Postpartum Self Care and an Unexpected Cesarean (Part 2 with Caitlin Benson)

Trigger warning: this episode contains references to postpartum depression and sexual assault.

Welcome to Part 2 of my interview with the irreverent and amazing Caitlin Benson. In this episode, we delve into the details of Caitlin's emotionally charged second birth of her beautiful son Owen, who was born via cesarean during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To kick off this episode, we start our discussion around Caitlin's postpartum experience after delivering her daughter Ellie (whose birth was covered in our Part 1 interview). Caitlin gets candid about her struggles with anxiety and OCD and the painful discovery of how a former sexual assault impacted her postpartum journey. Then, we shift gears and get into her journey of ushering baby Owen onto the planet.

We keep it real and raw here because sharing our stories can be a deeply healing experience, and we aim to discover solutions to America's terrible motherhood mortality problem.

But I promise you, it's not all gloom and doom in this episode (there’s also no mortality in this episode). Caitlin always has a way of keeping things light while keeping it real.

What I love about this interview is learning how Caitlin was able to do to advocate for herself, even in the face of unexpected changes to her birth plan. There's also a hilarious anecdote about how she discovered she had scoliosis during her labor.

I hope you enjoy today’s episode, and consider recording your own birth story voicemail here.