Speaker 0
Into the wild, I'm going into the wild, I am. It's been a wild freedom child since I left my roots back home. Into the wild, I'm good. Into the wild, I'm here. It's been a while, freedom child, since I left my roots back home.
Speaker 1
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.
Speaker 0
It's been a wild freedom change since I've left my rules back home.
Speaker 2
Imagine dancing under the stars, surrounded by your sisters, barefoot and free, completely immersed in the here and the now. Imagine a place where you can play, laugh, and howl under the big, bright moon. Here, you can let your guard down and come back to the essence of your wild womanhood. If you've never attended a woman only event before, let me tell you, it's pure magic. And so, I am thrilled to announce that the third annual Matriarch Rising Festival will be taking place June twentieth through the twenty fifth in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. The Matriarch Rising Festival is an exclusive women only event that cultivates a sanctuary over ourselves as sovereign and spiritual beings. Beginning with our closely knit and welcoming staff, our core design of community is woven throughout the entire festival. Matriarch Rising Festival is a coming home to ourselves, a safe and playful arena for the wild hearted woman to let her guard down, to find deep kinship, and return return to her daily life renewed. Tickets are officially on sale and they will sell out, so head over to matriarchrising festival dot com for all of the details and to grab your ticket. See you there, my friends. Okay. Today, I am bringing you a very special episode with my dear friend, one of my mentors, elder midwife, Sister Morningstar. Sister Morningstar played a big part in last year's matriarch rising festival on my land this past June, and this conversation was actually recorded for the virtual matriarch rising festival bundle that we offered in the fall of twenty twenty two. In this episode, sister brings us a much needed mother centered perspective on the sacred first moments of a newborn's life. We get into the do's and don'ts of neonatal resuscitation, what is needed to protect the health and well-being of mother baby, and how to get back in touch with our wild, primal nature.
Speaker 3
Okay. Welcome. Welcome, my dear sister Morningstar.
Speaker 4
Emilee, I'm so proud and happy to be with you today. I'm sister Morningstar, and I would like to begin, feeling like we're close and seeing each other even though we're doing this virtually. Yes, please. So imagine yourself standing before me, and I'm going to anoint your heart with some sacred oil that I make on my own holy land. So with your permission, touch your heart and initiate this blessing. You are a sacred living chalice, a womb bearer of life for your people. May you be protected. Beautiful. And so I I think what we want to talk about today is newborn for stress. Is that correct?
Speaker 3
Mhmm. Yeah. So this is going to just be a conversation, a snippet into you sharing some of this important wisdom. I wanna get into helping women understand, especially women who haven't had children yet, understand, what this topic means, what, what we can do to support our babies. And I would love for you to explain, you know, kind of the default medical response as well so that women who aren't familiar have that contrast of understanding. And, yeah, we'll just take an hour here to explore the topic, and then they can also, contact you to do the entire full actual training, which I believe is is a long six hour in-depth training, which, of course, we're not here to do today.
Speaker 4
Yes. So newborn first breath is really almost the equivalent of what medical or modern medicine responses think of as newborn resuscitation. And what's fascinating to me is recently and I I'm a retired active midwife. Having traveled the journey of professionalism and starting out in, apprenticeship and birthing my own babies without any of all of this even existing before. So going through CPR and then neonatal CPR, As it progressed along and went into things like positive pressure ventilation and how do we get our babies going, of course, we don't handle it that way. We're primate, and primate don't handle it that way. So, eventually, I have so many passions, and this has become one of them, mainly because we're really going back in time to recapture how is it that primates at the moment of birth know what to do to help their baby. And by help their babies, I mean, almost really avoid the necessity for what we we might call re resuscitation. So, yes, this is not actual training. We don't have time for that, and it's very the training is interactive, and we would need to be together. So this will be like an overview or an oversight or hopefully an inspiration or stimulation. And sometimes people just need their own instinct stimulated, and then there's just like, I got that. But as women who basically read and write, we can have so much clouding what our instincts would do that we actually make an error. We we go a direction that makes things harder. So I I wanna start with some so just so you know, it's one of my passions. Deep, one of my passions. I have many. And I'll just begin with some main point. Mothers are the very best initiators and resuscitators of their babies. So I believe that's a fact. I'm functioning like that's a fact. I believe that is fact. So if it's a fact, then making sure that we don't interrupt that truth is really the first, not only goal but task of anybody who's around a mother who's having her baby. So if you if the mother succeeded in growing her baby, especially full term to the point of giving birth, then she already has accomplished, you know, real like, a mag a miracle, a magnificent thing, daily miracle. And then there she is at her moment of birth. Our task, if we're honored, privileged, or by accident or disaster or whatever reason to be with her, then knowing that she is the best initiator and resuscitator of her baby means that we wouldn't act like we are. We wouldn't interrupt what her instincts are gonna have her do. Okay. And, again, in the training, it's so fun to a little bit more dialogue about this. Why why would that be true? And the reason is there are five universal maternal behaviors that contribute directly to newborn first breath. So once we understand what we're looking for, if we if we happen to even be there, which she doesn't necessarily need us to be there, but if we we are, it would be nice if we're not hurtful and harmful. Then we can watch for those five universal behaviors and see that they are happening, and they are contributing to the baby then, taking its first breath. Some basics are things like, is it full term? Are they is it a is it a premature situation, or are they just healthy having their baby? We're assuming all of these things are just a normal, birth. Mhmm. No. Normal birth for this mother who is basically an animal. She she is an animal. Plant, animal, or mineral? Yeah. The answer is animal, and we're primates. Millions of years on her side, in her old brain and in her physiology that's going to kick in. Ideally, nobody has bothered her in her labor, so she's deep in that soup of wisdom and intelligence, and it's going to act. So I want to mention those five behaviors that can be observed, you know, by anybody if that happens to be there. The first thing she's gonna do is look. It may be her first baby. I've been with women on their twenty eighth baby, which is always really their first baby because you never birth a baby twice.
Speaker 3
Like, that's where I'm at
Speaker 4
first that.
Speaker 3
Did you just say twenty eight?
Speaker 4
I did. What? I did. Holy guacamole.
Speaker 3
Okay. I've never
Speaker 4
heard that much. Or or twenty first baby or, mini babies or sixth baby. Like like the Mennonites say, when you have your sixth baby, you have half a family. You know? Congratulations. You have half a family. Whatever number baby it is, it's her first baby because you never birthed that baby twice. So it's the first time she's birthing that baby, and she's gonna do the same thing every single time. So I want to go slowly with that because at the moment of birth, there's so much excitement. We are talking about people who might be birth guardians or, you know, that they're watching, protecting the space of the birth or the mother herself. Yeah. That's why I'm going so slow, and I apologize because I know we don't have very much time in this interview together. But it's so exciting, and it's so fun. And it's so wonderful for people to come back with their stories and say, oh my god. I've seen this a thousand times, and I never saw it. But it's there. So she's going to look. If nobody is in her three feet bubble space or halo, I call it, then she's going to look at her baby. She's not going to look at the wallpaper. She's not gonna look at her nails. She's not gonna look anywhere but for her baby. So if she threw her head back in a very, orgasmic, posture spinal posture for for giving birth, then when her head comes forward, she's going to look at the baby. The next thing she's going to do is she's going to vocalize. I'm gonna just say all five of them. She's going to look, vocalize, touch, hold, and mouth, with mouth being a verb, not a noun. So she may do all three of those first ones so simultaneously or not necessarily in that order. She may vocalize first, and there may just be sounds like, or she may say, my baby, or she may say, oh my god, or she may who knows what. But she's going to vocalize, and that vocalization is gonna be directed toward her baby. And she's gonna look for her baby, and she's going to touch her baby. She's going to reach forward, and it all may happen so simultaneously or fast, or it may be in different order, or it may be, one and lots of time passing. She may look if she's the first time mother or if if she's had a lot of cesarean, so it's not her first baby, but it's her first, non medicated or vaginal birth where she was in birth by knife. If she was born by knife, like, all these things make a difference. The narrative is what's important, of course, in any woman's life, especially at birth. So these can take different odor or time, or they can happen all at once. But once she has looked and vocalized and touched, she's going to take hold of her baby. She's gonna wanna bring her baby up to her. She's not gonna grab it by his ankles. She's not gonna hand it over to somebody, and she's not gonna say, oh, please you take my baby. She's going to hold her baby if nobody is bothering her. If nobody is interrupting her old brain and her instinct, and if she's a fierce female tiger, you know, you can't take a a cub from a mother babe bear's arms, you know, like, if she's fierce, then even if you're trying to interrupt her, she won't let you. But she's going to hold her baby and bring her baby close as close as she can get it. If she has a short cord, she'll reach her face. She's trying to get her baby to her face, and she may first just hold her on her chest. Emilee, you're a woman who's birth and you are holy woman right now. Am I being bore boring? Yeah. Am I kidding
Speaker 3
at all? I'm thinking about how the vast majority of women and birth workers will not get the chance to enact, you know, witness or enact this simple primate, you know, steps that you're describing. And you had told me about these steps, you know, back back in the day, maybe five years ago, and similar to what you just shared about women waking up to this, you know, after seeing birth in captivity for so, so long. Once I started attending women without medical providers interrupting this phase, I began to see this. And like you've said, it it always happens. It's just this natural process that's so so integrated and so subtle and so instinctual that you could not notice if you weren't paying attention or looking for it. And, yeah, it's just as beautiful to revisit it and the the difference of a woman in a space where she's allowed to enact her instincts versus, unfortunately, what most women experience on the planet today. It's just so it's so different, and it's making me think about the cost of not getting to do this with your baby is so painful.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Painful and sometimes, the long term effects are just almost irreversible.
Speaker 3
Right.
Speaker 4
So if I'm not boring, then I'll just go a little bit slow still to get
Speaker 3
You're definitely not. I don't think anyone's ever called you boring in your life, sister.
Speaker 4
Okay. Okay. Wonderful. I'm glad to hear it. So when she hold when she holds her baby, and she brings her baby to her face, it it her her her vocalizing is pushing air out of her mouth into her baby's face. So now we're gonna start to get into what is critical. All these steps are critical. She's stimulating her baby. And I don't really wanna get into how how medical people, you know, do what they do. But if you if you do go there, then you can see, oh my gosh. She's doing the things in the way that we would say we have to do them. We've got to draw baby and stimulate baby and dah dah dah dah dah. Okay. So she's got this baby now up close to her face. As as as close as she can, if the cord is sufficient, then she's gonna have it right there in her face, and she's gonna start to mouth the baby. Modern, more more sophisticated women will often kiss their baby. If they're a little bit more primal, and and I've worked all over the world, they'll use their lips in a big way, you know, like a like a primate would. They're gonna open their mouth and and, like, like, more than a kiss if you know the difference I'm talking about. In that exact moment, the baby is not only getting stimulated by tactile you know, the the sensory I can feel if somebody was kissing all over my face right now, And and sound, which is very stimulating. The baby has been in a very muted environment. Sight, sound, touch, all of that has been all of this is brand new brand new to the baby, and it is highly stimulating. And it's more stimulating for it to be the mother than anyone else on the planet. It's not possible. The the high highest trained person has less power behind her her voice than the mother who's who's been the sound that this one baby has been hearing. So in this instantaneous moment and she starts to mouth, then the baby is covered with amnionic fluid. The baby is covered with a little bit of blood. The baby is covered with some mucus, some burnix, some all kinds of things that are rich in hormonal soup, hormonal cocktail, Michelle Odont likes to call it. But it's it's just like gold mine. You know, it's ambrosia from heaven. And she's taking it in, and she's not even thinking about it. Oh, this will help my hemorrhage. Oh, this will help my uterus contract. Oh, this will help me stabilize. And she's not thinking, oh my god. If I don't do this, my baby won't breathe. She's in love. She's she's just a very primal, organic living creature who is on a euphoria and and an, and a high high peak Ferris wheel seeing things from, her point of view, her vantage point that none of the rest of us have. We have we don't have it. It doesn't matter how skilled we are, professional we are, how many thousands of births we've seen. We do not have it. If we've been privileged to be in the presence or be a witness or be around that, then, you know, part of her cocktail is spilling over to us. We get to have little tiny bit of it. It's pitiful little bit, but even it can make us dance for days. You know? We're on a high for days of, like, oh my god. What I just saw and see. So to not interrupt this is is the most important thing that the guardian or anyone around can do. Too interrupted is is cruel and and criminal and and ignorant and just ignorant because we we want the mother and baby to do well. So we have everything on our side for them to do well. So there she is. She's doing something that is helping her baby and helping herself. So I'm gonna go to the next point, which is an impact cord. So the cord is getting the baby some oxygen just like it has been. It nothing has changed. It's still getting its oxygen supply, so it doesn't have to rush to burn its lungs up, you know, and cry, you know, immediately like like it's, lifeline being cut off. So it's very important that the cord is left alone. And the point I wanna make here is it doesn't matter if it's what the modern people are now calling, you know, is no longer pulsing or looks flat. Like, do not touch the cord. Do not the mother is the best resuscitator because she is not going to do these crazy things. She's not gonna say somebody hand me the scissors. Like, she is going to leave the cord alone. And that cord is the baby's lifeline while the physiology and the and the anatomy of these two creatures getting to know each other, having been turned inside out, both of them, that cord, even if it is limp because of who knows why reason, it can be lots of reasons. This teaching is not about that. But, the the placenta is a fetal organ. The baby made that placenta. And so it it is attached to the baby more than it's attached to the mother, and it's attached through the cord. So the cord will reconstitute itself if it needs to, even if it's flat and limp. Just don't cut it because that placenta is rich in blood and oxygen and thousand other things. And as soon as the baby makes the tiniest effort for a breath, for for getting some oxygen, for moving things through its system, of course, it's gonna start to do that cardiovascular, switch over, but it's not immediate, and it doesn't have to be immediate. And so it will then reconstitute a cord, and it's fascinating to watch that happen if for whatever reason the cord, was was compromised by some reason. So I'll just slow down about I'll leave that alone for a moment and just say an intact cord is critical to this process as well. I'm I'm gonna also say that babies are conscious and active participants in their birth and their first breath. So, the baby is responding and and changing. Of of course, we can just we can throw it in a trash can, and it'll probably live, but it's not its ideal beginning. It's meant to be going from, oh my god, am I dead, to, oh my god, this is euphoria. This is heaven. Like, happiness factor is now replacing fear and shock and who knows what all. It's things that are very, like, disorienting and concerning. And within this first look, this first sound, this first touch, this first kiss, the baby is starting to then complete its neurological development, which waits until labor final neurological development waiting until labor and the the few moments after birth to complete its circuit, you know, its cycle. And it's completing it by making millions of dendritic spines and saying, ah, this is life. Life is beautiful. Life is wonderful. I I want to give one tiny so a a last comment with that is just that what's good for the baby is good for the mother. So all of that amniotic fluid that she was getting in her lips and sucking and whatever is now she doesn't even have to wait to eat a piece of the placenta if if she needs that in order to control her blood loss or to contract her her uterus. All of that has started to initiate. It's happening. I want to give one tiny story right there. My daughter, one of my daughters, gave birth to a child, a a she a she cub, and it was challenging birth. It was a very serious shoulder dystocia, and it was challenging. And she got her baby out, of course. Many things have different teaching than this. But the the moment that she got her baby in her arms, you know what I mean? She just, of course, baby get gets free, and she she did all four of the first steps like a hard and fast. Like, you know, grabbed her baby and is covering her baby with kisses and is, you know, touching and holding. And the first words she said were, oh my gracious. That was such a tight fit, wasn't it? Oh, that was so, a tight spot. Well, now you know, my little Sequoia. Now you know for the rest of your life. When you're in a tight spot, you're gonna get out. You're gonna make it. Yeah. That's what's gonna happen. Now you know all your life. You're gonna be okay even if it's a tight spot. So this song just pours out of her mouth. And the baby, she first was, like, mad and scream, and then she just whimpering and having their dialogue. You know, the talking back and forth. She's like, yeah. I know. It was type it. Well, yeah. Now you know this. And and so that is her knowledge. That girl grew up and is a pilot. So we we don't have a right to interrupt what is going to affect not only those first due breath, but possibly the later breath of that child to know what it's capable of.
Speaker 3
Yeah. It's beautiful.
Speaker 4
So I wanna give a a few facts. So right now, fortunately, I've lived past the positive TPV, positive pressure ventilation, errors, and day and damages that were done to babies and continue to be done to babies. And there's more talk about starting off a baby with, room air if if the baby is going to need some o two help. So I just want to give little bit of knowledge about that. So let's let's all wrap our minds around the fact that we're told that room air has about twenty one percent o two in it. About. So we you can tell right away. Oh my god. Wonder how many babies we damaged with one hundred percent oxygen, right, which nobody breathe. And not only do nobody breathe this oxygen level, but, babies in utero, they don't have that level even twenty one percent. So they're not even used to that level of oxygen. But so let's start with room air oxygen twenty one percent. Then expired air or if we breathe out, we have about we'll just say about seventeen percent because it's not exact. And if you're in high altitude, it's different and this and that. Okay. But if we take our breath that we might, like, blow in a baby's face or or, like, we're speaking close to this baby where our expired breath, and then we add the o two coming from a cord, which we can't even measure. Exactly. You know? We can't measure it. Then with that seventeen percent plus the cord, if we don't cut it, which is, of course, the first and automatic thing that happens in a a medical setting. But if we don't cut it, then we have the seventeen percent plus the cord. We're we're we're right on target with what our baby should be getting. And that's assuming that we even need to help it. You know? Because ten percent of babies need help to breathe at birth. Ten percent. And of that ten percent, only one percent actually need serious, serious help. And most of that ten percent are premature babies. So I'm not really gearing this towards that. I'm not talking about preemies.
Speaker 3
The one the one percent that you feel needs serious help, what do you mean do you mean beyond what a mother can instinctually give to her baby?
Speaker 4
That one percent for me is, like, a baby that's highly premature. So, yes, I guess I should say what she can instinctually give if her baby is, like, twenty three weeks.
Speaker 3
Oh, of course.
Speaker 4
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like, a super premature baby or, let's say, a baby with and I I in the teaching, there is a stratagems for, special circumstances. But if the baby has deformities or there's some heart or an anomaly that we can't change, you know, that made it, perfectly fine for womb life, but it can't handle, extra, uterine life. So aside from those things.
Speaker 3
So I just wanna be really clear here because this is so this is so important and and dear to my heart as well, you know, for women to to know and to lean into the possibility of it because so many women that birth at home, this is their fear. Right? Is will my baby be okay? Will my baby be able to breathe? Will I know enough to support my baby? And a lot of women birthing at home have first birthed in the medical paradigm where their babies are, you know, taken from them and and all the stuff that that you and I obviously already know. So can we just slow down there for a moment? Because I I would love for you to just speak a bit more on what you're saying, which is which is, if I'm hearing you correctly, is that outside of very, very, very rare extreme circumstances like a sig like a second trimester baby or, severely deformed baby or, you know, all of these kind of unusual circumstances, a term baby born, you know, physiologically, it is just unheard of that a mother baby won't be able to figure it out in in from what I have witnessed and from what I have learned from the mothers that I've personally known. And I just yeah. I would just love for you to expand on that a little bit more because that's a really powerful confidence boosting, you know, significant thing to talk about.
Speaker 4
Right. So, obviously, I'm not god and no one no one is. I'm not saying that that some rare thing could happen. Like, say, for example, a heart defect that can't even be assessed except after birth. So we're not talking about rare things, but just women having their babies, the baby is in more danger of doing poorly by having interventions than it will do by the mother doing what she does instinctually and the cord staying intact. So I can say that with absolute confidence. The the baby is going to do more poorly. I'm not saying that that a team can't then recover because that's what they're good at, causing problems and then recovering those problems. But and I'm not being super critical. I'm just saying that we don't realize that when we cut the cord, we cut the oxygen line for the baby. And when we interrupt the mother from what she would be doing naturally, we've interrupted nature's safeguard on how that mother and baby are going to do well in those first breaths and those first moments of life. So her safest, bet is doing those two things, doing what she does naturally. And so anything we can do to build her instincts during pregnancy, spending time in nature, walking in creeks barefoot, that her old brain is is functioning, that there's a halo around her of people at least three feet back away from her. Like, that's the that's the safest way. And, you know, so I wanted to mention that recently in the midwifery world, the professional midwifery world, the question was posed around the world. So this is global sisterhood. What are the what are some of the most important things you need to know in order to be a really good midwife? This would be professional midwife. And the the overwhelming response that came back was how to control the damage and also resuscitate a baby. Wow. Okay. Fine. It's true. It's true. Those are really critical. What I'm describing is the safest way to handle both of those things.
Speaker 0
Mhmm.
Speaker 4
Now and and and we could go deeper into it of, like, oh, alright. What if you're watching you happen to be watching or you're the mother and you you're watching and seeing so I wanna go over the baby indicators. Just if we have time, I'll go to the baby indicators. The the baby is going to, change colors, but the baby is going to change color, you know, color up, get more pink, whatever, and it's going to, start to move. It's going to have a pulse. It's it's going to have a heart rate, which is why its color is changing, and it's going to grimace with its face, and it's going to try to grasp with its little pen. So if the mother is, looking and vocalizing and touching and holding and mouthing, and if the baby's color is changing and moving and grimacing, it's going to breathe. The thing that follows is a newborn first breath. These these things that the mother's doing, that the baby's of course, it might just breathe on the perineum, and it might just, like, really go for it. Not on the first time baby because its lungs are being squeezed. But twenty eighth baby, they often breathe because there's nothing. Yeah. That's fun. Those are fun for us to be a part of, but, I I hope I'm impressing upon us all that things should be getting better and not worse. And their best chance for getting better is what I've described. If we're watching it and it's not getting better, then what we do is we do what we're doing more aggressively. We don't cut the cord. Right. Right? Right? And we don't just lay the baby down and go, oh, well, I guess it didn't make it.
Speaker 3
Right.
Speaker 4
We we we there is no primate. The fourth floor is not covered with dead primates laying all around. You know, the the primate gets more aggressive. So I do wanna mention stimulation of the inner ear. So mouthing is a is a normal thing that that a primate will do. Not and not just primates, mammals. If you've gotten to be around dogs and cats and horses and whatever, they're they're gonna lick and kiss their mouth, all over the baby, and they head for the I shouldn't have said head. They go for the orifices. So they'll go for the ear. And if and when they go for the ear, they might even use their tongue. So if you stimulate the inner ear, the ear, then you stimulate the spinal column. Like, that goes straight to the old brain and the spinal column. And if there's any life, if there's any chance of life, it will stimulate the baby will jerk or move or, and and have so many of these stories. You can practice it with your loved one. You know, find somebody or find a stranger, whoever. And if you kiss their inner ear or and get in there, they're going to shiver and shake and jerk and move because you can't hold still. You can't do it. And so the and that's what they'll do. They'll go for the anus and the ears, any orifice, and they're gonna start licking and stimulating and and they're gonna continue to do it a little more aggressively. And that's when you're gonna start to see, oh, okay. It was a slow to start baby because things like water birth, breech birth, shoulder dystocia, which is what happened. I just gave example of that. These babies are a little bit slower. They're naturally slower. And so all these actions, they're slower to take their effect, but they're always gonna go in that direction. And then some babies, for lots of reasons, which can't get into here, they kind of, like, initially start something and then they kinda they and you have to keep, keep at them. They're like, oh, don't, you know, don't act that way. Nobody can do that better than the mother. It's not possible. The only time it's possible is if the mother, for whatever reason, expires or faint or she can't she can't do it. Then it's very valuable to have someone mother the baby just like the mother would do. I'm not talking about cutting the cord and and doing, some modern apparatus. The mother is superior to all of her actions, and she will do them. I've seen women tied down for a an a nice birth, a birth by knife, and they still unless they're put out, their arms will reach, their face turns toward their baby, their mouths start to drip drip fluids. Their eyes are dripping tears. They're they're calling out for their baby. They're still doing the five universal maternal behaviors. I'll just call it that. They're still doing everything even though they can't get to their baby.
Speaker 2
That's interesting.
Speaker 4
Wow. So those indicators, we wanna watch for because they should always be making things get better, not worse. I think your question was, like, mothers who've watched other people handle their baby. And sometimes they'll even say to us, it's a good thing you were here. You know? If you weren't here, you know, your baby wouldn't wouldn't make it or you know? As if you would have no idea what to do for your baby. Now that could be true if the baby has an anomaly or some I don't know. Something. Or if the baby is flatlined, if a very healthy mother if a mother goes into labor as a healthy mother and a healthy baby, then that's what you come out with. Mhmm. You know? It's it's when you go if you go into labor with an unhealthy mother, unhealthy baby, well, that's you still usually come out with healthy ones. Mhmm. But but it's when things start getting intervened with. So if the labor's been drugged, if you scare a mother you know, I I always say fetal, fetal distress becomes fatal distress because you can't stress a stressed baby. You know, if you stress a mother, you stress a baby. And then if you have a stressed baby, the the thing you wanna do is is not stress it further. Like, don't stress a stress situation. And then because it become can become a fatal situation. It's so simple. It is. It's so simple. You know?
Speaker 3
You know, that we gotta break it down in these simple, detailed ways because we have lost touch. So many of us have lost touch with our primate nature, and we don't see normal birth. And so this all feels more heady, I think, for a lot of new women, new mothers, new birth workers than it than it race, have become so domesticated we're such a sedentary, you know, unhealthy, disconnected from nature, human race, that we're not the same as the birthing tiger, we're not the same as the the wild, you know, lion. What do you say to that? Well, it is it is a true fact.
Speaker 4
I mean, obviously, we're more and more tamed and domesticated. And so, but if a female has gotten pregnant, especially the old fashioned way, then there is a very, ancient instinct. And if she grew her baby to term, she's already done a lot of of amazing primal action. She her body has already turned a uterus into a masterful, miracle I I can't call it a machine, but it's it is accomplishing so many physiological functions, and she's doing that while she, you know, waters her plants and makes breakfast. So, get keeping her out of her head at the moment of birth can be that very valuable during pregnancy, prenatal villages, or her walking to the well with being around people that have birthed in power, spending time in nature, spending time in water, visualizing our baby flipping out of her body, pink and wet, pooping outside. Like, anything that will move her margin a little bit further, you know, a little bit more into the wild, like like a deer on the edge of a strip mall because it she's going to either leap into the concrete or she's gonna leap deeper into the woods. If she leaps deeper into the woods, her and her baby are safer. If she leaps onto the concrete, they're in more danger. So she's she does we have we have a responsibility to stay as as natural as we can during pregnancy. And I would even say as as women supporting women, even if I'm at the grocery store getting an avocado, we have a little bit of responsibility toward all the holy women of the world. We don't need to even ask, like, where were you where are you gonna burst? What are you gonna do? We can just say, you know, have fun. You know, we can say something. We can do something that that that shockingly says, oh my god. I hope you both live. Like, what what's a Hades? What's a Hades? What kind of attitude is that towards somebody who can't get out of what they've gotta do? That's like if we were gonna go on a beautiful vacation and someone says, god, I hope you make it back alive. Mhmm. Like, well, I was planning to have fun. You're gonna work harder than you ever worked in your life, and you need all the positive, we need all the positive yeah. So, yes, have we become more tame and domesticated? Absolutely. I love working with indigenous villages where they will bite you. They will bite you and kick. You know, we've lost that. So, yeah, we've become more tame, but we don't but because birth is ruled by a deep intelligence, then the more that we don't bother her, the more she's primal, the more she is going to have all those things kick in for her. Yeah. May she be proactive during her her pregnancy and her labor? You know, Emilee, I have to agree. I I don't know if I'm agreeing with you or I don't know. I'm yeah. Sometimes I write something, I read it later, and I'm like, do I agree with myself? Like, I don't know who I'm agreeing with. But the stories in a birth room, even if they're not spoken. So for example, if the story in the birth room is somebody's in that birth room, but they were born by nice, like the the husband or a or a sister or neighbor or the midwife or whoever, or they were in NICU or they or the stories that are in the DNA, you know, in the room, those things are real factors. That's why narrative is so important. You know? So we we've got to be able to face those and weed them out as best we can. They're they're real factors in that birth room, and they can be overcome. If you know you're at risk for and we you know, many people are. Many people were born by knife themselves or they birthed by knife. Then there's no sense in being rose colored glasses and just go, oh, I'm a primate and I'll just birth. Like, we're now got to undo that story. Yeah. We're at risk for repeating a pattern, repeating a negative story, and we wanna make a different story. What what story do you wanna make? Well Yeah. Surround yourself with that story. Face what the skeletons and the shadows are at night. Dream work is powerful for that. Like, what are you dreaming about? Anyway, that's a whole another prenatal care. You know, prenatal care is what the mother gives herself. A prenatal visit is what somebody else, you know, looks at. But there was with her. Her prenatal care, she's doing every breath, every bite, every step. That's her prenatal care. She's doing all the prenatal care, she's doing herself. Somebody else might be, like, watching it or visiting it or evaluate. But I women are too isolated. We need a village. We need to walk to the well with people. We need, because, yeah, being stranded off, we're we're not we're not made for that. We're social creatures. Yes. We'd like a little privacy when we poop, maybe a little privacy when we get the baby in, whole lot of privacy getting the baby out, like but we don't need to be abandoned.
Speaker 2
So let's Okay.
Speaker 3
Let's go back to this concept of newborn's first breath and and, you know, what's what's on my mind right now is how overly intellectualized, you know, women try to make this. And and a problem that we have is women haven't seen newborn transition, newborns' first breaths, and so we only have, you know, media deep deep seated in our consciousness of of babies coming out. You know, and media are quite well, they're, like, three months old in the media, you know, and they're coming out quite, red and screaming. And that's that's kind of what we're all used to seeing in movies, which is actually quite, I would even say less less than average, you know, not not as common, when babies are born in peace. You know, they come out, like you said, with sometimes quite a slow transition. They certainly can take five to ten minutes. They, don't necessarily breathe right away. They don't necessarily take a big breath or cry right away. And so we're combating this ignorance of not knowing what's normal. And, you know, thankfully, what's so beautiful about a biological experience is as it's unfolding, you know, the women who are brave enough to choose this experience even without all the knowledge under the sun, you know, they they get to see and experience in real time what it's like to be in their instinct and what it's like to allow this to unfold. And it I think it takes a lot of bravery in a world where that is villainized and largely unknown. Right? Like, you actually don't grow up seeing this, most of us, as we become mothers. And so, yeah, I just wanted to talk kinda circle you back to what can we tell the mothers who are brave enough to birth, you know, at home as the authority and and want to open up to their own instincts and and want to give their baby the safest, most, you know, in alignment with the biological design, first breaths support the transition. What else do we want to have them know about to prepare for that time?
Speaker 4
Okay. That's beautiful. I will comment that that those stabilizing first breath, you know, you mentioned five to ten minutes. Time is a interesting thing, but the main thing is the baby would be getting better, not worse.
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 4
So even though it may be slow to do whatever it's doing and and the word allow is interesting. I understand what you meant by using the word allow, but I'll just say that, actually, there's really not much allowing going on except by people watching. Because the mother and the baby, they're not allowing. They are just busy. They are interacting. They are very active participants. They're they're proactively doing something on a continual basis, and that's what's allowing things to, progress in positive way. So I will say with my daughters, they did not watch any human birth. So during their pregnancy, I'm not saying they they haven't been at birth or seen birth videos of this or that, but during their pregnancies, I had them watch, animal birth. And there's a wonderful one in the, Ithaca, zoo. It's a chimpanzee birth. And I had they watched it over and over and over. It's one of my favorites because that those two, chimpanzees, one is actually acting as a midwife, and the other one, she's having the baby. And this baby has to be, quote, its transition is slow. It has to be quote, recessed. You know, it needs help. And the the zoologist, the anthropologist watching, they're very strict about not intervening. So they don't do anything. And you're just watching this primate mother do what she does to get this baby going. And, it's beautiful, beautiful birth, and they watch it over and over and over. What's fascinating is my youngest daughter, and that's the only birth she watched. I always only have them watch animal births. Ideally, not in captivity, but this one in captivity just happened to be excellent because they did not do anything, to intervene. But the amazing thing about that birth was not only did my daughter, Calista, do what that primate did, so that was imprinted in her consciousness, you know, in her mind, in her role playing, her her imprinting. So not only did she do what the mother did, the baby did what this baby did. It was fascinating to watch. It's as if the baby had been watching the the the video or the film as well. But the baby actually moved its mouth and did what this, what these little primates did. So animal birth is one answer I can give. What can we do to help them when they haven't seen it and they haven't been around it? Don't watch human birth. They're they're a mess. I mean, even ones at home and this and that. Watch if you're pregnant. If you're not pregnant, watch whatever you want. But if you're pregnant, watch animal birth. Watch and see what those, giraffes do and the, you know, the mammals, the and and especially primates. Oh, study your dreams. Be in nature. Sit in prenatal villages and and hear the powerful stories of people who birthed the way you want to. Like, if you've been if you've birthed by knife, then hear the stories of the women who birthed their next who birthed by knife and then birthed their baby in power. Fill yourself up with with a new set of knowledge and all of that knowledge and imprinting in your ears and in your eyes and and get in nature yourself and pee outside and, howl at the moon and eat some greens out of your garden or out of the if you know how, out of the wild. Get wild. Like, be wild. Not like, I don't know, not modern wild, instinctual wild. Those those things will actually show up because we can't we can't act We can't be domesticated and then birth like wild creature. We're birthing in captivity.
Speaker 3
Yeah. And I see when, you know, thinking, you know, that they wanna birth at home, they wanna have wild birth, and they, you know, they don't have medical providers, but their their head, their brain, their way of thinking is still so domesticated. And, you know, some of those women will go on to overcomplicate things and get scared and self sabotage their births, and and other women birth will, you know, will happen, and and that will support the needle moving a bit more, back towards, let's call it, a wild a wild way. You
Speaker 4
know, Emilee Emilee, our our narrative, our own narrative is so important. We we almost need someone else to talk to to say what we how how did we first how were we born, and how did we learn about birth? What do we think about birth? How do we not not my our most recent, like, oh, I've decided I wanna do this. Like, what's those early imprints about birth that are in us? And then, here is an example. I got a call in the middle of the night, one night from a CEO in LA, for some big company, and it was gonna be her first birth, and she really wanted a natural birth. She was gonna have a hospital with, fancy midwives and da da da, but she really wanted it natural. Fine. She called and her water had broken. I did not know her. My daughter, lives on the West Coast, and she knew her. And she she called her, and my daughter said, if, if it were me, I'd call my mother. So I don't know what else to tell you. Just try. She'll help she will answer you your call. I did, and we ended up talking for thirteen hours. Her her water had broken, dah dah dah. The end of that story is and, of course, the medical team wanted her to come in, and she she was afraid if she went in that they would put her on this conveyor belt of, like, starting an induction and then this and that and dah dah dah. She really wanted to have this natural birth. But she was not a wild woman at all. Not at all. Not one drop of her. It just was crazy as I worked with her and listened to her. So we we worked with the ideas. I'm like, is blood running down your leg or you know? No. Everything's fine. Okay. Well, then let's get a cup of tea and just talk for a while. Then talk turned into thirteen hours, and she ended up by that time she was not able to talk and pushing her baby out, she had her baby in the hallway of the hospital. Afterwards, I asked her, tell me how tell me what was on your mind. What were you thinking? And she said, you know, sister, I just kept thinking. My grandmother had thirteen children on a farm in Iowa, and and I'm trying to just have one baby. If she could have thirteen babies on a farm at home in Iowa, surely I can have a baby. Okay. That story is what made the difference in her being able to do what she did.
Speaker 3
Yeah. It's so important to have those tethers of birth and power stories.
Speaker 4
So the opposite. If a mother ends up in a very, nonvictorious way and she's devastated And we find out, what were you thinking? Often, what she's thinking is, I was thinking about aunt Elizabeth who died in childbirth, and I was so scared.
Speaker 0
Mhmm.
Speaker 4
And she may not have mentioned that one time in her prenatal time. She may not have ever spoken of it, but it was the thing that was back there. Or, somebody else in the room is like, well, I was, so scared because my mother, hemorrhaged and they and she almost died and I had to do a hysterectomy. Mhmm. So these these things are in the room. They're in the room and they're in the the narrative and they're in the psyche. So we must get very honest with, like, woah. What are my black holes? What are my shadow places? And how can I, be so brave to face those, and what am I gonna do with them? Just like if we, on the physical level, if we break our leg right before we're gonna give birth and our plan was to squat to give birth, only now we've got one leg stretched out, which I've helped a mother. She's like, oh, I so wanted to squat. And so we created a very, very, creative way for her to get into a semi squat position and give her baby, give her her birth this way, but she couldn't squat with both legs. She had broken legs. So, physically, we face the reality, and we must learn to face where have I been pain. What has robbed me of my instinct? Where is my in instinct injury? Because if we don't face it, it will show up in labor and birth. But there is a million years of biology. If we tap into the old brain, I wanna say that it's important to me to say this last thing. A woman in labor and at birth, she perceives any sight or sound that comes into her halo as danger even if it's positive. So if she's pushing or she's, like, at the moment of birth and we somebody reaches over and says, you're so beautiful. You're amazing. You're doing great. Her if she's deep in her old brain, her eyes are gonna widen. She she doesn't have language languages in the forebrain. So she had to go to forebrain to hear that, to try to and she is nine times ninety ninety nine percent times is going to say, is everything okay? Is is everything okay? Is my baby okay? Even though we just said, you're beautiful. You're doing amazing. Any intervention is perceived as danger by the old brain.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 4
So that's why I think so simple. I'll come all the way back to newborn first breath. The safest way that mother can make sure her baby and her are going to, not bleed to death and baby gonna breathe is by her just being instinctual and doing what she would do almost subconsciously. I believe in I believe in her. I know she's doing the the she is the superior person to help her baby with its first breath. Yeah. No one can do better than she can.
Speaker 3
Yeah. And I'm just thinking on not to end this on a downer, but I'm just thinking about how, obviously, this is the complete opposite of how providers and medical midwives and and doulas and everyone are are taught, and it's all you know, it's so it's so misogynistic to reprioritize the leader of the room away from the mother herself. And, you know, that women who mean well are bringing toxic oxygen into these women's homes and are very, very quick to take the baby away and to take over assessment and, you know, for some medical midwives to give oxygen very, very quickly and interrupt the third stage, cut the cord, and just what else?
Speaker 4
Are all the I'll just say those are dangerous moves. Yeah. And many people have been taught those dangerous moves. Mhmm. So for example, even in even in, neonatal resuscitation program, even in those programs, if you are in a disaster situation so if you are being trained to help in a disaster situation, they change that protocol and say don't cut the cord. So I would say if you are a mother and you're planning to birth at home, just consider yourself. There's no surgical suite down the hallway. You know? There's no emergency personnel and people right down the way. So you can say, you know what? I'm I'm out here. Obviously, I can get somewhere if I need to, but I'm out here. So I'm going to handle things in the way that even they are taught to handle it in a disaster situation. And I'm going to leave the court alone, and I'm going to ask for my instincts. I'm gonna do the very best I can from my instinctual place and leave the court alone and that and then I know I am doing the very best for my baby.
Speaker 3
I appreciate you pointing out that, you know, following the lead of the mother, we're never gonna see a mother call for the cord to be cut. And that's such a obvious but kind of interesting, you know, thing to point out because, of course, I've I've never in any setting, I've never seen a woman say, give me the scissors. You know? Maybe hours, hours, hours later, but certainly not in the transitional time. Yeah.
Speaker 4
Right. They're not they're not gonna ask for that or they're not even gonna say, you know, don't we need to cut the cord? Should we need to cut the cord? Please cut the cord. Like, they're not going they're not going to go there. And that's one beautiful indicator of that primal, intelligence. You know, it's not going to it's not going to do the dangerous action that is now going to compromise. Would the baby breathe and live? Most of the time, yes. Because ten percent of bay only babies need need help anyway, and most of those are premature. So we're not even talking about those babies. I might add that even, neonatal resuscitation is only seven to nine percent successful even in the ones that need it. That is a really poor success rate. That's a very for me, for my life, like, if it was my baby, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go with not cutting cord and and doing, nature. I'm gonna I'm gonna on the side of nature because I've got a whole lot more success rate than seventy nine percent. And that's just that heady place when we need to get that kind of stuff out of our head. Because, like I said, in the moment of actually pooping or, making love, if if if we're orgasmic women or giving birth or any of these, highly refined biological functions, we don't need to think about, god, I hope my blood pressure is okay. Mhmm. I I I'm guess I'm wrapping things up too and saying it's exciting to know that, wow, I have an intelligence. I don't just have luck on my side. I don't just have, like, lady luck. Like, I have an intelligence in me that is safeguarding the moment of birth just like it's safeguarding, you know, second semester and I'm growing my baby, and it's safeguarding that moment.
Speaker 3
And what would you say to mothers who are wondering how they need to prepare and if they need to take neonatal resuscitation training in order to have their free births.
Speaker 4
I I would not. I know that this is this is a counter to my own colleagues, and I apologize. But I would say if it's a mother, don't take that. It will scare you. It will put it's imprinting you and imprinting your baby to need something that you that you not only won't remember exactly how to do or whatever, but that you have a higher intelligence, like, imprint yourself with with what I'm describing. Mhmm. You know? Yes. Your baby needs stimulated and needs some, you know, blow in its face or get oxygen in its face or it might. I don't know. But don't don't take these programs that make you try to prepare intellectually for an instinctual experience.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 4
Prepare yourself instinctually to have the best outcome of an instinctual experience.
Speaker 3
Beautiful. Well, it's a nice note to end on.
Speaker 4
May it be so, and I'll just remind I'll just say that blessing again, or maybe we can sing a little song or, the she bear song, which is birth like a she bear. To everyone here that has been with me and been talking about beautiful newborn first breath, I will close with the song. It's a Navajo song, birth like the she bear, and you will and may you not only birth like a she bear, but mother like a she bear. I do not have my drum, but I have my hips. So I will use my hips as my drum. May you be protected.
Speaker 3
Thank you so much, sister Morningstar. I loved having you in connection with me today and to share your wisdom and thank you so so very much.
Speaker 4
Love to you, dear one, and give your baby one extra gift from me.
Speaker 3
Mhmm. I will. Thank you.
Speaker 4
Bless blessed be blessed to everyone.
Speaker 2
And that's it for today, my sisters. Check out everything we do, including one on one and group coaching. Learn about our private membership, in person retreats, and more on free birth society dot com. Our online courses are on free birth society courses dot com, including our flagship course, the complete guide to free birth. Don't miss the radical birth keeper school if you're ready to become the authentic midwife that women are searching for. Together, we rise and the revolution starts inside each of us. I'll leave you with our free birth society theme song, Wild Woman by Aruba Red.
Speaker 5
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 beams of 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 in captivity. The picket line redefined 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 all your poison. We reject your fear. We choose love. Everything with intention, death, ascension. I will fly and bring her back to the star.
