Why Colleen Ballinger HATED Pregnancy | Honest ObGyn Interview

mortifying i was like in my worst state ever just like destroyed vagina i am horrified like crying from pain and i was like thank you for watching my videos hey y'all welcome back mama dr jones ob-gyn and mom 24 today is a super exciting day i have been waiting for this day for so long and you have been asking for this day for just as long colleen ballinger on the mdj channel here to talk about her pregnancy and birth experience if you're not familiar with her which i'm not sure how you found me and don't know who she is but colleen ballinger is a youtuber who has been around for a really long time she is also an actress and a broadway star i'm gonna stop blabbering on and introduce her colleen thank you for being here i feel so bad i know that you've been trying to do this for so long it just took me forever to like set it up so i apologize don't don't apologize i would love to hear what your experience was in pregnancy and maybe how that has affected you moving forward what your family planning plans were how that has changed it things like that well my pregnancy was i like to use the word traumatic because i feel that it was i had a really really hard pregnancy and um it was painful physically basically the whole time and mentally emotionally um i didn't realize during my pregnancy but after i gave birth i realized that i was depressed during my pregnancy which i didn't know was a thing you always hear about postpartum depression and so i just didn't think that you could be depressed when you are pregnant so i just didn't know that that was a thing so i was struggling with that pretty terribly and also the physical pain was really really intense when i gave birth i you know i was like okay i can't i don't think i could handle that again pregnancy again and i still feel that way i have a two-year-old almost and i still feel like i don't know that i could survive another pregnancy but it devastates me because i desperately want more children i enjoyed my birth experience i love being a mom more than anything in the world so the fact that my pregnancy was so difficult is really a challenge it's something i've cried about a lot like inner turmoil of like i really want more kids and of course adoption is an option and you know that's a big part of my family so um i'd love to do that but the idea that like pregnancy was so hard for me and that's just like not really an option um i mean maybe it is you never know but like it was really really painful what were your expectations going into pregnancy i see it all across the spectrum i see people who dread pregnancy from the moment they want to have a baby to people who are so excited to be pregnant where were you on that spectrum going into it i've always wanted to be a mom and i was always really excited to be pregnant my expectations were really really high and i think that was part of my um just disappointment with pregnancy i thought pregnancy was going to be amazing i i heard of all the things everyone hears about you get morning sickness and you know sometimes you feel the baby kick and contractions will hurt and you get uncomfortable and big at the end like i've heard all like the typical things um that generically everyone kind of knows and kind of like floats over but i didn't know to the extent of like how hard it could be and i think something that's important for everyone to know is that every woman is so different i've never met another woman who had the same experiences as me and i don't know any two moms who've had the same pregnancy experience and i think that's really important to know going into pregnancy because i just thought pregnancies were kind of generically the same ish like some people might have had harder pregnancies than others but in my mind they're all just kind of like yeah pregnancy is kind of hard but it's so cute and you have a bump and you get a baby so like who cares so i think maybe if i got pregnancy again i would have such horrendous expectations that maybe i might enjoy it more who knows but um i yeah now my expectations of pregnancy are it's the worst thing ever everyone's different one of my close friends is pregnant right now and she's nearing the end of her first trimester and she's had a little bit of nausea and nothing really else and i think that's amazing that women can have that and so i wish that for every woman but that was not the experience that i had you've made some really great points and one of them being that it's different for everyone and i would kind of counter that with and none of this should be to convince you like you should get pregnant again that is such a personal decision and you're the only one who knows like what that experience was like for you how it affected your physical and mental health and what the best thing is for you and there's people who are just blindsided kind of like you're describing where they had this kind of romanticized view of pregnancy and then they get into it and they're like man you know every day something's new i'm peeing on myself my back hurts my pubic bone hurts the baby's you know all these things and and it it can be really difficult and i think normalizing that like you are is really important a lot of people have the experience you have where they're so excited to be a mom i had that as well that i thought when i'm pregnant for the first time it's going to be beautiful and wonderful and some of it is but some of it's definitely not so if you're comfortable do you mind going into a little bit of detail about kind of what what surprised you what pain you had what kind of went on where do i begin the first trimester i mean i was just really nauseous 24 7 it was not morning sickness for me it was all the time all day all night all morning i was always nauseous and i didn't vomit a bunch my first trimester um like a lot of women i almost wish i could vomit because i felt like if i could throw up then maybe i would feel better extremely exhausted all of the time in my first trimester i feel like that might have been the easiest trimester and i had heard the first trimester is really hard and then the second trimester is pretty great and then the third trimester is hard again is what i heard so i just thought okay i just got to get through this first trimester and then i'll be okay and um my second trimester was horrible right at the start of my second trimester i started vomiting and fainting all the time almost every day like it was bad to the point where i was touring um because i was working the whole time i was pregnant and i was on a flight and it happened while i was on a flight i was we were taking off and um i started fainting and vomiting and i ended up on the floor of the airplane as we're taking off they had to stop the plane escort me off it was very embarrassing but it happened everywhere all the time um and that was kind of the remainder of my pregnancy that happened a lot a lot of fainting you're describing is something i struggle with treating in my clinic as well kind of positional hypotension where your blood pressure gets low depending on how you're sitting or standing or lying on your back is one of the exacerbating factors i suspect you got very little help in that regard from your doctor i have had i can remember three patients in my now almost seven years of practicing um just ob-gyn that have had this so significantly that it it really made them miserable in their pregnancy and i felt so helpless what you're describing is exactly what they described of it ruined my pregnancy i couldn't predict it although i knew immediately when it was going to happen that it would happen you know and i would get ekgs and echoes and we'd check blood sugars and we check blood pressures and although nothing we couldn't figure out anything that would help yeah we went through all of that and we didn't really know ever what the cause was of all of the fainting um but it was often and also in my second trimester pretty early on i started having really extreme pelvic pain um the pelvic girdle pain i started feeling that extreme like excruciating can't walk pain in my pelvic area in the second trimester and it lasted the whole time the only thing that gave me a little bit of a relief was i'd see a chiropractor at least three times a week and he would adjust me and um teach me exercises and stretches i could do at home all of which were painful but did help the pain for a little bit but it would always come back most days i couldn't walk i was in a wheelchair for a little while um it was really painful so was it more like was it your whole pelvis or centered kind of in the front at your pubic bone yeah definitely pubic bone like it felt like being stabbed and punched by a heavy sturdy boot right in my lady bits is like what it felt like it was extreme pain but just right centered right there and i talked to my ob about it and he was just like um oh you know that happens it's common which i think this aided to my depression and disappointment in myself was i just kept getting told that's very common and so i just felt weak i felt like oh why can't i handle this and i see all these pregnant women everywhere who are walking and who are fine so what's wrong with me that like am i just really weak and can't handle pain because this is normal this is how everyone feels that just made me feel so horrible about myself that i was so i i mean i can't even express how painful it was it was awful i i hate that you were made to feel that way because although aches and pains in pregnancy are very common i would venture to say that it is not normal to be miserable for the entirety of your pregnancy was it worse like if you were sitting down and you got up to walk did it get worse as soon as you started walking and it was bad when you rolled over in bed really yeah really sleeping was near impossible going from side to side in bed was like scream out loud painful in my pelvic area and walking was very painful i mean i'm not gonna lie i had days where i was okay like it was painful but i could walk and i could get around now i'm sure that as a very i mean from what i know of you as a very independent person it was very hard if you're anything like me to ask for help i always want to do everything by myself and i'm sure that that can contribute to how you're feeling as well you know i'm obviously not here to diagnose things in any way but just to give some education to the audience what you're describing sounds a lot like something called synthesis pubic dysfunction or spd although i see it sometimes i did not until i experienced it in my own third pregnant second pregnancy with my third baby know how significantly that can interfere with your life if that's what you had and it started early on you should feel fully validated that one that's not something you caused and two it's a very unpredictable complication of pregnancy that although not threatening to you or the baby is very much something that has a high potential to interfere with your life and happiness because it affects almost every movement you make and it's like a grinding horrible like your bones feel like they don't have any cushion on each other anymore yeah exactly when i talked to other doctors about it they don't quite get it and i know why because i didn't get it either after learning about it in a book until i had it you shouldn't feel like like that was you just not tolerating pregnancy those are not normal aches and pains of pregnancy they may not be abnormal as in dangerous or you know something was missed i would definitely not say that but it it's not a typical experience i had a horrible time breathing um allergies not like my lungs were being crushed which that did feel like that was happening as well almost like your mucous membranes feel swollen is that kind of what you mean yes i could not breathe out of my nose so it felt like the worst allergy attack in the whole world but it never went away difficulty breathing is related to elevated levels of estrogen and progesterone which cause swelling of mucous membranes and makes them more sensitive and and that actually is a pretty common one but i'm sure with everything else that you were having going on that that was just kind of icing on the cake like okay i can't you know stand up or lay on my back and now i can't breathe and i can't move because it hurts like that you know these are just they stack on top of each other it's just like everything on top of everything but the other big one that happened was um i was you know due in four weeks and i started getting really really itchy on um the palms of my hands and feet like felt like like if you gave me a knife and said you can cut off your skin i would have to get underneath the skin like it was i've never felt itching like that in my life it was like i was digging so i got tested for cholestasis you know more about it than i would but what i learned about it is that it was like my liver was leaking bile or something into my bloodstream and it can be really really potentially dangerous for the baby then i was like well then we have to get this baby out and my doctor was like oh no we'll wait and see and i said well how do i know if he's okay and he said well if he stops moving and so that was my that's what i was told like if your baby stops moving then you should you know then he's something's wrong and and so it was traumatizing knowing like there's something wrong with me and my liver is doing this and there's nothing i can do about it so then i was just a disaster cholestasis or interest intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy which is exactly what you described where the bile acids which are typically made in the liver are put into the bloodstream and how our amounts and you had exactly the classic symptoms of that which is people come in and they say my soles of my feet and my palms of my hands itch like crazy it's worse at night i can't sleep then you're not sleeping so on top of that you're tired which makes it difficult to deal with physical symptoms anyway when you're just trying to stay awake through the day especially when you're working like you are i want to continue to reiterate that you mentioned at the beginning that it felt guilty like why are other people able to tolerate this and i'm not other people don't always have this many things that are bad and even though none of these except the cholestasis are you know severe pregnancy complications that can be threatening to your baby tiny things like that add up and mentally are very difficult and physically to deal with and then on top of that when your doctor can't give you answers i mean this is one of the most frustrating things for me as a physician and i tend to take a very kind of patient-centered approach where i want to spend a lot of time on the patients and hear my patients and listen to them and i know everybody kind of has a different style but it it keeps me up at night when i have things like this that i can't figure out and i know my patient is at home miserable and i can't help them and that's why i continue to you know push where we need more research we need more information we need to figure out how to better improve these experiences for people because it matters during the whole pregnancy i just never felt validated and i just i was always told well that's common you're fine and so it made me feel really weak and down about myself and like there's something wrong with me being validated and what you're experiencing and being verbally told by someone who is in charge of taking care of you that not only is their experience valid but it's okay if you hate this you don't have to love it and that won't make you a terrible mother can go a really long way for someone do not get me wrong i have many many wonderful ob-gyn colleagues who are male and and great like i think they can be excellent as well and your doctor probably is excellent as well but i feel like i do have a little bit of a unique experience because not only am i a female but i've had kids the entire time i've been in ob-gyn my twins were born when i was a medical student and i've had that perspective and i figured out early on that it's so important to listen to your patients yeah and being someone who is really open about my experiences online throughout this whole process you know pregnancy and birth and motherhood and postpartum and everything i've always been very open and vocal about it um emotionally and physically talked about everything and um through that i've noticed a lot of moms being grateful that i'm talking about the hard stuff but also it's it's a really sensitive subject so it's also difficult to talk about because i don't want to be insensitive to the women who can't get pregnant and wish they could and that was also another struggle for me is feeling really guilty that i wasn't enjoying it because there's so many women who wish they could experience it and i'm so grateful as miserable as it was i am so grateful i was able to get pregnant and have you know my baby and um experience that like even though it was miserable and i don't wish my experience on anyone or on myself ever again i am so grateful i got to do it and so there's like a balance there that i never wanted to make it seem like i wasn't grateful i think it's important for pregnant women to know you can be grateful that you're pregnant and also be miserable and that's okay and it's okay to not think this isn't the magical beautiful you know ponies and rainbows experience i was expecting like it's okay to be like oh this kind of sucks and i'm grateful that i'm having it and that i get to experience this but it sucks you know i think that's important for women to know that that's that's okay and to see you on this side of it where it sucked but you're still a wonderful mom it doesn't invalidate anything that you experience in the pregnancy and now you can still look back on it and go yeah it sucked but here's where we are and that's important too totally and and i had the opposite experience of what i was told and what i expected which was pregnancy would be fine and birth would be the worst most traumatizing thing i've ever heard of you know my birth wasn't and my birth was i liked it it was hard for sure and birth is you know a crazy thing that your body goes through and it's really intense but i enjoyed my birth experience and it was nothing compared to my pregnancy i would take birth over pregnancy a million times over and that's a unique view for a lot of people as well oh i know it's it's very unique it's not common but that is my experience it's beautiful i mean i love that too because a lot of people are very afraid of birth and i think i even heard you mention maybe in one of your videos that you were really scared of the delivery process i think it's also really important for those stories to be out there because a lot of times all we see are these very polarized birth stories of it was either you know this beautiful home birth with nobody there and everything went fine or i had a very traumatic hospital birth and everybody was you know abusing me which don't get me wrong i know that these things happen in our hospitals and i am you know one of the people trying to make a difference in that but i also love that you bring that up because it's important for people to see a non-scary hospital labor and delivery experience as well i think it's really important for anyone who wants to be pregnant or is pregnant to know that like i said earlier all women are so different not just physically and how you're going to react physically but mentally and emotionally every woman is so different every human is so different and how they will react to things i knew for me i did not want a home birth because i knew for me i really trust doctors and i wanted to be there in case something went wrong my pregnancy was so awful that i thought there's no way this is going to be an easy beautiful home birth i also at that point thought well i obviously can't handle pain well because look at me compared to all these pregnant women i'm gonna need help with pain because you know that's just was my impression and so i knew i needed to have a hospital birth and i was scared that it would be miserable i was pleasantly surprised when i got there to find out that it wasn't i had wonderful nurses and my doctor was great in that experience i think you mentioned in your birth vlog that you got an epidural and that you were really happy that you did that can you talk just a little bit about why you felt like that was the right choice for you and how it helped you as far as or didn't help you whatever your perspective is as far as like enjoying the birth process um i know that for me i took the necessary birth classes prior and those actually gave me panic attacks so some women need to know all of the information and really understand exactly what their body is doing and why it's doing it and how the pain is going to be and how they can manage the pain and that's really helpful information for them to know and important information for them to know for me it it just made me panic and freak out to hear all the options of what could happen how it could go wrong how i should react and how my you know all those things freaked me out because i just thought of every worst case scenario and thought what if my body can't do this and i had panic attacks so then i went into my birth going i'm going to trust my doctors they've studied this and they went to school for this they know more than i do about this no matter how much i study in the next few months they went to school for years they know more than i do and i trust them and i decided i trusted them and i went into it knowing i need to trust them that they have my best interest in heart and my and they want to keep me and my baby safe and i'd rather just do that than go in and tell them that i know better than them because i knew that i didn't and everyone's different but that was my experience and i knew i just panicked when i the more information i learned how you explain that is almost exactly how i talk about it with my patients it's like planning a wedding you can plan as much or as little as you want you can get as much help or as little help as you want but don't try to plan things that we can't control don't try to plan the weather that sets people up sometimes for disappointment when they try to plan every little thing that are sometimes out of our control i think that what you touch on is really important because we're kind of told like you have to go to birth classes you have to learn everything you have to find out all your options and that's a really important thing for some people some people want to do that they want to make every single decision and some people want to be pregnant and go to the hospital and have a team that they have a lot of trust in and come home with a baby and that's an okay thing as well and i try to kind of explain that to patients you are the only person who knows your level of anxiety and if it improves with tons of information or if once you have that information you worry about all the possibilities and so i'm glad that you brought that up there's a lot of like you should or you have to talk with motherhood and with pregnancy and birth and i don't think that that's i don't think that's ever accurate unless it's like an emergency situation so i went in my water broke and i went and i think i was two centimeters when i got there and um they wanted me to progress a little bit faster because after an hour i hadn't progressed and but my water had broken and then you had cholestasis and all that so they said you know we'd like to give you pitocin and um so i think first they gave me like a shot of a painkiller because the contractions were extremely painful even though i was only two centimeters um and so they gave me a shot of some painkiller that i don't remember what it was probably something like fentanyl or state all especially if it kind of made you feel loopy a little bit so they gave me that and it made me feel a little bit loopy and i'm tired and i wanted to be awake and aware so when they came in and said they were gonna give they wanted to give me pitocin what do you want to do i was scared of getting the epidural because the first drug they gave me made me a little bit loopy and out of it that's what i thought the epidural was going to do so i said no to the epidural at first and um they gave me pitocin and it got really painful and my contractions got really really painful and i was progressing fast and so they came in and they heard me kind of like moaning and they came in they're like did you want the epidural now no pressure they were really sweet about it and i getting the epidural i've always heard was is really terrifying and painful and it wasn't for me i mean it's painful because there's you know putting a needle in your spine but it wasn't as bad as i thought it was going to be compared to how bad my contractions were i didn't really care and um then i felt great my epi i had a great epidural experience you know i wasn't really in too much pain i could feel enough i could feel the baby moving i could feel him going down and getting closer to um where he needed to be and i could feel contractions but i wasn't in agony um and you know it was i feel like the perfect experience with epidural i progressed faster because i wasn't as like tense and freaking out i was just really relaxed i was able to take a nap um so for me the epidural experience was really wonderful i pushed him out in like 20 minutes and um i think maybe total six or seven like pushing times or whatever you know contractions and pushings and he came out and i tore a lot and um so the recovery was really bad i've always heard you can tell me here but that the epidural since you don't feel sorry my computer since you don't feel too much with the epidural then you push and you'll you know you're not going to stop if you feel the ripping or tearing or whatever and so you're pushing harder and faster that is a really common thing that that people say and we've studied it a lot and people don't actually have if you look at a global population scale of people worse tears if they get an epidural um but they do you do tend to have worse tears with your first pregnancy where do you think you are as far as the trauma that you experienced in pregnancy and healing from that physically and and especially mentally how are you coping with that it's been hard just because all my friends that had babies the same time as me now already have another baby or are pregnant and i wish i i'm like how do they already how do they want weren't they so miserable how could they want more but i guess that's you know i'm like that's what people do a lot of people do that and so it's a struggle because i'm feeling the natural like urges and yearning for another baby and for my son to have a sibling and for me as i love being a mom it's incredible and so i want more kids so desperately so it's really difficult um you know having that like conflict in my mind of like oh should i do it again because some moms say their second pregnancy is easier some moms say it's worse some moms say it's the same again every woman is different so there's no way to know what would happen to me if i got pregnant again it could happen i don't know and if it does i'll be excited to like take that journey and see where it goes um you know it's mentally i don't think i think a lot of people say oh you just forget that's what i was heard is you forget about all this pain and you forget about the birth and you forget about the pregnancy pains and you just want another one and i do just want another one but i have not forgotten i mean you can't forget like a year of your life that was the most miserable painful um year of your life physically emotionally mentally i mean i there's no way to erase that if it happens it happens and i will go on that journey and i think i'll be more prepared this time and i won't be as disappointed because i'll have the expectations of my last pregnancy as opposed to an expectation of pumpkins and rainbows i don't know why i said pumpkins and that's a new one but maybe you love pumpkins hey we love pumpkins so it's fine so i think you know i'm open to it we'll see what happens physically i think another thing that a lot of moms don't know is the recovery i think people just go you had a baby yay and the recovery um can be really difficult and for me it was a long recovery as well because of how much i tore i didn't know there was all that stuff you had to do and all the things you know but going to bathrooms not just going bathroom anymore there's a lot of items that you have to take with you and it's like 20 minutes to pee because of all the things that you have to do and cleanse and take care of and i was not prepared for that and um my recovery was very long because of my situation i'm fine now physically but like physically looking not the greatest so i like i got i got like frankenstein frankensteins down there so um that is something i wasn't expecting and um so that's another thing that i i think moms should be prepared for i was not prepared for that experience which funny a story uh happened to me right after i gave birth a doctor came in a nurse came in to tell me how to clean and take care of that and um how to deal with you know cleaning everything and all the blood and everything that's happening and it was explaining everything i'm on the toilet and she is down like showing me physically showing me how to do everything and she looks up at me and goes i'm a big fan by the way i saw you tweet you were in labor and i was hoping i would get you here so that was mortifying i was like in my worst state ever just like destroyed vagina that is horrible oh my gosh i am horrified thank you you know i'm like crying from pain and i was just like thank you for watching my videos oh my god that is so terrible i am i'm sorry on behalf of the medical profession that someone would do that i wasn't like mad i was just embarrassed for your birth experience sometimes you just want it to just be that experience and have people around who are helping who aren't fangirling while you're trying to recover your perineum after a delivery i think i wouldn't have cared if it was like i was in bed holding my baby and she said i love your videos or you know any other scenario would have been fine but it was like i had just given birth and i had just a million stitches and she was teaching me how to clean that area i mean inches from it and looked up at me as i'm sitting on the toilet and that was the moment she chose and i was like why couldn't you wait five minutes till i'm like standing and we're not in this scenario like it was very funny that is something else um well i think that you touched on something else really important too is people say oh you forget and whatever and i think that's a really important distinction between the difference between pain and discomfort and actual trauma related to pregnancy or delivery people forget or can ignore things that were temporarily not enjoyable or temporarily hard or painful but you don't just forget something that your mind and body have perceived as traumatic that's because your body and your mind are warning you that this was extremely traumatic and you don't want to forget those things and you know nobody should make you feel like that's the goal i try to tell my patients your job is not to ever forget something that was traumatic it's to process it to feel it to validate the fact that it happened to you and you didn't cause it and then to work on letting it go where it doesn't interrupt your normal parts of life and i think there's a big place for kind of cognitive behavioral therapy and things like that in these scenarios because people are told by society that it should just be okay and it doesn't have to just be okay yeah i think if i if i ever went through it again i think that i would go into it really asking more people and getting multiple opinions on how to deal with things because um i think i just kind of took it how my doctor said it was just like well it's common and so you're fine and and instead of you know maybe getting more opinions from other doctors other moms who've experienced the same things um i think you know that would be my more my approach the second time around is expecting it to be difficult and knowing that it's not just we'll just sit there and deal with it and you know there are things you can do that might help alleviate some of the pain and i would definitely be in therapy if i went through it again um you know so there's a lot of things i would do differently we'll see we'll see if it happens i have i have no idea what to expect for the future of me and more children you know i mean and you know this but it's okay if it doesn't and it's okay if it doesn't because you don't want it to you aren't even if you want to expand your family you're not obligated to sacrifice yourself mentally or physically to do that you also matter in that equation and although you know having seen some of your videos and stuff i fully believe that you are a wonderful mother and that this is your passion in life just like mine it's okay if that's not on the table for you and i think it's important for people to hear that and that's why i think it's so great and why i was so drawn to your story and your experience when my subscribers started telling me about it is because i could tell from you know seeing you with your family and your son that this is what you live for and people need to see that it's okay if that's your priority but it's still really hard for you to imagine doing it again totally yeah so we'll see what happens but i appreciate you sharing your story and hopping on here with me and do you have any questions for me or anything that you would like me to make sure my followers know about pregnancy or parenting in general you know i'm just really appreciative to hear a doctor validate a woman's feelings and um you know actually giving information about each thing that i was feeling as opposed to just like that's normal um so i'm very appreciative of you for that and just for educating people in general because that was something that really shocked me when i started talking about my pregnancy and birth and postpartum was a lot of people going like oh i didn't know any of this stuff i didn't know that these things happened i didn't know that this stuff could happen i didn't know that this is how women could feel or um and so just to know that there's anyone else out there educating people um because i think women are kind of taught that you just enjoy pregnancy and don't talk about you know the difficult stuff um so thank you for and thank you for just talking about it being open about it and educating people thank you thank you so much coleen for being here today i wish you the best of luck in everything if you're not subscribed hit that subscribe button check out coleen's channels i have linked them below kind to yourself to each other to me in the comments be kind and i will see you next time