When Birth Breaks You: Healing the Hidden Wounds That Shape Motherhood (with Brigid Tebaldi)

What if your struggles with anxiety, irritability, or disconnection trace back to how your birth unfolded? Join me as I interview board-certified women’s health coach, Brigid Tebaldi, to understand how birth trauma affects your mind, marriage, and motherhood. We unpack the science and psychology of birth trauma, how it lingers in both your brain and body, and why it’s so essential to heal—for you, your marriage, and your children. 

In this powerful episode, you’ll discover the hidden impact of traumatic birth experiences on women’s mental health, relationships, and parenting—and learn practical steps to heal. This compassionate conversation will help you make sense of your emotions, rebuild safety in your body, and move forward feeling whole again so you can love and parent from peace, NOT pain.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

•  How common birth trauma is, and how it unknowingly shows up long after you’ve physically healed 
• The crucial differences between a “natural” birth and a “physiological” birth, and how that impacts a woman’s ability to actually have her baby
• Numerous signs you might have unresolved trauma—even if you didn’t have a “bad” or “hard” birth
• Why it’s crucial for moms to heal their birth trauma so they don’t unknowingly sabotage their marriage or wound their kids
• Simple steps to begin the beautiful work of healing so you can reconnect with yourself, your husband, and your kids

AS MENTIONED:

Connect with Brigid on her website and Instagram.

HOMEWORK:

Your homework for today is to spend 10 minutes writing out your birth story. Did things go as you hoped? If not, how and why? In what ways might that be affecting how you show up in your daily life now?  Always here as a safe space to process your thoughts & feelings via email or DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity. Would love to connect further! 

COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back next episode to keep unpacking more hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy, along with more neuroscience-backed insights to help you live your BEST life.

CONNECT WITH AMBER: Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn

Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.

Transcript

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Today we're talking about something that rarely, if ever, gets talked about. How so many moms feel disempowered or even traumatized after giving birth and how deeply your birth experience can affect you, your marriage, and your parenting long afterwards without you even necessarily knowing. Welcome to More Time for Mom. where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. What was birth like for you? Not you being born, but you giving birth to your children. Birth is a pretty taboo topic in our society. When you find out you're pregnant, attention immediately fast forwards to gender reveal party ideas, and what car seat to buy, and which diapers to use. Rarely, if ever, on what giving birth is really like. And then birth rarely, if ever, goes according to plan. Yet after baby comes, you are expected to bounce back and excel at motherhood without any chance to pause, reflect, and process what just happened. Deep down, you know everything is different, even if your birth went amazing. But especially if you had a hard or traumatic birth, it's essential to unpack your experience and heal any wounds so they don't unknowingly show up in your marriage and parenting. I couldn't be more honored to bring you birth expert and women's health coach Bridget Tebaldi, a mom, board-certified and trauma-informed women's health coach, traditional birth companion, and someone who knows what it's like to feel overwhelmed, disconnected, and even lost after becoming a mom. She's also one of my dearest friends and the coaching work we do on nervous system healing really parallels one another with Bridget helping moms through their birthing experiences and me really underscoring how important it is for moms to do this work so that those wounds don't get transferred to your kids. In this guest interview, we are going deep into a very vulnerable topic, so I invite you to listen with openness and self-compassion, knowing that I and others are fully here to support you in your healing journey. Bridget, welcome and thank you so much for joining us here on the More Time for Mom podcast. Would you please give us a brief introduction and tell everyone who you are? Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I have to remember that we're on a podcast and not just the two friends chatting because like that's what we usually do. But okay, so I am Bridget. I am a mom of five little kids ages nine through one. We do homeschool, so they're around all the time, which is a blessing. I live in Pennsylvania on a little farm and I I'm really passionate about women's health and birth and physiological birth. I help moms who've experienced a challenging or traumatic birth experience to really heal that experience so that they can step into their future births feeling really confident and joyful and just like ready to take on whatever motherhood throws at them. That is such powerful work. And yes, for anyone who isn't aware, Bridget and I are very, very close friends outside of this individual interview, but always an honor to just share you with the world because I love you so much. And I love the work that you're doing. I speak so often about helping women heal their hidden sources of stress. And, you know, we often in my coaching world go way back to childhood or other real traumatic or complex traumatic events that wired the brain a certain way. But it's so important to shed light on the fact that we have a lot of experiences in our adult lives that can instantly change us and then affect how we show up for ourselves and our families ever after. Can you just briefly walk through, like, what are some of those wounds that moms come to you regarding their birth stories? Yeah, for sure. Okay. And so just to clarify things a little bit, when I say that I help women with their birth experiences, it's not necessarily their personal, like, being born. It's more of their children that they have births. And so just to clarify that a little bit. And so a lot of the times, a lot of times women don't even necessarily know like what it is that happened or like how their birth is still affecting them. They just know that they don't feel the same as they did before birth. And again, some of that is just due to being becoming a mother and like having this new person to take care of. But unfortunately, in the US at least, up to 45% of women think that their birth is traumatic. And so that means that they are really having these wounds that are showing up in terms of like, they don't trust their body anymore. They feel like their body failed them. They don't even like their body. They don't like looking in the mirror. They might have postpartum rage, meaning that they They just snap and they don't understand why they're just snapping. They're afraid to be intimate with their husbands. They might not even like their husband anymore. The idea of giving birth again is terrifying. I hear all the time, I would have so many babies, but I just can't go through that again. And so those are just some of like the big picture wounds that I hear a lot from women. But again, it's really just like not feeling at peace with your body, being so scared to have another baby, just that sort of thing. If you're feeling any of that, like again, some of it could potentially be related to hormones and whatnot. But a lot of times it's more so that they felt violated, that they felt like they weren't listened to, that nobody was respecting their wishes. That's really what it is that a lot of women who come to me, that's what they tell me that they're feeling. It goes so deep. And you'll talk more about this, no doubt, but society does not prepare us to become mothers. I know I felt so inadequately prepared. And the irony is that I think I was way more prepared than most. My mother was a midwife, and she used to help women have their babies at home. She delivered over 1,500 babies, and I just grew up with her seeing prenatal clients in our house and then being gone at random times for births and always talking about the physiology of birth and, you know, making it sound so wonderful. I just assumed, I don't know what I thought, but I guess I thought that if I just learned how birth worked, then having my own babies would be easy instead of maybe thinking more about how becoming a mother was going to change me. And then if someone has a birth experience that runs completely different than they expected, which is probably the vast majority of women, right? I mean, how often does a birth ever go as planned? But we know from psychology that that gap between expectations and reality causes huge discomfort, maybe even guilt, and can form the basis of trauma, even if no physical trauma occurred. There's a lot of psychological wounds to be dealt with and to recognize. Yeah, I don't know where you want to dive in deeper to help everybody unpack this, because I can think of so many directions to go, but I just really want to call out and normalize that birth as a rite of passage is huge, and yet we're not prepared for it in our culture, and then everybody just sort of moves on and gives all their attention to the baby, and you as the mother are giving all your time and energy to the baby. How do you even begin to process what happened during your birth and how that has left you? Yes, for sure. And so just to back up a little bit, a lot of times, like our culture has totally warped such beautiful experiences. So even marriage, for example, we spend so much time thinking about we collectively, I'm just generalizing, thinking about the day, right? Like the colors, having the perfect chargers, the perfect napkin color, all these things that obviously are like not bad things. They're fun, they make beautiful events, they make people feel comfortable, they make people be able to express their creativity. Again, none of this is bad in here. It also costs a lot of money, so we can maybe go the conspiracy theorist route and understand why there's so much attention on those things. But excuse me for interrupting. No, you're so true. Like that's so right though. And so again, none of these things are inherently bad, but when you focus so much on the like the colors and the dresses and whatnot, and you actually forget what the marriage and the marriage preparation is the important part and like realizing that it's going to be super hard at times, but then also amazing. Like that's the part that we're missing. And that's why so many marriages ended in divorce because again, We're all in this like lovey-dovey phase and again, none of it's bad, but we don't spend time on the things that actually matter. The same is true for birth, where we spend so much time like taking the right, quote unquote, right birth class. We spend so much time focusing on the nursery. We spend so much time focusing on, like you said, the car seat, the nursing bras, the bottles, the pumps, like all of these things. When in reality, all you need to do when you are pregnant is eat, sleep and like learn to trust yourself if you haven't learned that already and I know that I'm very much simplifying that but it's so true because if you do not trust yourself you are not going to be able to go through labor in a physiological way because you are always going to be looking for somebody on the outside to affirm or to say like everything's okay and at times yes even like in transition that might happen But generally speaking, you need to be confident walking into labor being like, my body's good. My body understands this, like knows what it's going to do. Sometimes mom's seat help and sometimes baby seat help. But like, I got this. Everything's going to be fine. And so that's the mentality that women need to go into birth. But so often it's more of the like, oh, I need to make sure the hospital bag is packed and we get there. Like whenever I'm having contractions every three to five minutes and like all of these different things. But in reality, we just need to go inward. And not just for birth, but in life in general, like we need to stop being people pleasers. We need to stop looking to the outside for affinity, things like that. And so it really is all connected. And I just wanted to throw that out there that, again, birth is this beautiful event. It's beautiful. It is truly a rite of passage. And it starts before you're even pregnant. And it starts with really going inward and seeing, like, what is it that I truly want? Like, do I really want a hospital birth? Maybe. Do I really want a home birth? Maybe. Like, I don't know what you want, but you need to know where you are and what you want because otherwise everybody else's opinions is going to make things so cloudy and you're going to have nothing that you actually are desiring. Can you clarify for us, when you say physiological birth, can you help my listeners understand a little bit more about that term? So physiological birth is a term that we use in order to describe a birth that is not going to be influenced or disrupted by anything outside. And so just trying to pull up the definition for physiologically just so I can make sure I get that exactly right for you. Physiologically is just describing something in a way that relates to the normal healthy functions of a living organism or the science of physiology. The reason that that is important to distinguish between a physiological birth and a natural birth is because a natural birth is just, broadly speaking, no epidural, no IV potentially, like that sort of thing. A physiological birth is more about not interrupting the, I don't like using that term in the definition, but like the physiological process of birth, meaning think about like a cat. or even like go to the extreme of like a tiger. Like for a tiger to give birth, a tiger needs to have dark, needs to feel safe, needs to be quiet, like all of these different things. And that's the same thing that we women need as well, because we are still animals. Like obviously we are humans, but we are still a mammalian species. And so physiologically, it just means that we need to be supported in a way that makes our nervous system feel safe, that is going to allow our bodies to feel safe. And generally speaking, that is in our home, because most women feel the safest at home. Not everybody, but most women do. So again, that's in our home or wherever we feel safest. That's going to be somewhere dark, because again, that's just how we're wired. That's going to feel some be somewhere warm. It's going to be somewhere quiet, potentially where we're supported by people that we trust. So that is what physiological birth means. Again, most of the time, for most women, the safest place that they heal is at home. And as soon as you step outside of that, or even as soon as you bring anybody into that, that can shift physiology and that can change how things go. So again, that's how we define physiology. It's not just having an unmedicated birth. It really is like, where is your nervous system? Where does your body feel the safest? That's what physiologically is going to be most supportive for you to give birth, the least amount of interventions. It is amazing to me how in our society we are just not ever educated and made aware of how perfectly and beautifully our bodies were designed to give birth. And then when we get pregnant, I think the default is to assume that the doctor knows best and You know, we turn to classic sources like what to expect when you're expecting or, you know, all of these great apps and websites and things that we have now. But they are all, I think, driven by this very Western medicalized perspective that immediately takes the power away from the woman. and puts it into the hand of the birthing industry. And I want to be so gentle here because I would imagine most, if not all, of my listeners are already moms. They have had births and they may carry, I think we all carry, birth wounds from our birthing experiences to some extent. And so, you know, it's really hard to be made aware and consciously aware of some of the trauma that maybe has been affecting you, but you didn't have that clarity until you're hearing something like this and you're realizing that there was an alternative way, or you're even allowing yourself this little bit of space to start and question. How you really felt about your birth experience. So again, like when we start talking about these things, how do you help women approach it from self-love and compassion instead of defensiveness or victim mentality or all of those things? Just a little bit of background, I actually had three of my babies in the hospital because I did not know any of this. Literally before number one, I did not take a single class. I just showed up and I was like, I'm going to figure it out. And by the grace of God, I did figure it out. But still, it was just like, again, so I totally understand where a lot of you are coming from, where you just You got pregnant, you went and saw the OB that you've been seeing since you were however old, and then you just kind of did whatever they told you to do. And so I would say to your question that no matter what happened, you did the best that you could with the information that you had at the time. And that's all that you can do. There's nothing wrong with doing the best you can at the time with the information you had. right now, looking back, I would be like, Bridget, 10 years ago, do you need to like actually learn a little bit about birth? Because I literally did not know a single person who had given birth before me. And that's obviously like mothers, but like nobody was actively in labor or giving birth or like in their childbearing years, whenever I was giving birth. And it was like, looking back now, I could be like, Bridget, why didn't like, why did you consent to this? Why did you do this? Why didn't you just stay home? Why didn't you do this? But I didn't know any better. So I can't judge my past self on what my current self knows. And that is hard to come to terms with, but that's where doing a lot of that work, like that you do with the women too, is where you just have to learn that, again, we did our best and that's all that we can do. And we just have to leave the rest in God's hands and just trust that he will take care of it and that everything is going to work out because everything always works out. And so, yeah, just remember that you did the best you could with the information that you had at the time. It's so true. And that is the great opportunity here, right? We're having this conversation because it is so amazing to heal these wounds, right? But the first step is awareness, which is shedding light on very painful things. And hopefully everyone's had an incredible birth experience, but I think Very often we go through birth so fast in the sense that a baby is born and whatever happens during the birth is so quickly forgotten by everyone else and mothers don't have this space to talk about what happened and really like feel their own thoughts and experiences surrounding it, and they are so sleep-deprived and their life is forever changed holding their new little baby. They know how they want to show up as moms, but they're still subconsciously caught up in this whirlwind of whatever just happened. How can, like, what would you recommend women do to start this healing process? And like, maybe we could even start with some signs that your past experience has left unresolved trauma. You mentioned a bunch at the beginning, but if there's anything that you want to discuss further. If you can't look back at your birth experience, or experiences and have and feel like nothing but joy. And like I did this, like I did this cool thing, like I brought this child into the world. And like if you can't look back at it and feel that, then there's something there that still needs to be rehashed. Not saying that you have like full. full blown full blown like PTSD or anything like that. But you should be able to look back at your experience, even if it was a really awful one, and be like, I did this like I did this really cool thing and like I'm finding joy in it. And just for example, after my second, I had I had a hemorrhage. I had to go to the ER, the transfusion, like all the things like that. And for literally two and a half years after that birth, I was like, I knew something was wrong with me, but I didn't know what. Like, I couldn't put my finger on it. And like, nothing was wrong. Like, from the outside, I was doing all the things. I was still showing up. Like, everything was fine. But internally, I was just like, something is, like, off. And I don't know what it is. Like, I'm I just couldn't figure it out. I was Googling things like what is wrong with me after I have this baby? And I was even Googling like I need therapy and stuff like that. But it just like wasn't I couldn't figure out what was going on. So if that's you and you're like, you just feel like something might be off, even if you can't put a like a name or you can't really speak it like that is your sign from the Holy Spirit to be like, OK, something is still off around this and I need to figure out what it is. And more often than not, the birth is really where our past wounds show up. So, for example, a lot of women that I work with, they have these traumatic birth experiences and we work through that and process the birth experiences. And then what ends up happening is that all of these past wounds come up. A lot of them are mother or father wounds. And those show up because when you have a mother or a father wound, Those are wounds that do not allow you to feel safe, that don't allow you to feel held, that make you always feel like you're striving or needing to do the next thing. And that shows up in birth because, again, if you're not feeling safe, if you're not feeling like you can actually be held during the most vulnerable part of your life, then you're going to have these experiences. All of these wounds that you've had, all these traumas that you have are going to show up in the most vulnerable time of your life. That's the biggest thing. If you're like, something is off and that's your sign to go back and be like, we need to figure out what what's off. The birth is just a great place to start. That is so not the message that we get from society. The society just makes no recognition of what moms have just been through. It's all, you know, get back up, keep going, do more. And I just, I love. not only the wisdom that there does exist in these hidden little pockets of people like you and home birth communities, or just in general, this idea that women are designed for this, it is possible, and it doesn't have to be so hard, but even if it's hard, women who recognize that they need to talk about it, they need to process it, they need to be around other women who openly speak about their painful experiences so that other women know they're not alone. I know for me, and I've spoken about this some, but I still underestimated how very alone and depressed and other things that I would feel after I became a mother. And I kind of went through a version of that after each birth because it is such a transformative event, right? You're bringing this new little life into the world and it changes everything. But we don't have places and spaces to talk about that. So I just love that that's what you do, and I want other women to know that they can reach out to you and they can seek out these kinds of communities. You run a community for women that are wanting to heal their wounds and improve their lives, right? Yeah. So it's called The Dwelling Place, and it's really this awesome community where They have access to some of the resources that I've created, but we do monthly sister circles. So we all come in and I usually start with a little question and we kind of answer the question. But then after that, it's just really open Q&A. So even if it's something like, or like, how do I get my kid to stop crying in the car? We all just chime in and offer suggestions or advice or really just listen. Because so often, especially like directly after birth, all we want somebody to do is to just listen to us without interjecting and without saying like, oh, but like, thank God that you were in the hospital or like, just be grateful like your baby's OK. When in reality, it's like, no, I can be mad that I didn't get that golden hour, that like I didn't get to hold my baby when he was first born. I can be mad or I can be frustrated that things didn't go the way I thought they would go. And that's okay. That's the other thing to normalize is that we need to be able to just sit and listen, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Just to be able to sit and listen to somebody is so important. And that's really what I try to do within my community is to just have this place where women can sit and be listened to without judgment, without saying, Oh, but thank goodness like this happened or whatever it is. And so, yeah, that's wherever you are. Just listen to moms. Just listen. You don't even have to respond. Just listen. It's so powerful. And you're exactly right that sometimes we go to talk to someone and they're very quick either to dismiss and invalidate whatever we're bringing up. for their own wounds, right, for reasons of their own wounds, but also maybe because talking about it makes them uncomfortable, or they jump into that fix-it mentality of like, oh, I'm so sorry this happened, but here's what we're going to do, and here are some resources, or here's a book to read, or here's what you need to do to just snap your fingers and get over it. And it's never that simple. You are very adamant that these kinds of experiences take a toll on the nervous system. And this is where our work aligns so beautifully because I also am really trying to raise awareness for moms about how their life experiences and their especially early childhood wounds have wired their brain a certain way that is then affecting all of their current actions in the present moment. How do you approach nervous system healing and regulation with your client? Yes. So nervous system is huge for birth because like we'll go back to the safety thing. So I always use the silly analogy, but I mean, it works. Think about like a stray cat or any cat, really. When a cat is pregnant, and she's about to go into labor, where does a cat go? Does she go, like, under the porch light and just, like, lay there under the porch light? Like, no, she's going to go underneath the porch so that she's alone, so that she's in a dark space, so that she's in a quiet space. Now, say a dog comes up and is like, hey, cat, what you doing? And what's going to happen to that cat's labor is it's going to stall, right? And it's going to stall because the cat's going to say, oh, there's this dog here. This is not safe to bring a new like new babies, new kittens into the world. And so the cat will either again, labor will stall so that she can move to a safer place because you don't want to be laboring if you're going to have to run, like survive. And so the same is true for women where Women labor, right? But then a doctor or nurse pops into the room and is like, hey, how's it going? Everything going okay? Let's just look at this continuous fetal monitoring and have these little buzzers go off because it fell off of your belly and lost the baby's heartbeat. We're like, oh, let's do a cervical check right now. When in reality, every single time that that happens, that's a little trigger to your body saying like, dog's here, like not safe, like not safe. And so that's what I'm talking about when it comes to physiological birth where we need to just let women labor on their own. If they ask for assistance, we can give that assistance. But again, it's so important that women understand this because if they go into birth thinking like, oh, I'll just go to the hospital and do X, Y, and Z and everything will be fine. Yes, it might be fine, but also it might not be okay. And that's not a problem necessarily because it literally was your body trying to keep your body safe. And so right now, if you're thinking like, oh, that was my experience and I've been blaming myself for this, like, don't blame yourself for it. I actually rejoice that you had a nervous system that was keeping you safe. Even if it's not what you wanted, it did exactly as God intended it to do. And so that's where I really, really try to educate women beforehand, like before they even go into labor. Early labor, sure, like go do whatever you need to do, go grocery shopping, go to the park, whatever. But when you get into that active labor, that's when you really want to draw inward. I actually have a client right now who's in labor, so I like, I'm keep looking over here to be like, any message from her yet? No message yet. And so we're really like, she's really trying to draw inward so that she's less focused on what is the midwife saying, when to go to the hospital, Does she need a cervical check? When in reality, it's just like, no. Right now, her nervous system, her body needs to feel safe. And for her, we went through this. For her, safety means in her bedroom with her son at her parents' house. She has a playlist that she's playing because it makes her feel happy and good. She's going to have dim lights. We have a few other things that she's doing, and that's what's making her feel safe enough to actually move into that labor land where she can really soften and allow her body to work and allow her baby to feel comfortable to move down into the position as well. So, again, nervous system is huge, not only for labor, but also for postpartum as well, because, again, it's all connected. So if your labor and your birth didn't go super well, It's more than likely, unfortunately, that your postpartum is going to be a little bit of a struggle as well, especially when it comes to nursing and even bonding. And so it's so important that women understand nervous system work, not necessarily the nitty gritty of it, but just, again, the safety aspect of it before moving into labor so that so that you can set yourself up to having the most peaceful, confident, joyful labor that you possibly can. It's so true. And it's not easy, right? But it is beautiful. And my heart just, you know, goes out to all of us that didn't maybe know this until now and didn't get to have an ideal experience for whatever reason. But now that we're trying to move on and move through those hard experiences, can we shift gears and talk about How traumatic or just any kind of birth experience that took away your power and left you feeling like a victim, how does that go on to affect the way someone relates to their husband or is able to show up as a mom for their kids? These are big, big impacts. Yeah, they really are huge. And again, just a lot of times whenever women have experienced a challenging or traumatic experience, it really makes them feel like they've done something wrong, like they're the inadequate ones. And with that feeling of inadequacy typically comes a variety of emotions, but a lot of times will come fear and fear can manifest as lashing out, as like drawing inward and becoming almost like depressed, not necessarily like postpartum depression, but like losing that spark that you had before. And again, not necessarily clinically like PTSD or postpartum depression, but just you just know something is off, like something is just isn't right. Lashing out, like I mentioned, is a huge one. where women think that they have these big triggers, which is like their kids being really loud. But in reality, these little micro actions that are really the buildup and then that last like loud noises is the trigger. Well, this is there. That's really huge. Mirrors. Mirrors, for some reason, can be a trigger for a lot of women, where especially if it's like a full length mirror and they look at their body, or even if they see their C-section scar, it like immediately turns them into like, this isn't my body. This isn't what I look like. And that is, again, goes deep into like either that fear or that anger that they're feeling or that inadequacy that they're feeling. And so there's so many different ways that it can manifest, but it really is anything around your body, anything around how your body's able to take care of your babies, whether that's through nursing or even just like comforting them. how your body feels safe around your husband, because a lot of times after a birth, that can be one of the things that isn't the same anymore, where if you don't feel safe around your spouse, then that's a sign that your body's still in that fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. And so really, it can manifest in so many different ways, but those are some of the big common ones that I personally have seen. Yeah, and we've got to be talking about this. I really want more women to know that this happens. And it may not be the explanation for everything someone is going through, but it could be part of why their marriage has changed after they became a mom, or why they have trouble feeling close to one kid versus another kid, right? If they had very different birth experiences, there may be some just really deep, innate sever in the bond that was meant to exist between you and that child. And it's nobody's fault, right? But these are the opportunities for healing and self-exploration. I get so fired up about this. I see how this has played out in my own life, starting with my grandparents and then my parents and how their wounds really affected me. From the moment I was even conceived, I can get so specific into what I know my little unborn nervous system took on and how that shaped everything about my life until I have now been on this incredible journey of discovering that and really healing those wounds and it's ongoing, but I see now how important it is for mothers to do this work. For mothers to heal themselves so that they can reclaim their joy and model for their kids what is possible when you are free of the burden of any guilt or shame or self-judgment, all of these things that we take on, they're so natural, but they're not good. And they really then cause our children to feel unsafe in our presence. They interfere with our ability to bond and love our children the way we want to. And then that perpetuates the behavioral issues and the parenting struggles. And we typically, in our wounds, then respond from this place of anger and frustration. And the child isn't obeying me. They're not respecting me. They're not doing what I want, and then we further judge ourselves on the basis of our children's poor behavior. Instead of seeing it all as just this rupture in connection that was the inevitable, you know, it doesn't always happen this way, but if someone has had traumatic experiences, then connection gets wounded because we go into those survival states. And that is what the nervous system is designed to do, but we've got to step back and heal that. So that's my little bit of stuff. Yeah, that's so from the rooftops. I do want to add this to our kids. You do, for sure. And I do want to add one thing, too, is that this is also really a spiritual attack. And the reason I say this is because if you think about it and it might sound drastic, but if you think about it, women, right? The devil hates women. Why does he hate women? Because women are the only creatures that are able to bring new life into this world, and he hates that because he can't bring new life into this world. He can't create. Women can create. Obviously, men help too, but women are creating this new life, and so he hates that about us. Because, again, that brings us closer to God because we are essentially God's masterpiece, right? Like, we are the last thing that God ever created. And that's what they say about artists, is that their last piece is typically their masterpiece. And so again, he hates this for about us. And so therefore he's going to do everything in his power to make us feel small, to make us feel that we do not have this power inside of us, to make it so that we draw ourselves further away from Christ and more into like, oh, we're all alone. We have to take care of all of this all by ourselves. And in reality, it's like, no, like we have been made Again, everybody says it but like we have been made in his image and likeness and so therefore we are already called like we are already anointed and so we just have to Allow ourselves to step into that and part of stepping into that is going into these these birth experiences Knowing that like God already has this like he already has this handle we just have to show up and do the work and our bodies are not going to create something and that is too strong for us to actually move through. That's one of the other big, huge lessons that I really try to tell women is that, again, if you're having a physiological birth, you literally are creating the contractions. And so therefore, they're not stronger than what you can handle because you are creating them. And so that's where it's so important because it's different than if you say have Pitocin, where it's like, yes, the Pitocin is stronger than you. It can be stronger than you because it's this external thing that we are opposing on our bodies. And so that's why the education and the informed consent is so important. But in a normal physiological birth, our bodies can handle this because we literally have been designed for it. We just have to be supported in the right way. And so, roundabout way to say, again, there's also the spiritual side of it as well, because, again, the devil just wants us to be, feel alone, feel isolated, feel like we can't handle it, we're not strong enough, when in reality, again, God gave us everything that we already need. We just have to accept, we just have to say, like, here I am, Lord, like, use me, and he'll take care of the rest. The stakes are so high in every sense, but I love that there's this final note of optimism and healing and grace and what is possible, right? That no matter what has happened, no matter what wounds you have taken on, like they are not your burden to carry. They are there. for healing, and that healing is so possible, especially through the amazing work that you do. So I could talk to you forever, but Bridget, would you tell my listeners where they can get more of you and maybe a little recap of the variety of services you offer if someone feels called to reach out and get more personal support for their own traumatic experience? How can they get in touch with you? Yeah, so I'm most active on Instagram, just at Bridget.Tobaldi. I'm also on LinkedIn as well. Again, just Bridget Tobaldi. My website you can find at LorettaWellness.com. That's just spelled L-O-R-E-T-O Wellness.com. I do also have a podcast that I'm sure I'll have Amber on soon called The Discerning Mother, where we just talk about all things women's health from a an alternative standpoint. So I have some pretty controversial topics and guests sometimes. But yeah, I would just love for you to reach out to me on Instagram. I do have a main program that is called Restored by Grace. It's 12 weeks to really healing your birth story. And I would love to work with anybody in there who is interested in getting some support after their experience. And then, as we mentioned, I also have the community called The Dwelling Place. And so we just that's a really great group of women who really just want to get closer to the Lord while also healing and being the best mothers that they can possibly be. Love it. I will include all those links in the description. Bridget, thank you so, so much. This is amazing. Thank you so, so much. All right. Your homework for today is to spend 10 minutes, whatever you can afford, writing out the story of your birth. Did your birth go as you hoped? If not, how and why? In what ways might that have affected how you're showing up for your daily life now? How do you feel about your body? About intimacy with your husband? Towards your child? I sincerely hope you have someone that you feel safe talking to to let all the emotion out around this. Definitely check out the links below to get more of Bridget. She is especially trained on healing after traumatic births and preparing during pregnancy for an even more empowering birth experience. Highly, highly recommend working with her. I was so honored to get to have her on this podcast and I hope you enjoyed it as well. Please, please, please share this episode with another mom that is struggling so that she can get the support she needs to. Join me back next Tuesday for another episode where we continue to unpack the root causes of stress that are keeping you stuck and overwhelmed so you can overcome them and be better equipped to deal with them in a more healthy, productive way the next time they arise. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is, so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe, and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.