My Body Kept the Score

My motherhood story is ultimately one of triumph.

But one cold November night, a monster’s eyes glared at me through my windshield as it tore into my car.

The screaming sound of ripping, shearing, crumpling metal was deafening.

Windshield glass shattered and coated my hair with so much white, I became an old woman.

My mind cried out, “WHY are you doing this to me!!?!!!!” “I didn’t DO anything!!!”

I was completely helpless as my car careened down the rural highway, just minutes away from my father’s Nova Scotia home, until it pitchpoled into into the ditch filled with dank water.

I hung from my seatbelt, broken, unconscious, and bleeding out.

But I fought to stay alive.

I was 23.

The collision with that drunk driver broke 15 bones, and inflicted a severe traumatic brain injury that landed me in a coma that was 3 on the Glasgow coma scale.

That’s the least responsive you can be without being dead.

I had to relearn how to swallow, and how to talk, and how to walk.

I needed a cane for months, and false teeth for years.

I had gotten engaged 3 months prior to the accident, but when I finally remembered who my fiancé was, a new fear hit me. “What if I CAN’T have babies now?”

My neurosurgeon waked briskly into the room at my final in-patient appointment, dressed in his white coat and wire-rimmed glasses.

He sat down across from me and with my head shaved, and missing all my front teeth, I faced him from my wheelchair.

I asked my ONLY question. “Can I ever expect to get 100% better?”

He looked me in the eye, and paused, and then…..he said, “No.”

“You might get to 90 or 95%, but you’ll never be the same.”

I am Canadian, and I am polite, and I didn’t say anything to his face, but in my mind, I growled, “FUCK. YOU. WATCH ME.”

Because I hadn’t asked him if I would be the same. I asked him if I could get better.

In that moment getting 110% better became my mission, and failure, was not an option.

Over my 7-year long healing journey, I reclaimed my sense of agency. I dialed in my nutrition, and used fitness and mindfulness to support my body and my brain, but healing - felt - so slow - I cried tears of despair more times than I can count.

But one day, in yoga, like a puzzle piece literally falling into place in my brain, I felt something viscerally, CLICK.

My cognitive healing took a giant leap forward as new movement in my body created new neural pathways in my brain, and my healing accelerated!

Married now, I still wanted a family, and finally believed it could be possible!

When I was in a coma, I needed more than 20 hours of orthopedic surgery and oral surgery and neurosurgery, and I never got to give consent.

I had a drain inserted through my skull, into the deepest ventricles of my brain,

I still have a titanium rod inside of my left femur, steel plates and screws on other bones, and I have no memory, of any of it.

But my body kept the score.

So when it came to having kids, I knew with every fiber of my being that I needed to do this, without medical help. When we started trying, I conceived, easily!

We lived in San Diego by then, and I found an OB/GYN whose practice considered the “mind, body, and soul,” of every patient. He believed in my ability to birth from the get-go, and I began to trust MYSELF and my ability to have this baby without medical intervention! was ALL-IN.

My baby only got to be born once, so I took 4 classes, I hired a birth doula, did prenatal yoga, massage, I ate well, exercised… and released all the fear I knew I still had. I wanted to trust, and surrender to the power of my birth in order to take my power back.

Here’s what was unexpected: I immediately saw a direct overlap between what I needed to heal my body and my brain, and what was required to have a healthy, empowered pregnancy and birth.

And that, planted a seed…

At 40 weeks and 2 days, I woke up with mild aching in my lower back on the day that my baby had told me, weeks before with a well-timed kick, that he was going to be born! I labored at home where I felt relaxed and safest for as long as possible. I didn’t even time my contractions.

Late in the afternoon, things changed. My water broke with a dramatic “kersploosh” all over my living room floor!! Then, I roared, doubled over, animalistic and primal now as a pushing contraction took over.

My husband drove. Every bump in the road triggered a push. “Sloooow down, baby,” I begged. But I wasn’t scared. After 45 minutes, we arrived at the hospital. I roared through more contractions in the lobby. I refused a wheelchair and WALKED into labor and delivery, calm.

By the time I was on my hands and knees, my baby’s head was almost crowning and with my doula’s support I declined a saline lock for an IV. My nurses shouted “PUSH!!!,” with each contraction, but the added stimulus of their voices was too much. I quickly shouted back, “SHUT UP!”

I went inward, I breathed, I vocalized in low lioness roars, and a few pushes later, my 8lb 2.5 oz. baby boy, with his head covered in dark curls, was out and passed through my legs.

Skin to skin, on my chest, my baby was here. We did it. We did it.

Giving birth on my own terms healed me physically and emotionally, beyond measure. And it prepared me for the birth of my next baby, 2.5 years later.

I was in a swimming pool when my water broke the second time. I obviously couldn’t see it! I had no contractions, and was in full labor denial. It finally hit me when I woke up in the morning with soaking wet sheets. I had planned a birth center birth, but my heart sank when my midwife sent me to see my OB.

In my OB’s familiar clinic, multiple concerns started to stack up as my baby’s footling breech position and extended head turned even waiting for a trial of labor into a risk I wasn’t willing to take. My OB left the room, and I began to sob.

But I knew in my gut that my body had bought my baby and me, time. So I made a choice. I looked at my husband through my tears, “OK.” I said. “Let’s go have a baby.” We drove immediately to the hospital and I was prepped for my unplanned cesarean.

I knew I was in the best possible hands with my doctor, but I was scared. Then, my doula arrived, followed by my birth photographer. Then my postpartum doula brought my son. These women had all supported me for my first birth, and to be with me in the OR, my husband dressed in a white, sterile outfit head to toe.

Surrounded by my village, I could finally relax.

When it was time, I walked myself down the hall to the OR, with my husband beside me, but but had to enter the operating room alone. On the operating table, I held a nurse’s hands as I curled forward and received my spinal block. Then I laid myself down. Soon I was completely numb from the chest down, and I happily complied with a request to put my arms out to a T.

But straps tightened around my wrists, pinning my arms to the table. I panicked. All I could think was, “FUCK NO!” I am not going to let someone take away my control. Not again. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Don’t tie me down! Please don’t tie me down. Let me go. LET. ME. GO!”

The straps loosened, but the anesthesiologist grumpily ordered me, “Don’t touch the doctor.” I pulled my arms in close to my body and breathed a sigh of relief as my belly birth began. After the empowering, healing birth of my first baby, I was equipped to handle the gentle caesarean birth of my second.

Laying under the surgical drape and bright lights, my second baby boy even did the breast crawl on my chest and started nursing right away as I was stitched up. I was terrified more surgery would leave me feeling helpless and broken yet again, but by making the informed choice and by advocating for myself, it ended up being another beautiful and healing experience that I hadn’t known I needed.

——>>> Fast forward: My boys are now 7 and 5 years old!

That seed that was planted when I was pregnant the first time has grown into my business coaching pregnant and postpartum clients to have strong, healthy pregnancies, EMPOWERED births, and faster postpartum recoveries.

Counting them down from 3… 2… and last one! as they finish a corrective exercise set, I have a big smile on my face watching them become confident and prepared for birth, and beyond.

And guess what? I did get 110% better. My accident changed me, but I don’t like to give it credit for anything. I built this life and I can’t wait for more.

~Maggie Yount