The Birth of Goldie & Teva

Written on December 22, 2025

11 months ago today, I experienced the most transformative day of my life.

The birth of Goldie and Teva wasn’t the orgasmic home water birth I had visualized for months. It wasn’t the redemptive story I wanted to tell. And while I can’t leave the story in 2025, I can release it.

Tuesday evening, my water broke while eating eggplant parm. Within minutes, came a contraction that made me scream… not like ‘oh, I think that might be a contraction,’ kind of scream, but more a full-body wave of intensity that completely stole my breath, kind of scream.

Within 15 minutes, contractions were 3 minutes apart. No warm-up. No early labor. Just 0 to 100.

I labored at home for 6 hours in my birthing tub, in my beautiful bedroom, surrounded by crystals, flowers, my dog, Joel, mom, and carefully selected birth team, my doula coaching me through each wave. But my blood pressure kept climbing. When my midwife said, “Your body is trying to tell us something, and I think we should listen. I think we should consider the hospital?” my heart shattered. And I felt she was right.

So many people had called me crazy for planning a home birth with mono-di twins. They laughed at me. “You would want a woo-woo home birth.” But I wanted to prove it could be done - to them, to myself, to every mother who’s been told “you can’t” or “that’s dangerous.” Instead, at midnight, I found myself in the back of our car with my mom, laboring through black ice and 25 degree temperatures on the coldest night I’ve experienced in Austin, while Joel was driving at the fastest, safest speed possible.

The cascade of interventions I’d worked so hard to avoid came anyway: blood pressure medication, magnesium drip, catheter, and after another 5 hours of laboring, an epidural. When my cervix stalled at 8.5cm and Baby B’s heart rate started dropping, the choice became clear: C-section in a controlled setting, or wait until it became an emergency. There was clearly no other way out.

I mourned my home birth and then my vaginal delivery right there in the hospital bed after nearly 12 hours of unmedicated labor. Then I surrendered.

In the OR, we played Om Ganesha, the Lord of New Beginnings and the remover of obstacles. It’s been my favorite deity for many years. This was a new beginning. I heard my babies cry. And then... blackout.

I’d hemorrhaged. I lost half the blood in my body. Lost consciousness, intubated. I needed two emergency blood transfusions. I nearly had a hysterectomy. While I was in post-op, Joel was running between three wings of the hospital - his wife who almost died, Baby A in the NICU, Baby B in the transitional nursery.

I woke up 7 hours later in post-op, wired from every direction. I had IVs in both hands, both arms, a catheter, oxygen tubes, heart monitors, and wires literally coming out of my toes. Confused. Terrified. Joel wasn’t there. The babies weren’t there. I was screaming inside.

When they finally laid Goldie on my chest, tangled in wires, I looked at her face and thought to myself, “I don’t know if that’s her,” as if I’d met her before. I was that disoriented.

I couldn’t meet Teva until the next day. Teva and Goldie couldn’t meet each other for 4 days. They were separated the moment they entered the world, just like I was separated from them.

Those first days weren’t the new mom bliss bubble I see my friends experiencing. There was no oxytocin flood, no peaceful golden light skin-to-skin. There was fear. Anxiety. Physical agony. The constant choice between which baby to hold, which area of the hospital to go to, which baby to feed, which baby to abandon for the other. A valiant attempt at trying to get Teva out of NICU to be with us (because we truly believed she didn’t need to be there) resulted in hospital threats to call child protective services on us.

I thought breastfeeding would be intuitive. Instead, it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I had bleeding nipples, supply issues, marathon nursing sessions with babies too small to latch, followed immediately by another marathon session with the second baby. I had started studying breastfeeding like it was a final exam, calling my lactation consultant multiple times a day, reading every article, asking ChatGPT questions at 3am.

I doubted whether I could do this. For the first time in my life, I genuinely didn’t know if I had the strength.

In the surrender of the reality of what was, I found something I didn’t know I was looking for. Not the birth story I wanted, but the one that cracked me open and remade me completely, and I’m still discovering who she is.

Eleven months later, I watch Goldie and Teva interact with one another, laugh at my every peek-a-boo, smile every time I walk in, babble, and learn new things everyday.

I find redemption in every ordinary moment. In their morning smiles and cuddles. The tandem feeding, when they were smaller, and would both just look at me, quiet, calm, blissful. In the way Teva learned to crawl and Goldie learned by watching her. I choose to be home every day, because what I want most is to be with them.

Motherhood gave me a fear and anxiety I’ve never had before… a low hum asking “am I doing this right?” with every piece of food I make for them, every nap, every time I leave, every time I let them fall down. But the fear also gave me a fierce, protective love that makes everything else seem small by comparison.

This birth was not what I wanted, it really sucked. But I guess it’s what the universe thought I needed.

Goldie and Teva are more incredible and adorable than I could have dreamed of. And they are healthy, happy, vibrant, loving little munchkins.

Life is the full range of emotions, and this was certainly that. Nothing has shown me the immensity of pain and joy in equal measures as much as motherhood.