When Angela first came into Fertility Framework, her biggest concern wasn’t even “Can I get pregnant?” It was, “Why does my period hurt this much, and is this really the only option I have?”

Like so many women, she had been put on birth control to “fix” her cramps. The focus was less about understanding what her body was trying to say, and more about turning off the symptoms. She knew she didn’t want to stay on birth control forever, but the thought of going back to debilitating pain didn’t feel like an option either. Somewhere in that tension, God led her to start learning His design instead of just managing the discomfort.

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“I Just Want My Body to Work”

Angela told me she started listening to my podcast around the time she decided to come off birth control. She had relearned that it really shouldn’t hurt like that to have a period. As she went through Fertility Framework, she began to see how nutrition, detox, and lifestyle changes could actually support her hormones instead of suppressing them.

She did Whole30. She cleaned up her diet and her cleaners. She made the “boring” day-to-day shifts that are so easy to dismiss but so powerful over time. Slowly, her cramps started to change. They were still there, but less intense. Then, eventually, they began to fade. Her body was responding.

But along with the physical changes came a new kind of frustration: Once she knew what a healthy cycle was supposed to look like, it was hard to unsee the ways her body still wasn’t quite doing what it was designed to do. “It wasn’t even about trying to grow our family yet,” she said. “I just wanted my body to work the way it was supposed to.”

Over time, though, her heart and her husband’s heart began to shift. They moved from “We’re not ready yet” to “We’re open whenever God wants to grow our family. We don’t want to stand in the way.” That posture of openness, both in her body and in her heart, became the soil where God planted a new story.

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The Double BBT Spike

Because she had gone through Fertility Framework, Angela didn’t rely only on an app that assumed she ovulated on day 14. She knew her body didn’t read those default settings. Instead, she watched her cervical mucus, tracked LH, and took her basal body temperature.

One cycle, she noticed a temperature spike closer to day 21. “Maybe my body actually laid an egg this month,” she thought. A few days later, she saw that second sustained rise – the one we talk about inside the course that can be an early sign of pregnancy. Before a pregnancy test could even pick it up, her chart was already whispering: something is different.

The morning she left for a state track meet (where she was an assistant coach), she took a test. The faintest line appeared. She took another. Still faint, but there. And then she had to climb on a bus and go spend three days with high school athletes while quietly Googling, “Can pregnant women eat shrimp?” at team dinners and scheduling her first prenatal appointment from the mall.

No one around her knew, but God did. He saw the double BBT spike, the faint line, and the hidden hope growing in her heart.

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Preparing for a Natural Hospital Birth

As pregnancy progressed, Angela and her husband did what so many of us wish we had done the first time: they prepared intentionally.

They prayed through their options and landed on a hospital an aunt had used multiple times, one that also happened to have excellent VBAC and low C-section rates. They chose an OB who, in Angela’s words, felt like someone God kept placing in front of her. Every time she thought about switching to a midwife, something would happen and she’d end up back in his office, asking a hundred questions and feeling genuinely cared for.

She was especially nervous about Pitocin. “I was very anti, I do not want to be put on Pitocin,” she told me. She was afraid of the cascade of interventions: stronger contractions, epidural, stalled labor, and then potentially a C-section. When she finally told her doctor, “I’m scared of Pitocin,” his answer surprised her. He said, “I think avoiding Pitocin during birth is an excellent choice,” and explained why he felt that way from a medical standpoint. He did recommend Pitocin after birth to help the uterus clamp down and reduce hemorrhage risk, but he respected her desire to avoid it during labor.

That kind of support is a gift. Not every hospital provider talks this way and it made a huge difference in her confidence going into birth. On our doula calls, we also walked through practical birth preferences and “if/then” plans. If labor stalls, then what? If baby needs NICU, then what? We weren’t trying to script every moment, but to think through wise options ahead of time so panic wouldn’t be in the driver’s seat later.

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A Beautiful, Unmedicated Birth

At 41 weeks, Angela woke up around 5 a.m. with contractions that felt very different from Braxton Hicks. “You’ll know,” her doctor had told her when she asked how she’d tell the difference – advice that felt vague at the time but made sense in the moment. She ate breakfast, and did all the “labor at home” things. When her body did an involuntary push around late morning, she said, “We’re going to the hospital. I know I’m not about to deliver, but we are going now.”

At the hospital, she was already 5 cm. She asked for the tub and spent the afternoon soaking in warm water – the “aquadural” – with contractions cushioned by hydrotherapy.

By early evening, she was 8 cm and mentally done being in labor. Around 9:30 p.m., she was fully dilated and began pushing. She had dreamed of being one of those unicorn women who push four times and baby is out… but about an hour of pushing later, her baby was born.

For a first-time mom, that is still amazing. They named him Azariah. Later, a friend texted to say, “Azariah means ‘helped by God.’ Good name.” At this point, everything looked exactly how they had hoped: a healthy baby, a natural birth, a mama who had done the hard work and seen it pay off. And then, 24 hours later, everything turned upside down…

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When Postpartum Didn’t Go As Planned

About a day after birth, Angela suddenly became very sick. Her fever spiked. Her blood pressure dropped into the 70s over 40s. Her heart rate raced into the 130s and 140s. The baby began to show signs of being unwell too. A long night followed: labs, monitoring, questions, concern. It wasn’t until a CT scan that the doctor finally sat down and said, “You have a kidney infection.”

Azariah was sick enough that he needed to be transferred to a NICU an hour away. The ground ambulance was already out on a call, so he ended up going by air ambulance – his very first flight at only 32 hours old. Angela stayed behind, fighting her own battle: two blood transfusions, nine or ten liters of fluids in the first 36 hours, a diagnosis of sepsis, and the disorienting feeling of weighing more at five days postpartum than she had at 40 weeks pregnant.

And yet, even here, they weren’t scrambling. When the team said, “Your baby needs the NICU,” they already knew what to do. They simply followed the plan they’d made in pregnancy. Preparation quietly held them up when circumstances tried to knock them down.

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Helped By God

As Angela and Azariah walked through that intense week, they watched the meaning of his name unfold before their eyes. “Azariah: helped by God.” They saw God’s help through the medical team that caught the infection in time. Through the air ambulance that happened to be available. Through a community of people praying over them. Through healing that came faster than the situation seemed to warrant.

The birth had been beautiful. The 24 hours after had been terrifying. But in both, God was there. Psalm 46:1 says: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” That word “help” feels so small until you’re the one lying in a hospital bed with a spiking fever or watching your tiny baby hooked up to monitors. Then “helped by God” becomes the sweetest promise.

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Takeaways From Angela’s Story

When I asked Angela what she would say to the women listening who are considering Fertility Framework, doula support, or childbirth education, her answer was simple: “Do what you can to prepare.”

• Prepare your body and your cycles. Fertility Framework goes beyond just “getting pregnant.” It helps you understand your body, support your hormones, and eventually teach your daughters how God designed them too.
• Prepare your mind and your heart. Take the time to learn about birth, interventions, and options so you’re not making every decision in the heat of the moment.
• Prepare with backup plans. You don’t need to imagine every horror story, but it is wise to think through what you’ll do if baby needs extra care, if labor takes an unexpected turn, or if recovery is harder than you imagined.

And then… surrender. Call it a birth plan if you want, but hold it like birth preferences in the hands of a God who sees farther than you can.

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Ready to Prepare With Wisdom and Faith?