Mattie James, a wife, mom of three, and entrepreneur based in Atlanta, always knew that she wanted to have kids. She and her husband had talked about having a family for a long time, but once they were ready to start that family, they realized the process might look a little different than originally anticipated. “It became a lot more layered than I expected it to be,” she says. “My birth story is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.” When she became pregnant with her first daughter, the doctor shared that she had uterine fibroids, one of which was the size of a grapefruit. Because of this, her doctors all but told her that she would most likely be delivering her child via C-section.
“I had never had a baby before,” she says. “This was our first child and it was really important to me that I was safe and that the baby got here safely.” But unfortunately, when she went into labor, it was “really really intense.” James ended up having an emergency C-section, which resulted in her losing a lot of blood. “Typically, with a C-section, people are in the hospital for 1-2 days,” she says. “I was in the hospital for almost a full week because I lost so much blood.” In that moment, made the decision that if she were to have more kids, she didn’t want to go through anything like that again. For more about James’ birth story, watch the video above.