Speaker 0
Welcome to the Free Birth Podcast, a supportive space for people who are learning, exploring, and celebrating their autonomous choices in childbirth. Together, we'll unpack truths, share personal stories, and claim our ability to birth freely and intuitively. Here's your host, host, Emilee Saldaya.
Speaker 1
There are many ways to interact with Free Birth Society. These include our incredible offering, the complete guide to free birth, which is the most comprehensive online course available on how to give birth in your power. We also have a beautiful free birth meditation program called the sovereign birth meditation series, designed to help you release your fears and actualize your dream birth. Our latest course is called Through the Veil, a profoundly personal, radical pregnancy companion program by Yolanda Norris Clark that offers the opportunity to travel with Yolanda as she moves through the last trimester of her most recent pregnancy and invites you into her birth room to witness the birth of her eighth child. And if you're looking for a deeper connection and the opportunity for sisterhood in community with radical, like minded women, the free Birth Society private membership is for you, and you can apply on our website to become a member. We also offer personalized one on one transformational coaching with a focus on learning the tools to move out of victim consciousness and towards self responsibility, skills that translate to freedom, not only in the context of birth and mothering, but in every area of life. And finally, we are offering all of you, our amazing listeners, the free gift of Yolanda's twenty minute birth affirmations audio recording, a gorgeous, soothing meditation that every pregnant mother should have. So just head on over to our website at free birth society dot com, sign up, and Yolanda's affirmations will be sent directly to your inbox.
Speaker 2
Hello, it's Yolanda here, and I'm so excited to tell you about my latest endeavor with free birth society. It's called Through the Veil and it's an invitation for you to join me on the most profoundly intimate experience of my life and yours. The journey of moving through the birth process into the underworld of birth to be reborn as a new mother into a new family once again. Through the Veil is a very raw, very real third trimester, birth, and postpartum week by week program that includes seventeen videos in which I discuss exactly how I prepare for my free birth, including so many of the messy, emotional, logistical, and relational issues that aren't often talked about in the conventional prenatal context. Through the Veil also includes the hour plus long documentary of my eighth baby's birth, an incredibly loving, incredibly vulnerable, gritty, agonizing, naked, and beautiful family birth that I'm so, so proud of. I really look forward to you journeying with me through the veil.
Speaker 1
I am so stoked to be bringing you today the story of an incredible woman, Shilah Ray. Shiloh free births her child in an off the grid yurt on Christmas by candlelight in Southern California. She was also a radical birth keeper for many years serving women outside the system. She's also my new favorite musician, so be sure sure to listen to the end where we share my personal favorite song of hers. Enjoy. Yeah. Let's begin. Take me to wherever you wanna start with that with that marker, with that question of when I ask you where your motherhood journey begins, what's the first part of your life that comes into view?
Speaker 3
That I was raised around children my whole life. My mother owned a daycare and Mhmm. I was just always around babies and, you know, was it was a very, different way that my mom was raising these kids than I think I had envisioned for myself. But it was great that I had the experience, you know, being around so many different kids and, never imagined I'd become a mother so young at twenty.
Speaker 1
Oh.
Speaker 3
You know, I think around eighteen, nineteen, I was like, oh, I'll have kids maybe when I'm thirty three or something, you know. And then, yeah. And then I found myself pregnant at twenty, three weeks after meeting this man and was very in love, but also very naive. So I, you know, immediately when I got pregnant, I I obviously, I had to choose. I had to make a choice of if I wanted to keep this baby or not. And I think something in me felt I felt capable. I felt strength. I felt I felt completely capable of being a mother. I'd had no idea what it looked like to give birth. You know? I didn't know what my body looked like giving birth so that, you know, I wasn't quite there yet, but I just know knowing and caring from my childhood, this experience of, like, babysitting so much and helping with all these children, I think I felt a confidence of, like, I think I'll know how to do this. Yeah. Obviously, my my mind had had opened a lot over the years and, you know, I was living a pretty, like, holistic lifestyle at that point, and I had a very different image in my mind of how I wanted to raise kids. So, I definitely was considering, you know, a more conscious approach, such as a birth out of the hospital, such as, you know, breastfeeding because I was not breastfed as a child. So, you know, I went into it without knowing too too much, but so willing and eager to learn. And I felt that that was gonna be a huge part of my path. Otherwise, why why would I have chosen it, right, at twenty? I could have said, no. Thank you. I'm not ready. But part of me was so ready and, like, kinda hungry for, like, a new direction. So, And you
Speaker 1
had already heard about things like home birth?
Speaker 3
Well, this is this here's where this happened for me. Is that when when I was traveling in British Columbia, in Canada, because I'm originally from Ontario, I'd hitchhiked out there. I lived on this piece of land where there was a woman who had given birth to her child. Just her, the baby, and one other woman who I don't even know was a qualified midwife. So when I heard that she just gave birth to the baby in the bathtub, like, in winter, I was kind of like, wow. You can do that. You know? Totally. Going on nineteen, and I was just like, you know, and that was my first time actually seeing a toddler being breastfed also. And I was like, wow. You can breastfeed a baby that big. It just it blew my mind. Yeah. Totally. I've never seen this in my life even though I had been traveling, was going to all these different hippie gatherings and whatnot. It was like, you know, this was just such a mystery to me. So that opened my mind a lot. And then when I saw these images too of, like, the birthing in the bathtub and looking at the toddler, it was like, wow. I think that's something I could do. You know? Like, I started to consider this. Like, this looks really healthy and whole and natural. Like, something in me, like, just awoke to that and was like, I think I need to have this kind of experience to make my experience, like, really full in this life. You know? Like, I didn't wanna settle for just a mediocre
Speaker 1
Yeah, girl. Really. What? I love Gary.
Speaker 3
I, you know, I live a pretty I was living a pretty wild Right. Static lifestyle. I was like Right.
Speaker 1
You were already, like, questioning the norms and this was just an extension of that.
Speaker 3
Of course. Living outside the box already. So, so what happened is that when I met my partner, and it wasn't very long, like I said, before we got pregnant, he informed me that he had two best friends that were down in Costa Rica who were who had just given birth to a baby down there, you know, and that term unassisted wasn't really being used all that much then. It was just like he said they just had the baby at home with nobody else there that was qualified. And I thought, wow. I wanna talk to her about this. And so we connected. She came back to California from Costa Rica. I guess they split up. She came back. This woman was seventeen years old. This tiny, tiny woman, raw foodist, just the sweetest, most beautiful girl. And yeah. And there were these photos, and she's pushing out this gigantic move at me in the jungle and she's pulling on a rope and she's just, like, so in it. And I thought, wow, this is really raw. And, like, if this woman can push out a baby without any help or support, I absolutely can. So we bonded, and she was so supportive. She was probably my biggest and only real support for this pregnancy because I was new to California. I just moved there on a whim. So, so
Speaker 1
she So your mom wasn't in California?
Speaker 3
No. No. No. My parents have been in Canada. They're still there. My entire family's there. Gotcha. I've been on my own since eighteen. So I, yeah, we we developed a sisterhood really quickly. She kinda coached me through the pregnancy, was, you know, was encouraging me to have have a free bird, have an unassisted birth and was like, you totally got this. I'll support you. I had a little bit of fear going into it. Something in the back of my mind was telling me that I was not a hundred percent prepared. I listened to this voice and in about five and a half, six months pregnant, I, I was referred to a woman in Los Angeles that was a midwife. And so we spoke, we had a consultation. They loved us and they were willing to work with us despite how far along I was. I was maybe even seven months, actually. I just remember I was planning to kinda do it unassisted, and every time you tell people that, they're like Of course. You know, they're so worried. They just can't believe it. They're just like, you want your baby to die? You know?
Speaker 1
I'm like, okay. So rude.
Speaker 3
So I just kinda shrugged a lot of it off. But over time, I was like, you know what? I could be a little bit more educated. I could do more research. I feel like I need a bit more experience, and and something in me just told me to have a midwife. I am so grateful I had her because of how much I learned about being a midwife. Okay? This woman helped train me later, and that's and that's what ties in my two birth stories. Decided to work with me. She's cool. Yeah. And then I had my friend, you know, who was, like, my best friend, my doula, and then I had their assistant, and then there was another woman who was being, like, my doula. So this is six people now. Woah. And we live in a tiny space. Okay? So here I am thinking about where are we gonna place the birthing tub? Yeah. How is this gonna happen? I'm talking tiny space. It was in the meditation room in the basement of a pyramid house that was formerly a Krishna temple in the eighties. And it was just beautiful energy.
Speaker 1
In Topanga?
Speaker 3
This is in Topanga Canyon. And in this tiny room, this is where the two of us lived and we're gonna raise our baby. And then we're like, okay. Well, this is a nice space to, like, give birth. Like, this is cool. But, like, once your baby starts, like, crawling and walking, you don't wanna move. Right?
Speaker 1
Well, I always think that about spaces. Like, hospital rooms are super small. You know, when people say, like, oh, our house is too small for a birth. It's like so you're gonna go to a tiny, tiny room somewhere else.
Speaker 3
Right? Or just be limited to your movement in general. Yeah. So so, so in in preparing for the birth, yes, we had a water tub, and, yes, it was relatively short. I think about six hours of active full labor. Nice. There there's more details to it. Like, you know, I I you know, my water had broken, and I wasn't contracting, so I took herbs. You know, I took blue cohosh, black cohosh. I did acupressure. We did spicy foods. I did all this stuff to stimulate labor, get it going, and sure enough, it did. So I didn't actually give birth, I think, almost two days after my water really broke, but I wasn't in active labor. I would never say I was in thirty hours of labor. It's like, no. My body physically was working for about six hours. And that was a very pleasurable birth. I was so grateful that I had the midwife there, but everyone else could have disappeared and that would have been okay. I think just at some point while I was giving birth, I didn't get in the water till the very end, by the way, too. So my labor was very active. It was very like, you know, I felt it. And then as soon as I got in the water, it was, like, I just melted. Right? Like, my lower body just everything opened, and she came out really quickly, totally perfect. Everything felt great. But I was so grateful that she was there to show me, you know, just teach me about more herbs, you know, and how to, like, really prepare my body and, like, really coach me emotionally, like, the things that truly matter in prenatal care. You know? And and then postpartum was incredible for me to just be able to rest and not have to go anywhere and have my midwife come to the house and take care of me and have my friends be there and take care of me and bring me things and teach me about herbs that are gonna help my body recover and about, like, you know, the fondness and and, you know, massaging my uterus and skin to skin and all this yummy stuff, right, about birth that we're not always really coached on properly. So I was so grateful she was able to show me this, and I, I think that was a beautiful birth. I just realized mid birth that I was totally capable of doing it myself. I think I just I kinda had that realization, though, where it was like, wow. The more people that are here Yeah. The more it's taking me out of my, you know, out of the depth where I can go, like, in the abyss of, like, of birth and just in my process and labor. You know? I just felt like this is me and my baby and God. Like, this is it. You know? This is, like, this line, this channel going right through. So, yeah, I, I had a really positive experience, but there was a feeling of being a little unsatisfied or something that was lingering for a little while. I didn't have any, like, birth trauma. There was no birth trauma to, like, heal or process from, and I was so amped on becoming a doula right after this birth. I was like, I am gonna help women have the kind of birth I just had. Like, there was such a fire ignited in me that right away, I was like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna study. I'm actually gonna, like, be present for birth, and I'm gonna help women. So I attended my first birth at, when my daughter was six months old. It was a hospital birth. Mhmm. And there were friends who turned into clients that I knew in LA. And, you know, it was very humbling for me to be in the hospital setting and watch how they do things, and I was so turned off, right, of just and I was then I was so grateful for my own experience looking at her. Like, wow. If they talk to me like that, I would've just lost it. Yeah. No. I just I don't know how I would handle it. So, you know, fast forward to, you know, five, six, seven births later that I had attended. I was studying with with my midwife at the time, or she was just kinda, like, dragging me along the birth and was like, you wanna learn about birth? Let's go. You know? What she taught me about that I love the most is, placenta encapsulation. I got to, to encapsulate, oh my god, like, hundreds of placentas because she had all these clients. And I even did mini drivers. I did her twin placentas. It was, like, the peak of my career there. Do you
Speaker 1
know whose placentas these are?
Speaker 3
We we had celebrity clientele, you know. Totally.
Speaker 1
It's LA. Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah. So there were, you know, there were some exciting moments, but, you know, when I went on to create a business of that of my own and started my own, you know, I did a doula training and and, just attended birth. That's how I got my my experience. I read all the books. I watched all the DVDs. I went to birth conferences. I yeah. So I went to a lot of these, and I just soaked it up. And I was so passionate about it. Everywhere I went, I couldn't stand just, like, seeing a pregnant woman and not saying something. You know? I was just on this, like, this trip of, like, oh, gotta educate everyone. So what ended up happening is that, I took a little break from being a doula to get more into my music. Right? Because I'm a musician, I write songs, and I was starting to perform. You know, while my daughter was maybe two and a half, three years old is when I really started writing songs and and performing them. And, you know, I was doing really well with that. People were loving it, you know, and they loved that I had this other element to me that was so passionate about birth, and I would integrate this into my music. I would sing about that.
Speaker 1
You're basically Erykah Badu.
Speaker 3
Basically, except by missing one kid. Okay? If I pop out one more baby with a different baby daddy, we are good. Because I have two baby daddies right now, but I need one more. But, yes, I do practice baddoism.
Speaker 1
Nice.
Speaker 3
So I, you know, I I was integrating the birth stuff with the music. I go to festivals and I play, and then I also do a workshop on, like, sacred birth, you know, and people love it. They come out, and we talk about natural birth. I talk about circumcision. I talk about vaccines. I talk about all this stuff, like, these big topics, right, that people either don't know enough about or let's just have, like, a a little, you know, educated conversation, debate round table, whatever. So anything to just get these conversations going because I felt, you know, this is this is some of the most important stuff when we're talking about, like, how we bring people into the world. Right? So I, moved to Ojai a couple years after that, fell in love. And as soon as I got with this man, I could feel the presence of another baby. I already had it in my mind that I was gonna have an unassisted birth. I already knew that I was going to give birth either, like, on my own with with my partner. I didn't know if it was gonna be in nature, if it was gonna be in a home. Like, I didn't know what that looked like. I just knew that this time around, that's something that was important to me. So tell
Speaker 1
tell me a little bit about that that shift of because you had the positive home birth experience with the midwife and then the midwife takes you under her wing and you really get to know her. Can you speak to that? Like, why why you wouldn't have wanted her there versus this, like, call to do it on your own? Or
Speaker 3
Well, I think it was because my original vision of doing it on my own because I felt capable. I feel she was there to specifically teach me certain things about how to be a better birth attendant, how to really show up for women, you know. And I was just an aspiring midwife for a few years. I was like, I wanna go through my training and be a midwife, but it it was just nearly impossible with my circumstances as a Canadian and just with having a young child and not being certain I wanted to even live in LA. There were certain elements. So, I actually I did work with her a little bit. My second pregnancy, I got my blood work with her. We did a little check-in, but I told her, you know, and she she even knew that I was that I wanted an unassisted birth. I expressed that in our first consultation. So she knew that I was out to have, you know, an independent experience. Mhmm. And and she supported that, you know, but she also wanted me she wanted to support me getting, like, formal training, you know, to really know what the risks are and to really be educated about it in case something does go wrong. I I know she was very firm about that with me and, you know, and I was just still a little bit young and rebellious. But by the time my second pregnancy came around, I had just kinda I mellowed out a little bit. You know? I just been to more births, so I just feel like it humbled me. I got to see different circumstances, different outcomes. Sometimes the birth didn't go as planned. And the truth is is what was happening while I was making this transition going from having this home birth into planning this unassisted birth for myself, even though I wasn't pregnant yet, I just had it in my mind. Right? What was happening is that women who wanted unassisted births were finding me. They were finding me and they're like, we heard that you support women to give birth on their own, you know? It's kinda like
Speaker 1
Had you been attending births without midwives?
Speaker 3
Yes. And Nice. I was developing a reputation and then not a good one for quite a while for a few years, even my own midwife. And I will say that my midwife, the doula, was kind of like, why are you telling women it's okay to give birth by themselves? We support you. Your birth was perfect. Like, why would you have anything to complain about? And I'm like, that's not my approach. It's just more
Speaker 1
like Miss it more, you guys. Yeah.
Speaker 3
Well, I think the point was was that they felt I was taking attention away from the importance of women having a midwife. And I was telling them, no. I fully support midwifery. I've wanted to be a midwife. Yeah. But I would like to be more of a spiritual midwife like Janine Parvati Baker, who I feel was the pioneer, who even came out with spiritual midwifery term before Ina May even wrote her book. So she was a woman whose books I read and went, wow. This is how I'm gonna do it. Like, this woman is so highly in tune and so intuitive and knows exactly what she's doing. It was like that to me just felt so aligned and so, well, you know, I just tried to be clear that I was here to support whatever a woman wanted to do.
Speaker 1
Right. No.
Speaker 3
I didn't feel I was capable of continuing supporting women only in the hospitals or birth centers, but I had a lot to offer as a birth attendant, being at home births where there was no midwife. Because, you know, even though I didn't have technical, you know, emergency related tools to be able to handle, you know, medical situations, I was a great support and presence, you know. I was very strong and grounded, and and women appreciated that, you know. But there were moments where I didn't know how to handle certain situations. And it's sad when we need to transport and we need to, you know, go through all this this energy. It's a big energy to go and transfer from home to hospital. You know? I've been at first where it's been either, you know, delayed placenta, placenta wouldn't come out for a really long time, and here I am, like, really trusting. And I'm calling midwives all around the country just like, how how long is the longest you've ever seen? You know? Like, what do you feel like should I tug on it? You know? Just things like that. And thank God they've been there to support, but these are moments where I'm like, wow. I wish I had more training to know, and I don't have to go around asking. So I started to feel the need to step back from birth a little bit because I felt I needed more training before, you know, but I and I'm also liable legally if something were to happen and they mentioned I'm there, and I started to see things come up like that. So I took a step back from birth for a minute, and then, you know, it found me again and again. And I just and every time was just like, do I do this? You know, because I never accepted money either. Never accepted money except there was, like, two times that came up, and that's when I got in trouble, you know. Mhmm. The midwives found out, and they got they called me out. So, and this wasn't until after my my my unassisted birth. So I'll get there. So when I when I was just newly pregnant with my second child, I remember communicating with her with this with the spirit, you know, and being like, okay. Listen. I wanna have the sun assist at birth. Okay? I wanna do this by myself. Like, it's just us. Like, if you don't wanna be here, if you don't wanna go through with that, like, you can leave. You know, I remember just, like, kinda putting it on the table. Like, I'm gonna do this, like, the real, like, mammalian way. If you don't wanna do this, you know, you can do this. Like, it's okay. So I kinda put it out there, and I felt this child's will and was like, no. This is why this baby came to me. Like, the will is already there. I got pregnant really quickly after meeting this man. Also, three months, we were dating. So I went from three weeks to three months of not knowing my partners. So in love and creating a baby, and that's how we got to know each other. And I was just and I just had a will both times of, like, this is how I'm gonna do it. He was all on board. He was super young. He was nineteen years old. I was twenty six, still legally married, and had a child. We, we didn't know where we were gonna give birth. We didn't know what that was gonna look like, but his parents own land here, and we have thought about it. What if we could convince them for us to live on this property? They were not okay with the home birth idea at first. They were just, you know, they didn't know what to do. What is something going wrong? We don't even know if we want you living here. You know? It's a it's a big property, so it wasn't gonna be an issue, but they just they also felt liable. Well, they, at around six months, they they agreed, and we started building a yurt on their property, and that would be my birthing space. So that pregnancy was was a little bit difficult in the beginning, actually, As far as just feeling like I maybe got pregnant too soon, you know, those feelings of guilt came up of, like, wow. I'm older than him. What am I doing? Like, am I just having another baby too soon? Like, is this the right thing? They're judging me. I felt judged by them, like, they don't like me. You know, there was just a lot of my own personal stuff going on, but I was still just so set on, like, building the bond with this baby and just doing it our way. You know, even if we had to, like, move and be somewhere else. Like, I just I still felt this immense, like, trust that everything was gonna be okay. So, yeah, the only prenatal care I had was going to my my midwife for my first birth, getting my blood work. Everything was great. Never had any real severe issues during pregnancy other than, you know, a lot of nausea and vomiting, which went away as soon as we told his parents. Right? I was sick every single day. It was emotional. It was like emotional sickness every day. And I was starting having dreams about it. I was starting having nightmares about telling them. I was like, what is this guilt, this immense guilt about, like, us admitting that we're pregnant, you know, because that just was gonna burst their bubble. Mhmm. Mom was, like, just retiring. It was like, oh, I'm gonna have all this freedom. And we're like, uh-oh. It's gonna be grandma. You know? So we, we just spent, you know, the pregnancy just bonding, and I read a lot. Again, I read a lot more books. We watched all the films. He got self educated. He was very present, very supportive, and then we started building this yurt. And we got it built in maybe, like, a month and a half, moved in only a few weeks before I gave birth. So we did not have a stove even set up, and I was giving birth in December. Oh, dear. Now we're in Southern California, so it's not, you know, it's not as bad as it could be other places. But, but he built us this beautiful bathtub outside that had a fire underneath it. And it was like, oh, that's gonna be my birthing time. This or that. Well, the water didn't even heat up in time. So I, yeah. So I never did any childbirth classes. I never did any tools or techniques or anything like that. I just really surrendered really well in both of my births, I think. Just was so present and so focused. And, you know, I didn't really the prep for me was, like, making sure I'm doing all of my teas and herbs, you know, reading the right stuff, journaling enough, being honest with myself about, like, what I'm actually scared of. Like, I journaled a lot. I had to journal with myself to talk myself through it. Right? Like, what are you actually afraid of? What's coming up this birth versus the last one? You know? Like, am I really you know, what are the possible outcomes that really scare me, about doing it by myself? And so I think journaling really helped me, and he helped me just like we got to talk together, and he got to just say, like, well, if this happens, let's do this. So what we did do is that we obviously had a a car ready. We were, you know, maybe thirty minutes away from a hospital, so I wasn't really worried about that. And we did invite his closest friend and my best friend to both be on the land, and he was tending fire and she was in our outdoor kitchen, so in separate spaces outside of our birthing space. So we did have two other attendants people on the property, but not in the space with us. So what ended up happening was that it was christmas and we were at a beautiful christmas party and everyone was being so loving and so just, you know, warm and welcoming. Like, we love you, baby. Like, we're so ready for you. And so and and I'm getting all this love, and everybody's rubbing my belly, and I'm just feeling starting to feel a little tripped out. Right? Like, I'm starting to feel this, like Mhmm. Like, feeling that we talk about in spiritual midwifery. This, like, woah. Like, I'm feeling really light headed and really warm and fuzzy, and I could feel the beginning of labor starting. And then by the time we got in the car to leave the party, I felt my first contraction. It was like, oh, there it is. I was like, all that love and welcoming. Like, baby felt that. That was real. And so we put on some soothing music, and here I go. I'm I'm feeling them. I'm like, wow. They're coming on strong and fast. It was a fifteen minute car ride, but the whole way, I was like, okay. They haven't stopped. We get home, and I'm like, let's prepare. He starts the he starts the bathtub. You know, he lights the fire under the bathtub outside. I get into warm stuff. I we have a little tiny space heater because we don't even have the stove set up. Right? I change. I get into, like, some warm stuff, and I'm like, I'm gonna go to the bathroom because I we need to sleep. Like, if my labor is starting, I need to rest right now. You know? I go to the we have a compost toilet outside, and all of a sudden, I feel this, like, big glob come out. And I shine the light, and I can see that it's the, mucus plug. And I'm like, oh, shit. Here we go. Okay. Well, I better really sleep. Like, this is happening. I lay down in bed, and I just feel all this warm water just in the bed, and I'm like, fuck. And it's cold. Right? And I'm just like, god dang it. So I get out
Speaker 1
of bed. And are you are you off grid down in the yurt? Yes. So you're on a generator with the with the space heater?
Speaker 3
No. We have we have, we have electricity coming from another part of the property. Okay. But there are solar panels on the property. We do not have computer. We do not have we have one working cell phone, you know, but no smartphone. This was Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This was, you know, a little bit more drastic. So Yeah. Totally. Yeah. But without the the heat oh, and we have no no. We have no lights in the yurt.
Speaker 1
That's what I was wondering.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Candles. We had candles. So we lit the two candles, and we have the space heater, and I think that's it. I think that's all we kinda had going on. So so I get out of bed, and at this point, it's maybe one in the morning. We probably left the party at eleven. Yeah. It's probably, like, twelve thirty. Twelve thirty one. And then I labor for I don't even I can't even tell how long it is, but it's fast. Okay? These contractions or rushes are coming on so quickly and so hard, much harder than my first. And I thought, what is this? And it was like, something came to me and it was like, your body already knows what to do. So it's doing it. It'll it's acclimating a lot faster. And I just thought, okay. Just surrender to it. I'm taking homeopathics to try to stop it. Right. It's like, slow this down. He's like, remedy what he's trying to, like, fiddle in the dark looking for the different homeopathics. I'm like, whatever it is.
Speaker 1
We're basically either, like, make it go faster or slow
Speaker 3
it down. To get it over with or right? So he's he's fiddling, looking for the any remedies that help slow down labor or bring more mild contractions. So he's giving me these. I don't feel a difference. All I'm doing is drinking coconut water. There's a bowl. I'm, like, pooping in the bowl. He's, like, cleaning up after me. And I feel myself get to, transition where I just, like, throw up a little bit, and I just feel my body go through it. And I'm like, wow. Here she comes. And he's just like, here she comes. You know? Well, we didn't say that because we didn't know it was a girl yet. So it was just like, here's the baby. Baby's coming. So this is at two o'clock in the morning. So labor started around eleven, so we've got a three hour labor there. And it it felt so quickly to me. But, you know, when you're you're in labor and you're just in it, you have no concept of time. So I'm I'm not even aware it's been three hours, but I can just tell. I can feel the difference of, like, woah. This baby has a strong will and is coming fast. So, yeah, we we what do I was just, like, covered with, with, like, this cashmere robe. I'm on all fours, and I'm on the yurt floor, and I'm on, like, a little sheepskin rug. And we just have the bowl there. He cleaned it out after I pooped, and we were gonna use that for the placenta. And then I, yeah, gave birth on all fours. He caught her, like, right before she hit the floor pretty much. I dropped some blood too on the floor. Like, the stain was there for a really long time.
Speaker 1
Aw.
Speaker 3
Sweet. Right? We'd always Love that.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
But That's sweet. So we, yeah. So that happened. And then when her first little cry came, it's like our two friends who were outside, they could just feel that. Right? Aw. They just knew. You know? Yeah. Just hear the little the little cry and then,
Speaker 1
So were the friends at the Christmas party? How did they got there so fast?
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. My girlfriend was the one hosting the party.
Speaker 1
Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 3
So she knew and I was when I was leaving, I was like, just so you know
Speaker 1
Yeah. Feeling it right now. I just got all juiced up on oxytocin and this baby might come.
Speaker 3
Yeah. So she was like, I'm here. You just tell me. And then she checked in with me when I was at the year and was like, how's it feeling? I was like, I think it's happening. So if you could, like, come down here. And she was making teas in the kitchen. She was cleaning up. She was making food, like sweet potatoes and soup and all this. And then his and then his, friend was out just holding space, tending a he made a beautiful fire outside and was just praying and was just holding space. So it was beautiful to have that male, female presence there, you know, just both outside. And and, yeah, and then after that, I think I just got into bed and just rested a lot, and she just brought me yummy things. And by the next day, we had just a couple visitors bring us nice things, and my healing was very was very smooth both times, actually. I think I tore a little bit my first birth, and funny enough, she was a smaller baby. And then my second birth, you know, outside of the water, bigger baby, didn't even tear. Something I'll say is I think it had to do with, you know, because the the our yoni, our vagina is like this opening. It's and it and it has the ability to open and close based on how we feel emotionally, especially when we're feeling really loved, when we're feeling scared, when we're feeling trauma, when we're feeling PTSD, you know, whatever it is. And I did not have as much of a loving, sacred sexual relationship with my first partner. Mhmm. And it took me six months to even wanna, you know, make love after the birth. Ten days after I gave birth to my second daughter, we were making love just because it was like the love was juicy, and I was just so in my power. I was so happy and, like, that I did it. It was just like that feeling of like, wow. I did this. I knew I would. Like, I just it just satisfied this place in me, you know, feeling like I finally did it. Like, I can walk my talk now, you know, because I believe so much in the power of undisturbed birth. I had to experience it for myself Yeah. To know that I could be an an inspiration to other women to know, hey. You can have this kind of experience too. You know? So that was really important to me to know that I had gone through that rite of passage myself before I could really support and encourage other women. Meant a lot to me. So, so, yeah, healing was great. We named her Munaya. And yeah. And, you know, she just turned eight. It's so it's so true. My oldest is thirteen. Her name is Ama. And, yeah, and she was born in the pyramid house in water, midwife, second birth, Munaya, in the year, unassisted, free birth, primal.
Speaker 1
Hell, yeah. And do you still attend birth?
Speaker 3
I haven't attended a birth probably in two and a half years. And the last birth I attended was not intended to be a birth I was going to be at. It was just a woman in our town who was not sure what she was gonna do, you know? And and I felt a little I felt compassion. I felt a little sorry for her that she didn't have a partner, and she didn't know what she was gonna do, and finally got herself in this little house. And I just remember she was, like, I just feel like I need you at the birth, and I thought, okay. I'm putting myself in a liable position again if I show up, but okay. And then one day, she tells a friend of ours, oh, I think I'm in labor. She'd already said that three times.
Speaker 1
So we
Speaker 3
were like, okay. Can I go over? And she's really in labor, and the baby comes out ten minutes after I get there. So I caught that baby, and that was the last birth I'd been to. I thought, I'm this is I'm just gonna end on a good note here. I'm gonna catch this baby, help her postpartum, and then just be done for a little while. But, yeah, that was the last one. I think because a couple births before that, it was a friend of mine's birth, and she had a total free birth outside. I'm happy to forward her contact to you if you want. Outside, outdoor birth way up in this canyon here in Ojai and, needed to be transferred the day after for a blood transfusion. And she would yeah. So there was some there were some but there were red flags also, you know, that she was anemic. Things that she could have done a little bit better, and I think that's what's important about our experience is that if we look at it and we didn't have the outcome that we hoped for or things didn't go as planned, you know, if we just look at, like, how we could have taken better steps, you know, to either plan or prepare things that we would now educate young women or women who who don't know, you know, to say, hey, that was my experience and this I would really recommend. Like, she did not get her blood work done, and that's something I always recommend to women, especially if they're planning for an unassisted birth. I say you have to be your own midwife then. When you're planning for a free birth, you know, you you're stepping in as your own midwife and you gotta look to yourself for what to do. You know? So what what is this how you would tell another woman, you know, that had to go about her birth if you were in that position? So I just tried to make all the right steps to, you know, educate her and say, you know, get your blood work done. It'll tell you a lot about it. She never did it. She was anemic, lost a lot of blood, needed the transfusion. Fast forward, yeah, I got I got a bad reputation for that birth too. Mhmm. Because I was the only one there that was actually very experienced with birth. And even I didn't know what to do. It was like, I don't know what is wrong. Like, I I cannot tell what is wrong and why she's, like, why this is going or why the baby has this cough. Like, I couldn't that's not my job. And then so I realized, like, that's I could be better as a birth coach. I love educating women, telling them about my birth stories, you know, directing them to the to the right books and films and and and teachers and workshops or whatnot. But actually going and attending births even though it's so beautiful and I love being part of the experience, I don't think I need to keep doing that, you know, as part of my life's work. I would rather just get the training and just be a midwife and but I have my stuff about that too. You know? If there was a way for me to not have to go and get the credentials just to be able to, like, work with women in in in a legal good way, you know, then I would do that. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1
just the imagery of it being Christmas night with the candles and the spa heater and the sheepskin and just the rawness and I feel like I could totally see it. Mhmm. And of course the bathtub never got.
Speaker 3
No. It was like nothing in me wanted to get up in that Totally. Because it was so fast, you know. Mhmm. Nothing in me wanted to just get up and go get in water. It was like, I was doing just fine. I was like, fine, you know. And if it
Speaker 1
The floor was your friend.
Speaker 3
Yeah. I could've slowed down labor as it does sometimes, you know. I just nothing in me wanna do that. It was an earth birth. Right?
Speaker 1
I had
Speaker 3
one birth, and I was having an earth birth. And funny enough, my my vision after this birth was like, okay. You know? It was so remember, like, my brain after the first birth was like, I need to support women during birth to make sure they have a birth like this. After my unassisted birth, I was like, I'm never letting a woman go to the hospital again. It was like, my mind was just so like, do not ever let a woman go give birth in the hospital who could have this caliber of experience. Like, you know, no way. Like, this is why you're here. You know? It's painful. I know. Gotta prevent it. You know? So I don't I don't think that way now. I've let go a lot on telling women what I think is right. Totally. And I We don't we don't know. Right. And I let all the women who who find me find me.
Speaker 1
Right. And your story your story is the medicine for the right people.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1
It's just so interesting.
Speaker 3
To design too. I was like, I want to test myself to see if my design is actually perfect. Like, does my body actually know what to do without anybody telling me what to do or coming and intervening with the natural process? Because I know for a fact that animals do not like it when you intervene at birth. Right?
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 3
Like, it's so basic. You know? So I'm really you know, I know that the women that need to find me do. You know? And I just have so much more experience now that I can look at it all and go, okay. Maybe it is not for everyone, but I'm gonna tell you at least, like, what you're capable of, like, with the where you are in your mentality. You know? It takes a lot of work even mentally to get to that place.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And, you're just as capable of sabotaging yourself as you are of living in your power and claiming your birth. Right? Like, we get it's all within us. Right? Whichever it is, we can we're capable of accepting crumbs and being grateful for the c section we didn't need. Just as capable of birthing at home in our power and, you know, and and claiming that and shouting it from the rooftops. Like, it's all Right. It's all within us and and, yeah, I agree. There's definitely, I think for me, shifting out of thinking I know what's right for anyone else has really helped me genuinely midwife women to trans help them transmute their trauma into power, and what I find pretty regularly is that women, will use their shitty hospital trauma story as the point of never
Speaker 3
again. Yeah.
Speaker 1
And while my greatest prayer is that, you know, we can experience a world where we don't have to first be traumatized to, you know, to to, live in our power, you know, that that would really probably be ideal, but at the same time, what the fuck do I know? And and Yeah. Whatever it whatever it takes to wake wake us up and reclaim matriarchy and Mhmm. Recenter ourselves as the most important, you know, people in our family because we're the the energy calibrators and the creators and, yeah. But anyway, so I feel you.
Speaker 3
Yeah. My biggest fear about, giving birth the first time was, not being able to breastfeed because I wasn't breastfed as a baby. Right? And I had a really hard time with my mother and our relationship growing up. And I think the the the bond was something something was severed. Something happened, and we just never never really bonded. And I thought, well, there's you know, here's a big example of, like, why that could have gotten in the way, you know, with, like, breastfed, being put in my own crib, and never being able to, like, sleep with my parents, you know. It's so sad, you know. We So sad. So normal though. It was so normal to do this. And this is where, like, the whole SIDS movement came from too. Like, all these babies are just dying without an explanation. It's like, maybe because, like, in their They're alone in a box. They're, like, being abandoned, and they're they just go into shock, and they're like, well, I guess I'm not safe. Right? Yeah. So that was my biggest fear because I felt that was that was what was gonna make me, like, a great mother. I thought if I could just do what my mom never did, because my mom had a a natural vaginal birth with me. I think she had an epidural with my brother afterward, But, you know, I loved that. I loved knowing that my mom had a natural vaginal birth. It made it feel like, oh, okay. You know? Because a lot of women hear their mother's birth stories and their grandmother's birth stories, and then it's like, oh my god. I'm susceptible to this as well. Especially if it was very traumatic, very long, and, oh, the whole you almost died or I almost died at birth, which is so common, so so so common that we're told that.
Speaker 1
That was something I really thought a lot about was I I want my daughter to know that she got born, like that she that she birthed herself.
Speaker 3
Yeah. I tell mine the same. I'm just like, you did that. I just surrendered. I just breathe. I just
Speaker 1
held on for dear life.
Speaker 3
I just did breaths. That's all. You made your way. You pushed yourself down. You found your way. You know? You knew exactly what to do. And I always tell women that too. It's so basic. I'm like, our bodies are designed to do this. Just if you don't trust in that, you're in trouble. You know?
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, that's where we're that's where we are. That's why we have podcasts like this, and that's why we have women like you telling your story.
Speaker 3
Oh, I'll tell it all this all the time. All the time.
Speaker 1
I mean Before we close, because you are such an incredible musician that I have come to enjoy so much, can you please, share with everybody how they can find your music and and enjoy what your offerings are in the world?
Speaker 3
Well, so I go by Shilah Raye, but when you're gonna look me up online, you wanna look up Shyla Rae Sunshine. You'll get a lot more you'll you'll get the direct link to my Spotify and to my website because it is Shyla Rae Sunshine dot com and on under Spotify, Shyla Rae Sunshine. And then I have, you know, I have an EP and an album available there and then other collaborations. I've done even a couple different podcasts that I think are on Spotify, which are great. And I think one of them is called Blood, Breast, birth, and something else. I don't know. It's all the like, belly, birth I don't know. I just used to come up with little cute titles like that of all the things that I loved and I'm passionate about. So there's a couple of those available. And, yeah. And then shout out to Janine Parvati Baker who is Always. You know? God. Who just wrote the most incredible book. So those are my recommendations is
Speaker 1
What's your favorite book of hers?
Speaker 3
Prenatal Yoga Natural Birth by far, first edition. First edition just because it was so I don't know. It was just so even just, like, the cover of it, everything. It's just my favorite book, and I Gotta revisit this. Her birth stories. Her her she has four birth stories in there because she has five children. She had, four four births and then one twin birth. And the twin birth is what made her a midwife because she just used her own intuition. Literally walked out of the hospital and went home and gave birth to her twins because they wouldn't allow her older daughter to be present in the room. So great. Right? She's just like, it was so important to me. It was the most important thing to me about the birth that she be there, and she's a friend of mine now, this this woman, Loy. So so she, she her books, yeah, I think natural, prenatal yoga and natural childbirth is is my favorite. The other ones are, like, a little bit too big and long. There's, like, a lot of information in there, but this one gets straight to the point. And then what else did I read? God, there were so many other books, and I I I'm not so much in the birth world anymore, like I said. So it's been about music, and I really appreciate when people have both, you know, where we have women who are even if we give Erykah Badu as an example where she's a mother, she's also an aspiring, you know, midwife, and she's a doula and this incredible musician. You know? So she's got all these elements, and I love
Speaker 1
this. That's women. Yeah.
Speaker 3
And I love this stuff when women are passionate about more than one thing and, like, whether involved, you know, we take our life experience such as our birth experiences, and we're still inspiring others, especially when I see celebrities doing this, where they're talking about their home births, and they're breastfeeding openly in photos, and they're hashtagging the right things, and they're all about the free the nipple movement. Like, I just love this. I love seeing that we're normalizing this kind of stuff. You know? I don't know what it's gonna take to really normalize, like, free birth and unassisted birth. It's happening, but it's very kinda like it still feels a little underground. It still feels a little like, you know, you can only talk about it some places in certain times, you know, but
Speaker 1
I mean, and it super helps to not give a fuck, which I've found the more I've embodied the more I've embodied that, which I do pretty well, it there isn't anywhere where it's not welcome, because I'm I'm dictating the space, you know. So, I I am a good example of someone who never, I never once received any negative, energy when I was pregnant around my free birth.
Speaker 3
I wasn't Okay.
Speaker 1
Like, I didn't hold it close to my chest, but I also would never tolerate anyone, like, questioning my authority about myself. That that's like Right.
Speaker 3
That's
Speaker 1
such a mind boggling, like, off the table idea to me. Yeah. But because of that, of course, I, you know, you attract what you what you believe about yourself and what you create. So
Speaker 3
Definitely. I saw the difference in mine. Nobody questioned me on my second. Right. But on first where I wasn't a hundred percent. Yeah. And then there's different people, like, aren't you concerned? Aren't you worried about being in the canyon? You're far from the hospital.
Speaker 1
So rude.
Speaker 3
Things like that where I started it started to get to me a little bit. I knew it was the second birth, nothing could get to me. So I know that it is it is a practice mindset. It really is daily a daily practice.
Speaker 1
And you birth how you live. I mean, it's not like a compartmentalized, you know, like how it's sold to us that you, like, go away with strangers in a small room, and and then it's, like, happens, and then you come back to your life. That's sort of a fucking lie and what a bad way to set women up into motherhood, you know, it's such an integrated, you know, deeply, deeply relevant, you know, aspect of who we are and so we birth how we live, we die how we live. So if if you are a rule follower that doesn't wanna, you know, make any waves and don't know how to stand up for yourself and have a have a real struggle with your voice and, are deeply afraid of what people think and and need a lot of validation and, well, you're you're you're set up for a certain experience, you know, and that's not right or wrong or good or bad, it's just set up for a certain experience, you know? Yeah. And and, you know, the thing with the,
Speaker 3
what were
Speaker 1
you gonna say about you said, oh oh, about free birth, like, getting normalized.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
You know, I think that at the end at the end of the day, free birth is just birth, and it's not all ways of birthing. Free birth is the original birth, it's mammalian undisturbed birth, and we have to call it this, you know, little label now because it's been so completely co opted and bastardized by patriarchy. And so, that's where we are, and it's interesting though, because in my world, free birth is completely normalized. It's a completely normal thing. And so that to me is where we start in a people, you know, ask me this all the time, how does free birth become normalized? And it's like, but it is normalized for me. Is it normalized for you? Like, you you don't normalize it by waiting for someone else to fucking do it. Just if it's normal for you, it's become normalized and just move on with your life and integrate that. It doesn't, yeah. It's not like we don't have to have it be this like big movement. It's just like how are you walking in your life and what feels normal to you? But anyway, okay. We gotta wrap up. Thank you so much for your time, and I can't wait to share your story with the world. It's it's an amazing one.
Speaker 3
Well, have a great day. Okay. Bye.
Speaker 1
That's it for today, everyone. Join us next week for another episode of the Free Birth Podcast. Thanks for joining us, and remember, your body, your choice. Lots of love.
