Welcome, Christine, to the Yin-care® podcast.
I’m so happy to have you here today, and just truly honored to share your story of your mothering journey with your son, Max, with our audience. So thank you for being here.
Christine: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Margaret: I’m excited. Absolutely, yeah. Really wonderful. Um, Christine has such a touching and tender story about Max’s short life.
But, you know, it… very interesting mothering journey, for sure. And what I would really love is if you would start by sharing Max’s full name, because we really want to honor what he brought here, what he came for, who he was, and through that it’s expressed in his name. So let’s, let’s honor his name, and then maybe you can start by sharing [00:01:00] what your journey was for your…
Like, before you were pregnant, what was your life like? What was Christine’s life before Max? Just to give us a flavor of that, and what led into your pregnancy all of your hopes and dreams, where you were at with that, and then what your pregnancy was like. Okay?
Christine: Yeah, sure. Um, so my first child was Maxwell Kristian Bovenmyer.
Mm-hmm. Um, Kristian with a K. Yeah. And he came into our lives a few short months after my husband and I were married. Um- Mm-hmm … I think we were three months into our marriage when I got pregnant, and it was a huge shock for me. I- Yeah … did not… I was 27, but I was… I did not feel ready. So-
Margaret: And where were you guys living?[00:02:00]
Christine: Uh, we were living in Ames, Iowa.
Margaret: Okay.
Christine: In central Iowa. I had a pretty sheltered upbringing where I didn’t do a lot of exploring or rebelling in high school. And so, those first years when I was meeting my husband and when we were married, that… I was, like, in that phase of life- … where my husband was in a band, and so we did a lot of going out and listening to music or, you know, supporting him playing music, and there was a lot of drinking involved in that.
And, um, it was not something I did in high school, and so this was kind of like that period of my life where I was doing all the things and trying everything out. And so when I got pregnant, it was a huge shock. I was not at all prepared for this. And I remember thinking I didn’t want this to, like, change my life drastically.
Like, I wanted to be able to enjoy my life and [00:03:00] have fun and things like that along with a child. And so yeah, a lot of my visions for being a parent were very different from what I was seeing around me.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And maybe not in the… Like, looking back on it, I’m like, I’m not sure that was, would’ve been a healthy way to raise a kid anyway. Mm-hmm. But whatever. Like,
Margaret: what do you mean? Like, to elaborate a little bit on that.
Christine: Um, just like-
Margaret: What were you seeing and what were you noticing were the juxtapositions of what
Christine: you
Margaret: did
Christine: and didn’t want?
I th- I think at the time I was seeing a lot of structured, like, this is bedtime, and we don’t go out past this time, and we don’t do these kind of things because our life revolves around our children.
Margaret: Got it. And,
Christine: Yeah. I think part of me just wasn’t really ready to give up that independence and-
Margaret: Right
Christine: um, so that probably was [00:04:00] just my, yeah, immaturity.
Margaret: For sure. Um,
Christine: not ready to be a parent yet. So that whole pregnancy was just me kind of coming to terms with and I wanted to- Mm … I wanted to be in this consciously. Mm-hmm. Like, I wanted to be engaged. I wanted this baby to feel loved. Mm. And, and so, like, I felt like I needed to get myself together even like early on so that I could really yeah, just cultivate a love for and make sure this baby, like, felt loved and appreciated and everything we want as humans and what we need to thrive.
Mm … yeah. And so I ended up finding, My husband and I kinda talked before we got pregnant that we wanted to have a home birth, and I, you know, I was not ever… I hadn’t been in the medical world for anything really. I went to the [00:05:00] doctor for- Regular stuff growing up, but I probably hadn’t been to the doctor in several years at that point.
I mean, I was a pretty healthy person, so I didn’t have a need for that. And just really feel like birth is not something that needs to be- Mm-hmm … medicalized. Like, it’s not a disease. It’s not anything abnormal. So just really trying to honor that natural and-
Margaret: And were you raised, like, a with more natural inclinations around medical or just natural lifestyle or anything?
Or it’s just something that you intuitively, that’s just part of who you are really, that you came, were coming into?
Christine: Yeah. ~I, ~I think it was more just something I was coming into. I wouldn’t say that’s how I was raised. Definitely my parents took me to the doctor when I was sick.
I had antibiotics when
Margaret: ~they- What about your, ~what about your ex-husband?
How was… I mean, just to get a flavor ~for everybody, like, what your, what it ~[00:06:00] of what the whole thing, picture was like.
Christine: Yeah. My ex-husband probably was raised a little more like that. I think six of the seven kids in his family were born in the home. Mm. Okay. So that was… And he was a middle child, so he definitely witnessed some home births when he was young.
So yeah, that, I mean, that kind of flavored things, but- Yeah, it was definitely something that I was kinda coming into too. And the midwife that we found was absolutely wonderful, and I… the book recommendations that she had for during the pregnancy period- Mm-hmm … were just epic for preparing me for- Wow
what was gonna happen.
Margaret: Um- No way. That’s awesome …
Christine: I remember reading the book, I highly recommend to anyone who’s pregnant, uh, it’s called Baby Catchers.
Margaret: Mm.
Christine: Baby Catcher.
Just all kinds of birth stories of all different kinds of outcomes to just kind of [00:07:00] help you see the full flavor of what is possible- Right
with birth, and to help, it helped me really, um, yeah, just prepare to hold space for whatever was, was going to be coming. And also just see a lot of, I mean, most of them are home birth stories. Mm-hmm. Some of them were, uh, hospital birth. But yeah, just to kinda, since I was not a person who was raised seeing home births- or with that as the normal at all it was really good for me to just read those stories and, and get that experience of this normal, natural process that the body goes through and how we all come into life. Mm-hmm. Um, so that was really amazing. She also, my midwife also really opened me up to herbals and a lot of different kind of natural, different natural treatments and modalities and- yeah, just gave [00:08:00] me a lot of empowerment as far as what testing we were doing. She was a nurse midwife, so she could’ve prescribed, uh, or, you know, ordered an ultrasound and all the things. But she was really good about just discussing, like, “Hey, you can do this ultrasound. It’s gonna show you these things, and you need to decide, are you gonna…
is it gonna change anything?” Like-
…
Christine: This ultrasound might tell you that your child has Down syndrome, but is it gonna change the outcome-
Margaret: Right …
Christine: of your choices? And so that was really cool to me to see, like, no, I’m not gonna do anything differently, and actually, I might just have more anxiety throughout the rest of my pregnancy- if I have that awareness beforehand. Mm-hmm. And just also speaking into, like, if we really were meant to know if our child was a boy or a girl there would be a window into the womb, and we would be able to [00:09:00] see. God would’ve given that, Mm-hmm … that capacity for us to know. And so that was really cool and empowering to me to even kind of tune into my own intuition.
Like- Mm-hmm … did I feel like it was a girl or a boy or so-
Margaret: And let me, let me just touch on this really quick just to kind of help color it maybe a little bit more. I mean, you and I know each other because we’ve met in, um, Z’s Womb Container and, or in Earth Star Academy. I think you w- you were in the Womb Container, right?
Christine: Yes.
Margaret: Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. So I mean, we have this connection of being in a spiritual community and speaking knowing that we both share, um, a belief in God. And so I’m just wondering what your… but this was all recent, well after all of this happened for you. What was your faith or your belief at that point in time?
Or what, how had you been raised? That would [00:10:00] be important for everyone, I think, probably to know.
Christine: Yeah. I was raised very like evangelical Christian, born again Christian- Mm-hmm … kind of flavor. And so my idea of God was very much masculine loving, but j- but that judgment piece was pretty important, I guess.
Mm-hmm. And at that time in my life, I’d been through a, I’d kinda just passed through some pretty significant religious trauma- Okay … with some individuals in a church that I had been involved in. So th- and that’s what led to this, like, rebellious period for me- Mm … where I just wanted to get away from Christians.
I wanted to get away from this idea of God that I had- Mm-hmm … with me that I had been raised with. So, yeah, that was definitely coloring this whole period of my life. But I always, I think I always had a [00:11:00] sense that there was something greater than me out there.
It didn’t feel like it
resonated with the God that I was seeing being portrayed in a lot of the churches I’d been involved in. But I did… I just wanted to have a community where people loved and Cared for each other in a non-judgmental way. Yeah, right.
Margaret: 100%.
Christine: And yeah, it’s kinda hard to find.
Margaret: It’s very hard to find in multiple communities.
Yeah. That’s a whole nother conversation, right?
Christine: Right. I mean, we are human, so- Right … I mean, we all, I think we all have those judgments, and yeah, it’s hard to kinda check that and be aware of it. So like, it’s valid that that’s, it’s not common because it’s [00:12:00] hard when we’re human, but-
Margaret: Definitely.
Yeah …
Christine: um, hopefully it’s something we’re striving for and working towards.
Margaret: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of people that are waking up to that whole you know, the, the, um, well, God, what do you even call it? Like the distance almost, like the distance that we are from really knowing and being in alignment with God and the teachings of God in multiple communities.
It’s not just like an evangelical Christian community. It’s in, it’s rampant in many, many Christian, Jewish, like all community, even the New Age community. Like, there’s all … And it, I don’t think it’s actually, personally don’t feel like it’s an innate thing. But it’s something that we are just culturally entrained to, to be judgmental, and it’s like we have to like train ourselves to get out of that.
And I do think that people are waking up in a [00:13:00] lot of those communities and sharing, like exposing it for what it is, which is good. Yeah. But I think that’s important for people to know just that because things get pretty hard pretty quickly for you. And so ~knowing, ~knowing that you’ve got some level of of faith or knowledge or understanding, like deep inner knowing intuition and connection with a divine presence, I think probably is a good backdrop for everything, right?
Christine: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Margaret: Yeah. Okay. So then wh- So you, so you, you get pregnant pretty quickly and and your husband’s open to this, um, to having a home birth. You find a midwife. You’re well on your way to getting educated about and getting comfortable with. I feel like you have this incredible blog that you end up writing later on in your journey, and I feel like in the little side bio [00:14:00] that you express that you had maybe been meditating throughout your pre- your pregnancy.
Is that correct?
Christine: Yeah, that was actually- Tell
Margaret: us about that …
Christine: that was actually when I pursued or, or started, trying to meditate. It was very new to me, and at that time, that was 2011. Mm-hmm. So there wasn’t Insight Timer and- … like all these YouTube… I feel like there’s meditations all over the web right now.
If you- Mm … if you want a guided meditation, you can find anything.
Thousands of different places. But at the time, uh, or I didn’t know where to find it.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: I didn’t know how to search right. But so it was not something that was readily available to me. Mm-hmm. I think there were a few written out meditations that were in some of the book recommendations that my midwife had recommended.
I was doing birth affirmations- [00:15:00] Mm-hmm … kinda saying, talking through those periodically. Yeah, so just kind of like unlocking this kind of a little more mystical side of spirituality, which had- Mm … totally been foreign to me and in my religious upbringing. So it was very new to me.
It was very, very explorative there. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, I really, I understood the importance of keeping my, myself stress-free or as l- it’s not possible. But- … helping me keep my stress level down for the health of me and my baby and- Mm-hmm … so that was my big priority there. Just preparing myself physically, mentally, and spiritually for this birth.
Margaret: And were you connecting, were you also consciously connecting with Max, like in womb, in utero? Or was it more just getting to connect with yourself, like, for the first time,
Christine: yeah. It, I think it was [00:16:00] a little both. I definitely did… I don’t feel like I heard from him. Mm-hmm. But I definitely, like, communicated to him.
And you know, like those insecurities after I first got pregnant I just really wanted to reassure him that- I was gonna love him, like regardless of when he came along. And so I, I did a lot of those kind of like talking to him and and especially towards the end just saying, “Whenever you’re ready, I’m so excited to meet you,” these kind of things.
Mm. Yeah.
Margaret: Cool.
Christine: Yeah.
Margaret: That’s awesome.
Christine: And I, the whole time, the whole time I felt like it was a girl. I felt like it was gonna be a girl the whole time. Oh my gosh. And I don’t know if that part of me just really wanted a girl and so that’s why I was- Uh-huh … I was feeling like it was a girl. But I also feel like Maxwell had a pretty feminine spirit to him.
Not that… [00:17:00] Obviously he’s fully, fully male and was born into a male body, but just had some softness to him I guess- Right … that we generally think of a little more feminine. Mm-hmm. So maybe that’s what I was sensing too.
Margaret: That’s awesome. That’s really cool. So okay, so then you move into like it’s time to basically…
Is there anything else in the pregnancy? Like, i- things were going well. Any hiccups, anything? Yeah. I mean,
Christine: the pregnancy was completely normal. I had no reason at any point to believe that anything was out of the ordinary.
Like, granted, we didn’t do all the ultrasounds and tests and things like that, but there wasn’t anything that suggested that they would be necessary.
Margaret: Right.
Christine: That they would have
Margaret: any- And you’re, and you’re 27. You’re young. Yeah. Like, yeah. Mm-hmm. Exactly.
Christine: Healthy. Yep.
Margaret: Totally.
Christine: Um, so yeah, I went into labor, and it was pretty, pretty normal [00:18:00] labor. I had my mother-in-law there kind of supporting me. Death, or more birth doulas were kind of a thing, but they weren’t as available as they are now.
Mm-hmm. So I knew she had done home births herself, and she had supported other women through birth. So maybe she wasn’t- Mm-hmm … a, a certified doula, but she had plenty of experience. So yeah, she was supporting me. And the one thing that was a little risky with my birth was that I lived about a half hour away from my midwife.
Um, so it’s kind of the edge of her field of where she would work.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And the other thing was our hospital, our local hospital that was right in town, was very close. However, they did not have a physician, an OBGYN on call in the hospital.
Margaret: Okay.
Christine: They would have 30 minutes [00:19:00] to present to the hospital, ’cause they weren’t in house the physician that was on call.
Yeah, labor went pretty normal. My midwife came. I… This is very gray area for me, ’cause obviously there’s some anxiety and stuff going on, but I can’t remember if when my midwife got there, like she had the Doppler and she was checking the heart tones of me, like she was checking my pulse and baby.
Mm-hmm. And I’m not sure if it was from the, right from the time that she got there, like the first heartbeat check, or if it was like a little while later. But Max’s ~heart tone, ~heartbeats, ~heart tones were ~were slow. And I, at the time I was a pretty avid runner, so I had a pretty slow pace myself.
Mm-hmm. So when I heard the nurse saying that the baby’s pulse was slower than mine, because they were having- Mm … a little hard [00:20:00] time telling, “Is this mom’s or is this baby’s?”
Margaret: Right. ”
Christine: That’s mom’s. Baby’s is slower.” I remember those words. ~”That’s mom’s. Baby’s is slower.” ~So that’s when I knew, like, something serious was going on.
Margaret: Mm.
Christine: And we tried, like, all the different positions. shifting around to get baby into a better position, me into a better position.
Margaret: And how, how, were your contractions coming pretty quickly at this point, or no?
Christine: Yeah. They were pretty quickly. I was starting to try to push, but I didn’t feel like the pushing was very effective.
Margaret: Right.
Christine: And my midwife had kinda coached me that, you know, “Hey, baby’s struggling a little bit. Maybe we should try pushing a little bit more too.” Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, I just didn’t feel like it, it was effective. Um, so anyway, through all that, we decided that it was, it was time to move. And when I got to the hospital they took me up right up to the the delivery unit.
And, [00:21:00] um, ~I h- have, ~I don’t have much memory from the time- Wow … I got to the ER to- Mm-hmm … when Maxwell was born. But The things I, I do remember and the things I’ve kinda ascertained from discussions with my midwife were that they, the hospital staff weren’t treating it as urgent- Mm-hmm … as we already knew that it was.
Margaret: Got it.
Christine: So they were just treating this as, “Oh, this is a home birth. They shouldn’t have been at home.” Like, these kind of things. And-
Margaret: Wow …
Christine: and at that point it was already like, this is urgent.
Margaret: And so was there an OB there at that time, or did they arrive to meet you, or-
Christine: He did arrive. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. I… The times are pretty gray to me. That’s okay. No worries. So it felt pretty instantaneous to me. Mm-hmm. It felt like he got there pretty quickly. But after talking to my midwife, it just [00:22:00] seemed like for her it felt like forever.
Um- Got it … so yeah, I just remember them trying to get an IV in my arm, and I was like, that is not necessary. We’re beyond this. Like, I don’t need an IV. I just need- Right … to get the baby out.”
Margaret: Like
Christine: baby’s- And were,
Margaret: were they talking of cesarean then at this point, or no?
Christine: Mm-hmm. They were shaving my lower belly. Oh. Mm-hmm. And that, and that’s where, that’s the other thing that I was like, “No, I’m pushing this baby out.” Mm. Like, “We’re not gonna do a cesarean. We’re gonna-”
Margaret: So you were committed regardless as to… Like they were toying with it, but they weren’t pushing that on you, or what was-
Christine: Yeah.
I mean, I think they were preparing for it, but- Got it … yeah, I was already pushing.
Margaret: Got it.
Christine: The doctor wasn’t there. Mm-hmm. Right. So maybe if the doctor had been there they would’ve- I see … gone ahead with the cesarean, and I probably would’ve consented just because I- I was worried about [00:23:00] my baby.
Margaret: 100%, I get it.
Yeah.
Christine: Um, and so when the doctor got there, like he was so regulated, and I am so grateful for his presence.
Margaret: Oh, good. That’s amazing.
Christine: He came in and he said, “We’re gonna have a baby.” And he got the vacuum and, did the vacuum thing. And I didn’t feel like I was doing any of the pushing, but he said, he told me that I did.
He said, “No, my vacuum popped off. You did that all by yourself.”
Margaret: Wow.
Christine: And I was like, “Okay, whatever. It didn’t feel like that to me.” But anyway, yeah, he came in with a very regulated presence and just kinda calmed m- the whole situation-
…
Christine: At least one level. Um…
Margaret: And what was your, um, husband at the time doing?
Was he freaking out? Was he- I, honestly, I don’t remember … doing the,
Christine: don’t
Margaret: remember? Okay. ~Just curious. I’m ~just curious. Yeah.
Christine: [00:24:00] Yeah. I know he was there, and I know we were in it together and but I, I don’t have any sense of like actually what he was doing. I just remember, yeah, when, when they got Max out, they plopped him on my chest just for a split second, and he was gray.
Margaret: Wow.
Christine: And I was so, yeah, just shocked.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: So for a split second he was there, the next second he was on the table being resuscitated. And, you know, at this point I didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. We didn’t have a name like definitely picked out. Mm-hmm. Um, and so there was just this, I don’t know, we were probably all just holding our breath.
Margaret: Right.
And was he in the same room while they were resuscitating him, or did they move him?
Christine: He was in the same room. Yep. Mm-hmm. They got, I think they got him stable, [00:25:00] and I don’t know if they had- intubated him before they took him out. They did end up, he was breathing on his own, but it wasn’t, like, a steady breathing, so they did intubate him shortly after he was resuscitated.
But yeah, the doctor had done an episiotomy, I think, just to get him out faster. And so he was stitching me up, and I just remember I was in such shock that I didn’t really feel anything until I felt everything.
Margaret: Oh.
Christine: And then I was like, that lidocaine isn’t working. Right. Like, I feel everything.
Margaret: Oh, God, that’s so brutal. Are
Christine: you done? That
Margaret: is brutal.
Christine: And yeah. So I think about that time, they had taken Max out to kind of maybe, maybe intubate him, maybe get him stable somehow, and they were talking about transporting him to [00:26:00] Des Moines, to the bigger hospital- Mm-hmm … where they had a NICU and a specialist and stuff.
So, yeah. Mm-hmm. Then my husband left in the ambulance with him, and it, it, it was just- Oh, my gosh … the whole way through, it was just shocking. Like, I remember them taking Max into my room to, like, say goodbye before they left, and I had expected this, like, the little isolette- Mm-hmm
with the open top, and I was just gonna, you know, grab his little finger and say goodbye. But he was in this, like, literal box. Like it was- Oh … all enclosed. And-
…
Christine: I, you know, –
Margaret: Oh, I’m so
Christine: sorry … I just, I couldn’t even see him-
Margaret: My goodness …
Christine: hardly through all the, like, stuff and tubes and everything. And yeah, so it was just very shocking for me.
And
[00:27:00] Yeah, I guess the thing that I didn’t mention before that is pretty valid and pretty what’s the word I’m looking for?
I don’t know.
Margaret: Rele- relevant, important?
Christine: Yes. The thing I didn’t mention that is pretty relevant is the dreams that I was having during my pregnancy.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And the fears. I was never afraid of birth, of labor pains- Mm-hmm … of birth. I really was only afraid of having a child with special needs.
I
Margaret: Actually, I remember I did read that in your blog. The, there was one, uh, you were in like… Were you doing a prenatal yoga class or something too? And the tell us… The woman had said “God will not give you more than you can handle,” and you thought… I’ll let you fill in the blank.
Christine: Yeah. In my yoga class, this was a, an amazing yoga class where we were in there was a period before every class that we were encouraged to like discuss any fears and concerns that were coming up. Mm-hmm. And yeah, I remember something [00:28:00] coming up at one of the classes, and, and my yoga teacher telling me that, God or nature will never give you anything that you can’t handle.
But God or nature will, will give you the capacity to handle it to- together.
And so that’s just how I dealt with it. I was like I can’t handle having a child with special needs, so that’s not what I’m gonna be given because I can’t handle that.” Mm-hmm. And obviously-
Margaret: And your dreams were reflecting this as well?
Christine: My dreams were were kind of, yeah, along those lines too. I just remember having one specific dream of having twins- … where I was literally, like, breastfeeding one, then breastfeeding the other, and like- Oh,
Margaret: wow …
Christine: constant, all the time. And I didn’t, it didn’t even [00:29:00] connect until I was, in it, but I was breastfeeding.
I was pumping round the clock. Not round the clock, but I was breastfeeding, and then I was feeding via G tube. And so the time it took me to breastfeed and the time it took me to do the tube feeding, then it was, like, almost time to pump again. And- Mm-hmm … and then, so it did have- It
Margaret: Was like having twins in a sense.
Christine: It did have that same kind of- Mm-hmm … idea of, like, this is all I’m doing is just feeding a baby or babies Mm-hmm … in my case, it was only one. But yeah.
Margaret: Interesting.
Christine: I think there was another dream, too, that was really… Oh, yes. Yes. I remember having a dream where I was walking through, like, a shopping mall.
I’m not really a shopping mall person, so that was kind of weird. But I was walking through the [00:30:00] shopping mall, and I was carrying this, like, seven-year-old child.
And just this huge child and, like, carrying them, and struggling under the weight of this. And I didn’t connect any of this when I was pregnant.
It was all, like, after the fact, like, oh, yeah. And there were a lot of moments in Max’s life that it did feel like a struggle to be carrying this child. Not… Obviously, I wasn’t physically carrying him anymore at seven, but just, like, supporting him was a struggle. And, you know, looking back on it I really wish I didn’t feel like that.
I wish I could have lived in the, in the joys a little bit more and found joy in, in the small things and the little things. But yeah, at the time, it [00:31:00] was… there were several moments of that overwhelm and that struggle.
Margaret: Oh, gosh, yeah, 100%.
Christine: So yeah, I feel like there were these little things that, that were- were preparing me and, like, helping me to get ready for what was to come.
And I just, I don’t know if I had blinders on or what, but,
Margaret: Well, sometimes we’re not meant to know. We’re just not meant to know all the details, right?
Christine: Yeah.
Margaret: It’s
Christine: the- And it was, yeah. Mm. It was probably just the, a little teaser that I needed and-
Margaret: Yeah,
Christine: 100% … it was just that, that God was talking to me or Max was talking to me or, and preparing-
Margaret: Pre- yeah, preparing you.
Exactly. Yeah … even
Christine: those little small ways.
So yeah, I can’t remember where we were
Margaret: ~So, ~so he was off to the hospital with his dad, and you were left in the initial hospital. And so then what happened? Like, how… Did you stay there? Did you get [00:32:00] transported yourself? Like, what happened next there?
Christine: Yeah, I think they did discharge me early, earlier than probably a typical birth. But it was torture for me to, like It just heart-wrenching- Mm-hmm … to be there without my husband, without my-
Margaret: Yeah, of course …
Christine: baby. And-
Margaret: Was your mother-in-law with you or anyone?
Christine: ~My mother was there at that point.~
~There- Okay … ~I mean, there was always someone with me.
Margaret: Right.
Christine: I think my mother-in-law might have gone home ’cause she had stayed up all night, and then when my mom got there from out of town Then they kind of switched places.
Margaret: Sure.
Christine: So yeah, I was never alone, but it was still, very heart-wrenching just to- Mm
be there without my baby and, and to be getting in the car and, and having people carry all these things for me when I just felt like I should have been carrying my baby.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: Like, yes, you carry all these other things so that I can [00:33:00] carry my baby, but I don’t have
Margaret: him. Ugh, God.
Christine: And so it just felt very unnatural for me,
Margaret: Absolutely
Christine: that whole process. And we lived about the next month in the Ronald McDonald House right across the street from the Children’s Hospital in Des Moines. And yeah, we-
Margaret: Were basically-
Christine: It
Margaret: was a- … in
Christine: the NICU- It was a very
Margaret: s- 20. Were
Christine: you guys doing- It was a very slow healing process for me …
Margaret: were you guys doing shifts watching him or were you both going together or?
Christine: We kind of, we did both. Okay. I think in the beginning we were both very exhausted from that, the whole process. Mm-hmm. And so we were s- sleeping at night and going to spend the days with him.
Margaret: But
Christine: then he was having really rough nights.
And then the days would be great. He… We did kangaroo care all the time. [00:34:00] Pretty much all the time. Like-
Margaret: And tell people what kangaroo care is in case they don’t-
Christine: Yeah. Kangaroo care is amazing. It’s… There’s a lot of research done on it and on preemies, NICU babies, but it’s just getting the skin to skin with mom and baby.
So, like, mom usually has a shirt on like a button down shirt. Open up the shirt, put the baby on the chest naked, just a diaper- mm-hmm … and then kind of close that shirt up so mom has more privacy. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, it helps regulate heartbeat, it helps reduce the work of breathing- Mm-hmm
and helps babies regulate their temperature. Um, so it
Margaret: And did you suggest that or did the staff suggest it or?
Christine: We kind of pushed for it.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: It was the fifth day he was there, which was our wedding anniversary actually.
Margaret: Wow.
Christine: So Max was [00:35:00] born just five days before our first wedding anniversary.
And ’cause we had been introduced to kangaroo care and baby wearing and stuff like that through my midwife. And my midwife came to check on me. She came to the children’s hospital to check on me, and she had really helped us, kinda advocated for us to get that, um, s- that skin-to-skin, that holding.
And it’s probably something I wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking for myself at the time. But To… ‘Cause we just felt like he was so fragile that like- Mm-hmm … oh, we can’t hold him ’cause he’s fragile, which doesn’t make any sense. Like, absolutely the be- They, they put ’em,
Margaret: they put them in like a in a kind of incubator- Yeah
kind of thing, right? So you feel like they’re fragile because of that. You
Christine: feel like, like you can’t touch him, but absolutely the best thing the… There’s no better thing- … than for a parent to be holding that baby, especially [00:36:00] skin-to-skin.
Margaret: Right.
Christine: And so on her l- with her advocation we kinda were able to do that that day.
So that was a really special gift and from that point on, it was like every day, like, we’re doing this skin-to-skin, and we did almost every day, which was huge. ‘Cause we saw his, his oxygen, every time he was skin-to-skin, w- they turned his oxygen down, almost to room air. The last, last couple weeks, it was like we turn him down to room air when he’s skin-to-skin.
When we put him back down, then we turn him back up to two or whatever he was at. And yeah, his temperature was so much better regulated, and just ev- Mm-hmm … just everything. Like, you could just tell his body- Mm-hmm … was so much more relaxed when he was with one of us.
Margaret: That’s amazing. Was he able to nurse at all on his own, or was it the whole time he had to have a feeding tube?
Christine: Yeah. He was never able [00:37:00] to nurse. We did do a swallow study at one point to test ~if his, ~if he could swallow safe enough to get it- Mm … into his stomach as opposed to his lungs. And he did okay with purees, but the milk, just because it’s a little more thin, it was never, we never felt like it was safe enough- Right
for him to have that, um, by mouth.
Margaret: So how does that work? Give everybody an idea as to what you did as a mom to, like, make that happen, because that’s pretty unusual in a NICU unit to do that.
Christine: Just the pumping or-
Margaret: Y- pumping and then how did they feed him? How did…
What was the… what did it… Give us an idea as to what that looked like and what-
Christine: Yeah …
Margaret: yeah, what that was like. Um- And for everybody who doesn’t know what NICU, NICU is neonatal intensive care unit.
Christine: Yeah, so [00:38:00] first he had a tube through his nose- … that goes all the way down his throat and into his stomach.
Margaret: Okay.
Christine: So it just kind of bypasses that whole mechanism for swallowing and pushes it directly into the stomach.
Margaret: Okay.
Christine: And, um, they do the one through the nose for a lot of NICU babies because it’s a temporary thing. And sometimes babies will nurse through their mouth, and then they’ll have the tube through their nose so that they can, They can get extra nutrition.
Right … with preemies, I think it wears them out a lot to, to do this, the work of sucking and swallowing.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And their bodies are just not as mature. Mm-hmm. And so they need to get that, the calories to help them- … like gain the strength to swallow more. And so they say they kinda have the feeding tube, and they slowly wean off the feeding tube- Mm
and primarily to, yeah, breast or [00:39:00] bottle. With Max, since we couldn’t really verify, and because he had significant, he had a significant brain injury during that birth process, and so he really,
Margaret: and w- was that due to lack of oxygen then, the brain injury specifically? Yes. Or… Okay.
Christine: Yeah. They call it hypoxic ischemic
Margaret: encephalopathy. Mm-hmm.
Christine: So hypoxic is, like, lack of oxygen.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: Ischemic is, like, the blood’s not flowing to the brain-
…
Christine: Because of that lack of oxygen. And then the ~encephal- ~encephalopathy is, like, a swelling of the brain.
Mm-hmm. It’s because the brain’s not getting the nutrients, the oxygen that it needs, it kind of, inflames- Mm-hmm … as with any illness, it kind of inflames. When it pushes against the sides of the skull- … then it that outer part that’s pushing against the skull gets damaged-
Margaret: Got
Christine: it … from that pressure.
[00:40:00] Sorry, that’s all my
Margaret: No. That’s good. That’s good for everybody to, to know. Yeah, 100%.
Christine: Yeah. So, yeah, because he had that brain injury he wasn’t developing the way we would typically see a, a baby develop. He didn’t- Mm-hmm … have that kind of suck swallow reflex that babies have.
And so I think breastfeeding would’ve been hard anyway. It… Like, breastfeeding would’ve, would’ve been a big ask even if we had determined that he had a safe swallow, just because there’s a lot of mechanism that they have to, draw the milk out of the breasts- Mm-hmm … as opposed to, like, a bottle will just kind of, will slowly drip into their mouth if, if they have a higher flow nipple or something.
Margaret: Right.
Christine: But yeah, because they didn’t expect him to be able [00:41:00] to feed orally we opted to put in a permanent G-tube- … a gastrostomy tube- … which is just a little tube that goes in through the stomach. It has a little button that you kinda ha- pop it open, you stick the tube in, kinda lock it in place, and then it’s attached to a syringe where we would pour the milk in through the syringe.
Mm-hmm. It would kinda gravity flow into the stomach. And,
Margaret: And is that coming out of on his body?
Christine: It will just go right into the stomach, directly into
Margaret: the stomach. No, but, but on the outside, where was it located? Just to give-
…
Margaret: An idea. Was it- At
Christine: the lower-
Margaret: in his chest? Was it down low? Is it, you know?
Christine: Yeah left, lower left side of his belly.
Margaret: Okay,
Christine: yeah. Or was it my right? Now I can’t remember which side it was on. It was kinda located just to [00:42:00] one side of the belly button. We always talked about it as
Margaret: the- Oh, really? …
Christine: second belly button.
Margaret: Okay.
Christine: With the younger kids.
When the other two came along, we talked about it as his second belly button. But yeah, so that’s how we fed him. For the first three weeks we did all the NG tube, like, the same thing. We attached a syringe, poured the milk through, and let it flow gravity-like. And for the last week, after he got his permanent gastrostomy tube, Then it was, yeah, directly into his stomach, and yeah, just that same gravity flow- Mm-hmm
process.
Margaret: Got
Christine: it. Um, we did have a pump too that we used through the night. Mm-hmm. So to kinda pump, s- more slowly feed him. Like- Mm-hmm … he would just get fed kinda continuously all night long. So-
Margaret: And was that breast milk, or was that other nutrition?
Christine: It was still
Margaret: breast milk. It was breast milk?
Yeah. So was it exclusively [00:43:00] breast milk, or were they giving him other just nutrition?
Christine: Um, they, in the beginning they asked us to fortify his breast milk. So in order to give him a few extra calories- Mm-hmm … we’d mix a little bit of formula. Instead of with water, we’d mix it with the breast milk-
…
Christine: So that that breast milk would have a little higher density calories, just to kinda s- Mm-hmm
support his healing process-
…
Christine: With a little extra calories.
But yeah, other than that, he was exclusively breastfed for at least six months. I can’t remember when we started introducing some solids, but,
Margaret: One, one quick question about that, just to highlight. You mentioned that you mixed it with your breast milk.
Was that an idea that the hospital staff offered up, or did you come up with that idea and they agreed to it?
Christine: Yeah. [00:44:00] That was hospital-
Margaret: That’s great …
Christine: recommended.
Margaret: ~That’s awesome. ~That’s amazing.
Christine: Yeah. Even back in ~20- ~2010, 2011, they were, they were doing that.
Margaret: Very good.
Christine: I felt like we had pretty breastfeeding-friendly, facilities.
So they had lactation consultants that came in and talked to me about how to increase production. Mm-hmm. Um, because when you’re pumping, it’s just- Right … it’s just not the same. You don’t get the same- Mm-hmm … like biofeedback. Exactly … and so it’s just harder to keep that supply up. So- Yeah … she gave me a lot of good tips.
I think I was very strongly committed to breast milk. And so- Mm-hmm … if I had not been, I might have had different inter- interactions with staff along the way. But because I, it was something I was strongly committed to, I really wanted to do not only because I really wanted to do that for [00:45:00] my child, but I think especially since he had challenges, I knew that was going to be the best possible thing-
Margaret: Right
Christine: I could do for him. And so I was pretty strongly committed to it Yeah.
Margaret: That’s really amazing.
Christine: Mm-hmm.
Margaret: So how long does he end up staying at the hospital for before you get to bring him home?
Christine: He was there for four weeks.
Margaret: Okay.
Christine: And like I said, we were very eager to get him home at that point.
Yeah. And so we agreed to the surgery without the, you know, the gastrostomy tube surgery, without having a swallow study to prove that it was necessary. Because we really just wanted to be home. We wanted to have our, our child home.
Margaret: Yeah.
And there were stresses, having read some of your blog, there were some financial stresses [00:46:00] too.
You had, prior to having the baby your job w- disappeared, right? And then your husband was doing I want, wanna say some kind of outdoor landscaping or some type of work like this that was seasonal, so there was stresses on that. Plus he ended up supporting, like being there with you physically, so that decreased his, what would have been maybe more hours.
Christine: Yeah. And Max just ~really struggled with sleep the whole- Mm … his whole life. I felt like he ~really struggled with sleep, and so that was the biggest challenge in the first few months we had him home. Yeah, I always intended to be a stay-at-home mom for at least a few months after he was born, and so, when I quit my…
I was working in a coffee shop at the time. Mm. But when I quit my coffee shop job, yeah, I never really expected to go back. Also just felt like I, I wanted a change. [00:47:00] Like I, I wouldn’t have gone back there even if I had gone to work just ’cause I, I felt like it was time to move on. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, because ~o- ~one of us had to stay up with Max almost for most of the night.
Margaret: Right.
Christine: Um, we tried to alternate, so like he was up six hours, I was up six hours. You know, he’d stay up late, I’d get up early kind of thing. So that it wasn’t one person having to stay up all night. But it was still just, it didn’t put us in the place to-
…
Christine: Be really functional at a job- Mm
like the next day. And yeah, my husband was working doing groundskeeping for a- Like rental home rental company. And so, yeah, in the winter that kind of was not [00:48:00] an option anymore. And yeah.
Margaret: I just wanna draw attention to it only in that I don’t… I just wanna give voice to the fact that a lot of people don’t realize it can happen at the drop of a hat without planning, that these things come up.
And the stresses, the financial stresses are such a big piece of just being able to maintain yourself with gosh, with a sense of just somewhat sense of safety around just being able to be present. Like, it’s such an additional stress when you’re worried. You know, you’re also worried about the financials, and I, You know, ’cause every… I think people can imagine, they can’t, Nobody can understand what your experience has been like. But to layer on a financial stress on top of [00:49:00] that, it’s big. It’s just really big.
Christine: Yeah. And I will say, like, we had, I think we had at least $10,000 in the bank at the time of his birth.
Like, I felt like we were good. We were pretty stable. Mm-hmm. Um, but that money just went poof.
Margaret: Yeah.
Christine: Exactly. And I think, too, that we were, like, looking back on it we were physically exhausted. Emotionally exhausted in a physical way.
Margaret: Exactly.
Christine: Um, that exhaustion that comes from grief and guilt and, you know- All those emotions, fear, shame, like whatever,
Margaret: Why would you say shame?
Christine: I will say my midwife was wonderful. I’m so grateful for her and everything she spoke to me in those first few days. I remember her saying, “This kind of thing happens in the hospital all the time,” [00:50:00] and just really reassuring me that that my decisions and my choices would not have necessarily made a difference in the outcome of Max’s death Exactly.
And h- that being said, I think that part of me-
…
Christine: Was just so curious about what would have happened if-
Margaret: Exactly …
Christine: if I had planned a hospital birth, If I had been in the hospital for a half an hour and the doctor came right at the perfect time and
Maybe I would’ve ended up with a C-section, and that’s not something I wanted, but I also didn’t want a baby with special needs, you know? So I think I carried some guilt- … and shame about, like, how things happened for a long time. And it was hard ’cause I, I didn’t feel like I could express that [00:51:00]
Margaret: Hundred, yeah.
Yeah.
Christine: So I held it. Yeah. So I’m sure that was, like, that was causing me physical exhaustion.
Margaret: Exactly.
Christine: That was separating me from really truly bonding with my child.
I felt like I did bond with him, but it, it was o- only to a certain degree, and because there was this thing in the way.
You know? That was kind of, like, just putting a little distance there. And so-
Margaret: ~It’s such an… It- I just wanna share for the audience too, like, that it’s, ~it’s such a normal thing. ~That is such a normal thing to have in… ~Obviously, your birth ~was par- ~was particularly traumatic, in the outcomes.
However, ~that, ~that sense of shame in a birth experience is so normal for women regardless. I don’t know ~if you’ve, ~if you’ve picked up on that ~w- ~in other women. But even when they go to a hospital birth, regardless, ~it, ~there can just be one thing that they feel a regret over- … that the hospital staff did or didn’t do, [00:52:00] or they did or didn’t do, and it just eats away inside of them, so ~it, ~there is so much that happens around birth in general that can be considered, whether it’s a minor trauma or a major trauma, that inflicts that sense of shame. So I just wanna just put it there for other women listening, like, to acknowledge that your shame and your trauma is not insignificant that this may be a presence for other women that are feeling that as you’re sharing that too.
That other women are gonna resonate with that.
Christine: Yeah. And I definitely felt that. I had a w- a friend in that prenatal yoga class-
Margaret: Mm-hmm …
Christine: who had ended up with preeclampsia and needed to have a hospital birth when she had planned a home birth. And she felt like it was very traumatic. Mm-hmm. And because she was friends with me and had seen my [00:53:00] traumatic situation, she felt like- She felt like her trauma was less.
Mm-hmm. And like she, she couldn’t really, she couldn’t really view it as traumatic-
Margaret: Right …
Christine: because she was comparing it to mine. And I just wanna voice that too, that like just because my birth was more traumatic or just because my baby had a less than desirable outcome through that trauma- Mm-hmm
does not mean that any other woman’s traumatic birth was less-
…
Christine: Traumatic for them.
Margaret: Thank you. So that’s such a huge gift that you offer to women right there, truly.
Christine: Yeah. And I really felt that for my friend too, that like I wanted her to heal from her birth experience.
I didn’t want her to feel that she couldn’t talk about it to me or express it because mine [00:54:00] was, worse in some way.
And
Margaret: I know Yeah. It… So we wanna be there for each other as women so much. And and she sounds like a really good friend if she was really honoring your experience too at the same time.
Yeah.
Christine: Yeah.
Margaret: She really
Christine: was in her own
Margaret: way. Yeah. Okay, so you get to bring him home, and you’re, you’re around-the-clock s- swapping times to, to care for him, and this goes on for a while. And then there’s another shift in the family dynamic, right? Being that I think you get pregnant again, right, at a certain point?
Is there stuff that happens in between then or-
Christine: Um-
Margaret: How long how old was Maxwell when you got pregnant?
Christine: ~He was probably five- ~
~… ~
Christine: When I got pregnant. So a
Margaret: long time.
Christine: So, I think the next significant change was when I, um… [00:55:00] Sorry, I just remembered something that I- Yeah … wanna share about my- Ooh.
Go
Margaret: back. Share.
Christine: So going back to about the shame and the guilt.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: So I really was not in a place where I could acknowledge that to myself-
…
Christine: Until, so a couple years down the line when I was a CNA at this hospital, I was invited to take a healing touch class.
And I had been told about healing touch from my midwife, and she really recommended it for me and for my son to kinda help with his medical issues. And so I went to this class so that I could learn to do this, for him.
I was really doing this for him. And I had… obviously when you’re learning these different modalities, you’re practicing on different people in the class. And so when I [00:56:00] was laying on the table, like receiving this treatment- Mm … um, I just had a really profound experience where something in me kinda signaled that this was related to the birth.
But it w- it wasn’t like, like words or, or a specific feeling. It w- probably just intuitive.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: Um, but and then I sat up after that treatment, and I just sobbed. Like- Mm … I sobbed harder than I believe I’ve ever sobbed in my life, at least up to that point. Maybe since. And I was in this room full of, virtual strangers.
Not a place where I would generally feel safe to just- Mm-hmm … start crying. And I just feel like that moment was when my body finally was ready to release all this guilt and shame and grief too. Mm-hmm. Because although my child was alive I lo- I- [00:57:00] I lost the dream of what I expected parenting to be like.
Margaret: Of course. Yeah
Christine: All those things that I had, I had kind of hoped and longed for. Even the breastfeeding journey- … was obviously very different than what I had hoped for. I’m grateful that I was able to pump for as long as I could, and yeah, just really grateful that I was able to give him that.
But, you know, it wasn’t what I dreamed of or hoped of. Mm-hmm. And just being able to release all that grief and all that yeah, guilt around maybe feeling like I made the wrong decision or whatever that was h- that was huge for me.
Margaret: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I, I, I… That is such a good thing to draw attention to too because we do…
The body remembers all of the things, and it does store all of the information, all of the [00:58:00] emotions. I had a similar release. I have this qigong technique that I do, and at one point when I was doing it, there was one move, this was a number of years ago now, but all of a sudden I, I had an emotional release, and I knew…
it was in my groin area, and it was a release related to my s- cesarean section. I think at that point in time it had been, like, 22 years since it. Now it’s been 25 years since it, wow. But it was, like, a huge r- emotional release just out of nowhere, and, um, and I was in my home by myself, so I could just, you know, let it, just let it flow.
And~ there’s d- ~there’s just different things. Like, some… There’s… The body, as the body, I feel like, unwinds itself, from the traumas of our life, y- e- even past life remembrances, you know, there are things that come up. I recently had an emotional release in a leg [00:59:00] muscle where the visual that I got was that I had been stabbed in my leg, ~and ~and then it was like as soon as I acknowledged it, it was able to just start to just dissipate. But there was trauma there. So just- These, all these modalities are so important to take advantage of. You know, healing touch, qigong, uh, whatever, reiki, whatever people… I, I love to just encourage people to just go into their own womb wisdom and their own intuition to feel what is the next, you know, modality.
And as we start to, and I’m sure you had this experience with healing touch, like, as we need it in our life, those things show up for us.
Christine: You
Margaret: know? So that probably landed in your space right when you needed it.
Christine: Yeah.
Margaret: So you ended up going to work as a CNA in a hospital at while Max was still at home?[01:00:00]
Christine: Yes. Um-
Margaret: Wow …
Christine: so it was in his first year of life that- Mm-hmm … ~I, ~I think he had three specialists at that point, which, by the end I think he had something like five or six. So that was pretty minimal, but it felt huge to me. He had specialists, he had physical therapy, occupational therapy.
Margaret: Wow.
Christine: All these medications and yeah, different medical devices and things like that. And I just really felt like this kid needs a nurse. Mm-hmm. And he needed a nurse to advocate for him, and he needed so- I as his parent needed to understand this language that they were talking to me in. Mm-hmm. And so I just felt like I really needed to become a nurse so that I could be the best parent for him.
Margaret: Wow.
Christine: Um, so I [01:01:00] started that pursuit, yeah, probably… I think I started as a CNA and stuff in, in that first year of life. I started pursuing that field anyway. Yeah, and then I worked as a CNA through, through nursing school, kinda worked part-time while I got through nursing school. And yeah, just really had this passion to work with kids with special needs and really help advocate for them and help parent help advocate for parents too, ’cause I think from the beginning I have always felt like ki- parents of kids with special needs are just doing so much.
And my midwife talked a lot about self-care for parents Just of every parent. And it’s so important that you [01:02:00] have space for yourself and that you’re taking care of yourself so that you can take care of your child. But I think for parents of kids with special needs it’s just so much more challenging for them.
They can’t just hire a high schooler- No … to babysit. They can’t just- No … take a kid to daycare, you know? They they need to find specialized supports- Mm-hmm … to help care for their, their kid. And as much as I love the res- the different states who offer payment for parents who take care of their kids that it’s great for a, a parent to be able to
Yeah, provide for their child in that way. Provide financially and care for them physically at the same time. But I just, I… There’s this part of me that just knows that parent needs a break too, and I [01:03:00] don’t know if that’s always happening in those situations where they are the primary caregiver, they’re getting paid to do it, and so they don’t leave to go to work, which that’s another thing.
Like, that’s not a break either, but
Margaret: Right
Christine: Well,
Margaret: I’ve also, like I just, hon- it’s so interesting to me that … life is so interesting, right? I was led to read this book that I am probably three-quarters of the way through that is very relevant to our conversation, which is, oh, gosh, called Getting to Heaven.
Oh my gosh, I’ll have to reference it in the show notes for everybody. And it’s about this mother with an autistic child and her journey. And but she had, she had five kids and was in a terrible marriage, and I mean, the whole thing is like a complete n- night- nightmare and yet [01:04:00] it’s, obviously the story is something like getting to heaven.
Like there’s a heaven that’s reached, you know? Mm-hmm. So there’s an inspirational point in this story of her journey and her life and her reckoning with God and all of it. But suffice it to say that she shares a piece of this related to the financial assistance that she’s constantly having to reapply for on behalf of her child, where she ends up not only they, are they denying it, but because she’s had a job at certain points, they ask her to pay back money that she had had.
So now she’s like in debt to the government because she attempted to try to reapply. I mean, it’s just like you can’t make this baloney up, you know? Like, so yes, in a perfect world it’s nice that like people can access financial assistance, but it doesn’t even always work out [01:05:00] well, yeah. So it’s, it’s really rough.
Like it’s really important that people… I, and so let’s speak a little bit to this in that a big piece of this that I, that I am getting from this book and we haven’t touched on is what is, what’s everybody else on the outside looking in on you and your life? Are you able to connect with people still?
Are people pushing you away? Like is this… Because clearly, like you were saying, you had a friend who had a baby at the same time or roughly the same time in the prenatal yoga. That’s rough because people don’t know how to interact with someone when things turn out less than desirable, desirable-
situation, right?
What’s that like for you?
Christine: Yeah. I felt like that group-
Margaret: Mm-hmm …
Christine: um, that we were all in yoga together- They were really supportive at first.
And not that they weren’t supportive later on.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: Um, but [01:06:00] just the more their children developed and my child didn’t-
Margaret: Mm-hmm
Christine: it was, like each missed milestone was- Mm … like heart-wrenching for me.
Margaret: Yeah.
Christine: And so it was really hard for me to be around these babies who were starting to crawl or, you know, whatever it was.
And just, yeah.
Margaret: Ugh,
Christine: God. Where I was. And I will say it, it took me a long time, but I came around.
Like ~I, ~I do believe that in his life and probably pretty early on, probably within the first year or two, I started to be able to see him for and appreciate him for his uniqueness and- Mm-hmm … and to not compare, to not feel like [01:07:00] I needed to compare him-
Margaret: Mm-hmm …
Christine: to other kids and other babies.
I remember at first that being really challenging for me, just because I really wanted him to … Yes, he had this challenging start to life, but I s- there was a part of me that still believed that he could, he could progress and he could- … yeah, learn to do things like any other kid. And so it took a lot of like-
Le- letting go. Letting go of the dream and the expectations and the, and al- just allowing what is. I will say that beyond that, in his later life Max was just, like, all heart energy. So Everyone involved in his life, like absolutely loved him. Even though he had some pretty challenging moments-
Margaret: Mm-hmm
Christine: where like his body got really tense and you just would try and try and it was like nothing you could do to get him comfortable. [01:08:00] Mm-hmm. He’d have those really challenging moments. Everybody knew. I mean, it’s not like a kid that has explosive behaviors or like violent behaviors where there’s this little part of you that thinks like maybe this kid can and just doesn’t want to.
Like I feel like with Max, everybody knew that he… or we just, we just had this attitude of he’s doing the best he can. And I, I will say that not all parents of kids with special needs get that.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: Because if it is a more behavioral-
Margaret: For
Christine: sure … issue, it’s, I think it’s more, it’s judged more easily.
As like this is- … this is a flaw in parenting, or this is like something wrong with the kid. And whereas with Max, you just, I don’t know, you just knew it, it wasn’t on purpose. Like if he headbutted his nurse one day just like [01:09:00] boom.
Margaret: Uh-huh.
Christine: Head just psh, straight into her chin, and he had a big black eye.
I don’t think she actually got hurt, but-
You, you knew that he wasn’t doing it on purpose. Like- Right … I don’t know. We all just had this, like, knowing that he was doing the best he could, and- Right … his muscles were doing what they were doing. And yeah. So I
Margaret: ~will- ~Yeah, I think you’re right. In some instances, it’s harder to not take it personally, like the movements or the, w- whatever, what was I gonna say? There’s, like, just the, yeah, the uncontrollable movements that, that oftentimes special needs kids can have can be can, to, to us neurotypical people, can feel like they’re doing it on purpose, or they’re doing it to make us angry, or they’re just making our lives, you know, challenging or whatever.
Like, they’re, it’s, it ma- it just makes it more difficult. It’s not to say that we don’t have a heart and come [01:10:00] into these spaces of compassion and deep- Yeah … love, of course, if they’re, especially if they’re our own child. But it, yes, I know what you mean. But the, what I’m feeling as you’re sharing your story is consciousness in embodied tends to…
Consciousness always wants to express itself. And so I’m just feeling as you’re sharing this story that consciousness almost seems to have harnessed itself in his heart. Like- Mm … and just maybe he was, like, almost creating, like, a transmitter of heart energy while he was here.
Christine: Yeah.
Margaret: That’s a huge thing to be around
Continuously. Like an embodied heart energy is very powerful
Christine: Yeah. And I think of I don’t know. As you’re talking, I’m thinking of, [01:11:00] of triggers and, like, how our children tend to trigger our past pain.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: They trigger the things that within us that need to be healing, need to be healed. Mm-hmm. And I definitely see that as Maxwell really initiated this healing journey really.
Like- Wow … it was not, healing myself was not something I ever considered before he came into our lives. And yeah, that makes perfect sense that heart energy is just-
Margaret: That unconditional love just radiating. So that’s really fascinating to me, ’cause this is one of the pieces that I really wanna bring forward to shift our view on short-lived lives on the planet and really show people that oftentimes we embody to [01:12:00] do really powerful work in a short period of time- with the families that we drop into. And so you’re just kinda getting right into that right there, like he came in and initiated this healing journey. So share with us what you feel like he’s initiated for you.
Christine: Yeah. I think another big part of my healing around this birth and everything was I read- Mm
the, the book Spirit Babies, which highly recommend to any, everyone. And it really, I w- I wish I had the exact quote that he shares on just the perspective of- Souls who do choose to be born into, like, less abled bodies- Mm-hmm … not fully, [01:13:00] um, as we view it
Margaret: Maybe we could get the quote later and we can share it with, in the show notes and everything.
Christine: Yeah. That’d be great.
Margaret: But, but summarize it to the best of your ability.
Christine: Yeah, just the fact that these souls, like, come into these bodies for a purpose. It’s because we’ve had maybe several lives of these normal, quote, unquote, “normal lives,” and this is an experience that we’re choosing to have.
Mm-hmm. And that was really healing for me just to- Just to acknowledge that, that this is something this was not, you know, necessarily my fault or the, like my- Mm-hmm … poor choice. This was, like, something he chose to be born into. And yeah, looking at that I’ve asked myself many times, like, what was Max’s w- life’s work?
Like, what does, did Max come to do? And I think there are so many layers of that. Mm-hmm. [01:14:00] Um, but yeah, just for me to have that perspective that he had a purpose, a reason for being born into that body. Mm-hmm. And, and he could only do that work in that body. Like- Yeah … imperfect that it was. But for me I just think, I don’t think I would’ve been inspired to go to that first Healing Touch class or continue to receive Healing Touch for myself if it had not been for him.
You know, I w- I wouldn’t- Mm-hmm … have gone to that first Healing Touch class if I didn’t think like, “Oh, I need to, I need to learn this so I can use it to help Max.” Right. It was, I was going into it for someone else’s good.
Margaret: Yeah.
Christine: Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but as we learn the process of becoming a healer so often is about our [01:15:00] own healing.
Margaret: Yeah.
Christine: ~And, ~and so for me that first Healing T- Touch class just broke me open and that’s when I learned, like, the importance of this healing process. I started… and since then, ~I p- ~I feel like I’ve been r- down a rabbit hole. When I was in nursing school, that’s kind of, like, all I could handle, right?
But since then, it’s like I’ve been down this rabbit hole of trying all these different things. Yeah, seeking out and ~just, ~just being more conscious in my own life about patterns that ~I’m, ~I’m repeating and limiting beliefs that I have resurfacing, and things like that. I really feel like that first Healing Touch ~really, ~Really started that, like kind of jump-started that Yeah and I also just feel like Max was always and still continues to be a spiritual guide f- through me in that process of- Mm-hmm … of doing my own healing [01:16:00] and hopefully eventually w- working with others to support others in their healing.
Margaret: Yeah.
That’s awesome. That is so… That’s amazing.
Yeah. I am inspired to just share, That I really, I, I, to the whole audience and to you I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to listen to the Telepathy Tapes podcast. Anyone who’s around me all the time is probably sick of hearing me say this, but it’s an amazing podcast. It’s about autistic children who they start to realize have these telepathic abilities, and it, it just, it gives a sense of the deeper work that they have arrived here for in these very challenged bodies.
So I think you’d get, I think you would enjoy it, listening to it. And they, they, they do a lot of scientific, presentation of testing these things and everything as well, so it’s, it’s quite [01:17:00] fascinating, um, because of that. But just wanna add that in there for listeners who are curious about maybe making this idea of i- if it’s not 100% resonating around, spirits coming into bodies for particular work, that podcast details like, yeah, there’s, there’s definitely work that people are coming in to do, as a reference. We’ve been going for a long time, and I feel like we’ve barely even touched, like, on your whole journey. I, like, I wanna come back because you have such a fascinating, other pieces of your story.
But I do wanna know what happens to Maxwell. Like how, he’s, he lives for seven years, right?
Christine: Seven and a half, yep.
Margaret: Seven and a half years, ~and ~and it’s been how many years since his passing? And when did he pass, what date?
Christine: He [01:18:00] passed away on December 22nd 2018.
Margaret: 2018.
Christine: Um, so it’s been about seven years.
Margaret: Okay. Yeah,
Christine: right.
Margaret: Wow. And Max had ~a, ~a brother, right? Or a sister? Brother?
Christine: Yes. I have a, yeah, sister and a brother.
Margaret: A sister and a brother. So he got to meet both of them too?
Christine: He did.
Margaret: Wow. Yep. Oh my goodness. That’s very powerful. And so what happens to Max then as he’s getting older?
Was it just a natural, progression and that as things ended? Yep. Or what, what was going on?
Christine: Yeah, it was pretty natural. Looking back I have this perspective, I did not have the perspective at the time. But his sister was born in 2016. Mm-hmm. So about two years before he died. And at that point is when [01:19:00] I n- we, like looking back on it, I noticed he
just he was sleepier. He was- Mm-hmm … spending less time in alert, awake states and- Mm-hmm … more time in restful states.
And, And that just kind of was a slow progression till his death. And in the last six months of his life he started struggling a lot with regulating his temperature again.
Mm. Which was a struggle in the beginning, in his first six… probably not six months. His first couple months.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: Um, but that started becoming a bigger challenge just really cold all the time. Mm. I mean, we had a heating pad on him almost constantly.
Margaret: Wow.
Christine: Burned, burned out a heating pad trying to keep him- ~Wow~
warm. Um, he ended up getting a cold that w- [01:20:00] we-
It took us a while, but we ended up choosing to take him to the hospital for it and, I th- I think it was good. Looking back on it, I was like, “There’s 15 different things we coulda done in the home to treat him just as well as not, if not better than they did in the hospital.” But they didn’t give us those options, and I unfortunately wasn’t aware that, Or I, yeah, I didn’t have the knowledge to know to ask for those things.
Um, so yeah we opted to take him into the hospital. He was there for a little over a week. And his second brother, or yeah, his brother was born while he was in the hospital.
Margaret: Wow.
Oh my gosh, you’re kidding me.
Christine: Yeah.
Margaret: Oh my gosh.
Christine: That’s a whole different birth story. I was home alone with my [01:21:00] almost two-year-old and going into labor, but…
And it was a very fast birth too,
Margaret: Did you have a midwife, or did you end up free birthing?
Christine: I ended up free birthing. Oh my gosh. I mean, my midwife was on the phone,
Margaret: right.
Christine: It wasn’t planned that way, but he was ready to come.
Margaret: Wow.
Christine: But.
Margaret: Oh my gosh. That’s, that is, that’s an ama- oh my God, I can’t wait to hear that whole story.
Christine: Yeah.
Margaret: No. And so, and that was how many weeks before he passed then, or was-
Christine: And that was about ~three months before- Three months … ~Max passed. Okay. So, um, Max- came back from the hospital maybe three or four days after Maximilian was born, and he was then, we were just gonna do antibiotics at home and yeah, just spending a lot, a lot of time in restful states.
And I also remember [01:22:00] A lot of periods where he was just, like his eyes were open but he was not present.
And I don’t know. The nurse in me-
Margaret: Not, not present in this reality.
Christine: Oh yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Not fully embodied.
Margaret: Exactly.
Christine: And the nurse in me can kind of say, “Oh, maybe he was having absence seizures.”
But the more spiritual part of me was really seeing that he was engaging with the other side. Yeah. He was seeing his, his guides or, his angels who were-
Margaret: Yeah …
Christine: getting him ready for that moment. And, ~um, yeah. ~Um Yeah. Those three months I was, you know, I was home from work because I was on maternity leave, and just really most of that maternity leave was discussing end of [01:23:00] life decisions- Wow
and things like that. I, we had a premonition that it was coming. We were seeing the decline, but I don’t think any of us really knew how close we were to that moment. And so I went back to work for a couple weeks and, you know, looking back on it I’m like, did I, why, like why did I need to go back for those two weeks?
Mm. ‘Cause, if I’d had known that that was, that was gonna be it, then I would have wanted to spend those last two weeks with him, right? Mm-hmm. Um, but I think I needed to be there to fully prepare myself for his death. … I don’t think I mentioned it, but at that time I was working on a transitional care and long-term care unit for kids with special needs.
A lot of them were transitioning out of the NICU. We were helping support parents- Wow … learning how to care [01:24:00] for these kids with tracheostomy tubes to help them breathe with ventilators that they would take home with them, with the gastrostomy tubes that would, you know, the feeding tubes.
And some kids that were rehabbing from surgeries and things like that to maybe less severe medical issues. But there was one little baby that was there. Her mother had been a drug user and so she had a lot of medical issues related to that, and she in the last two weeks of, of Max’s life, she was on hospice care.
And, Yep, I’m still on my call. Sorry, bud. I’ll chat with you in a few minutes.
Margaret: We’re almost done. Um,
Christine: so yeah, this girl was on hospice care- … at the time, and, Yeah. So I was [01:25:00] being a hospice nurse-
Margaret: Wow …
Christine: for a baby, which was my first experience with that. I had been a nurse for some patients at the end of life adults.
But this is kind of a, been a first for me. And she passed away, I don’t know, maybe ~two, ~two days before Max did No way … ~one, ~one or two days before Max did. I can’t remember the exact timeframe, but, and-
Margaret: Wow …
Christine: that was huge in preparing me for his death because I walked into the unit at 6:00 for the start of my shift and she had passed away at around 5:00.
And you can tell in the energy, in the mood on the unit like what had happened and we all knew like the moment we walked in it was like you hit a wall and you’re like- Wow … you knew that she, she was gone. [01:26:00] And It just hit me so, so hard
Margaret: Wow
Christine: and because I knew- Mm-hmm … that he was close. And, my director of nursing was also a palliative care nurse practitioner.
And so, I was so grateful that I was able to talk to her about it. And she had met with my son a few times to provide some palliative care for him. Mm-hmm. ‘Cause we’d always wanted to make sure that we were providing for his comfort- Right
more than, than just doing things to, like, prolong his life for our own benefit or whatever. So we had palliative care involved very early on. And with some changes and doctors moving away and stuff, we had kinda landed on this director of, this woman who was director of nursing and not really a practicing palliative care [01:27:00] provider.
Mm-hmm. Um, just because we really wanted to have someone who had that specialty’s expertise to talk things through. So she had met Max previously, and we had discussed some palliative care stuff there, so she was kinda ware- aware of his situation. And so to be able to talk to her as not only my kind of boss as- Mm-hmm
to help me, like, process this loss that we’d had on our unit. I mean, it’s a, it was a very, like, tight-knit unit that we were all very close to all the children.
Just kind of like second parents to all these kids. So she was there to not only support me through, through this death, but then she also was aware of what was going on with my son, so she ~could sh- ~could really meet me right where I needed to be met.
And yeah. So we had two young kids. We had a newborn and an almost two-year-old, and we were [01:28:00] really struggling to provide Max, Maxwell with the care that he needed at this time of life. And the waiting list for, like, home care nurses was, like, two years long.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And yeah, I remember just kinda discussing with her these struggles of, like, needing more support but not really knowing, How to get it and she, brought up hospice.
And, because I had felt like this death was far out-
Margaret: Mm-hmm …
Christine: I didn’t have any idea how close it was. I hadn’t considered hospice, and she said, “You know, it’s for, six months-” Yeah … is the closest you need to be. ~And, ~and even if he lives beyond six months, then you just re- you know, reevaluate and you can- Right, exactly
extend it. That wasn’t always true. Back in the day, you had to pay for hospice care, and then after the death, they would, like [01:29:00] Medicaid or Medicare would pay for the past six months.
Margaret: Right.
Christine: So families had to kinda provide that upfront. So it’s not the case anymore that hospice care can be paid for through insurance
Margaret: anymore.
Well, I think you can’t… can’t you get palliative care though? You can also opt for that, and then switch over to hospice or hospice and back to palliative care. Yeah. Like, there’s ways to work between those two depending on what’s happening.
Christine: Yes. Yeah, I’m sure. So hospice would’ve been n- maybe not as much support as like an in-home nurse for eight hours caring for your child, but it would’ve- Mm-hmm
at least been something, someone to come in and provide some care. A little bit of respite for a short period- Mm … um, since we had our other kiddos to think about and provide and care for too. And [01:30:00] so, so that was just a really impactful conversation for me to have. And I, then took that home to my, my partner, my husband, and who had two grandparents, m- two, maybe three grandparents at that point had been through hospice care.
So he… And he had had pretty good experiences with hospice with them. So yeah just being able to take that to him and we, we both kind of said like, “Oh, yeah.” This is a great idea. This is what we’re gonna do.” And that was a Friday, and I think it was like, “Okay, we’ll do that on Monday,” kind of thing.
And then yeah, we had… ‘Cause we had some family gatherings. It was, about Christmas time, so we were getting together with family. That weekend and yeah, it was like that’s all Max needed all he needed was for us to be ready-
…
Christine: For us to, like, just bring [01:31:00] up that hospice conversation.
All he needed was to hear that we were ready to let him go, and he passed away the next day.
Margaret: Wow.
Christine: Yeah.
Margaret: Oh, Christine. Aw.
It’s so touching and so sad, but it’s so beautiful at the same time. Like, so, so, like, incredibly perfectly orchestrated, whew. Did he pass, uh, during the day or the night?
Christine: Yeah, he passed during the day. I was probably breastfeeding a newborn, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and I was just sitting with him. You know, I had the baby. He w- I think was on the floor or something, and he started doing this in nursing we call it guppy breathing.
But it’s kind of where the, I don’t know if you wanna show this or not, but [01:32:00] Yeah. You know, where they’re like
Margaret: Right.
Christine: Mm-hmm. Kind of-
Margaret: Yeah …
Christine: just kind of, I don’t know, like, reach out for that breath. And- Mm-hmm … so he started doing this breath that I had been taught was kind of a signal of the end of life.
Margaret: Right.
Christine: Exactly. And I immediately called my husband. He was in the kitchen with my daughter, like, they both came, and, he picked Max up and had Max in his lap. I had the baby in my lap. Lily was right there with us. You know, my daughter was right there with us. We were like this little circle. And he st- and Max stopped doing the breathe, the, that breath when- Mm-hmm … my husband picked him up. And so I thought maybe “Okay he’s all right now. It’s okay.” But then it was just a few minutes later when he took his last breath, [01:33:00] and I, like- You know, in nursing we’re taught like, oh, we listen for the heartbeat and the, and that’s how we determine time of death and, you know, when we don’t hear the heartbeat anymore.
But that that was, like, completely unnecessary.
Like, I knew the moment his spirit left. I-
Margaret: Wow …
Christine: I knew he was gone. I knew when he was gone. Yeah. And
Margaret: Wow. Oh my gosh. What a beautiful, having the family in a circle with him. I’m I can’t imagine what that was like, but in a memory at least that probably feels really powerful for you, I would think.
Christine: Yeah. And we, you know, we all immediately started crying. In that moment when he was gone, we all started crying. [01:34:00]
Margaret: Aw.
Christine: I was crying. My husband was crying. The baby was crying. Lily, like we were all sobbing.
Margaret: Aw.
Christine: That
Margaret: Oh
Christine: That wailing,
Margaret: Yeah. Of course
Christine: I think was safely-
Margaret: What a journey you guys all took, you know? Wow. Oh my goodness. Well, we’re gonna have to do a part two where we get to hear… ‘Cause I do want to pick up from here. I wanna hear, you know, and I, I think everybody, there’s some curiosities, you know, around what happens next. Um- Yeah … how all the different things. Like, there’s so many things that unfold in your life.
You know, how, how has his life touched your life and continued to touch it in many ways? But you know, I’d like to spend more quality time hearing about how you honored him, you know, without rushing it. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna [01:35:00] feel like we’re rushing, and I, I want this to be digestible for everybody since we’ve been talking for a while.
Christine: Mm-hmm.
Margaret: Um, so we’ll sit on this piece of it and then there’s more on your journey. I think it’s really powerful, and also the fact that it’s so much all of these little pieces that that you just barely mentioned almost at the end, going into working with special needs kids and the hospice and how they’re coloring the next stages of your career life- Mm-hmm
as well, um, that are really big. And of course, like, having gone through a divorce with all of this, that’s always a big one and I think is important for other women to hear, and I, I haven’t really covered that. That was, like, a big piece of what I used to talk about when I… The podcast used to be just the Mother Rising Podcast, and I was doing- Mm-hmm
divorce wellness coaching at that point in time. So that would be really, really good [01:36:00] if we could chat on all of that,
Christine: yeah.
Margaret: That’d be great. Oh my goodness. Well, thank you so much, Christine for sharing your story with us today, and thank you so much to Maxwell for honoring us and, um, and his spirit being present for this beautiful conversation about his life, his very short and powerful life.
And we’re really looking forward to having you back so we can hear the rest of your story, Christine.
Christine: Yeah. Well, thank you. I w- yeah.
Margaret: Is- I
Christine: look forward to share.
Margaret: Yeah. Is there anything, any last little tiny tidbit you’d like to say before we wrap up on this session?
Christine: I don’t think so. I think any tiny tidbit I would wanna add would just be-
Margaret: A bigger tidbit?
Christine: A bigger tidbit. So I think we’ll leave it at that.
Margaret: ~We’ll, ~we’ll save it. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Oh, well, thank you again for being here, [01:37:00] Christine. I’m so grateful.
Christine: Yes. Thank you so much.
Margaret: All right
