Podcasts about free birth society

In this powerful episode, I'm joined by MatriBirth Mentor Institute student, Darrah, who shares her transformational journey—from working within the medical system as a nurse to reclaiming her autonomy as a freebirthing, wild, and instinct-led mother. After birthing her first two sons in hospitals, Darrah awakened to a deeper truth and radically shifted her path. Her story is one of courage, clarity, and coming home to herself—and it's sure to inspire birth workers and mothers alike.Follow Darrah @mamas.holistic.collective

In this episode, we call out the problems that have arisen as a result of adoption of and adherence to the Freebirth Society ideology while also holding space for a woman's legal and moral right to choose to have a Freebirth.Ultimately, this is about the need for leaders to act in integrity and for everyone to remember that rarely two truths exist in extremes. All choices are valid, however in order for them to be authentically empowered, they must be made with true informed consent and an informed risk assessment which is unlikely to happen if a birthworker has solely received a virtual training rooted in biases, hyperbole, and a lack of evidence, just as much as it's unlikely to happen with a fearful OB who is encouraging weekly routine ultrasounds and a 39 week induction.We unpack the overused and misused phrase “variations of normal” in order to delineate a few examples of what would actually be abnormal and a reason to seek additional support.Freebirth continues to be a valid choice, however women deserve to have the full scope of outcomes objectively presented to them in all fairness.Risk is inherently everywhere, and there will always be a mysterious element to loss, however the key is to walk into your pregnancy with a true sense of confidence and options rather than a false sense of one.Recommended resources:Free MOTR Questions Guide to Vet Your Birthkeeper/AttendantReddit, so you can be the judge of what's wrong with this organizationNathan Riley podcast episode featuring Kristine LauriaDr. Sarah Wickham's book “What's Right For Me”“Whose Body Is It” podcast episode featuring midwife Mary Lou SingletonSupport the showJOIN OUR NEW, PRIVATE COMMUNITY! DONATE (Thank you!!

I have Anna on the pod today telling the story of her two births with her wife by her side. Anna describes the complexity of navigating postpartum when her wife wanted to be included in the lactation process. Anna goes on to have a simple freebirth where she birthed exactly where and how she wanted. Follow Anna on Instagram @_anna_bananaaPhoto Credit @nataliebeephotography✨Our Mother's Day sale is LIVE for just 2 more days! Check out our wild woman library on all things sovereign birth and mothering. This is the last time that 8 of our popular self-study courses are available for purchase. After this sale, they will be gone forever. Purchase now for lifetime access and at 40% off through Sunday, May 11th at 11:59pm EST. - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/courses✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering June 17th, 2025 in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina - https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨Join our freebirth community, The Lighthouse! This is a private, life-changing membership for conscious women! We open doors a few times a year. Get on the waitlist - Doors are open May 18th - 24th, 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Mentor Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! - https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our inspiring Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by MASA Chips. MASA is part of a growing movement to bring back real food. The kind of food our grandparents ate before Big Food got involved. MASA chips are just three simple ingredients: organic corn, salt, and beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no ultra-processed garbage.When you snack, snack on something real! Go to https://masachips.com/FREEBIRTHSOCIETY and use code FREEBIRTHSOCIETY for 25% off your first order!~~~~~When you need guidance from someone you can truly trust, someone who aligns with your values on sovereignty and natural living, look no further than Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Today on the podcast, Emilee and Danielle talk about body hair and the physiological function as well as the social aspects of allowing hair. In a culture where women are taught to be hairless in order to be both accepted and attractive, Emilee and Danielle share their own journeys of how they stopped this misogynistic ritual and learned to love themselves. Follow Danielle on Instagram @sistermoonshadow✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is the most epic space for conscious women! - Get on the waitlist for when doors open next! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Mentor Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by MASA Chips. MASA is part of a growing movement to bring back real food. The kind of food our grandparents ate before Big Food got involved. MASA chips are just three simple ingredients: organic corn, salt, and beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no ultra-processed garbage.When you snack, snack on something real! Go to https://masachips.com/FREEBIRTHSOCIETY and use code FREEBIRTHSOCIETY for 25% off your first order!~~~~~When you need guidance from someone you can truly trust, someone who aligns with your values on sovereignty and natural living, look no further than Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Marta from Poland tells the story of her unique births that are deeply intertwined with the plant medicine work she practices in Peru. Following her intuition, she goes to the hospital and demands to stay, knowing something is wrong. Marta is rushed for an emergency c-section with a full placental abruption. After a year of inner work and healing, Marta chooses to call in another baby, and freebirths her son in Peru.Follow Marta on Instagram @iammartawanderlusthttps://www.martawanderlust.com/✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is the most epic space for conscious women! - Get on the waitlist for when doors open next! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by MASA Chips. MASA is part of a growing movement to bring back real food. The kind of food our grandparents ate before Big Food got involved. MASA chips are just three simple ingredients: organic corn, salt, and beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no ultra-processed garbage.When you snack, snack on something real! Go to https://masachips.com/FREEBIRTHSOCIETY and use code FREEBIRTHSOCIETY for 25% off your first order!~~~~~When you need guidance from someone you can truly trust, someone who aligns with your values on sovereignty and natural living, look no further than Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Today on the podcast, Rosie shares her massive transformation from a people pleasing daughter archetype to a fierce freebirthing wild mother. She shares how her journey was shaped by a difficult family dynamic, to the grief of losing her father, to living on the road with her husband and children during 2020. Rosie shares the birth of her first child in a birth center, her excruciating second birth, and the wild, simple, and innate freebirth of her third child.  Follow Rosie on Instagram @rootedritualbrooms✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is the most epic space for conscious women! - Get on the waitlist for when doors open next! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by MASA Chips. MASA is part of a growing movement to bring back real food. The kind of food our grandparents ate before Big Food got involved. MASA chips are just three simple ingredients: organic corn, salt, and beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no ultra-processed garbage.When you snack, snack on something real! Go to https://masachips.com/discount/FREEBIRTHSOCIETY and use code FREEBIRTHSOCIETY for 20% off your first order!~~~~~When you need guidance from someone you can truly trust, someone who aligns with your values on sovereignty and natural living, look no further than Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

On today's episode, freebirth legend Sarah Schmid shares the story of 10 children, 9 of them being freebirths, several born outside, and a set of twins. After a midwife-attended homebirth with interference in her birth, Sarah learned that she was the only one who knew her body, and chose freebirth for her family after that. Sarah tells the epic story of her first freebirth in the forest completely alone, where she could fully face her fears. Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahschmid_alleingeburthttps://youtube.com/@sarah_schmidhttps://www.geburt-in-eigenregie.de/✨LAST CALL for 2025's Radical Birth Keeper School! - The groundbreaking program for women embarking on the path of sovereign birth-work. https://www.freebirthsociety.com/radicalbirthkeeperschool✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering - https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is the most epic space for conscious women! - Get on the waitlist for when doors open next! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! - https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by MASA Chips. MASA is part of a growing movement to bring back real food. The kind of food our grandparents ate before Big Food got involved. MASA chips are just three simple ingredients: organic corn, salt, and beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no ultra-processed garbage.When you snack, snack on something real! Go to https://masachips.com/discount/FREEBIRTHSOCIETY and use code FREEBIRTHSOCIETY for 20% off your first order!~~~~~When you need guidance from someone you can truly trust, someone who aligns with your values on sovereignty and natural living, look no further than Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Christina shares about her experience with living in France, a very anti-homebirth country, and wanting to birth outside of the medical system. Her dreams of wanting a physiological freebirth and believing she would NEVER go into the hospital system were very abruptly shattered when she found out about her baby's diagnosis. She then realized birth is not so black and white, we were able to discuss a bit about the dangers of freebirth culture, while also holding space for the women who feel a very deep and intuitive call to freebirth. Christina goes on to share her second birth experience which was a full circle moment of getting the birth she had always wanted from the very beginning. *I want to be transparent in saying that I do not support or stand with the Free Birth Society. My values and approach to birth work differ greatly from theirs*

Today on the podcast, Abby shares her full 180-degree shift in mindset from being a pawn of the medical system throughout her growing years, to then becoming a wild, embodied mother, birthing her son entirely alone in her bathtub. After a medical midwife sabotaged Abby's (surprise) breech homebirth with her first son, she decides never again to allow another person to take her power away from her. Abby ditches the victim mindset, takes the Complete Guide to Freebirth, binge-listens to the Free Birth Society Podcast, and claims her path.Follow Abby on Instagram @mamaearthsovereignbirth✨Doors to the Radical Birth Keeper School are OPEN! - The groundbreaking program for women embarking on the path of sovereign birth-work. https://www.freebirthsociety.com/radicalbirthkeeperschool✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is the most epic space for conscious women! - Get on the waitlist for when doors open next! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by MASA Chips. MASA is part of a growing movement to bring back real food. The kind of food our grandparents ate before Big Food got involved. MASA chips are just three simple ingredients: organic corn, salt, and beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no ultra-processed garbage.When you snack, snack on something real! Go to https://masachips.com/discount/FREEBIRTHSOCIETY and use code FREEBIRTHSOCIETY for 20% off your first order!~~~~~When you need guidance from someone you can truly trust, someone who aligns with your values on sovereignty and natural living, look no further than Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Today on the podcast, Radical Birth Keeper School graduate, Eveliina shares her three unique birth stories. At 30 weeks with her second child, Eveliina experienced bleeding and was coerced into an “emergency” c-section, leaving her with a painful vertical incision. The death of her daughter woke up Eveliina's inner mother lion. With Eveliina's third pregnancy, she had a wild pregnancy and freebirthed her beautiful healthy third daughter at home with her family in Finland.Follow Eveliina on Instagram @vapaasynnytyssuomi✨Doors to the Radical Birth Keeper School are OPEN! - The groundbreaking program for women embarking on the path of sovereign birth-work. https://www.freebirthsociety.com/radicalbirthkeeperschool✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is the most epic space for conscious women! - Get on the waitlist for when doors open next! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by MASA Chips. MASA is part of a growing movement to bring back real food. The kind of food our grandparents ate before Big Food got involved. MASA chips are just three simple ingredients: organic corn, salt, and beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no ultra-processed garbage.When you snack, snack on something real! Go to https://masachips.com/discount/FREEBIRTHSOCIETY and use code FREEBIRTHSOCIETY for 20% off your first order!~~~~~When you need guidance from someone you can truly trust, someone who aligns with your values on sovereignty and natural living, look no further than Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Mia, The Olive Oil Queen, shares her sweet story of sovereign birth as a first-time mom, supported by one of our Radical Birth Keeper graduates. Mia's love of birth first came after witnessing a friend's psychedelic birth at home where she was able to help care for her friend in her postpartum time. After becoming pregnant herself, Mia walked through her wild pregnancy fighting off negative comments and actualizing the truth of her higher consciousness. Through trust and intuition, she creates her simple, but not easy, dream birth.Follow Mia on Instagram @theoliveoilqueen✨Doors to the Radical Birth Keeper School are OPEN! - The groundbreaking program for women embarking on the path of sovereign birth-work. https://www.freebirthsociety.com/radicalbirthkeeperschool✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is the most epic space for conscious women! - Get on the waitlist for when doors open next! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by MASA Chips. MASA is part of a growing movement to bring back real food. The kind of food our grandparents ate before Big Food got involved. MASA chips are just three simple ingredients: organic corn, salt, and beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no ultra-processed garbage.When you snack, snack on something real! Go to masachips.com/discount/FREEBIRTHSOCIETY and use code FREEBIRTHSOCIETY for 20% off your first order!~~~~~When you need guidance from someone you can truly trust, someone who aligns with your values on sovereignty and natural living, look no further than Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

“I felt like I was in hell.” On today's episode, Fanika shares the dehumanizing story of the birth of her first baby in a hospital in Florida. From non-consenting vaginal exams to a painful vacuum extraction birth, Fanika left her first birth feeling raped, disillusioned, and disembodied. Robbed of her first birth and devastated to discover she had no legal recourse, Fanika finds the Free Birth Society Podcast, dives into the Complete Guide to Freebirth, and then journeys through The Radical Birth Keeper School in her second pregnancy. The day after graduating from The RBK School, Fanika freebirths her 2nd child in simple bliss. Follow Fanika on Instagram @birthinpowerhttps://www.birthinpower.com/✨Doors to the Radical Birth Keeper School are OPEN! - The groundbreaking program for women embarking on the path of sovereign birth-work. https://www.freebirthsociety.com/radicalbirthkeeperschool✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is the most epic space for conscious women! - Get on the waitlist for when doors open next! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Watch this interview on Odysee HERE

Today on the podcast, Kate from Santa Cruz shares the finding of her soul's calling in sovereign birth-work and how that led to creating a thriving women's circle community. After graduating from The Radical Birth Keeper School, Kate quickly began attending sovereign births in her community. Tune in to hear the powerful story of a young woman becoming mother, how attending women birthing in power prepared her for her own freebirth, and how she allowed herself to sink into a quick, easeful, psychedelic birth witnessed by her best friend and partner.  Follow Kate on Instagram @katyoakleywildflower-woman.com✨Doors to the Radical Birth Keeper School are OPEN! - The groundbreaking program for women embarking on the path of sovereign birth-work. https://www.freebirthsociety.com/radicalbirthkeeperschool✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is the most epic space for conscious women! - Get on the waitlist for when doors open next! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨ Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨ Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨ Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨ Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Today on the podcast, Kacea shares her beautiful freebirth story. Her journey to freebirth is a wonderful representation of the sovereign birth movement making its way through the world. From her upbringing with a mother who birthed at home, to having an entire friend group of freebirthers, Kacea was able to deter any negativity and fear that was brought her way, and with the support of her partner, she brought her son earthside.  Follow Kacea on Instagram @kaceao✨The FBS private membership community, “The Lighthouse” is OPEN! - Doors are open through TODAY February 28th at 11:59pm! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership✨ Enrollment is open for MatriBirth Family, our signature Sovereign Childbirth Education program. This is a 6 week *live* series taught by Emilee Saldaya and Yolande Norris-Clark. We only run it once a year and limit it to 20 spots - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/matribirthfamily✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for The MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Funeral director and death midwife, Dr. Ivy Margulies, is helping families to navigate a peaceful way of walking with the loss of a baby. She talks about the logistics and laws of stillbirth, the importance of a death plan, home funerals, and ways to commemorate the child. Follow Dr Ivy on Instagram @drivymargulieshttps://www.drivylove.com✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” - Doors open February 24th for just a few short days! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist✨ Enrollment is open for MatriBirth Family, our signature Sovereign Childbirth Education program. This is a 6 week *live* series taught by Emilee Saldaya and Yolande Norris-Clark. We only run it once a year and limit it to 20 spots - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/matribirthfamily✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Funeral director and death midwife, Dr. Ivy Margulies, is helping families to navigate a peaceful way of walking with the loss of a baby. She talks about the logistics and laws of stillbirth, the importance of a death plan, home funerals, and ways to commemorate the child. Follow Dr Ivy on Instagram @drivymargulieshttps://www.drivylove.com✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” - Doors open February 24th for just a few short days! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist✨ Enrollment is open for MatriBirth Family, our signature Sovereign Childbirth Education program. This is a 6 week *live* series taught by Emilee Saldaya and Yolande Norris-Clark. We only run it once a year and limit it to 20 spots - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/matribirthfamily✨ Matriarch Rising Festival tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the MatriBirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Nancy shares the heartbreaking story of losing her daughter at 27 weeks pregnant. Realizing her waters had opened while traveling, Nancy discovers her body going into the birth process at her parents home. Nancy describes the complexity, darkness, and hope that it is to walk intimately with loss. Follow Nancy on Instagram @nancylucina✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” - Doors open February 24th for just a few short days! -https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist✨ Enrollment is open for MatriBirth Family, our signature Sovereign Childbirth Education program. This is a 6 week *live* series taught by Emilee Saldaya and Yolande Norris-Clark. We only run it once a year and limit it to 20 spots! -https://www.freebirthsociety.com/matribirthfamily✨ MRF tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering - https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at -https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth -https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute -https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! -https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here -https://Matribirthdirectory.com✨Join the MatriBirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 -https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign✨Donate to the podcast -https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel -https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety✨Learn about everything we do at  -https://www.freebirthsociety.com~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

Sally shares her heart wrenching story of birthing her twin boys at home and the vicious nationwide media attacks that followed after one of the boys was stillborn and the other passed away shortly after.   Follow Sally on Instagram @sallypatti ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” - Doors open February 24th for just a few short days! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨ Enrollment opens February 14th for MatriBirth Family, our signature Sovereign Childbirth Education program. This is a 6 week *live* series taught by Emilee Saldaya and Yolande Norris-Clark. We only run it once a year and limit it to 20 spots so get on the waitlist! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/matribirth-family-waitinglist ✨The Radical Birthkeeper School opens for enrollment through March 3rd! Welcome to the new paradigm of birth-work. Get on the waitlist! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/rbkwaitlist  ✨ MRF tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/ ✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com ~~~~~ This episode is brought to you by Dr. Jennifer Tice, ND - Naturopathic Pediatrician + Homeopathic Expert

In order to find solutions, you must articulate the problem. It's undeniable as we look around our country that children are sick and suffering. Today, with my naturopathic doctor and friend, Dr. Jen Tice, we tackle the main contributing factors to why our American children are so sick. In part 2 of this episode we explore tangible accessible solutions that we can apply to our lives today.  Follow Jen on Instagram @dr.jennifer.tice ✨The Blood Mysteries School is open for Enrollment through January 31st! Become the wise woman that you know deep down you already are - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/bloodmysteriesschool ✨ MRF tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com ✨Work with Jen - https://redrocknaturopathic.com

Joy hired the same medical midwife for her first three home births. However, after the midwife completely sabotaged her third birth, Joy decided to never work with her again. When she got pregnant with her fourth she chose to have a freebirth and tells the story of her peaceful pregnancy and the beautiful experience of being the first person to pick up her baby.   Follow Joy in Instagram @MorphitMama ✨The Blood Mysteries School is open for Enrollment through January 31st! Become the wise woman that you know deep down you already are - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/bloodmysteriesschool ✨ Initiated Woman session 3 is coming up! Join us for this FREE, life-changing 3-part series to initiate yourself into embodied and mature womanhood. Register at - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/initiatedwoman ✨ MRF tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com ✨Connect with Joy - https://morphitseamoss.com/

Chrissy was called to motherhood in her 40's and navigated a highly medicalized pregnancy and birth with her first, and then a miscarriage and D&C. With her third pregnancy she let go of the “high risk” and “geriatric” labels, fired her midwife at 39 weeks, and chose to freebirth her son. Follow Chrissy on Instagram: @chrissybethhubbard ✨The Blood Mysteries School is open for Enrollment through January 31st! Become the wise woman that you know deep down you already are - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/bloodmysteriesschool ✨ Initiated Woman session 2 & 3 are coming up! Join us for this FREE, life-changing 3-part series to initiate yourself into embodied and mature womanhood. Register at - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/initiatedwoman ✨ MRF tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering -  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://matribirthdirectory.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com Check out Chrissy's Offerings: Chrissy's online course for women - Wild Heart Woman: https://www.shambhalaliving.com.au/wildheartwoman Free Fertility Empowerment Practices video:  https://www.shambhalaliving.com.au/FertilityEmpowermentJoin Chrissy's Human Design Website:  https://chrissybethcoaching.com/

Brittany was diagnosed with brain tumors at the age of 20 and was told she'd never get pregnant and it was too dangerous to give birth. After seven years of failed IVF and surrogacy attempts, Brittany decided to try to get pregnant naturally, and to the surprise of all her doctors, she did. During her first birth and through the pregnancy of her second, Brittany started to reclaim her authority and trust in her own body. Brittany decided to have a sovereign birth with her third child and since then has begun untangling herself and her family from the medical system. Find Brittany on Instagram: @abitobritt

Epic Irish poet, Siobhan, is on the show today sharing her wild story from a dehumanizing hospital birth, placenta previa, to freebirth.  Follow Siobhan @Siobhandepaor_focail ✨ MRF tickets are now LIVE! Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨ Initiated Woman is coming up! Join us in January for this FREE, life-changing 3-part series to initiate yourself into embodied and mature womanhood. Register at https://www.freebirthsociety.com/initiatedwoman.  ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨ Get on the waitlist for REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

Moving from admittedly loving the drama of her high risk label, inductions, and medical providers to really clarifying what she wants and why - Kurin tells the beautiful story of her three births. Follow @Kurinadele ✨ Join REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - ⁠https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign⁠ ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at ⁠https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety⁠ ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - ⁠https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf⁠ ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  ⁠https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/⁠ ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - ⁠https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist⁠ ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - ⁠https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here⁠ ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - ⁠https://Matribirthdirectory.com⁠ ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereign birth professionals near you! -  ⁠https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist⁠ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” ⁠https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist⁠ ✨Donate to the podcast - ⁠https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y⁠ ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety⁠ ✨Learn about everything we do at  - ⁠https://www.freebirthsociety.com⁠ Check out Kurin's Podcast “Mindful Mama” at ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/2RkyJFB8Tz5a0HDqYLdWJS?si=O_IMJtOoT1OQ46CttCV_Yw

Emma spent her 20's as an anarchist who didn't want children, until one day she was hit with the primal need to become a mother.  Through shamanic drum journeys, she heard the messages of her ancestors telling her to freebirth, telling her that they had been waiting for a woman in their lineage to call upon their support.  Emma beautifully articulates her journey through her wild pregnancy, how she laughed her baby out, and had all her needs met in postpartum. ✨ Join REIGN ~ Emilee Saldaya's action-oriented coaching container that is guaranteed to elevate you into your next phase of life for 2025 - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/reign ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereign professionals near you! -  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

Marlene joins us from California sharing her journey to a VBAC after three C-sections. She was a teenager with her first, and her doctor suggested scheduling an elective C-section for convenience. Marlene didn't even know what a C-section was.She became more educated with each birth experience. Still, when it came time to advocate for her physiological VBA3C birth, there were no hospitals, doctors, midwives, or doulas who would support her. Marlene decided to free birth at home with her husband. During labor, she made the call to transfer to the hospital. She arrived at 9.5 centimeters dilated and pushed her healthy baby out in just two pushes. Though she experienced resistance all along the way, Marlene kept fighting for the vaginal birth she knew she could achieve!Marlene's Doula Website: Designed to BirthHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. We are a week away from Christmas. I just cannot get over how fast this year has gone and how many incredible stories we have heard. I cannot wait to hear more stories next year. Today's story is a VBA3C story. These are stories that we get requests for daily. On Instagram, we get people writing us saying, “I need more stories of VBAC after multiple Cesareans. Is VBAC after two Cesareans possible?” Yes. The answer is yes. We have Marlene here with us. Hello, Marlene. Marlene: Hello. Meagan: She's going to be sharing her story just showing you how possible birth is. We have a Review of the Week. We're going to get into that, then we are going to turn the time over to Marlene. This review is by Rachel, and it says, “11 out of 10. Would be best friends with these ladies.” I love that. You guys, we feel like we are best friends, too. Even though we haven't met half of you, we just love this community so much. We feel like we are best friends. It says, “Amazingly knowledgeable doulas with a passion for compassion and birth. Funny, kind, smart. Specialized in VBAC. If humans are exiting your body, you want them by your side.” I love that. That is such a fun review. Thank you so much for your review You guys, if you have not yet, please help us kick off the 2025 season with some new reviews. You can go to Google and just type in “The VBAC Link” and you can leave us a review there, or you can leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Meagan: Okay, Marlene. Welcome to the show. Marlene: Thank you. Meagan: I'm so happy that you are here and excited to hear more details about these journeys of yours that led you to the final VBAC after 3 C-section point. Marlene: Yeah. Sorry if I say “like” or “um” so much because I've been on a few podcasts, and it never gets easier. For some reason, I am always so nervous. Meagan: It is hard. This is episode 300 and something, and I still say “like” and “um”. It happens. Listeners, just know it happens. Picture yourself sharing your story and thinking about what you're sharing and who you're sharing it too and what you need to share for them. It just happens. “Um” slips out.Marlene: Okay. So, I'll get started. I really want to tell my VBAC after 3 C-sections, so my fourth story, but I will get into a little bit of my first three because that paints the picture of how I had my VBAC after 3 C-sections. I was 18 when I had my first. My son is now 15. He's going to be 16 in November. Man, time flies. Meagan: Oh my goodness. It really does. Marlene: Yeah. I grew up in the LA area in Norwolk, so the outskirts of LA. I grew up with my grandparents because my parents were drug addicts and in and out of jail. The social workers took us and put us with my grandparents. There were 7 of us. We were fortunate to be together with family and my grandparents. My parents came when I was 16. I'm the youngest of 7. My parents came when I was 16 years old in the middle of my junior year of high school and were like, “We're clean. We want to take you back.” My grandparents were old. They already raised all of their kids, and they raised all of us, so they were like, “Just go.” They were tired. I understood, so I was like, “Okay.” I went with my parents. They moved me about an hour away from all of my friends and all of my family. It was just us. Probably a year later or 6-8 months later, they started doing their stuff again. I got pregnant. I didn't have anybody to ask. I wasn't educated. I didn't know. I was just like, “I'm pregnant. I'm going to go to the free clinic. I'm going to go to the doctor.” Being a sheep, this is what we do. I go to the doctor and the free clinic. My pregnancy was fine. My son was fine. I'm fine. There were no complications. It was a beautiful, good pregnancy, but towards 38 weeks, on my 38-week appointment, my OB/GYN was like, “Aren't you so uncomfortable? Wouldn't you want to have your baby on your due date? Most first-time moms go to 42 weeks.” In my head, I was uncomfortable. I was super swollen, but I didn't have preeclampsia. He didn't even mention preeclampsia or anything, but my ankles and my legs were probably 3-4 times the size of normal. I was very uncomfortable. I had back pains and stuff. He was like, “You want to have your baby on your due date?” I'm like, “Yeah.” He was like, “Okay. Let's schedule you for you C-section on November 12th.”Meagan: Wait!Marlene: I didn't even know what a C-section was, and not even an induction. Now that I think about it, no. It was straight to a C-section and I'm over here like, okay. I didn't even know what a C-section was. I thought this is how the process was. I was just so uneducated. I trusted him. I was like, he was the “expert”. He knows best, so I'm just going to trust him. I showed up at the hospital on the time and date that he said. They prepped me for a C-section.Meagan: Wow. Marlene: Yeah. Now, in hindsight, now that I know, I'm like, that's crazy. I could have probably sued him or something, but anyway. 4.5 years later, I'm 23 years old. I get pregnant again, and I didn't educate myself still. I was young and living the party life. I was not really caring and not educating myself. I did plan this one though. The first one was unplanned. My girl was planned. We planned to have her, but I still didn't educate myself. I just knew I wanted a VBAC because I wanted to experience birth the way women are naturally supposed to. I just went. I went to a different OB/GYN in a different city. I came back to Norwolk because I'm an adult, and I have my own place now. I went to my sister's OB/GYN. She was like, “Oh, he's good.” I'm like, “Okay.” I just go with him. He was fine. I actually got to go into spontaneous labor this time at least at 39 weeks. My water broke, and straight to the hospital I went. Meagan: Yeah. Marlene: I just went straight to the hospital because that's what I was told to do. I got there, and my pregnancy was fine. There were no complications or anything. I got there, and they were like, “Okay. You're not even dilated, but we'll keep you here since your water is broken.” They let me labor. I didn't feel anything. 12 hours passed, and they were like, “Oh, there's a risk of infection. We have to get this baby out. There is failure to progress,” blah, blah, blah, and this stuff. I'm like, okay. I trusted them again, so they gave me another C-section.6 years later, so this is 2019 right before the pandemic, I got pregnant. It was probably actually 2018 because I had my second daughter in August 2019. I got pregnant, and I was like, “This time, I'm a little more educated.” I found the Free Birth Society. I was listening, and decided to do more research. My husband opened my eyes to, “Oh, we shouldn't be vaccinating our kids.” He had been telling me before, but I was like, no. I was so brainwashed. My family is more medical-minded and stuff. Now, I'm the total opposite. My husband opened my eyes to things. I started doing more research. I can't just trust the doctors now and stuff. Now, I'm in Fresno, California when I was pregnant. I searched high and low for a good, VBAC-supportive OB/GYN, and a lot of them told me, “No, we can't do a VBAC after two C-sections.” This one told me that we could do it. She was truly VBAC supportive. I got to decline all of the things. I didn't even do the diabetes test. I didn't really do anything except for a little bit of bloodwork. I declined everything, and she was okay with it. Then she told me, “You don't have to have a C-section. You could try for a VBAC, but I might not be the doctor who is on call. Who's to say that the doctor who is on call is going to be VBAC supportive.” She said, “Just to warn you, you might have to stand your ground, and fight for your VBAC and stuff.” I was like, “Thank you for being straightforward with me.” My water did break. I went into spontaneous labor again. I went to the hospital right after again. I mean, it wasn't as fast this time. I took a shower. I ate dinner, and maybe an hour or two later, I went to the hospital. I didn't get a VBAC-supportive doctor. The whole time after I got there, she was like, “Okay, you can try for a VBAC.” She was telling me all of these things that I can't do. “You haven't done it before. What makes you think you can do it again?” Just all of this stuff.This time, I did feel contractions. I was in labor longer than 12 hours, but after the 12 hours, she started saying, “Oh, infection.” I had to keep fighting them off, the nurses, and the doctors. I was exhausted from labor. I believe I got to 6 centimeters or so. Those contractions were pretty hard. She just was like, “Oh, I'm about to switch shifts. Don't you want me since you've already been working with me? Wouldn't you feel comfortable if I gave you the C-section versus some new person?” They were doing whatever tactics. I was standing my ground, then finally, I threw the towel in because I was having to fight all of the nurses off while I'm laboring naturally. I had monitors, and the IV, and everything else. I was stuck on the bed. They wouldn't even let me move or anything like that. I was just like, “Whatever.” I educated myself a little bit more, but I wasn't fully educated. I didn't know that I was the authority. I thought they still were. I did educate myself a little better, but not as much as I should have. They wheeled me off into another C-section, and then not even a year later, I got pregnant again. It was probably 6 months later. I got pregnant again. It's funny because my two boys were unplanned, and my two girls were planned. I didn't plan to get pregnant with my fourth. When I found out, especially because it was in the middle of the pandemic, they had pretty much just announced the pandemic when I found out I was pregnant, so I was bawling when I found out. The future was so uncertain. My husband and I just finally, because my husband wants a big family. He wants 7 or 8 kids, and I'm like, “You're crazy.” I finally got him to say, “Okay, we're done. We don't have to have any more kids,” then I get pregnant again, and everything that was going on with the pandemic, I was bawling. I was like, “I can't believe this, but whatever. I'm pregnant. I don't believe in abortion. I'm just going to suck it up. I'm having a VBAC now,” especially since none of them were medically necessary. They were all unnecessary. I started doing way more research, reading books, reading articles, listening to podcasts, then finally, I did hear about the Free Birth Society before, but I really dug in and listened to every episode. They were the ones who made me want to do it and believe in myself. Finally, I tried to go look for a VBAC doctor though, and I went back to my other one who was truly VBAC supportive, but she was like, “Oh no, VBAC after three C-sections, we can't do this.” I'm like, “Okay, then,” so I went to look for midwives in my area. I interviewed them all, and they were like, “Nope. We would lose our license. Sorry, we can't do it.” I'm like, “Okay, I guess I'm just going to have to have an unassisted birth or a free birth, so I'm going to look for a doula.” I looked for a doula all in my area, and all of them told me, “No, we can't be your doula because it's going to be an unassisted birth.” So I'm like, “Okay, then. I guess I'm going to do it all on my own.” Like I said, I started reading all of the books, doing all of the things. It comes to the day. My due date comes. My water breaks actually on my due date. I'm like, “Okay.” But it was a normal day. I was cooking and stuff. But with my two girls, when my water broke, it was a full gush. This time, it was a little trickle. It might have tore. I knew about it. I was like, “Okay. It might replenish. I'm not going to panic. I'm going to go about my day.” It wouldn't stop trickling, so I had to put a diaper on, a big pad or a diaper, and I just went about my day.I never felt contractions. I went to sleep, then the next day was a normal day. That night, I went to put my kids to bed, and my husband and I laid down. I started to feel these sensations. They were pretty hard. They weren't hard enough that I had to get up and walk around, but they were hard enough to keep me up. They were not consistent, but they were happening all night. I didn't sleep all night because of them. In the morning at 6:00 in the morning, they totally went away. I had another normal day. I went back to sleep, and I got to sleep that night. Then again, I put my kids to bed. Me and my husband laid down. I felt these sensations, and they were a little stronger. The same thing, I dind't even tell my husband. I was just laying next to him. I put in my Christian Hypnobirthing. I tried to listen to it and breathe through them. They weren't consistent, then the sun camp up, and they went away. The same thing happened every night for a week and a half. Meagan: Whoa. You were still having trickling and stuff or no?Marlene: No. I wasn't having trickling. It was just that one day. My water never broke again. I think it really was broken for that week and a half. Meagan: Oh, okay. Marlene: It's playing with me. I was just like, “Man, is this real? Is it not? Is it prodromal labor? What's going on?” I'm like, “What's going on?” Then finally, the day comes, and I had been up all night the previous night, then I had a normal day, then I went to bed, but at 3:00 in the morning this time, I woke up with strong, and they kept getting stronger, faster, and more consistent. I'm like, “Okay.” I couldn't even lay down like the other day. I had to get up. I didn't wake up my husband. I went and took a bath. I was like, “Oh.” I didn't have a pool because I didn't want to make more work for my husband. I was trying to be not selfish. Even though now, I wish I did have a birth pool, I probably wouldn't have gone to the hospital if I did. I went in the bath. It was hard and small, so I'm like, “I can't be in here. I've got to get out.” I went to the living room. I was pacing back and forth. I was on the ball trying to watch TV to get my mind off of things, then at 6:00 in the morning, my husband wakes up. He always wakes up early. He woke up, and he was like, “Are you okay?” I'm like, “Yeah.” I was like, “I think it's the real thing this time though.” He's like, “Okay, well I'm going to go to Home Depot.” I'm like, “No, babe. Don't go. I need you. It's really intense. The baby is going to be coming soon.” He's like, “No, I'm just going to go.” I'm like, “Okay, whatever. Just go.” He goes, and I go to the restroom. I try to check myself because I never educated on myself how to check myself because I wanted to trust my body, and I didn't want any cervical checks, but in the moment, I wanted to see how much longer even though cervical checks don't really tell you how long you have, but in my head, I was like, “I've been going through this for a week and a half. I want to know how dilated I am.” I stuck my fingers up there wrong. I only went up to my first knuckle, but now I know you have to go put your whole hand in there and go way high up there. I only felt no opening, so I'm like, “Oh my goodness. How much longer am I going to have to go through this?” I started getting blood dripping down my leg. Meagan: Bloody show?Marlene: It was drops of blood dripping down my leg. My cervix was opening so it wasn't bleeding a little bit. It wasn't too much. It was just a little bit. I call my husband. I'm like, “Adam, get home.” That's my husband's name. “Take me to the hospital. I need an epidural.” He comes home 20 minutes later, then when he gets here, the first thing out of his mouth, “Are you sure you want to go to the hospital? Because you told me that unless it's an emergency, don't take you to the hospital. You told me this.” I'm like, “Shut up, and take me to the hospital.” I'm all mad at him because he left me, and he was not helping me. We drive to the hospital. It's a 15-minute drive, and I get there. I'm like, “Check me. Check me. I want to know how far along I am.” They check me, and they're like, “You're 9.5 centimeters.” My whole mentality changed, and I'm like, “I should have stayed home. I'm here. I'm not going to take that horrible car ride again. I'm guess we're going to have a baby here.” But when I got there, they were like, “Okay, let's prep you for a C-section,” because this was the hospital that I had established care with my third, so they already knew I had three C-sections. They were like, “Okay, let's prep you for a C-section.” I'm like, “I'm not having a C-section. I'm pretty much pushing this baby out. I'm 9.5 centimeters. I'm there.” They're like, “Okay,” so the  nurse went to get the doctor 10 minutes later. Now, I'm pretty much complete. They didn't check me any other times, but they were like, “Okay.” They just wanted her to tell me that I needed a C-section. I'm like, “Lady. I'm not having a C-section. I'm pretty much pushing this baby out.” She goes to my husband and says, “Your wife needs a C-section or her or your baby could die.” He's like, “Lady, get out of here. We're not going to do a C-section. She's pretty much there.” Then she leaves, and then 10 minutes later, she gets more fierce. “You need a C-section, or you and your baby will die. Do you understand that?” I'm breathing through my contraction, closing my eyes, and ignoring her, then she goes and tells my husband the same thing. He's like, “Lady, don't come back. We're not having a C-section.” So she leaves and doesn't come back. I pushed the baby out in only two pushes. Meagan: Oh my gosh. So was the doctor even with you?Marlene: A different doctor which is the doctor who I had seen for my third, came. Actually, I forgot to mention this earlier. I did establish care with her, but since it was the pandemic, I had only seen her about three times throughout my pregnancy. I wanted to make sure I didn't have placenta previa, the placenta wasn't in the way, everything was fine. I went a couple of times to the doctor. I told her at the last one around 34 weeks or 36 weeks– I can't really remember, but towards the end in the last trimester, she was like, “Okay, let's schedule you for a C-section.” I'm like, “No, I have to talk to my husband and ask him for his schedule.” The whole time, I told her, “Okay, I will have a C-section,” but in my mind, I was planning that I wasn't going to.She was like, “Well, we could schedule it now, then if it doesn't work for your husband, then you can reschedule.” I was like, “No, I'll just not schedule it, and I'll call you once I get his schedule.” She's like, “Okay,” then a week passed, then she calls me, but I didn't answer, and they just left a voicemail, “Hi, we need to schedule your C-section.” I heard nothing from them after that. She never tried to call back. I never tried to call her back until I saw her in the delivery room. That was the lady who delivered my baby.Yeah, when she saw me, and I was pushing, she was like, “Hi, Marlene.” I'm like, “Hello.” She had a look on her face.Meagan: You're like, “Yes, I've been ignoring you” Marlene: Yeah, it was funny. It was amazing. I told them I wanted delayed cord clamping. I didn't want any vaccines. The whole time, she said, “You're bleeding a lot. We need to cut the cord.” I did bleed a lot for their comfort, but I felt fine. It was a lot of blood, but I didn't need a transfusion or anything. I didn't feel dizzy. I felt fine, but in their case, I was hemorrhaging. I knew some women don't bleed a lot. Some women don't bleed at all. Some women do bleed a lot. It's just different for everybody. I told them, “Leave the cord alone. Leave the placenta alone.” I still had to advocate the whole time because they were trying to cut the cord sooner than I wanted. They were trying to put the ointment on the baby's eyes, trying to vaccinate, and then before I left, they told me, “CPS came to visit me because of medical neglect.” I didn't see my OB/GYN too many times throughout my pregnancy. I used the pandemic. I was like, “I have three kids at home. Nobody could watch them. I can't take them to the doctor with me. What do you expect me to do, leave my three young children at home unsupervised? I don't know anybody around here to watch them.” They dropped everything. It was crazy.Meagan: What was that process like with CPS? We hear it happening. What did they do?Marlene: I guess they have somebody in the hospital, like a CPS worker working in the hospital for cases like mine or whatever. Meagan: Interesting. Marlene: She just came in. She was really sweet. She was like, “I have to come and check.” She was like, “Can you tell me why you didn't go to the doctor? You only went three times throughout your whole pregnancy. You didn't make it to every appointment.” I said, “I have three young children at home. Nobody is willing to watch them, and I can't take them to my appointments.” She was like, “Okay,” That was it. She was like, “Okay, case closed. I just needed to do my job and ask you.” Meagan: It was like, “I'm going to take this baby away from you because you didn't go.” This is the hard thing for me. I'm going to get a little salty. Providers need to do better. Hospitals need to do better. If they don't want people having free birth or unassisted birth, stop pushing people to do that. I also don't judge anyone who does a free birth. Everyone has their own thing. We've shared free birth stories on here, but if they're going to give people so much crap and call CPS on them which is completely ridiculous because these people are just trying to do what's best. Stop making people go that route. Providers, if you are listening, please change your ways, and do better because you can't shame someone for going out of the hospital or not having support from a provider if you don't offer the support that they deserve in the first place. We're restricting midwives out-of-hospital. Providers are restricting after two Cesareans, and sometimes even after one. We have to do better in the medical world in order to see change. Then people who decide, “Okay. I'm going to do what I feel is right, and I'm going to free birth or I'm going to go unassisted, or I'm not going to be hounded about everything that I don't want,” right? It's so aggravating to me that people put people through CPS and things like that because they made the best choice for them when they were pushed away. You had three unnecessary Cesareans. You were failed from the beginning, right? In your very, very first birth, a provider set you up for failure that they had no idea maybe what the repercussions would be in the next few years with how much you'd have to go through to find the support and to get the support. It's just frustrating to me. Marlene: Yeah. I totally agree. Honestly, that's what made me, because I'm a doula, become a doula because I want to try as best as I can. I'm just one person and not a very important person in the medical world, but I try to educate my clients on not getting an unnecessary induction or unnecessary C-section. I'm not against them if they are an emergency, but if they are unnecessary, they're handing them out like Oprah. “You get a C-section. You get an induction.” That's how they're handing them out. In my area, that's what I see. And also, because the ladies who want to have a free birth like me, if I would have had a doula to support me, then I would have probably done it at home. I'm that doula who I was looking for. I support free birth. I'll be there if you're free birthing and you can't find any other doula. Meagan: Yeah, and there are a lot of doulas who feel uncomfortable with it, a lot of it because maybe they are uneducated on it, but I do think it's important for people who do decide to free birth just to make sure you are educated. You know what you are doing. You have a backup plan. You have the support. It is good to hear that you and other doulas are able to go and support still. Everybody has to decide what's best for them and what feels best, but support is needed, so I'm glad that you are willing to support your community. Marlene: Yeah. Honestly, I've noticed that the ones who decide to free birth are very prepared and educated even more so than the ones who are doing it in the hospital and stuff because they have to, in my experience at least. Meagan: Yeah. They do. They do have to. I do believe that those people who decide to free birth don't take it nonchalantly. It's a very serious thing that they take. We talked about that in the last episode. It's important to note that. These people are very educated. It's not just, “Oh, I'm going to go have a baby by myself in my closet.” It's not like that. Really, these people are educated. I'm so happy for you that you were able to fight through this, and to grow through each of your pregnancies and your births because you deserve that support. I'm sorry that you had to fight so hard in the pushing stages. Big eye roll. Again, we need to do better. We need to do better. Marlene: I agree. I'm grateful for podcasts like yours and other ones to get the story out there because we do learn as a community through storytelling and stuff. That's actually what helped me a lot.Meagan: Yeah, they do. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your stories today. Marlene: You're welcome. Thank you for having me. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In this episode, Emilee Saldaya shares her journey from leaving the medical system to leading the Free Birth Society. She explores the myths of freebirth, the challenges of hospital births, and how women can reconnect with their bodies to embrace birth as a natural, empowering process. Discover what freebirth entails, the limitations of licensed midwifery, and the positive stories of women who chose freebirth. For more details, links, and resources mentioned in this episode, visit our website: https://thewayfwrd.com/podcast/freebirth-for-peace-on-earth-with-emilee-saldaya The Way Forward podcast is sponsored by:  NEW BIOLOGY CLINIC: Experience individually tailored terrain-based health services with virtual consults, practitioner livestreams, movement classes, and more. The New Biology Clinic's motivation is to make you healthy and keep you that way. Visit https://NewBiologyClinic.com and enter code TheWayForward for $50 off your activation fee. Members of The Way Forward get the full activation fee waived. Become a member of The Way Forward here: https://thewayfwrd.com/membership-sign-up/

Morgan talks about choosing freebirth as a first time mother and the ripple effects it's had on her family, and tight knit community in rural WNC.  ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereign professionals near you! -  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

Today we are thrilled to be sharing our episode from the FIRST EVER LIVE SHOW from this past November in Austin, Texas. It was so fun to do this IRL and get to sit with my guest on stage, surrounded by so many amazing pod supporters. This is *not* a story to miss, check it out: An unwanted induction led Kait to a homebirth with a medical midwife for her second. In her third pregnancy, she felt ready to choose a wild pregnancy and freebirth. At 35 weeks, her birth unexpectedly began. Kait got freaked out by the amount of blood present in her birth and while her husband goes to get them ready to transfer, her daughter was born, weighing 3.5 lbs. While she waited for the placenta…her son was born. The healthy *surprise* twins quickly nursed and everyone stayed home. Kait tells the wild story of moving from surprise of twins to navigating loss of power as a hurricane pummeled Houston, Texas in the first days of her postpartum. ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereig professionals near you! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

Rachel is an American woman living in Denmark who shares the poetic story of birthing her two sons. Her first birth was wrought with sabotage, manipulation, and abuse, which took her years to fully unpack. With the help of this very podcast, Rachel takes on the courageous task of naming what truly happened and claiming a better birth with her second.  ✨ Join the waitlist for the Matribirth Midwifery Institute - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmiwaitlist ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join the Matribirth Directory and connect with sovereig professionals near you! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at - https://www.freebirthsociety.com ✨Connect with Rachel - www.rachelruva.com

Livi was a NHS student midwife for three years, admittedly betraying her true calling to serve women in a holistic way. Livi goes on to birth her baby freely at home opening up a whole world of possibility. Livi is now a Radical Birth Keeper Graduate and serves her local community.  ✨Join Emilee and the FBS Podcast *LIVE* in Austin, Texas 11/16/24! Get your tickets at - https://www.capcitycomedy.com/shows/282788 ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Become a founding member of the MatriBirth Directory until the end of 2024! https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at - https://www.freebirthsociety.com ✨Connect with our guest Livi - www.wildwatersbirth.co.uk

Livi was a NHS student midwife for three years, admittedly betraying her true calling to serve women in a holistic way. Livi goes on to birth her baby freely at home opening up a whole world of possibility. Livi is now a Radical Birth Keeper Graduate and serves her local community.  ✨Join Emilee and the FBS Podcast *LIVE* in Austin, Texas 11/16/24! Get your tickets at - https://www.capcitycomedy.com/shows/282788 ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Become a founding member of the MatriBirth Directory until the end of 2024! https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at - https://www.freebirthsociety.com ✨Connect with our guest Livi - www.wildwatersbirth.co.uk

Lesia developed a seizure disorder as a result of a vaccine injury at the age of four.  When she got pregnant the first time she started seeing an OB, then hired a doula, and began planning for a secret homebirth.  When she found out her baby was breech, she still decided to stay home and freebirthed her baby at 42 weeks.  Lesia goes on to tell the story of her wild pregnancy, healing her hyperemesis gravidarum through German New Medicine and her most recent freebirth, which was only three days prior to recording! ✨Join Emilee and the FBS Podcast *LIVE* in Austin, Texas 11/16/24!  Get your tickets at - ⁠https://www.capcitycomedy.com/shows/282788⁠ ✨  Join the Blood Mysteries School Waitlist and be initiated into the sacred secrets of womanhood. - ⁠https://www.freebirthsociety.com/bmswaitlist⁠ ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at ⁠https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsocietyod⁠ -  ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join our MatriBirth Directory as a founding member until the end of 2024! https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

Birth keeper Aisaba is on the show today sharing her five birth stories and all the deprogramming that has happened along the way. Aisaba has deeply experienced the negative cost of birth in the system, from unnecessary c-sections, to painful inductions, and the medical kidnapping of her newborn. She shares about her powerful lessons that brought her to finally freebirthing her most recent baby.  ✨Join Emilee and the FBS Podcast *LIVE* in Austin, Texas 11/16/24!  Get your tickets at - https://www.capcitycomedy.com/shows/282788 ✨  Join the Blood Mysteries School Waitlist and be initiated into the sacred secrets of womanhood. - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/bmswaitlist ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsocietyod -  ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Drop your name on the MatriBirth Directory waitlist and be the first to hear when we open to the public!  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com ✨Connect with our guest - divinebirthkeeper.com

Cadence's first birth was sabotaged by unlicensed medical midwives who pitched themselves as traditional and hands-off. That birth ended in a hospital transfer, wrought with dehumanizing treatment, and heartbreak.  After a 1:1 session with Emilee, Cadence began to unravel her first birth, and found motivation to rewrite her story with her second. Up in the mountains of the Big Island, Cadence freebirthed her daughter, learning to source from within. ✨Join Emilee Saldaya and the FBS Podcast *LIVE* in Austin, Texas 11/16/24! Get your tickets at - https://www.capcitycomedy.com/shows/282788 ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Drop your name on the MatriBirth Directory waitlist and be the first to hear when we open to the public! https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at - https://www.freebirthsociety.com ✨Connect with our guest - https://cadenciaphotography.com/

By the age of 12 Cheyenne had survived spinal surgery, drug addiction, and a near death car accident that left her with a broken pelvis and an internal infection. Through years of therapy and deep healing work, Cheyenne met her partner and decided to consciously conceive and freebirth her baby. She's now a Radical Birth Keeper Graduate and a student at MMI with us, learning to support women in their sacred birthing times. ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Drop your name on the MatriBirth Directory waitlist and be the first to hear when we open to the public!  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com ✨Connect with our guest -  WombensTraditions.Life

Originally from Tunisia, Houyem tells the story of her three births. Houyem recalls the moment she realized she could just stay home and how this begins to shape how she serves and inspires birthing women in the Middle East. ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Drop your name on the MatriBirth Directory waitlist and be the first to hear when we open to the public!  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

Esme Shea is on the show today bringing her stories of how simple and normal homebirth is in her family.  Everyone on her mother's side has been born at home, and Esme carries on this legacy by freebirthing her own daughter. ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Drop your name on the MatriBirth Directory waitlist and be the first to hear when we open to the public!  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

Skye, an Australian woman living in Southern California, shares her four birth stories on the show today. In her first birth, Skye experienced midwife sabotage, then with her 2nd, the heartbreaking loss of her son. After freebirthing her third son, she regretfully did a tongue tie revision that went horribly and left her entire family traumatized. Finally, Skye embraces an undisturbed freebirth complete with an intact and blissful fourth trimester with her daughter.  ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Drop your name on the MatriBirth Directory waitlist and be the first to hear when we open to the public!  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

Sabina is one of our VBAC-certified doulas from Canada and is sharing her peaceful FBA2C today. While free birth comes with its own risks and benefits, we know that many women feel drawn to this option when they have no support or do not feel safe birthing any other way as Sabina did. We want to share all types of births after Cesarean and honor all stories! The way Sabina trusted in her body and in the physiological birth process after a traumatic experience with HELLP syndrome is truly inspiring. Among the many important messages from this episode, Meagan says: “If you are a provider listening and you perform C-sections, please, please hear what we are saying today. What you say to us while we are on the table in the most vulnerable position… impacts us. Every word that comes out of your mouth, please think about it. Please think about it because it impacts us…I'm getting emotional because I remember my provider talking crap like that and saying things like that. It impacts us longer than you will ever, ever know and it will impact us for every future birth. Please, providers. Please, please, please from the bottom of my heart, I beg of you. Watch what you say to people.” The VBAC Link Blog: VBAC with PreeclampsiaNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, hello Women of Strength. It is Meagan and I'm so excited to be recording wtih you today. You've probably been listening all summer but I've actually not been in the recording studio all summer. I record up until May until my kids get out of school then I take June and July off so I can be with my kids and save you guys from the screaming and the dog barking and all of that in the background. It's August and we are back in the studio and we have our friend, Sabina. Hello. Sabina: Hello. Meagan: I'm so excited to have her on today. You guys, she is one of our VBAC-certified doulas which is so exciting. She is also a mama of three. She is a FBA2C. Okay, you guys. F is a new one. We haven't been sharing a lot of F. We've had H and V and breech B so what does F stand for?Sabina: F stands for free birth which means I did not have any kind of provider with me during my pregnancy or during my birth. I just did it all by myself. Meagan: Yep, you did. Sometimes I feel like it's a mother-led pregnancy. Sabina: Yes. Yes. Meagan: This is something. We've talked about this a little bit before we got recording. The world, when we look at free birth, frowns deeply upon it. It's not for everyone. Sabina: No. Meagan: That's why a good majority doesn't. However, I think it's important to share these free birth stories. They are still beautiful stories and it doesn't mean because you didn't have a provider that your story doesn't deserve to be heard, right?Sabina: Right. Meagan: I think that it's also important to talk a little bit about the fact that so many people are not getting the support. You're going to tell us a little bit more about why you chose free birth, but the world as we know it is not VBAC-supportive in many ways, in most ways. Sabina: Still. Meagan: Yeah, as we know. You are in Canada, right?Sabina: Yep. Meagan: We know that there are some hurdles there too. Even here in Utah, over the last 10 years of me being a doula and having babies of my own, I've watched the VBAC support wane and actually wane in the less-ideal way which is really unfortunate. We have a lot of people who try. They try and find the support. They try and get what they deserve. You deserve support. Women of Strength, no matter who you are or where you are, you deserve support. Most people who choose to free birth ran out of those options and decide that they are still going to do what's best for them. That is what Sabina did and I'm excited for her to share her stories. In addition to free birth, we have some other little things in there. HELLP syndrome, if you've ever heard of HELLP syndrome you guys, or if you haven't ever heard of HELLP syndrome, we're going to talk more about that and what that looks like, the symptoms and things like that, and what it could mean. Then larger babies and then yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about VBAC doulas too because we love our VBAC doulas. I don't know. Are you serving right now? Sabina: I am, yeah. Meagan: You have a new babe, but you are. Okay, if you are in Canada– and where are you again?Sabina: I'm in Ottawa. Meagan: Ottawa. Okay, you guys, give her a call. You can find her on our website at thevbaclink.com/findadoula. Sabina: I don't have a website but my Instagram is @letsdoulathisvbac. Meagan: Let's doula this. We will make sure to tag her so just go to today's Instagram or Facebook and find her. We do have a Review of the Week so we will jump into that and then get into your beautiful stories. This review is by mitaya. I don't know. I think it's probably an abbreviation. I don't know. Maybe it's a name but it says, “I vote this place on over the speaker in every OB/GYN office.” I love that. It says, “I cannot even begin to describe what an encouragement these podcasts have been for me. I have completely binged on these in the past few weeks and they have grown my confidence for my up and coming baby. I cannot stop sharing everything I am learning and even helping to encourage first-time moms on how to educate themselves to avoid a Cesarean in the first place.” Ding, ding, ding. We're actually going to have an episode about that, y'all. So if you're ready to share an episode with a first-time mom, it's coming up. “Thank you so much for this no-B.S., truth-declaring, and empowering platform that I know has encouraged so many more than just myself. Keep being amazing. I can't wait to share our story in just a few short months. All of my love.”Thank you so much for your review and I hope that you had your VBAC and had a beautiful birth. If you are still listening with us, let us know. Give us a shoutout on my email or on Facebook or Instagram. Meagan: Okay, Ms. Sabina. Are you ready to dive in to these beautiful stories? Sabina: I am. Meagan: Let's do it. Sabina: This is surreal because I've been picturing this whole pregnancy how I would talk about things if I was on the podcast. Every time I had a symptom, I thought about how I would say it on a podcast so it's very cool to actually get to do it. Meagan: Tell us all of the things. Here you are. Sabina: Okay. I'll start with my first birth. I was pregnant in 2019 and I had one appointment with an OB then realized it wasn't for me. I switched to midwives and had a perfectly uncomplicated pregnancy. I'm very athletic so I was in shape working out the whole time. No symptoms of anything other than heartburn and some rib pain. We had midwives who were great and then around 41 weeks, actually on 41 weeks to the day, we had our ultrasound just to make sure everything was going well. When we got there, I started getting a lot of pain in my right side. Again, I had rib pain so I just brushed it off. It's nothing. I had seen my midwives the day before and everything looked good. Blood pressure was fine. We were sitting in the waiting room and it just kept getting more and more uncomfortable. I started sweating and I asked my husband if we could just step outside for a bit then I remembered one of my friends saying that when she was in labor, she would put her arms around her husband and just dangle to open everything. I tried that hoping it would relieve some pressure and I just started panicking. My husband who was very naive at the time was like, “Oh, this is it. You're in labor.” I was like, “No. This is not right. It's not going away.” Meagan: Something's off. Sabina: Something's off. We went back in and I asked the receptionist if I could just go lie down. They brought me into a room and at this point, I couldn't sit still. We called my midwife and she asked if I was prone to panic attacks and I said, “No, I've never had one.” They checked the baby and he was totally fine. But my midwife was like, “Okay, I'll meet you at the hospital.” We called the ambulance and this is where it starts to get fuzzy. I was in shock. I couldn't remember everything but we took an ambulance and the only reason we took an ambulance was because I thought they would help but they didn't do anything. They just waited and took me to the hospital. I spent the ride on my hands and knees and when we got to the hospital, my blood pressure was 275/174. Again, we had just checked it the day before and it was totally normal, 121/80. My midwife was there and they asked if they could check my cervix just to see if it was a bizarre labor and I was barely a centimeter. I was still very posterior so nothing was really happening. I do remember my mom quickly poking her head in. My husband must have called her but then they were like, “Okay, let's do a C-section.” I don't remember a lot. I remember as soon as they gave me the epidural, I could relax. Everything just went away. I briefly remember seeing my husband and being like, “Oh my god. We're going to have a baby.”I remember hearing him cry. They showed him to me the first time. I also had a cyst on one of my ovaries so they showed me that. It was kind of cool. Then in the recovery room, I very briefly remember trying to feed my son and then I told them that my vision was jumping around and I couldn't focus so they handed him over to my husband and then I don't remember anything else. Basically, they never treated my blood pressure. They just–Meagan: Wait, they didn't do anything? They were just like, “We've got to get the baby out” type thing then they ignored the astronomically high blood pressure?Sabina: Yes. Meagan: Okay. Sabina: Even though the baby was fine because we had just had the ultrasound and checked everything, they completely neglected the blood pressure. Obviously, it dropped when I got the epidural because it gets rid of the pain so it goes down a bit. Later, I found out that they had the medication ready, they just never gave it to me. So as soon as the epidural wore off, my blood pressure shot right back up and I ended up having a seizure. My husband, I mean I don't remember any of it, but my husband was kicked out into the hall shirtless holding our newborn not knowing what was going on. My parents were down the hall and heard the code blue and just knew it was for me. Then I was just talking to my mom about it yesterday. She said that they were at the nurse's station demanding to know what was going on. They were telling her to calm down and they just sent them to see my husband. He was in a dark room by himself with a newborn who was crying because he probably wanted to eat or whatever. He just looked like he was a ghost. He didn't know what was going on. It was horrible. Even to this day, it hurts knowing that that was his entrance into parenthood. Meagan: And both of your experiences too. His entrance and both of your experiences. It didn't start off very positively. Sabina: No. Definitely not. I remember seeing my dad briefly and then I don't remember anything until the next day. I woke up and my dad was there and I just said, “What happened?” He told me I had a seizure and then the first couple days, I don't remember much. My son was in the NICU just because I couldn't take care of him and they would bring him to me once in a while so I could feed him. My mom said she noticed that every time he was with me, my blood pressure would drop obviously. It makes sense. She advocated for him to get to stay with me. I started breastfeeding even though I was honestly half-dead. They told my family the day it happened that the next 24 hours would determine which direction I went so it was pretty scary. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Sabina: Yeah. Pretty scary. We ended up getting a private room in the ICU and my son was allowed to stay with me as long as somebody else was there. My mom and husband just kept switching off. The nurses were phenomenal. Every nurse we had was great. They brought us a full cart of baby supplies because we had nothing. We didn't even have a hospital bag but I saw every other person in the hospital. It was incredibly frustrating. We saw residents. We saw random specialists who had nothing to do with me. We saw interns. I never saw the same doctor twice and I was there for a week.Meagan: Whoa. Sabina: Yeah. We kept being told by one doctor that, “Okay, if your blood pressure stays below this level for the next 24 hours, you get to go home.” Then the next day, a doctor would come on and I'd say, “Okay, it stayed below. Can we go home?” They were like, “Oh no, no, no. You're probably here for the next several days.” It was back and forth like that and it was incredibly frustrating. Eventually, I left against medical advice because I knew I couldn't heal in the hospital. I knew I needed to go home. We went home with two blood pressure medications and by day two, I had to stop taking them because my blood pressure was so low. Meagan: Whoa. Sabina: Obviously, I made the right choice. It got to the point where I could hardly get out of bed and I was so lethargic because of the blood pressure being so low. Meagan: Your body truly was responding. It was in that flight/fight mode where you're probably so tense the whole time you were there. Your body was not able to even try to recover. Sabina: Yeah. I mean, that was our first week as parents. It was in the hospital. Eventually, we got moved to the labor and delivery ward but still, we were not home. We weren't comfortable. We were bored because we were just there and then we're seeing everybody and their uncle at the hospital coming in because I was a unique case. It was super frustrating. I do want to mention with the HELLP syndrome that my kidneys were failing. I had swelling in my brain. I had to get one MRI or two CTs or the other way around. I only remember one of them. Meagan: Your liver obviously. Sabina: Yes, yeah. My liver was definitely not ideal. Meagan: That was the start of the pain. Sabina: Yeah, again, I thought that was the rib pain. Meagan: Kind of up there. Sabina: I was perfectly healthy. Yeah. I was perfectly healthy. I had worked out that morning. Meagan: Wow. Sabina: I felt totally fine. It was very sudden. Meagan: Did you have any other symptoms like headache, blurred vision, swelling, nausea? Sabina: Not until after that pain. After the C-section, my vision was jumping. Meagan: Yeah, you said. Sabina: Yeah. I couldn't focus and then the next two days, right here on my head on the right side had severe pain. Nothing would help. They were giving me pain meds and stuff and nothing was helping so eventually, I just stopped taking them. But beforehand, there was absolutely nothing. They didn't test my blood or urine because it wasn't routine to check it at that time and they had no reason to check it but it was very, very sudden and very severe. Because they didn't deal with the blood pressure, I still wonder to this day if they had dealt with it or tried. Meagan: Given you magnesium or something. Sabina: If it wouldn't have been as severe of a reaction or a problem. Meagan: Yeah. Sabina: It's very frustrating to look back. Of course, after that I had PTSD but I didn't know that I had PTSD and the support wasn't really there. My midwife was like, “Well, of course, you're going to have some hard times,” but that was kind of it. That was the only support I got. My sister actually was pregnant at the same time and was due a month later. She got induced because she just went past her due date and I was so upset when she was in labor because I was so jealous. It's a horrible feeling because you're happy for them but I was just so jealous. My midwife came over that day. Again, there wasn't really much support surrounding that. It was just like, “Yeah, that's normal. Move on.” My sister ended up getting a C-section just because she got the cascade of interventions. It was a typical story. For the next year, it was extremely difficult mentally. Any time I tried to talk to somebody about it, it was always like, “Well, you have a healthy baby,” so trying to justify that everything was worth it because the baby is healthy. Again, I didn't tell my family how much I was struggling but anytime like for example, I would talk to my mom about it and be like, “I missed all of those moments with him like the first night. I wasn't with him at all.” She would always say something like, “Well, he was taken care of,” because she was there. I'm super grateful that they were there, but it would crush me inside because–Meagan: But not by me. Sabina: It should have been me. All of those moments should have been me. Then toward my son's first birthday, we were talking about his birthday party and again, my sister did not mean anything by this because she just didn't know what I was going through but she was like, “Well, you didn't really give birth so we'll call it his removal day.” I just played it off like it was fine, but my insides just crumbled. Meagan: That would impact me. That just made me have a little bit of an ick. I'm sure she didn't mean any harm by that, right? But that just gave me the ick. Sabina: Yeah, she didn't mean harm at all. So I just would play these things off and smile and nod sort of thing, but inside it just crushed me. Meagan: I'm sorry. Sabina: I never thought that I would have a C-section. You just don't think that's going to happen to you. His first birthday was really hard and then after that, I just started looking forward to the next one which was good but also not good because I didn't really do any healing or recovering. I just was like, “Okay, it's done. Let's move on.” So my second birth was in 2021 and it was more of a classic unsupportive provider scenario. I went with the same midwife because she was amazing during our first birth and I had a lot of trust with her. She was amazing but she told me I needed to see high-risk as well. I went to see the high-risk doctor and he did not want to see me. He just was l​​ike, “You are a pretty low high-risk because it happened so late in your pregnancy. Take baby aspirin. Get some extra ultrasounds. We don't need to see you.” I said, “Great. That's perfect. I don't care.” But my midwife was like, “Nope. You need to see him every month if you want to continue with us.” Meagan: Was that the protocol of their staff or was that just her opinion giving her comfort of you seeing an OB?Sabina: Yep. I think it was her comfort because she said that then if something did happen, we had him on hand sort of thing. Meagan: Okay. Sabina: I still wanted a home birth. I wanted a home birth with my first. Obviously, it didn't happen so I still was totally comfortable. I knew it wasn't going to happen again. We were going to take every precaution but my midwife was like, “Nope. It's too risky because you are a VBAC and you've had that happen, we can't support you in a home birth.” Again, I didn't know all of the red flags at this time and I just trusted her too much to think otherwise. I pretty much left every midwife appointment crying because any time I had tried to be positive and be like, “Okay, well if I can't deliver at home, I'll deliver at the hospital,” they'd be like, “No. You can't deliver at this hospital. You have to go to a higher-level hospital.” Those were the ones where I stayed in the ICU for a week so I didn't want to go there. Meagan: Triggering. Sabina: Yeah, and that's where I had to go for the high-risk too. I was going there once a month and then 2-3 times a month toward the end of this hospital where we had been through all of this trauma. Eventually, I asked if I could do the appointments over the phone because you'd get the ultrasound then you'd have to wait 2-3 hours to see the doctor because they were always so behind. I checked my blood pressure. I was just like, “Can you just call me?” That was fine so it made it that much easier. Yeah. Eventually, my midwife said that if everything was fine by a certain point, she would talk to the OB at the hospital that I wanted to deliver at and see what they thought. Ultimately, they said I had to transfer to OB care if I wanted to deliver there. It was stupid. Again, another red flag. I had to be induced and yada, yada, yada. There were all of these stipulations and everything needed to be what they needed. We saw the OB once and I did not– we were in and out in 5 minutes. I did not like it. She could not have cared less about me. It was very obvious. My midwife said that starting at 38 weeks, we should try and do stretch and sweeps every few days to get things going before my due date. Meagan: She really wanted you to have a baby before that 41-week mark. Sabina: Yes, exactly. She was more scared than we were. Even my husband wasn't as scared and he is a very anxious person. Yeah. We started doing the stretch and sweeps and again, I should have refused but you don't know what you don't know at that point. I found The VBAC Link when I was 37 weeks so I wish I had found it earlier so that I could have done the course and saw all of these red flags and had taken things into my own hands. Eventually, we kept going in to get induced but we got sent home because there were no beds. Again, I was like, “Why are we doing this then? I'm obviously not high on their priority list.” Eventually, we went in. They broke my water. We waited to see if anything would happen and nothing did. They started Pitocin. For the first 6 hours on Pitocin, I was able to handle it but my husband and I were so uncomfortable in the hospital room mentally, physically, and emotionally. We didn't want to be there. We were never in the room alone so we couldn't be ourselves because there were strangers there. I eventually asked for the epidural. I told my midwife that if I asked for the epidural, try everything else first, then do the epidural. As soon as I asked for the epidural, she was just like, “Okay, let's do it.” No pushback, so that was super frustrating as well. We got the epidural then 2 hours later, a different OB came in, checked me, and was like, “No. You are not dilating. It's not working. You need a C-section.” Again, I didn't know this at the time, but she said there was no progress but I had dilated a centimeter. I had fully effaced and– yes, fully. Not just a little bit. Fully effaced. Meagan: If everybody could see my face right now, I'm like, what? That's not change or progress?Sabina: Then my cervix had come forward too. Meagan: Big changes all around. Sabina: Big changes. Big changes, just not fast enough for this doctor. I knew it wasn't necessary. I waited for my midwife to come in and fight for me and she just went along with it. I was like, “What? No.” I didn't know I had the right to just say, “No, I'm not doing that.” Neither did my husband. Meagan: Even though you had the right, it's still very hard. Sabina: It's very hard. Meagan: It's a very difficult thing to be like, “Actually, no. I've got two medical professionals here telling me what I should do but I think no and how do I say that?” Sabina: Yeah, and you're already in such a vulnerable state then there is all that negative energy too which really affects me. I'm a highly sensitive person so energies really affect me. Meagan: You were proof in your first birth too. As soon as that doctor walked in, I could feel that negative energy. I knew she didn't care about me. She wasn't in this job for the right reasons. I bawled and my husband tried to comfort me. He was like, “It's going to be different. We're going to remember everything. We know what's happening this time.” I just kept saying, “Yeah, but we don't need it. The baby is fine. I'm fine. It's just not necessary.”Anyway, eventually, we had the C-section and I just laid there on the table sobbing. I did obviously remember everything but I was just miserable. I was pumped full of every drug so I was exhausted. I think it really affected the bonding experience between me and my baby. That first night with my son, I wanted him constantly. I wanted him on me. I didn't want anyone to take him with her. I wanted her to sleep separately so I could sleep which is very unlike me. I really think all of the Pitocin and everything blocked my natural hormone releases. While I was lying on the table, my husband and the baby got taken away to the recovery room and I was just trying to rest. The OB was like, “So do you want more kids?” I was like, “Yeah.” She was like, “Well, they'll all have to be C-sections,” while I was laying on the table after sobbing that whole time. It was just horrible. Meagan: I don't want to interrupt you but I do because I want to point out to everyone that especially if you are a provider listening and you perform C-sections, please, please hear what we are saying today. What you say to us while we are on the table in the most vulnerable position– some of us are strapped down to a table– what you say to us impacts us. Every word that comes out of your mouth, please think about it. Please think about it because it impacts us and it impacts us longer– I'm getting emotional because I remember my provider talking crap like that and saying things like that. It impacts us longer than you will ever, ever know and it will impact us for every future birth. Please, providers. Please, please, please from the bottom of my heart, I beg of you. Watch what you say to people. Okay, sorry. Keep going. Sabina: That's okay. I totally agree with you. The lack of bedside manner, especially for VBACs because when you've gone through a C-section, even if it was planned or whatever, it still can be traumatic and they just don't get it. She even told me, “I had 3 C-sections. Once your baby is out, you won't care how it happened.” It's like, good for you but not everybody is the same as you. Maybe you don't care about birth experiences but lots of women do. It was super frustrating. We stayed one night in the hospital and then left. Of course, the PTSD came back. The midwives all tried to tell me that the C-section was necessary because her hands were up over her face so she wouldn't have come out anyway but their stories weren't the same so I realized that they were lying and were just trying to justify that it was necessary. Meagan: Yeah. That's unfortunate.Sabina: Yeah. The PTSD came back and I it got to a point– I can't remember how many months my daughter was but I was visiting with a neighbor and I was talking about my experiences and I was like, “Next time, I'm going to have a VBAC. I'm going to do whatever it takes to have a VBAC.” She was like, “Why would you even try that?” I was like, “What do you mean?” She was like, “Well, there's the risk of rupture so why would you even do that when you could just have a C-section?” It broke me. I came home. I bawled to my husband and a few days later, I was still really upset about it. He didn't know how to help which is fair and he was just like, “Maybe you need to see a therapist.” I'm sure there are some out there, but I couldn't find any that fit here and therapy is not something that I thought would help me. I know it helps lots of people so I started looking up my symptoms and things. I found out that it was PTSD. It got to a point where I was like, okay. I need to fix this for myself. I took The VBAC Link Course which already was super helpful just because I felt empowered going forward. I knew that my potentially both C-sections weren't necessary but definitely the second one. I knew the risks and benefits of having a vaginal birth after two C-sections. I had all of the proof in front of me. Then it also pushed me to become a doula. I've always wanted to be in the birth world. I became a nurse to work in obstetrics but then left nursing after 4 years because it just wasn't for me. I was like, “This is what I'm meant to do.”I wish I had known about doulas for my other two births. I took a doula course and then I took The VBAC Link Doula Course and within a month of starting my doula page, I already had a VBAC client who reached out which was super exciting. She got in with the midwives that I had, with the particular midwife that I had. I was like, “Okay. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe I can teach her about VBACs.” The first appointment, she was great apparently then after that, it was constantly, “Well, you have this so maybe we should do a hospital birth or you have this.” Every time she saw them, they were trying to push her to a hospital birth. She ended up having a free birth with me which was really cool. Meagan: She did? Really? Sabina: I told her from the get-go, “If that's something you want, I'm here for you. I'm totally comfortable with that.” Her original plan was just to maybe not call the midwives unless she felt something was wrong but then after some of those appointments, she was like, “No. They're not coming. We're not calling them. If we need help, we'll just go to the hospital.” Yeah. She had a free birth and it was awesome. It was great to be there. I was 14 weeks pregnant at the time so it was great for me. I actually met my doula a year before we even tried to conceive because I wanted to be prepared. She wasn't a VBAC doula, but she was newer and very open to the idea of having a home birth after C-sections. We became friends to the point where I actually attended her birth 3 months before she attended mine. Meagan: Oh my gosh, so cool. Sabina: Yeah, when I got pregnant with this one, I pretty much knew right away that I wasn't going to have a provider. It wasn't for me. I did apply to the midwife groups but every one of them either refused or said I was on the waitlist but I wasn't. As soon as they saw I wanted a home birth after two C-sections, that was thrown out. I mentioned it to my husband once and then the second time I mentioned it, he was fully on board which was mentioned. Meagan: Really? Because you said he was anxious about things yeah. Sabina: Anxious, yeah. But I had been educating him along the way too with everything that I learned. Any time I told him stories of other women who had difficult births or my client who was having these horrible appointments, he would get angry too so yeah. He really had become pretty educated on the topic which was amazing. He was very comfortable with our doula as well. He was like, “She's really knowledgeable.” We had a plan in place for if there was an actual emergency and if I wanted to transfer for whatever other reason. We had it set up and most other things I felt like I could handle myself unless it was one of the few very serious emergencies. My mindset going into this birth was amazing. I read daily affirmations to myself before bed and then I would listen to her heartbeat. I could hear it with a stethoscope around 15 weeks so every night I would listen to her heartbeat and I just felt so connected and so in tune with my body and my intuition which was something that kept getting shut down with my other births I found. It was the most stress-free pregnancy. We didn't do any tests. We got a couple of ultrasounds just because I like seeing the baby and I'm a very visual person but that was it. Both me and my husband were like, “This is amazing. We're just living our lives normally and not these stipulations and all of these worries being pushed on us.” I was checking my blood pressure but I just eventually was like, I don't really feel like I need to do this. It was very low. It was 90/50 for most of the pregnancy so I was like, I'm fine. I was still taking the aspirin just as a precaution but that was it. I wasn't in a rush. I wasn't like, baby has to be out at a certain time. I was just like, let's let things happen because we didn't get that opportunity with the last two. I had my mucus plug start to come out around 39 weeks and 4 or 5 days which was very exciting but I told my husband that it doesn't really mean much. Things are happening as they should. A couple of days later, the bloody show came out as well. Again, I was like, “We are fine. This could be going on for weeks. Whatever.”Then that night, so it was actually the morning of my due date, I had prodromal labor. I started feeling contractions and of course, I got excited but it started I think at 4:00 in the morning. I just sat there and breathed through them. They weren't intense. They were very easy to get through then me and my husband got everything ready when he got up then it stopped. I was like, “Okay, whatever. My body is just practicing.” For the next week or so, the mucus plug kept coming out throughout the week just in little bits. I didn't have any other contractions until– I have it written down here– the night of July 3rd into the morning of July 4th so probably 10 hours. I had prodromal labor overnight then it stopped as soon as I got up in the morning. I tried doing the Miles Circuit and both times it stopped the contractions so I was like, okay. Whatever. At least I know how to stop them. Meagan: Sometimes Miles Circuit does stop them because a lot of the times prodromal is a positional thing. Baby is trying to figure it out so the Miles Circuit helps with position and if it moves baby, it can stop them. Sabina: Yep. I was a little bit frustrated that day because I was like, I'm losing sleep now. I don't know if I should rest during the day because I still could be weeks away from giving birth. I was like, “We need to stay busy. We need to have plans for every day just so I don't feel like I'm rushing.”Meagan: Take your mind off of it. Sabina: Yeah. We kept busy that day then we were sitting after dinner. Around 8:00 PM I started feeling them again and I was like, “Great. Another night of no sleep. Okay, whatever.” The second night I had them, they were stronger than that first time but I could still breathe through them and stay lying down. That night they were even stronger which is odd because usually prodromal labor is the same. Meagan: It's monotone, yeah. Sabina: But these ones, I couldn't lay down which was really frustrating because I was so tired. I had to keep getting up. I tried doing the Miles Circuit and it didn't help so I was like, “Okay, I guess I'm going to stay awake all night.” In the morning, I got up and I was waiting for them to stop. I tried to have a hot shower and they were still going. It was 10:00 in the morning at this point and the other ones had always stopped at 8:00. I was like, “Okay. Maybe this is something.” My husband was like, “Get Jess here.” I was like, “Well, I'm fine though. I don't need the help.” But I texted her to let her know what was going on and then for my husband's sake, told her to come because I knew he needed that comfort. We called her and we called our friend who was going to come watch the kids. For the whole day, I was contracting and dealing with it beautifully. I was breathing through it no problem. I was excited every time I got a contraction. I wasn't timing them because I felt like that was stressing me out. I felt like they needed to be a certain length and a certain time apart. I stopped timing them and it was just really nice. Our friend was taking the kids swimming. Me and my doula were mulling around the house and she would play with the kids too. It was like we were all just hanging out. It was so peaceful. Then around 4:00, she does reflexology, my doula, so she got me to lay down and did some acupressure stuff on my feet. While she was doing that, I had a really big contraction and after that they pretty much stayed. I think that was the shift into active labor. My husband made everybody dinner which was nice and I was just in the kitchen picking up the food while going through contractions. Eventually, the kids went to bed and our friend left. At this point, it was 8:00 at night. I had the TENS machine on. I had been going back and forth from the toilet because the toilet is the dilaton station. Any time I had to go to the bathroom, I would stay there for 4-5 contractions. Again, I was still fully in control and mentally fully aware. I was happy in between contractions so around 9:30, I decided to get in the tub because they were still increasing. My husband and doula were both there. My husband and I really got to connect during this labor and he was so present. I had asked him after my previous births if he was proud of me. He was like, “I don't know if I would say proud.” He didn't mean it negatively, but it just hurt that he wasn't. So throughout this labor, anytime I looked at him, he'd tell me how proud he was of what I was doing or he would tell me how amazing I was and it was just so nice. He could hold me and we could just be ourselves without feeling the pressure of people watching. So then around 10:30, transition hit. I struggled. I was so mentally tired because I hadn't slept in three nights of no sleep and my mental strength had been what was keeping me going the rest of the time. I was struggling. It lasted 3.5 hours so it was a long transition. Of course, I had the moments of “I can't do this. I'm not strong enough” or whatever and my doula just went, “Okay, if that's how you feel then we need to talk about the alternative.” I was like, “No.” I shut it down. I can do this. We're not going anywhere so that was great. All she needed to say was that one thing. I felt my water break at 12:30 which was amazing because I'd never felt that before and it gave me that push then a couple of contractions later, my body started pushing on its own which again, was amazing. It was very intense and I just couldn't stop it. Every time I got a contraction, I couldn't stop myself from pushing so I just went with it. I could feel her. I reached up inside me and I could feel her head around 1:40ish which was so incredible. How cool is that? So a couple of contractions later, I could feel her crowning, and my husband– I sat up and my husband was like, “Oh my god. I can see the hair.” He was so excited. It was adorable. It took me another 20 minutes to get her head out. I had a lot of pressure in my back and on my right side so I was like, “Maybe she's posterior,” but I didn't know. Once her head came out, she wasn't posterior. Meagan: Was she looking sideways a little?Sabina: I think she was asynclitic because all the pain was on the right and I ended up tearing only on the right side so I'm pretty sure she was crooked. Her head wasn't really coned either so that's what I'm assuming. That's my guess anyway. Meagan: Yep. Coming down a little wonky. Sabina: Her head was out. I got to feel her. We didn't know the gender of this one either which was very exciting. We were 99% sure it was a boy so I kept referring to her as “it”. “Oh, I can feel its ear. It's turning.” I felt her turn too which was cool. My doula took videos. In the video, right before she came out, I said, “She's all gooey,” which is crazy to me because I thought it was a boy but in the moment I said “she”. It was very cool. I'm pretty sure that was all intuition. Meagan: That is crazy. Sabina: I had a 3.5-minute break between when her head came out and the next contraction then on the next contraction, I pushed 3 or 4 times. I felt her come out. I sat back and got to pull her up to my chest. I just looked at my husband and I was like, “We did it. We did it. She's here.” His reaction was everything. I don't think he realized she was out because I had been moving around so when I sat back I think he thought I was just readjusting then all of a sudden, I pull her out. He had a huge smile on his face. He put his hands on his face because he couldn't believe it. He started bawling and it was just, oh my god, incredible. She cried. The second I took her out of the water, she squawked and was moving around and everything. It was the best moment of my life. It was everything and even though it felt like a dream because I was so tired and of course, you're in shock that this actually happened, but it was incredible. She was totally healthy. I got to feel her cord pulsing. I didn't even get to see the placentas with the other two even though I wanted to so then we just stayed in the tub for a bit. I was extremely sore. Once that initial high wore off, I was like, “Holy crap. My crotch.” Meagan: I just had a baby. Sabina: I was like, “My crotch hurts.” My husband ran the other tub for us and we got to see the gender too which was super fun and a big shock to both of us. I got up to switch over to our shower tub and I was like, “Oh, there's a little bit of pressure.” I grunted and the placenta came out which was very cool because I didn't get to experience that the other two times. We went to the other tub and I got to do the placenta tour by myself. I got to let her latch by herself. I love those videos of babies finding the nipple themselves so I let her do that. She was coated thickly in vernix. For a 41-week baby, it was super thick. I think it was intentional for me because I always wanted that gooey baby and she was extremely gooey. I have photos of it all over my face, all over my nose. It was just everywhere. Yeah. Then we transferred to the bed. We got to cut the cord. I made a little cord tie because I hate those plastic chip clip things. I made her a cord tie and I got to put that on. When the kids woke up in the morning, they just got to come in the bedroom and she was there so it was the best. My doula was great. She did counterpressure and she helped my husband any time he was having moments of panic. At one point, I said, “What's taking so long? Is she stuck?” That's his trigger. For some reason, he's terrified of the babies getting stuck. You can see in the video that he looks over to my doula all panicked. I didn't know because she just calmed him down without me knowing which was great. Sabina: I did tear. When I was in the tub, I looked down and I saw something floating. I was like, oh is it gunk? But it was a piece of my inner labia that had ripped off. Meagan: So what did you do about that? Did you let it heal naturally? Did you do the super glue thing?Sabina: I've never heard of the super glue thing but I wouldn't have tried that. Meagan: Yes, super glue. There are some midwives here in Utah, birth center and home birth midwives who when there's a little bit more tear that would maybe make them say, “We need to do some stitches but not too bad,” they would superglue it. It's pretty minor, but they would superglue it. They just say that it causes more trauma to put a needle in, a needle in, a needle in, yeah. Sabina: I originally told myself that if I tore, I would just let it heal, but I couldn't actually figure out where it attached to. We even got a mirror and we were trying to figure out where it had actually ripped off of so I was like, “You know what? We're going to have to go in.” There's a really small hospital about 20 minutes from us. We went to the emergency room and told them, “I just gave birth. I don't have midwives. I need to be stitched up.” They sent us to the OB unit. The doctor really took his time and he stitched up every little tear that he saw which I didn't really want but I didn't know any different. At one point, I asked, “How many stitches are you putting in?” He was like, “You've kind of got a zig-zag tear up.” That was part of it and then beside my urethra. “I'm trying to fix it but I'm also trying to make it look aesthetically pleasing.” I was like, “Okay, I appreciate that. I want it to look decent afterward.” We did have some issues with her. They wouldn't leave her alone even though we didn't want her looked at. There was one doctor in particular who just really caused a lot of problems and threatened to call child services and stupid stuff like that. In hindsight, I would have just let them call child services because she was perfectly healthy and they would have come here. They did end up coming here even after we did what they wanted and she was like, “Why am I here? This is so unnecessary and such a waste of my time.” In hindsight, that's what we would have done. Anyway, the stitching was fine then we came home. I healed. The stitches were the most uncomfortable and sore part. With everything else, I healed relatively quickly. I was back to working out just after two weeks which I know is very quick. Meagan: Whoa, that's really quick. Sabina: That's just me. I did that with my C-sections too. Meagan: You felt really good. Sabina: After the C-sections too, I was back after two weeks with light stuff. I worked my way up. I didn't just go back to the intense stuff. My husband even said that it was the best experience of his life and he would gladly do that again over what we had been through. It was amazing. It was amazing. Meagan: I'm so happy for you. I can see the joy. I can see this cute little one right here. Oh my goodness. I am so happy for you. Sabina: Thank you. Meagan: I'm happy you had that support. You had that team. You even had support for your kids. You had everything planned out and I'm so, so, so happy for you. Sabina: Thank you. I should point out too that she was our biggest baby. Meagan: Was she?Sabina: Our other two were 6 pounds, 14 ounces and she was 8 pounds, 5 ounces. Of course. Meagan: Okay, that's definitely a lot bigger of a baby. I wanted to talk about that too. It's actually going to be in another episode where we are talking about big babies. Did people ever comment on your pregnancy like, “Oh,” and did that ever impact you like, “Oh my gosh, maybe I'd have too big of a baby?” Sabina: I honestly instinctively knew it was going to be our biggest baby because I knew that I was going to deliver vaginally. With the other two, their heads were in the 5th percentile and they would have slipped out. I knew it was going to be challenging and I knew that I was meant to have the biggest challenge that I could basically. She was very fluid-filled so she lost over a pound after birth. She dropped down to the low 7s so I don't know if the vernix had anything to do with that, but I looked the exact same as the other two pregnancies, maybe even smaller. It just looked like I had a soccer ball stuffed up my shirt. I was not big at all. Meagan: Okay, okay. That's good. Sabina: Yeah, we never really got comments about a big baby or anything. 8,5 is big but not crazy big. Meagan: It's not but it's bigger than 6 pounds. So many people are being told, “Oh my gosh. You're so big.” All of these things. Don't let people get to you, Women of Strength. Believe and understand that your body is going to make the right-sized baby.Sabina: Yep, exactly. Just because you're big doesn't mean your baby is big. You could have lots of fluid. It could be how you're carrying. It's all so silly. The ultrasounds are silly. Meagan: Torsos. Sabina: Yeah, exactly. If you have a shorter torso, you're going to stick out further which makes sense. I weighed myself before and after birth just out of curiosity. I had gained 18 pounds during pregnancy and I lost 16 of it with her coming out. So 16 pounds of baby, fluid, and placenta is a lot. Meagan: That is a lot and that's amazing. People have a hard time bouncing back like that. You just bounced back right after the baby was born. I also wanted to talk about HELLP syndrome a little bit because there are people who worry about it happening with future pregnancies. You had mentioned that your provider was like, “Well, you are a low risk because it happened so late in pregnancy.” According to the Preeclampsia Foundation, HELLP syndrome, there are two L's in this and is it hemolysis?Sabina: Hemolysis? Meagan: I'm like, I never know how to say that. Elevated liver enzyme levels so that pain that she was describing in the beginning was her liver. It was her liver. Anyway, we've got symptoms of blurry vision, pain or sharpness in that upper-right middle part of the belly, headache– and she mentioned it was on her right side but these are things that are common with preeclampsia. A headache, blurry vision, overall not feeling well, fatigue, sweats– I only had one client who had HELLP but she had night sweats. She would wake up and was just Iike, “I just was so wet then I would feel yucky.” Sabina: I had a lot of that in the recovery of HELLP syndrome. I was very sweaty at night. Meagan: Very, very sweaty at night, yeah. Super nauseated that continues to get worse. Nose bleeds are kind of a weird thing but that can be a symptom and they can have a hard time stopping. You keep getting nosebleeds. And seizures. They are the last and most serious and weight gain and swelling. Sabina: Yeah, the major one. Meagan: But according to the Preeclampsia Foundation, women who have had HELLP syndrome in previous pregnancies have a 2-19% chance of getting it again. 2-19% is pretty low.Sabina: That's the range. Meagan: Women who experience HELLP before 29 weeks of gestation in their first pregnancy may have an even higher risk though. So where your provider was like, “It was 41 weeks,” you had a lot of a lower risk. Just know if you have had HELLP syndrome, could you get it again? Yes. Will you get it again? Maybe, but your chances are lower than if you got it earlier on. Sabina: Yeah, and there are a lot of precautionary things you can do to prevent it. Meagan: That's what I was just going to say so we can talk about that. If you've had HELLP syndrome, and even just preeclampsia, what are some things? You mentioned aspirin. What are some other things you did to try and avoid it in future pregnancies?Sabina: As I mentioned, I'm a very active person so obviously a healthy lifestyle in general is going to help but then we did a lot of extra urinary tests and blood work. Even if you have no symptoms, it can still show up in those tests so maybe if we had done blood work for me or a urine sample, we would have known ahead of time. Those are really the only ones I did to help prevent it. Then I checked my blood pressure twice a day at home which was excessive but with all of the pressure from my providers, I just felt like I should. Meagan: I think it's warranted for sure. Sabina: Yeah. It was a good way to monitor. Sometimes it would go up slightly so you'd be cautious and then if it went back down, you're like, okay it's fine. It was just a one-off thing. Like I said, with this pregnancy too, I did all of those things other than the tests. I took the aspirin. I stayed healthy. I made sure I was well-hydrated the whole pregnancy. Meagan: Yes. I was going to say hydration. Sabina: Yes, that's a hard one. It's something I struggle with on a daily basis. Meagan: I know. I struggle and I'm not even pregnant. That's why I love our Needed hydration packets from our Needed partner and it helps me because hydration is so hard. Sabina: It is. Meagan: Hydrate. Make sure you are watching out for those symptoms. If you've had it, don't hesitate to call your provider or take charge of your care. Thank you so much again for sharing your beautiful stories. I really appreciate you so much. I'm trying to think if we've had a free birth, an intentional free birth. Sabina: You've had one and I've listened to it. Meagan: Have we had one?Sabina: You've had one and it was Ashley Winning. Meagan: Oh, duh. Of course. Yes. Sabina: She was the first one who I had ever had of a free birth then I found Free Birth Society after that so she started me down this path. Meagan: Yes. Oh, she's so great and she's in Australia. Definitely someone to listen to for sure. Okay. Well thank you so much and congrats and we'll talk to you later. Sabina: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was a dream come true in so many ways. Meagan: Oh, it makes me so happy that you're here. And remember if you're looking for a doula, go find her. Her link will be on today's episode. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Kendra is on the show today sharing her redemptive FBAC (freebirth after c-section), guided by the messages of her ancestors and the deep work required to heal her lineage, her relationship, and step into the role as the new matriarch for her family. ✨Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety ✨Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here ✨Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf ✨Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com ✨Drop your name on the MatriBirth Directory waitlist and be the first to hear when we open to the public!  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist ✨Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ ✨Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist ✨Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y ✨Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety ✨Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

First time mother Hari is on the show today sharing her wild pregnancy and freebirth story.  Hari speaks of the deep trust and intuition that lead her to the mountains of Costa Rica to freebirth her healthy 5 pound child at 34 weeks. Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety Get our FREE Freebirth starter kit here! - https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here Check out our best-selling course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf Drop your name on the MatriBirth Directory waitlist and be the first to hear when we open to the public!  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist Join us for our annual women's gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ Get on the waitlist for the FBS private membership community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety Connect with Hari - https://www.sacredflute.org/ Learn about everything we do at  - https://www.freebirthsociety.com

“My birth stories are my testimony…I have never trusted God more with any situation in my entire life other than with the lives of my children and bringing them into this world.”Shelby's story is one of faith, trust, and surrendering. Shelby joins us today from Indiana sharing her wildly traumatic Cesarean story due to a placental abruption and her peaceful, healing home birth. Shelby was on vacation at a cabin in New York at 34 weeks when she woke up to regular contractions and heavy bleeding. She rushed to the nearest hospital, was put under general anesthesia for her Cesarean, was transferred via a separate ambulance from her baby to a hospital 3 hours away, and had a 23-day NICU stay in the height of COVID 800 miles away from her family and community.She and her husband were certain they would not have any more children. But as they fought for healing through faith-based counseling, their hearts yearned for another baby and a chance at a healing birth experience. She completely surrendered, found holistic prenatal care, and created a birth space for herself where she knew she felt safe. She was brave and vulnerable, and her second birth was everything she hoped it would be. As Meagan says at the end of this episode, “Get educated. Love yourself. Have faith in you and your body and your baby. You are amazing. You are a true Woman of Strength.”How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Women of Strength, we have our friend, Shelby, here with us today sharing her HBAC story. In addition to her HBAC story, she's got some other unique things that I think are going to be important for us to talk about today. One is placental abruption. That is something that is definitely a reason for a Cesarean and one of those absolute needed reasons for a Cesarean. We are going to talk a little bit more about that and then we are going to talk about faith and how faith in whatever faith looks like to you, it's so important to cling onto that. Shelby has some messages about that. Then we really want to talk about physiological birth. We hear it. We see it online. I mean, if you go on Instagram and you go into the birth world, you're going to see it almost 100% guaranteed but what does that really mean? We're going to be diving in with that today. Shelby, you are in– where did it say, Indiana? Shelby: Indiana, yeah. Meagan: I have to look at my notes. Indianapolis, Indiana. She's in Indiana so Women of Strength, if you are coming from her area, definitely listen up as well. Okay, so we have a Review of the week and this is by birthing confident. It says, “Invaluable information. I love this podcast. As a mom planning a VBAC and a VBAC-trained birth doula, the information shared on this podcast is invaluable. I have become so passionate about helping all women know their birth options and avoid unnecessary C-sections. I think this podcast is great for all expectant mothers” and I 100% agree with that. This podcast is for anyone and everyone because like she said we are wanting to help people avoid unnecessary and/or undesired Cesareans. We have a ridiculous Cesarean rate. It is through the roof. I would love to see it start dropping and I don't know if this podcast truly is going to impact the Cesarean rate the way I would love it to, but I do believe that it's a starting point. It's a starting place for you guys to learn your options for birth after Cesarean and to learn how to have a better Cesarean experience if you have one because that's also a really important factor that I think a lot of people forget about. Not only do we share just VBAC stories, but we do share healing, beautiful CBAC stories and repeat Cesareans. Thank you so much, birthingconfident, for your review. As always, please if you haven't yet, leave us a review. You can do so on Apple Podcasts. You can message us. You can rate us on Spotify and all of the places that you listen to your podcast. Meagan: Okay, cute Shelby. Welcome to the show. Shelby: Thank you. I'm so excited. Meagan: I am so excited. So let's dive in. I am actually really excited to talk a little bit more about placental abruption as well and hear about your experience. Shelby: Yeah. I don't think I even knew it was a thing honestly before it happened to me. I think it's something that people don't really talk about and it's probably a good thing because it's really scary but also, it would have been good to maybe know what was going on. I know it wouldn't have changed the outcome, but yeah. I just had no idea that was even something that could happen. With my first pregnancy, it was very run-of-the-mill. Everything was good and I was planning on birthing at a birthing center in Indianapolis so I was still going for that natural, unmedicated birth. I didn't really know anything that went into that as you do with your first and I feel like you do the typical making the baby registry and doing all of these things that don't really actually help you with your birth. Not that I would have gotten the chance to even try anyway. I feel like I just definitely didn't really have much knowledge and I think the problem is that you don't know what you don't know which is why I literally recommend this podcast to all of my friends who are even pregnant with their first baby because I'm like, “Just learn the things. Learn all of the things.” We took a very basic birthing course through the birthing center and it was just virtual, like four sessions and it was not super helpful honestly but we also didn't get to implement it. The pregnancy itself was just very normal. I mean, I have pretty much all of the symptoms which is the worst like really horrible rib pain and nausea and heartburn and all of the things. What was crazy though, this was in 2021 and I actually got COVID while I was pregnant also. Everyone I've talked to thinks that's probably why I had a placental abruption.Meagan: That's interesting to know. Shelby: Yeah. I had it in about my 5th month of pregnancy in September and I was due in January. It was horrible for a week but then I recovered and I was back to working out. I was totally fine. I didn't have any blood pressure issues after that. Everything reallly seemed okay. We decided at 33 weeks that we were going to go to New York which is really far away from Indiana on vacation for Thanksgiving to gather with all of my husband's family. My midwives cleared it. Like I said, I was working out. I was healthy. I was fine. The trip was going super well. I was working out while we were there. I was doing barre obviously so I was doing safe things. Fitness is a really big part of my life but also, it's not something I added in during pregnancy. It was just normal for me. Meagan: I used to take barre too. I took barre and was teaching barre with my second TOLAC. It's a very low impact but very, very good for strength and cardio. Shelby: Yeah, and my husband and my father-in-law were doing them with me so we have some really awesome videos of me at 34 weeks pregnant working out with my husband and my father-in-law doing barre. But yeah. Everything was going well and anything that was slightly risky which really even wasn't, I wasn't doing. They did this office chair floor hockey where they were pushing each other around in office chairs and playing hockey in a building and I didn't do it. I sat on the sidelines and observed. I was being really what I feel like was cautious. Meagan: Responsible. Shelby: Right, yeah. We even took family pictures on Saturday and everything, I have pictures of us smiling and laughing and then literally the next day we had a baby which was crazy. I start having Braxton Hicks contractions at 20 weeks. For both of my pregnancies, I just feel like I start having them really early so they are not shocking for me. But that Saturday, I remember several times looking at my husband and being like, “These feel a little stronger than I remember them being,” but with your first, you don't know anything. I kept mentioning that to him but they weren't super regular and there were no other signs of anything, just Braxton Hicks contractions. Then that night when we went to bed, I couldn't really sleep. I was laying there by myself the only one awake. We were all staying in this big cabin together which was great. My husband and I were in our room. At 4:00 AM– this is so funny to me now that I know what labor is actually like. At 4:00 AM, I started timing contractions and they were less than 5 minutes apart when I started timing them. I'm like, What was wrong with me?So after an hour of them being like that, I woke my husband up and I was like, “I think you should go get your mom,” because she is actually a midwife which was good. Meagan: Oh, convenient. Shelby: She was in the room next to us. Yeah. I was like, “I think you should go get your mom because this is not right.” They were not just less than 5 minutes apart. They were pretty uncomfortable. She came over and checked things out. I know now that she definitely knew that something was going on but she was really good at keeping her cool. She was like, “Why don't you go shower and try to relax?” When I went to go to the bathroom and shower, I started bleeding. Like I said, I knew nothing about labor, so I was like, “Oh, well maybe I am in labor” which was really scary because I was only 34 weeks but it was a lot of bleeding. I was like, “Well, I don't know what's normal,” but I know that obviously, my mother-in-law knew what was going on. She was like, “It's okay. We'll have Chad (my father-in-law) just go start the car and we'll go in and get everything checked out.” So we were in the middle of the Adirondacks which is literally nowhere. We had a 25-minute drive to the nearest hospital and this hospital, I mean we were probably the only people there. It was 5:30 in the morning maybe. They didn't have an OB there. They didn't have a surgical team there. They were all at home so we come in and the front desk lady is like, “What's your occupation?” She's typing like a sloth. I was like, “Girlfriend, I am bleeding and I am in full-on labor. Can we just go inside?” So that was crazy. She's asking me to sign stuff and I'm telling my husband, “You have to sign.” At this point, contractions were pretty back-to-back and they were super strong. I could tell I was bleeding with every one. I could feel it. They got me back into the ER and the poor nurse. I know that this was probably so scary for her, especially with an OB not even there but she was asking me, “Have you felt her move recently? I can't find a heartbeat.” I was like, “I don't know. I'm in labor. I don't know if she's moving or not.” Every time I'd have a contraction, she'd just be like, “Oh wow, that's a lot of blood.” I'm like, “Thank you. I know.” Meagan: You're like, “I can feel it.” Shelby: Yeah, it was wild. By the time the OB got there, she checked. She said I was fully dilated and effaced. Meagan: Holy cow. Shelby: This was maybe 2 hours. It was not long. Now that I've been through a full labor, I'm like, that is crazy. My body had to have just been in panic mode like, We have to get this baby out right now.She checked and something that was kind of cool was I knew that my baby was head down. She had been from 20 weeks. She was perfectly always in the same spot because I could always feel her kicks really high and one of the times the OB checked, she goes, “Oh, and she's breech so we're just going to have to go.” I was like, “She's not breech. Check again. She's not breech.” She checked again and she was like, “Oh, you're right.” I was like, “Yeah.” So the nurse brings in all of the scrubs and stuff for my husband to put on and as he's getting dressed and everything, he's fully ready to go. He's all excited because he wasn't really super scared. Meagan: He didn't understand what was going on. Shelby: Yeah, but also, he's like, “I'm going to meet my baby today. This is so cool.” And the literal most gut-wrenching thing of my life was when the OB was like, “No, we don't have time. It's going to be under general. You can't come.” She wheeled me out of the room and I looked back and saw him standing there fully dressed just like yeah. It was awful. In that moment, I wasn't even worried about myself and I wasn't worried about the baby. I was just like, He's going to be traumatized from this. This is horrible. They took me back there and I'm in labor holding onto the top of the bed. I was only in there probably for a minute, but it is scary. The whole room is white and there is somebody over here counting instruments. They stick a mask on your face and you can barely breathe and then the next thing you know you wake up in recovery. I woke up as the only person in this room. There were maybe two guys sitting at the desk but that was it. Nobody else was there. They didn't say anything to me. Nobody told me if she was okay. I knew nothing. Yeah. I was just laying here. Eventually, my husband came in and he showed me pictures of her. He was like, “She's okay. She's on oxygen but she's doing all right.” But yeah. It was totally crazy. Then they moved me to– I don't even know. It probably wasn't actually a postpartum room. I don't even know if they have those at this hospital. I feel like they probably try to send everybody everywhere else. Then basically, they told me, “Hey, you have 10 minutes if you want to go see her and try to hold her before the ambulances get here to transfer you guys,” because there wasn't a NICU there and they probably weren't even– they couldn't have cared for her. I think as soon as we got there, they must have called Albany Medical Center because it's 3 hours away. She was born at 7:30 in the morning. I started timing contractions at 4:00 AM. We didn't leave until after 5:00. The whole thing was so fast. I'm getting ready to get out of bed and get in a wheelchair to go see her and they didn't warn me how much pain I would be in and they didn't really help me get out of bed either. As I went to stand up, I leaned back a little and after you've had a C-section, I almost passed out. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Shelby: Yeah, so I get in this wheelchair and I get in the room where she is. She's got the oxygen mask on and she's got all of these tubes and all of the things and you could tell in the pictures I was barely with it. What I remember bothering me the most is I had obviously been intubated so I felt like there was stuff in my throat because it was so swollen. My mouth was all dry and I got to hold her for a couple of minutes but it didn't even feel real. Then the NICU team got there. She was on one ambulance and I was on a different one and my husband was in a car so we were all separated for 3 hours to Albany. Halfway there, my ambulance– so hers left first, and halfway there, we passed hers pulled over on the side of the road. I started panicking. There was no communication between the two ambulances. Meagan: Oh my heavens. I'm dying right now. Shelby: Yeah. The EMT, bless her heart, was amazing. She was like, “It could be anything. It could be one of the monitors isn't hooked up right and they're just stopping to do that or they need to change out an oxygen tank and they can't do that while driving.” She helped me calm down a little bit. She probably shouldn't have said this, but we got closer to Albany and she said, “We don't need to panic.” I don't remember if she actually said this but she said, “Unless they pass us again going fast.” I kid you not but we were 5 minutes out from the hospital and her ambulance went by us with lights and sirens on. I had maybe seen her for 10 minutes before this and she couldn't contact the other ambulance. So just traumatizing, all of it. Thankfully, when we pulled into the hospital, the first thing that the guy on the baby's ambulance did was come over and say, “Everything is okay.” It was just something. They had a lead or something come off so they needed to stop and take care of it so it wasn't a big deal but it made it feel like a big deal. We are in New York still for all of this. We get in there and I have to get settled in the postpartum section and she has to get settled in the NICU and then finally, hours later, I was still bleeding a lot so they were trying to take care of that. They were doing the fundal rubs and I remember texting my mom and I was like, “If they do it again, I'm going to punch someone in the face,” because it was so awful. They were saying, “It's because the EMT didn't do them on the ride over that you are bleeding so much,” so they kept coming over and doing them. It was so awful. So then we had a 23-day NICU stay in New York, just my husband and I because no one else could even visit us because it was 2021 in New York which was pretty bad for COVID. Once I was discharged after 4 days, technically, the only visitors allowed were my husband and I with our NICU bracelets to see her. Even if they had someone come, they couldn't even come into the hospital. We didn't really want to leave the hospital because we wanted to be there with her. We were Ubering to Target. We didn't have a car because we flew there. We are Ubering to Target and thank goodness they had a Ronald McDonald house there so we were staying there and they supplied a lot of dinners and housing which was the biggest blessing in the world. I literally don't know what we would have done otherwise. Getting discharged without your baby is super horrible and she was only 4 pounds, 10 ounces so she was really little and nursing just never took off for us. I didn't get to try for a while even because she was being tube-fed and she could barely stay awake because she was so tiny. Every nurse that you'd have would tell you their tips and tricks which is great but not helpful when every 3 hours you are being told something different. We tried so hard and eventually got to the point where it was like, “Let's just get home. We are 800 miles from home and if it takes a bottle, that's fine. We just need to get home.” Yeah. After 23 days, my amazing mom drove to New York because we didn't even have a car seat. It was all at home. She picked us up and drove us back home. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Shelby: Yeah, so then you are coming home with this little 5-pound baby and you are like, “How are we even allowed to do this? She doesn't even barely fit in the car seat.” It was so crazy. After that, we were really unsure if we'd have more kids. Especially right after, we were like, “I don't know if we can do that again.” My husband and I always wanted lots of kids and a big family. That has always been something that we wanted so after that first experience– and you do a quick Google search of placental abruption and they say, “Once you've had one, it's 15% more likely that you'll have another one.”You're like, I can't go through that again. That was horrible. I knew that if we got pregnant again, I was like, I'm going to feel like a ticking time bomb. All of these also quick Google searches tell you that it can happen as early as 20 weeks. Thank goodness we made it to 34 but I'm like, If that happens at 20, baby is probably not going to make it. Meagan: That's a scary thought. That's a really scary thought. They really have advanced the medical world so much to a point where even when babies are born really, really preemie, there are higher chances than there used to be, but the thought of that in general is just too much to think about. Shelby: Oh yeah, and my mom who drove to New York to get us– which is probably part of the reason they discharged us. She's a NICU nurse so she actually knew how to feed this litle 5-pound baby who was still causing us feeding issues and all of the things, but I've obviously heard from her too the stories of the really early babies. I mean, even 29 weeks and I was like, It's just too much. But we also knew that we couldn't stay in that place because we both were not in a good place with it. My husband was obviously so traumatized for different reasons and I was too. It was just a lot. We started seeking out some faith-based counseling basically like spiritual reconciliationing kind of to work through it all because I knew even if we weren't going to have more kids, I could not just live with that raw the way it was. Meagan: Both of you needed to process that. Shelby: Yeah. We were just praying for the release of that and we even prayed over our poor baby because I was like, She's probably holding trauma from that too. The losses that I was experiencing were also losses for her. She missed out on the golden hour and a peaceful entry into this world. It would drive me crazy thinking that her first moments in this world were with people she didn't know and it was bright in the room and being hooked up to machines. I was like, That was probably so scary for her too. We could tell for a long time, probably her first 7 months that she was so sensory. I mean, just screamed and hated the car seat, hated transitions, hated bedtime. I mean, it was basically non-stop screaming for 7 months. I was like, You were supposed to be in the womb for 6 more weeks and instead, you were in the NICU with lights and sounds and all of the things. We just started praying really hard over all of it and speaking to some really trusted friends who worked through trauma with people. I started listening to The VBAC Link. This is probably when it started obsessively. I was doing Amazon deliveries just for fun on the side. I could take the baby with me so I'd put her in her car seat. This was eventually when she stopped screaming in the car seat so it took a while. I would put my AirPods in and while I did all of these deliveries, I would just listen to back to back to back episodes forever and for months. I think honestly that was probably what started getting me thinking even about more kids. I started learning about VBACs and how really the odds of having a VBAC are not that horrible and that it's really not any riskier than a second C-section and I was like, I really don't want another C-section because that was– I mean, I couldn't even roll over in bed by myself. My husband told me, “You don't usually need me, but that was the one time you actually needed me.” He was like, “Honestly, that was really hard to see you in that much pain and struggling that much.” I was like, “Yeah. I couldn't even pee by myself.” Meagan: Oh, I remember my husband literally helping with my second. He had to hold me up in the shower. I was like, “I just can't stand the whole time in the shower. Can you just hold me up and shower me?” I remember feeling so vulnerable and I was frustrated because I'm like, This isn't my personality. I'm very independent. Why is this happening? Yes. Shelby: Independent and strong. Yes. But also in my fashion, I was walking to the NICU by myself very slowly by day two. I'm like, What was wrong with me? But also, we didn't have a choice. I was about to be discharged. We had to figure something out. Thankfully, I didn't need to stay for 4 days, but because I had nowhere else to go, they were like, “You can stay all 4 days if you want.” I was like, “Okay, great.” But yeah, so I just started learning everything and consuming as much information as I could about physiological birth and about VBACs and there really isn't a ton of information about placental abruption. There are risk factors which I had none other than COVID which no one talks about yet because it had just started, but I didn't have high blood pressure. I obviously didn't do drugs. Meagan: You didn't have multiples. It was a singleton. Yeah. Shelby: It never happened before. My placenta was in a good location. Meagan: Your membranes hadn't ruptured. Shelby: Yeah, my water never ruptured with her so it was crazy. But around when she was probably 9 or 10 months, I couldn't even believe it, but I told my husband, “I'm not totally opposed to having another baby.”He was like, “For real?” We talked about it and we prayed about it a lot and I told God over and over again, “If I get pregnant again, this is going to be the biggest test of my trust in You ever because I know that if I try to worry about it, I'm going to go crazy. If I try to control the outcome which I can't, I'm going to go crazy.” So it basically was like, “If it happens, I'm just going to have to trust you with it fully. No holding back.” Actually, before we were even pregnant, started shopping around for providers. Meagan: That is key. That is so important. Shelby: Yeah. We do have one hospital locally that has midwives and birthing pools. I was like, “Okay, that sounds like a pretty good option for a VBAC.” We went to talk to them– well, I went by myself. I had my list of questions ready. I walked in ready to not take any crap because I also knew a lot about what they were probably going to say and they said, “Yeah.” First of all, they wouldn't call it a VBAC of course because nobody wants to do that. Meagan: TOLAC.Shelby: That was the first thing. I was like, “No. I'm going to do this.” Yeah, so they were like, “We'll allow you to try.” I was like, “Okay.” They were boasting about their VBAC rates and it was 60%. It was not very high and I was like, “Umm, okay. That's not that awesome, but all right.” They started listing off the things you have to do because I had all of these questions ready because I knew. So you have to have an IV hooked up. I was like, That's annoying. I was like, “Can you at least have the hep lock?” They said, “Yeah, that would be fine.” Then they said, “But you have to have continuous monitoring.” I was like, “Okay. I really, really don't want continuous monitoring,” and they try to make it sound better like, “Well, it's waterproof and it's mobile so you can still move around with it,” but I also knew about the statistics of continuous monitoring and how a lot of times they indicate things that aren't actually an issue and then especially if you are a VBAC patient, they're like, “Well, time for another C-section because baby's heart rate is dropping.” Baby's heart rate is supposed to fluctuate as they are descending. Meagan: Just like ours. Shelby: There was that and then they also said, “You can labor in the water, but VBACs aren't allowed to push in the water.” I was like, “Doesn't that defeat the purpose?” Especially if it's a VBAC patient, we should be doing everything we can to ease the labor. Why would you make them get out right when they are feeling like they need to push? They were like, “Oh, well it makes the OBs uncomfortable.” I was like, “Well, the OBs aren't delivering this baby so I don't really care what makes the OBs uncomfortable.”So they made me schedule out all of my prenatal appointments and I went to one of them but I told my husband, “I just don't want to have to fight for it. I know I can. I know that I can go in there and say ‘No thank you' and be confident in myself, but I don't really want to.” So I had never ever even considered a home birth. I don't even remember how, but we somehow heard about the only home birth midwife in our area and I scheduled an appointment with her. I didn't even get established with her until I was 19 weeks. I pushed out the OB care for a really long time when we found out we were pregnant because I knew we didn't really love them. So I just didn't go for a long time. I felt like everything was good. I felt like I was pretty in tune with everything. But yeah, I skipped a little bit but when we got pregnant with our second, it was a lot more immediate where I started praying about it all like, Okay God. This is for You because You are the only one who knows how long this baby is going to gestate and you're the only One who knows if it's going to end how we hope it does. I started praying. This is something. I started praying really specific prayers. I believe that God cares even about the little things which really aren't little things in this, but I prayed that my placenta would be in a good spot and I prayed that my placenta would be strong and that it would make it all the way to term and I prayed that this baby would make it all the way to term. Literally every little concern I had, I pretty much sat in the shower every day and just spoke it aloud. I was like, God, I know that You are a God of healing and restoration and I know that You can do that for me. I believed that through this birth, He was going to heal the trauma from our first because I was like, that feels like this is how it has to go at this point. We went and we met this midwife. She didn't doubt for a second. She didn't say anything that was like, “I'll let you try.” She was like, “You sound like a perfect candidate for a VBAC.” I told her that I had COVID and she was like, “Well, that's probably why your placenta ruptured.” She told me that the placentas she had seen throughout COVID and recently, she was like, “They are not healthy and they are not sustaining a lot of them until the end of pregnancy or if they are, they don't look good by the time they get there.” She wasn't surprised. But yeah, she said, “You sound like a perfect candidate. I think you can do this.” At every appointment with her, we'd sit there for an hour and we'd talk and she totally respected all of my wishes. She'd ask me if I wanted to do something. I'd ask her for information and then she'd let me decide either way which was cool too. With our second pregnancy, we didn't use a Doppler until I was in labor. I could feel her moving first of all so I knew that she was well but we actually started using a fetoscope which was really cool. You can't start using it until after 20 weeks so we had to wait for a really long time to hear her heartbeat but our toddler would watch us do it too. It was really cute because she would walk around with this fetoscope around her neck and she would go put it on daddy's belly and say, “I'm listening to Daddy's baby,” or she'd put it on her belly and it was really sweet. Yeah, we took a full 180 with this pregnancy. I had learned so much at this point that I was so confident in my body and in my instincts and all of it. We didn't find out the gender which with our first one, we found out at 8 weeks with the blood test. We didn't find out gender. I didn't do much prenatal care. We didn't do genetic screening anyway with the first one either because that didn't really matter to us. But yeah, I didn't even do an ultrasound until we were 32 weeks or something. We waited a long time because I had learned a lot about ultrasounds and how we actually don't know as much about them as we might think we know. Meagan: Might think we know. Yeah. Shelby: I read about how sometimes the techs are like, “Oh, they're moving away from it,” because they can feel it and I'm like, “We're not going to do that.” We waited and just had the technician who worked in our midwife's office which was perfect because we could tell her we wanted a very minimal one just to check basically the heart and vital organs and the brain to make sure everything was okay. She would pause the screen and take the measurement she needed and take the Doppler off and everything so it was very minimal. I was like, “I don't really care if they have 10 fingers and toes. We'll figure that out later. Just check the important stuff. Don't tell us the gender.” We did that and she basically was like, “Everything from as far as I can tell looks good.” That was pretty much all we did. My lifestyle was still very active and I was eating as best as I could. I didn't really feel like I had anything that was anything of concern which was perfect. I remember at my 30-week appointment, my midwife looked at me. We hadn't really talked about specific expectations I think for the birth because I didn't really know what I needed or what I wanted but she looked at me at my 30-week appointment without prompting and said, “I think what you really need from me in this birth is for me to just be there and for you to just do your thing.”Meagan: I love that. Shelby: I was like, “That's actually perfect. That's exactly what I want,” because at that point, I had listened to hundreds of birth stories and watched hundreds of birth videos and shown them all to my husband. Everything I was learning, obviously I was soaking it in but if there was anything I felt was pertinent to me, I was showing to him too. He really benefited from that because we went into birth also with him not being afraid. He would watch birth videos with me and he'd be like, “Wow, that's amazing.” That's one of my things. Knowledge is power and educate your husbands too or whoever is going to be with you at your birth. Physiological birth especially, they should be comfortable with it. They should know what it looks like and how it progresses and how to best support you in that. That was huge for us. I made him watch a lot of birth videos and he wasn't even weirded with it by the time it came around. But yeah. She said that and I was like, “Yeah, you know, that sounds great.” We made it all the way to 40 weeks and I just felt completely at peace the whole time. I wasn't worried and I was like, “She's going to come when she's going to come.” Another thing they had told me at the hospital was, “We only let VBACs go to 41 weeks and once you go past 41 weeks, you have to have a C-section.” I was like, “I'm not going to do that. I don't even know what my typical gestation is because I haven't made it term.”Meagan: I was going to say, you didn't even make it to 40 weeks. Shelby: Yeah, so my midwife was like, “Well, if you get to 42 weeks, we'll do an ultrasound and make sure everything is okay,” but she wasn't putting a timeline on it which was so great. I did a lot of courses. I stay at home with my daughters so I just listened to a lot of courses. I did the Christian HypnoBirthing one, our midwives did a course. It was really cool. They got us all together at one of their houses and went through a course with us and our spouses with all the moms who were about to have babies. I also did the Free Birth Society course which I was kind of so/so on but I was like, “If I want to know how to home birth, I just want to know about everything. I want to know about the complications that could happen and what you should do in those situations,” so even though I wasn't planning to free birth, I still wanted to learn all of the things. That was one of the things that I did and I was just listening to constant everything. When we made it to– I guess it was two days before my due date, so July 29, I was having fairly consistent contractions in the evening and so we were all excited. We're timing them and we were texting our moms but then they stopped the next morning which was a Sunday before church so we were getting ready to go to church but then I lost my mucus plug in the shower. I was like, “Okay, just in case something is going to happen, we should probably watch online.” We stayed home, watched online, and nothing was happening all day. We knew that we shouldn't get our hopes up but also you make it that far and you're like, “I'm just ready.” Our church had a picnic that night at a local water park so I was like, “Well, nothing has happened all day. We might as well go because we didn't go to church.” We went to this picnic and we were doing the mini playground with our 1-year-old at the time who is water crazy. I think I jumped to get into one of the tubes and felt something kind of funny then around 8:30 PM, I had a really strong contraction. I was like, “Okay. That was unusual.” I went to the bathroom and had bloody show so I went back out and got my husband. I was like, “We've got to go home.” On the drive home, contractions were 8-10 minutes apart. I showered and we called the midwife and our photographer and my mom and grandma who were coming to get my daughter and the dogs because we didn't know how it would go so we didn't want anybody else there who needed care obviously. Meagan: Well and your last labor was actually pretty dang fast. Shelby: Right, yeah so I was like, “I don't know how this is going to go.” My mom came and helped us clean up the kitchen which is where we were going to put the pool and everything. The midwife and her student arrived at around 10:30 PM. At this point, I was between the coffee table and the couch on my knees holding a comb and my husband was pushing on my back. I labored just in that one position for a long time and that felt as okay as it can feel. Then at around midnight, the midwife heard one of my contractions and was like, “That one sounded a little different. Let's get in the pool.” So I got into the pool and that was instant relief. I was able to sit between contractions and try to relax then after a little while, I was too afraid to feel. We did zero cervical checks. I didn't want to know. I was like, I just want to go. After a while, it was so cool how in tune she was with it all. She goes, “Why don't you see if you can feel your baby's head?” I was like, “Are you serious?” So I reached up and I could feel her head. I was like, “Okay. That gave me a little bit of encouragement to keep going.” I would say probably about an hour after I got into the water, my body started pushing. I didn't push voluntarily once. It was wild. I felt something at one point. We were about to change positions again. I had been in the tub for a little while and they were getting the bedroom ready. I was like, “Hold on, something just happened.” I reached down and a big hand-sized bulge of my amniotic sac was sticking out still full of fluid.Meagan: Yeah, I've seen that. It's so cool. Shelby: I told my husband, “Do you want to feel it?” Meagan: It's like a water balloon sticking out of your vagina. Shelby: Yeah, then the midwife was like, “Okay, we're not going to move. We're going to stay here. Obviously this position is good.” I held a comb in my hand the whole time and I had my husband push on my back because with both labors, I have had total back labor. I don't know why. I just have. I mean, she said I pushed for less than 40 minutes which was crazy. I felt her head come out but we didn't know it was a girl yet so that was fun and then I tried to slow down because I knew that sometimes you need a push or a contraction between and you don't want to get pushed too hard and tear but I couldn't. My body literally just pushed her all the way out in one push. That fetal ejection reflex is definitely a thing. So at 2:14 AM was when she was born and my first contraction was at 8:30 PM. I caught her by myself in the water and pulled her up. She had her cord on like a backpack. It was around both arms and her neck so I had her head out of the water but I could barely get her up. The midwife came over and untangled her and I mean, my husband and I just sat there for probably over 5 minutes before we even checked what the gender was because we were just in awe. We didn't even care. We were like, “Whatever. It's fine either way.” So when we finally looked, we saw it was our girl and we already had a name picked out, Elowen Ruth so we got to hold her for a long time but obviously, my midwife could tell that I was bleeding a lot so she had me get out and I had planned not obviously to do Pitocin unless I really needed it especially before baby was born but it was a lot of bleeding. I tried one of our tinctures first and it didn't really slow it down. So we did some Pitocin. She just did it. I didn't even notice. I was sitting there holding my baby and I was like, “You can't make this moment not perfect.” So we did some Pitocin and delivered the placenta. Then we went out and just sat on the couch and my husband made a snack plate and we all– the photographer and the midwife and her student and my husband and I just sat there talking about the birth and eating snacks.Then after a while, my husband got to hold her while I got cleaned up. I did end up having a lot of bleeding.Meagan: I was just going to ask if the bleeding resolved or did it continue?Shelby: I mean, it stopped pretty well. I didn't end up having to go get checked, but about a week later, my mom and when I took the baby into her first appointment at our nurse practitioner, I wasn't even there for me and she was like, “We are running iron labs on you because you look super pale.” I was really anemic and we didn't know so I think that probably was something. Now I know for the future, if I have a lot of bleeding again, I need to get it checked out really fast because I think it really slowed down my healing. Other than the initial pain of a C-section, my vaginal birth recovery was much more difficult. I could barely walk or stand for 4 weeks. I could not believe it. I remember going to my appointment and I was like, “Is this normal?” The birth went so well. I know it was fast but I think it was because my iron was so low. My body just couldn't heal. I did end up having a little bit of tearing but we didn't stitch it or anything. It healed pretty well on its own. It was super painful when I would have to pee and all of the things but eventually, it healed up on its own. But yeah. I mean, we got to sleep in our own bed. Well, I mean, the husband and the baby got to sleep. I could not. That high we were on, my midwife told me, she was like, “Okay. She's probably going to sleep for the next 5 or 6 hours and you should try to also.” I laid there and I was like, “There is no sleeping. There is none.” After that, she's like, “It's time to nurse 24/7.” Meagan: Of course. Shelby: She's 9 months today and we are still breastfeeding which is huge because with my first, I exclusively pumped for 8.5 months and that was so hard. I was so determined. I also took breastfeeding courses leading up to this baby because I was like, “We are going to make this work because I do not want to pump again.” I love nursing. I have to leave for an Army training here in a couple of weeks and I'm planning to take her with me and still nurse her at night time. I'm like, “We're going to make this go as long as we can.” Yeah, I mean, it was wild but so good. Meagan: Wild but amazing. Shelby: Yeah. Meagan: Did you find it healing? Because sometimes I feel like when you have a harder postpartum where you're like, “I'm not walking as well and I'm feeling gross with the iron,” that can be defeating and frustrating. But did you find that healing or were you like, “I would still take this over the other?” Shelby: Oh absolutely. I mean, I definitely had times where I would just break down not only because of the hormones but everything else. With my husband, I'd be like, “I did it. Why is this so hard?” I had prepared for postpartum. I made sure we had help lined up for our daughter and for meals and for everything so I was really able to take the time I needed. I think if I hadn't done that, I don't know what would have happened honestly because I needed it. I couldn't even sit on the couch. I had to be laying down in the bed or I was in pain. Meagan: Dang. Shelby: I think preparing for it definitely helped and the birth itself made it all worth it. Now, I'm like, Yeah, that was really hard for a couple of weeks but that experience made up for it for sure. Meagan: Worth it. Shelby: Overall, with the recovery, I'm like, Man, that was really hard with the C-section. it was two really hard days with the C-section but everyday is a little better. With my vaginal birth, I was like, Man, everyday is gettig worse. It's hurting more. But it was still really good. Meagan: What was it that was in pain? Was it your pelvic floor? Was it your abdomen? Shelby: It was probably my pelvic floor honestly and also because I think I had torn and she came so fast and there was no slow stretching, I mean– Meagan: Fetal ejection. Shelby: From the first one, it was crazy. I think it really was pelvic floor. I remember one of my friends describing it as she just felt heavy. I was like, “Yes. That is what it is.” It just felt heavy and it ached. Yeah. That was hard. I mean, even being in the shower didn't fix it and that was how my husband and I had planned to bond postpartum was showers together and stuff and I would be in there and I'm like, “I cannot stand up. I have to go back to bed.” Meagan: Too much pressure. Shelby: Yeah, for sure. Meagan: That makes sense. Okay, so let's talk about faith and getting yourself through a really, really rough first birth and you finding that faith. Do you have any advice for the listeners to gain faith in their ability?Shelby: Yeah. I mean, for me it was just knowing that God created my body to do this. No matter what had already happened, my body knew how to birth. I think what helped was I was like, Okay, it's already gotten fully dilated and effaced in my first labor. Maybe not gradually or the way it should have, but I was like, I've kind of already done it. I didn't get to the pushing but just knowing that I was designed to do it and through a lot of prayer and speaking and speaking, “God, you created me to do this. You gave me this baby to grow and to birth,” and just the knowledge is the same thing. Learning about how your body was made to do this is just huge and like I said, just praying those specific prayers for me was so important and proclaiming the promises that God has that He is a healer and a redeemer and He cares about our birth stories. He totally does. That was part of His plan from the beginning. I think for me personally, my birth stories are my testimony. I feel like until these two babies, I really was like, Oh, I grew up in the church and I don't really have a cool story which is fine but also with these babies, I'm like, I have never trusted God more with any situation in my entire life other than with the life of my children and bringing them into this world. For me, that was something I didn't really realize until recently too. That same friend was like, “I think this is your testimony.” I was like, “You're so right.” Meagan: That's cool. Shelby: It totally brought beauty from the whole experience. From the first one, you are like, Why in the world did this happen to me? What good could possibly come of this? We're traumatized. My baby is having sensory overload and I'm not at home. It was all of these things and then realizing that I shared about my story and I was able to connect with so many other moms who were like, “I had an emergency C-section” or “I had a really scary birth story” and now when I hear that a mom had a baby, my first thought is, How did her birth go and how is she doing? Did it go the way she planned and is she hurting? Those are my first thoughts instead of, Oh, is the baby okay? Okay, the baby is okay. It's made me really passionate about postpartum moms and at some point, I'd love to do something with that not while I have a 9-month-old and a 2-year-old but just knowing that there can be beauty that comes out of every story because in the moment, it totally did not feel like it with our first baby. Meagan: Right, yeah. That is the case a lot of the time. It feels like there is no beauty at all anywhere in that story and then you go and you listen to these stories and there is beauty in every single story and growth in every single story. There is learning. I think there is just so much to take from these stories. Then I wanted to go over physiological birth. There's a women and infant's blog or website and it says, “A normal physiological birth and birth are defined globally by midwife organizations as a birth that is powered by the innate human capacity of the birthing person and fetus.” The innate human capacity. “This means that there are no interventions performed that disrupt the normal physiological process in the absence of complications that warrant interventions supporting the physiological process of labor and birth has the potential to enhance birth outcomes and experiences.”I do believe so wholeheartedly that there are sometimes here. You had a real thing happening, a real medical–Shelby: Right. Thank goodness for the medical system in that situation, you know?Meagan: Yes. Thank goodness for intervention in that situation but that doesn't mean that we always have to just get all handsy with birth. It does show the benefits of supporting and fostering physiological birth of individuals include reduced Cesareans, increased breastfeeding success, improved birth experience, and reduced cost of care. Now, this world is very cost-minded especially with insurance and all of those things, but in the end, if you look at the reduced amount of money that we are spending when we are not paying for all of the interventions that happen during birth– and they don't always happen. We know that this is not a blank statement where it's like, “Every birth ends this way,” but usually when there's one, there are more. That adds up. Right? In the end, it's like, is that experience worth another experience? Even if you're in the hospital, you do not– you can totally have a physiological birth in a hospital. I love that so much. Some people don't feel safe out of the hospital. Shelby: Right. That's physiological birth. The key is being where you are safe because your body cannot progress as it needs to if it doesn't feel safe. I majored in animal science and I think about how animals won't have their babies if they don't feel safe. I think that we are mammals and our bodies are the same way. If you feel safest at home, awesome. If you feel safest in the hospital where you know you can get care right away, awesome. Yeah. You definitely just have to make that decision for yourself. Meagan: Yeah. I had a client who really wanted a home birth really, really badly. She decided not to, but decided to labor at home as long as possible and she was laboring and she was laboring and she was laboring and I was like, This labor. Something is off. Something is off. It was going but it wasn't really going and through chatting with her and doing a fear-clearing and fear-release to see if we could get over to that next stage, she never said, “I want to go to the hospital.” She didn't say those words but everything else that she was saying to me, that's what I heard. I said, “Why don't we go to the hospital? If we end up coming back home, that's okay but let's go and let's just see how things are going.” She was like, “I don't know,” because she was steering off of her plan in her mind of laboring at home. I said, “Okay, cool. It's going to be your decision.” About 25 minutes later, she was like, “Yeah, let's do it.” I'm not kidding you. The second she got into that car, it was a game changer. Shelby: Oh my gosh. Meagan: Because her mind was like, I'm going. She immediately felt better and safe. She didn't realize that's where she felt safer. We went. We had a total physiological birth. In fact, we didn't know if we were going to make it. She had the baby on the bed and the doctor was not there. Shelby: There's so much mental work that goes into it and everything. For me, knowing that I was going to my house. I hate packing and knowing I didn't have to leave and go somewhere, that was how I felt safe but I know a lot of people who are like, “No, I want to be in the hospital.” I'm like, “Great. Do it. Just make sure you are informed.” Meagan: Make sure you are informed. That is the ending tidbit here to this story. Be informed. Take a VBAC class. We have our VBAC class online. If you have any questions online, you can always email us on Instagram or in our email at info@thevbaclink.com. Hire a doula if you can. Hire a provider that you really, really trust to support you. Find that birthing location. Get the information. Learn what is important to you because what's important to you is going to stand out that day that you are in labor. Get educated. Love yourself. Have faith in you and your body and your baby. You are amazing. You are a true Woman of Strength. Shelby: Yes. So good. Thank you so much. Meagan: Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We kick off this season with Emilee sitting down with Britni from Washington, who tells her big story of birthing her daughter outside of the medical system at the age of 41. Britni shares how in the first moments after birth, she realized her daughter looked different and settled into the knowing that she had Down Syndrome and would keep her daughter away from the medical system.  Connect with Free Birth Society on Instagram at www.instagram.com/freebirthsociety Get our FREE Freebirth Starter Kit Here! -https://www.freebirthsociety.com/start-here Check Out Our Best-Selling Course, The Complete Guide to Freebirth - https://www.freebirthsocietycourses.com/cgtf Are you a sovereign birth professional? Get listed on the Matribirth Directory here - https://Matribirthdirectory.com Drop your name on the MatriBirth Directory waitlist and be the first to hear when we open to the public!  https://www.freebirthsociety.com/directorywaitlist Join Us for our Annual Women's Gathering  https://www.matriarchrisingfestival.com/ Get on the Waitlist for the FBS Private Membership Community “The Lighthouse” https://www.freebirthsociety.com/membership-waitlist Donate to the podcast - https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YJBSCNYXT52Y Subscribe to our Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FreeBirthSociety Connect with our guest - https://Radiabirth.com Learn about everything we do at www.freebirthsociety.com 

The Free Birth Society Podcast is BACK *this* Friday!

I hope you are having a bold & beautiful New Moon

Watch this episode HERE Podcast Day

In this heartfelt episode, I share my personal journey of giving birth outside of conventional medical settings, highlighting my experiences, challenges, and the intuitive decisions that shaped my path.   From my upbringing in a holistic household to the empowering and intimate moments of free birth, I discuss the importance of trusting one's body and intuition in the birthing process. I also touch on the lessons learned from my first birth with medical midwives and how it led me to a more self-directed and fulfilling experience with my second child.     - Non-Judgmental Approach: Emphasizing respect for all birth choices and the importance of comfort and ease in the birthing process.  - Holistic Upbringing: Discussing how being raised by a chiropractor and homeopath influenced my perspective on conventional medicine.  - First Birth Experience: Recounting the challenges faced with medical midwives during my first home birth and the feeling of disempowerment.  - Routine Procedures Resistance: Describing the pressure to undergo routine medical procedures and my decision to refuse them.  - Empowering Birth Vision: The journey towards envisioning and achieving an empowering birth experience.  - Connecting with Intuition: How connecting with my baby and intuition guided me towards a free birth decision.  - Free Birth Decision Process: The steps and support systems that led to choosing an unassisted home birth.  - Birth Doula and Free Birth Society: Introduction to the Free Birth Society and their influence on my birthing choices.  - The Role of My Partner: My husband's supportive role and the preparations we made together for the free birth.  - Actual Birth Story: Detailed account of the labor and delivery, including the intimate and powerful moments of birthing my second child.  - Post-Birth Experience: Reflecting on the immediate post-birth period, bonding with my baby, and the natural delivery of the placenta.  - Final Thoughts: Encouraging listeners to trust their bodies and intuition, and to create birth experiences that feel right for them.     Tune in to this episode for an intimate look into my birthing journey and the powerful role of intuition in making empowering decisions.  Use coupon code INDRA for 15% off spiritual guidance session with Indra. Head over to jessicarachel.co/sessions to book your session!    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamjessicarachel   Email: jessicarachel.snider@gmail.com   Website: https://www.jessicarachel.co/podcast 

PODCAST EPISODE - KELSEY'S BIRTH STORY - PLACENTAL ABRUPTION - RETURN TO TRUSTING - #103 Join your hosts Lea and Sophia as they interview Kelsey on her birth story. They discuss topics such as obstetric violence, fetal heart arrhythmia, post term pregnancy, placental abruption, and cesarean. Kelsey is an herbalist living and working on a farm in Petaluma. Her and her husband, Roberto welcomed their baby boy, Julio, in November 2023. They are finding their groove as a family of 4 (including their sweet and sassy shiba inu, The Maki Dog!) and they love going for walks around the farm and watching the Warriors together. Kelseys favorite hobby is aerial silks- she can't wait to get back into it once Julio is old enough! Kelsey recommends: •Free Birth Society: @freebirthsociety •Birthing Instincts: @birthinginstincts •Hard truths about placental abruption episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/birthing-instincts/id1552816683?i=1000642767921 Connect with Kelsey: •IG: @kesocandisco Listen here: IG: linktree in bio FB: https://anchor.fm/bornwild/episodes/103--Kelseys-Birth-Story---Placental-Abruption---Return-to-Trusting-e2fmsq4 @sophiabirth @bayareahomebirth @bornwildmidwifery Stay Wild