Speaker 0
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Speaker 1
Into the wild, I'm going. Into the wild, I am. It's been a wild freedom challenge since I left my roots back home. Into the wild I'm good. Into the wild I hid. It's been a wild freedom child since I left my roots back home.
Speaker 2
Welcome to the Free Birth Society podcast. This is a radical space for women who are ready to celebrate their autonomous choices in birth, motherhood, and beyond. Together, we'll learn about wild birth through personal narrative, we'll explore the politics of birth, and we'll analyze everything that relates to our lives as women from a feminist perspective. Here's your host, Emilee Saldaya. It's
Speaker 1
been a wild freedom change since I left my roots back home.
Speaker 0
Matriarch Rising Festival, our annual summer solstice women's gathering, is here on my gorgeous land in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and it is the place to connect with me and the free birthing women and sovereign midwives of this epic birth liberation movement. I teach classes and host an intimate meet and greet the very first night of the festival, and you will even catch me DJing. Yes. I am matriarch one. You'll get to meet all of our Freebird Society luminaries, our wise women teachers, who you know from your favorite FBS courses. You'll meet the very women I interview on this podcast. This is the place for wild women and moms to meet up, connect, and forge friendships that can last a lifetime. It's truly the climax of everything we do, and MRF is so close to my heart. We're scaling back MRF twenty five to be the most intimate yet, capping it at only a hundred and fifty tickets because this year, I wanna go deep. I just love the experience of getting to know each and every one of you by the end of the festival. For a long time, I held the vision of creating a women's gathering where true sisterhood could be woven, and matriarch rising is the manifestation of my dreams. I'm so glad I get to share it with all of you, and I want you there this year. Come learn directly from me and surround yourself with powerful women from all ages, all walks of life, and from all over the world. Make sure you sign up for our mailing list so that you can be the first to know when we roll out all of our insider insights of this summer's festival. I'll see you soon. Every now and then, a product comes along that our entire family can't get enough of, and lately, it's masa chips. Delicious chips made the way food was meant to be. Just three simple ingredients, organic corn, salt, and beef tallow. No seed oils, no fillers, no ultra processed garbage, just real whole food that nourishes rather than depletes. What we put into our bodies matters. It affects our energy, our mood, our resilience, and yet the food industry today is completely disconnected from what's real and nourishing. Just like birth, food is one of the most powerful ways to claim sovereignty over our bodies. And it's no surprise that a sovereign birthing family is who makes these chips. When you snack, snack on something real. Go to masa chips dot com slash discount slash free birth society and use code free birth society for twenty percent off your first order. Alright. So we're kicking this episode off with a sleep deprived, fresh postpartum mother, and I am a hungry, stressed out pregnant mother. So we are starting from that very real very real place. So welcome to the show. I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 3
Thank you so much for having me. And, yeah, this is probably going to be as real as it gets when it comes to motherhood. But thank you for having me, and just very briefly, thank you for for you in this lifetime. Deep, deep, deep bows for your soul mission. I think it's so powerful how you awaken sisters into remembrance. And, yeah, I probably wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for you, for your radical honesty, first and foremost, what you have created and and how you bring it into the world. So I'm deeply grateful. Mhmm.
Speaker 0
Thank you. Yeah. That's nice to receive this morning. And it's a you know, we have a cool thread because we met a couple of times throughout your pregnancy. And, you know, I certainly wouldn't say I know your whole story, but I know little little bits of it and that you fairly recently really reclaimed this birth in power, you know, for yourself and your lineage. And, yeah, I'm just so excited to to hear the whole thing as you wanna tell it today. So where do you wanna start?
Speaker 3
Beautiful. So what I would like to offer today is the lens through which rebirth is a potential gateway to generational healing. That's been my experience. It's been, yes, personal redemption, but it's also been, I think, a massive clearing of my entire lineage. So with that, I'll just go back in time super quick.
Speaker 0
Yeah.
Speaker 3
So I am Polish, which in terms of my genetics, epigenetics, cellular memory means generations after generations of wars and genocides and regimes and poverty and nation, etcetera. So it's quite a load to carry internally. And in terms of birth, my great grand grandmother died in birth during the second World War. She was birthing her third child, and she she was the medicine woman in her community. So when someone was going through something, she was the one to help. She hemorrhaged after the birth, and there was nobody to help her. Usually, she would be the one stepping in. So she dies during the second World War, abandons three children. My maternal grandmother, one of those three, goes on to birth my mom in communism at the time the practice is that your baby is taken away from you into the nursery Oh. Where the nurses just bring you the baby whenever they deem, you know, it's the moment. And you have to stay in a hospital for two weeks. And then my mom goes to birth. Me and my brother is still in communism, still on the back, legs and stirrups, men in white coats, perineum caps to speed up the process, etcetera. And while my birth in that context is, let's say, semi peaceful, my brother is taken away from her on day three because he gets jaundice. And at the time, this is eighties in Poland. The protocol is that babies are locked into a room. The mother cannot see the baby, cannot touch the baby, cannot feed the baby. I think he stays there for five days, and all my mother can do is look in through the window. So while all of those birds were unmedicated, they, you know, didn't feel particularly empowering for me. And they left me with this really strong feeling of unrequited love and abandonment, dreams running through the lineage. So much abandonment between the mother and the child, and in that diet, so much disruption. So then, you know, we know traumatized children traumatized their children until the cycle is broken. So I go through a lot of painful experiences in childhood, become very empty establishments to show my dad that I don't care. That leads into me running away from Poland as soon as I can. I moved to London, spent ten years there. And in that time of growing up in another country, I massively act out on all the trauma. So I get into drugs. I become addicted to cocaine. And with that comes looking for my father in all the wrong places. So sexual acting out and a lot of misappropriation of my body because there is this pattern of not really knowing ever since childhood that my body is a safe space.
Speaker 0
Oh, it's total disembodiment, you know, generationally.
Speaker 3
Also, and then couple that with, you know, a lot of personal abuse experiences. The body is something outside of myself. The womb doesn't really even exist. You know, I'm just not connected to myself as a woman. And eventually, I do get clean and pick up my yoga practice that I discovered as a teenager, and that takes me on a massive awakening. You know, six days a week practice, chanting scriptures. At the same time, I discovered plant medicine, and it's really in my first Ayahuasca ceremony that I'm shown the extent of what I have internalized in terms of shame and pain and terror. And so both of these paths, you know, the eastern practices and the shamanic healing traditions, they take me on this massive journey of awakening and really holding myself through this lens of, fuck. I have been holding on to in my body so much for myself and for all these other generations. Yeah. That brings me to India. I end up living in India for a few years, continuing to evolve unfold and evolve and continue to really unravel into who I truly am. Eventually, I end up in Peru. I am offered by this point. I'm teaching and sharing different practices. You know, I've been studying for years and working on myself for years, and I end up having this opportunity to teach at a plant medicine healing center in the jungle. And so I arrive and I meet this man who works there, and I'm attracted to him. And few days into us meeting, we have a staff ceremony for all of us, and the medicine shows me I'm about to marry this man, and we will have these two gorgeous children. And I asked, like, how do I know this is true? Like, how do I know I'm not projecting? And the medicine says, don't worry about it. About two minutes from now, he will get up from his mat. He will come over to you, and he will tell you everything I just showed you. So he gets out.
Speaker 0
He was on the staff for this
Speaker 3
Yes. He was working there as a facilitator. Okay. Mhmm. And I went on as a yoga and meditation teacher. So, yeah, I opened my eyes. He gets up. He comes over. He says, look. I know this may sound crazy, but and, yeah, that's kind of the
Speaker 0
So he was having his own, truth download about you in the room?
Speaker 3
We were having exactly the same message in that same moment of, like, you're a soulmate. You're about to get married. You're gonna have these two babies. You know? And when I asked, like, how does this work? Ayahuasca was like, don't worry about it. You'll never understand. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Totally. Don't worry about
Speaker 3
it. But, yeah, he, you know, he came over and he said, this is what I've just received, and I love you. And, you know, we met, like, three days prior. Woah. So we did get married. We had a
Speaker 0
beautiful long ago is this? Eight years. Eight? Yeah. Cool.
Speaker 3
Eight years ago. Exactly. Kind of around the time my son was born.
Speaker 0
Okay.
Speaker 3
Probably to the date on the ceremony. So we had a beautiful shamanic wedding. Two months later, we got married right away. We just trusted the past. That is wild. What I said to Al was, look. I I love you too, and I trust that we're soulmates, but I never want to have children. I don't want to be a mother. I like, that's not for me. So these two babies that we saw, this is not the timeline for me. Woah. And my husband, a man who sees right through my bullshit very, you know, clearly said to me, don't worry. I love you. However that looks, I'm I wanna be with you. So I relocate permanently to Peru, and we started this really deep journey of conscious marriage, which brings up everything for healing. Yeah. And then also working very deeply with plant medicine. So being in this country, being on this land, you know, gives me an opportunity to really go deep with my teachers. And, again, this combination of different modalities brings a massive healing. I am faced yet again with how much there's been in my story that's been painful. And few years passed, and I realized it's not that I don't want to have children. It's that I haven't forgiven from my childhood experiences. And it's easier for me to attach to a story of somehow freedom than own it and really look at the murky waters of inner child healing and go there. And once they own it, the yearning for babies comes, you know, right away. And then it's twenty twenty, and Peru goes through the circus just like everybody else. However, WHO at the time had a big impact here, so we had every single restriction possible, curfews, police permits to leave the house. Like, it was so intense.
Speaker 0
Police permits?
Speaker 3
Police permits. Sundays, you couldn't leave your house. And this is coupled with the ancestral trauma of these people who had their ancestors killed off by disease. So, you know, there was this real intensity in the air. And we started a beautiful conception journey, but I wasn't getting pregnant. And I knew that it's not my body. I knew that it's the environment. Mhmm. And all all I could think of was I need to come to Europe. And I couldn't really tell why, but I just had this strong knowing I need to get out of here. And it was a massive decision at the time because all the airports were closed for almost a year. So we had to give up our residency status and jump on, like, a repatriation flight.
Speaker 0
Woah.
Speaker 3
Give up our IDs. I kinda lost all of our rights in Peru because we were being rescued by EU. Woah.
Speaker 0
So That's huge.
Speaker 3
It was huge. It was a huge decision to leave our beautiful conscious community and just go, but I knew that I have to. And now in hindsight, knowing my story, I know why. You know? I'll get to that. But yeah. So we come to Europe, and I'm pregnant within a week. And we lose that baby at six weeks. And at the time, we're in Portugal. And, yeah, that's my first free birth. You know? I wake up in the morning. I start bleeding, and I know the baby is gone. And by the evening, they release. It kind of it crosses my mind maybe to ask someone, but I kind of know that I'm I'm okay. And I know my body knows what to do, and it doesn't really feel like I want anybody inside of my journey at this point. You know?
Speaker 0
And you had only known you were pregnant for
Speaker 3
For about two weeks. So I was about six weeks. Yeah. So, yeah, at the end of the day, the baby releases. We bury them. We sing, pray, do a beautiful ceremony. But that whole day, I'm in so much grief that I know that this loss is becoming a gateway to something that's not mine. Like, I can tell that something opened because I had this experience. And, yes, there is devastation and and sadness that I've lost the baby, but I can just tell. I'm tapping into something, and all I can think about is my mother. So a few weeks later, we get on the plane. We fly to Poland. We see her. And in a short sequence of events, I find out that, yes, she had a miscarriage that she never revealed to me prior to conceiving me, that she has cancer, which she has, at that point, had for a few years, but chose not to reveal to me because I've always lived far away and she didn't wanna say anything. Mhmm. And then I'm pregnant again.
Speaker 0
And then you're pregnant?
Speaker 3
Yes. Again. Oh, okay. So I, in hindsight, know exactly when we conceived. I know the moment, but so much happens in between that I kind of forget that it even happened. So I'm faced with, you know, a terminally ill parent and a pregnancy, And we decide not to go back to Peru to stay in Europe, just be closer to my mom and, you know, see how the whole journey for her will unfold. And neither of us wants to be in Poland for a myriad of reasons, so we decide to settle in Berlin, which is a city I've always really thought of as very open minded and, you know, and Al from? He's from the States. Okay. Yeah. He's from the States. Yeah. And that was a big reason because he doesn't speak Polish, and I didn't want him to be isolated. And
Speaker 0
Berlin's more international.
Speaker 3
And we had good amount of friends there and, yeah, just felt like this will serve us better. Okay. So, yeah, twenty twenty, pregnant in Berlin. I start listening to your podcast. Someone tells me about it. I cannot remember who. I leave the podcast after two episodes. That bitch is crazy. Literally, Al told me that I said to him at the time, I didn't remember this, but he was like, oh my god. Can you believe people do that? This is completely bonkers. It's outside of my reality.
Speaker 1
Mhmm.
Speaker 3
Hospital is completely out of question for me. It doesn't fit my values. It feels Isn't
Speaker 0
that interesting?
Speaker 3
Yeah. I know.
Speaker 0
That, like, both both land is so extreme for so many people.
Speaker 3
Yeah. And here we are. You know? But at the time, I think and, again, I think what I wanna share will show that I was living still completely outside of my body even though I've done years of healing work by that point. You know? So I didn't
Speaker 0
see any not just outside of your body, but also just from a place of where unconscious fear is dictating the moves. You know? Yes.
Speaker 3
Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So that is out of question for me. Hospital is completely out of question either. You know, when I was growing up, my mom would just make us remedies. We've never really glorified doctors in my house and just how I walk my life. It's not a space I perceive as a safe space. So my two options are home birth, and I interview a few midwives. I don't like any of them. One spends the entire interview playing with her hair and just, you know, being complete. Like, just braiding it endlessly. And And so the other thing that I'm left with is a birthing center, like a both houses they say in German. And, yeah, I get a spot at one, and I actually really like it. I'm assigned two midwives that are on rotation on meetings with me that either will be at birth. They both feel really lovely. They both feel solid, but calm. The center is very holistic, I think as holistic as it can get with no machines, no beeping, not even a Doppler. They use the wooden comb to check the heartbeat. So that feels really in alignment, and I feel really seen. You know, when I meet them once a month, the conversations are very much around spirituality and psychology of birth and motherhood and not so much the medical lens. However, it's Germany, and it's the medical system, and Germany loves system, and Germans love system. And, you know, probably not all Germans. I have a lot of friends who don't, but, you know, it's a very
Speaker 0
The culture is very
Speaker 3
The culture is For sure. Yeah. And and the culture is very much you either follow or you get out of here. Yeah. And the rule there is that, yes, you can birth here however you like. However, we fall under the umbrella of the medical system, so you still need to fill these requirements, which for me are having a monthly checkup with an OB GYN of my choice and showing those papers at the birthing center and having three ultrasounds.
Speaker 0
Of your choice. You know?
Speaker 3
In the entire pregnancy. You know? But
Speaker 0
you know You can totally do whatever you want as long as you do exactly what we say. But you totally have choice. But and and this is all birth centers. Yeah.
Speaker 3
I mean, you know, also, at the time, like, I wanna give myself some grace. I had so much going on. I just relocated. I left all of my friends. My mom has cancer.
Speaker 0
Oh my god.
Speaker 3
I didn't have the bandwidth to be like, what do I you know, I just took it how it was. I moved with it. And
Speaker 0
It but also, it is where you were then.
Speaker 3
Yes.
Speaker 0
It's not, you know, of course we can laugh about it now because you've moved your needle further.
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 0
You know, it is it is. I mean, it's like dark comedy, but it is kind of funny, the smoke and mirrors, you know, but it's also very real that women that are, coming to it's not just that you had a lot going on. It like you said, it felt in alignment for what where you thought you were and how it was presented. And the free birth stuff felt too extreme. The hospital stuff felt too, you know, like, it makes sense how this happens.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. And so at the time, I don't even question. Is ultrasound good or bad? I just go. Now the hilarious thing is that, you know so I had to have three. The first one, I was so excited. Hard to beat baby. And the woman was so devoid of any emotion.
Speaker 0
I
Speaker 3
had the most disenchanting experience that really reminded me this whole thing is completely stupid. Second ultrasound, they congratulate me on having a boy. They show me his penis on a screen. And I'm thinking, this is so strange because this girl keeps coming to me. She gave me her name before we conceived her. Wow. My daughter was all up in my psychic space the whole pregnancy. She just wouldn't stop.
Speaker 0
They showed you a penis?
Speaker 3
Yes. On the screen. I know. And I was thinking this just doesn't make sense. Like, I'm sure I'm pregnant with a girl. You know?
Speaker 0
Also, I I just wanna pause right there and and say about ultrasound. That is one of the many, many, many common examples of further disembodiment of what these surveillance technologies do. The fracture that is, you know, probably largely unconscious at the time but that this machine is telling you something and your instincts, psychic space, and intuitive space is telling you something different. That's a very, very, very big deal.
Speaker 3
Totally. Totally. I mean, my daughter, she just won't stop talking now in her embodiment. You know? And she was like that. She was like that in my in my space too. So I kind of knew that I'm pregnant with her, but, yeah, it was very confusing. And then, of course, on the third one, the woman asks me, like, so how do you feel about having a girl? And I thought, yeah. You know, all along I knew this. So what was your penis?
Speaker 0
I don't know. Exactly.
Speaker 3
Good question.
Speaker 0
Right. Well, so when I serve women in the system, I I have seen this more more than you'd think of actually being shown major air genitals, but like women, you need to remember you're seeing the same stuff they're seeing. Like it's just blurry gray bullshit. You're not actually seeing the baby. People don't understand that. You're seeing an echo. It's not the X-ray vision that you kind of perceive. Also, I just have to say the idea of this birth center being, like, machine free, but then you have to go do the machines is like
Speaker 3
I know.
Speaker 0
Okay. So by the third time, they get it right.
Speaker 3
Yeah. And, you know, what I can say about having to go monthly to for these checkups, firstly, there was so much emphasis on iron levels that I started supplementing iron levels. And now in hindsight, I think that was a very bad decision. And then the weighing, the monthly weighing, I had a history of eating disorders as a teenager. And, again, this piece of this embodiment, for me, having my weight checked monthly really fed into that. And I ended up in this mindset of, fuck it. I'm gonna eat all this junk sugar because, anyway, I'm putting on weight. So, actually, in that pregnancy, even though I was doing yoga, I was very active, and I was actually feeling really good throughout the entire pregnancy. I put in a ton of unnecessary weight from, yeah, compensating with sugar and also, you know, acting out on this feeling of, like, oh, my body's becoming something I'm,
Speaker 0
you know, evaluated on. Exactly. When you're getting literally assessed and critiqued on one of the most tender points of feet of culture what am I trying to say? The most tender point that is groomed into women in our culture. The the shame, again, largely unconscious that then motivates the eating habits is this is very, very, very common. You know, of this kind of fuck it, shame, induced lower frequency of eating. Yeah. But, of course, I mean, it makes so much sense, you know, when you're when you're literally being openly judged by the people that you have agreed to trust. Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So my pregnancy overall is uneventful. I was writing my book that came out just before my daughter was born, and I was working with people at one zero one. You know, this was twenty twenty. Germany went crazy. The second winter came, so it was very isolating in many ways. My blessing way happened on Zoom. You know? Aw. That was like that, I guess, the energy for everybody was pregnant then. But I was feeling good, And all my tests were always coming back fine. Everything was fine. We lived really close to a forest, so my husband and I would often walk and microdose different plants and just keep this connection to our tools very much alive, and it felt all really beautiful. And like I said, my psychic connection with my daughter was really strong and very open, and the channel was super clear. Yeah. And then the night of the week, thirty five comes, and I start having really intense lower back pain. And at the time, I just thought, like, you know, maybe some preparation pain. I didn't really know. So I go to bed, and the pain keeps increasing. And when the morning comes, I put my hands on my belly, which is something I started doing since my daughter would move in my womb. I would silently, internally say to her, good morning, and she would kick in response. So I do that, and she doesn't kick. And I say again, good morning, baby. I put my hands on the womb. Nothing. And I know something is wrong. I know at this point, like, okay. She's not responding for the first time in months. So I sit at my altar that I started every single day on. You know, I chant, I pray, and I connect with her, and I say, look. What do you need? What is this about? And instantly, the words come c section. And I am so shocked. And, of course, this is so far away from anything I've been envisioning calling in that I push it away. I'm just like, nope. Not going there. I tried to call one of the midwives. They don't answer. So I'm like, oh, this is a sign. Everything is okay. You know? And I tried to get on with my day. And I'm in these two realities where on one hand, I know something is wrong and this message came. But on the other hand, I am so attached to what I want that I'm in resistance to the bigness of what's coming at me. But when my husband gets up and he sees the state of me, and at this point, I'm, like, leaning on the table. I can't even move. The pain is so intense. We decide, okay. Let's just go to the nearest hospital and have me checked up. The birthing center would only accept me from thirty seven weeks, and this was, like, day one, thirty five. So we go to a nearest hospital, and, again, this is now May twenty twenty one. Germany is still following stupid COVID protocols. I have to be by myself. I have to wear a mask. So So by this point, it's like a midday, and I spend the entire rest of the day by myself in this hospital being probed and poked and subjects to every single thing they could come up with to find reason for the pain, and they can't. Baby's fine. Placenta's fine. Everything is fine. The only thing that was flagged up was that there was some infection in my blood, but it couldn't really tell why or what. You know, there wasn't really a reason. So as the day is ending, I am having this head OB GYN have a final say. Of course, he's a male doctor. He's a very important male doctor, and he checks me up. And in this very dismissive way, he says to me, like, your cervix is completely closed. Just go home, woman. You know? I guess there is some pain in birth and
Speaker 0
your body. Your only physical symptoms so far is you're having sensations and or sorry. You're having pain in your lower back.
Speaker 3
I'm having sensations too, but they were I can't really relate to them as sensations because there was no rhythm to them. Okay. So there was mhmm.
Speaker 0
There are some sporadic contractions and pain in the lower back. And then anything else?
Speaker 3
There was an insane pain in my lower back, and there was one nonstop contraction that wasn't pulsating, that wasn't coming and going. It just was.
Speaker 0
Your you meaning your uterus stayed in my uterus. Like, hyperextended almost.
Speaker 3
Yes. Yeah. Okay. And this was now, like, gosh, eighteen hours later after it began, you know? K. So, yeah, it's now it's maybe almost twenty four hours still began. The doctor says to me, just go home. There's pain in birth. You're imagining things, you know? And behind him is a midwife who was with me the whole day who was kinda chaperoning me from place to place, and I can see her face behind his shoulder. And she is clenching her jaw and shaking her head, and she looks so pissed off. And when we come out, she held holds my hand and says, look. I don't know how to say this to you. I'm gonna say this to you as a woman to woman. I feel something is going on. I feel he is wrong. Can you stay in the hospital? And, like, the staying in a hospital voluntarily is the last thing I would ever want ever do, ever choose, but I know that she's right because I can feel this too. I can really feel that this doctor doesn't know what he's talking about, that he has my cervix is closed, but I've been in insane pain for twenty four hours and there's something going on. Like, my baby's not responding to me for the first time in months. Even if the ultrasound says she's okay, you know, there's something that's going on.
Speaker 0
You're also someone who has spent years living in the psychic space. You know? Like, not everyone does that. Not everyone is connected to that layer of consciousness and reality. You know? And and, yeah, I think that's a really interesting other piece because a lot of women can't hear that or they think they can't. You know, maybe in some way, some part of their consciousness probably can. You know? But but that's a pretty open field for you.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. And I think in this situation, I have to thank my father for the father wound in becoming so anti authority and anti establishment because that guy for me didn't hold power over my body or over me. Mhmm. So hearing that from him and feeling my intuition, I just kind of yeah, I just knew I have to go with what I feel, so I make the most radical choice of my life. And I asked to be kept on observation overnight. I, like, paid extra for private room because I was sure, you know, I'm just gonna be there till the morning. And the general consensus is that I'm just gonna get some IV for this infection and then go home in the morning if everything is okay. And it's ten PM by that point. I am in some, like, birthing suite they brought me to to get the IV. And I'm chatting with this Spanish midwife, and we talk in Spanish. We talk about Peru, and it feels like a nice distraction to the pain I'm going through. And I think symbolically, it was actually, like, plugging into my field here. You know? And I say to her at one moment, like, I I I can't I can't handle this anymore, and I get on all fours. And then I just can feel this buildup of warmth in my body. And I look her in the eye and say, I think I'm gonna bleed. And as I say that this waterfall of blood comes out of my body, I was on this massive bed, waiting for the drip, and I've never seen this amount of human blood in one place. It was a waterfall that covered the whole sheet. And I had my phone with me because I was just going to listen to something. And so I text my husband, come. And from the moment I sent him this text to my daughter's officially registered birth time, six minutes passed. Woah. So in those six minutes, I am undressed, sanitized, wheeled into the operational theater, which is literally next door. So that's the miracle in this whole situation. Anesthetized. You know? The last thing I remember is the general, yeah, I'm not Yeah. The person saying to me, like, breathe for your baby. You know? And the midwife who was with me looking me in the eye saying, you're gonna be okay. Your baby's gonna be okay. Like, just breathe. And I'm out. You know? I'm out. I had a full placental abruption, the entire placenta detached from the atrial wall. And, yeah, when I come to, I'm laying on a corridor. My husband is stroking my face, and I am so high and so drugged up and so disassociated that I don't ask, where's my baby? Is my baby okay? He told me later that and I don't remember this, of course, that I was cracking jokes. I was laughing. I was like, what the fuck just happened? I was completely gone. I was completely gone.
Speaker 0
Yeah.
Speaker 3
So, yeah, she then got survived the surgeon who was operating. And I think this is also so symbolically beautiful. Everybody who was present at that birth was a woman. I didn't have a single man, not a nurse, not a doctor. They were all women. The surgeon who was abrading said probably two more minutes, and your baby wouldn't have made it because of the amount of the blood that was in the uterus and the entire oxygen, you know, starting to be limited. Luckily, she survived. Luckily, she didn't have any brain damage. Nothing. You know? She was kept in intensive care for a week, so we came home after a week, which is a miracle too. Mhmm. And, yeah, the first forty eight hours, she was under breathing support. They had to help her because she ingested a huge amount of my blood. It was, like, my blood in her stomach. And then, eventually, forty eight hours later, they unblocked her from all of it. So this was the first time I was able to hold her. So she spent forty eight hours with me just being able to, you know, touch whatever exposed part of her body. Now I was cut so fast and so big that my scar is literally hip to hip. So when I started to move and, you know, I I was going through this motion of, like, on one hand, I just had this massive surgery. I'm completely cut open, but my baby's one floor up in the NICU, and I have to go see her. You know? So I was walking up and down the stairs and taking the elevator and just it was just horrible. And it was only on day three only two when I finally had skin to skin with her. It's a her birth was at night. The following day, I didn't get to hold her the following day. I did. So two days later. It was only when I finally heard her that it connected that I have a baby. Yeah. For those first two days prior, it was like I was in some drain. Totally. My body was hurting. They gave me painkillers, but I wasn't taking them because I didn't want them to go into breast milk. Then she was there, but was she my baby? Like Totally. You know, it was such a painful experience. And now, you know, really thinking about what I was sharing about my entire lineage, exactly that energy Right. Unrequited love, abandonment. You know? So then, of course, I get a pump. I am told I cannot breastfeed her because they need to monitor how much she's ingesting so that she puts on weight because she was born, you know, like a tiny bird, super super small. So I started visiting, you know, every two hours, bringing the milk. And luckily, the way it was working, she was in a room where there were only three or four other babies. And, you know, it's kind of my responsibility to unplug her from on this all the things, change her diaper, feed her to skin to skin with her, put her back into her little bed, plug her back into all those things. And then I could stay and watch her. I could go. And, honestly, the turmoil of the oxy coming on and having to leave that room, I would, like, come back to my room, and I would just weep until, you know, until it was time to go and see her again.
Speaker 0
It's just, like, everything wrong. Like, every counter to instinct, counter to maternal instinct relationship.
Speaker 3
Yeah. It was it was horrible. And, you know, again, there were many realities coexisting. One was that there was a miracle in this birth. And I had strong intuition, and I had actually, you know, members of the team at the hospital visit me and be like, wow. We just wanna say congratulations because normally babies die in this context. Of course. How amazing.
Speaker 0
Short period of time.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 0
I don't I didn't I mean, the blood PCS and then also just literally, you know, obviously, when a placenta comes off the uterine wall, there's no more oxygen. I mean, the time that a baby would have to be removed or born is very, very, very small. I mean, it's hard it's hard to even comprehend six minutes.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 0
I'm I'm intimately aware of, you know, what a surgical birth is like in six minutes. Yeah. Like, doesn't even compute.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. So then imagine that for my nervous system, but my Right.
Speaker 0
Of course. And her.
Speaker 3
Yeah. So we come home, and I managed to, you know, put her in a breast. And we Wow. Actually have, I I wanna say, a really peaceful postpartum for the first, at least, however many months. I'm doing everything I can to down regulate her nervous system. We stay at home for forty days. We support her with so much energy work and body work. And, you know, by by this point, I've been studying trauma for many years. I understand what she's been through, and my mission is to make sure that she feels safe and she can reintegrate that experience as much as possible. And then by the time she's about seven, eight months, Germany becomes even crazier. There's a talk of mandatory vaccines for everybody. So we leave. We come to Florida for a little bit, then we actually come to Asheville for a little bit, but we decide to ultimately go back to Peru. So we return to our community in the Sacred Valley just before my daughter turns one. And as she turns one, literally a few weeks later, I stopped sleeping. And this is one year postpartum. I am so tired. From one day to the next, I develop insomnia. And a few days later, I start having panic attacks as I'm about to fall asleep. And I am so outside of my body, how my story actually, I wanna share this for anybody who can resonate my story. My entire first year was that I know so much about trauma that I didn't get traumatized by that birth.
Speaker 0
Yeah.
Speaker 3
You know? That's how I survived by telling myself that.
Speaker 0
Okay.
Speaker 3
So So then this insomnia comes, this panic attack comes. And believe it or not, it takes me two months, and it actually happens in an Ayahuasca ceremony for it to click that it's because of the birth. Yeah. I look for every answer possible other than the most obvious one. They put me to sleep in the moment that I've waited for for almost a year. So my nervous system carries the imprint of when I go to sleep, bad things happen. Yeah. So I realized, like, oh my god. Of course, I'm having a panic attack. Because in the moment in which I wanted to be awake for my baby, I couldn't. I had to go. So when that clicks, a really intense nine months journey begins of healing. And, again, I think it's symbolic that it was about nine months before my sleep really returned without me having fear of, like, what's gonna happen when I lay down. I was really dedicated to healing. I worked with a lot of different spirit medicines. I worked with somatic experiencing. I was talking a lot about what really happened and allowing myself to feel and to cry and to scream and to be angry, to remember all the midwives at the hospital that were really shitty, you know, to not just put it aside and really own it. And I really felt my spirit come back into my body. I did a lot of underworld shamanic journeying to really clean up, you know, and reclaim. And I actually think body based, somatic experiencing helped me come back into my body as, like, okay. This is my body. You know? So, yeah, it took nine months. And by the end of that period, we really felt ready for another baby and started calling them in, and the baby wasn't coming. And, again, I knew, like, okay. Something something's here that isn't fertility. Something isn't aligned for this baby to come. They don't come for the entire year. And at the end of that period, I get a message that my mom is being moved to a hospice. At this point, you know, she's been living with cancer for many years. She gets moved to a hospice. And I know, of course, this is why the baby hasn't come. If they came, I wouldn't go to be with her and, you know, I wouldn't take a newborn to be in a hospice. So I leave my my husband and my daughter at the house. I fly to Poland. I spent few weeks with my mom at her side. She is still here on Earth. She has a super resilient spirit, but, you know, that time is a very powerful time because she shares stories of her own trauma that she can link to cancer and she knows as a root of her illness now that I never knew about, that again paint a group, like, a larger picture of what the entire lineage has been going through and to hold space for her. I really feel that some pieces come together. And I come home, and I'm pregnant within a moon cycle. Wow. So there is such a powerful weaving between my babies and my mom and the pregnancies and her healing. And, yeah, I'm I'm pregnant, you know, within the lunar cycle of the visit, and I know that this baby, you know, is coming and that this is the boy that I saw in the ceremony, you know, that those two kids that were revealed to me those whole years back are starting to come.
Speaker 0
Quick question. So
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 0
I'm sure you're gonna get to it, but have you thought yet as you're calling this baby in or where where are you at this point in your story around birth again?
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. So right before this PTSD came on where I had insomnia, I was sure I'm never having babies again. Yeah. That was just you know, like, a few years prior. That was my story, just not doing that again. But these nine months of dedicated healing journey, and it was really I was so oriented towards reclaiming my life. You know, I did, like, a two week master plan, Ditao, intensely working with the plant and fasting, and really was going into my body, into my cellular memory, into my nervous system, but also into my psychic space and understanding, like, why this birth happened, you know, and actually we'll get to it in a little bit. But, I knew that my daughter and I have chosen it on a higher level. Like, I could agree to that. And I also felt that in the extremeness of what we have been through, how I always visualize it was this image of this blast that burst through the lineage that pulls through all the trauma, through the pain. It's almost like this final culminating event that takes it to the extreme because it shows how much of a buildup there has been. So by the end of these nine months, I actually felt fully in my body. I was sleeping perfectly. I was enjoying motherhood. And the idea of another baby was like, yeah. Of course, I wanna have another baby. Like, I can't imagine not having another baby. Like, we still too. We, you know, we have to call that baby in. But it didn't happen overnight. Yeah. It was, you know, after almost a year of healing. Yeah. So then I'm pregnant, and I know right away there's no way I'm, like, going to a hospital or, you know and being here in a sacred valley, all of my friends either free birth or they birth with this one traditional birth attendant. So my first thought was I'll I'll work with her, and then you and I had a call. And this is so perfect because we spoke on a Friday, and you offered me some really powerful reflections. And one thing that you said that really stood out was, you know, anybody that will be in your space will have their own relationship to your story and will bring their own belief about your story into your space, whether you like it or not. And so I spent that entire weekend, talking to everybody I know who had her in their space, asking what did you not like about this woman? And the answers that came opened my eyes to the fact that I don't want her in my space. I don't want a cervical check. I don't want her to boss around my husband. I don't want her to tell me what to do. You know? I heard some pretty extreme stories, and I was meant to meet with her for the first time on a Monday. So Sunday night, I prayed, and I was like, okay. God, please show me. Like, what am I supposed to do? Monday morning, I wake up to a text message from her assistant saying we have to cancel. She has birth right now. Can you just reschedule? So I knew. Like, I've been set free, and I've been shown my I this is my path. I have to be sovereign in this birth. I never get in touch with her again, and I am fully committed to free birthing this baby. So I purchased your course. I start taking my core your course. My husband does too. And I go on this massive journey of really taking full radical responsibility for responsibility for this choice, for my body, for this baby, to the point that actually for the entire pregnancy, I apart from the first trimester when I was super sick and I was receiving acupuncture, I didn't receive anything. Even at the end of the first trimester, I decided not to see my Chinese medicine doctor even though I love him because I wanted to cut cords with anybody offering me anything. I didn't
Speaker 0
And then why?
Speaker 3
Because I wanted to fully embody the knowing that I don't need anything outside of myself to break this baby. I don't need acupuncture. I don't need energy medicine. I don't need anything. This was important for me.
Speaker 0
Yeah. This is a very interesting point and and one that many people do not understand because the the twist on that is, you know, like, a a lower consciousness, twist or way of hearing that is, you know, that we, like, have something to prove. Like, we need to isolate ourselves and not receive and, like, that any, I I can't even really articulate very well because it's kinda silly and nonsensical. But I I hear you. I mean, it's part of people will be like, why don't you take a prenatal supplement? I'm like, why would you take a prenatal supplement? I like, if I felt like I needed something, I would do it, of course. But there's this kind of extreme lens projected. But, also, I can find the truth in it too around our interest, our shared interest in learning and accessing the deep, deep inner well of our own resources. And the reality and and the truth that so many of these things, it's not that they're bad. Like, there's nothing wrong with acupuncture. But on a psychological level, most people are doing acupuncture as this outsourcing Band Aid and not addressing or even getting curious about, you know, seven layers deeper. You know? And that I mean, I really understand and resonate. And and I and I can see out there how how misunderstood that is. It's not like you wouldn't get a massage if you wanted a massage, but routinely seeing someone and getting their input and their advice and their treatment and their analysis, which isn't wrong. There's nothing wrong with doing that if that's what you're into. But, also, there's this other, you know, group of women, you could say, that are just kind of interested in seeing what's here when you don't do that. Yeah. I really yeah. I really resonate with it, and I'm just kinda giggling thinking about how,
Speaker 3
you know, I
Speaker 0
I guess it is extreme from the lens of just constant outsourcing, you know, and never internally spending any time with yourself.
Speaker 3
But, you know, I also don't think there's anything wrong with proving anything to yourself. For me, that word isn't charged. And I actually yes. I wanted to prove it to myself after so many traumatic experiences Yes. Physical, sexual that were taking me outside of my sovereignty. The birth, that was everything I didn't want to happen to me and my baby. Yeah. I wanted to prove to myself that I am the creator of my own reality, that I am in full authority over my body and my being, and I am fully responsible for the outcome of my birth.
Speaker 4
Period.
Speaker 0
I guess this this idea, you know, like, it can be framed as proving something as, like, maybe childish or immature. And and, you know, what I'm hearing and totally relate to is, you wanted to know. Yeah. You wanted to know. You wanted to know. You wanted
Speaker 3
to know. Remember.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Well, for sure. Yeah. And you wanted to connect the dots that hadn't been connected. You know? And and, I mean, in my second birth, I knew I was going to be alone. And and my husband was, like, in the wings, you know, supporting as needed, but I was just really interested in who I would be if I didn't have women loving on me and and telling me I was doing a great job. And there's nothing wrong with that, obviously. But people kind of, I think, have a hard time seeing things nonhierarchically. Mhmm. You know? That there's just, like, different times and spaces of what the spirit is up for. You know? It doesn't it can be all kind of on this, you know, plane that doesn't have to be something that's better than yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 3
So, yeah, I have a superhems of pregnancy, not a single test of any kind. You know? I I did take a pregnancy test, but that was, you know, the only test I was in in contact with. And interestingly, as a recovered vegetarian, you know, I was devouring meat. I've never eaten as much meat in my life as I had in this pregnancy. And now seeing my son and his epic metabolism, like, I totally get it. But, you know, I could have leaned into a story of, like, oh, I'm eating all of this. You know? I was fully embracing everything that was coming to me as an information of what I need to do. Your course was amazing. I really keep recommending it to everybody, and there were so many videos I watched that were feeling like a validation, and there were so many that left me think thinking, oh my god. I didn't even think about this. You know? It was so eye opening. I decided to have a dear friend at home with us at birth to help with our toddler and just to, you know, have another pair of hands. Brenda's a dear sister who has nothing to do with birth. You know, she isn't anyway trained. She's someone I deeply trust. And, yeah, we just moved through the entire pregnancy as a unit. They both, my husband and and her, did the course as well. We had many conversations, many big conversations. Like, what will we do if the baby is born still? What will we do if this happens? But the entire time, I knew in my cells that I am not gonna have the same emergency again. That I've had this once, this needed to happen, but it's just it's just not happening again. I just knew it. So there was no fear in me, and I just did everything I could to have a super healthy journey. You know, we live in the southern hemisphere. There's an amazing amount of sunlight here. I was was eating organic. I'm always barefoot. We have eggs from our chickens. It was just a very different experience than twenty twenty winter in Central Europe, you know, isolation.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 3
You know? My blessing rate was so beautiful with all the sisters in my community. And, yeah, I sat with some plants. I kept dropping in. The interesting thing is that I, at first, I was attached to this idea that it's going to be in another girl. And so the baby was really quiet, and it was only really when I finally acknowledged,
Speaker 0
shoot,
Speaker 3
I think he's a boy, that the channel opened. And he started coming through, and he started you know, I think he was just waiting for me to get over my own idea. And I wanna say the final thing about the pregnancy is that I read the portal, and I was, I think, in the second trimester when I read it. And something that Yolanda's writing about in one of the chapters is this notion of the consciousness of birth as something that we have created based on our own state of consciousness. And so the full accountability for every single type of birth that we've had, including those most dramatic ones, and being willing to accept and see and name how could we have made that possible. So to be in the statistic of zero point three percent of possibility and to hold that, it was confrontational, you know, but I'm I'm willing. I'm always willing to do my inner work, so I really sat with it. And when I really felt into it, I realized that once I came down from this high of general anesthesia and stopped making jokes, the first conscious thought I had was, of course, my daughter didn't pass through my Yoni. There is so much dirty energy in there. I'm I'm not worthy of her being born that way. When that clicked, I realized why this happened for me. You know? Of course, there's so many layers to why this could happen, but I saw this. And the interesting thing is that I, in pregnancy with Ooma, started having yeast infection for the first time in my life. It wouldn't go away the entire pregnancy, and then it kept on and off coming back. This pregnancy now, it came back with vengeance, and I couldn't get rid of him. So I looked at it through the lens of Germanic new medicine, and it actually talks about shame and disgust because it kinda feels disgusting when you have it. And it's like, you know and I was thinking shame and disgust, you know? And then I was also talking about a relationship to, like, a primary male energy and something around that. And when I realized this was my first conscious thought after the birth of my daughter, I knew that I need to tell my husband. I knew that I need to own it to him and to, you know, be fully vulnerable and just come on down in front of him. And I expressed it to him, and we process it together. And, you know, we cried. We held this. We grieved this. I woke up next morning with no yeast infection, and it's never been back since. Right. You know? So all this time, this shame and disgust really with myself was still perpetuating. And I think it's really powerful to, you know, take in almost over a decade of inner work and to see that I was still not forgiving myself at that point. I was still thinking that trauma that has happened to me is my fault. I was still carrying the imprints of my family, of my ancestors, and blaming myself for it, and then turning it into the story of, like, of course, I'm not a not worthy to have my baby naturally. Like, what happened to my own in my life? It's you know? Yeah. So portal really awakened me. And as we moved through this final piece, I really felt ready to have this baby. And I knew, like, this was the final piece that needed to be done for me to have this amazing free birth. And then as my pregnancy was ending, I had this story that my baby's gonna be born on solstice because I was really attached to having Winter to tell you. Winter solstice. Yep. Well, here's some Which
Speaker 0
could have only been
Speaker 3
Week thirty
Speaker 0
one. Thirty seven. Yeah.
Speaker 3
So week last day, week thirty six comes, and I'm walking in my garden and some water leaks. And I'm like, yes. I'm getting this baby. I wanna have a week thirty seven. I'm gonna get my Sagittarius baby. And then I wake and then I wake up the next morning, and, of course, nothing is happening. Yeah. By the end of that day, I'm googling how long after, you know, water starts leaking. You should have a birth. And the first three or four articles that I saw were morbid. Like, you're basically going to die if your birth hasn't started now. And I realized, okay, this is happening for me so that I can see that I'm still trying to control it. And you sent me at the time the most powerful text message along the lines of, like, you gotta do whatever you gotta do to get back into your body and your birth because you might be pregnant for another month. And I saw your message, and I realized the stupidity of all these, you know, articles on the Internet. And I thought, okay. Cool. I'm I'm being shown where I haven't surrendered yet. I am really being shown.
Speaker 0
Mhmm.
Speaker 3
And no more water came, so I'm guessing there was just some tiny tear that, you know, repaired itself. And I was pregnant for another two and a half weeks. Wow. So two and a half weeks later, I get this really strong call to go visit this ancient tree that's near where we live. And it was quite a sight because I was massive. I'm, like, climbing this muddy path, and I get to this tree, and I pray, and I sing and I chant, and I make offerings to this tree. And I say to this tree, you know, I I'm really ready. And this tree is incredible. It's hundreds of years old. And when you look up at it, it has these two huge branches that really create these, like, open legs from which these
Speaker 0
Cool. Come.
Speaker 3
Yeah. So I just declare my readiness to spirit, and I come home.
Speaker 0
Beautiful.
Speaker 3
And that night, I my birth begins. Yeah.
Speaker 0
I also just wanna say that the the thirty seven week thing, like, how how I see it from, you know, zoomed out of witnessing, you know, many, many, many women do this in their own way is you, on some level, were playing with self sabotage. And by by controlling, by projecting, by making up that there was some time you knew when the baby would come, and I see women do this all the time, and you were just so willing to do your work around it, it really could have ruined the end of your pregnancy. I don't mean that the baby wouldn't have come out of your vagina, obviously, in terms of energetic, the energetics, you know, the spirit, the enjoyment, and and the surrender and all the juicy stuff that you you get to do if you choose at the end. I see so many women around that thirty seven week up up to, you know, thirty nine where women just make up that they're gonna have their baby, and then they don't, of course, because that's not actually super common. And then they go either way. They either have a horrible final month. Everything is stressful. Everything is complainy. And it's just they're totally entitled to do that, but it's just, like, bad vibes. You know? And and I wouldn't say that's necessarily doing the work. You know? And you really chose to face it and see what was in you that wanted to do it. Anyway, I just I appreciate that because I saw you in the ways that we were connected through your pregnancy. I just saw you consistently willing to get curious and face yourself and and raise your thermostat setting.
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 0
You know? Because a lot of this too is just your own blueprint in your lineage. Right? And you were very consciously are very consciously raising it, which is extremely confronting.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Thank you. And, you know, I actually forgot to say there was a layer to it that I think it's so incredible because I examined that thought of why am I so freaking attached. And what I realized this was all about was, again, unconscious fear. My mom, my grandmother, they were cats all the way through their perineums because of all these different reasons that people give you to abuse you. So I actually, on the back of that, had this unconscious thought that I will tear if I go full term. Yeah. So that was my story. I wanted thirty seven weeks worth baby because I wanted a smaller baby because I didn't want to tear. Interesting. So I feel like, yeah, I've released whatever my mom and grandma have been through through that experience. So, yeah, I visit the tree, and at night, I go to sleep, and I wake up from a dream in which a sister tells me you're three centimeters dilated. And as I wake up, I feel the baby's head just hit deeper and some water breaks. So I'm so excited. I'm like, okay. It's happening. You know, it's thirty nine plus four that in that moment. No. Thirty nine plus three. I spend the whole night kind of excited. I cannot go back to bed. You know? I'm just too, yeah, built up with energy and anticipation. I get out of the bed in the morning, and the waves come. We have breakfast as a family. You know? I look at the clock every now and then, and they seem pretty regular. They're building up. They're coming. And then my daughter has a massive meltdown. And as the meltdown is happening, I try to reach for her. She's standing on the stairs, and she pushes me away. And even though I don't fall, nothing happens to me, I kinda have to, you know, fall back a little bit, and everything stops. Like, everything stops in that moment. And this is about eleven AM. And I just think to myself, like, everything will start when she goes to bed. So I'm completely relaxed about it. I don't really feel any pressure. She goes to bed usually at six PM, so we put her down for the night. We we we put her down
Speaker 0
for that goes to bed at six PM?
Speaker 3
Yeah. And sleeps till six AM. So that's the only That's awesome. Wow. That's so early. Yeah. But, you know, here, the sun sets at, like, six, so it's a different Mhmm. Light energy as well. But, yeah, so she goes to bed at six in the bedroom upstairs, and the second I come down the stairs and I step on the ground floor, waves come back. And they keep building up, and I just eat a massive dinner. I light candles. I turn all the lights off. My husband comes downstairs too, and we hang out for a little bit, but I just really wanna be by myself. Like, his energy as much as, you know, I love him as my husband. I just don't want anything to do with him in the moment. I don't wanna talk to him. I don't wanna, you know, feel anything. So he makes me a fire, and he goes to bed. And I'm by myself the whole night, really just moving with it. Like, the waves are regular, but not too regular. Sometimes they're known for some minutes. Sometimes they're, you know, backing up on each other. And I'm just either in a child's pose or leaning on a birthing bowl or, you know, laying on a side, but I'm not really thinking about anything. It was really beautiful that a very instantaneously for me that birth opened up as a space of meditation. So it very much became about dissolving into the sensations, and my mind really entered into this non dual space in which the birth was everything I was experiencing. And I think as someone who, at this point, has been meditating for so many years, it's easier for me to tune into that, and that felt really supportive of my birth space and almost like the the meditation was the facilitator, and all I could do is just breathe and, you know, be and let myself come on down more. And then I was so exhausted by this point because it was the second night without really sleeping that I decided to go to sleep, to try to go to sleep for a minute. So I lay on myself up, and I fall asleep for maybe two, three minutes. And as I fall asleep, my water breaks, and the active birth really begins. And by this point, it was maybe four or five AM. My husband intuitively woke up by himself. He came down, you know, he saw me, but also our toddler woke up. And, again, she had a meltdown. You know, the energy was intense. She was feeling everything. As she's melting down, everything stops for me altogether again.
Speaker 0
And how old is she at this point?
Speaker 3
Going to be four in May. So she's, like, three and a, you know, three and a half, a little bit more at the birth. So, yeah, my my husband called our dear friend Juliana to come over because it was clear that another pair of hands will be needed, you know, to manage the situation. And she comes over and, yeah, I just wanted to be by myself. So I went to our upstairs bedroom, closed the door, drawn all the curtains, you know, and was just by myself for good few hours just listening to some mantras and moving with it, you know, changing positions, breathing. But the waves weren't really coming back. I took a homeopathic remedy that can really, I think, help with strengthening of the waves in the hope that it will help me come back into that strong space. Nothing was happening. I thought, okay. I'm just going to sleep. You know? This birth is never gonna come. And, again, I lay down. I fall asleep maybe for two minutes. I wake up in a fully blown active birth, like, full on. So I guess I just needed to shut off for a minute, you know, change gears, and then it came on really strong. I asked them to set up water for me. I got into the water, and it just felt horrible. Like, I just hated being in the water. And I'm so grateful that we didn't invest in, like, a proper birthing pool. I had a had a hunch that I might not want it. You know? So I was in the water. At first, I was in the water for a while, but before it started feeling horrible, it just felt like it wasn't really doing anything for me. The birth kinda stopped. The sensation softened. Like, it was clear that it becomes like a buffer between me and the intensity into which I need to lean. So then I get out of the water, and my sister joins me. And it was so beautiful because in the whole act of birth, once she joined me, so I think for the final four hours she was with me, she just sat in silence. She just sat and held space, you know, gave me coconut water to drink and just was witnessing me. And I think for me, as a woman with such a painful history, there was so much reclamation and being witnessed by a sister who didn't want anything, you know, just to see the redemption of another woman. It was so powerful. So, yeah, I was mostly birthing on the floor. Like, I was squatting, lunging. I was doing all these crazy positions, but I couldn't get up. The one time I tried to get up, I almost fell down. Like, I full respect to women who birthed their babies standing because I thought I'm gonna pass out. You know? And then, yeah, I was just really intuitively moving. And then one more time, I think, okay. Maybe in the water. I get into the water, and I literally just, oh, I can't send it. You know? So I knew, okay. This baby wants to come on the ground. And then the whole time, I can say that I felt pain. Like, it was so intense. But being in the meditative space, I was allowing the intensity to move through me, and I was vocalizing so much. And, actually, I think the interesting piece is that around ten o'clock, my daughter's teacher came. She comes to her house, and she took her outside. They went for a walk. And as Ooma left the house, that's when the act of birth really began for me around that same time. So I was vocalizing a lot, and I really felt that I wasn't vocalizing in response to the sensation. The sensation was the sound moving through my being. You know? And yeah. And it was just going on. I think my active birth was about five, six hours. So, eventually, I'm like, okay. I'm gonna check myself. You know? It dawns on me that I can do that. And, you know, I was completely naked all over my bedroom floor, peeing everywhere. And the funny thing is, I think you remember, I was so concerned about not being able to pee. I couldn't stop peeing. I was peeing endlessly. I didn't even know that it's possible to pee so much. But I was just peeing all over the place. And something you said to me in the call as well that I found really helpful, you said to me, just be aware that there is blood in birth. Mhmm. You need to process that because there was blood in your first birth. And you need to know that there will be blood and you are safe. And the quantity of blood that was coming out of me again, I you know, I've never witnessed other woman birthings. I don't know if that's what everybody has, but there was so much. There would be a wave and there would be blood coming out of me, wave blood coming out of me. And I was staring at it, and I really felt no fear. I've done so much inner work around my first birth that I could see it. There was not a single thought of fear. So then I check myself,
Speaker 2
and I'm
Speaker 3
like, oh my god. The head the head is there. You know, my cervix is fully open. There is the head. And this is the hilarious part of transition. My mind breaks. My mind completely breaks. I think the energy of downloading a soul and turning it into matter, it just breaks your mind. It's beyond the ego what happens. So my mind
Speaker 0
quote right there.
Speaker 3
So my mind breaks. So then I'm in this obsessive, like, oh my god. I have to check myself again. So the next wave comes. I check myself again, and I say to my sister, oh my god. My cervix is wrapped around the baby's head.
Speaker 0
And she's like she looks at me. She's like, Yeah.
Speaker 3
Okay. Okay. So then the next wave comes, and I'm again obsessively with my fingers. The head is obviously lower and lower, but I'm touching it. And I'm like, no. There is a membrane wrapped around the head. She's like, look. Get back into your body. Yeah. Your baby is coming. I'm gonna bring you a mirror. She brings me a mirror. And this was actually the only thing she said to me the entire birth. Get back into your body. It was so helpful. She brings me a mirror, and I realized, oh my god. This is the head. Like, it's just a super hairy head that's covered in slime that feels like a memory.
Speaker 1
Mhmm.
Speaker 3
So, anyway, when I realized that, I I felt so empowered and excited and just so ready. And it was literally when I saw the head in a mirror that I felt this energy of, like, down bearing. I need to push. And this roar came came out of me that my husband later described as the most authentic expression of my being that he's ever experienced. You know, this roar came, like, from the core of who I am. And in one push, his head came out. This was, like, maybe seconds. Literally, my pushing was three seconds maybe. The next wave came right away, and his whole body just slid out. And as his head came out, while he said it was hanging out of Mayoni, he was talking. It was just Yeah. Making sounds. It was so funny. And, yeah, as he came out, you know, Uma was in a room. My husband was in a room and my sister, and he was super gurgly. He had so much, like, amniotic fluid everywhere, and I just kind of knew to put him on my forearm and wrap his back to, you know, drain him. Again, I didn't really feel any any fear about anything. He just was a perfect baby that was covered in blood and, you know, slime and vernix. And he was super girly, and the cord was about this long. So I couldn't do anything to you know, I I had to keep him in my lap. But, yeah, I kept him in my lap. We wrapped him up, wrapped me up. And about thirty minutes later, I had a really strong wave. I just got out of bed. I squatted over a bowl and tugged at the placenta, and the placenta came out. It was so beautiful. It was so redemptive to see the placenta because I didn't even get to see it the first time. I don't know what they did with it. Probably Bill knows. Bill g.
Speaker 0
Someone someone has
Speaker 3
it. Someone had someone knows what what happened to it. But, yeah, it was very beautiful, and I was just in bed. And because the placenta was so short, the cord was so short, we couldn't burn it, which was our intention. So we just waited a while, and then we cut it. And, yeah, just me and the baby, the stamp were in bed, and he was breastfeeding. And I was eating broth and stew and chocolate cake, and, you know, we were just sitting there in awe and in this massive energy of of healing and of redemption. And, apparently, the first thing I said when my husband saw me, I looked at him and he was like, oh my god. I did it. I did it, which I don't remember. But, apparently, I was like, you know, like a child
Speaker 0
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Who who just had the biggest awakening experience. And, yeah, for I actually wanna add, like, for me, in this work with Plant Medicines and having experienced really open vision space and, you know, psychedelic experiences that bring me into non duality, while I was an active birth, I was in a ceremony. The visions that I was having, like, my ancestors were coming, Christ was coming, all the spirits of all the planted trees were coming. And that open vision space for me continued for four days and nights. I was in a full DMT release for four days and nights where at night, I would, like, see in Technicolor. Yeah. I would I would look into my baby's eyes, and I would, like, see his past lives. You know? It was full on, and it was so amazing. Because I think for me, the older years of working with plant medicines have left me with knowing life is ultimately a ceremony and the non duality is always there. And yes, that's the gateway to remembrance, but we don't really need that tool to remember. And the birth was such a portal of non dual remembrance. Truly, that whole journey anchored me in God, in connection to all of life. And I think as a, you know, like a closure of this entire lineage story, the pieces of all this abandonment and violence and unrequited love and everything that everybody was subject to generationally, including me. I think having this experience of just birthing and birthing with God, birthing in joy, birthing in bliss. Like, I was laughing. I was, you know, saying crazy things about my membranes, but I was ultimately fully surrendered. And it was actually only in transition that something came undone. But the entire experience after that point, I was fully capable. There was no fear. There was no pain. There was intensity. Yes. But I knew that I can move with it. And then there was this peaceful baby coming out of my vagina talking, and he is so peaceful. He has such a Buddha like energy to him now, which is also so interesting to, you know, to see two children who had very different experiences in their imprints. And my daughter isn't like that. She is highly sensitive. She is very anxiously attached. She has big abandonment triggers. She's not coping well with having a brother just yet. You know, there's a lot going on. And I see in that a lot of imprint from her birth where there is this baby now who gets to experience what it's like to break the cycle and arrive in peace, to be on his mother's body. Nobody touching him. Nobody nothing. So, yeah, I really felt that he came to break so many cycles.
Speaker 0
And I do believe very much that by your daughter being in that field, even though her birth story is different and she has a different, you know, set of puzzle pieces, so much regulation and stability and lineage blueprint and thermostat setting still happens in her system by the mother birthing this way next time. You know? She's in the home. She's in the field. And I think a lot of women can forget that when they have a traumatic first birth, and they can feel really bad, you know, or guilty or or just you know, it's so complicated. You know? And and I've had so many women tell me about, yeah, just how how sad and and guilty they can feel of the first kid having
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 0
This really brutal start and then the sec second kid having this, you know, kind of idyllic. But but I but also you're one family. Like, you're also one, organism in a way. Like, of course, there's individuality, and also there's the soul family that is healing together and weaving together and and very much healing together. You know? So he he plays a big part of her story of what she'll know birth to be. Yeah. Which is so beautiful and so important to remember for any mother's feeling, yeah, guilty about the the swing. It's like, thank God there's a swing. Yeah. You know? That's it's for everyone.
Speaker 3
And that was part of my choice to free birth. I didn't want me to be pathologized, and I don't want her to be pathologized. And I wanted to offer her a different story. Whether she chooses to have children or not, she now has a different story of what birth is.
Speaker 0
Exactly.
Speaker 3
Now the interesting piece looking of generational healing was that my breath and my my I don't know why I keep bringing up my breath or maybe it stuck to him. My son was born on my father's birthday.
Speaker 0
Yeah. That's a trip.
Speaker 3
So there is something here too and there's some cycles of abuse, you know, coming to an end and, I mean, broken. But, yeah, it's it's been such an incredible journey. And, you know, eight years later, probably to the date of that telling ceremony, you're gonna have two babies. I do have my two babies, a boy and a girl that I saw in my vision space as did my husband's. So the plan's new ahead of time. Yeah. Of course, which is really just me on the higher plane of consciousness talking to myself through the costume of the plants. Yeah. So I'm I'm feeling really redeemed in that sense. You know? I don't yet know who I am on the other end of that because the sleep deprivation and the newborn portal is so intense. And we've actually had a very challenging postpartum so far with the adaptation and lots of different pieces going on. And I think the way this rewired me and my cellular memory and my children and what this has done for the lineage is beyond any words I could come up with now in my two hours of sleep. You know? It's such a gift, and I can really see how from now on, the lineage is free to choose whatever story they want to write. You know, it's such an honor to be the ancestor who put the foot down and was like, okay. We're not doing this anymore. We're not telling the story.
Speaker 0
And to connect to the the many, many women prior to the generations you're aware of who surely also birthed in power.
Speaker 3
Yes.
Speaker 0
Maybe not every single one. I'm not trying to imply some utopian, you know, history, but surely, you know, we have millions of years. Surely, you you you are coming again, you know, back to this. It's so beautiful. Well, I'm so happy for you, and and you did a very, very good job articulating this on two hours of of sleep.
Speaker 3
Thank you. Somehow, we survived.
Speaker 0
You did.
Speaker 3
We survived.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Well, congratulations.
Speaker 3
So much.
Speaker 0
Yeah. It's such big work. Thank you for sharing.
Speaker 3
Thank you for being part of it. Mhmm.
Speaker 0
I'm honored. It's such a joy. I hope you enjoyed the show today. You can support this podcast by donating to it through the link in the show notes below and, of course, leaving an awesome review on whatever form you listen on. The more reviews, the more visibility the show gets, so let's spread the good word of Sovereign Birth. Don't forget, you can watch our podcast interviews on YouTube and see the women as they tell their birth and power stories, and you'll also find our viral free birth collection of epic raw birth videos on our YouTube. Make sure you're subscribed to our channel. We've always got a lot going on at Free Birth Society, and you can find out all about it at free birth society dot com, at free birth society on Instagram, and opt in to my newsletter below. We offer courses on free birth, authentic midwifery, the blood mysteries, as well as one on one coaching, in person retreats, and, of course, our annual women's gathering, the matriarch rising festival. Our exclusive private, vetted membership, the lighthouse, is definitely something to check out if you're looking for a community of wise sisters sisters to get guidance from and to meet in real life. Together, we rise sisters. We must speak our stories, fully claim our lives, and support one another. This is the living revolution, and I am so grateful to be in it with all of you. I'll leave you with our gorgeous Free Birth Society theme song, Wild Woman by Aruba Red.
Speaker 4
I honor you for the wisdom you held, the ancient traditions of Eons upon light beams of survival, withstanding the eradication of our power by design. I will not allow the separation of our young to be forced upon me. My sisters will no longer birth in captivity. The picket line we define from burning our wild women to paralyzing us and drugging our babes. Strapped down in a clinical white bed, drying up the milk from our breasts, keep your needles. My family will never again be doomed to chase those dragons or your poison. We reject your fear. We choose love. Everything with intention. Death, ascension, I will fly and bring her back to the star.
