Entry #20 • March 3rd, 2026

Wow. It’s kind of serendipitous that this is Just Me #20. The only reason I say that is because I’m about to share birth story #2, as promised, since a birthday is coming up…my oldest will be 20.

Oof. What.

Can you please have a moment of slight freak out with me? Thanks. How did I get here? This makes me feel like I’m getting old, but I’m not. Right? RIGHT?

Happy Birthday, Ethan. I can’t believe you’re out of your teens. You’re stepping into a new decade, which is just wild. I’ll be following you shortly as I turn 40 in May. We get to turn the pages into new decades together, every time, which feels pretty special.

Dear Reader, as many of you requested, I’m going to share my next birth story. I shared the story of my firstborn, Ethan, back in December (see JM#15 and JM#16 — it was a two-parter). The rhythm I originally planned was to release each birth story in birth order as each child celebrated a birthday. Well…I didn’t stay true to that plan. We had a birthday in early January, but I wasn’t ready to dive into another birth story so quickly.

Now I am. So here we are: birth story #2. As for the remaining birth stories…we’ll discuss that later.

Mexico, Metabolism & Making Plans

We were living in Mexico with my first son when I became pregnant with my second baby. I have vivid memories of that pregnancy. One of them is the wall of exhaustion that hits me in the first trimester. It always amazes me how completely drained I am during those early months. My oldest was about ten months old when I found out I was pregnant. When he napped in the afternoon, I would immediately nap too. I was utterly exhausted.

Of all my pregnancies, my second was the one I was least sick with. I only threw up a handful of times total. Compared to my other pregnancies, where I threw up daily for 30–35 of the 40 weeks, this one felt almost gentle. I still got nauseous, but it would pass quickly.

It’s funny how certain foods or smells can become completely repulsive during pregnancy, and how different each pregnancy can be. With my first, a soup we ate constantly in Mexico — “sopita” — would make me instantly nauseous. It was such a loss because we ate it all the time. It was yummy and cheap. But I could not stand the smell of it cooking. Thankfully, that aversion disappeared after he was born.

With my second pregnancy, of all things, sandwich bread — just a normal loaf in a bag — made me nauseous immediately. It was so random. I couldn’t even make sandwiches for my husband’s lunch because the smell was so repulsive.

Another thing I remember clearly — and have pictures of — was that around twenty-three weeks, my hands started itching like crazy. I was scratching the skin off of my fingers, specifically. Thankfully, it wasn’t anything serious like ICP or cholestasis. I can’t remember how long it lasted, maybe a couple of weeks.

Another very memorable part of this pregnancy, especially the first half, was the intense hunger. I was famished constantly, despite eating a lot of calories. Oh, the joys of being 20 years old when my metabolism was truly working in my favor.

During that first half of pregnancy, I was nursing my firstborn five to seven times a day. I was also walking our dog at least twice a day because she didn’t have access to an area to relieve herself unless I took her out. She lived inside…and on our roof. Yes. On our roof.

Roofs in Mexico are flat and usable. Ours was like an extra living space. She stayed in a back room that opened onto the roof, wandering between inside and outside, but she still needed regular walks.

Here are a couple of pictures from my 21st birthday, where my husband, sister-in-law and I had a cook out on the roof. I don’t drink but was so excited to find a “Root Beer” in Mexico to celebrate with 😆

The demand on my body — nursing a baby, growing a baby, and walking a dog daily — meant my calorie needs were high. I remember eating four large meals every day. It was wild. And honestly? The best season of my life for appetite.

The food in Mexico is still the number one thing I miss. It never got old. I could eat it every day for the rest of my life and never be bored. It was especially wonderful that I wasn’t constantly nauseous during this pregnancy. I could actually enjoy eating — which was helpful, given how much I needed.

We started thinking early about where we would give birth. Mexico was home. We wanted our baby born there. But we also knew we didn’t want a hospital birth, for the same reasons we hadn’t wanted one with our first.

The C-section rate where we lived was extraordinarily high. Some sources showed up to 80% of births in private hospitals at that time were cesarean. If we were going to have this baby in Mexico, it would need to be at home.

So I began searching for a homebirth midwife.

It’s almost comical to think about searching online in 2007 — especially in a foreign country. It was not simple. We searched online. We asked different contacts. We followed every lead we could find. But when we asked about a partera (midwife), people looked at us like we had two heads.

“Una PARTERA? Por qué???”

Why would we possibly want a midwife when we could go to the hospital and have a “pain-free” C-section?

Needless to say, we weren’t making progress. I did find an American midwife (living in Mexico), but she lived several states away. Logistically, it would have been far too complicated, though we seriously considered it.

Out of desperation, I stumbled across a term: Unassisted Birth.

The idea was giving birth at home, on your own.

I started thinking, Well…I’ve had a baby before. I know what it feels like now. It isn’t as mysterious as it once was. Maybe — just maybe — we could do this ourselves.

I dove in. I read birth stories. I studied what to watch for in emergencies. What was normal. What wasn’t. Everything.

Back then, there was no social media. I kind of miss that, if I’m honest. But there were message boards. That’s where I lived online. I joined several different boards across the internet. They became my connection to other moms — American moms, English-speaking moms.

I was a brand-new mom with no in-person community. No other friends with babies. Newly married. Newly a mother. Living in a country where I could barely speak the language. It could have been deeply isolating.

Those message boards were a lifeline.

One of them focused entirely on unassisted birth. Women who had birthed that way once, twice, multiple times. In different homes. Different countries. Different circumstances. I began to believe I could do it too.

But there was one major complication.

We had to secure a Mexican birth certificate. Without it, we couldn’t obtain a “Consular Report of Birth Abroad” from the American embassy. And as we researched, it became clear that getting a Mexican birth certificate for an unassisted homebirth would be extremely complicated.

Paperwork in Mexico is never simple.

We pressed. We asked questions. We kept running into roadblocks. The number of hoops we would have to jump through — with no guarantee of success — felt too risky.

We couldn’t risk having a baby and then not being able to secure a birth certificate in either country. That would have been an entirely different nightmare.

In March, we started toying with the idea of moving back to the States — specifically to Grand Junction, Colorado, where I had grown up. The thought was that we could live there temporarily, get my husband’s U.S. residency paperwork sorted out, and then move anywhere we wanted. We wouldn’t have to stay “stuck” in GJ. We even imagined eventually moving back to Mexico after we were done having our…five kids (hahaha, the number we originally thought we’d have).

There were two major hang-ups.

First, our dog. Getting her into the States would have been a process. It was already going to be complicated enough trying to move as a family when my husband only had a tourist visa. That entire conversation is far more layered than what either side of the political spectrum reduces it to — and far more than I can unpack here.

The second hang-up was church. We had specific convictions about what we were looking for, and we knew the options in Grand Junction were limited. Maybe that’s a story for another day. Maybe not.

Either way, both obstacles eventually resolved themselves.

On April 1, 2007, our beloved dog, Rhonda, died unexpectedly. We never really knew what happened. It didn’t matter. She was gone. That loss removed one of the largest barriers to moving to the U.S. Once that happened, we began seriously considering the move.

Within the next month, we reached out to my parents and shared our idea. They generously offered their home to us while we got settled. It meant leaving nearly everything behind in Mexico and starting over completely.

We decided to move forward.

I was due in October 2007. By July, I began selling our belongings. I set up small yard sales in front of a friend’s house a few blocks away where there was more foot traffic. Slowly, piece by piece, I sold what I could. Whatever didn’t sell would either be stored with my mother-in-law in Mexico or packed into suitcases to bring back with us. We were flying, so we couldn’t take much.

In mid-August, at about seven months pregnant, I flew back to the US with our son.

I arrived “home” and began settling into my parents’ house — the same house they had moved into when I was two and a half years old. It was my childhood home.

I promptly resumed care with the same midwives who had delivered my first son. Once it became clear that I would be giving birth in the U.S., I knew I wanted Ruth Ann — my midwife from his birth — to attend this one as well. Back then, you chose your midwife, and she attended your birth. It wasn’t like the more common model today where you rotate through providers and whoever is on call delivers your baby.

When I walked into Ruth Ann’s office, she seemed genuinely surprised to see me. She knew I had been living in Mexico. Maybe she didn’t expect to see me again — or at least not so soon. I was due just nineteen months after my first.

She asked how I had been. I filled her in on our life, our move, and the decisions that had led us back.

I told her how I had spent months preparing to give birth at home in Mexico. Alone. Not because it was my first choice, but because we couldn’t find a homebirth midwife and the hospital felt too risky for the outcome I wanted.

She was incredibly kind and understanding. She seemed to grasp the tension I had been living in — preparing mentally for an unassisted homebirth in Mexico, and now sitting in her office in the U.S., facing a hospital birth again.

I asked if there was any way she could attend a homebirth for me here. She smiled gently and said no. Unfortunately, it couldn’t work that way.

I want to pause for a moment and recognize Ruth Ann.

She’s no longer practicing. She retired years ago and now lives out of state, closer to family. But she was an incredibly attentive midwife. Sensitive to the needs and desires of her patients — even when that patient was just 21 years old and had mentally prepared to birth her baby alone, at home, in a foreign country.

She never scolded me. She never dismissed my desires or minimized my concerns. She listened. She reassured. She met me where I was.

She was a gift to Grand Junction.

For moms who maybe didn’t want a hospital birth but had very limited options — and choices truly were limited in the valley during those early years — she walked with them. She navigated hospital protocols as nimbly as she could, helping women move toward the birth they envisioned within the constraints that existed.

This past August, Colorado Baby was a sponsor for an event for midwives from all across Colorado — homebirth midwives and hospital midwives — gathered together to learn more about their craft. During the lunch hour, there was a moment of recognition for Ruth Ann and her longtime partners at Mesa Midwives: Cindy Busker and Janet Grant.

They were the original anchors of hospital-based midwifery care in the valley.

I’ve known all three of them personally for years through overlapping demographics and professional circles. It was a special moment to see them honored. And to stand next to Ruth Ann and quietly think, this one was mine.

When Safety Shifts the Body

My husband joined us in Colorado by mid-September after closing out the last of our business in Mexico. Just a few short weeks later, we would be welcoming baby number two.

Labor started on a late Sunday afternoon. The contractions were mild at first. That evening, my husband and I sat at the dinner table playing Rummikub with my mom. She had no idea I was in early labor. I could still sit through the contractions without shifting or squirming.

We played for over an hour. I remember we had Chinese food for dinner. I ordered my tried-and-true favorite: beef and broccoli.

Later that night, we turned in. By around 11 p.m., the contractions had picked up enough that I needed to pace and focus on my breathing to work through them. I told my husband to go to sleep and get some rest before I truly needed his help. I was remembering my first labor — the relentless back pain — and assumed I’d be waking him in the middle of the night, expecting another 12–24 hours ahead of me.

Everyone else in the house was asleep. I was downstairs in the living room of my parents’ house, pacing through contractions in the quiet dark. The lights were off except for the glow of a single lamp.

As I worked through each contraction on my own, I secretly hoped the baby would come quickly and I wouldn’t make it to the hospital. I wanted to have this baby at home so badly. I knew it likely wasn’t the path for this birth, but there was still a small part of me hoping it would happen too fast for anyone to stop it.

With each contraction, I would start timing it and begin pacing the hallway, looping from one end of the living room to the other. The contractions were lasting forty-five seconds to a minute. During each one, I would take a breath in and blow it out slowly through pursed lips, picturing pixie dust leaving with my breath.

I imagined blowing the pain away.

That visual became an incredible coping mechanism for me during this labor. I've ended up using it in every labor that followed.

After about an hour and a half, the contractions were a minute long and five minutes apart. I couldn’t talk through them anymore. All of my focus had to turn inward.

I called my midwife. She spoke with me for a few minutes and then gently suggested that I come in to be checked. I suspect she knew I wasn’t coming into the hospital to simply be checked, and sent back home. This was likely her calm, non-invasive way of making sure I arrived before it truly became too late.

I woke my husband and let my parents know it was time so they could stay with our toddler, who was fast asleep. We left for the hospital around 12:30 a.m. on Monday morning.

I remembered a tip a friend had given me during my first birth: “Ask for the room with the jacuzzi tub. You’ll want it for pain management.”

At that time, St. Mary’s was the only hospital in town delivering babies, and only one labor and delivery room had a tub. The rest had showers only.

I hadn’t loved the tub during my first birth, but that was partly because I hadn’t gotten the actual room with the tub. I’d ended up in what felt like a utility closet off the hallway — a shared tub space that never felt secure. I was constantly paranoid that someone would walk in. It didn’t feel safe or private.

This time, I was determined to ask for the real room.

When we arrived at Labor and Delivery, I asked the nurse if I could have the room with the tub.

She sighed. “Yes…however, the hot water on the entire floor is turned off for the next several hours. I’m so sorry.”

What.

I remember thinking, Wait. I left the cozy atmosphere where I was laboring so well…for this sterile, bright hospital…and there isn’t even hot water? I had at least assumed that would be one perk — endless hot water.

As it turned out, the labor and delivery wing was in the middle of a large remodel, and I had arrived on the exact night they needed to temporarily shut off the hot water.

I couldn’t believe it. I felt defeated.

My labor had been progressing beautifully at home. I was in rhythm, in my own space, coping well. I had only called the midwife out of good faith — to do my due diligence and check in. She suggested I come down to be checked. No big deal.

And now here I was, feeling stuck. Trapped, really.

Once in the brightly lit hospital room — complete with tub and no hot water — the nurse hooked me up to monitors. They wanted to observe the baby during a contraction. Standard hospital protocol.

We waited.

And waited.

And waited.

No contraction.

During that time, the nurse checked my dilation and looked surprised. “You’re already at a five…maybe even a six.”

She commented on how impressive it was given that I wasn’t having consistent contractions.

“But I was,” I told her. “Every five minutes at home. Lasting a full minute.”

She didn’t quite believe me.

Nearly forty-five minutes passed before I had another contraction.

After I had been there close to an hour — with only one or two contractions total — Ruth Ann came into the room. Not actually bulldozing, but it felt that way to me. Like a knight in shining armor.

“Megan,” she said gently but firmly, “let’s get you out of this bed. Off these monitors. Come on. I know this isn’t what you want.”

To have a provider advocate for you so clearly in such a vulnerable moment is indescribable.

She asked me what labor had looked like at home. I told her the lights were off except for one lamp. The house was quiet. I was pacing. Focused. Breathing through contractions that were five minutes apart and lasting a minute.

“Well,” she said, “let’s recreate what we can.”

She apologized again about the hot water, then turned off the overhead lights. She left only the bathroom light on and cracked the door so just a sliver of light filtered into the room. She brought in a birth ball so I could sit and rock through contractions.

I sat there in the dim room with my husband and Ruth Ann, feeling strangely self-conscious. Waiting for the next contraction felt like waiting for a watched pot to boil.

I could feel the psychological block in my mind.

So I started talking to myself quietly, internally.

It’s okay, Megan. You’re safe. She’s here for you, not against you. It’s okay.

Almost immediately after that little internal pep talk, a contraction came.

Seven minutes later, another.

Then another.

About every thirty minutes, a nurse would come in to monitor the baby. Instead of strapping me back into the bed, Ruth Ann had me stay seated on the birth ball while the nurse crouched next to me and held the monitors against my belly.

Every time the nurse left, there would be a lull. Ten or twelve minutes before the next contraction returned.

And all the while, Ruth Ann sat quietly in the dark corner of the room. She never left. She was a steady, calm presence. Not performing. Not directing. Just…there.

I’m tired of the overused phrase “holding space.” It feels like a buzzword. But that’s the closest description I have.

She held the room.

Around 5 a.m., a nurse came in, almost giddy, to tell us the hot water was back on. I could use the tub if I wanted.

My mind immediately went to: Use the tub. It’s the magic button.

So we had them start filling it.

This time I had brought a bathing suit so I wouldn’t feel so exposed. As soon as it was ready, I stepped in, fully believing this would be my ticket to a quick finish and a baby born any minute.

What I didn’t realize was that I was already in transition — the final stretch before pushing begins.

Within ten minutes of getting in, I felt intensely nauseous. I’ll spare you the details, but my beef and broccoli made a reappearance…in the tub.

Ruth Ann rushed in as soon as she heard me gagging. With so much tenderness she said, “Oh Megan…let’s get you out of there, honey,” and helped me up and out of the mess.

Second tub experience in labor: also not magical.

As she walked me toward the bed, another contraction hit — stronger than anything before it. I couldn’t move through it. I felt an overwhelming urge to push.

When it ended, it was clear. This baby was coming.

I climbed onto the bed intending to use the squat bar so I could birth in a squatting position. But before I could even turn around, another massive contraction surged through me.

I was on my side when it hit, and I started pushing instinctively.

I could feel the baby descending. The nurses quickly positioned my husband to catch the baby, like he had with our first.

I pushed again. I felt the head crown — and then it was out.

One more contraction, and the body began to slide free. Without thinking, I reached down and caught my baby myself.

Sorry, husband. That was the beginning of the end of you catching our babies.

It was the most intoxicating experience — catching my own child.

As I brought my baby up into my arms, that highly anticipated newborn baby cry let loose.

We checked quickly. Our second boy!

He was born around 5:30 a.m.

The rest unfolded just as smoothly. I delivered the placenta without issue. No stitches were needed. And then, almost unbelievably, the staff quietly left the room.

They gave us space.

For about forty minutes, it was just the three of us. I lay there, unfiltered and undone, learning to nurse this brand-new baby. He hadn’t been taken from me. Not once. From the moment I pulled him to my chest, he stayed there, untouched by everyone.

I remember being in disbelief.

No one whisked him away to weigh him. No rushing. No scrubbing him down. No slapping a hat on his head. No immediate transfer to our room on the mother and baby unit.

Just us.

In the sacredness that exists in those first moments after birth.

Even now, more than eighteen years later, I get chills thinking about it. That kind of reverence, in a hospital setting no less.

I know these experiences can happen in hospitals — I just told you mine did. But I also know they aren’t the standard. My goal isn't to criticize the system. I’m simply acknowledging how rare and sacred that moment felt inside a traditionally sterile, protocol-driven environment.

And I credit Ruth Ann for that.

She saw what I longed for and did everything she could to recreate it within the constraints of where we were.

I have nothing but deep respect for her.

The Sacred Crossing

Birth marks a woman. The first time. The second time. The eighth time. It shapes something in her. She cannot pass through it unchanged — even if she never consciously names what shifted.

I believe it happens all the way down to the cellular level.

One of my biggest realizations from this labor was watching how fluidly my body moved at home — and how dramatically it stalled the moment I entered the hospital.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. My body simply perceived risk.

Once I recognized that, I was able to speak to myself differently. You’re safe. You are not in danger.

And my body responded.

It made me realize how powerful the subconscious mind is. How fiercely the body works to protect us — according to whatever definition of safety we are carrying, consciously or not.

Whew.

I knew this one would be long. It really is impossible for me to tell a short birth story. There are so many layers woven into birth.

Birth happens on sacred ground. A woman is literally bringing life into the world. Because it’s such a common occurrence in the broad sense, it’s easy to forget how profound it is. And yet for each woman, it happens only a finite number of times in her lifetime.

That alone feels weighty.

I could talk about birth endlessly. Truly. Ask anyone in my inner circle and they’ll tell you it’s one of my favorite topics. I marvel at it. These first two stories have been incredibly dear to share because they tell the story of my children moving from being with “just me” in pregnancy…to being shared with the world on the other side of birth. Every birth story carries that kind of gravity.

And there is something sacred about that crossing.

I’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with what to do next. Whether to continue sharing the remaining birth stories here. Whether an inbox is the right container for them.

Because the rest of these stories — including one that holds significant loss — carry a different kind of depth. They deserve more than a screen of words

They deserve tone. Eye contact. The quiet in a room. The ability to pause. To respond. To feel the air shift together.

So the rest of my birth stories won’t live here in email. They will be told in person, in a space intentionally created for them.

I’m still discerning what that space looks like. A gathering. An evening. A room of women willing to sit on sacred ground together.

But I know this much: those stories need a shared room — not just a one-way send.

If and when that space is created, you’ll be the first to know. If this idea excites you, click here to silently raise your hand.

Just Me isn’t going anywhere. There are still stories to tell — just not all of them belong in an inbox.

Dear Reader, thank you for sitting in this one with me. I never take that lightly.

With gratitude,

— Just [Me]gan

If you regularly enjoy this email series, would you please share it? Forward it. Whisper about it over coffee. I’d be grateful. ❤️