This week, Becca and Arielle sit down with Caitlin Gillings, a 34-year-old mom of four whose birth stories span nearly every setting: two hospital vaginal deliveries, a birth center birth, and finally a deeply empowering home birth.

Caitlin opens up about navigating six pregnancies, including two losses between her third and fourth babies, and how each chapter shaped the mother she is today. With children now ages 9, 7, 4, and 18 months, Caitlin reflects on how her confidence, intuition, and perspective evolved across her journeys from her early hospital experiences to finding autonomy and peace in her later births.

As a stay-at-home mom, Caitlin brings a grounded, honest, and relatable voice to this conversation. Her story is a testament to growth, resilience, and the beauty of learning to trust your body over time.

This episode holds a deeply sacred story one that moves through four intentional home births, a miscarriage, and then an emergency twin C-section that resulted in the devastating loss of one twin at delivery.

What began as a familiar, confident rhythm of physiological birth suddenly shifted into medical urgency, grief, and long-term caregiving for a medically complex child.

In this conversation, we walk through:

– Four planned home births
– A miscarriage and its emotional impact
– An emergency twin C-section
– Losing one baby at delivery
– Navigating grief while caring for a surviving newborn
– Becoming the full-time caregiver to a child with trach, vent, and g-tube needs

Her living children range from teenage years to toddlerhood, and this episode highlights what it looks like to mother across different developmental stages while holding grief, medical decisions, and everyday life.

We explore:

– The identity shift that comes when birth outcomes change drastically
– How grief and joy coexist in motherhood
– What resilience looks like beyond the romantic version of strength
– The complexities of marriage, household demands, and caregiving
– How life can redraw itself overnight

This episode gives voice to mothers navigating unexpected loss, medical complexity, and survival mode. It offers honesty without dramatizing, hope without glossing over pain, and visibility to stories often held quietly.

Episode 16: Our Thanksgiving Special with Dr. Zwerling 🦃💗
This week, Becca and Arielle sit down with the incredible Dr. Zwerling to hear her journey into becoming an OB-GYN, what a day in her life really looks like, and how her philosophy of care has been shaped by her own first birth experience a prolonged induction (partially at home, partially in the hospital), four hours of pushing, a cesarean birth, and a postpartum hemorrhage.
Dr. Zwerling is passionately dedicated to providing comprehensive sexual + reproductive healthcare for all patients, with specialized training in complex family planning and a deep commitment to serving LGBTQIA+ communities especially trans and gender-expansive folks.
We also dive into her academic research on spirituality in medicine and medical education.
This is a warm, grounded, heart-opening conversation you won’t want to miss.
Listen now Episode 16 is live. 🫶🎙️