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 am. 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 check since I've left my rules back home.
Speaker 2
Imagine a world where girls are properly initiated into their first bleed, where mothers and daughters talk freely and openly about their bodies, and where women care for themselves and each other outside outside the lens of medical pathology. We can have this world, but we can't do it without you. Kristin Hauser and Nancy Lucina are bringing the first ever Blood Mysteries School to Freebird Society this winter, a four month journey alchemizing the sacred and the science of the power of the womb. You will learn how to properly initiate and reinitiate women and girls through powerful rights of passage, support the women in your community through cycle issues, womb pain, and hormonal imbalances, and take a deep dive into the spiritual and energetic components of our blood mysteries. If you are a birth keeper, an energy healer, a postpartum worker, an herbalist, this school is for you. And if you're a woman wanting to dive deep into your own healing for you and your lineage, this school is for you. If you are ready to be a part of the generation of women healing the hormonal chaos and womb trauma that runs rampant in our female bodies, head over to blood mysteries school dot com and enroll today. We begin February second. Today, I'm talking with licensed midwife turned radical birth keeper Kimmy Birthjoy Johnson After two traumatic hospital births of her own and nearly four decades of pursuing medical midwifery, Kimmy was faced with the harsh realities of the medical system over and over again and decided to remove herself from it for her sake and the sake of the women that she served. In this episode, we talk about the modern day witch hunt of traditional midwives by the medical industry, what it looks like to serve women in integrity, and how women like Kimmy are reclaiming the word midwife all over the world.
Speaker 3
Alright. Welcome. Welcome.
Speaker 4
It's so good to be here, Emilee. Try try not to over smile, but I just love I I just love your fire. I love it. I love your fire. I I've loved it. And so, I'm always telling people who have who have the slightest idea about what maternity services is actually about. And so what you need to start doing first before you're pregnant is just you need to add yourself to free birthing society free birthing society, and you need to just you need to see all the twin pregnancies and the breech babies falling out of women. You need to see that because it's a reset. It's a reset, a very necessary one. Thank you for doing what you do.
Speaker 3
Thank you for
Speaker 4
You you probably saved lives. You probably saved lives. You've at least saved sanity, marriages, perineums. You know? There's I I'm I'm thinking you've saved lives. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. That should be
Speaker 3
my new tagline.
Speaker 4
I tell you, if you're very, very good if you're very, very good, I'll get you a T shirt that says it. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 5
If you're very good.
Speaker 3
That's funny. Okay. So I heard a little bird told me that you were once an accountant.
Speaker 5
Tell me tell me. Sorry.
Speaker 4
No. Accountant the so head towards accountancy was the my reflex. It's my safety mechanism because I've had a a dreamy, kind of weird, woo woo dream when I was fifteen that I needed to be a midwife. I didn't know what it was, so I I I no. I didn't. So I heard my mum was still mute about her birth, so you can imagine how harmed my mother was. She she still couldn't talk about it. So and so we we didn't know I didn't know what a midwife was or anything. And then so I went and looked it up. I was I was on quite a good trajectory at that time. My, you know, my parents had worked bloody hard and supported me, and I'd got a scholarship for a private school. And so I was having an amazing education and and was one of two black girls in the whole school. Yeah, in London, there's about a thousand girls in this school. There's a girls' school and there's just two black girls. So, so my my parents had worked very hard to give me this education. My dad had a view on me being a doctor. So I looked up what a midwife was, and then I said, Oh, dad, huge, huge gear shift. I'm going to be a midwife instead. He said, no. No. No. You're gonna be a doctor. You're gonna be an obstetrician. So I said, oh, no. No. No. I said, definitely not gonna be that. So I'm gonna be a midwife. So we had a big falling out over it, and I dug my heels in. I know. Because I I he was my first love, so his his voice carried a lot of weight. Right? So, so I said, okay. I won't do what my dad doesn't want me to do, but I'm certainly not gonna be an obstetrician because I know what they're about. I'm gonna be an accountant. So that was my that's so I did. Because you can't I took midwifery very seriously. I take childbirth very seriously, and I knew how enormous it was. So we're in that situation.
Speaker 5
I decide instead to be an accountant because, at that time, I couldn't keep a plant alive. And I
Speaker 4
was accountant because, at that time, I couldn't keep a plant alive, and I wasn't certain that I was really gonna be very safe pair of hands at childbirth. So I went into accountancy instead. Really loved it. And, but the calling kept coming. So, yeah, I go to college, and I start my training with ACCA, which is a financial accounting, higher education. So I'm doing all of that, and I'm running a small team. And it's all going very, very well. I have my baby's absolute systemically racist fiasco. What happened? And but I but we're alive. And at that time, I I kind of knew something wasn't quite right. So for the second pregnancy, I still wasn't quite with it, and I took my laboring body without my husband's, that time my ex husband, because he to me, he assisted them to sabotage my health and that of my son. I was twenty four.
Speaker 5
K.
Speaker 4
I was a very fit, healthy, thirty nine week, twenty four year old, newly married,
Speaker 5
with
Speaker 4
a little basketball bump at the front, growing beautifully, baby. And I skipped into literally skipped into my thirty nine week appointment, and they went, oh, your blood pressure's raised. I think you need to have an induction. Yeah. And I didn't ask a single question. I didn't say how, how does it work, what do I do, whatever. I thought they'd give me a pill, and I'd sneeze and catch a baby. Wow. What I thought. Yeah. And I know. Imagine that. Someone of a calling as a midwife is is that naive. And I went
Speaker 3
But, also, why would you know any different?
Speaker 4
But this is why I would like if I I I would call them colleagues, but I'm no longer a midwife, which you'll hear about later on. So, I I'm just very upset that people with so much power would not be more transparent or would not give the information rather than have it having to be hauled out of you. Because what I've noticed, you kinda tore this information out of them, and they just give you inaccurate information. Now when I say they, I'm just talking about the majority. You know? There's there's gonna be people that say, I'm not all midwives. So, Kemi, how could you say that? There are gonna be the gems. There are the gems within the system, but they're just the minority. It's it's clear. It's clear that they're the minority.
Speaker 3
And it's it's almost it's almost irrelevant because they still not only work for the system and participate in enabling said system, but as the consumer slash mother, we don't know who the gems are.
Speaker 4
We don't know who
Speaker 6
the gems are.
Speaker 3
Everyone acts like they're the fucking unicorns, and then you go and you get abused. So And you really find out that they're not, you get abused.
Speaker 4
So And you really find out that they're not. Yeah. I know. That that's why I use the term wolves in sheep's clothing a lot. It's all very offensive to some people. But Okay.
Speaker 5
Everything I do is offensive to someone. Oh, alright. You're right from here. It is.
Speaker 3
Keep calling. Absolutely. So
Speaker 4
And and that's to me, that's worse. I'd rather you would just straight up, look. I'm a midwife. Look. I I'm I'm my agenda is about my employer. It's not
Speaker 5
about you.
Speaker 3
Women.
Speaker 4
Just say it. Just wear a T shirt, and then I know where I stand when I come in with my big belly, can't see my feet.
Speaker 3
Right. I agree. I've said that a lot, you know, on the show and and and behind closed doors that in many ways, I think that the the lying midwife is more hurtful than the, like, creepy OB because you expect woman to woman care and not support
Speaker 4
That's right.
Speaker 3
Betrayal that's wrapped up That's
Speaker 4
the word. And that's the word I hadn't used until about a year ago when I realized, oh, that's that's actually what we're doing.
Speaker 5
Yes.
Speaker 4
Because at least your guard's up when you go to an obstetrician, if you know anything about the birth world, which I didn't at twenty four and twenty six. At least at twenty six, I had the sense to know, okay, so you think you're going back to a safe place, but at least don't let them touch you. And so they couldn't touch me. And then in the end, I gave birth to my second son with my back pressed against the door to keep out the midwife because she'd let the ring for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're they're not happy birds. They're not they're not the ones that I facilitate or the ones when I say facilitate, I'm I'm Michelle Odont's right. We just gotta not mess it up. So so the birds that I'm present at that I don't fuck up. They you know? It's your
Speaker 3
business card. Not fucking up your business card.
Speaker 4
Put it on my
Speaker 5
business card.
Speaker 4
That's literally all I have to do is just don't fuck it up.
Speaker 5
I know.
Speaker 3
It's not that hard, by the way.
Speaker 5
It's really not that hard.
Speaker 3
I had a student recently ask me, how do I not fuck up births? Like, how do I not do what everyone does? And I was like, it's not hard. It's really hard
Speaker 4
to sit there and shut up. That's what my daughter-in-law told me to do. They put the telephone in in the bed and said, but you're not allowed to speak. It's like, fine. Yeah. And her birth went really well. Okay? She just wanted to know that her mother-in-law was nearby. Yeah? But but that's all it takes. And and this is what I love about your movement because it's it's a big fuck you to the whole of the somebody called it beautiful Yolanda. Did she call it the industrial obstetric complex the other day? Yes. Industrialize it it is because women are just so oh, are juicily powerful, and when left alone, do spectacular things. So if they do invite us to be present because they we seem to hold that feeling of safety for them, The the best we can do to honor them is do nothing. Be quiet. Be in the corner of the room. Be out of the room. You know? We just need to give them what they want, but no more than that.
Speaker 3
And I totally. And I do find that the more for me, the more I've attended births as the authentic midwife, the more I've learned how to trust myself and the more I've learned actually how to trust birth, which is such a overused, like, exploited term, but for me to actually learn the terrain of undisturbed primal wild birth.
Speaker 4
Yep.
Speaker 3
I've actually found in some ways, now that I trust myself, I can do more. And I can say more, and I can touch more, and I can take more initiative. But it Wanda talks about this concept of being being responsible to, not for the woman. You know, being responsible to her. Yeah.
Speaker 5
And because a lot
Speaker 3
of women when they come to me wanting to attend births outside the system, they have this idea that they're not supposed to exist in the room. You know? And it's like, you know what? Until you figure out how to be, maybe you should just play it that way.
Speaker 4
That's right.
Speaker 3
Because if you, like, think you're a doula that needs to do rebozos every five seconds, like, get over yourself, sit in the corner. But once you go through the initiations to actually show up in the room Yeah. Yeah. That's when it gets really fun because you can trust yourself to speak and touch and move and shift the energy in that kind of shamanic way when it's Yeah. And it's not ever when it's not needed. And there's no way to rush learning that. That takes messing up so much.
Speaker 4
Oh god.
Speaker 5
I know.
Speaker 4
Oh my god. It's so painful. When When, like, I was on the register, you know, and a reasonably experienced midwife when I when I cast my own back to the two major props. Major. And so that's why I had to just put my head in my hands because you're so right. And I think we need that humility to do that walk, but that's another reason why I say a lot about I think I think, originally, birthkeeping was always about apprenticeship. And you could kind of learn with somebody who's very, very, very experienced so that at least you're with somebody who can save your fuck ups. So, you know, for the sake of the woman. Yeah. Not for it's not for our sake. We just have to to have the pain, but for the woman and the baby's sake. So I'm really big on this idea of apprenticeship. I'm really big but not apprenticeship for midwifery because I I think midwifery has been is is been messed up. I I can't even call it that anymore. I call myself the birth keeper, and I'm really happy with that term. And it sits well with me. So I think we need to be apprenticing each other with that so that if we do mess up, the the woman and the baby don't have to suffer our mess ups. That there'll be somebody there to rescue the situation, if you get what I mean.
Speaker 3
Of course. Yeah. And then in in spite of or what's the right word? In lieu of having that. Right? Because most women in my field, you know, they want an apprentice an apprenticeship so badly, but it doesn't exist because Yeah. It's only medical midwives and who wants to do that. So we have to become
Speaker 4
I love you.
Speaker 3
Oh, been there, done that. I mean, I did a medical memory free apprenticeship. It was Alright. Awful. I did it for years. Yeah. Anyway
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3
But we have to become the mentors that the next generation of birth keepers get an apprentice with. You know?
Speaker 4
Yeah. That's why.
Speaker 3
I it's kind of the awkward piece of we we have this online midwifery school, which is kind of an oxymoron in some in some respects. We're not bringing women to birth, which, obviously, everyone's aware of that, but we've gotta start somewhere. We have to just get out there and start doing it because we are gonna mentor women eventually. I mean, I I bring women to birth, but I'm just one person. You know? Yeah. We have to be yeah.
Speaker 4
It's an
Speaker 3
awkward time in the revolution.
Speaker 4
It is an awkward time, but I I still feel that we're on time because the attention of the birthing population does seem to be more on birthkeepers, you know, giving birth outside of the system than it ever was before. And and this, sit I I call always call it a situation with a virus is, it's it's one of the silver linings. I think being able to see the subterfuge in that world is enabling people to see that, actually, it's the whole of medicine. It's not just that.
Speaker 3
So I would say it's fairly I feel embarrassed that it had to get this bad
Speaker 5
Yeah.
Speaker 3
For humanity to even try on. You know, like, how bad did we have to have our babies treated in the system? Oh. Okay. You know? It's so painful. And I'm not saying that judgmentally to women.
Speaker 4
No. No. I did it. I I I I did it. I did it. No one does. Right? So, you know, my children can do a necessary harm because of the choices. So there you go.
Speaker 3
But I guess if it's it really does just come down to well, if you don't know your options, you don't have any. And if you traumatize a woman and then put her into survival mode alone with a newborn
Speaker 4
Yep.
Speaker 3
What is she gonna do?
Speaker 4
Yeah. That's right. And then
Speaker 3
she's knocked up two years later, what is she gonna fucking do? She's not really Right. Enough to, like, break that chain. I mean, I in some respects, she could be resourced enough because women are breaking the chain, but it's complicated.
Speaker 4
It is complicated. The the the solution is very simple.
Speaker 3
Right. It's also not complicated. Exactly.
Speaker 4
But it's a complicated situation we're in because we have been groomed to have our power outside of ourselves. And and and, you know, my daughter's my daughter in law's one of her favorite terms that she just coins it beautifully, outsourcing. Mhmm.
Speaker 5
She
Speaker 4
just says, you know, we've been groomed to outsource our health, our love lives, you know, our fertility. So, you know, she she has taken her power back fully, and she started that process, before she became pregnant. Like, it was like, okay. I know what I'm doing. And then when she became pregnant, it was like a huge, oh, I get it. And her mothering, you just go, oh, yeah. I get it. Like, she's the epitome of somebody who takes responsibility. And and and I think we're you know, I I I am now there, but she's done it in half the time. I I think I think we hope. Right? We are evolving. Yeah. Exactly. It's what we hope, isn't it? We are evolving. And, you know, my sons are magnificent. You know, they're it's like you said, my how I my beginnings are part of the story and do and and do explain why I have the the the stance that I do. So I was skipping along, really healthy. They suggested that I should end my pregnancy. I didn't ask a single question. I went home, packed a case, skipped back in, was very excited to meet my baby. Three days later, he was cut out of my abdomen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The real deal. The real induction cascade.
Speaker 3
Right.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Fifty percent. Yeah. Yeah. And then, obviously, I still hadn't learned my lesson enough, so I then went and and had him jabbed with everything on the list of jabs. And in the same year that they were hiding the evidence that DTaP and or MMR, is associated with autism in black boys. So they were hiding that whilst I was injecting my son of the poison. So, you know, I I I personally, for me, like, I saw the I saw the truth straight away. It took me another twenty years to really get back, to get my power back. And so when I'm when I'm suggesting to people to reclaim their power, it's not it's not something that I haven't had to do myself. Yeah. I've I've had to I've had to be healed. You know, I didn't look at my cesarean scarf for ten years. I didn't touch it or look at it.
Speaker 5
Wow.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Speaker 3
With your second baby, did he come out of your vagina?
Speaker 4
Yep. He came out of my vagina, but under those circumstances, remember my back was against the door. I was screaming. He was born, and I passed out. So he still yeah. So, apparently, I hemorrhaged. So I still I still don't I I I I I I have reconciled with my birthing stories. I've now thankfully really gone for the deep work and, you know, understand my mom's story of birthing me, her being born, you know, what where my grandmother was at, you know, going back through the generations. I under I I get it, and I'm I finally have peace. But the reason like, somebody mistook the edge on my on my attitude and my postings and my voice. They mistook it as me still being in pain. I said, no. No. No. No. I've I've had this conversation. I've done my work. I've I've and I'm still the work is still manifesting. My sons absolutely know. They're just so proud of me and what I'm doing and and behind it because they were the result of maternity iatrogenesis. They had to walk back to health as a result of that. So, you know, I'd I'd imagine, you know, I'd I'd, collapsed, apparently, and I'd hemorrhaged. And then when I woke up, they'd already given my newborn child, my second one, ninety mils of formula.
Speaker 0
Wow.
Speaker 4
Ninety mils. Right? So I just I just I just said, well I and I stayed in the hospital because I was very anemic. I was anemic before I had him. I stayed in the hospital, and I said, I'm just gonna stay here in this room. So I commandeered a room. I said, I'm gonna stay here, and me and him are just gonna keep doing this until he breastfeeds. So, of course, he'd had ninety mils of cow juice and then was very resistant to my colostrum because he'd already had the big guns as far as he was concerned. But, anyway, on the third day, he was breastfeeding, and then my milk came in on the fourth day. I was very stressed. It took a while to come in. And, then it came in, and then we were flying. We breastfed for two years. But I'm sorry to bring that in, but I just wanna say the steps to reclaiming our power are small and painful, and we sometimes have to recover between each step, but it's still endlessly worth it. And the reason why I have my voice today isn't because I'm hurt and pissed off and angry. We've resolved that. It's because every single day every single day, women are contacting me who are being treated the same, if not worse, than I was treated thirty years ago. That's why I'm angry. That's why I'm shrill.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's actually insane that everyone isn't talking about this all the time. You know? Because we all get born. You know? This isn't a woman's issue. This isn't a mother's issue. We're all fucking born and almost every baby, mother baby, are being violated. That's right. Like, literally.
Speaker 4
That's right.
Speaker 3
So at what point after let's go with the second one or or even with your first baby. Like, at what point do you start to put the pieces together of what the hell just happened and how abusive it was and and, you know, arguably unnecessary. It is necessary within the system, but as a whole human being, of course, none none of that was necessary. You know, like, what what does it look like in those early years? Is there anyone validating your experience? Are you alone? Are you mothering primarily alone? And, like, at what point do you start to have this awakening to the truth? I mean, I I assume you know it in your bones pretty quickly.
Speaker 4
I I I knew it in my bones. I knew that I descended, like, every single woman until me had given birth vaginally. There wasn't a single cesarean in my entire line of thousands of women. I knew that because otherwise, you I wouldn't have been here. Yeah. My mom was born in Lagos, Nigeria. She's Sierra Leonean, which is another West African country, but she was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Everything was vaginal, vaginal, vaginal. So I had such an amazing amount of shame. I I can't tell you. And and and I if a woman's in front of me and she's feeling ashamed of her caesarean, I wanna shake her because I said, god. Shame? No way. Like, your body was on a on a theater table. You allowed yourself to be cut open for a little for another little human. It's amazing. But for some reason, all I could feel at that time was huge shame. My ex husband at the time didn't wanna talk about it, didn't didn't want me to talk about it Woah. Would laugh at me. Woah. Only because he was immature. Yeah. Just thought it was ridiculous that I should consider that a baby should come out of my vagina just like all the women that I descended from over thousands of years. Yeah. So couldn't get it. Didn't there was no space to talk about it. No one else wanted to talk about it. Oh, at least you've got a healthy baby. You know, if you were to say to a man who, you know, who couldn't have an erection, oh, don't worry about it. That's alright. We'll just hold it up for you. You know, there'd be an outcry. Be an outcry if fifty percent of men couldn't have an erection. Be an outcry. Yeah? But, apparently, we're supposed to just be really quiet, just feeling really grateful. At least you got a healthy baby. You know? Just be quiet and get on with it.
Speaker 3
Did it did it did any part of that like like, how how much did you did you suffer in that in being gaslit by everyone? Like, if you're aware, I'm trying to imagine it. You know? Like, how aware are you? Because I I mean, so many women don't question it, and that's how they survive, which I get. You know? It it it it's harder to question it. It's harder to really feel what was taken. Yeah. Obviously, the other side of that is power, but it's so painful.
Speaker 4
So, so painful.
Speaker 3
So how do you start to yeah.
Speaker 4
Kind of every waking thought, every decision you're gonna make, you second guess because you say, well, couldn't really get a baby out, could you? You know? That's basic. So so because it didn't it didn't occur to me, the sabotage, until it was around until my my eldest child was ten.
Speaker 3
Wow.
Speaker 4
That's that's when I realized yeah. Yeah. It honestly, it took a decade for the penny to drop, and then it took a decade, another decade to talk about it. It's so deep. It's so deep. And it's just it's just endlessly painful. It it killed my marriage. Absolutely killed my marriage, and it took me ages to make eye contact with my newborn. So just, you know, in the short term, I just couldn't look him in his eyes until he's about six weeks old. And I I don't know. It was just, just a huge amount of shame. And especially because I was descended from you know, my heritage is is slavery. Like, my mom my mom was Sierra Leonean, but a tribe called Creole. So Creole, basically. So they were the returned slaves to Africa. So repatriation was offered, and my mom was amongst my mom's ancestors our ancestors were amongst those that chose to go back to Africa. And then my dad is Barbadian. So, basically, my dad's family never left the plantation. So so you you've got you've got that happening knowing all the women in my lineage that we gave birth in a barn with no food, pressed up against other slaves. Yeah. That's that's how they gave birth and then realizing, Emilee, that that was better Right. Than what I choose.
Speaker 3
Totally.
Speaker 4
This is a massive amount of feelings I've had and thoughts, etcetera. So when I see people fight their way in tears to their power now, makes me cry every time. I'm always I'm always crying, but it's a joy cry.
Speaker 5
You. It's okay now.
Speaker 3
Yeah. So ten years to talk about it. So internally, you're working it out, you're questioning it. You're putting the pieces together. When do you start to actively learn about birth and the system and all of that?
Speaker 4
Yeah. Really good question. So it was when my before I even spoke about my own pain and trauma, I knew I needed to work it out by helping other women. So when my eldest was seven, so this is before I started talking about it, I started being a doula. So he's thirty now.
Speaker 3
Okay.
Speaker 4
So, I started being a doula, and it was at night because I needed my income during the day. I was a single parent, and, I needed a full income. And then when I couldn't earn it outside of the home anymore, because I used to miss my boys so badly, just honestly, the pain. So by the time my eldest was five, I had to leave working outside of the home. So I had a little office and was doing accounting for small businesses in the office, small charities, actually. And, and so I could manage my own my own time better. So I started being a doula at night because I knew I could just sleep during the day and stuff, so I'd be around. Most babies wanted to come at night, so it was it was working really well. And then I started to notice a lot of unnecessary happening. So I was giddy about being in the birth room because I felt like I was coming home. Then I started to notice unnecessary things happening to women. Most of the clients I had were black women. They'd be having midwives that wouldn't give them eye contact or look at them or answer their questions properly. You know? And so I said, oh, god. I've got to do something about this. And, and so then, I was I was doing a stint kind of managing a small office of accounts people, like payroll and things like that, and having a whale of a time, really great fun. And then, so I was acting up in that role for my finance manager who'd gone on a long a long spatter for about six weeks somewhere. And so she said, could you wait in the office for me to come back from the airport? So she called me in. She's at the airport. She said, could you wait in the office? I should be there by seven. Then we can just do a quick handover, then you can take tomorrow off. So it's brilliant. So I waited in, and I don't know what happened. I think I had a lot of time to reflect on, yeah, this has been a really great time. I've had a really great time, but the calling was so strong. So by the time she walked into the office, I was hosing tears. Like, she she was going well, she couldn't get me to stop crying. And I said and she goes, what's the matter? What's the matter? And I said, I have to be a midwife.
Speaker 5
She said, well, just go on then. She was like, she's like,
Speaker 4
And so I I did a two month flight working to the end of that contract, and they gave me a wonderful send off, and then I started my midwifery training. And, so I started my midwifery training. And then by the second year, Emilee, I was in hell because I'd done a stint on labor wards and heard all the mutilation and abuse that was happening. It was it was, oh, it was just, it was very triggering for me. And I did look like someone that was unraveling, and so I took a few months out and tried to have counseling, but it's not a counseling issue. I was being vicariously abused, basically. And,
Speaker 3
so many women do this. So many women Yeah. Are abused in the system and then think that their healing path will be to go back into that same system and be different for the women. And, like, that makes it makes sense until you try it. And then you That's what
Speaker 4
you try it.
Speaker 3
Make sense, like, it's such a it's like a it's a well intended unsustainable move.
Speaker 4
I know. And it's And when you put it like that, Emilee, you know, like saying, yeah. That doesn't quite make sense. And
Speaker 3
I get it.
Speaker 4
I totally get it. I get it, but I would still say I I probably knew from before I went on the register that I probably would not be able to stay on it. And I said
Speaker 3
wondering with your birth work, when did you when did you see your birth? Like, when when did you see the induction into c section?
Speaker 4
Oh, yeah. So I I saw that when he was around twenty. So I'd already started. Yeah. I was already on the register, sadly. It's so it's so weird because I I don't know why it took for me I needed to be on the register, become an independent midwife, sit in births unfolding by themselves again and again. That's when the full hit came. But it was okay because I'd already done most of the work, and I'd forgiven myself. And I'd sought forgiveness of my children, And I've been modeling something different, and they were believing something better about women and their ability to birth. Because I gave birth to two sons. You know? It really mattered. I I really wanted to make sure that the citizens that I brought into the world were helpful, not a hindrance.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 4
And I don't know. Yeah. Really. You know, if I'm gonna bring people here, come on. Yeah.
Speaker 5
Let's take it off. Come on.
Speaker 4
I don't wanna add to the problem. Okay? So so they are magnificent men. They are magnificent kings Wow. Without a shadow of doubt. And I and in every respect, even to how they support childbirth, even to what they think of a woman's ability to birth. They are magnificent. And I feel I I I would love to take all the credit, but I'm guessing they've come with that calling as well. I don't know. They're just amazing physiological birth advocates. They do. Their eyebrows fly off their hairline. If their friends say that they're that they're having they're giving birth and it's not at home, their eyebrows literally fly off of their head. And they start pleading with them. They start pleading with them.
Speaker 3
Do both of your sons have children?
Speaker 4
One of them does.
Speaker 3
Okay.
Speaker 4
But the other one, it's like a a
Speaker 5
a done deal. I was on
Speaker 4
the phone when my younger one came into the house, and I said and he was wanting to talk to me. I said, no. I said, Fax is having the baby. And he goes, but you're here. And I said, I know. The baby's coming now. There's nothing I could do. And he said, so they're not going into hospital? Like, he was terrified. I said, no. No, darling. We're at home.
Speaker 3
How old is he, the younger one?
Speaker 4
He's twenty
Speaker 5
eight. Is
Speaker 3
he single?
Speaker 4
Oh oh, no. Sadly not.
Speaker 5
There's a lot of women that are looking for a
Speaker 3
physiological person.
Speaker 4
Sadly not. No. He's he's just something else. So he he's only concerned.
Speaker 5
I know women are thinking
Speaker 3
it right now as they hear you.
Speaker 4
That's alright. There's there's more of them.
Speaker 5
I'm going to get DMs asking about it.
Speaker 4
There's more of them to come. There there are a lot more young men, you know, even if it's just amongst their friends. I'm coming across a lot more young men that are kind of shrugging and saying, why are we putting women on the conveyor belt for them to go to harm?
Speaker 3
Oh, I find I often find men understand some of this stuff. Even, like, with trans ideology
Speaker 4
Yes.
Speaker 3
They they, like, get things like, yeah, duh. Instead of the, like, but we need to make sure everyone never has their feelings hurt. You know, the whole the whole thing we do. Yeah. Okay. So so you become the registered midwife. You're working as an independent midwife, though. So you're doing home birth.
Speaker 4
Yeah. That's right.
Speaker 5
So you're
Speaker 3
just gonna make it through, like, the crazy time of the trainings and the l and d and all of that, and you find a spot for you. Your I
Speaker 4
do.
Speaker 3
Seems sounds pretty good.
Speaker 4
Sounds cushy. That's right. That should be the end of the story. Right?
Speaker 3
Well, I already know that you and I are two kindred of spirits that that would not be the end of the story.
Speaker 4
It'd be fine. Like, happily ever after. Right? No. It's not. Because there's this enmity, I I noticed, between NHS midwives and independent midwives.
Speaker 6
And
Speaker 4
then there's this cockiness, amongst the some of the independent midwives. I know everyone's gonna say, oh, Kemi. But there is. It's there were still times we were very trusted. Yes. You've got gold standard care, but there was still an element of disrespect of the birth process that was in there. But I'll tell you something. Independent midwives, I I don't care what anyone says. I've been there. I've seen it. I've seen who become private midwives, whatever. Independent midwives are the absolute cream of the crop if you're gonna have a registered midwife, if you're gonna have. I've seen them advocate like nothing before. They they are they it you know, like, some people say it's a famous saying, you know, trying to organize independent midwives is like trying to herd cats. And I'm and I'm proud of that, you know? However, their stuff that our registration body, nursing and midwifery council, are cosigning, which is absolutely unforgivable. Did you read that famous statement, that the nursing and midwifery council made about how abominable it is that women should be asked to go into hospitals, wearing masks and have their partners stay outside of the hospital unless they submit to vaginal examinations to get them in. No. You haven't read that statement because it doesn't exist. Okay? The nursing and military council who are supposed to be there for the protection of families and to support midwives don't care what's happened to birth in the last almost two years. They don't care. Okay? The other thing, the gold standard midwives, independent midwives in this country, have had problems with insurance for years. Since we joined the EU or we were part of the EU, there was this directive that said that to and to provide birth care, regardless of whether parents want to write a disclaimer or not, we can't do it without paying some bigwig insurance company who don't give a fuck about birth outcomes for premiums. Okay? The nursing and midwifery council to protect the only real bastion of gold star standard care Didn't say a thing. Don't care. They don't care. So now independent midwives don't exist in the UK anymore unless it's for antepartum or postnatal care when where we shine is the amount of times we prevented transfer, hemorrhage, poor outcomes, assisted twin birth, breech birth, everything in the home.
Speaker 3
So they lost their ability to have insurance coverage?
Speaker 4
Is that what they Yeah. That's right. So and and and the nursing and midwifery council colluded with that whole thing because what they wanted us to do is to shut up, be very good girls, go back into the NHS
Speaker 5
Yeah.
Speaker 4
And follow the NHS employer rules because they're not about the well-being of the woman and the child. That's just them being employers and being assholes.
Speaker 3
So the independent midwives that do exist are just operating outside of insurance?
Speaker 4
No. The you you can't call yourself a midwife if you're on if you're not on the register. You can't stay on the register attending birth as an independent midwife without the insurance.
Speaker 5
Gotcha. There's
Speaker 4
none of the insurance available. So you either have to become a private midwife
Speaker 3
Okay.
Speaker 4
Which is a company that's kind of employing independent midwives, or you have to have, managed to somehow get covered by a hospital. But in which case, they're the ones that are giving you the parameters about who you can look after. So the true authentic midwife that you've that term, which I love as well but I'm not allowed to use the term midwife in this country because I'm not on the register anymore. Took myself off. Authentic midwife, to be that here, you you have to deregister. Mhmm. Totally. Yes.
Speaker 3
I mean, it's like that here too.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. So you totally understand.
Speaker 5
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 4
So so I call myself an independent independent midwife as a joke.
Speaker 3
Totally.
Speaker 4
Or or but I usually call myself a birthkeeper because if I use the term midwife, they'll want to charge me some silly amount of money, and I don't wanna do that.
Speaker 3
Mhmm. So you are years into your midwifery career and are putting all this together? And then do you have tell me about the, like, breaking point where you actually take yourself off the registry.
Speaker 4
The breaking point was I've had three calls in one week, and they were all from people that I'd looked after where someone had called them from the nursing and midwifery council to ask if I'd been their midwife and if I was at the birth. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Because if people, had me as their midwife, they might mention it on Instagram or or a few of them are Googleable, so it might be in the paper or something else. And and if if they were in the papers, they would always refer to my midwife. They wouldn't say my name because I was very up up front with them about the situation. So they were they were wonderful, and yet, like, one of them, I've looked after them for the second time, so they were kind of aware that I might have been their midwife from the first time. And, and they they all received calls.
Speaker 3
And you weren't supposed to be attending because you didn't have insurance. That's right. Exactly. So you were in, like, a weird suspended state kind of.
Speaker 4
I was in a suspended state because I'd I'd when the insurance was vanishing
Speaker 6
Right.
Speaker 4
Because we have, like, a two day period. We thought we'd had it arranged. And then on the twenty eighth of June and and so we thought we'd had it arranged, an alternative. Then on the twenty eighth of June, they told us, oh, yeah. You only have to pay a premium of seven and a half grand per birth, and and you're fine. That's all you had to do. That's all you had to do. And so and then our insurance disappeared, like, two days later. So, I but I'd already been telling them all the throes of it from earlier that year. So when it all came about, it was really easy for them. They said, well, I'd rather give birth in the middle of Piccadilly Circus with pigeons than than go anywhere other than give birth of you. So she said, whatever you do, all of them. They said, whatever you do, just make sure you get to my birth, like, or or I'm free birthing. And that was it. And they didn't want a free birth because they'd chosen a midwife. Mhmm. Okay? So so I said, well, I'm never gonna dump you, so let's see what we can do. And then meanwhile, I was saying, like, how badly do I need this registration? Do I really wanna be associated with the Nursing and Midwifery Council? They're not protecting anyone. They're not protecting midwives. They're certainly not protecting families. They're protecting the NHS, I think. Yeah. So so I in the end, I it was just a no brainer. But it was literally like it was like wrenching that registration out of me. Is it it's I don't know. It it took scary. It took longer than it should have done, Emilee. Come on. What we know. Come on. It it took me months to actually open my computer, complete the form, and press send.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, were you feeling scared?
Speaker 4
No. It wasn't fear. It was I knew it was gonna be a one way trip.
Speaker 3
Uh-huh.
Speaker 4
I knew I'd worked so hard for something, and I I I I hate having to work so hard for something and then literally set fire to it. So that was all. Once I'd done it, it made complete sense. And now
Speaker 5
I'm woo hoo. Yeah.
Speaker 4
I think it's, though, because I I had this term midwife from the age of fifteen, and and so it was, like, almost almost four decades of dreaming about it, working towards it, being it, you know, becoming it, then being it. So it to me, it felt like letting go quite a lot of my identity. But
Speaker 3
don't let them fool you and think that they own that word just because this the country you live in could get up your ass about it, don't ever forget that that is our word. And it has always been and will always be and is in every land. You know? So, yes, I get it. I also don't call myself a midwife a midwife because of where I live. Most of the women I know who are keeping authentic midwifery alive on this planet don't use that word. Wow. And it's something that we're always contending with of, like, do we put that word down? Do we fight for the word? Like, how do we be in this in between space? Because they don't own this fucking word. They think they do and they've obviously quite successfully co opted it in the public eye, but it's a sacred word, you know. And even just like with the word woman, you know, like men are trying to co opt the word woman, but I love that word. And it's a sacred word to me, you know, or mother or whatever. Right? There's so many words that are ours. I mean, we just did an episode around the word witch, and the word witch was always our word. And it meant wise woman just like midwife means in literal translation all over the world. And, yeah, it's been weaponized against us, and it's been you know, it has this whole charge and and a lot of women who are wise women don't use the word witch because of how it's been weaponized. But it's still our word and I think there's something I know it's I know it's complicated because I think you and I are really on very similar journeys. Like, I don't I don't claim that word publicly, but I claim that fucking word. You know? Like, it can't be taken. Even if I put it down and I and I get creative, like, I made up the term radical birth keeper. You know, Denise Cardi Baker obviously created birth keeper, and I added the word radical to it to be like, okay. Well, this could kind of signal what I'm doing because I can't say midwife because people think midwife means I'm gonna finger them and monitor them. So I can't say that.
Speaker 5
You. But that being said, kind
Speaker 3
of where I'm going with this is that we can't forget, even if we put that word down and we say birth keeper and other stuff, what we're doing, our willingness to continue on in authentic midwifery, doing the work of midwifery, and keeping that work alive, we have to remember that this is reclaiming midwifery as it once was and as it will be again. And so they can't have that word. Like, they can in a way. You know what I mean? It's smoke and mirrors, but we also, I feel like, have a duty to keep the word alive in our inner circles with the families we serve because it is our true word for what we're doing.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Okay. You
Speaker 3
know what I'm saying?
Speaker 0
Do you
Speaker 4
know this conversation, if if we only had it for me to hear what you just said
Speaker 3
Totally. Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 4
And I will die with that imprinted in my heart. That's what we are. And I honestly, like you say, we can play the game of them if we want because I just don't like handing over money for nothing. Right?
Speaker 3
Well, in many cases, it's not safe. Like, you you it is illegal in certain states in my country or in Canada. They own the word in this day and time, but also fuck them and no one owns words.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Speaker 3
That's right. Women own this word, you know. So it's it's kind of that holding it in both ways.
Speaker 4
Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And and and we can do that. You know? I've always known that there are shades of gray in life. I've not always wanted to live that truth, but, honestly, it's all gray. And and just what you said to me just now, I'm gonna make sure and pass on to everyone who is walking our walk because I never realized that you and I had so much in common. And it although I've watched and admired your work, I just didn't know we had that much in common. And we need to be this strong and this true for all the people because there were a lot of people that I get contacted by, and I'm sure you're exactly the same, that have our calling and are are in bits. Doesn't they don't know how to express it, where to express it safely, where would they be accepted. You know, if they work in it, what will their income be?
Speaker 3
Right. It's why we started our school, and it's why we call it what we call it. You know, it's an authentic midwifery program that we call the radical birth keeper school because in our whole initial first couple weeks is explaining this whole complex time to be in this work and have the word be co opted, but the work be alive and how to dance in that, but never ever ever forget that us attending births is midwifery. That's right. You know? And that can't be taken even if we're gonna play with it. And, I mean, it's very similar to to, you know, I have many critiques around trans ideology, but, you know, one of them is no. You cannot take my word. You cannot. I will not play this game. It is our word, and we need a word that defines who we are on this planet. And females are women. And I I protect that, right, internally and and in my life. And it's the same it has the same kind of complexity in some ways with midwifery. Yeah. Yolanda and I talk a lot about how there's this paradox where we say midwifery is dead, long live midwifery. Yeah. And that's that's you know, she'll she said it on the podcast that midwifery is dead, and the work of midwifery cannot be killed.
Speaker 4
No. They can't.
Speaker 3
But we are continuing it behind closed doors, some of us in the public eye. And what is midwifery? And and actually and Yolanda articulates this way better than I can, but we would both actually argue that it is not midwifery once you're registered. Once you have the state involved and you have a daddy telling you how to, you know, how to show up for women. Yeah. Get out of here with that. No. It's not. It's great. And we've probably never involved men telling us what to do. Oh my god. Weird and patriarchal and infantilizing. Right? So I love when you're talking about the that you've been on because you have actually become a midwife. By eregistering and by working out where your loyalties lie and figuring out and claiming that your loyalties are actually with the family, you are now a midwife.
Speaker 4
That's the end of the list. And yeah. Thank you. And I am now a midwife. It's so funny that you're saying that because I do feel that that decision, gosh, it's it's it's it's been a while now. But that decision, I do feel like a door was open to me. In fact, I pressed send on my deregistering form, and then I was called thirty minutes later to a birth, which was spectacular. I love it. It was spectacular. And it it was almost it was almost like a screenplay, seriously. You should have seen it. Right? And and I went and I used herbs for the first time with, with a brisk bleed. So I used herbs because before and you can't use herbs unless you're a herbalist. Right? But I'm not on the register anymore.
Speaker 5
Right. So
Speaker 4
so I I took my herbs and and they were used. And so I used herbs. But it was just so it was so funny the way the timing of it all, because then I started to really take deep breaths of freedom, like, and then take a big exhale of the weight and and that toxic energy that goes with trying to kowtow to, if not an employer, to a registration body, then, actually, all you wanna do is sit there and keep the space for a magnificent woman. That's all you wanna do.
Speaker 3
Then you can actually show up Yeah. Completely as a whole as a whole woman in that space.
Speaker 4
And the
Speaker 3
strength is being fragmented like before. I mean, yeah. That's beautiful. It's it really is being an integrity. Right? Like, integrity defined as wholeness.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Right? And I have the very strong opinion that you can't be in integrity and midwifery and be licensed and registered. Because even, like, Yolanda, again, says this better than I, but I'll I'll share her concept that she taught me that, if you're licensed, you have to betray somebody. You're either betraying your licensing body or you're betraying family. Right? And so that's not in integrity. Right. But it's not and if you just take the license out of it and just show up woman to woman, now the the possibility of integrity has arrived. You still have to walk through those gates and choose it every moment.
Speaker 4
Right.
Speaker 3
It's actually not possible if there's a licensing body involved even if you're trying to be that unicorn midwife. Yeah. Because you will have to abandon either your licensing or the woman at some point. Right? At some point.
Speaker 4
Yeah. At some point. It
Speaker 5
is You'll totally
Speaker 3
have birds that hang out in the middle where you don't have to do that. But eventually, you'll have the thirty five week or the forty three week or the I mean, anything. Right? Anything. Yeah. Anything. Yeah.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah. Fortunately, in the UK okay. So, yes, you're right. There's an issue. If you stay at home of a thirty five weeker, you'll probably find yourself answering questions. If you're at home of a forty three weeker in this country, you don't necessarily need to answer any questions. So so I think that's why it's been slightly easier for me to be on the register for longer than I'd have ever expected to with the kind of birthing that I've seen done. And I'd say as well that my colleagues that are independent midwives, I've I've seen them cross all sorts of lives
Speaker 5
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Without a blink. They they will just do it. So you're right. They they I've seen them easily choose to betray the registration Totally. Rather than the woman. And and that's what I always wanna see. So I know there's some people still hanging out on the register
Speaker 5
Mhmm.
Speaker 4
That I know when push comes to shove, they'll choose the woman before their registration. And so and so I I will I know they're they're walking in their authenticity. I I've gone a step further. I I my step suits me because part of being on the register and this will actually highlight what you've just said. Part of being on the register means you can't bring midwifery into dispute. And when you're talking about midwifery and what's bringing it into dispute, you know, women being loaded onto the conveyor belt without a question and with no evidence, apparently, isn't bringing midwifery into dispute. Right. But me me talking about it is. Yeah? So so in a way, you're right. I could never have stayed on the register, you know, and and and definitely now, now that I'm off of it, now I'm everything, all the truth is coming out.
Speaker 3
Yeah. You can't go back.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. If you yeah. Definitely. I wouldn't last long. I wouldn't last long. Occasionally, when I say things now, I I I feel like adding, and just for you all in all of your information, I'm not suicidal. Right? I just feel like saying that sometimes just in case just in case I come up missing because
Speaker 3
Yeah. Totally. That brings it full circle
Speaker 5
to the first part when we weren't recording.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Seriously. Yolanda's done that in some of her videos. Yeah. I feel you, girl. Okay. So how can women find you if they wanna learn from you or work with you or find you on Instagram, tell us.
Speaker 4
Aw. Thank you. On Instagram, it's my playground. At first, it was like, oh, Instagram's Facebook. Forget it. But, no, I'm having so much fun there. And, I'm I'm having such a laugh there. So, you'll find me on Instagram, Kemi Birth Joy Johnson on Instagram. I've got things I've got things being offered. They're on my Linktree. So if you wanna find out how to get more of me, it's on there. This podcast will be listed on there because it's just so fabulous chatting with you, Emilee. And, I will always be available in my DMs. I know some people it can be overwhelming. I think with your following, it would be impossible, Emilee, but I'm just a nice cozy eleven point five k. So and, also, I'm getting my book out.
Speaker 3
When it's out, we could do an Instagram live about it.
Speaker 4
Love to you because you you are the authentic go to place, you and what you've created for people to realize their power. Ultimately, it's amazing. I love it.
Speaker 3
That's awesome.
Speaker 4
Thank you.
Speaker 3
I appreciate your friendship and your presence today, and it was so fun to discover that we had so much in common. Yeah. Alright, girlfriend.
Speaker 4
Alright. Thanks. Take care.
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 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 Freebird Society theme song, Wild Woman by Aruba Red.
Speaker 6
I honor you for the wisdom you held, the ancient traditions of plant medicine and womb magic. 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 survival, withstanding, the eradication of our power by design. I will not allow the separation of our young to be forced upon me. My sisters will no longer birth in captivity. The picket line redefined from burning our wild women to paralyzing us and drugging out babes. 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.
