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Introducing My New Baby Boy!
Hello, my loves! Welcome back to the Wanderlover Podcast!
I am officially a mother. I’m currently recording this episode technically on maternity leave, but I just felt so inspired and so excited to share my birth story here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and dedicate this entire episode to the highlight of my year so far, which obviously is the birth of my baby boy, Leven Muen Thompson.
He was born on February 25th. 2025, and I just want to take some time to share everything about this new chapter so far about what’s been going on in my life, in my business, and how it all connects to the digital nomad lifestyle.
I also really want to connect to those of you who are moms and who maybe want to be moms while still traveling full time and just shed some light on how it’s been working out for us as a family.
How I Created Flexible Maternity plans
If you go back to my previous episodes, you’ll know that I have been preparing for this new chapter for a while. So setting my business up to make passive income, but also planning this pregnancy.
After my miscarriage, it was very calculated. I had extra time to really play out what I expected from being a new mother.
I gave myself so much freedom to learn to be a mother and learn as much as I can, take as much time off as I need, so I am very blessed and grateful to have the time freedom to be able to spend 24/7 with my son if needed.
Going off of that, the location freedom. So we were able to choose any country, any location in the world where we wanted to give birth. And so I’ve designed this lifestyle where we’re walking distance to the beach. We are in sunny weather in the middle of February and it’s been amazing.
And lastly, the financial freedom. To be able to pay everything out of pocket. We don’t have health insurance here, so all the doctors, all the hospitals, all the baby expenses we are paying out of pocket.
In addition to, of course, the living expenses to be able to house the help that we want to house my family when they visit, so in addition to that, it’s having the funds to live in a five bedroom house with all of the amenities. Perfect location. Of course, that was all calculated as well, so that was going into the pregnancy.
I knew that all of this, I needed to be set up so that I could have as smooth of a transition as possible and the least amount of stress. I will be writing an entire blog post about my doctors, about finding all the help we could get about relocating to Brazil, the visa process, all of that. If you are interested or if you might be planning to give birth in another country, I’ll be writing a blog post about that.
Choosing A Birth Date – And Time!
But going into the C-section date. Back in January, we had met with my amazing doctor who I had biweekly consultations with since December, but in January I wanted to choose a date for the birth of my son.
I had wanted an elective C-section, so she recommended to schedule the surgery at 39 weeks, which was February 25th, 2025.
And the funny thing is afterwards she asked, what time do you want your surgery? And I was like, whoa. And not only can I pick my baby’s birthday, but I can also pick the time of day.
We chose 8:00 AM because she recommended to do it in the morning because you can’t eat for eight hours before, and I didn’t want to, just be awake all day, not eating and being anxious. So we chose 8:00 AM.
After deciding the day, the one thing I just was really hoping for was not going into labor before 39 weeks, so before February 25th, which there really may well have been a risk of.
However I refuse to believe anything else other than what was going to happen according to plan.
This is my mindset of when you have a plan B and you focus too much on it, your plan B eventually ends up manifesting itself. So I did have a plan B. My plan B was if I did have my first contraction before the date, I was immediately going to call my doctor, call the team to meet me at the hospital and still get a C-section.
After deciding that, I just chose never to think about it again. I even wrote my Instagram caption beforehand, so what I was going to post, introducing the birth of my son, I wrote the caption. Saying it was a smooth, a safe delivery.
It happened according to plan. And that was just me putting all my thought and energy into playing out for the perfect birth. And the night before, we packed our hospital bags and I was going to prepare myself for saying two nights in the hospital, which was standard procedure.
Giving Birth In Brazil
So the day of, on February 25th, I had not gone into labor and I was so excited and so happy. We left for the hospital at 5:30 AM We got to the hospital around 6:00 AM checked in, and this is where our entire team came to meet me.
So we had a photographer, we had my doula there. In Brazil, it is very common to have your whole birth photographed by a professional photographer, including natural birds, home births, water births.
You can go onto my photographer’s page on Instagram. You can find her on my page, and see all of the other birth she has photographed. It is insane. And I didn’t post it on social media because I know in some countries, like the imagery of blood and birth is taboo, but I do have pictures of the exact moment that Levin was pulled out from my body, which is crazy.
But anyway, the photographer and the doula arrived at 7:00 AM. We started getting pictures taken in the room around 7:30 AM.
They wheeled me into the operating room while everyone else got changed, while Ragz got changed. And then I was in the room with two doctors, my anesthesiologist, pediatrician, physical therapist, and everyone else on the birth team. Most of who I had met with and known before, so I felt really comfortable.
The operating room was super clean. I got to play music that was really calming, and of course this whole experience is so new. I really had no idea what to expect from it. So I was just letting life and all of the experts take over. I was just laying on the. Operating table and I just knew for the next hour or two I would go with the flow.
After the anesthesia, I couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. And my amazing doctor, she narrated the whole process for me and told me what to expect. So I was feeling really calm. I was holding rags, his hand rags, watched the entire surgery. ’cause you can peep over the curtain that they put up between you and your stomach.
He doesn’t get queasy. And I was just like, oh my God, what is happening? ’cause I couldn’t really feel anything. I was also on morphine, so I was drugged up and just in this state of watching the ceiling with all of the bright colors.
The Birth
And after 41 minutes on that table, baby Leven was born at 8:41 AM The first thing I heard from the team in the room was like, oh my God, he has so much hair.
And then when I first heard him cry, that’s when I just started bawling out in tears because. I think it was the moment it hit me. I am a mother. We had brought life into this world and I have a son.
That feeling, I don’t think can be explained to anyone who hasn’t gone through it themselves. It’s just one of those things where your entire brain chemistry alters in that moment and it continues doing so and so ever since that moment, I’ve felt like a different person.
I am a different person and I will go into my reflections later, but after he was born, I was just so happy and relieved and emotional.
And while all of this was happening, my amazing physical therapist, she was busy creating the placenta painting for us, which is also common in Brazil where they take your placenta, they paint it.
So we, I chose the color or we chose the color and it was blue and they decorate it into this tree because it symbolizes the tree of life. You can also see images of that on my Instagram. After they stitched me up, they wheeled me back to our suite.
My parents arrived at 10:00 AM and they got to meet the baby and we saw the photographer there and it was just a lot happening, but it was the most exciting day.
Everything went perfectly. The first few hours, I was also still high on morphine, but that day I will never forget and it is probably one of the best days. If not the best day of my life so far. We had two nights at the hospital and then we were discharged.
Going Home With Baby
The other surreal feeling was going home with this newborn where it really sank in when you bring the newborn home to your home and you realize you are this little family in your own love bubble, but also I can’t believe that.
The government and the hospital. Just let us go home with this human and trust us with its life. That was also a surreal, really funny moment, especially because Levin’s facial expressions, they were somewhat judgmental, like he was always. Frowning and kind of looked at you with judgmental eyes and it was just really funny ’cause we were always saying ‘ He’s onto us’.
He knows that we have no clue what we’re doing. He’s like ‘ What am I doing here? I was so comfortable in the womb and now I’m with these two crazy people’. But all in all, that was the birth story and I honestly could not have asked for a smoother or better experience.
My Postpartum Experience So Far
So it’s been a few weeks since we came home with the baby, and while this is still very fresh on my mind, I will be sharing exactly how everything has been going. First and foremost, I do want to preface by saying we do have a lot of help. So we have night nurses coming three nights a week. We have a cleaning lady to help us around the house.
My family came from New York and my mom is staying a little longer than the rest of my family to help with simple tasks around the house and also of course, helping with the baby. We also have our doula doing house visits. She’s also a lactation specialist to help me with breastfeeding, and I had prepared all of this beforehand because I knew that I just wanted.
The most support I could have, especially being in a foreign country, of course, with a new human. I knew that I just needed as much time as possible adjusting to this new routine as a family of three.
But overall, I think because of the mindset of just taking it one day at a time, doing the best that you can, but also prioritizing self-care. Like I’ve always said, you can’t pour from an empty cup, so on a daily basis, I really try to go outside whenever possible. I sleep in and get my sleep whenever possible. I also try to be really present without. Having a million things on my mind, showering every day, small things like that, it makes such a big difference.
Also, give yourself permission to make mistakes as long as you are doing the best you can and taking baby steps and learning every single day. That is what you can do to be a great mother.
My scar has healed so nicely, so after the surgery while I was still in the hospital, my physical therapist actually put muscle tape all over my stomach and I had that on for two weeks and after she took it off, I have this like silicone patch that I have on my scar that I wear 12 hours a day to keep it compressed.
But that’s all healing really nicely. It’s barely noticeable, completely under my bikini line. So even like my lowest rise bikinis, you won’t be able to see it. This whole process has just taught me so much about unconditional love, loving a human without any need or expectation. Also, just manifesting this new chapter in my life how I wanted it to be.
It is completely different and we are still navigating what this new chapter will look like, especially when we get back to traveling. We have Levin’s American Passport approved. We are just waiting for the Brazilian one, and when we go back to England, we’re going to get is British passport as well. But again, nothing ever grows in a comfort zone.
Final Thoughts
I am currently defining this new era as we speak and growing into a better version of myself as a person, as a wife, a mother, creator, coach, and a business owner. We are already planning our next travels and adventures and so by the time this episode airs, we actually might have already gone on our first flight together.
Thank you all so much for being a part of this journey. I am really excited to be back and I will see you all in the next episode. Have an amazing week my loves!
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