EP 53: Birth Story Empowerment, Pregnancy Education And Support With Sophie Strauss

Pregnancy facts, body acceptance, and a detailed labor story. Learn about the hormone that causes heartburn and swollen feet during pregnancy, what it feels like to change your mind about your birth plan during labor, and what the biggest indicating factor is in your feelings about your birth story in general.

Sophie is a first-time mom to a three-month-old boy. We dive into her postpartum experience, which has been pretty smooth so far. She notes that societal expectations of postpartum can be pretty binary (ie: the super polished “everything is perfect” image of motherhood or “everything is incredibly hard”). And while it’s important for those experiences to have a platform and a voice, it can be difficult to know how to talk about your experience when it falls somewhere in between. She credits support from her partner, family, and friends as a huge component of why her postpartum experience has been positive, and the privilege of that is not lost on her.

After years of disordered eating, Sophie talks about how her relationship with her body has changed for the better since becoming pregnant and speaks eloquently about a sneaky patriarchal narrative that can arise when talking about postpartum beauty standards. It can sound like a body is only “allowed” to have stretch marks or gain weight once it has birthed a child. She emphasizes that no body is any less valid, regardless of size, shape or whether or not you’ve had a child.

Sophie loved learning about what happens physically and chemically during pregnancy and is passionate about sharing that information.  Exploring the science of pregnancy gave her tools to handle the parts of pregnancy she couldn’t control, and knowing what was happening in her body and why helped her to feel more empowered in her decision making throughout pregnancy and during labor.

We go step by step through a detailed account of Sophie’s delivery including her choice to adjust her birth plan from unmedicated home birth to having an epidural and hospital birth during labor. She reiterated that between her doula, midwives, and partner as well as her research and prep, she felt supported, educated, and confident in her decision and feels happy with her delivery. She underlined that feeling supported during birth is the biggest determining factor of how you feel about your birth as a whole.