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At 41, Connie Rutherford became a single mother by choice, giving birth to twins via a scheduled C-section at 38 weeks. The delivery resulted in significant blood loss, requiring two transfusions. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the hospital nursery was closed, forcing Connie and her mother to care for the newborns alone in their hospital room—they couldn’t even leave for water. One of the twins frequently choked, adding to the stress. On the fourth day, a nurse tried to discharge them, but Connie advocated to stay an additional night. The next morning, a doctor discovered jaundice in one of the babies, who then underwent six hours of phototherapy.
Once home, Connie faced the exhausting demands of caring for two infants while breastfeeding and pumping around the clock. Two weeks later, she passed large blood clots and went to the ER, where she experienced a postpartum hemorrhage. It was a physically and emotionally grueling start to motherhood.
Connie Rutherford Bio
Connie Rutherford, a proud alumna of The University of Oklahoma and a lifetime member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, is a multicultural woman of Black and Taiwanese heritage. She spent her formative years in Okinawa, Japan, where her father served in the U.S. Air Force. In 2019, while working on Wall Street in New York City, Connie made the life-changing decision to become a single mother by choice. She pursued motherhood using donor sperm and, at the age of 40, became pregnant. She gave birth to twins at age 41 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. During her pregnancy, she began writing a memoir to document her journey, capturing the emotional, physical, and mental challenges she faced. After nearly six years of dedication and perseverance, she has self-published her book, Searching for Tadpoles: The Journey to Motherhood of a Single Mother by Choice.Her story aims to inspire and empower others considering or navigating similar paths to parenthood. The book is available at store.bookbaby.com/book/searching-for-tadpoles. Learn more at connierutherford.com and follow her journey on Instagram and TikTok @searchingfortadpoles
Resources
Zenith Health
Today’s episode is sponsored by Zenith Health. Zenith Health helps you navigate pregnancy with access to real evidence, bringing you peace of mind through data. Imagine if your google searches only returned answers based on real evidence from research studies, clinical guidelines, and physician-authored content. Instead of giving you more opinions, Zenith’s Pregnancy Evidence Navigator -or Penny- tool provides exactly that and it’s completely free to use! Next time you have a burning question like a new symptom, a supplement you’re unsure about, or a question as you’re planning for birth. Spare yourself the panic Google and ask Penny your question for a real-time, unbiased review of the evidence at www.zenithhealth.io. Zenith also started the Pregnancy Evidence Project which is the first large scale research project wholly focused on learning from the millions of pregnancy and postpartum experiences already happening in the real world. If you choose to opt in, your pregnancy journey becomes part of the evidence that helps future moms make informed decisions and drives research forward. You can access the Zenith app in the app store as well.
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