00:00:06:20 - 00:00:41:22
Unknown
Into the wild and go into the wild I am. It's been a while. Freedom, child, since I left my roots back home. Into I don't go into the wild I hear it's been a while. Freedom sharp since I left my roots back home. 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.
00:00:42:03 - 00:01:01:23
Unknown
Together, we'll learn about wild birth through personal narrative. We'll explore the politics of birth and will analyze everything that relates to our lives as women. From a feminist perspective, here's your host, Emilee Saldaya. It's been a while. Freedom. Chase.
00:01:02:01 - 00:01:11:07
Unknown
Sense of left Meru bear on.
00:01:11:09 - 00:01:41:19
Unknown
All right. Welcome. Welcome, Cheyenne. Thank you. It's a beautiful room that you're in, right? Is it a Mongolian yought? Oh, is it a yard? Yeah, it's all hand-painted. All the wood is hand-carved. The insulation is felted wool dope. But there's. Yeah. Windows. Yeah. These were custom put in. Cool. Yeah. Is this your like. What is this? Is it your bedroom or.
00:01:41:21 - 00:02:25:20
Unknown
This used to be my bedroom when my partner and I first met. And now I live in the house. And this is now a sanctuary for anyone that wants to come and relate with us. Nice. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Love that you're doing it in that special room. All right, so why don't we just start from wherever it makes sense for you to begin when we kind of zoom out and ask this big question of who are you before you become a mom and what what is maybe like the culmination of your relationship to the medical system prior to this pregnancy?
00:02:25:22 - 00:02:34:03
Unknown
And so, yeah, I've had a long journey that.
00:02:34:05 - 00:03:10:03
Unknown
Throughout my life I've experienced, things that have like influenced me to grow as a lot as a person from a young age. I had a spinal surgery from scoliosis. I have almost my whole spine is fuzed with metal, and this was like my entryway into like inviting my soul to figure out its path. And this surgery was a bit unnecessary.
00:03:10:05 - 00:03:38:07
Unknown
They don't really practice it anymore today because of how much pain it causes people throughout their life, and I've had a close relationship with pain throughout my life because of it. And relating with pain has been a journey of mine, and this incident opened me up to pharmaceutical drugs as a young. From a young age being 12, it made me depressed.
00:03:38:07 - 00:04:05:23
Unknown
And right in that time where like I started my period and my hormones are starting to come in and then was prescribed really strong pain medication, it kind of numbed me. Were you when you had the surgery? I was 12, you were 12 when you had it. And then that's when the pharmaceutical started. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. They prescribed me OxyContin.
00:04:06:03 - 00:04:37:21
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. Super strong. And it just, like, numbed me as a person and made me really confused and really just. Yeah, numb. Not seeing, like, the light and life and, I found cannabis later on through my introduction to pharmaceutical drugs and that really, like, switched me and I felt like, wow, this plant is so natural. This I prefer that more.
00:04:37:21 - 00:05:08:04
Unknown
And a couple years later, when I was 14, I was in a car accident and shattered my pelvis. My pelvis broke in multiple different places. One bone like completely flipped around and I also shattered my ankle. And when my pelvis broke into itself, it punctured my vagina wall. And.
00:05:08:06 - 00:05:43:08
Unknown
Then when it went, the pelvis went back into its shape. It created an open wound inside of my womb space, and an infection grew. I was sent to the hospital, right away. My it was kind of magical. The first person that came on the scene that actually stopped, there were people that just drove by us, but the first person that stopped was a nurse, and the second person was my aunt at like 3 or 4 in the morning.
00:05:43:09 - 00:06:08:23
Unknown
And who was driving the car? What was the context of the accident? So it was two of my other friends. They my friend was driving. I was in the front passenger. They had been drinking that night and they were at my house. I, I didn't participate in the drinking. I actually was asleep and told them, you guys can hang out here, but I'm super tired.
00:06:08:23 - 00:06:35:21
Unknown
And honestly, I probably would have drank with them if I wasn't if I wasn't tired that night. So they woke me up. They said, it's an emergency, our friend needs us. We need to go and rescue her. Our girlfriend was in like a bad situation with some guy or something like that. So we just got in the car and started driving and wow.
00:06:35:23 - 00:06:59:07
Unknown
At some point my and like, I had never driven a car before at this point. So I'm not like really focusing on how the person's driving and yeah, I mean, I have to ask, like, what's up with your parents? What's the dynamic there? Why are you like unsupervised at 14 at three in the morning. So I was notorious for sneaking out of my house.
00:06:59:07 - 00:07:31:18
Unknown
My parents were separated. Okay. My mom, she tried to keep me home, but I would sneak out and go. And this was still in that time in my life where I was still numbed from the spinal surgery and the substances that was influenced on me. And yeah, my dad also, he lived, I think, like an hour away at that time.
00:07:31:20 - 00:07:59:11
Unknown
So yeah, at some point, like I noticed that the driver, my friend, started to drive really fast. And I looked over at him and right in that moment, he drove off the road into a meridian. And because of the speed and the intensity, it hit the meridian, bounced off, hit a huge retainer wall like a 30ft retainer wall.
00:07:59:11 - 00:08:27:12
Unknown
And the car kind of like, flipped a couple times and landed parallel on the road. And, yeah, I managed to, like I was conscious for the whole accident. Both of my friends went unconscious. And they were also drunk, so they were that kind of influenced them in a way. And.
00:08:27:14 - 00:08:49:07
Unknown
Yeah, I could manage to, like, wedge the door open just a little bit to be able to pull myself out of the crack. And I was going to go and try and get help, but I felt like my legs were just like jello and I couldn't walk. And so I fell to the ground and I tried to get up again and found that I couldn't walk.
00:08:49:09 - 00:09:10:01
Unknown
So I went back down, crawled to the car, grabbed my blanket that I took with me out of the car and laid it on the cement and just laid there. And one of my friends got out and he was kind of just he was maybe in shock, not really present. He was telling people like, oh, keep driving, we're fine.
00:09:10:01 - 00:09:36:01
Unknown
And the other friend was unconscious. Well, I think he hit his head. And, eventually they were like, completely fine. And I got all of the damage because I wasn't drinking. And they say that, with alcohol, many times it makes you all loose. So you flow with the car, and when you're sober, you're you tense up so your bones are more likely to break.
00:09:36:03 - 00:10:03:07
Unknown
And so anyways, they take me to the hospital and my aunt, she says, sweetheart, you're bleeding. Are you on your period? And I said, no, I'm not on my period. And she brought it up to the doctor and he said, oh, it's really common for women to start their period from shock. And they kind of overlooked that. And I was hospitalized for five days.
00:10:03:09 - 00:10:23:06
Unknown
Have you already had you already started your cycle like normally. Yeah, I started when I was 12. Okay. That's another thing I like. I started my period and didn't know what it was. So I called my cousin, afraid I had blood in my underwear. What is this? And she was my safe person to talk about things that were private.
00:10:23:06 - 00:10:34:15
Unknown
And, so that's another aspect of my story, is that I didn't have such a strong relationship with my body. And.
00:10:34:17 - 00:11:07:06
Unknown
So, yeah, they kind of, like, overlooked the vaginal bleeding. And in that time, they misdiagnosed my, my pelvis and my ankle. They kind of thought that I just fractured my pelvis in my ankle, and they put me on blood thinners, and forced me to walk, like, as part of my rehabilitation, and then sent me home. And I was home for a few days.
00:11:07:08 - 00:11:30:00
Unknown
My. Hey, if you are new to all the things we're talking about on this show, then you need to go grab our most popular free resource, the Free Birth Starter Kit. It's a crash course and everything you need to know to start wrapping your head around the world of sovereign birth. The starter kit includes over three hours of teachings from me on how birth works, what all this new language means, like wild pregnancy or radical birth keeper.
00:11:30:01 - 00:11:51:12
Unknown
I touch on emergencies, complications in free birth, postpartum care including the placenta and umbilical cord care, dealing with the what ifs, nervous partners, and more. We love resourcing our listeners, and this free birth starter kit is rocking people's boats and blowing their minds. And best of all, women are using it to birth in power, which is what we are all about here at FBS.
00:11:51:14 - 00:12:17:02
Unknown
Grab it in the show notes below and enjoy my blood. Vaginal blood just kept getting heavier and heavier, like huge clots coming out. And I felt in that time I was really like in and out of consciousness and was sweating like all through the nights, all through the days, and, like, I would pee the bed because I couldn't get up.
00:12:17:02 - 00:12:34:01
Unknown
And my mom, like, I would call for her to come to my room, but she wouldn't be able to come fast enough. And one morning she helped me to the toilet and she said, like, there's way too much blood, we need to take you to the hospital. And she called my cousin to come help lift me into the car.
00:12:34:01 - 00:13:08:21
Unknown
And, we got there to the hospital and they had a gynecologist looking at me, and he was spreading my legs on this, like, table, and I could literally feel my bones and hear them breaking in my pelvic area, and I like I was just so traumatized of, like, being touched, being forced to walk, being like, just not heard or listened to and fighting for my life.
00:13:08:21 - 00:13:38:21
Unknown
Really. So he, he at some point said like, there's too much blood and I'm like, crying hysterically. I think he's getting nervous because, like, I'm freaking out and he's pushing too hard. And at some point he just says, like, there's too much blood. I can't say anything. And they had paramedics come and life like me to what the main hospital in the state.
00:13:38:21 - 00:14:03:10
Unknown
And I entered this room. I was first, like super afraid to be separated from my mom because that was like some. She was like a voice for me as being a voiceless person, where I was just being like, abused in the hospital. And so I was super afraid. They gave me morphine on the flight to calm me down.
00:14:03:10 - 00:14:28:01
Unknown
And I get to the main hospital and I get in this room and there's like 20 to 30 doctors, students. They're like all around me, touching me, injecting needles in me, hooking me up to things, moving my body to try and find out where the pain is coming from. But you're a minor. How does your mom not go with you?
00:14:28:03 - 00:15:11:13
Unknown
They wouldn't allow her in the helicopter, so she needed to drive as fast as she could to get to that room. That's very dark. Yeah, like super bright fluorescent lights being handled all over the place while I'm, like, in fear and agony. They found that I was bleeding to death internally, that that's when they found that I had that incision, and there was an infection that was growing inside of my womb where the had been punctured open, and this was what was making my temperature rise super high and sweating through the night.
00:15:11:13 - 00:15:19:04
Unknown
And, God, I know, so.
00:15:19:06 - 00:15:23:21
Unknown
That's like. Yeah.
00:15:23:23 - 00:15:53:22
Unknown
I mean, just the obviously, I want you to finish. I'm just like, as if the surgery wasn't enough. Like, what a hardcore hardcore double whammy. I look at it, it's like I got it all over with. I'm good for the rest of my life. I love that. I love planning to live till I'm 124, at least with absolutely no more surgeries.
00:15:54:00 - 00:15:59:18
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So.
00:15:59:20 - 00:16:32:04
Unknown
You'll get there. Yeah, yeah. They do. They do many tests, many imaging. They're trying to figure out what is really happening. And, this doctor that, that I was working with, he essentially, like, found everything. And immediately they focused on getting the abscess out, and, I felt like in that window, I was really, like, out of consciousness, or at least, like, tapping out of my body.
00:16:32:04 - 00:16:58:14
Unknown
And I remember, like, I would just stare at this clock in my, in my room and look at the time and felt like everything else, needed to be, like, faded out. And also in that that whole experience, I was trying really hard to protect my energy because there was so much fear from my family and my friends being projected onto me.
00:16:58:14 - 00:17:18:00
Unknown
And I remember it happened with my spinal surgery as well, my parents hugging each other, crying right before I went in the operating room like I hadn't seen them love on each other in years because they got divorced when I was five. And I remember, like, being mad at them. Like, why are you treating me like something that's going to happen?
00:17:18:01 - 00:17:41:03
Unknown
And you're supposed to do that as parents after you've been wheeled, taken away? Yeah, I think before you're supposed to be like, this is going to be so great. Yeah, I'm not worried at all. This is so great. And then afterwards, you collapse in your ex-husband's arms. God. Oh. So, yeah, I really I focused on protecting my energy.
00:17:41:03 - 00:18:08:18
Unknown
And in that, like, times of hospitalization at night, I would stay up and cry in my bed because that was the only time that I could really, like, feel my own emotions and release them, and a time that I didn't need to defend myself. And, so yeah, they took out the abscess and they put an external, external fixate in my pelvis and got me that treatment that I needed.
00:18:08:18 - 00:18:48:17
Unknown
I ended up getting kidney failure from all of the medication and radiation from all of the scans and everything. And then they sent me to a children's hospital for the rest of my recovery for about a month and, rehabilitated myself from there. So this like after that experience, also seeing all the people that showed up in my hospital room, I felt like loved for I could really, like, understand how much people love me and care for me, where maybe before I didn't like, care for my life as much before and really see the value in that.
00:18:48:17 - 00:19:18:18
Unknown
And then being like so close to death in that car accident medical malpractice journey. I really like appreciated life after that. And it's I remember the doctor, one of my last appointments, he said, we've done everything that we can in the medical, in the Western medicine world, and I want you to start going to eastern medicine for the rest of your healing journey.
00:19:18:18 - 00:19:30:09
Unknown
And I was like, okay, I don't know what that means, but we're going to look into it. When you say medical malpractice.
00:19:30:11 - 00:20:04:12
Unknown
Maybe it's really obvious, but what do you mean, exactly? So the term, I mean, I know what the term means, but like what what happened in your treatment because you also use the word abused. What what what part are we talking about. So being misdiagnosed first and then being mistreated based off of that diagnosis okay. And then being abused in the sense that I was forced to walk with my shattered ankle and shattered pelvis.
00:20:04:16 - 00:20:29:09
Unknown
Okay. Like begging them, but they literally pulled me out of the bed and like, I would cuss and pain. And it's a mormon state. So they would be like, don't use that language here. And they were very like, we know what's wrong with you. You don't know anything about your own body. Got it? That's kind of what I mean when I say abuse and medical malpractice.
00:20:29:09 - 00:21:08:23
Unknown
And also the gynecologist, before I got sent to the main hospital, that felt really wrong to me. That I felt so much pain. My mom was crying, telling him, stop, stop touching her. And he wouldn't stop until like he decided on his terms that he had seen. He can't see anything with the amount of blood. Oh, this is such a such a it's the right word like example of when the place you know, what culture has manifested until we do something different, you know what.
00:21:08:23 - 00:21:44:09
Unknown
Where the place that we go for care and emergency and help is also the place that hurts us and, and you know, does everything you just described like it's a very classic, you know, storyline again and again and again, this time when the healer is absent from our communities and our consciousness, you know, as a, as a, as a, you know, I understand there like in micro communities, but, but, you know, as a mainstream culture or whatever, it's just like as dark as it gets.
00:21:44:10 - 00:22:17:06
Unknown
It's like, you know, when when children are abused by their parents, they're the caregivers and the abusers. You know, this this combination of going there for help because who else could possibly help you? Like literally when we're talking about broken bones and, you know, the extreme stuff that, that you needed support in is also this, like really satanic, dark, twisted out of control place.
00:22:17:08 - 00:22:48:23
Unknown
Yeah for sure. Girlfriend, 14 years old. It gave me such an awakening in my life. I from that point I was like, I appreciate life in a deeper way than I have never felt before. And I, because of that doctor, told me, I can't help you anymore. Go to Eastern Medicine. I started to get curious what he meant by that and like I started to study yoga.
00:22:48:23 - 00:23:26:17
Unknown
I started to study, study herbalism, natural plant medicines, meditation, breathwork, different things like that. And also it gave me this like black and white perspective, that of like the diversity and the spectrum that yes, they almost killed me in this hospital and they also saved my life, right in the same as me. This is what I read like, that is a pretty twisted thing to have, you know, to navigate, to untangle, to understand.
00:23:26:18 - 00:23:48:07
Unknown
You know, you obviously have a consciousness, you know, capacity to handle that. But but a lot of people don't, you know, and so then it turns into some really bizarre reframing and Stockholm syndrome. And, you know, you know, all the stuff that we already know about. Yeah, that's really, really big. I definitely could have gone in that route.
00:23:48:07 - 00:24:09:16
Unknown
And I even remember telling them when I first got hospitalized. Please don't give me any narcotics. I have a history for my spinal surgery with them, and I don't want any. And they also forced me to have narcotics. They said, like, this is way too extreme. You have to have them. But I did try to choose that.
00:24:09:16 - 00:24:37:17
Unknown
And definitely after my healing journey, I didn't take any pain medication for all of that. How long did it take you to? You said you were at the children's hospital for a month. And then. I don't know, I guess I guess I'm kind of asking, like, how long did it take to just kind of feel normal again after such a big physical and spiritual experience?
00:24:37:19 - 00:25:04:20
Unknown
It's been a while, so it's hard to, like, put a time frame. I feel like I've been I've grown lifetimes of a person since then, but, I was in a wheelchair. I was then in crutches, and probably once I started walking again. Yeah, I started to feel a little bit more like I can go out in public and hang out with my friends and stuff like that.
00:25:04:22 - 00:25:32:16
Unknown
But in general, like I, I held a lot of that trauma in my womb unknowingly for years. And it's also like I stored a lot of pain and emotion in my spine. I didn't know that my womb was like related to it because I never really thought of it. I didn't feel pain in my pelvis. I felt all of the pain, like went into my spinal region.
00:25:32:18 - 00:26:05:13
Unknown
But it was when that I started trying to. I went to like a holistic physical therapist, I think, when I was 22. And, she does myofascial release. So like, she breaks up all of the connective tissue in your body and does like structural realignment. And in general, she has like more of a holistic approach. I didn't know any of this until I started having sessions with her, but she would have me work as much as she worked in our session.
00:26:05:13 - 00:26:42:16
Unknown
So she said, like, I'm only doing half the work, you need to do the other half. And that's through breathing practices and releasing emotion. And yeah, in that sense, and through like our sessions together, I could feel like for the first time, energy in my womb, like, if I could describe it, it felt like this energetic bloom, this flowering bloom that rippled from my womb throughout my whole body, into my fingers, fingertips, my toes.
00:26:42:16 - 00:27:13:17
Unknown
And I started to have lots of memories from the car accident come up in those sessions, and she kind of explained to me, it's completely normal and you can store like your body stores, memory and emotion and that sense, it's not just pain, it's also a whole like connected system. And I felt like before that, like I had never had an orgasm or anything like that.
00:27:13:19 - 00:27:48:20
Unknown
I felt more like numbness and sexual intimacy. And that showed me that, like, I can heal myself. And before that, I was more in like victim mentality throughout my life and always felt like I'm in pain and kind of felt like I wanted to source my help through the medical system. Still, like I had gone back years later and tried to get some assistance.
00:27:48:20 - 00:28:14:05
Unknown
I got more imaging done. The pain was getting more intense throughout my life, and some days it would be like unbearable and I would be in tears and I the last time I went to the hospital, they did imaging and I was kind of disrespected by the doctor and he told me, you can have we can like burn your nerves so you don't feel pain or you can be on permanent steroids.
00:28:14:05 - 00:28:42:06
Unknown
And I told them, I'm like, I don't take drugs and I don't take surgeries either anymore. These days. I'm sorry. Those are epic options. I was like, okay, I need to like, heal myself. I didn't really know what that meant. But eventually when I had this physical therapy, it showed me what that meant. And it was it showed me like, oh, I'm not like my story that I believed is not permanent.
00:28:42:07 - 00:29:08:05
Unknown
Like, I can change it. I just needed to be invited. And. So I started after that point to be able to feel in my womb space and sexual intimacy. And it kind of just like opened a doorway for me, a new doorway, like to go even deeper into the path of who I am as a person. And in my journey.
00:29:08:05 - 00:29:37:14
Unknown
And, I started to pray for finding a partner and was really clear in that intention. I wrote down specifically what I'm looking for, and he came in my life and and that point, like once I started to see a father in him and he was encouraging such a mother and me, I for the first time considered to be a mother.
00:29:37:14 - 00:30:03:16
Unknown
And, I brought it up to him and told them, he said, I think that there's a few things that we need to focus on, and that's your nutrition and your physical health. And so I said, okay. And I started to change my diet. I was vegan before, and I started to eat animals and focus on a fat, nutrient dense, wholesome diet.
00:30:03:16 - 00:30:42:17
Unknown
And I start exercising routinely, which I never exercised like before my spinal surgery because of the pain and the fear, really, of hurting myself. And this this really helped me in my back pain is to start exercising and, my skin changed beautifully when I switch my diet. And, I also started to study fertility awareness method to just, like, understand my body more and to later on understand when exactly is the time to consciously conceive.
00:30:42:17 - 00:30:50:05
Unknown
And so I did that for a year. And we.
00:30:50:07 - 00:31:01:11
Unknown
Yeah. How old are you right now? 27. Okay. I'm just kind of like getting a snapshot of how long ago this was. So.
00:31:01:13 - 00:31:04:20
Unknown
What was your.
00:31:04:22 - 00:31:32:04
Unknown
Like? Were you afraid that you wouldn't be able to get pregnant or any of that? Like, I'm just making this up, but I would assume someone suggested that you wouldn't be able to, given you're sure, right? Yeah. Like my the fact that my pelvis had broken, like, shattered. The fact that I have a C-section scar, like a woman that would have had the C-section baby.
00:31:32:04 - 00:32:01:13
Unknown
So they did the same incision to take out the infection. So that was also a part of it. And at some point, I think when I was maybe 15, they did a test. They sent dye into my ovaries to see if sperm would actually pass through, which it did. And so they were like, okay, so you can get pregnant, but it probably 15 I think about it now and it's like, it's creepy.
00:32:01:15 - 00:32:34:03
Unknown
Jean. God. What? Well, I think it was a part of, a lawsuit to see, like, how much damage. Oh, shit. It caused me. Yeah. Got it. Wow. Okay, okay, so we're moving along. You're healthier. So I definitely, my partner and I were like, we think it's responsible to probably go see a doctor, maybe get imaging done and see, like, can I vaginally birth?
00:32:34:03 - 00:32:55:09
Unknown
Because I knew that I would never feel safe in a hospital with such an intimate experience based off of all of the trauma that I had previously. But you were going to go ask a doctor if he thought you could birth. Yeah, it was like it was all in the cards. I was like, oh, I need to figure out the insurance thing.
00:32:55:09 - 00:33:20:01
Unknown
And for me, it just was too technical and civilized to really, like, pursue it. And I'm more of a simple person. And eventually I just started honing in to trust, and I decided I'm not going to go and get any imaging done, and then I'm just going to trust this process. And I talked to my partner about it.
00:33:20:02 - 00:33:46:07
Unknown
He said, okay, we tried to conceive on the point that I was most fertile. My daughter, I feel like she chose. She wanted to be her. She chose her own birthday. So we tried for five moon cycles until it actually happened. And at that point, like, I never thought of the technical side of giving birth or anything until I got pregnant.
00:33:46:07 - 00:34:26:07
Unknown
And I could tell just by the way my body started to change that it had worked that time. And did you my, did you already know about things like a wild pregnancy or free birth or anything like that? No, honestly, like I didn't know anything about birth pregnancy. I actually didn't really have interest in it either. I felt like that was something I would dive into when the time is coming for me, and I didn't really dive into it until I got pregnant.
00:34:26:08 - 00:34:57:08
Unknown
I just knew that I would birth at home because I didn't feel safe in the medical system. And at that point my partner was like, we should start looking for a midwife like. And I was like, okay. So I looked online and I felt I could see just like so obviously, that midwives are medicalized too, on the based off of the websites of the local people I was looking at, and my intuition just kept telling me it's not right.
00:34:57:08 - 00:35:25:02
Unknown
And at some point I tried to sit with myself and tune into my body and envision my birth, and all I could really see and feel was darkness. Fire like the warmth of a fire in our home and being completely alone. Every time I tried to envision the birth, this is what kept coming up to me. And obviously I want my partner to be around.
00:35:25:02 - 00:35:30:20
Unknown
So I consciously added him in the picture and.
00:35:30:22 - 00:35:54:11
Unknown
Like, envision him just protecting the space energetically for us and my partner, at first he was like, I don't know about that. Like, I love you. I want everything to be good for us, save for us and more. With time, I was I just kept like instilling it. I was like, maybe we'll get a midwife. But for now, I haven't found the right person.
00:35:54:16 - 00:36:35:01
Unknown
I said, like, I'm really open to a wise woman that has experience, attending birth. And yeah, that person just wasn't coming. And eventually I found free birth society through Yolanda's post. She I started following her in Covid time and followed her more for like, her German. Sorry, not German new medicine, but terrain theory expressions to the public as opposed to germ theory, and was interested in her as sense in what she shares and could find through social media the free birth society.
00:36:35:01 - 00:36:57:17
Unknown
And that's when I found your course, and I presented it to my partner and said, like, this has all of the emergencies listed here in case something were to happen. We could essentially just do it on our own and we'll know exactly what to do. And he was like, okay, great. Like we immediately bought it and I started taking the course.
00:36:57:17 - 00:37:26:21
Unknown
And I like every module that I watched. It just kept reaffirming my intuition that, like, I know my body, I trust my body and I know what to do. Like at first I thought maybe, I don't know, like what to do, but it turns out you have everything you absolutely need. And so it just kept like reaffirming my intuition and.
00:37:26:23 - 00:37:59:08
Unknown
Yeah, I experienced a lot of fear mongering, a lot of judgment. I was I tried to keep this, this pregnancy and birth private for the most part because I didn't want someone to disrupt my energy. And I already knew the importance of this through my experience with the car accident, where I needed to protect my energy and not have other people's fear of my life determining my fate, for example.
00:37:59:13 - 00:38:33:05
Unknown
And you're already settled out there in California for all of this, and your family's back home in Utah. They're spread out. My dad's in Southern California, and my mom's in Oregon now. Oh, okay. Yeah. So anything else you want to share about your pregnancy before you head into your birth story? Yeah, I felt, the pregnancy. Like, if I can share with anyone, it's it primes you for your birth.
00:38:33:05 - 00:39:06:11
Unknown
And then, like, the birth primes you for being a mother. I always thought that, like, the birth was the climax of the experience, but it's really just the beginning in many ways. And in the first, first trimester, I found my body told me to slow down. It told me, be conscious of what you're eating. I felt a lot of nausea and fatigue, and for me, it was just like so obvious that this is nature's designed to tell us that something big is changing.
00:39:06:13 - 00:39:45:14
Unknown
You need to slow down, be more conscious of what you put in your body. And, and this time I felt like a lot of maybe pain from my not being supported fully as I would want from my family and in general, to not have that like ancestral wisdom, that grandmother medicine of just like fully supporting me and trusting me as much as I trust myself, and the sense of like not having our village in this modern society being really separated impacted me.
00:39:45:14 - 00:39:51:05
Unknown
And also.
00:39:51:06 - 00:40:16:10
Unknown
Yeah, there was things that would come up, like all of my short term memory started to kind of dissipate and my long term memory showed up. I would have memory, childhood memories coming up that I haven't thought of till they since they happened. And I felt like it was all telling me, don't repeat the trauma that you had as a child.
00:40:16:13 - 00:40:42:13
Unknown
Like don't repeat, carry on that ancestral pain. This is like an opportunity for you to make a new story. And I already knew this. It's why I wanted to make to make a better future by raising children in the way that I believed was right. But this was more of like a bodily sensation, just echoing that truth.
00:40:42:17 - 00:40:46:15
Unknown
And.
00:40:46:17 - 00:41:08:03
Unknown
There was a time where I felt like I was sitting out on our deck, and I kind of broke down in tears and, like, cried out to the sky and the trees and just said, like, I don't want to do it alone. And.
00:41:08:05 - 00:41:15:12
Unknown
In this moment.
00:41:15:14 - 00:41:50:05
Unknown
In this moment, a hummingbird came and sat next to me. And it's like, for me, it's my grandma that came and it was just like a message. She said, like, you're never alone. This. In that moment, I realized that all of all of the wisdom of our ancestors still lives within our DNA, and we can tap into our connection with them.
00:41:50:06 - 00:42:28:04
Unknown
It's fully accessible and like we're the tip of the arrow. And from that moment on, I felt like this huge relief off of me. And I never I never went into that place again where I felt alone and could always tap into my ancestors. And like, naturally, I felt connected to every mother, that of all existence animal, human, all of it, you know, like have that wisdom living within you.
00:42:28:06 - 00:42:40:05
Unknown
And should you choose to. Yeah. That way. Yeah. We're only as alone as we decide. It's so true.
00:42:40:07 - 00:42:55:13
Unknown
And that was yeah, a big turning point for me. And the rest of the experience felt like coasting, like honeymoon excitement. And.
00:42:55:14 - 00:43:21:06
Unknown
I had some other intuitions as well. Like I could feel suddenly I was like really attracted to the color pink and like, I could feel her moving in my womb. Even such an early age. I tried to be humble, the whole experience and say like, maybe it's just like bowel movements. But looking back, looking back, it's totally I could feel her.
00:43:21:06 - 00:43:46:08
Unknown
And there was no like. I never once thought to myself, I need to go and get imaging done to see or to find out the sex or anything like that. And having a wild pregnancy. I needed to be creative with other people that are. That's their norm for them and their sense of safety. And like, how early could you feel her?
00:43:46:10 - 00:44:01:03
Unknown
Honestly, like like within like the first month I started to feel. Yeah. I mean, I think that highly intuitive women like yourself or.
00:44:01:05 - 00:44:05:17
Unknown
Able to feel.
00:44:05:19 - 00:44:36:03
Unknown
I don't know if it's if it's movement at that point, like, literally. But I think it it's Chey, you know, like it's it's consciousness. It's it's consciousness. It's there, you know for sure. Like obviously it's there whether we feel it or not. And yeah, I definitely have known women that from the moment, from the spark, from the moment that, you know, it happens, they can feel tingling and vibration.
00:44:36:03 - 00:44:44:09
Unknown
And yeah, I've heard it described all sorts of ways. So I don't think that's. I don't think it's that crazy.
00:44:44:11 - 00:45:09:21
Unknown
It's fun. Also like you spent the last decade, you know, very consciously learning how to feel yourself, right. Just like more than what most people could say. So it doesn't surprise me at all. So then, so yeah, you had to get creative about all the Mughals around you and how to deal with them. And and then the Mughals.
00:45:09:23 - 00:45:38:06
Unknown
Is there a better word for it? I like that too. Yeah. And so and so then what happens? Well, there's so much I could share. So about a week before I had a dream that I birthed my baby, that she was a girl. And I remembered in the dream that it was just very primal. I didn't feel like a lot of emotion in the dream.
00:45:38:06 - 00:46:04:12
Unknown
It was more like intense that I had just given birth. And I, in the dream, walked over to the mirror, holding my baby and my to my breast and birthing my placenta in front of the mirror. And yeah, I felt. And I wrote down her birthday in the dream and it ended up not being her birthday, but everything else was exactly what I experienced.
00:46:04:17 - 00:46:39:21
Unknown
So the day of her birth, I was at my neighbors baking some bread and like this bread ended up nourishing me postpartum. I didn't know, but in the time I felt a lot of pain and I thought, maybe she's just having a growth spurt because I was still 36 weeks and six days and listening to the course, I tried to be really humble and just say, like, I have to like 44 week, 43 weeks, like also it's my first birth.
00:46:39:22 - 00:47:03:08
Unknown
Like, I just, I gave it like the longest shot possible and tried to be humble the whole time. And so I felt some pains. I thought it was just growing pain. My partner just got home in the evening time at this point and we had dinner together. I told them like, I'm feeling some sensations and.
00:47:03:09 - 00:47:34:21
Unknown
He said, well, just let me know if it's like real and I'll start preparing for it. And at some point I was like, it's starting to get more intense. Like, I, I didn't feel this before, so let's start preparing. And I went to the shower because the warm water really helped my back pain. And I came out and my partner had like, cleaned the whole house and set an altar with my pictures of my ancestors and lit candles.
00:47:34:21 - 00:48:00:01
Unknown
And when I walked out, like I felt all the intensities. But I could just take a moment and thank him. I was like, thank you so much. And I felt like this really, like flipped the switch because before I could notice, I was resisting a lot of my sensations. Our house was like day to day uncleanliness and we work from home.
00:48:00:01 - 00:48:22:00
Unknown
So it's like we have many projects going on all over the place and coming out to a clean sanctuary. I could feel like it really started at that point, and time also was very elusive for me, like it felt the time was just flying by and,
00:48:22:02 - 00:48:57:05
Unknown
I could feel like at some point I felt a contraction, what I thought was a contraction. I didn't really know that pain is like considered a contraction. I felt the fetal ejection reflex, and in my mind that was like the first contraction, just being innocent and not really understanding. And you, you thought the fetal ejection reflex was a contraction.
00:48:57:07 - 00:49:23:07
Unknown
Yeah. And so meaning like at the end. Yeah. So all the stuff before that, the like surging of tightening of your uterus. What did you think that was I felt, I felt I like I've been I just started reading Yolanda's book portal. I think I'm on page like 40. But she says that it's not painful. It's excruciating.
00:49:23:07 - 00:49:54:00
Unknown
And I could relate so much with that, but it's like it's beyond pain. What it really reminded me of was the pain that I felt when I shattered my pelvis. And that intensity of an experience. And for me, I like I didn't think it was a contraction. I just thought, I can feel things are changing in my body, starting to prepare for my baby's descent, which in a way it was totally.
00:49:54:01 - 00:50:18:10
Unknown
I mean, that is what it is interesting, I think. Thank goodness that didn't psych you out. No. Like I really thought, oh, it's just beginning now. My partner and I too were like, we have a long journey ahead of us. Those are always the best birth. So yeah, I told him I was like, oh, I just had the first contraction and then I could.
00:50:18:11 - 00:50:48:08
Unknown
I could feel her starting to descend down my womb, my canal. And I told him, like, she's coming. And he said, maybe you want to get in the pool. He's like preparing the pool, filling it like drilling holes in it, putting a blank to like, put a soft blanket. So it's all nice and comfortable for me. And I get to the pool and the water's too hot because we thought it would still be like ours.
00:50:48:09 - 00:51:17:02
Unknown
Yeah. And she. I was like, it's too hot. She's coming. I just leaned on the outside of the pool and she like, with every I could just so vividly like feel her coming down. And when it came to the point of her, like her head emerging, I was in like constant prayer. And I just kept saying, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you body.
00:51:17:04 - 00:52:02:10
Unknown
Thank you baby. Thank you ancestors, thank you, thank you, thank you. And this mantra is what like really brought her out. And I didn't feel pain. And when she was coming out, it felt more like expansion. And the pain really stopped when the fetal ejection reflex started happening. So her actual birth didn't feel painful. It felt more like expansion throughout my body, and my focus the entire time was to breathe deep and to breathe into my womb and just to focus on relaxing, because I felt like my body was doing all of the rest of the work that needed to happen.
00:52:02:12 - 00:52:29:00
Unknown
I also think it's it's probably harder to feel it as pain when you're chanting in gratitude. Yeah, definitely. You know, I just think that, like, kind of changes the vibe in your consciousness a little bit. Also, before the fetal ejection reflex, I was I was singing a mantra of I trust my body, I trust my baby. I trust the great mystery.
00:52:29:00 - 00:52:59:16
Unknown
I trust all of my ancestors. I'm inherently connected to all of the mothers before me and said that constantly throughout all of that, into those intense sensations. And you have to your own, like North Star with those affirmations. Or you can just get you can just float away in the in the yeah, darkness. Pain is really a perspective in so many ways.
00:52:59:16 - 00:53:21:12
Unknown
And someone once said to me, make pain your power. And I never forgot about that because it is a form of energy and we can transmute that energy into something that is like driving us. You can like crumble in your pain, or you can start hiking a mountain and use that as like fuel to get up to the top.
00:53:21:14 - 00:53:47:01
Unknown
I mean, that's the thing as a as a birth witness, the spectrum of how women experience birth, which like fundamentally is the exact same every time, like physically like more or less like the exact same thing is happening. Baby contractions are having a baby is moving down. A baby gets born. You know, the basics are the same for all mammals.
00:53:47:01 - 00:54:22:06
Unknown
And yet the spectrum of experience and perception and sensation and, you know, tolerance. And it's just crazy how big I've seen women, you know, have rolling orgasms. Never one complaint the most like high, blissed out, you know, like they're on a bottle of MDMA, MDMA and then of course, the complete, complete, complete, complete complete. And I mean, in a normal physiological birth, no abuse, no hospitals.
00:54:22:06 - 00:54:54:04
Unknown
I don't mean any of that stuff. Just like a normal, you know, physiological birth just. Yeah, it's just like, wow, that is so how could that not be primarily perspective, spiritual consciousness, choice, you know, all the stuff. And I think that listening. Who doesn't know my last bird story, I'm saying that very humbled in my like suffering of my last birth, just suffering in a hellscape of of a lot of excruciating pain.
00:54:54:06 - 00:55:26:09
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. It's so diverse. It's like snowflakes. Every experience will be different, not the same sames, but I think there are tools that we can implement exactly. Like to have mental fortitude to do things that are hard in modern society. We're so comfortable. We don't do things that are hard. We don't step out of our comfort zone. And to have a practice that challenges you will also support challenging moments and how to process them.
00:55:26:11 - 00:55:50:04
Unknown
Yeah, she just emerged. I told my partner, she's coming, please come. I want you here. And he grabbed her and gave her to me immediately. And we I held her the he like he was like, I need to check. And he looked he was like, it's a girl. We have a daughter. And we had this moment of bliss.
00:55:50:04 - 00:56:17:23
Unknown
She had her first cry and we kind of like started to settle from the intensity of that moment. And we sang her an arrival song and she just, like, opened her eyes and looked at us, looked back and forth at me and her dad so beautifully. It was so much light in her eyes as we sang to her, and it was just so precious and beautiful.
00:56:17:23 - 00:56:44:18
Unknown
And I wish that for every, every being on earth to be experiencing that, to be born into and to invite new life into this world in such a way, would you be willing to share the arrival song? I sent it to your email. So beautiful.
00:56:44:20 - 00:57:12:16
Unknown
Mother, how are we? She's my dad, the girl. I will look at. Her house is dancing her moccasin and ribbon skirt all.
00:57:12:18 - 00:57:19:11
Unknown
Is my double girl.
00:57:19:13 - 00:57:22:15
Unknown
Are we?
00:57:22:17 - 00:57:42:02
Unknown
Look at her. So beautiful. Look how she's dancing. Her moccasin and ribbon skirt. Little will.
00:57:42:04 - 00:57:49:15
Unknown
My partner encouraged me to birth the placenta. Because what we learned.
00:57:49:17 - 00:58:26:09
Unknown
Through the course is that immediate skin to skin can encourage the bleeding to stop and the placenta to come. And our cord was quite short, so I couldn't put her up to my breast. And I kind of just like I didn't push myself. I waited for a contraction and didn't feel anything really happening, so I just stood up kind of intuitively and walked to the mirror and looked at myself in the mirror as I'm holding my baby.
00:58:26:09 - 00:58:47:04
Unknown
And just like I looked at my yoni and kind of just focused on relaxing and some blood started to drip, my partner saw and ran over and put a bowl under. And right in that second, it just like fell out on its own. Like the dream. Yeah, it was just like the dream. And I didn't think of the dream in that time.
00:58:47:08 - 00:58:56:22
Unknown
I was totally fork. And yeah, but once that happened, I was like, oh, I've already experienced this before.
00:58:57:00 - 00:59:45:04
Unknown
Yeah, it was beautiful. And she, my daughter, she has the thing with the number 23. She was born on the 23rd at 23, 23 on the dot. So this is I've tried to talk to some people as well, and they say that, well, someone brought to me that there's 23 gene genes. And I felt like that was symbolic for us because she, both my partner and I had the intention of bringing her to write a new story for our lineage and to remember our ancestral wisdom and to carry those gifts into the future generation.
00:59:45:06 - 00:59:50:03
Unknown
Beautiful.
00:59:50:05 - 01:00:04:05
Unknown
So how would you say, kind of, in closing, that your free birth has changed you?
01:00:04:07 - 01:00:30:08
Unknown
It it definitely confirmed my inner knowing, my inner wisdom. I feel I saw recently someone shared a meme and they said, you don't get a badge for free birthing. And it made me laugh because, like, you can credit yourself, but people might. People aren't really going to look at you like that, or at least like the modern eye.
01:00:30:11 - 01:01:01:22
Unknown
People are starting to wake up to the beauty of it and the brilliance of it, and the really like naturalness of it, that we all came that way. Something huge for me was that it just reconfirmed everything that I felt like I already knew. And to fill a gap in my community, I've seen, like I didn't meet one person that had known anyone that was trying to do what I plan to do.
01:01:01:22 - 01:01:29:17
Unknown
And not just that, but God judged many times for it and was fear mongering for that decision. And I feel like more than anything, it awakened me to want to support other women who maybe have experienced something like me that don't have any support in their life, but that they trust their bodies. And that's really all it comes down to.
01:01:29:18 - 01:01:59:10
Unknown
Or they want to and they're not resourced enough to have that. So for me, I feel like that's my next chapter in life. I inspired me to take the course, and I'm so excited and passionately devoted to it that I'm also signed up for the MMI. And yeah, so excited, so excited. I just want to be a support person for other women and sisters.
01:01:59:10 - 01:02:20:00
Unknown
I'm the oldest sister of four and yeah, I'm like, it's natural to me. Yeah. You're walking the walk. Awesome. Love that. Well thank you so much for your time and your story. Thank you for holding space for me to share.
01:02:20:02 - 01:02:45:11
Unknown
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 platform 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.
01:02:45:11 - 01:03:17:22
Unknown
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 Freiburg Society, Freiburg 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.
01:03:17:23 - 01:03:43:02
Unknown
Our exclusive private vetted membership. The lighthouse is definitely something to check out. If you're looking for a community of wise 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.
01:03:43:03 - 01:04:18:12
Unknown
I'll leave you with our gorgeous free birth society theme song, Wild Woman by Aruba. Read I honor you for the wisdom you held, the ancient traditions of plant medicine and womb magic. I feel the spirit of the ancestors as I place my hands upon my belly. This sacred portal will be honored eons upon light, fields of survival, withstanding the eradication of our power by design.
01:04:18:16 - 01:04:46:21
Unknown
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 redefined from burning our wild women to paralyzing us and dragging 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.
01:04:46:23 - 01:05:11:06
Unknown
We reject your fear. We choose love. Everything with intention. Death. Ascension. I will fly and bring her back from the stars. I just want to say. While the woman. She still lives inside.
01:05:11:08 - 01:05:33:03
Unknown
Wild woman from you I will not hide. They could not find your spirits away. So please teach me your way. I'm ready to learn from you. Why?
01:05:33:05 - 01:05:40:11
Unknown
I still run around the wolves when it's time.
01:05:40:13 - 01:05:47:23
Unknown
I still run, run, run, run. We were all once wild.
01:05:48:01 - 01:05:55:07
Unknown
I still run, run, run with the wolves. When the sky.
01:05:55:09 - 01:06:00:20
Unknown
We all came from. While the woman.
