Tricks to Bounce Back and More
In a Nutshell
A 38-weeks-pregnant woman shares her successful ECV procedure to correct a breech baby and credits heavy-duty belly binding for dramatically faster postpartum core recovery. She emphasizes checking home air quality for mold/SRS as a key factor in resolving her infertility and miscarriage issues. Her experience shows that meat-based eating, strategic partner support, and early family planning are more critical than career priorities for successful pregnancies in one's 30s.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
I'm 38 weeks and 3 days pregnant. The baby turned breech recently, causing significant rib pain. My midwife confirmed the breech position during a home visit. The baby had flipped from head-down to head-up position, creating the sensation of ribs splitting apart.
I went to an experienced OB who has delivered triplets vaginally seven times. The doctor performed an ECV to turn the baby back to the correct position. The procedure took approximately 15 seconds after administration of medication to relax the uterus. The baby flipped back to head-down position successfully, and I was able to go home immediately afterward.
Belly binders are the single most important product to purchase during pregnancy. I recommend a heavy-duty version from Bumpsuit, though similar products are available from other companies. The system includes a thick outer band that tightens around the belly and a thinner inner band with flexible boning. I wear both bands 24 hours a day, including during sleep. This has significantly improved recovery time compared to my first pregnancy when I didn't use belly binding. Without belly binding after my first child, it took 5-6 months for my core to return to normal, whereas with belly binding I returned to my pre-pregnancy waist size within weeks despite being older with subsequent pregnancies.
Weight gained during each pregnancy:
- Scarlet: 35 lbs
- George: 30 lbs
- Audrey: 30 lbs
- Current pregnancy: 32 lbs
The limited weight gain is attributed to primarily eating meat. During this pregnancy, I experienced meat aversion and temporarily added greens and Fronin mango coconut ice cream (3 ingredients). However, this dietary variation triggered arthritis symptoms including joint pain in shoulders, thumb joints, and big toe. The meat aversion has recently lessened, allowing return to primarily meat-based eating with improvement in joint pain.
Each child has followed different developmental timelines. Scarlet was early with everything, including bottom teeth at 3 months and weaning from breastfeeding by 13 months. Audrey experienced developmental delays of approximately 4 months across all milestones due to hospitalization. George has been slower than Scarlet but within normal range. My family has a pattern of late speech development, with both my father and myself not speaking until age 3, then using full sentences immediately.
George is currently 2.5 years old and just beginning to say words, with expectation of full sentences by age 3. He demonstrates normal understanding and motor skills. For feeding, guidelines suggest starting solids at 6 months, but my experience indicates babies show more interest around 8-9 months. Audrey showed no interest until after 12 months, at which point she began eating more and maintained good weight on breast milk alone.
I start infants with fatty meat due to its benefits for head circumference and iron levels. Babies naturally prefer fatty meat. I introduce other foods slowly, monitoring for behavioral issues, rashes, stomach aches, or digestive problems. This cautious approach stems from my autoimmune disorder history and family background of food sensitivities and psychiatric issues. Scarlet follows a paleo diet with no processed foods or cane sugar, including meat, some fruit and vegetables, though she doesn't particularly like eggs. I don't plan to restrict my children to the lion diet unless health issues arise.
I am not concerned about showing my children's faces online. This decision was made 8 years ago with Scarlet and has never presented problems. My husband shares this view. Living in America provides additional security considerations. Data privacy concerns are minimal since personal information exists online regardless.
First trimester involves extreme fatigue similar to being drugged, heightened smell sensitivity, meat aversions, and potential nausea. Food choices significantly impact nausea - whole foods are recommended while avoiding coffee and dairy. Second trimester brings improved energy and reduced aversions. Third trimester returns extreme fatigue with significantly reduced mobility.
George was born at 36 weeks and 1 day weighing 7 lbs 9 oz. Audrey was born at 38 weeks and 2 days. Both were home births. I have avoided the final 2-4 weeks of pregnancy discomfort with these last two children. Current back pain stems from sacroiliac joint issues and the physical strain of late pregnancy. No prenatal exercises were performed due to consecutive pregnancies and time constraints.
There is no comparison between career and children - children should take priority. The societal message to prioritize career first and have children later is recognized as false, particularly given fertility challenges that increase after age 35. Relationship choice is even more critical than career planning. For young people, focus should be on selecting a life partner rather than career advancement. Work-from-home arrangements with hired help (multiple nannies, one living in) have enabled balancing career and family. The decision to hire help came after experiencing isolation during Scarlet's first year with no assistance.
Minimum two years should be allocated for having children, accounting for pregnancy and the first postpartum year. Planning should begin early since pregnancy timing is never convenient. Partners must commit to this journey together. Postpartum recovery requires staying close to bed for several weeks with adequate food and water provisions.
During labor, hip squeezing technique significantly reduces pain. Hands should be placed on the indentations at the back of the pelvis and pressed inward firmly. This technique transformed excruciating pain into manageable discomfort during Audrey's birth. For the end of pregnancy and postpartum period, partners should provide a safe, cozy environment with food and water while limiting visitors. The immediate postpartum period is primal and animalistic, requiring comfort, nourishment, and security. Partners should prevent overwhelming social visits that can be distressing for new mothers who may not want to share their newborn immediately after birth.
I'm so congested. My nose has been stuffy this entire pregnancy. I'm so excited to not be pregnant. I told you guys I have this like extra energy which I think happens at the end. So, we'll see. I'm just so excited to not be pregnant. My husband keeps being like, "Yeah, and there'll be a baby." I'm like, "Oh, yeah, there'll be a baby, too." But I don't know why I'm thinking about like that. I just want to be able to sleep and breathe through my nose again and not cry all the time about nothing. Like I wake up in the morning and I'm just so sad and uncomfortable and I just need to have a quick weep. He's like, "What are you weeping about?" I'm like, "Nothing. I'm just hurting. Like nothing. I just am so pregnant. It's crazy." I told him this morning, "I'm nothing but a baby vessel now. There's like that's all I am is just a waddling around baby vessel. There's no part of me that's here."
Maybe that's part of the reason I wanted to do another Q&A. I was like, uh, I just want to do something. Is it harder being pregnant in your 30s? No, because I was so sick in my 20s. That was right when I was getting out of autoimmunity and depression and I was in psych meds. Uh, and I wasn't in the most fantastic relationship. So, that was really hard. And Scarlet was a total surprise. So that was hard. And I still had arthritis and things. I wasn't on the lion diet at that point. Oh man. Yeah. No, that was hard. So I'm probably not the best. I think the healthier you the healthier you are, the easier your pregnancy is. So it's been easier in my 30s, but now at the end, I can't remember being this uncomfortable with the other ones. And I don't know if that's cuz I had Audrey last May or if it's because I'm older or my core is more worn out with multiple children. But I'm so uncomfortable. I'm so uncomfortable I can't sleep at night. My back hurts so much. There isn't a position I can get in that doesn't hurt. I can get into a position that doesn't hurt for 40 minutes and then my upper back will start hurting and I have to flip over and then 40 minutes later that'll hurt. So, I'm waking up every 40 minutes. So, if that's age, then that near the end is harder. But the psychological part isn't.
I was talking to I got my nails done and I was talking to my nail lady who had a kid. I think she was 23 and I had Scarlet when I was 25, which doesn't seem that young, but it felt young. like I got pregnant when I was 24, obviously. Uh, and I was talking to her about how psychologically it's been a it's a lot easier later. So, maybe it's more difficult physically, but I'm much more confident and sure of myself. I'm in a fantastic relationship, which makes all the all the difference. I've already had a baby. Having multiple babies is so so much easier than your first. like you're not worried about whether or not they're going to survive. Although I'm a little spooked about it since Audrey got sick last year. So I have that a bit, but it's easier. I would say now I'm not 40 or anything. Maybe it just gets way harder at that point, but I've actually had an easier time.
Oh, this one's sad. How did you improve fertility after mold? I have SRS and currently miscarrying. That's too bad. I You guys know that I was diagnosed with SRS from mold exposure and I had a miscarriage in Miami. Um that was pretty early, like 10 weeks. Uh, and it's funny because Jordan and I kind of started to try to have kids right away and we didn't have successful pregnancies until I figured out the SERS aspect and moved out of mold. So, I would say for anybody suffering from infertility, I think this is rampant. I really think you should look at your air quality, get tested for SER. You can go to moldco.com and they have blood work that's cheap and easy to do so you can at least rule out sers. But more importantly, check your HVAC. Make sure there's no obvious water damage in your house. So that would be like wrinkled paint lines around doors and windows. water staining, water staining on the ceiling. Obvious mold growth is obviously a sign, but also look for those signs I just mentioned. You can check your toilet bowl, too. And if your toilet bowl is moldy, I always toilet bowls were always moldy wherever I was living. And I used to think that that's just what happened to toilet bowls. It's not. Toilet bowls when you flush will pull in air from the bathroom and whatever's in the air will start growing in the toilet. So if your air is clean, your toilet bowls don't get moldy. This might not be shocking to you guys, but considering I always had moldy toilet bowl, like not toilet bowls, sorry, toilet tanks, uh I just kind of thought that was how they were. It's not. So, a good test is looking at your toilet tank and seeing if there's mold in there, cuz that means there's mold in the air in your bathrooms, which likely means your whole house.
And I have a good setup. I have a really good setup now, and I'll I'll just link the article below to what we have. It's not super pricey, but I think I think the best investment for your health would be adding an ERV to your HVAC and a serious filtration system to that setup as well. So, we use something called a SuperV, which has a really, really intense u filtration rating. I think it's the MV, it might be MV 19. It's something like that which is just a really intense filter. So it actually takes in outdoor air, filters the air, and so you have fresh air circulating around your house all the time. So then if something does leak and you have a bit of mold in your house, you should fix that. But it doesn't fill your house like you're living in an aquarium cuz our houses are so sealed now that it's basically like we're living in aquariums. You need to get your air quality under control. So, anybody suffering from miscarriages and infertility should really check out their air. And I know a lot of people are like, "Get your diet under control." That's true. Get your diet under control. Like, get healthy. But I've seen so many people have miscarriages because of their air quality. And I did. And so Jordan and I were kind of off and on trying. One of my really old episodes, I was like considering getting a surrogate because I was worried about suicidal depression during pregnancy. Seriously, cuz I had that a little bit with Scarlet. But also because we were having such trouble having babies, which was weird cuz we're both on the meat diet. We're like, we're good to go. This is going to be easy. And then it wasn't easy at all. And then I had a miscarriage and I was like, what? Why would I have a miscarriage? figured out the air quality issue, moved out. I got pregnant with George a month after I moved out of the Miami home. A month. We were like, that was fast. We were living in a hotel at the time cuz we didn't have a house cuz I was like, I'm not staying in that house anymore. Death house. Uh, and I got pregnant then. And then the gap between George and Audrey was nothing. I had George in December and I got pregnant with Audrey in September the next year, which was like just a couple months after I was even able to get pregnant. And then with this baby, I didn't have any time. This was a shocker. I didn't even like this was not my plan. But he snuck on through. So, it's been hard to not get pregnant since we figured out the air quality issue.
And then with the diet I'm on that's put everything into remission. Like, I can't believe I gave my myself arthritis again with arugula. Like, the recent flare up was caused by eating arugula, cooked arugula. I was talking to my dad about this and he's like, "Of all the things to eat, why would you be eating that?" And I actually like greens a lot and they're cooked and they're supposed to be good for people with IBD and IBS and very easy to digest and low in oxalate. Like I chose this very carefully and then boom, arthritis. So yeah, that's disappointing. Meat girl for now. Maybe forever. Who knows? Who knows? I think if I probably did something like have mango that mango ice cream, it's just mango, coconut, and honey. If I had a little bit of that once a week, I don't think I would bring back an autoimmune disorder. But obviously, if I do arugula every day, all my joints start to hurt. And I know that if I kept doing this, it would progress in a nasty way. like it went from a couple of joints hurting to suddenly all the joints that used to be impacted in my hands. Um, my knees didn't flare. They used to be pretty badly impacted. So, my knees are still in the clear, but I can feel it my shoulders, my toe, and my fingers.
Do you do the glucose testing while pregnant for diabetes? I didn't because I have a keto mojo where you can test glucose and ketones and my glucose has never been abnormal. I'm really not worried about it. If you only eat meat, the likelihood of that is I don't even know how it would be possible to get diabetes during pregnancy. If you're literally only eating meat, but I also don't know anyone insane enough to only eat meat during the pregnancy. I don't mean carnivore with some like eggs and cream and a lot more variety. I mean just eating beef. I don't understand how it would be possible. So, I did not do the glucose testing. They also want you to drink this disgusting drink that's completely full of sugar. If I drank a drink completely full of It might not be sugar. Let me Let me just look up. What do they use? Oh my gosh, it is sugar. So, pregnancy glucose drinks contain 50 to 100 grams of dextrose/glucose, depending on the type of test your doctor orders. I haven't had that much sugar in 11 years. If I drank that drink, my glucose would look so bad, I would immediately be diagnosed with diabetes. So, I didn't do it. But, I don't know what would happen to my glucose if I did that. like 200. I'm not sure. So, no, I didn't do that.
Pregnancy specifically. Pregnancy. I can't wait to have my brain back. Oh, it's going to be good. It's probably going to take two years to come back to normal. I took felinic acid and I took a little bit of B1. So it looks like if you only eat meat for a very long time, eight years for me, your B1 and folate can fall. And this took years to figure out. If you've only been doing the diet for like 3 to 6 months, I wouldn't even worry about this. And there are people who have been doing this forever that have had kids that didn't supplement, but I did. Um, felinic acid was pretty tolerable. I have a really bad reaction to B vitamins where they make me agitated, give me insomnia, horrible feelings. And so I've had to test out B vitamins. Methylolate was horrible. Folic acid was horrible. Uh folinic acid anyway wasn't so horrible. So I supplemented folinic acid, which I would recommend, and B1. But what I would do too if you're pregnant, if you're pregnant, you don't have issues with supplements at all and you don't have any autoimmune and psych issues, then I would say take folinic acid and just pop uh Seeking Health has a really good prenatal supplement. I'd probably just pop one of those. But if you are in the category of people that have autoimmune issues or you're on the lion diet or you previously been on psych meds or you're on psych meds, I would get your blood tested pretty frequently throughout pregnancy and you're on a actually just regardless of whether or not you're on a restrictive diet, get your blood tested and then address the deficiencies, especially if you're on to multiple kids because I've noticed with this kid, I can just tell I'm depleted. I did not wait long enough between children and that's that's fine. He's here. He's here. But uh but I'm depleted. So I I definitely supplemented keto and pregnancy and breastfeeding. So a lot of doctors will test to see whether you're in ketosis during pregnancy. And if you are, they'll freak out. And that's to look for keto acidosis. And so they should be looking at the combination of how high your glucose levels are plus whether or not you're in ketosis. And that's called keto acidosis. And that's bad. Uh I haven't had a problem at all being in ketosis almost the entire time except for I if I have that delicious mango ice cream. Uh but I'm in ketosis like for sure. Even adding in arugula, I was still in ketosis. I've just found it beneficial. Um, so I haven't had issues during pregnancy. And then for breastfeeding, I also haven't had issues. The main thing that impacts breastfeeding for me is stress. I've run into a couple of really, really stressful situations about 3 months into breastfeeding that just tanked my milk supply. And so for Audrey, it was going to the hospital and switching to pumping. and I was worried she was going to die and I wasn't sleeping or eating and so that obviously didn't work well and then there was another issue that was really stressful with George didn't have to do with George it just happened at the same time as George and that impacted my milk supply um but the actual diet hasn't as long as you eat enough calories as long as I eat enough I've seem I seem to be fine.
Any hair loss this is the last question cuz my pack's killing ing me. But any hair loss with close pregnancies? I'm losing mine like crazy after a miscarriage. Oh man, that sucks, too. That sucks. Sorry. Uh, yeah, I had hair loss with Audrey and Scarlet. A lot with Audrey. Luckily, I have hair extensions in. Uh, like obviously this is not all my hair. Uh, so it didn't wasn't noticeable on the outside, but it was noticeable for me. I got a lot of thinning up here that I'm still recovering from, but with my boys, I've grown more hair. So, it hasn't been with every pregnancy, but with all the girls, I lost so much hair. My arms got less hairy. My legs, I stopped having to shave. My eyelashes got really short. Like, I lost hair from everywhere. And with the boys, I've My arms are ridiculous. My legs are ridiculous. My like I have to shave a mustache. I'm so hairy. But it's kind of nice because I'm growing back all the spots that were depleted during Audrey. So, and I haven't had hair loss postpartum with the boys. So, I'll get hairier, but it doesn't seem to fall out. Although, the arm hair and the leg hair seems to stop and the mustache. But the other thing that happened during this pregnancy that hasn't happened before is I got malasma. So if you look back on at some of my videos, I have kind of a mustache. That's melasma. It's darkening o over the upper lip which seems to have toned down near the end of pregnancy. But hopefully that goes away cuz I was like, what? What? Not only do you have to be pregnant and give birth and breastfeed and not sleep and be nauseous and be tired, but now I get this like painted on mustache that's really hard to cover with makeup. So that's that. Okay, next time I talk to you guys, actually I think I have one podcast I can put out, but after that I will be separated into two people. Thank goodness. and then I can feel like myself again a little bit. Thanks for watching.
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