Faith Over Fear: The Christian Pregnancy & Birth Podcast

1. How God Used My Birth Story to Call Me Into Birth Work (Ellie’s Unmedicated Hospital Birth)

• Natalie Portman • Season 1 • Episode 1

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In this very first episode of Faith Over Fear: The Christian Pregnancy & Birth Podcast, I’m taking you behind the scenes of one of the most transformative days of my life—the birth of my daughter, Ellie.

From navigating unexpected complications early in pregnancy to giving birth unmedicated in a hospital setting, this episode is full of the real, raw, faith-filled moments that shaped me as a woman and called me into the sacred work of serving other mamas.

You’ll hear how I coped with a subchorionic hematoma, managed intense pelvic pain, and prepared for birth with a mix of evidence-based tools and spiritual practices. You’ll also get a glimpse of the worship-filled atmosphere during labor, how “The Blessing” became my birth anthem, and the exact moment I realized God was calling me to become a doula and childbirth educator.

Whether you’re newly pregnant, preparing for birth, or just curious how God shows up in the labor room—this episode will inspire you to surrender fear, embrace faithful preparation, and trust in His beautiful design for birth.

In this episode, I share:

  • My journey through early pregnancy fears and faith
  • Coping with a subchorionic hematoma and pelvic pain due to hypermobility
  • The natural comfort measures that helped me during labor
  • How I experienced God’s peace and presence in the delivery room
  • What sparked my decision to become a doula and childbirth educator

Scripture Shared:
“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” – Proverbs 16:9

A Prayer for You:
I close this episode by praying over you—whether you’re hoping to conceive, currently pregnant, or already a mama. May God meet you in your preparation and birth journey with peace, strength, and deep trust in His goodness.

Mentioned in this episode:

If this episode encouraged you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend. Let’s keep choosing faith over fear, one birth story at a time. Go here for the full episode show notes and all resources mentioned!

Natalie Portman:

Hello there. I am so excited to have you here and I wanted to kick off this podcast by starting with an introduction of myself, a little bit about me, and sharing my birth story with my first baby girl. Her name is Ellie. So I'll go into detail about everything that went into preparing for that pregnancy, preparing for that birth. The birth itself and some takeaways as it related to igniting my passion for birth work. So I am here in Jacksonville, Florida. If you're in this area. I do in-person doula support, and I'm also now offering virtual doula support. Two people that live in the Jacksonville area and also, you know those who live beyond Jacksonville and the surrounding areas. It's a huge city here, and I am married to Brian. He is an amazing husband and dad. We've been married for five and a half years, and we have two amazing little kiddos. Our first is our daughter Ellie, and she will be four in June and Daniel, who just turned one in March. And we go to the Church of Eleven22, which is a huge mega church here in Jacksonville. And we just, we love our little family. We love our church family. And it's been such an amazing thing to watch the Lord move in birth in my life as a way to love on and minister to so many other families. And without any further ado, I'll just go into my birth story with her. So we got married in September of 2019, and then obviously Covid hit in early 2020. We moved into our first house at that point and just began nesting and doing all the fun. Just newly married, just getting to know each other, building our little. Nest and decided before, we originally had said, we'll wait until our first year of marriage and then we will start thinking about having kids. There was literally nothing happening during COVID and so we just were like we'll start now. So in September of 2020, we started trying for a baby and I actually had an IUD for years. And I did not know when I was ovulating because I didn't ever have a period when I had the IUD and I decided to do the ovulation test strips. It's like a urine strip. And it would tell you when you were ovulating, which, would give you a better chance of knowing when to time having sex to conceive. So I did that and like I said. We were very blessed, got pregnant our first try, and I remember first of all being in shock that I was able to get pregnant that first time, but also just in awe of, okay, so now what am I getting myself into? This is. Really intense. Thinking about the fact that I'm now going to be growing and giving birth to a human being like, this is crazy. And it almost felt to me like I was staring at this mountain in front of me and I didn't know, I didn't feel equipped. I didn't know how to climb that mountain and to get through that journey. And so I. Am a researcher. And so I, I really dove into listening to podcasts, listening to birth stories listening to audiobooks. I'm a huge audiobook person. And that was a way that I prepared. I took online courses and just did everything I could think of to prepare myself for this journey ahead because it was so unknown to me. And. I like to feel prepared. I don't know if you're like that, but I really like to feel prepared for what I'm getting myself into. And it was really great'cause I felt prepared going into my birth. I felt really excited. Which was awesome. But to go back to the beginning of when I first found out I was pregnant there was a little bit of complication in that first trimester. So I ended up around 10 weeks I woke up and I had some intense cramping in the morning and then. Started to have some bleeding and if you're not familiar, that is a pretty classic miscarriage sign and we ended up going to the emergency room. And it was inconclusive. They didn't know what was happening, if it was truly a miscarriage or not, but they treated it like it was a miscarriage. And so Brian and I and my family really, we were all just grieving that because I had just recently announced to my family that we were expecting. And so it was just a really hard time. I remember it being difficult, but also having just a peace that passed all understanding. I just trusted in the Lord's timing and plan for that pregnancy and just again, not knowing what was happening because it was almost worse them saying we don't know if you're miscarrying. Because I, again, I just didn't know. I didn't know how to feel at that point. But the Lord was so gracious to us and I just played a ton of worship music. We just worshiped and cried and, I just really trusted in the Lord when we didn't know it was happening. And then I had another episode of bleeding a couple days later that weekend. And then Monday went to my regularly scheduled OB appointment and they told me that I actually had something called a subchorionic hematoma. And it's basically where like a pool, like a little pocket of blood. Was formed, and it was close to the cervix, like where that opening is. And so I was bleeding from that subc chorionic hematoma. And so it was a huge relief to find out that baby was fine and that's where that bleeding and cramping was coming from. So that was really wild experiencing that in that first trimester and then in the second trimester started having. Some pretty intense pelvic pain. My like front pelvic area, kinda like where the pubic bone is. I started having just like really intense pain. Like I couldn't lift one leg without my pelvis. Feeling like it was like ripping apart, just walking, hurt, moving, like rolling over in bed was really painful. Which I have come to now realize was due to hypermobility. I'm very hypermobile. And I will also have a separate episode about hypermobility and how that could affect your pregnancy and maybe, give you some tips and tricks for coping with that. But I struggled to just get comfortable in my pregnancy just having horrible pelvic pain. And so I had chiropractic adjustments that helped me so much. I remember I would like hobble into my chiropractic appointment and then walk actually be able to walk out of that appointment. So that was super helpful. And then I also went to, physical therapy, pelvic floor, physical therapy, and they gave me some exercises to help with that as well. So that, that helped a lot. And then I continued to exercise. I was doing reformer Pilates, if you're familiar with what that is. And that's a really great low impact strength training exercise for pregnancy. So that was, a huge blessing to be active during the pregnancy. Another thing that I was doing to prepare my body for birth was cervical ripening methods. So I'd heard about this as a way to prepare your body for labor. And I'm gonna also have a separate episode about cervical ripening methods and what those look like and how that can help benefit your labor experience. And then thankfully, I had listened to a lot of other women's experience You know what to expect in that last, month or so of labor. And my sister had a ton of Braxton Hicks and things like that. So when I would go to bed at night and then, throughout the night and in the morning, I would have a lot of Braxton Hicks, the practice warmup. Contractions. And so it was nice to have her perspective because if I didn't expect that or I didn't know that was normal, I would've been like, oh, I'm going into labor like every night. And so it was nice to expect that and just to make my mindset like, okay, this is normal. This is okay. And so the month or so leading up to, I think it was like maybe starting at 37 or 38 weeks, my provider offered to do cervical checks during my weekly OB appointments. And I think there was some progress up to that point, like maybe I was like, a centimeter or so, a couple weeks ahead of my due date. And then my due date was June. Seventh and on June 8th I had an appointment with my OB and I asked them to go ahead and do a cervical exam. And I was already three centimeters dilated and pretty efface. And so that was really encouraging to me because I had been doing a lot of these cervical ripening methods to get my cervix to be favorable. And they were like, whatever you were doing, keep doing it. This is awesome. So I was really exciting. And so that night we went to Taco Tuesday with some friends. That was really fun and I love spicy food and that's another cervical ripening method, eating spicy food. So that was great. me and my husband had sex that night, and that's another cervical ripening method. And the next morning I woke up. And I had some kind of just crampy feeling and could just tell I felt, a little different that morning. I am an early riser. I woke up at five something and then at six o'clock I'm in the kitchen and I'm mixing up my oatmeal and I all of a sudden have this pretty. Powerful contraction. And I look over at the clock and it's six on the dot. And I was like, okay, interesting. so I eat my breakfast and I think I was having some contractions at that point, like just really sporadic. So I hop in the shower around like 7, 7 30 and as I'm in the shower, I just start to notice I'm having pretty. Regular and powerful contractions, and I'm having to breathe through them I get out of the shower and at that point I start timing them. I'm getting ready for the day and Starting to time those contractions, and they were pretty regular at that point. I think it was somewhere between five minutes apart is what those contractions were already at. So eight o'clock my OB's office opened up and I was like, if I'm still having regular contractions at that point, I'll give'em a call and just let'em know what's happening. I call them at eight o'clock and I just get the nurse line and I'm like, Hey, just wanna let you guys know I'm having regular contractions. I'm already, a day past or two days now past my due date. When should I head into the hospital? And so they call me back and they're like, yeah, you can go ahead and head here now. And I was like, wait, what? Because I fully anticipated needing to labor at home for hours. Like I, I just mentally prepared for that to take. A lot of time before they would have me come in, during that time I was definitely noticing the contractions were picking up. I really needed to take, deep breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth. I was vocalizing, moaning, making sounds. Moving. The most comfortable position I could find was leaning over my bed and kind of swaying side to side. And I would even sometimes have somebody do like double hip squeezes. So my sister my older sister came over and she was helping me pack up my bag because I didn't even have my stuff all packed up on my toiletries. I had the basics packed away, but I didn't have any of my toiletries, so she was helping me pack all that up. And so it was like I would have a contraction. And then I would be like, okay, Kellie go and pack these things. And I would tell her where everything was. And so I only had that little break in between the contraction to tell people what to do and then go back right back into just working through that contraction. So we got to the hospital around nine 15. It's only like 10 minutes down the road. And they checked me and I was already five to six centimeters. So even in just a couple of hours of starting labor, I was like in labor at for three hours. At that point I was already, dilating. So that was really encouraging. And the nurse even said, is your plan to get an epidural or are you trying to go natural? And I was like The goal, the hope is to go unmedicated. And so she was like, I think you're gonna do great. So I was also very encouraged by that. And I continued to labor. Just like the breathing, the vocalizing, moving swaying leaning over the birth bed and double hip squeezes. And they checked me again a couple hours later around noon, and I was already eight centimeters dilated. And they were like, okay, your water bag is bulgy, so if you want, we can break it and then, get things going. But at that point I was like I seem to be progressing on my own let's not. And so they were like totally fine with that and I continued to labor. And then I had them check me again, like close to four and just to see what was happening because I felt like the contractions weren't progressing at that point. Like they, they were staying just as consistent. They were staying just as strong, but like nothing was picking up. And when they checked me, sure enough, I had not made any sort of change at that point. And that was a little, not discouraging, but I was like, yeah, I could tell like things were really manageable. If I had to rate that intensity scale of zero to 10, they were probably like a five or a six. And so I, at that point when they checked me and said there was no change, I was like yeah, let's go ahead and break my water and just see if that kind of gets things going. And sure enough, they broke the water. And oh my goodness, that first contraction after my water broke was intense. Like I, I got up out of the bed and started crying, like I, I just was overcome with how intense it went from the previous contractions to that contraction now. And thankfully though, because things were much more intense, I did completely dilate to 10 centimeters within an hour and started feeling that urge to push. And I had given them a like checklist of like my birth plan, my birth preferences. And one of the things I had put on there was a warm compress during the pushing stage. So when I started feeling that urge to push, I got in the bed. I was exhausted at that point.'cause I had been laboring for like 11, almost 11 hours. And, standing up almost that entire time because any time someone suggested I sit down or lay down or do something, it was like. As soon as that contraction would start, I would wanna stand up again. And I was exhausted by the time it came to pushing and so I, I did lay in the bed and start pushing and they, they did the warm compress for me, which was such a help. It really helped Knowing where to push, but also just relaxing that area and it helps with blood circulation there so that reduce the risk of tearing during the delivery. So I pushed for about an hour and 15 minutes, and then she was born at 6:09 PM which is hilarious because she was born on six nine, June 9th. At 6 0 9 and she weighed six pounds, nine ounces. And then she was born to the song, Jesus. I have my doubts, which is so funny because it's a silly, title, but it's actually a beautiful song. By John Foreman, who's the lead singer of Switchfoot, if you're familiar with that band. But yeah, so she was born to that song and then throughout the pregnancy I would sing to her a lot. I'm a singer. I went to an arts school for singing, and so I sang to her a lot during the pregnancy and it's really sweet because babies obviously know and recognize your voice. But they also love to hear your singing voice too. And so I sing to her the Blessing by Bethel and it's the verse, the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace. And so that's the song, the Message. And so Brian and I sang that to her right after she was born. And it was like, honestly surreal, giving birth to her. Just the intensity that happened when she was born and then just that immediate joy of her being put on my chest and just seeing her. And she was just so beautiful and I was in disbelief that I had actually done it. And I had put on my birth plan to have that golden hour where I got uninterrupted skin to skin time with her. And that was such a sweet time of again, just getting to know her, singing to her. I got to nurse her. The only thing that really was not fun about that time. Was I did tear. I did have a first degree tear and when you have a tear and you are going unmedicated, they'll give you lidocaine to help, numb the area before they start stitching you. But she did not numb me well enough, and so I could like, feel her stitching me up and that was very painful, very uncomfortable. I know, for next time if I have to go through that, I will just say, please numb me a little bit more please. But yeah, so I was very distracted during all of that. But then after just everything got done and settled down and I was nursing, Ellie. I just remember looking down at her and just being overcome with joy and just feeling like I was on a high, like I could not believe that I had just given birth to her, that the labor was just so beautiful and like I just felt the Lord's presence there and that he had gotten me through that challenge. it was a worship experience of and experiencing the Lord's goodness in that. So that was so beautiful. And then yeah, so that was my birth experience with her. It was so transformative and I, I just felt like I couldn't get enough of the birth. World. Like I, I just continued to just want to learn more about it. It was like almost after I had that experience, I was like even more intrigued about birth because it was just such an empowering and beautiful experience that I had just had. And I was talking with a friend who was newly pregnant and she was like why don't you become a doula? And that's, that was like the first time it had really hit me that could maybe be an option for me because I had heard about a doula some of the podcasts and birth stories that I had heard about, talked about doulas. And, with COVID and everything going on I didn't know if I could have other people in the room with me for the delivery, and so I decided to not look into a doula, which I really wish I had. But I was doing some research about doulas and came across DONA, which is the number one, like largest. Doula certifying organization in the world and started to pursue that route. I did get my DONA certification. I also decided to become a Body Ready Method Pro which was very complimentary to my doula certification. And then I also became a childbirth educator. Like all of this happened within that first year of me becoming a doula. And then started taking on clients and. And it was so sweet because I just was in awe that people would would trust me to be a part of their birth experiences. And the feedback that I got and just how much it, it helped them get through that experience and encourage them, it really did feel like such a calling that the Lord had on my life and just absolutely have fallen in love with birth ever since then. what I find just so striking about it is. How, yes, of course birth is a very physical experience, but it is extremely spiritual and the ramifications and the implications and the parallels of the gospel, like it is insane to me. And I'll share more about that aspect of birth as we, explore more on this podcast. But it just was so striking to me just how much the Lord's. Just goodness and his beauty in designing birth and the birth experience is, so that was my birth experience with Ellie. It was so amazing. But I hope that was inspiring and encouraging to you having, hearing about an unmedicated hospital birth experience. Something that I would love to leave you with is a verse from Proverbs and it's from Proverbs 16, nine. And it says, the heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. And I love this verse because it really has, been the meditation of my heart that I would, plan my steps that I, like I said, am such a planner. I love to know what to do, feel prepared, feel equipped, but I also. Value and see the importance of trusting in the Lord that he will establish my steps. Like I can make these plans, but ultimately it's up to the Lord and his will and his sovereignty to see those things come about. And so I would love to pray for you and just leave you with a very short prayer so that you can also feel that encouragement from that verse. Father God, I just, I thank you for this sweet sister of mine that's listening right now. I pray that you would stir up in her wherever she's at, whether she is hoping to become pregnant, whether she is currently pregnant or already a mama. I pray that you would meet her wherever she is, Lord, and I pray that you would just stir up in her, a stewardship mentality of taking the beautiful things that you've given her and just to leverage those for your glory and your goodness. And I pray that you would just establish her steps, honor her preparation, honor her plans, Lord Jesus. But I pray that you would just ultimately help her trust in you more deeply and just love you with trust and surrender. We love you Jesus. It's in your name we pray. Amen. So that's it, that's my birth story, and I hope that you will stay tuned for the next episode where I'll be sharing about my second pregnancy and birth story. And that was actually a home birth, so it'll be a different setting. But stay tuned for that.