Introduction:
My name is Sarah Denio and I want to share with you the story of how I became the founder of KindNest, a hub of simple, natural, powerful resources for fertility, healing after loss, pregnancy, parenting and wellness.
To understand the most important takeaway, it’s helpful to know the back story…
WHAT HAPPENED: THE BACKSTORY
I come from a large extended family, with my parents having a combined total of 19 siblings. Therefore I had always assumed that starting my own family would happen easily. Like many, I spent years actively preventing pregnancy until I was ready to have kids, and then I thought it would just happen.
After I met my husband and we got married, we decided to start trying for a baby. I thought it was going to happen pretty much right away. I’m not typically a super anxious person, but when I wasn’t pregnant after the first few months, I started getting nervous. Was something wrong?
And so I did what many of us do when faced with fear: I began trying to control as much of the process as I possibly could. I started micro-managing everything I could possibly think of that might “increase my chances of conception.”
Not only was I timing intercourse, but I was also spending exorbitant amounts of time on fertility and pregnancy blogs, apps and podcasts, taking my temperature, tracking the day of my cycle and how many days post ovulation I was, trolling the ends of the internet learning about cervical mucus, symptom-spotting early signs of pregnancy during the dreaded two-week-wait…you name it — if it can’t hurt, might help, I was on it.
Then, just a few short months later, I got pregnant! I was overjoyed! All my worries and fears dissolved to thin air as I blissfully traded my micro-management tasks for day-dreaming about telling my friends and eying the Maternity section at Target.
But my bliss was short-lived.
A little over a month later, I lost the baby. At our first prenatal visit, my husband and I had gotten to see our little bean’s healthy heartbeat, so the shock of finding out our baby was no longer living upon returning a few weeks later…it was devastating.
I had a D&C (a medical procedure to remove the “products of conception” ←horrible term if you ask me…) and went home feeling like a hollow shell. I wasn’t sure I wanted to put myself through that again, though I really wanted to have a baby.
Then, though I couldn’t see it at the time, something amazing happened…
I turned the focus of my internet researching skills to this new topic of pregnancy loss and was amazed to find scientific evidence that loss is significantly less likely when pregnant people receive additional support. It wasn’t crazy stuff either; it was simple things like calming the mind and honoring the time of a previous loss.
This was enough for me to muster the courage to try again. I didn’t actually DO anything differently, mind you, but I decided to try and believe that if others could have babies after loss, so could I.
I became pregnant again a few short months later but rather than feeling excited I was scared to death. What it if happened again? It was such a mind-screw: being pregnant was exactly what I wanted, more than anything, and yet I was plagued by fear and anxiety about the fact that I was — I checked the toilet paper for blood each time I went to the bathroom, poked at my breasts to see if they were still tender and reminded myself not to get too excited each time my mind wandered to a future including a baby.
It was such a roller coaster.
And then my worst fears came true. I lost that baby too. Now, not only did I have the grief of loss and question of whether something was wrong with me to cope with, but also the nagging feeling that perhaps my fear and anxiety had had something to do with it. Of course there was no way of knowing, but it certainly added salt to the wound.
We found out about the second loss at my OB’s office where the doctor told me I’d be sent for testing if it happened again. (This seems to be standard protocol, testing after a 3rd consecutive loss…!) I couldn’t fathom the thought of waiting to see if it happened again and asked for the testing sooner. I was referred to a local fertility clinic where testing found no notable cause for my losses.
But…while I was under their care, I became pregnant again (without medical intervention). The old fear and anxiety were raring and ready to go, BUT this time, per fertility clinic protocol, I received concrete evidence via ultrasounds and bloodwork each week that my little one was still growing, which enabled me to keep the darkest demons at bay.
9 months later, my 1st daughter was born, a healthy 7+ lbs, after 24hours of unmedicated labor, an epidural, another 8 hours of labor, and ultimately C-section. She was colicky, not gaining weight properly during her first weeks of life, and wouldn’t sleep anywhere but the car, but she was here and I was overjoyed! I had done it. I became a mother.
But the backstory doesn’t end there…
After that, I decided to wait a year or so and then give TTC another go so my husband and I could complete our mission of having 2 kids, as we had always envisioned.
But there was still a problem.
You may recall that when I became pregnant with my 1st daughter, I hadn’t actually done anything differently, which meant when I started trying again the old fear and anxiety were waiting in the wings. I hadn’t really healed from the prior losses or learned to believe in my body’s innate wisdom and capabilities. When we began trying again after my daughter turned 1, I told myself the prior losses had to have been a fluke.
And then we lost 2 more babies.
After the first I had another D&C. Following the next (what thankfully turned out to be the last) loss, EVERYTHING CHANGED.
HOW IT GOT THE FAMILY I WANTED
I KNEW I had to do something differently. I felt it in my bones. “This isn’t working. Something HAS to change” I heard myself say. And I recalled the research showing significantly better outcomes when pregnant people receive additional support. Since that type of support wasn’t readily available, I decided to figure out what it meant for me and to do whatever was needed to create it myself.
It began with choosing not to have a medical procedure to “take care of things”. Of course no one had said those words to me, but it’s how it felt to me. Like the losses and everything to do with them were happening to me and I was just helplessly along for the ride.
I instead waited for my body to recognize what was happening and worked through it all at home. That allowed me to begin feeling like I had some say in the situation, and that I could trust my body to do the right thing.
I had felt like someone else had been recklessly driving this train of my fertility journey, and I decided to take back the wheel.
I started studying yoga and mediation at home and practicing what I learned each morning, to train my mind to slow down and focus on what I wanted. I took a hard look at my diet and tried a couple different cleanses. I planted a vegetable garden from seed for the very first time, and witnessed my ability to nurture and grow life as some of the seeds withered away and others blossomed to bear fruit.
Ultimately, I occupied my mind with new thoughts and engaged my body in activities that FELT GOOD. Which had the side benefit of meaning I spent less time worrying about whether and when I would have another baby.
I didn’t understand it at the time but what I now know is this really meant I was no longer living in survival mode: I was no longer flooding my body with stress hormones day and night thanks all my pointless micro-managing, “doing doing doing” to conceive.
Just 3 months later, we conceived our 2nd daughter, to whom I gave birth in a completely natural, unmedicated VBAC delivery for which I arrived at the hospital already 10 cm dilated and pushed for 3 hours. It was one of the most empowering experiences of my life. I had no drugs, no tearing, no hemorrhoids, no fear… Her birth not only codified my family of 4 but the strength of my relationship to myself and my ability to give birth to ANYTHING my heart desires.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I LEARNED & HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE
How would I sum up the point of this story? The most important thing I learned is that all I ever needed to do was embrace living my life and being my true self. Shedding what was no longer serving me and embracing what felt good.
Perhaps that sounds overly simple but in truth, most of us have no idea HOW to do that. It takes coming to a cross roads of sorts to motivate us seek out the resources needed to make a change that realigns our lives. And then making that choice to DO something.
Otherwise the inertia of life as it is propels us years in to the future, whether we like it or not. It begins with that one problem we feel we need to tackle, and if we find the right person to show us how, it then permeates ALL areas of life.
That’s what I did. I needed to tackle how to become a parent and in doing so, I learned how to become myself. I can now manifest anything my heart desires.
When all was said and done I had begun living my life in a way that felt good each day, which means I’m a more joyful person, loving wife, patient mother, connected daughter and real friend to this day.
SO many of the things I had been doing to try and get and stay pregnant were fleeting and unproductive… But now I can truly say that because of this, I am forever changed, for the better.
Which is why I decided to create KindNest, to make it simple for others to embrace their lives as I have learned to do, shed what’s no longer serving them and become themselves. I became a coach so I could operationalize what I had learned on my own journey and share with others how they too can transform from controlling to embracing, using simple tools and practices, and be forever changed for the better.
KindNest’s mission is to help individuals build the families of their dreams, by simply becoming who they are meant to BE.
Whether you’re trying again after a loss or have been at it for a few months but it feels more like a few years… Whether you’ve been diagnosed with infertility or OCD or depression or some other medical label, are already in the middle of fertility treatments, or had 3 kids but have lost yourself along the way, I want you to know there IS hope, you are not alone, and it can be much simpler than you ever imagined from this point forward. Reach out to learn more.