In today's episode we meet Kori, who is a mother of two and currently lives on the island of Maui. Kori is a wealth of knowledge and has her own platform, podcast and online course where she teaches women how to restore their metabolism, vitality and food freedom of their youth. Kori’s first pregnancy ended in a cesarean due to her son being transverse when her water broke. She had been receiving prenatal care at a birth center in Florida, and had a poor experience when they needed to transfer to the hospital for a cesarean. Kori immediately knew that she would be pursuing an out-of-hospital VBAC for her next pregnancy, and she and her family made the move to Maui in between her pregnancies, where she then planned an HBAC with a midwife. After not progressing past 4cm for the first 32 hours of labor, Kori persevered and fully dilated the remaining 6cm within 40 minutes, immediately felt the urge to push and gave birth to her 9lb 7oz daughter two contractions later at 42 weeks exactly.
Join us as Kori shares her birth stories, how defeated she felt during her HBAC labor and how she reflects on and perceives the experience now, the importance of sharing difficult labor and birth stories, and the feelings surrounding an unplanned cesarean, not experiencing yourself give birth to your baby and seeing your baby for the first time when they are on the other side of the room. We also discuss honoring your intuition as a mother and allowing ourselves to trust our instincts despite the constant unsolicited advice mothers receive, the taboo conversations around bedsharing and co-sleeping, differing opinions on what “safety” is in birth and how it impacts our choices, taking responsibility for our bodies and health, how trauma can expose itself during birth, that our babies can also undergo birth trauma, our body’s wise, built in protective mechanisms, the importance of communal female relationships before, during and after birth, the current trend of “pain free births” whether at home or in the hospital with an epidural, and the huge rise we are seeing in the surgical method of addressing oral restrictions.
Find Kori on Instagram, here.
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