My Own Birth Story: Finding Strength After Feeling Detached

People often assume that because I’m a doula now, my own birth story must have been this powerful, connected, earth-shaking moment — the kind that gets written in soft lighting with perfect music playing in the background.

But the truth is much different.

My birth story started with detachment, fear, confusion, and a kind of quiet grief I didn’t have words for at the time.

I didn’t have a “bad” birth.

But I also didn’t have the birth I expected, or the emotional experience I thought I was supposed to have. And that part is what took me the longest to unpack.

When everything should’ve felt magical, I felt nothing

Meadow came six weeks early.

Everything moved faster than my brain could keep up with. I was exhausted, sick, scared, and trying to convince myself I was “fine.” I remember lying there, waiting for this movie-moment wave of love to wash over me — the one everyone talks about.

It didn’t come.

Instead, I felt blank.

Disoriented.

Like I was watching my own life from a few feet away.

Nobody prepares you for that kind of silence inside yourself.

The NICU changes you in a way that never fully leaves

One minute you’re supposed to be recovering and bonding.

The next, your tiny baby is taken from your arms and attached to wires, monitors, tubes.

The NICU is its own world.

Bright lights. Constant alarms. Hallways filled with parents pretending they’re holding it together. Doctors talking in a language you learn quickly because you have no choice.

I loved Meadow, of course. She was mine. But bonding?

That strong immediate connection people talk about?

It wasn’t there.

I felt guilty even thinking that — let alone saying it out loud.

Every day, I showed up.

Every day, I held her, pumped, sat beside her bed, listened to updates, asked questions, tried to feel something.

But my body and mind were in survival mode, not connection mode.

It took me years to admit that part out loud.

The moment I realized something was wrong wasn’t about birth — it was about feeding

When Meadow went home without a feeding tube, I thought we were through the hardest part.But two months later, during that terrifying choking incident, everything cracked open again.

The fear.The detachment.The sense that I was failing her somehow.

That moment was when I realized my birth story wasn’t just about the day she arrived — it was about everything that followed:

• the silent aspiration

• the swallow studies

• the NG tube

• the PEG tube

• the G-tube

• the stiffness in my shoulders every time a monitor beeped

• the waiting

• the watching

• the praying

• the grieving for the “normal” path we didn’t get

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I didn’t get the soft season of newborn bliss. I got hospitals, therapy, survival, and a baby who needed more than I knew how to give.

But I learned.

And I kept showing up.

That’s what bonded us — not a moment, but many.

Finding strength wasn’t instant — it was slow, quiet, and messy

Healing didn’t look like some big breakthrough.It looked like:

• sitting beside Meadow during feeding therapy

• celebrating tiny victories

• crying in the shower when no one was watching

• going to therapy

• learning to ask for help

• choosing to keep moving forward even when I was exhausted

• letting myself feel anger, grief, love, hope — all of it, tangled together

My strength came from the days I didn’t feel strong at all.

The detachment eventually softened, but it didn’t disappear overnight

There wasn’t one magic moment where everything clicked.

But there were small ones:

The day she smiled at me for real.

The day she grabbed my finger with her whole hand.

The day she tolerated a tiny sip of water by mouth.

The day she danced in the living room with her feeding tube swinging.

The day the tube finally came out after 1,257 days.

Every one of those moments helped stitch me back to her, thread by thread.

My birth story shaped the doula I became

People sometimes ask why I hold space the way I do — gently, non-judgmentally, without rushing people into “gratitude” or “positivity.”

It’s because I’ve lived the kind of birth and postpartum that makes you question yourself.

The kind that makes you feel alone even in a crowded room.

The kind that doesn’t fit the pretty narrative people expect.

My detachment wasn’t failure.

It was trauma, exhaustion, and survival.

And it taught me how to support others who walk into birth carrying fear, grief, or past wounds — or who walk out of it feeling confused that their emotions don’t match the stories they were told to expect.

Birth is more than a single moment.

Bonding is more than a single moment.

Strength isn’t a perfect picture. It’s the whole damn journey.

This is why I do what I do now.

Why I show up with realness, empathy, and no judgement.

Why I believe every family deserves someone who won’t look away from their truth.

Because I didn’t just find strength after feeling detached —I built it.

And I learned how to help others build theirs too.