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Not What I Had in Mind...with author Laura Diaz Freeland💖
56 Plays1 year ago
Hello friends!
Hold on to your hearts for today's guest interview with captivating storyteller, author & creative with @ohhilaurahere, Laura Diaz Freeland.
A short time ago, Laura went through an unimaginably harrowing birth of her twin girls at just 22 weeks gestation. She is here with us today to talk about this life changing journey that her family has endured & the subsequent book she has authored, "Not What I had in Mind: A Motherhood Origin Story".
In this episode, you'll hear:
-the beginnings of Laura's lifelong calling to be a writer & creative
-how she has transmuted this vulnerable traumatic series of events of advocating for her micro preemie daughters into a story that will capture your heart, make you laugh out loud (humor is DEFINETLY a natural gift of Laura's ) and feel the gratitude to the one's that get us through the hard times.
-how Laura coped with being thrown into the deep end of literal life or death circumstances of her girl's survival & navigating though the resulting mental health impact herself.
Trusting yourself, your journey & putting your head down to do what you need to do when life throughs you a major curveball.
No doubt her story will connect with the heart of any mother in any circumstance. We all can relate in some way to reality vs expectation of bringing a child into the world. It changes us into leaders we never knew we were going to be & bonds us with a unique empathy for each other. ❤️❤️❤️
It would mean the world, if you shared this episode with a mom in your life!
Please go show Laura & her book some love!
Connect with Laura on Instagram @ohhilaurahere. to her blog is a MUST- such poignant writings there)
Pre-order her book "Not What I Had in Mind: A Motherhood Origin Story" at any book seller (amazon, barnes and noble, etc)
To connect with Renee: on Instagram @feelgoodwithrenee or www.reneenovello.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Dose of Inspiration
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello, my intuitive friends. Welcome to the Dose of Inspiration podcast. I'm your host, Renee Novello. You may know me as a mom, a microdose advocate, and a creative. This podcast is all about revealing the magic in the mundane.
00:00:29
Speaker
through doses of inspiring guest conversations that take us deeper within ourselves. It's all about the tiny doses of connection and creative expression that can add so much color into our world at times when we feel like we may be stuck or going through the motions. You can expect to hear expanded perspectives and inspiring human stories of transformation.
00:00:56
Speaker
all to support you along your most inspired and creative path. I am so grateful you are here and you have dropped in for your dose of inspiration. Let's get started.
00:01:12
Speaker
Hello, everyone. I'm so grateful to have our guest with us today.
Meet Laura Diaz-Freeline
00:01:18
Speaker
She is a vulnerable storyteller and now an accomplished writer with a brand new published book.
00:01:27
Speaker
She's somebody who I have known for a few phases of life and to see her putting out an incredible story that everyone has to read and listen to. It is her debut memoir, not what I had in mind, a motherhood origin story.
00:01:46
Speaker
It's now available for pre-order and Laura Diaz-Freeline is here today to talk with us and share about this experience and this book writing. So settle in, grab a comfort beverage, get cozy, and just prepare to be captivated by the sense of hope that she brings through in everything that she is sharing in this story. So welcome, Laura.
00:02:12
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me, Renee. I'm so happy to be here. I literally finished your book this morning. You were so gracious to send me a copy. And I'm in that, you know, when you watch a movie that's emotional or you read something that is so compelling, I'm in that space afterwards where I still cannot stop thinking about it. It really captured my heart.
00:02:41
Speaker
And yeah, to have you here and just to hear from you and what this has been like for you to live and now to recount and to share with the world. I'm so grateful. So thank you. Thank you for bringing your vulnerability to all of us in this way.
00:03:00
Speaker
It is an honor for sure. So I've always known you to be a poignant writer. I mean, you've had a blog, you've been a storyteller that, so I can't say I'm surprised that you have birthed to literally no pun intended this book, but to go through such a harrowing and vulnerable experience that is the birth of your daughters was for you and to live through that and then to go back
00:03:29
Speaker
and to retell all of it in such intimate raw detail. Start off by first of all telling us a little bit about you as a person and then get into what inspired you to tell this story to go ahead and do the memoir.
Laura's Writing Journey
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I am a lifelong writer from the time I was super little. I was writing quote unquote novels that my parents probably saw on their bookshelves somewhere. But
00:03:58
Speaker
As I grew up and realized I had to get a real job also in airports, I pursued marketing because I figured it allowed me to still do this thing I loved. I still would get to write, but it was a more respectable career. It was a more lucrative career that would allow me to take care of myself. So I worked in marketing for about 10 years, and when the twins were born,
00:04:25
Speaker
I had to stop working, which I will get into that story, but there was not another option for a lot of reasons that has to do with both the twins and with me. So I didn't work for the first two years of their lives. And around the time they turned to, I mean, even before I was itching to do something creative.
00:04:48
Speaker
And if there's anything I've learned about myself through the many seasons of life, it's that I am a creator and I'm happiest when I'm making something from nothing, anything, right? It could be words, but it could also be paintings or designing a room where there's nothing in it, right? I love to create and I was itching to do that. And around the time that girls turned two,
00:05:13
Speaker
They were in a good place, I was in a good place, and I started writing again. And this book has been on my mind and on my spurt since the girls were in the hospital, when I didn't even know if they were going to make it. I knew that whatever the story was,
00:05:36
Speaker
It wasn't in vain. And I'm not one to say everything happens for a reason, but I am one to say I can create something from this grief. I can create something from this experience. I can make it beautiful, right? Yeah.
00:05:56
Speaker
I started writing a newsletter again. I was writing a lot about food because that was a big part of the twins healing journey. And then I just kept coming back to this story. And I wrote it a million different ways because it is
00:06:15
Speaker
You touched on the fact that it is very vulnerable, but it was very scary to be that vulnerable, and so it didn't start out that way. I mean, I even tried to write it as fiction because I just wanted to separate myself from it, but it didn't work. And I ended up having a conversation with a friend of mine who also wrote a very intimate memoir. Her name is Asha Juno, and she was
00:06:42
Speaker
Essentially what she said to me is stop thinking about who is going to read it or if it's going to sell or what the end product is and just start writing. And it was the most liberating advice.
00:07:00
Speaker
I just I did that was last summer and so now a year later the book is edited and it is I'm recording the audiobook right now but to give a little bit of background because I like hinted at things and didn't
00:07:16
Speaker
really give a lot of context for it. So my daughters are identical twins.
The Birth of Laura's Twins
00:07:21
Speaker
They were born two days apart, one at 22 weeks, five days gestation, and one at 23 weeks gestation. In most of the world,
00:07:35
Speaker
Viable babies are babies born at 24 weeks gestation, and some places don't even really like to intervene there. I don't know, I'm not familiar with the way things work in the whole world, but in the United States, 24 weeks gestation is the accepted line of viability. There are hospitals that will intervene at 22 and 23 weeks.
00:08:03
Speaker
But even in those hospitals, their survival rates are very low. I didn't know any of this when I had the twins. In fact, the book opens when my husband and I having to make a decision about whether or not we were going to sign a do not resuscitate order so that when they were born, we would not intervene.
00:08:28
Speaker
Spoiler alert, everyone knows that this story has a happy ending because if you go on Instagram, you can see that my daughters are alive and well and absolutely perfect. They are going to be four this year. Wow. Yeah, but it was a long and very scary road. It was not a straight path.
00:08:52
Speaker
I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about the American healthcare system. And so I wrote this story to reveal some of that to people, but mostly I wrote it to connect because motherhood is really not what I had in mind. And I realized it's probably the case for everyone. Well,
00:09:15
Speaker
There's a few things you just shared there that I would love to touch on because when I read in the first chapter part of the experience you were having, and I'm just going to read this one part because this just shook me. I literally was sitting outside in 90 degree weather with full body chills and you wrote that I can
00:09:41
Speaker
You're sweating through the rise and fall of each contraction while considering the fact that there's no way to know whether my kids will live unless I give them a chance. Jared, your husband, writes, the time and duration of each contraction, I consider a peaceful death. Is it selfish to keep them alive? Is it faithless to let them die? I need to decide quickly, seeing as how the children in question could be making their debut at any moment.
00:10:05
Speaker
But I have no basis for it. All I have is this one doctor, unreliable internet searches, and of course, a pamphlet. I just what you're speaking to in terms of the title, which I think is so genius. I love the title of this book because I think it is so relatable. It's something that I think every single mother on the planet can relate to.
00:10:29
Speaker
not what I had in mind to some degree, right? Obviously, there's a large continuum there of what that can look like. And you went to the depths of the most extreme circumstances in an instant and had to make literally life or death choices that affected the rest of your life and also to little innocent beings potentially. And when you were
00:10:55
Speaker
in that moment and the amount of resilience I think that you probably have just cultivated through this experience, how in that moment did you feel optimistic or were you just like, I have no idea what's going to happen? What was the feeling of that experience at that time?
Challenges in the NICU
00:11:15
Speaker
No, I was not optimistic. In fact, I did not write this in the book, but
00:11:24
Speaker
When I was admitted to the hospital, my mom showed up and I said to her that babies are going to be born and they're going to die. I was sure they were going to die, which was why originally we had agreed to sign a DNR, which you have to read the book to find out how that played out.
00:11:51
Speaker
Yeah, Jared and I had originally decided to sign a DNR because we just didn't see how this could possibly end well for anyone. But I also, there was so much I didn't know at the time. So now, if I had to do it again, I would, which sounds insane if you read the book, but I understand so much more. It just so happened that I had the twins
00:12:22
Speaker
in the number one NICU in the state of Florida, and that they have a team that is dedicated to resuscitating babies at 22 and 23 weeks gestation. Like they actually dedicate themselves to improving outcomes. So at that hospital, more babies born at 22 weeks live than die. That is definitely not the case for every hospital that intervenes,
00:12:52
Speaker
I didn't know any of that because things were done differently then, so people didn't come down to explain that.
00:13:03
Speaker
And even the twins were a big part of this hospital getting on the map for those kind of survival reads and their protocols. But that's kind of all the clinical side of things. I share all of that to say I had no clinical understanding of what was happening. So I was very pessimistic and I expected them to die.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah. And to somewhere in your mind, maybe it would make it a little easier if you just prepared yourself mentally for that awful worst case scenario. And the fact that, let's just talk about the mind intervention here at first. And if you want to call it that or what you just shared about being so close to such a
00:13:49
Speaker
Prominent hospital that was able to actually have the doctors and the resources to help you help them and to move through this Experience and we what like I can't even wrap my mind around the fact that that is The the setup that you had right there and then of course you didn't know I mean no one no one's researching those things until they absolutely have to write and at that time I
00:14:17
Speaker
Yeah, at that time too, if you did a search, like a Google search, it would just tell you that babies born at 22 weeks have less than a 10% survival rate. Like now there's insane research and you'll find like a study was just published in July.
00:14:36
Speaker
out of Japan, where they have had an 82.9% survival rate for babies born at 22 weeks, and also with minimal long-term complications, like very minimal. But none of that information was available when I had the twins in 2019.
00:14:56
Speaker
So just in four years. That's amazing. Yeah. Wow. Obviously this story is of your resilience and your grit and strength and going through a traumatic ordeal that was how long were they in the hospital?
00:15:16
Speaker
So Vivian, who is baby A, was in the hospital for 135 days, which is, I can say this now, which is average, I would say for a baby born as early as she was, she came home two weeks after what her due date would have been.
00:15:40
Speaker
And then Margaux was in the hospital for seven and a half months, so 224 days. It was very complicated. And it was really touch and go until maybe the last five weeks that she was... It was only in the last five weeks that we knew we were gonna get her home.
00:15:57
Speaker
Wow. That's such a simplistic question to ask. I don't even know if it's the right question to ask, but how did you cope? Like how did you not lose your mind? How did you not crash and burn and just crumble? The endurance to show up and to deal with doctors and terminology and
00:16:20
Speaker
with such a emotional part of you, right? That's now outside of you trying to survive. How did you cope? Did you just do it? I mean, I did just do it. I think in retrospect, I can, and after a lot of therapy, I can kind of break down the different seasons I was in, but I did just do it. And I think,
00:16:46
Speaker
I realize after going through this, people often will say, like, oh, I could never do that. But that's exactly what I would have told you three days before my daughters were born, right? I would have told you that if that happens to me, I would die, but I didn't. And I think everyone has their way of coping.
00:17:08
Speaker
And I know that from watching people within this community, right? Because I'm now part of this community of people with extremely premature babies, that everyone copes very differently. So my hoping was to remain pretty detached for a really long time and angry.
00:17:34
Speaker
So I didn't break down and cry. I just was mad at everyone. I didn't always show that, but that's how
Coping and Emotional Growth
00:17:43
Speaker
I felt. And I think that comes across a lot in the book. I was mad at a lot of people who did not deserve for me to be mad at them for a long time, but it was the only way that I could get up in the morning and keep doing what I was doing. Now, once the girls came home,
00:18:00
Speaker
I paid dearly for all of the emotions I had avoided and for all the things I had not talked about for those seven and a half months because I experienced like such a rush of the feelings and thoughts and just actually realizing what had just happened to me and my family that I was
00:18:28
Speaker
useless for a year almost after they came home. Like I suffered a lot of mental health challenges, which I'm very open about in the book, but it took me, it took me a long time to get to a place where I am not angry, I am not
00:18:55
Speaker
Sad I don't even I think I even have successfully grieved that I will never birth a newborn and take her home from the hospital like that's never gonna happen for me and I have Successfully grieved that that sounds so weird to say successfully grieved, but like I'm okay with that. I'm at peace with that being my story and
00:19:20
Speaker
But it was not, I wouldn't say I coped gracefully, I would say I survived, which is really all of us did. And when I say all of us, I mean my husband, my parents were also very, very involved in
00:19:39
Speaker
the girls' chair, they were in the NICU every day until COVID started and they couldn't come anymore. So my parents coped in their way, Jared coped in his way. And obviously I'm the mother, so it's different. And so it makes sense that my coping was more intense and insane. But I think I really believe after going through what I went through,
00:20:06
Speaker
that it doesn't make me different from most moms. It really is what we all would do, even if we don't think we would be able to do it in theory. Kind of like that, you know, what is that like survival mechanism of mother's strength? Like if there's a car on top of their baby or something and they have all of a sudden the superhuman strength to do what you have to do.
00:20:34
Speaker
in that moment that you never could do otherwise. And your superhuman strength just happened to last for years. Right. Yeah. But I mean, it's really I could go on about this for a long time, because in retrospect, I have often reflected on how
00:20:51
Speaker
oh my gosh it was a total god thing that we were at this hospital and this was our situation because if we weren't then the girls would have just died I would have just believed the doctors but then like time after time since I've been a part of this 22 weaker community I have
00:21:12
Speaker
met women who have fought, I mean, tooth and nail to be transferred or to get their baby transferred to a hospital that would give them a chance. And it actually took me writing the book and telling some of those women's stories to realize I might be selling myself short, that maybe I would have, that probably I wouldn't have just taken no for an answer once I made up my mind that I did want
00:21:42
Speaker
intervention, but I didn't think that until I started to hear stories from all of these other women. I really have learned that we have no idea what we are capable of as moms until we are like backed into a corner. And that's when we really find out what we're made of.
00:22:05
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure you have so many lasting sentiments from processing this, going through it, living through it, but is that kind of the
00:22:17
Speaker
or feeling that you feel after going through it is that a sense of empowerment that you can do something and sustain something that is turning your life upside down isn't even beginning to describe what we're dealing with of ups and downs. Is it an empowering feeling or does it still feel like surreal? It depends on where I am looking at it from at the moment.
00:22:46
Speaker
I think normally it is very empowering. And one thing that came out of it is I'm really unfazed by things that are not life or death. I feel like I can do anything, which is a little bit dangerous, that I feel like I can handle anything after what we went through.
00:23:07
Speaker
On the other hand, if I am going through pictures or videos or even when I was writing the book and having to read back through it aloud, right, for editing purposes, I would stop and think, I cannot believe this happened to me. I cannot believe this happened to my daughters, like this actually happened. Because today, if you look at them, I spend a day with them every day.
00:23:38
Speaker
It would never occur to somebody who meets my daughters to think, they must have gone through something horrible. They must have been cut open a dozen times and put back together. Nobody would think that. They would just maybe ask, when did you find out they needed the glasses? That is the extent of what people might ask.
00:24:07
Speaker
As you mentioned, spoiler alert, they are thriving. And I know that this has had a lasting impact, obviously, how can it not? How has this changed your perspective on life in general? For sure. It has given me perspective on what is important and what is not. The other thing is
00:24:37
Speaker
In the aftermath of the NICU, there was still so much I had to do to get my daughters to this point where they were thriving. I mean, we feed these kids an impeccable, impeccable diet, and they had all of these therapies. Nobody even
00:24:58
Speaker
them unless they had been quarantined, right? Until they were like two years old because they have premature lungs and it was a huge risk, not just COVID, but like the flu, the common cold would have been a huge risk. Even just like last December, Margo got pneumonia and she was in the hospital for eight days. So there are still risks, right?
00:25:23
Speaker
Although the older they get, the more those risks are reduced. But anyway, I all have that to say that one of the things that has really shifted is me not really caring what people outside of my family think.
00:25:40
Speaker
of as extreme or too much because it does look like it. If you are a healthy parent with healthy children and you looked at my life of my zero convenience food kitchen and me making people wear a mask until the end of 2022, if they wanted to see my daughters, you would be like, this woman is nuts. And I really just
00:26:07
Speaker
don't care if people think that because it got us to where we are, which made me trust my judgment more and just care way less about people who could not possibly understand how clinically loaded and complicated the situation was. For sure. Yeah, you earned that. That was hard earned nuts right there.
00:26:32
Speaker
I mean, I just do not care if people think I'm extreme. I mean, now I'm much more relaxed. But in those two years after the girls were born, I was like...
00:26:47
Speaker
Yeah, I don't care what you think. I don't care if you think everything is okay. I am the one running the ship here, so. That's right. Yeah. And obviously what you are doing is working and you got to definitely hold true to what you feel like is right for you and your family. I totally get that. And having perspective to no longer caring what people think, all of that is so freeing, but also hard earned in your case to get there.
00:27:18
Speaker
In writing this book, what was really what you wanted people to feel when they were writing it, or what did you want people to get from
Empathy and Storytelling in Laura's Book
00:27:28
Speaker
it? Because I know you made mention before we started recording that it's not necessarily a story about having premature babies, right? But what did you want people to feel when they read this? Yeah, so for sure, I did not want people to think it was a story about prematurity. I wanted this book
00:27:49
Speaker
to connect people, for people to feel empathy, not towards me, but towards all mothers, because motherhood is hard, whether your kids are in a hospital or at home. So it was really the foundation of the book is this
00:28:14
Speaker
deep empathy that is shared between mothers that I found was very unique. Like I don't think I've ever felt empathy for another person the way I feel empathy for moms since becoming a mom. So I think that was a huge foundation for the book.
00:28:34
Speaker
on which it was written. Now, I did really strive to make this a book that was compulsively readable. Like that was my goal with the story is that no matter what your motherhood origin story is, I wanted it to be a book where people read it. And even though they know, because they can go on Instagram, they know it ends well, they could not wait to find out
00:29:03
Speaker
how it ended, they couldn't wait to find out what happened next. And that they had those high highs and those low lows throughout the story, which is why I wrote it in present tense because it makes you feel like you're really in it. And then my hope was that people would learn something along the way, right? I wanted to entertain, I wanted to connect.
00:29:32
Speaker
But my goal is that through that entertainment and through that connection, people might learn something about prematurity, about medical complexities in motherhood, about viability. Because those are not things that you would seek out normally. The thing I learned is that I didn't know anything about any of this until it was really too late for me to get informed. So I wanted to write a story
00:30:02
Speaker
that was compelling.
00:30:05
Speaker
and that would inform so that people would have this information should they or anyone they love find themselves in a situation like the one I was in were the one my friend Kayla and my friend Kin and my friend Andrea, who I write about in the book. They all have nicknames in the book, but actually, no, they don't. No, they're good. I was like, wait, I gave a lot of nicknames. I was like, I just blew everyone's cover. But I think most of those. Yeah, they were named.
00:30:36
Speaker
But yeah, I wanted people to have an experience that they enjoyed reading the book, but for them to learn that because people don't seek it out. No one is like, oh, I'd really like to learn about prematurity today because no one thinks their baby is going to be premature. No one is like, oh, I really want to learn about
00:30:58
Speaker
viability and outcomes for 22-week workers at the University of Iowa. Like, no, you don't seek that information out until it's far too late. And so this
00:31:09
Speaker
seeds that so that people are empowered if they or someone they love ever find themselves in that position. Well, well done. I, as I told you, literally could not put it down. I had less than a week with it and I was like, oh, maybe I'll just skim. And as soon as I read the first chapter, I was like all in.
00:31:29
Speaker
And i felt like i was going along this experience with you highs and lows and also i love that you infused humor and you infuse some snarkiness and you were so real and.
00:31:45
Speaker
all of that was endearing as a compliment to such a harrowing story to have that be a part of it because that's what I appreciate was that, well, this is obviously the worst possible case scenario, but look at this and how she has made this feel actually kind of even humorous in the moment. And the nicknames you gave all the caretaking teams and doctors was just endearing Laura. Like I learned
00:32:13
Speaker
to your point, a lot that I had no idea about. And I was thoroughly entertained and along for the ride and I finished it in just a couple days, no problem. And was like, wow, that left an imprint. I will never forget the story. So well done.
00:32:31
Speaker
Thank you. It makes me so happy because at this point, so few people have actually gotten to read it, start to finish. And so it means so much to me that you had the exact experience I wanted people to have when they read it.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yep. It's landing. It's going to land in a big way. And I know, I mean, I was reading it thinking about, oh my gosh, this friend of mine needs to read this. Like I preordered it because I'm going to give it to somebody that I had in mind when I was reading it. And I'm like, this is a story that is just so well told. It was the hardest thing someone could go through. I have a question because I was thinking about the details.
00:33:07
Speaker
I'm like, how did she keep track of all these details? Was this you recalling or were you literally in the midst of going through this and kind of keeping track of things? Were you like taking notes along the way and journaling, thinking one day I'm going to tell a story and this is going to be a doozy? Or did you have to go back and relive?
00:33:29
Speaker
This is such a good question. So I did not journal while the twins were in the NICU. I structured this entire book.
00:33:41
Speaker
based on my most vivid memories. So I actually started with just a list of things that I could close my eyes and be right back there in the room when they happened because it was so vivid to me. And that being said,
00:34:01
Speaker
That book is everything I remember. There is nothing really, I only remember those moments and a lot happened in between those moments, right? You see everything is dated and so you'll see all suddenly like skip two months and it's because that's a trauma response to just block out whole seasons of your life, right? So the book was structured
00:34:27
Speaker
based on those moments because I wanted it to be truthful so I could only write about what I really remembered. The medical details I know, right? Because it's permanent, right? Those diagnoses, all those things that I talk about are things that have affected the way we live, they've affected the way I go into doctor's appointments. So those are all things that I learned and
00:34:52
Speaker
For a long time, up until the girls were about 18 months, they were things that were very relevant because we were still going to doctors and getting therapies for these things. So the medical details were just things that came from my head. The timeline, exactly when things happened, I used the discharge summaries. So I have their medical, which are basically
00:35:20
Speaker
the cliff notes on their NICU study. And so I used the dates on their medical records to match it to when things happened, which is why some things have very exact dates and then some things just have a month and a year. And it's because I wanted to be as truthful as I could be and as factual as I could be. And so things that I had exact dates for, I put exact dates, but if I didn't, I didn't.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah and that's the way it felt reading it was these were the most vivid detailed parts of this experience and that there were some pieces that you probably for a very good reason could not recall or could not get to and all of that a nod to realness, a nod to the vulnerability of living through something like this. I mean
00:36:15
Speaker
It's amazing the capacity for a mother who wants to apply herself into helping her child, what is possible in terms of digesting and understanding things that you never thought you'd be.
00:36:31
Speaker
learning or experiencing. That is in and of itself just its own phenomenon of mothers. I know like I wish I didn't. That's like always like when I get into conversations and people are like, how do you know all this? I'm just like, oh, trust me. I really wish I didn't. Yeah, you're like, I've lived it. Yeah. When does it release?
00:36:51
Speaker
November 8th. November 8th. Okay. Awesome. And from here, do you feel like you identify with being an activist now in terms of prematurity and awareness of babies that are born that premature? Or do you feel like this is just like something that is obviously a natural result of your experience? Like where do you think you'll write more? I'm just curious. Like where do you even go from here besides being present and a mom to your beautiful girls?
00:37:22
Speaker
is a really strong word. I think what I'm about to say is going to be really loaded, but I'm going to say it anyway, because I feel like this is a really safe space is I
00:37:35
Speaker
think women should be able to choose. And so if we're going to fight for women to be able to choose one way, then we should also fight for women to be able to choose the other way. And the fact is there are a lot of hospitals, a lot, most hospitals that would have told me, there's nothing we can do. You can hold your babies until they die. My stance is that
00:38:04
Speaker
mothers of extremely premature babies, which are also called peri-viable babies at 22 and 23 weeks gestation, should have the right to choose whether or not they want intervention, and they should have the information they need to make that choice.
00:38:21
Speaker
because I do not think there's only one right choice. I like would never hold it against someone who decided not to intervene because it is brutal and you don't know what you're going to get, right? So I also want to make sure that that is heard on this podcast is yes, my daughters are
00:38:47
Speaker
thriving thriving. They have no delays. They are they are bilingual. They are
00:38:54
Speaker
Perfect. But that is not always true. Now, the data is very skewed to tell you that my daughters are an anomaly. They are not an anomaly. That's not true. In centers that dedicate themselves to improving outcomes for 22 and 23-weekers, my daughters are not an anomaly. That doesn't mean it's the only possible outcome. A lot exists.
00:39:24
Speaker
between dead and alive. It is not black and white. And so I do believe that parents should be informed before they make this decision, but informed with actual data, right? Not like, generally,
00:39:50
Speaker
physicians in run of the millic use across the country are pretty pessimistic about outcomes with 22 weekers because they haven't seen it. But if you go to a center like the University of Iowa or like Winnie Palmer where the twins were born or like the center in Japan, those physicians are very optimistic because they've seen it. They have protocols. And so I am a proponent
00:40:20
Speaker
of equipping right-knit women with this information before they find themselves in such a horrible situation. What they choose is their choice. I really believe that. But I don't think they should make the choice based on one physician who tells them babies like this don't survive. So that's my stance as far as like,
00:40:48
Speaker
whether or not I'm an activist, probably some people might say I am. And I just think I'm pro empowerment.
Connecting with Laura and Future Projects
00:40:57
Speaker
The other piece, where I'm going next, I really hope to continue writing about this topic and other topics
00:41:09
Speaker
within the realm of motherhood that are really important to me, like health, nutrition, and even just one thing that I'm very passionate about is raising bilingual children if you can, right? Like making sure that your children have that piece of your heritage if you can give it to them, which is a really hard thing to do in the United States. And so that's another topic that I have been
00:41:36
Speaker
living out and researching and am hopeful that I will be writing another book in the coming years about that. Yeah. And I was beyond touched by everything that you put in this book. And like I said, it was a felt experience that will stay with me. And I just appreciate that you are someone who digs deep.
00:42:00
Speaker
And you are someone that has high standards and be able to help people to also dig deep in their most vulnerable time when literally I can't imagine the strength of even having the wherewithal to not just take the team that's in front of you. It's a word because I mean, you're at your most vulnerable state ever. Probably it's a life or death situation. These are the people that you have to
00:42:25
Speaker
work with one way or another and they're not instilling you with a sense of faith and optimism, how to help people to get a layer deeper and to seek out other resources and other opinions. I mean, in a very, I imagine, fast paced situation where you have to make a decision pretty quickly and being able to have this sort of information be more widespread, I think is just incredibly important too. Yeah, absolutely.
00:42:56
Speaker
So as we're wrapping up here, is there anything else in this book or anything else that you feel inspired to share? I mean, you have to read the book, but is there anything else that you want to leave people with? Anything at all from this or that you have as a takeaway yourself? Yeah. I just want to share that this is, it is my story, but this book isn't about me. It is about.
00:43:23
Speaker
mothering, right? And this connection that we have, this what I call in the book, a wild thread of love and lunacy that connects us. I love that. Tell people though about how they can connect with you and pre-order your book and what also the goody is for pre-ordering.
00:43:49
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. So I published a weekly newsletter called This Is Not Advice. You can subscribe to it at lorahear.com. The book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, and Bookshop.org, which supports local bookstores. And when you pre-order, if you email me your receipt at heythereatlorahear.com,
00:44:18
Speaker
I will be sending out some goodies, including the first chapter of the audiobook. Beautiful. I'll put all that in the show notes.
00:44:30
Speaker
That is awesome. Yes. Thank you for coming on and telling us more behind the scenes of what it was like in sharing the story, going through this journey. I just can't say enough about how heartfelt this was for me. Watching you go through this and then to be able to be brought in to see what you went through is
00:44:51
Speaker
It's really brave and I'm here with such reverence for what you have been through and who you are, Laura. I really appreciate you for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for reading and just sharing your response. It has been an honor and a pleasure.
00:45:12
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post on social media, or leave a reading and review. It would mean the world to me. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me over on Instagram at Feel Good With Renee. Thanks again, and I will see you next time.