story, it was always a healthy baby

I did not get my birthing center.

I did not get my water birth.

I got a healthy daughter.

And she was worth every single contraction. 🥰

Have you ever had to let go of a plan and trust the process anyway?

Drop it in the comments. 👇🏽

I pumped for 10 weeks before my daughter ever latched on.

Ten weeks. 🧠

When she was born at 4 pounds, 10.8 ounces, the pediatrician gave us advance warning.

Because of her size, there might be delays in her developmental milestones.

I braced myself for that possibility.

What I did not expect was the very first challenge to show up immediately.

She would not latch.

I had planned to nurse her.

Instead, I met with the hospital's lactation consultant, who told me to call anytime I needed her.

I called.

Often.

For ten straight weeks, I pumped around the clock while we worked toward that latch.

It was exhausting. It was discouraging. It was also the first sign.

The first sign that her development might move at her own pace, not the one charted in a textbook.

Here is what that season taught me that still shapes how I care for patients today:

→ Early signs are information, not verdicts

→ Support systems matter more than we realize in the moment

→ Persistence through a hard ten weeks can lead to a breakthrough

→ A child's timeline is their own, and our job is to walk beside it, not rush it

She latched.

Eventually.

And that ten week season became the first chapter in a much longer story about understanding her brain and her development. 💛

Have you ever pushed through a season that felt impossible, only to look back and see it was the beginning of something important?

Tell me about it in the comments. 👇🏽