Pregnancy Q&A and Advice
In a Nutshell
A woman with severe autoimmune issues shares her meat-first approach to feeding babies until age 2.5-3, citing research on head circumference and delayed amylase production for starch digestion. She describes traumatic birth experiences, medical gaslighting around vitamin K decisions, and managing four pregnancies with hired help including 24/7 rotating nannies. Her core message is that women need substantial support systems to handle motherhood without resentment, and partners must protect the postpartum period by limiting visitors and reducing stress.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Pregnancy does not feel natural even though the woman is female. The speaker describes feeling like there is a fish living inside her. Men do not realize the shift it represents for women. MRIs show that the brain changes during pregnancy. The entire world becomes centered around keeping the baby alive and the relationship with the baby.
The speaker feels like a hippo. She did not plan two pregnancies this close together. Her body is struggling with the demands.
Cucumbers have been the craving during every pregnancy.
The question of how to know when ready for another pregnancy is raised.
Kindergarten teachers will decide the gender. The current pregnancy is a boy.
The speaker is Michaela Fuller hosting a pregnancy Q&A. She is 37 weeks pregnant and sitting on a ball. Her back is in significant pain, particularly the sacroiliac joint, midback, and ribs. Everything is expanding. This is the biggest she has been during any pregnancy.
Products will be covered in a separate video, likely postpartum. The speaker feels the need to complete this Q&A today due to her current physical state.
The speaker outlines her approach to feeding her children. They begin with breast milk, then transition to meat. Feeding babies meat involves some gagging, which occurs with any first foods. Some babies gag more than others.
Meat was introduced with Scarlet as the first food for the first three years. Parents of children with autoimmune disorders at age two have inquired about the lion diet. The approach allows slow food introduction for little kids. Breast milk is followed by meat until two and a half to three years old. Beef is primary, with some fish and chicken added later. Primarily fatty beef is used.
Research shows children who start with meat have larger head circumference in a positive way. The study will be linked below or can be found through Google search. Meat as a first food is described as amazing.
In the 1990s, iron-fortified cereal was given to everyone despite cereal lacking iron. This is attributed to marketing decisions. The recommendation is to avoid iron-fortified cereal and use meat instead.
Amylase is an enzyme that helps break down starches. Amylase levels do not reach peak adult levels until approximately two and a half years old. Children are not ready for starches until around that age, so there is no need to rush introduction.
The speaker would not be this strict except for her personal history with autoimmunity and her family's history with autoimmunity. The family has sensitivity possibly related to genetic factors and mold exposure causing autoimmune problems. The goal is to prevent this for the children.
After the two and a half to three year period, foods are introduced one by one. Monitoring includes watching for sudden tantrums in previously calm children, stomach aches, rashes, eczema, and mood changes. If tantrums occur, foods were introduced too early.
Scarlet is almost nine years old and eats a paleo diet with no processed foods and no cane sugar. She can eat dairy but does not eat much. She does not like eggs but can eat them. She has no allergies except environmental allergies, which are attributed to mold exposure before the mold problem was identified.
Scarlet's diet consists of approximately 80% meat with fruits and vegetables. All food introductions went well. She has eaten nuts with no allergic reactions. She was an easy child.
The only times Scarlet had tantrums occurred when she received chocolate at school around age five. She came home and ran around the couch in circles, then had a meltdown. The same reaction occurred the following year when another child gave her something at school.
George is two and a half years old and still eating only meat. Small amounts of sweet potatoes, carrots, cooked arugula, and egg have been tried. He really likes beef and will have chicken sometimes.
When carrots and sweet potatoes were introduced at age two, George began having tantrums when waking from naps. Removing these foods eliminated the tantrums. This occurred despite carrots and sweet potatoes not being sugars.
George will likely have starches reintroduced closer to age three following the same approach used with Scarlet.
The speaker has separate beds from her husband due to sleep difficulties during pregnancy. She has been sleeping at an angle for three months due to inability to breathe through her nose. She slept sitting up for four months with Audrey due to pregnancy rhinitis. Her current sleep setup includes a pillow behind her back, under her stomach, and between her knees. She wakes every two hours to urinate. Separate beds prevent her husband from waking her, which could trigger anger. Her husband is sleeping fine.
The speaker was not ready for the current baby. Audrey was born in May. The following summer was traumatizing. Audrey got a cold at three weeks old. George was also sick around the same time. It may have been an adenovirus. Audrey initially had only a sniffle.
Approximately one week after the sniffle, Audrey began projectile vomiting once a week. Two doctors diagnosed reflux, but the vomiting was violent and projectile. Two weeks later, Audrey became lethargic, sleepy, and was not eating well. The mother had a strong intuition that something was seriously wrong.
At the emergency room, Audrey was lethargic but doctors said she was fine and to monitor intake. The family went home. The next day, Audrey almost died. She was not eating. The family had bags packed to return to emergency when she became lethargic and began screaming. She seized up, prompting a 911 call. The fire department arrived in three minutes. In the ambulance, Audrey turned blue. Oxygen was administered.
At the hospital, doctors initially suggested a brain bleed and blamed the mother for not giving the vitamin K shot or oral vitamin K. The mother was told she had basically killed her baby. The mother spent the night on her knees praying.
At 6:00 AM, doctors confirmed it was not a brain bleed, but Audrey was still on the verge of death with no identified cause. The family was transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit. The mother was questioned about vaccines. A neurologist stated it would take time to determine the problem because the baby was not vaccinated, despite the baby being exactly six weeks old and not yet due for vaccinations beyond the birth Hep B shot.
The neurologist suggested meningitis as a possible vaccination-related illness, but meningitis vaccination is not given at six weeks and had already been ruled out. The mother describes the neurologist as power-hungry and misinformed.
Phoenix Children's Hospital saved Audrey. The diagnosis was idiopathic pulmonary hypertension. A virus stressed her lungs, causing one side of her heart to enlarge. This condition affects one in two million babies. Persistent pulmonary hypertension occurs at birth and is more common, but this presentation at six weeks is virtually unheard of.
Audrey was treated with Selenapil, the same medication used for erectile dysfunction. She received steroids, prophylactic antibiotics, and required a blood transfusion. The family was told they would live at the hospital for possibly a month. They were discharged after 11 days.
Audrey is now totally fine with no heart issues. The cardiac unit at Phoenix Children's Hospital is praised. Heart issues are fairly common in children.
In August, the speaker's father deteriorated and was hospitalized by ambulance. The same day, Audrey returned to the hospital after turning blue again due to a UTI, likely caused by extensive antibiotic use weakening her system. The UTI was treatable.
The speaker became pregnant in October. She did not discover the pregnancy immediately because she had not had her cycle return. The pregnancy occurred quickly without intention or careful prevention.
The speaker spent a week crying upon discovering the pregnancy. She was not mentally prepared. She had previously experienced periods of suicidality during pregnancy with Scarlet, complicated by antidepressant withdrawal. She feared repeating that experience. This pregnancy has been easier than expected, partly attributed to carrying a boy. Boy pregnancies have been easier than girl pregnancies for her.
Having two little kids is hard. The speaker had Scarlet for six years before she had a sibling. Having one child is better than having none if that is the limit. However, the speaker always wanted a sibling for Scarlet and felt sad about the gap. George and Audrey interact well despite their age difference. George is two and a half and Audrey just turned one in May.
The speaker plans a large break after this pregnancy. This is most likely her last pregnancy, though she acknowledges uncertainty. She states she cannot continue at this pace.
The speaker recorded this Q&A twice after accidentally losing audio the first time by kicking a cord.
The carnivore diet helps with nausea but is complicated by meat aversion during the last three pregnancies. The aversion was brutal with George and the current pregnancy. During first trimester, the speaker introduced other foods because she was gagging and could not eat enough. With George, she maintained the diet and was very skinny at the end, having gained 30 pounds total, all in her belly, with loose rings.
During the current first trimester, the speaker ate chicken arugula and coconut mango ice cream. She also had avocados to maintain sufficient calories. These were described as super clean options.
In the second trimester, the speaker returned to meat only. There was no meat aversion. She was more stable emotionally, attributed to both hormones and diet.
At approximately 31 weeks, meat aversion returned. The speaker became angry. Her husband encouraged her to eat. She ate chicken arugula to dampen the steak aversion, allowing her to eat steak in the morning and afternoon, with other foods at night when aversion was worse. Recently, the aversion has resolved and she has returned to meat only, feeling better.
Diet plays a significant role in nausea and vomiting. With Scarlet on a more varied keto diet, nausea was dependent on what was eaten. The speaker threw up a few times. Vomiting was triggered by foods that did not agree with her. For the last two pregnancies, there has been no vomiting. Severe nausea is difficult to avoid entirely, but vomiting may be reduced by dietary changes. First trimester nausea is normal and harder to avoid. Removing all fragranced items from the home helps.
The speaker needs work to stay sane. With Scarlet, she was a stay-at-home mom for 11 months but began working when Scarlet was about six months old, with the baby on her lap while working on a laptop at home. She needed that work escape.
Full-time stay-at-home motherhood involves maintaining a house, managing extracurricular activities, and caring for newborns and toddlers. It is a full-time job that is way harder than most corporate jobs. It is constant work and overstimulating.
Women should ensure they can take enough time off after having a baby. Feelings before birth differ from feelings after birth. Even women who are not particularly maternal will want to be with their baby when it is very little. The speaker describes herself as compassionate but not the most maternal person. She always knew she wanted children but also wanted to do other things. Staying home exclusively would have caused resentment, which would not be good for the children.
The speaker manages both roles through significant help. Women who work extensively almost always have help beyond daycare. When the speaker had Scarlet, she had very little money and was living in debt.
To manage being a mom with work, you need to make sure you have a support system. Your husband needs to be on board and hire help if you can hire help. Hiring help has been crucial because the speaker wouldn't have this many kids if she didn't have help. Hiring help actually enabled her to have more children, which is why some celebrities that have four or five kids can manage it - they have a lot of help.
The speaker has something called a roa nanny, which involves two women on rotation who come stay for a week at a time and stay 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This allows her to attend business meetings or take short trips without organizing anything. The nannies are like family, and they've been working together for quite a while now.
Last year when Audrey was in the hospital, the speaker and her partner were staying overnight for 11 days monitoring the situation and medication because they had this help set up. They had George at home and Scarlet was at her dad's, but there was a 1 and 1/2-year-old at home. The speaker notes that this help is expensive and she doesn't recommend it as something everyone should do, but she emphasizes that what she did for Scarlet was have someone come 9 to 5, 5 days a week, which she could barely afford but was fantastic.
The speaker notes that the reason people were able to have more kids back in the day was because they had family helping them - grandparents, aunts, uncles, and community. We don't have that anymore, so you need to create that yourself. It's not a waste of money because it's your kids and your mental well-being, and you need a little community. The speaker isn't near Jordan's family, and her own family is swamped with health issues, particularly her dad's health issues this year.
The speaker fully believes you can be successful at both work and motherhood. It's beneficial for children to not have a resentful mother and to see their mom going out and doing things, which is completely healthy. However, you're going to miss things, so you have to be okay with that. You might only want to hire somebody for 3 or 4 hours a day to get out and do things, or you might want 9 to 5 help - it's all fine.
The speaker doesn't want to use the word privilege because she worked really hard to get where she is and prioritized this, but she's at home most of the time doing what she calls stay-at-home momming. If there's an emergency or a kid gets sick, she can pop over to the other side of the house. She's able to work full-time because she has people there. A lot of people who run businesses have help, and she recommends getting help at night so you can sleep. She recommends asking for money for a night nurse as presents when having a baby, even just once or twice a week during the first postpartum period, particularly the first 6 weeks.
The speaker didn't have a night nurse with Scarlet and remembers at 6 weeks holding her in the kitchen rocking back and forth near hallucinating from sleep deprivation. She was so isolated and it was so hard that she made a concerted effort that if she was going to have more kids, she would set this up so it wouldn't be stressful. Making enough money to have help has been near the top of her primary goals because she wants to have a lot of kids and wants this to be a fun experience, not traumatizing.
You don't have to have mom guilt for having some help because everybody used to have help with big families and we don't have that anymore.
Pregnancy and postpartum periods significantly impact sex life. A pregnant woman isn't the same woman you married. Knowing that this is a season of life - the pregnancy season and then the postpartum season - helps put it in perspective. In the greater scheme of things over your life, it's not very long, so you shouldn't treat these seasons as representative of your relationship or life.
It's a season you need to get through together, giving each other as much grace and compassion as you can. Jordan is very stable and good at being like, "Okay, this is the year we do this." The speaker notes that her ideal relationship certainly isn't her when she's pregnant, and they haven't gone out on a date in at least four or five months because she's grumpy and her back hurts.
The speaker is on a bouncy ball because she can't sit on a chair, and her back hurts. She's so touched out from having kids come in for hugs and being touched by babies all the time. This is partly from having kids close together where she's already overstimulated. It negatively impacts her sex life, but not long-term.
The last thing on a wife's mind when she's pregnant is how fun this is going to be for the husband. This can breed resentment where the man gets resentful about not getting what he wants, which is totally fair because the relationship entirely changes. The woman gets hurt because she's being guilted and pushed on, is sore, isn't sleeping, is nauseous, and feels disgusting.
The speaker maintains her weight purely because of her diet - she only eats meat and doesn't gain extra weight during pregnancy. However, she notes that if you have a meat aversion, which many pregnant women do, that's very difficult. She doesn't recommend only eating meat as a diet during pregnancy and thinks it's probably not ideal - you should probably be eating other things and gain a bit of weight for breastfeeding.
She maintains her weight out of necessity mostly for arthritis but also for psych stability. Otherwise, she wouldn't recommend it. You can definitely control weight during pregnancy by just not going crazy with your food, but it's really hard because you're starving all the time and only want certain foods.
Recently when eating chicken and arugula along with steak, she started getting arthritis again. She had previously introduced some foods without arthritis, but that seemed okay in the first trimester. Then she ended up getting a gallbladder attack and went back to just eating meat. In the third trimester, she started getting arthritis from arugula or chicken, and after about 4 weeks she started getting symptoms again.
Gaining weight isn't a problem, but you don't want to get into the diabetes situation because you can gain too much weight and get gestational diabetes more easily. You should be monitoring what you're eating and trying to eat healthy. A paleo diet is probably the safest bet during pregnancy - don't eat processed foods, just eat healthy foods.
To overcome fear of pregnancy, buy a hypnobirthing book and some audio books about hypnobirthing and listen to them. The positive affirmations can help brainwash yourself into not being scared. The goal is to brainwash yourself into not being scared, and hypnobirthing can help a lot with that. It goes into statistics around home births and helped the speaker with Scarlet.
Read positive birth stories and positive experiences, and don't read any of the negative stuff. What you feed yourself matters. There's so much fear-mongering around pregnancy and birth, which is especially hard with your first. The speaker had a home birth with Scarlet and spent all this time brainwashing herself into believing it was healthy and natural, but then someone told her about a home birth where the baby died, which was really hard to hear when she was in such a sensitive state.
The whole point of pregnancy is to have a baby. The pregnancy part sucks. The baby part is amazing. There's nothing like it.
The newborn phase is the closest thing to heaven on earth. It's really emotional and there's a lot of weeping - the speaker will cry for the first two weeks and it'll feel bad, but there's going to be such beauty and bonding and love. Read positive things, stop reading negative things, and don't talk to people who are negative about it.
The speaker is planning on doing a home birth again. She only recommends home births for people who are comfortable with the idea. The best place to have your baby is wherever you feel safest. With Scarlet, she was having panic attacks going into hospitals due to serious PTSD-type aversion to hospitals from all the medical stuff she's been through. She brainwashed herself and read all the statistics - home births are super safe if you have a low-risk pregnancy.
The speaker has had three home births. With Scarlet, it was so fast the midwife didn't believe she was giving birth. The midwife got her to get out of the bathtub and get on her back in bed to do cervix measuring when she was at the point of pushing because she couldn't see. This caused the speaker to tear a bit because being on your back increases the risk of tears. The speaker notes that if any doctor tells you to do something like that while giving birth, you can just say no.
The current midwife is amazing, and these births have been as easy as a birth could be - very painful and intense but fast. The speaker is planning on having a home birth again, assuming everything goes smoothly. She likes being able to lie in bed with her baby afterwards.
The speaker had Scarlet at 40 weeks, George at 36 weeks and one day (the cutoff for being able to have a home birth in Arizona), and Audrey at 38 weeks and 2 days. You shouldn't be pressured into a home birth if you're in the health-minded community - if you want to do it at a hospital, that's totally fine.
For hospital births, bring a piece of paper with all your requests like wanting lights low and people to talk to your husband and not to you. Make sure your husband is prepped to be your guardian in the hospital. Bring an eye mask, earplugs, and things so you don't have to hear beeping.
The entire point of making a normal healthy birth go well is to stay calm. If you stay calm, your oxytocin goes up and contractions increase. If you get stressed out and cortisol goes up, oxytocin goes down. If you go to a hospital and stress out, you're going to have a longer, more painful labor because oxytocin is suppressed by cortisol. That can lead to pitocin, which can make contractions stronger than they are naturally, which hurts, leading to an epidural and trouble pushing.
The speaker did not plan two pregnancies this close together. Allison asked about cravings outside the normal diet at 26 weeks. The speaker's craving for every pregnancy has been cucumbers. This time, when she had a cucumber while eating arugula and having some mango ice cream in the first trimester, her whole face got itchy and it didn't taste as good as remembered - it tasted grassy. This eliminated the cucumber craving.
All the foods eaten during this pregnancy haven't hit whatever the speaker wanted them to hit. When eating chicken wings and arugula in the third trimester to get through the meat aversion month, she got sick of it. She wanted to get back to the meat diet because she feels better on it and is tired of eating so much food. You have to eat so much food when you don't just eat meat. Chicken wings don't feed you, and arugula is a joke - you could eat an entire field of arugula and not get full.
Now that she's back to just eating meat, she can take more time between meals, isn't constantly thinking about food, and her mood is better and more stable.
This baby is a boy. The speaker will have two boys and two girls, which is very cool. She thinks that's why this pregnancy has been more doable. With the stress of this year, she was worried about some serious mental issues, but other than crying every day until the last month, she hasn't had it any worse than that. The crying was mostly from her dad being sick mixed with pregnancy hormones, but it wasn't worse than that, which is what she was worried about.
Four kids seems like a lot - as many as she can handle. Maybe in 6 or 9 years she'll want another baby, but five kids was never something she thought she'd have. She thought she'd have three because her mom and dad always said they wished they'd had more. This fourth one snuck in. Her husband wanted five children when they met, but now that he's been dealing with her through multiple pregnancies, he's thinking maybe three or four seems like a lot.
The speaker is going to try a home birth and has ordered her birth tub. She'll link all her favorite products in the description, including the home birth kit.
The speaker has struggled to parent while feeling so sick. She wouldn't be able to do this without the help. There's definitely some guilt because her other babies are so little and she has to nap and is tired with her back murdering her. Especially near the end, she has to be in bed and feels overstimulated when going into the living room with too many noises. She feels like she should be in a cave and needs to hide under the covers.
She feels guilty but knows her kids are good with the nannies, she's there, and her husband sees them. It's still hard. She doesn't think you can have three kids close together and it isn't hard - that's just part of it.
With Scarlet, the speaker did oral vitamin K. Looking at the literature, you can get oral drops of vitamin K that are just as effective for blood clotting as the injection. She'll try to remember to link the paper for dosage information.
When she had George, she decided not to do anything. The mainstream argument for vitamin K is that levels are too low with a very small chance of bleeding and delayed brain bleeds, which are basically deadly. The vitamin K shot given in hospitals has preservatives, and the baby's liver stores that level of vitamin K and slowly releases it over the next 6 months until their vitamin K levels are normal.
The hippie argument is that maybe vitamin K levels are supposed to be low, which is why they're low. The speaker was more listening to that because she assumes less intervention is better after everything she's been through. She was neurologically injured by medication that was told was safe, potentially permanently. She's seen what it did to her dad and has an autoimmune disorder she's had since she was two - they don't know why. It wasn't some gene they've figured out, and it's mitigated by diet, but she can still eat arugula and chicken and get some joint pain.
She said no to vitamin K for George and Audrey, and they were fine. But then at 6 weeks Audrey had a heart issue and because she was hospitalized, there was so much hubbub
The speaker plans to use oral vitamin K drops for this pregnancy due to previous negative experiences with hospital staff over vitamin K administration during a prior birth. The previous hospitalization created significant stress around the vitamin K decision, and the speaker wants to avoid repeating that situation. Oral drops are being chosen because no risks were identified with preservative-free formulations, and the speaker notes their family experiences unusual medical situations that occur at rates as low as one in two million.
The oral vitamin K drops to be used are the same type used for Scarlet - containing only vitamin K and MCT oil. The dosing schedule involves administration for the first three days after birth, followed by weekly dosing thereafter. The speaker will provide a link to the specific product being used.
No vaccinations will be given to the baby due to the speaker's severe autoimmune disorder with unknown cause. The decision reflects caution until more research establishes safety for children, particularly given the speaker's own health condition.
The speaker typically takes no supplements and maintains a meat-only diet for years. Following mold exposure and SERS diagnosis during pregnancy with George, the speaker began taking folinic acid due to low folate levels being associated with cleft lips and spina bifida. Throughout pregnancy, vitamin levels are tested periodically to identify and treat deficiencies, with folate being the primary concern identified.
Folinic acid is taken at the beginning of pregnancy and periodically thereafter. The speaker also takes thiamine (B1) during pregnancy. Methylfolate causes severe reactions including insomnia, hyperstimulation, crawling sensations, and behavioral changes, making folic acid and most B vitamins unsuitable. The speaker recommends testing vitamin tolerance before pregnancy and adjusting supplementation based on actual deficiencies identified through testing.
Partners should focus on stress reduction during the 9-month pregnancy period plus the postpartum period, recognizing that the first 3 months are particularly difficult and the full adjustment takes approximately 6 months. The hormonal fluctuations, mood changes, food cravings, and nausea are described as genuinely difficult experiences that don't feel natural, despite being a biological process.
The speaker recommends removing as much stress as possible from the pregnant woman's responsibilities, noting that partners may need to help identify stressors and handle them. Partners should also ensure the pregnant woman stays fed throughout this period. The relationship benefits from mutual kindness during this challenging but temporary timeframe.
Partners should act as gatekeepers during the postpartum period, protecting the mother-baby relationship from unnecessary visitors. The speaker emphasizes that the mother's care takes priority over social visits, particularly when the mother is still bleeding. Partners should evaluate whether potential visitors will add stress during the sensitive recovery period and decline visits that aren't essential. The speaker notes that men often underestimate the neurological changes women experience postpartum, as evidenced by MRI studies showing brain changes, and should focus on protecting the mother-baby bonding period.
Keep Mikhaila Peterson in your library
Save the videos and channels worth coming back to, and find them again in one place.
