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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, Emily Saldea.
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Quick note at the top of the show here, Freebird Society has a big announcement coming up in a few weeks, and the best way to keep in touch with us is through our newsletter. Have you joined yet? There's gonna be some awesome things you definitely wanna know about. So go to my website, free birth society dot com, or my Instagram at free birth society to subscribe. Hey, everyone. This is the fiftieth episode of the Free Birth podcast. It's also been exactly one year since I started this crazy thing. And to top it
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all off, this week is
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the end of my fourth trimester. I have sat down so many times to record this story of my birth, but it just didn't feel quite right yet. I'm glad I took my time because today marks twelve weeks postpartum. I can't believe my baby's three months old. I can't believe I gave birth twelve weeks ago and that my baby already isn't a newborn anymore, and I am no longer feeling immediate postpartum. Oh my god. I'm splitting up my birth story into two episodes because, a, it's a hell of a story, and, b, I also wanna talk a bit about the first few weeks of my postpartum. Thank you all for supporting the podcast and my own personal journey with such love and excitement. My birth story will mark the end of season one, and I'm gearing up for a super awesome season two, so keep tuning in. I'm ready to tell my tale. So thank
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you to all of
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you who have held interest and held space and patience and feeling really vulnerable sharing this. So we'll see how it goes. This is my first episode holding it on my own. I always have someone else with me. So I'm just going to take my time and share with you my crazy, crazy, epic, beautiful, long story. So with that, I did want to give a little recap for anyone who's new to the podcast, that I did come here to Maui, Hawaii, to birth my baby. It has been a dream of mine since I was a kid, to come here and have my baby here. And maybe it was an intuition or a vision. I don't know. But as I became an adult, it was still strong in my mind that that was what made the most sense if I was able to pull it off and kinda had let go of it for a couple years, not thinking that it would be very realistic. And then as I grew closer to actually conceiving my child with my husband, we brought it up again. And I shared with him my dream and my vision, and that I really couldn't think of a more reverent idea, to check out and check-in and spend the last couple of weeks or months of my pregnancy, just us together in a place that we love that's beautiful and warm and where there's sunshine and birds and beaches and jungles and, have him be able to be totally present and then of course have the birth. And then almost most importantly, to spend a couple months here postpartum and be somewhere really still and nature based and beautiful, and, you know, in alignment with that, that he was not gonna be working. So it all worked out and we made it happen. You know, pretty, pretty fantasy situation that we were able to cultivate. So now we're moving on, and we're gonna head to Colorado where it makes a bit more sense for us to be long term, where we have family and friends, and our industries are both, very busy and plentiful there. So, yeah, we were able to pull off four months here, and it's been everything I hoped it would be and more. Yeah. So with that, let's let's move to the birth. I wanna talk about the weekend before the birth. It was just kinda funny how it happened. I was forty weeks on Saturday, and we had a no such thing as a due date party. Maybe some of you saw that beautiful cake that my husband surprised us with and had all of our friends and family over to our house. And it was really fun. We had quite a few people come in from out of town staggered so that, they could attend the birth if it happened in the time frame that they were there. Three of my closest friends, one of them is my actual blood sister and the other two my soul sisters. And so it was this perfect weekend where everyone overlapped. Crystal and her family had been there in the previous week and I obviously hadn't gone into labor. And then Allison, who's my blood sister and her husband, and then Alexandria and her partner, had just flown in from Colorado. So it was this awesome weekend of everyone overlapping, and they've all known each other and and our friends. And so we spent on Sunday after the party, we all went to the beach. We went to this beautiful little beach called baby beach in Paia on the North Shore, and just spent the whole day hanging out and having fun. And I felt very spacey and dreamlike and happy. And, it was warm and spent the day in the sun, and it was real windy and just beautiful. And then we went and got pizza, and, I think everyone had some beers. I I can't remember if I did or not. I probably did. And, then we came home. And I did not think I was close to labor, but now in retrospect, I definitely was more spacey and kinda felt a little stoned, which is a pretty good telltale sign. And, Johnny and I came home and got to bed early, and we started talking about sex and how we didn't know when we would have sex again. And so we made love and connected and, went to sleep in each other's arms. I got up a couple of times in the night to pee and noticed that I was having stronger uterine contractions, you know, but I had been having them for so many weeks and months. It was like this steady incline of them just getting stronger and more frequent. I remember in the beginning of January noticing that I was having them more often and just got used to it and didn't give it much thought. You know, the other funny thing is that I had really made peace with carrying to forty two, forty three, whatever it took. It it was something that, you know, I I I wouldn't have blinked an eye if I had stayed pregnant for many weeks longer. It was never a concern of mine. And, yes, I was, you know, definitely starting to feel the end of pregnancy sensations. I was quite swollen in my feet, really my whole body, and my hips were hurting and my, adductor was starting to have a little spasming and, you I was starting to be like, okay. Yeah, I get why people start to feel like they're over it. But of course it is what it is and you carry as late as you carry. And so yeah, I woke up at three in the morning and realized that my waves were stronger than normal, and I was feeling uncomfortable. And I had a pretty strong wave that made my body wanna stand up and get out of bed around three AM and walked around the house a little bit just to see if it would subside, and it didn't. And so Johnny, you know, just kinda was watching me. He came out and laid on our, we have this big couch bed thing in our living room. He came and laid on that and just watched me. And I kept saying, you know, this is definitely gonna go away. I'm sure it'll go away when the sun comes up, and it didn't. And so around sunrise, I accepted that I was probably entering labor and Johnny was making tea and he made some scrambled eggs. And I texted Alexandria because she was, possibly gonna take a trip to the other side of the island and we let her know, Hey, probably don't do that. Things might be brewing. And, yeah, we just started the day in early labor. It was pretty typical early labor, sporadic contractions. You know, they were nice and long. They were forty five seconds or a minute long and sporadic. Sometimes they would hit, you know, close together, and sometimes they'd go far apart and just really your standard early labor pattern. But I was definitely working. My hips were burning with the waves, and, and I was really emotional. I cried a lot in early labor before anyone came over. I remember taking a shower by myself and just crying and crying, and just really feeling the power of this portal I was about to enter. Kinda couldn't couldn't believe it was really happening, that this was real, you know, that I really was gonna go into labor after so many years of witnessing labor and and, you know, obviously having my pregnancy knowing it was gonna happen conceptually, but actually feeling it and getting to a place where I couldn't deny it. I was having contractions that were strong and were making me work and I couldn't lay down and, it was labor and it just felt so beautiful and such a big deal for my spirit to be entering this, this phase and that my baby was coming and that I was really going to get to know birth from the inside out. It just felt so big and so intense and overwhelming and and intimate that I just kept crying. It was, it was a nice way to release. So, yeah, the whole morning was really nice. And, you know, some people have asked, like, where do you start your labor timeline? Like, why do I say it was fifty two hours? And I started at three AM on that early Monday morning. What was that? The twenty ninth? I guess it would have been. Because I couldn't stay in bed. It was strong enough that I needed to get out of bed and really be with it. And for me, that's feels like when my labor started. You know, I I wouldn't say that that like is the rule for everybody. Some women can do a lot of their labor knowingly in bed. So I'm not saying that that's when anyone else should start it. Just for me, I started at when I couldn't ignore it when I really needed to get out of bed and and be with it, which was at three AM that early Monday morning. So, yeah, I'm walking around. My hips are hurting with the waves. They're burning. I'm moving around doing different positions, playing with my breath. Johnny setting up the house. He's putting the waterproof cover over the bed and on our couch bed in the living room, making some food. I'm just trying to keep moving. Johnny holds me on the big ones. He was always the perfect distance close enough or away from me. Somehow he just knew the whole time, the It was. Really amazing how in tune he was with me. And somehow he just knew he was so tuned in and he listened so well, and he really was my ultimate birth keeper, which I didn't know, you know, I didn't know if that would happen or not. Cause even the best of men sometimes don't really know how to be in the birth space, but he just, he just somehow did. I'm really grateful for that. So, yeah, I didn't feel any fear. I didn't have any doubt entering my early labor phase. It just felt really like, wow. Wow. It was all I could think and and most of what I could say. So around seven forty five, I ate some oatmeal and, I was able to lay down in between the waves. They had spaced out ten, fifteen minutes apart. Crystal came by around ten AM or so. And Crystal, was one of my best friends and I had attended her birth eight years ago with her son Rain. So it was really special that we got to do a little bit of my labor together. Her flight actually left in the afternoon, so she was able to spend a couple hours with me in early labor. And and it was interesting. I do have to note, you know, having her come in the space was the first time I felt what it was like to have somebody from outside come in. And even though it was one of my best friends who I've been very, very close with for over a decade, just having her enter the space with her volume and her energy, took a minute to adjust to. And, you know, eventually I just said, Hey, can you guys be quiet? And it all worked out pretty quickly, but it I could feel that adjustment happening of adding a new person to the space. And I was still totally present, you know, not high, and still totally able to talk, but that would go on to prove to be a really, really big lesson for me as a laboring woman and as a birthkeeper that attends birth. Yeah. So it was wonderful having her there. It definitely felt more physical than anything else. And it was pretty much what I expected it to feel like so far. And yeah, I got at some point around noon, I was five one one, you know, we timed him a little bit for fun. I kept joking about wondering why I wasn't traveling in the cosmos yet. And I just kept at it. Crystal left. My contractions were active. My sister Allison showed up with some groceries around three PM and hung out for a couple hours. And same thing as Crystal, it felt weird adding someone to the space. It definitely took a minute to add to the space. The intensity was growing. The waves were strong and steady. And I was thinking that my baby would surely arrive tonight. So my sister left around six PM, and then my third and final sister and birthkeeper, Alexandria, shows up. I had cut a ton of rosemary from our garden to use on the placenta for Lotus birth. So Alexandria sat quietly in the corner and half focused on us, half focused on the herbs, just picked the rosemary off the stems. And I I really loved that little hour where she came in and we hardly noticed her coming in. She came in quite as a mouse and just sat in the corner and got to work on this, you know, little project that we had. And it felt really good to have her there, but not have her be, you know, too hands on or too involved. I would find out later that she had spent fifteen or twenty minutes outside of our front door, just grounding and meditating and purifying her energetic space before she joined into our birthing space. And I really appreciate that. That something as a birth keeper, when I join births that I try to make a point to do and stand outside the door before I join to just cleanse myself and take a breath and try to enter as clean and empty as possible. And I didn't know she had done that, but, I guess Johnny somehow knew that and let me know later and really loved that that was how she entered and felt really respectful. So sometime in the evening, I went into the bathroom and saw my first sign of bloody show, which was really exciting. I'm feeling really ready for a change of pace at this time. So Alex and Johnny fill up the birth tub for me, and I'm in it in the evening time. Sunset's just happened. It feels really good on my starting to be tired body. You know, and the whole time I'm thinking, I'll probably have a baby tonight. I've been in labor since three AM, went through early labor. I've been active since early afternoon. I'm sure to have a twelve or fourteen hour birth. And I will go on to realize that that was my that was my big lesson, and that was my big blind spot. I guess now's a good time to get into that. As you could probably imagine, I have done a lot of work on deprogramming and and reconditioning my relationship with birth. You know, the first ten plus years of attending births, it was all in captivity. It was in hospitals or with regulated midwives who were still medically managing the birth experience of the woman. And so even in the last couple of years, when I aligning with free birth, I still had to work out a lot of the stuff that I had seen and a lot of the stories and conditioning that I, had been taught. And like I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't have blinked an eye if I had carried past forty two weeks. There's a lot of things that I wouldn't have blinked an eye at. And interestingly, I had this blind spot about the length of labor that I didn't catch. And I wish I had. Obviously, it would have gone a little easier as as I tell you the rest of the story, but that was my blind spot that I didn't know about. Right? Of course, we don't know our blind spot. And what I will go on to learn from this birth is I wish I had reconciled before going into the birth that I could have a three day labor, and that that is perfectly normal and natural for, especially for a primary birth. You know, it's something that I've even said to other women that I worked with prepare for a three day birth, but for some reason it just didn't ever take hold in my brain that that would apply to me. And really, as I, as I continue telling you the story, I'll get into, you know, how I started to pathologize a long birth. I assumed inaccurately that because it was gonna be undisturbed, because no one was gonna be messing with it, because I wasn't afraid, because I had so much experience that some for some reason, all of that was gonna lend itself to a quick birth, which of course, you know, I wish I had caught because really I'm making an equation that's not true. I was making an equation that undisturbed fearless births are always quick. And, you know, of course we all know, right, that that's not true. And so that was a blind spot I did not catch. And, when I did wind up having an above average long birth, you know, a long labor, fifty two hours from start to finish, long pushing, long you know, the whole thing just took a while. It really it was really heady, and it became the really only challenging piece of my birth was my own head. And, you know, my head really became my own enemy towards the end of the of the birth. So a lot of this comes down to that big lesson that I wish I had reconciled a three day labor for anyone listening, especially if they're free birthing and they're not gonna be managed by anybody else. It's perfectly normal, and it happens. What's unique about my story is because no one was managing me, I actually continued on to have, you know, a free birth. That was the big thing that I learned in this birth, because all of the other births I had attended that got even close to this long, really thirty hours or plus, they were medically managed by a regulated midwife or by a doctor. And so you just don't see births go this long without intervention because the system pathologizes a long birth. Right? So at some point after whatever it is, thirty, thirty five hours, it starts to be what's wrong? Why is it taking those you know, why is it taking so long? Is something wrong? What's going on? And I did that to my birth. I, after forty hours, started to assess it, without realizing that I was doing it, you know, really because of the conditioning that every long birth I'd ever attended, I was conditioned to pathologize it. So, yeah. That is definitely what happened. So in the first twenty four hours, it was a normal labor. I didn't think twice about anything that was happening. It was quite textbook. It was great. I had fun. I had great support. Didn't really want anyone to touch me the deeper in I got. Didn't really feel high yet. I wasn't particularly exhausted. I had some food here and there, but it was really just your your standard, wonderful, normal labor. And by about twenty four hours on the dot, I was able to feel
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her, well, really the bag inside of me, I
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was able to feel her well, really the bag inside of me, and, that was nice, but that had been going on all night. I could feel the bag. It wasn't bulging. It was still up inside of me, but I could feel it, and I wanted it, of course, to come down because I was really wanting to see some sign of progress. And, it wasn't happening. It wasn't happening all night. And I passed the twenty four hour mark and, I was in my bedroom and all my birthkeepers were with me. And I had my first experience of negative thinking. And, really what it was was it was just impatience and that made me feel annoyed. I wasn't scared or, yeah, it wasn't like that big of a deal. I just felt annoyed that things weren't happening sooner. And I would go on, you know, when it had doubled that time to be a little bit more nervous about it or worried about it. But at this twenty four hour mark, I was just like, why hasn't it happened yet? I wanna see some progress. What's going on? You know, let's let's let's see something happen here that isn't happening. So it was really the first moment I felt out of alignment with the birth process and with fully trusting what was unfolding. So as the night passed, we tried some rebozo. We tried the tub. I used my silks to hang on, just kinda went around and did the normal labor stuff. I didn't like the rebozo. I really didn't want anyone touching me. The birth tub never felt quite comfortable for me. It I felt a little bit too contained in there. I just couldn't I couldn't move around in the way that I wanted. I didn't want to be still. And Allison at some point had rejoined the party in the late evening, so she was also there. And so, yeah, all night happened. And then when I hit that twenty four hour mark, I felt discouraged. And mostly it was just annoyed, like I said. And so I called my beloved best friend in birth, Yolanda Clark, who's up in Canada, and I called her. She's been a big mentor and, encouragement, kinda like a long distance midwife for me. And so I called her and told her what was going on, and she said everything that I needed to hear. You know, she reminded me that this was normal and to not make a big deal about it and that I was doing great and just to get back to it and that this was perfectly normal, and everything sounded exactly as it should be. So that was beautiful, and we hung up, and it I felt completely rejuvenated and ready to dive back in and and change the energy of the room. And so we I I walked away, and I went into the living room where I had a lot of spaciousness, and I had my big speakers, and I pulled out a song that I knew I would play at some point in my labor that had been given to me from another woman who had free birthed here on the island. And I just knew it was the right time to hear this song. I had sung it a lot to the baby in my pregnancy. It's a song called Please Prepare Me by Beautiful Chorus, and it goes like this.
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Please prepare me to be a saint you pure and holy, tried and true with thanksgiving. I'll be a living, Saint Hubert for you. Please prepare me to be a sanctuary. You're an holy, tried and true with thanksgiving. I'll be
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Isn't that so beautiful? It makes me cry every time I hear it. So, yeah, I knew that was the song I needed to play and sing and came into the living room and played that and cried my eyes out and sang, and everybody was crying and singing and dancing. And it was a really, really special moment in my birth that I will always treasure, you know, and the power of it was. I took that negative energy and I said, no, I'm good. I'm gonna do something different. I'm not gonna get lost on this because I could so see the temptation to go there. And I wasn't gonna do that. I wasn't gonna do that for my baby. I wasn't gonna have that be my birth story. And this song was exactly personally needed to turn it around. And it did just that. It was beautiful. And the call to Yolanda, of course, helped a lot, like a lifeline. So that combo of calling her and playing this beautiful song just totally shifted everything and got right back to it. And Johnny and I chose to have some quiet time in my bedroom, and we did the classic. For any of you who've done this, you're gonna know what I'm talking about, where you are resting in between the waves and then you have to hop up right before one starts onto your hands and knees. And, you know, if you have a partner or a doula or somebody, and they know exactly what to do and you have your rhythm, and then you go right back to resting and you go back on your side, but you couldn't possibly have a wave on your side. It would hurt too much. And so, I had done that on the doula side so many times, and it was kinda I was kinda chuckling in between the waves when I was trying to rest that I was now the one experiencing it, and it's such a familiar and common experience in birth. So Johnny and I had our rhythm for however long. I don't know, maybe an hour or something. And we were resting in between. I was able to fully fall asleep in those five minutes of rest and then hop back up when I felt the wave again. And then all of a sudden, now one of them, when Johnny was going to help me up, my water burst and broke all over the bed and it was so awesome. It felt so good and it was so warm and there was so much of it. And more than anything, it was progress. It meant the baby was coming down and things actually were happening. Of course, I knew that they were, but, part of me, you know, the laboring part of me, when time stands still, just really needed that. However, my mentality after the water breaking would really soon become my enemy. I was sure that the baby would be right behind the water's opening. You know, I've seen that a million times and why wouldn't it be? I was ready to have my baby. So, of course, the water's opening meant that the baby was gonna come down and the baby would be right right out. And, instead, you know, I would go on to labor for a whole another twenty four hours. And so what was interesting about this and ultimately became my my mental downfall is that about thirty minutes after the waters opened, I did begin spontaneously pushing. And the rectal pressure increased dramatically, and my body started to just push at the top of the wave. And I was going with it. I assumed that meant I was pushing. I mean, I I was pushing, but, as I said, I would go on to not have the baby for twenty four more hours. So, obviously, I did not know that at the time, and I was just going with my body and was having, you know, the very classic wave starts, and I was just, you know, fully making the noise that we all know. Right? And all day went by and all night went by. And I could feel my baby a couple inches up inside of me, maybe two knuckles deep. I could feel her head and it wasn't moving. I would put my fingers in and feel when the wave would come and her head wasn't moving. I threw up a couple of times, and one time while I was throwing up somehow through magical coordination, I also had my fingers inside to see if her head was moving while I puked, and her head wasn't moving. So the sun sets. I'm puking and pooping. I can't eat anything. I'm pushing. I'm completely fascinated by how absolutely uncontrollable it all is, and I'm finally traveling somewhere. I wouldn't call it the cosmos, more like the underworld. I'm getting higher and higher, and the whole labor is bringing me deeper and further. I'm thankful for my relationship to ceremony and psychedelics because the traveling didn't scare me. It felt really familiar. I kept pushing my head into pillows or onto Johnny's arm or in the birth tub and traveling through a portal through my third eye. I would swing my head back and forth as if in a no motion, but really I was looking into this other galaxy. I was looking for my baby, calling her spirit to me. I wasn't consciously doing any of this, but a part of me was also observing me doing it. I was very, very high. So needless to say, I was fully tripping, more so than I thought I would. You know, I've seen plenty of women get really high in labor and, of course, lots of women talk about it being psychedelic, but, wow, I didn't know it would be like that. I mean, I I couldn't I could hardly talk. You know, I would try to talk and my words just turned to mush. When I closed my eyes and when I was really left alone, I was traveling into other spaces that I hadn't been before. I was visually also really tripping out and seeing a lot of crazy stuff when I closed my eyes. And, and, yeah, like I said, I was hearing stuff. I mean, it was it's hard to articulate now, of course, as traveling to other realms are nearly impossible. But, it it wound up being this really challenging tight rope balance to walk between my birth keeper mind who was trying to actively assess my labor, and this other part of me who really just wanted to go travel wherever my spirit was going, and then this third part that I did have attendants, and I was regularly disrupted by them. Just the innocent things like making noise in the kitchen or quiet whispers or, you know, going in and out of our back porch. It was a full moon and my sister would, I guess, quasi regularly step outside for some fresh air. But every time that door opened and closed, it would bring me back into the room. Or someone, you know, putting a washcloth on my face or even just a a gentle touch. You know, all of those things were bringing me back into the room. And I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to be completely alone for a birth because of the traveling that my spirit seemed to want to do. I wonder now in retrospect if I had been less disrupted, if I would have been able to spend less time in my birth keeper cerebral analysis mind, and just have melted into the process a bit more. So thankfully, as I said, you know, even with all the traveling, I did feel safe. But my birth keeper mind kept going, is this normal? Is this normal to feel the urge to push all day and all night? I was racking my brain to try to figure out if I had attended a birth where a woman pushed this long, particularly with what, you know, the medical model would call no progress. And this is really where the blind spot conditioning was coming out in me that I didn't even know about and that I did not in that moment have the tools to process. So now I wanna stop the story and explain a couple of things. My head was my only enemy in my birth. While I had done a lot of reprogramming of deceitful narratives about bodies in birth, I had one big one that had yet to surface in my cognitive mind. I had done so much work to prepare for my birth. Years and years of unlearning, leaning into what felt true versus what culture says. But there was still this one big storyline I had to unlearn in my birth. My friend Yolanda says birth will decimate you, and that that's one of its gifts. And before my labor, I thought about that line a lot. I was ready to be decimated. I was ready for it to kick my ass. I didn't feel afraid. I felt in awe of its bigness, and I felt like, I love you. Bring it on. But I didn't feel decimated at fifteen hours. I even felt fine at thirty. I was working hard, but I was into it. This was labor. I was unafraid. But then my story came in. This was taking too long. This shouldn't be taking so long. Why is it taking so long? I shouldn't be pushing for so long. I have to know what's going on, and I don't. Insert lesson. Insert decimation. As I unconsciously believe my story that this was going on too long and that the baby should, in quotes, have been born by now, I began to collect evidence to prove to myself that this was true. Right? That's what we do. We believe a story, and if we don't catch it in time, we collect evidence to justify that that story is true. And then we believe that the story is true. So the fresh blood on the chucks when I push must be a swollen cervix. If I have a swollen cervix, I could be harming the process by just going with my body, which is what I've been doing all day. What if something was off? Looking back, I can so clearly see how the root of everything in my labor after thirty hours was based on the belief that things should be happening sooner and faster than they were. If I could have entered my labor with the story, my labor might take three days, and that's great. The whole second night and morning would have gone so different. But, alas, that's the lesson. Right? I entered my birth with an almost arrogant blind spot assuming that it would be less than twenty four hours. But that's the rub. Every labor I'd ever attended that had gone on for more than twenty four hours have always been attended by a regulated midwife or a doctor. So I had conditioning I wasn't even aware of from so many previous births that something must be up. Births can't just take that long. You know, it's not like I've attended hundreds of free births. I've attended a couple, not very many compared to the births in captivity that I've attended. So it's not like I had all this reference, of women having long births that were perfectly normal and where the whole team thought they were normal. I have never attended a birth where the team just said, some labors are just long. Keep going, which of course is had I had a midwife, what I would have needed to hear. I will say I wish I had had a seasoned birth keeper who could have just looked at me and said, get out of your head. This is birth. Relax. Keep going. I truly feel like if I had had someone present with me that I knew trusted birth and trusted me say that, then things would have gone a little differently. You know? And this is where it gets into an interesting conversation around choosing free birth for lack of traditional midwives. You know, and to me a traditional midwife is a true midwife but that word has gotten co opted by the government all over the world that the midwives we have today that are regulated and stand with their licensing which stands in non evidence based practices that protect themselves and not women who are birthing, you know, the whole term midwife has kind of gotten bastardized, really. And so when I say a traditional midwife, and I could have been ephemeral traditional midwife, I mean a true midwife who is not beholden to rules and regulations of the state, but who actually knows how to sit with women and can be a hundred percent with women and truly, truly trust birth. So this speaks to the larger issue at hand, which is that regulate regulated midwifery has failed women, and the world has almost completely lost traditional midwives. So many free birthing women would prefer to be birthing with an experienced midwife, but don't have one available. So my choice to free birth was largely rooted, not in that I wanted to be alone and unattended, but that I would never trust a licensed midwife in my space to be who I needed. And therefore, my only option was to take this on myself. I would have greatly benefited from an elder midwife who was not beholden to a license, holding space for me and believing in me and in my time of doubt, you know, being able to look at me and say, dive back in. This is normal. But because I didn't have that and that is so rarely available, you know, I didn't have seasoned birth keepers with me. I had unseasoned birth keepers who were looking to me. Right? And that was what I had created because that was what was available, you know, for me to have a birth on my terms. So okay. Now it's nighttime, and I'm a bit out of sorts. My body has been uncontrollably pushing for some time now, and I'm high as a kite, and I'm not seeing any, quote, progress. I'm switching between being in my birth keeper head and trying to assess myself and brainstorm and also being so high I couldn't speak, deeply sensitive to smell, touch, and noise, and really wanting to be on my own and just fully travel to these other realms that were bringing me there. I was hearing spirits, seeing full on psychedelic visuals, and overall, not being completely in the room. I never felt separated from myself, but I definitely was traveling to a place where no one else in the room was coming with me. The essence of birthing alone. But I couldn't get this swollen cervix idea out of my head. Alexandria takes my temperature. It's fine. She tries to do fetal heart tones, and it and she gets eighty, which totally freaks me out, but then I try and I get one twenty. I can't decide if I should relax or not. I have this nagging thing that something might not be quite right. And I come to realize later that that was my head and that this was the work. That was the test. That was birth saying, how deep can you trust? Though I've been attending births for over ten years, it wasn't until two years ago when I did my first Ayahuasca ceremony that I fully realized who birth was, that I fully felt and realized it was the divine feminine running into and through a woman and a room, that the divine feminine was birth, and it was Ayahuasca. When I was deep in ceremony, it all felt so familiar as if I had already known her, and I had for so long. I had been watching her come through other women, but I had never had her come through me until ceremony. And it was that night that I realized the deeper meanings and connections of why birth is so oppressed and why it's so important to birth freely. Because to birth in power means to fully welcome and let the divine feminine have her way with you in deep journeying and lessons. I say all of this just to note that now upon reflection, this was my test. Everyone is tested in birth in different ways it seems, and this was mine. She was asking me, how deeply do you trust me? And I faltered. After forty five plus hours, I was collecting evidence for all the reasons that something may not be right any longer. I never got to a point where I was too tired to go on. I never got to a point where I couldn't take the pain. It was really more of a head trip. It was about the length of labor and believing the story that it should have been quicker, and therefore, something may be wrong. So around one AM, I decided to call an elder midwife friend of mine. I wanted some help and guidance and felt like she may be the right one to ask. I didn't feel like I had many options anyway. So we call, and I muster up what communication skills I can at the time, and I let her know I've been pushing all day and am nervous I have a swollen cervix. She's quick to agree that that is likely. She tells me whatever I do, don't push and has me do some really intense breath work to try to overcome the pushing sensations. She asks to be taken into the other room with Allison and Alexandria away from my ears. This didn't feel good to me as it happened, but I really couldn't say anything. So Johnny stays with me in the bedroom. And some point in time later, the girls come back in with a completely different energy. They're full of adrenaline and a plan. They tell me that the elder midwife has instructed them to be my elephant circle, to not let me push, to go dark, no lights, no talking, and just to breathe over the pushing sensations and not give in to it. This was the worst part of my labor, the only part I didn't love, and it's because it's the only time in my labor I didn't feel in my power. I had gone from being the leader of my birth to getting kicked off the pyramid, and other people took charge. And, ultimately, I had created this. I called someone outside of my birth and asked for help. I, of course, know that my sisters had the absolute best intentions, and I can only imagine what it must have been like for them, both new to attending births and neither having ever attended a birth without medical professionals. I felt overwhelmed, and it's probably safe to say that they did too. Well, I think Johnny might have been the only one that wasn't. That man was cool as a cucumber from start to finish. So my sisters were given this plan, and they sprung into action, and I was way too deep in hypnosis to explain what I was feeling. All I could try to do was go along with what they were saying to do and occasionally try to sputter out, I can't do this. This feels wrong. No. No. I can't do this. But what else would we do? That section of my birth taught me a lot about how easy it is to take authority away from a birthing woman deep in her labor, how helping can hurt, and how doing can be unproductive. But again, I take responsibility for orchestrating all of it, which is another big lesson. You cannot control or predict how the people you invite into your space will be or what will come up for them and how that may affect your birth experience. The whole narrative had become that I shouldn't push. What my body was doing was bad, and I fell out of alignment with the birth process. So for the next three hours, I let them try to guide me, all the while with me saying, I can't do this. I can't do this. This isn't right. But I went with it. I tried so, so hard to go against my body's urges, and it felt so wrong. It's bringing me to tears to remember that and just, you know, I've sat with women trying to help them not push, believing the doctor or the midwife telling them to not push and them looking at me like it's my job to get them not to push. And then there I was experiencing the same thing that ultimately I had self created, believing this story that I shouldn't push, and it all turned out to not be true. So I was trying really hard to go against my body's urges. And at this point, you know, to give you some point of reference for where I was at in the labor, I had the baby just a couple hours later. So I was at the end of my labor without knowing it, but I had already spent all day thinking I was in transition. And at this point, when I actually was entering transition, I was so high and so unable to ultimately think straight, but that paired with the belief that I shouldn't be pushing and that maybe my pushing was swelling my cervix and therefore harming the birth process and potentially my baby, the the energy was really intense and it was, it was hard. I never had a point with my labor that I didn't love it until I turned on it and until I stopped trusting it. And then all of a sudden I was working against what my body was doing and I will never forget that feeling. And I don't ever want to have that feeling again. So by four AM, I hit my wall. I could not keep doing what I was doing. I couldn't not push. I had been trying for hours, and I just couldn't. So I hit a wall I didn't know I would hit. I couldn't keep going, not knowing if what I was doing was wrong or not. I didn't have anyone there to assess me. I felt like I needed to be assessed. I didn't know how to assess myself. I was in such a vulnerable, deep space of labor. I hit a wall. And so I decided that we should go to the hospital and be assessed. It was awful.
Speaker 2
I was in total shock. Me I'm going to
Speaker 1
go to the hospital. I fucking hate the hospital. All I've seen there is everything that I've grown to be afraid of. And yet I don't have a midwife I can call in the middle of the night. I was out of sorts. I didn't know what to do anymore, and I didn't have what I needed, whether it was my own internal trust or an elder midwife to give me a cervical exam, you know, whatever it was, I didn't have it anymore. And so I looked at my team and I said, I have to go. I need someone to give me an exam and tell me where I'm at. Because if I am pushing on a swollen cervix at six centimeters, I could be screwing up this whole thing. And again, you know, as I say this, I'm going back into my conditioning because I've seen births under the obstetrical model where they say the cervix was swelling and not to push so they get an epidural so that they can't push and then the narrative is that, oh, the epidural saved them from a c section. I've also seen a couple births where the women get swollen cervixes, you know, supposedly, and then they wind up having c sections and that's the reason. Now, of course, when I apply a critical eye to all of this, I don't necessarily believe that is the true narrative. But in that moment of my birth unfolding the way it was and beginning to believe the story that perhaps my cervix was swelling, I started to go down this conditioned, fear based, you know, mentality that, oh my god, if I am pushing on a swollen cervix, I'm going to have to get an epidural because I cannot not push. That part I know for sure I have to push. And so maybe I will need intervention to help me not push. If I am out of sorts with my body and not in alignment, which I was beginning to believe was true, then I was going to have to wrap my head around getting an epidural, which is I mean, I can't even articulate how crazy that that felt and feels, for me to say and think and and make peace with. So I told my team and the girls were quick to agree to go. Johnny was not, I really treasure that hard, hard, hard conversation that we had when I told him I felt like I needed to go. And he looked at me so broken, so sad. And he looked at me and he said, Emily, you told me we're only going if it is life or death, and you are not dying. I loved him so much in that moment. I loved knowing that he was so with me on this journey that he would even push back when I said I needed to go. It was beautiful. So I looked at him and I said, I know, I know I'm not dying. I know I'm not dying, but I'm out of my. I'm out of a zone that I can wrap my head around. And I don't know if we're safe anymore. I cannot say with a hundred percent confidence that everything is going perfectly. And so we have to go. I explained that I was feeling stuck and was feeling doubtful, and I couldn't keep going under the idea that pushing was bad. I needed to know if my pushing was okay. He, of course, said, let's do whatever you need. I could tell he was trying so hard not to shut down. I could see everything on his face. Getting dressed felt impossible. My sister was going around the house, packing up a little bag for the baby out of our diaper bag that had yet to be used. I couldn't believe this was happening, watching her get stuff together, watching Johnny pack a bag. I remember Johnny asking me what he needed to know advocacy wise, and I had this whole list in my head. But when I tried to speak, it was mush. I couldn't say anything, and I was full of dread. It felt like a complete nightmare. Was I gonna fuck everything up? I couldn't believe I was doing this, but I also knew that I needed it. I knew I had to be assessed. And at the same time, it felt like I was jumping off a cliff, not knowing what was gonna happen at the bottom, if it was gonna be deep enough to hold my jump or if I was gonna break my neck. I mean, it really felt that unknown because I, more than most people, know what happens in the hospital, and I know what happens with home birth transfers, and I know what happens, you know, when you try to push back. I know how quick your autonomy goes out the window, and I didn't know what was going on with my body anymore. And so it was just this perfect storm of absolutely knowing I needed to be assessed, and I had reached a limit, or a wall, and being completely dreadful of where I was going to seek that help. And we're gonna leave it there for this week. Thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to sharing the rest of my story with you guys next week. There's a surprise ending that you definitely don't wanna miss. 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.
