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, Emily Saldea.
Speaker 1
What does it mean to live a life guided by intention? For me, it means getting quiet, questioning, exploring, listening to my intuition, and moving forward with an open heart and a playful mind. It's that intersection between co creating something and being open to receiving it in whatever form the universe provides. So what does conscious conception mean? Well, I guess it's fairly self explanatory. It's an idea that's always felt really attractive and powerful to me. To conceive with intention. While it's common to hear from parents that you're never ready, and to each their own, I feel like I've been getting ready my whole life, and I can finally say I am ready. It's taken a lot of work, a lot of unlearning, job changes, life changes, even partner changes to settle into what I would declare as feeling ready. That doesn't mean of course I won't be constantly surprised and pushed outside of my comfort zone as I move into parenthood, but I can be ready for this part, to enter pregnancy with wholeness and no fear. I've always thought the most romantic notion in the world was getting the chance to be so ready for pregnancy, so ready for my child, so in love with my partner that we could create a space to intentionally call in our babies. And this isn't to say anything's wrong with the wonderful surprise of a pregnancy and then organizing around it. I just specifically have been fascinated by the idea of what it would be like to make love desiring a child, calling in a spirit into our family. So here I am. It's been a fun last few months with my husband, figuring out what we wanted to do to create a container of intention and health around this conscious conception exploration. We spent a few months getting our bodies healthier, eliminating what wasn't serving us, like coffee and alcohol, and did what we could to clean up our bodies. To really come into a respect that our bodies are going to give us the physical creation of our child. We figured, well, we got one chance for this child to give them the cleanest, healthiest start. So why not? It was wonderful to see my partner engage in the process, learning how his habits and body affect the quality of his sperm and if in wellness increase the chance of pregnancy and the health of the fetus. We made some big changes. We moved away from Los Angeles to the country because I knew I needed to take a break from attending births and focus on slowing down if I was going to house this little soul. We meditated, talked to our child, took romantic rose baths, and prayed. I tuned into my body more and more, spent time in the woods, and could feel our children so brightly. I've always felt very connected to my spirit babies. They have come to me in dreams and meditation throughout my life. They've guided me in many ways. The little boy even appeared the first night I was with my husband and told me that he was his papa and that he would be arriving in a few years. It's been really fun and awe inspiring to have felt these children, these people with me my whole life. So it's no surprise that they've guided me into birth work and have had me deal with many cultural placed fears and mistruths that I may have been carrying around birth before they arrived. I remember learning one of my favorite and most wild facts about women's bodies, that females are born with the amount of eggs she will have for her life. Therefore, when your grandmother had your mother in her womb, you were there, as an egg, inside the infant body of your mother. So not only were you literally inside your grandmother, which is insanely cool, but we also have the eggs that could or will become children with us, inside of us, our whole lives. I remember realizing this, that my babies were already in me and that I could start caring for them way before I was ready to
Speaker 2
be
Speaker 1
pregnant. So this is where I am, not yet physically pregnant, but we've lifted the veil. We're officially open for business, ready when they are. It's a very new and curious place to be, and I'm doing my best to remember. It's their timing. It's their journey. All I can do is be open and loving, and the rest is in their hands. If I bleed, it means I'm fertile, and I'll be grateful after being sad, obviously. I mean, I'm not Jesus. And I remember that this is the work of motherhood. This is standing in the not knowing and knowing that that's okay. So today, we're gonna be hearing from a few different women on their experiences about what conscious conception meant for them. Stay tuned. This year on the Free Birth Podcast, we are going to be hearing from women all over who birthed freely on their own terms. We'll hear from women like Maya who went to Maui and birthed on her own in small hut. Heather from Michigan, who had her fourth child outside in her pool. Cassandra, who educated herself on how to do her own thorough prenatal care and self cured her own health problems. We'll hear from women like Rachel, who birthed all four babies with just her family on their own homestead in rural Canada, and Linnea, who would have had birthed in her bathroom if her boyfriend hadn't have called nine one one at the last minute. Please remember, our intention with this podcast is not to suggest that everyone should be choosing free birth, but podcast is not to suggest that everyone should be choosing free birth, but rather to validate and celebrate these choices as a perfectly acceptable and safe option because as we know, no one cares more about the health and safety of the baby than the mother. Birth is not a medical event. Some women call this free birth. Other people just call this birth.
Speaker 3
Hi this is Lynn Doak and I just wanted to share with you the story of my conscious conception with my baby boy Zach. So like many women these days I didn't meet my partner and marry my husband until my late 30s and we started trying for a baby right away as soon as we got married. I had a lot of fears ingrained that I was too old, that I left it too long, that my eggs were old and poor quality and all of those things that you read and that the doctors tell you. Now in retrospect, I probably should have dealt with those fears first because I think they were a huge part in preventing me from getting pregnant. But I tried really every physical approach I could think of. I am actually a holistic therapist and I work with women who are trying to get pregnant. I do maya massage and reflexology so I tried all of that. I changed my diet, I drank all the smoothies and the juices and I did the castor oil packs and the vaginal steams and all of the holistic natural treatments that you can think of. A year and a bit down the line and I still wasn't pregnant. So I really had to take a step back and look at what I was doing and realized that despite being a holistic therapist I was approaching my fertility just from a very physical standpoint. So I knew I had to look at the emotional, the mental, and, of course, the spiritual as well. And literally within, I think, two to three months of making this change, I was pregnant. So I'd first heard of spirit babies online and I'd had a reading, with Kelly Meehan. And she had told me that I had quite a few little spirit babies around there to to choose from, which was which was nice to hear. But, again, it was only in that last couple of months before I got pregnant that I really started a practice of communicating with my baby in spirit and it was very simple. I listened to meditations. There was one in particular that I loved where you visualize yourself in this playground and you look at all the little children and there's one child in particular that catches your eye and, this child comes towards you and you're very drawn to the child. So I did this one nearly every day, I think, for about a month or more. And I kept seeing the same little boy with this same adorable little face. And I would look into his eyes in the visualization, and it was so clear to me that this was my baby boy. And the interesting thing about it was after about a month of doing this connection, all the doubts that I'd had for the past year, all of those worries that I was too old, that this was never gonna happen, they all went away. And it was almost like I knew that it was going to happen without a doubt. I can't explain why or how. It was just a complete change, and I'm sure it was to do with connecting with my baby in spirit. I knew one hundred percent certainty that I was going to get pregnant. I had no longer any doubts. As well as doing the meditation, I wrote to him every day in my journal. So I wrote to him, and I told him that we couldn't wait for him to come. We couldn't wait to meet him every day. I thanked him for choosing us as our as his parents. I wrote to him and told him all the things that we were going to do together when he came here. It might sound totally crazy, but, again, it all helped to reinstate that strong belief that I had that this was my baby and he was coming to us very soon. So I had a great pregnancy, sailed through it with ease. The birth, unfortunately, wasn't quite so straightforward. There was some complications and ended up I had an emergency c section. And the worst thing about the emergency c section was that when he was born, they didn't show him to me right away. So he was taken away into the corner of the room and, medical professionals were around him. They told me that he was having trouble breathing, so they were putting oxygen on him. And it seemed like the longest twenty minutes of my life. But eventually, they actually suspected he had Down syndrome, so they had to wait for a pediatrician to come to confirm that. So when they eventually held him up and showed him to me, He looked into my eyes, and it was just exactly like I had seen in the visualization. And when he looked into my eyes, it was like he knew me, and I knew him. And instantly, I just knew that that was that was my baby. So I just really want to share that with you. He's just eight weeks old now, and he already has so much personality. He's already smiling and laughing, and he's just the absolute light of our lives. So, if you are listening to this podcast and you're thinking about, communicating with your baby, do it. Just do it. Absolutely. It I believe in it one hundred percent. And I believe that if you've had the desire to be a mother, if you have the desire to have a baby, then that's there for a reason. So I do believe that your baby is out there for you if you have a strong desire to be a mother. Okay? That's it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4
It was like, you know, like, she was guiding me to, you know, to heal my emotions, to heal you know, I had lost my mom cancer, and so I was just really nervous about motherhood, about, you know, just for several you know, lots of different reasons. And so, you know, my it was like my daughter was just kind of guiding me to these different healers to heal those aspects, even physical things, you know, so that I would be ready and open for her. You know, to be to be honest, I think that, you know, even as, like, you know, even early, like, even as maybe a child and teenager, you know, I'd always felt connected to a child and children. But it was, you know, there was also this disconnect too because of this ex you know, I had lost my mom when I was sixteen. I had kind of raised my brother and just felt really nervous about having to do that again. And, you know, the possibility of, like, you know, screwing somebody up, you know, me being sick and having to leave a child like my mom had, you know, left me. There was just all of these fears that needed to be healed. Let's see, I wanna say, about a year before I was pregnant with her, there was this it was her, and I wasn't connected to that it was my child or a baby spirit. You know, I had no idea. It was just this thing. It just kind of guiding me to kind of two different healers. One was, you know, helping me to heal some physical things. You know, I had had a doctor tell me at age nineteen that I would probably not have children due to endometriosis and things like that. So, you know, one of the healers that I was led to, you know, was helping me with some physical things. Another one was, you know, helping me with some emotional and spiritual things. So it was like this, you know, I knew it would I knew it was like some, you know, maybe my higher self, maybe, you know, some other entity, I guess. Mhmm. You know, kind of guiding me to these places and things that I needed to do. But it wasn't until, I think, when I was pregnant with her that I realized what had happened. That it was her. This is this is what she needed me to do. She needed me to heal these things so that she could come or said, and if I hadn't been, you know, doing this emotional, spiritual, and physical, I guess I'll call it cleansing. If I hadn't been doing that stuff, she wouldn't have had the pregnancy, the birth, you know, in the early parenting style that I had with her, you know. Totally. I had her I had her at home, you know, I've, you know, I've done, you know, mostly attachment style parenting. I mean, you know, of course, you know, what works for us, things like that. But it just it just would have been a completely different experience, you know, had I not done all of this work before. Because she was, you know, to be honest, you know, even though I had been feeling connected to this, she, you know, she was a surprise. But, you know, had it been different, you know, and not it still was, like, conscious, like, on another, like, subconsciously, like, on another level. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1
Totally. I mean, I kinda think I kinda think all babies and parents have that to some, you know, depending on where we fall spiritually. I do think there's very real contracts that get made whether we're aware of it or not.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yes. Exactly.
Speaker 1
And so what was it like with your second? You said you were able to feel, like, more of his presence, or what was that like?
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, I think it was, you know, maybe even a few months after I had had my daughter that, you know, I knew that I was gonna have a boy next. I knew I knew that it's funny because they have a very difficult relationship with each other. Very difficult. You know? The and I I knew that I knew that that was gonna happen. I mean, it was just, like, I knew these things. But, you know, it was it was kind of the same thing. Like, there was just certain things that he, you know, he didn't how he wanted to come in, things like that. So, you know, it's funny, I was it was kind of the same the same thing when he was conceived, you know. I was I had just finished doing a juice fast. You know, I think that's very important to my kids is just coming into a very healthy womb space, you know, not not just emotionally and spiritually, but physically. So I had just finished a juice fast. And I just kind of knew, like, it's funny, my husband had even been trying to clean things up and, you know, doing, you know, doing more raw, more raw foods and more juicing. And it was like, we were just kind of being led. And it was like, you know, I had even known, like, when he was conceived. So, you know, I think it was even like just a couple weeks after I knew that he was conceived, you know, I was just kind of waiting to see what would happen. I didn't think I'd have any symptoms for a while. And it was like, you know, probably two and a half weeks or so after, you know, I thought that he was conceived, but I was, like, gagging on my dinner, and I just knew, like, he's in my belly.
Speaker 2
And you knew, you
Speaker 1
knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the boy?
Speaker 4
Yeah, I mean, there were some doubts, just, you know, kind of doubting myself, but I just had felt very connected to this, you know, to this to this boy.
Speaker 5
You know,
Speaker 4
and with with both of them, you know, I don't do very many ultrasounds. You know, if I have another baby, I I may not do any. But, you know, just kind of for my peace of mind and my midwife's peace of mind, I usually do one. And, you know, I just kind of went into that appointment just knowing already that it was gonna be a boy.
Speaker 2
So I
Speaker 4
just felt very I just you know, and I felt very connected to this very, you know, kind of different kind of masculine energy, like a more softer, you know, more balanced, more balanced masculine energy. So
Speaker 2
beautiful.
Speaker 4
Thanks. Yeah, it's it's been it's in you know, I think it's the case, you know, with with most of us, I mean, you know, when we're calling in kind of these higher vibe, babies, you know, they call for us to do some more work on ourselves and in our relationships in our home.
Speaker 2
Mhmm.
Speaker 4
So it's just been like, yeah, I'm really passionate about talking about all this stuff. I love all this stuff.
Speaker 1
And do you you feel any more spirit babies tapping at your door?
Speaker 4
I do. Yeah. We fill a third one. And, you know, my like I said earlier, my four year old daughter, I mean, she is highly spirited, high energy, and it's been it's been really hard for her having this other little baby. So I do feel like it might be another couple of years before our family is ready Mhmm. Is ready for another one. And, you know, and that's all, you know, it's all in divine timing and things like that. But, yeah, I I do definitely feel, you know, this really soft feminine energy.
Speaker 1
And sometimes I feel like a third can actually, like, when the pack is finished, something energetically can, not always, but sometimes settle in that in that older child, you know, when when everyone's arrived. And, you know, the the the pack keeps changing, you know, as each child gets gets brought in. And, yeah, I wonder what how it will feel. You know, maybe maybe it won't be a super hard transition with the last kid. Maybe it'll be more of a settling and, yeah, of course, she'll be older and who knows?
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Not that. Yeah. I know. That's that's very true. Yeah. I do want to you know, I think it's hard. It's hard on us moms, you know, to grow a baby and to nurse a baby and, you know, all of that stuff. So, you know, I'm big on, you know, getting myself feeling good. So, you know, that's another that's another aspect of it too. But, no, I love I love what you said about it. Just kind of being, like, you know, like, the package is done and, you know, she can maybe feel a little more grounded and settled in our home. I like that.
Speaker 1
Hope so. Well, thank you so much for sharing.
Speaker 4
Oh, thank you for having me. This is great. I appreciate it.
Speaker 6
On our honeymoon, Eric and I modified our family planning timeline. We're giving ourselves a last little hurrah to increase our bond as man and woman, and we're working up to conception. When I say increase our bond, basically, I mean sex. But I mean sex not just in its physical form. I mean sex in the depths and heights of its soul bearing, spiritually revealing, psychologically demanding, intimately connecting, mind challenging, past provoking and present healing expanses. I spent the summer secretly learning pole dance to surprise Eric with a private show the night before our wedding. This turned into an unexpected journey for me. It was a huge challenge to engage in an activity that so boldly and blatantly calls out body image, sexuality, confidence, and self expression. Practically every last one of my most sensitive triggers. Entering the studio felt like entering someone else's domain, the world's domain of what is beauty and what is ugly. Getting on a pole felt like trying to fit into a definition of what is sexy and what is grotesque, and I didn't fit. Dancing was battle, my armor nothing but bare skin, combating and being beaten down by these limiting beliefs and lies that I grew up wearing as truths. Yet I found myself wanting to face this again and again, My goal increasingly to strengthen my ability to claim my own space in the studio and metaphorically in the world to create my own definitions of worth to separate my truth from all the false. Dancing became my spectacular rebellion, freedom, healing. Dancing became exercising my control over my vulnerability instead of letting it be controlled. It became exercising my surrender to what I thought was unacceptable about me. It became an exploration of that wild space where control and surrender interplay. Past abuse and misinformed culture had their effects on my capacity for intimacy, physical and otherwise, abuse on my sexuality and self esteem, my power of consent and bodily autonomy, my perception of self in relation to others. Compounded by the outrageous conditioning of society, the relentless messaging of how to contort my femininity, what I should be embarrassed by, what is gross and dirty, what I need to change in order to be proud of, and how much of that depends solely upon what one sees. The barriers and protections collected from growing up in this from growing up in this environment become normal life ingrained existence. Normal to navigate around your own obstacles. Normal to lumber around hindered by your own armor. You forget your purity. The terrifying liberation of feeling yourself exist bare and unapologetic. You forget the strength that was born in you. This was not about dancing for Eric. This was about myself. This was about being a woman. This was about claiming my mind, my body, my life. From this perspective, that one dance became the most intimate gift I could grant to anyone. It was not simply for his gratification, for the pleasure of a man. It was my own creation. It belonged to me. It was an extension of me and my expression, and it was fully my choice to allow him to see it. I consider that dance to be one of the strongest rituals of making my vows to him. This is my biggest revolution from the bars and walls and alarms and dishonesty and silence with which I protected myself from the beginning and for the first many years of our relationship. We've worked on it piece by piece as aspects have come up and much progress has been made, but this is next level for me. The point of all that is to put my desire into perspective. Yes. I want all the babies, and yes. I want them now. But I really want to be the best mother I can be. I want to make them from the best of me. I want them to be conceived of my wholeness as a woman and Eric's wholeness as a man who also with abuse in his past is reclaiming his own definitions of masculinity. We want to take just a bit more time to up our game in these areas so conception will be the result of intimate and honest connection between us, not just biology. So our babies will be born of and raised in expressions of love without fear and withholding. Not everything will or can ever be perfect before having kids. Please, if you get anything out of what I'm saying, don't misunderstand that I believe it ever could be. Nothing, for that matter, will be perfect after having kids. And indeed, healing can happen through having kids. I believe that, and I'm not delaying on those premises. But you hear stuff like, If you wait to be ready, you'll never have kids. You're never ready to have kids. And I simply don't believe that for me. I believe there are many factors external to oneself that can distract and delay, and I agree. There are many unnecessary and effectively false markers of preparation in which people can get caught up. But I do believe in preparing my actual self. I believe I am the only thing that needs to be ready. I believe there are things in myself I have the time and luxury to address now that are my responsibility to get an order before I take on the responsibility of another soul. I believe I've learned to know when I'm ready to act on something, to commit to it, ready to start something, ready to finish it. I've learned what it feels like when I'm almost ready and how to listen to myself to get there. I've learned I take a long time, longer than so many others, but I've also learned to be okay with that because of the results of letting myself be truly ready. I prefer what comes of that over what comes of forcing myself into situations based on time or anyone else's opinion. I believe I'm close now, and this is the path that leads there. We would like to make a lot of progress in these next months and then hopefully let conception happen as a result as a natural result later in the year. Of course, you can never know how successful it will be or what might be preventing it, so we'll deal with any complications as we're made aware of them. But like a good Disney child, I'm following my heart. I'm simply making a decision and living it out. It will have its pros and cons, just as plowing ahead to have a baby now would. I'm not trying to explain that it's better than any other choice or possibility. I'm just explaining why I've chosen it.
Speaker 2
Probably shortly after I met my now partner and husband, so that would have been almost eight years ago, and prior to that, like, I had almost even considered that I didn't wanna have kids. I was just really unsure of it. And meeting him and just some other things that were happening in my life at that time, like, initiated this whole unraveling of, my relationship with the feminine in a greater way and and my relationship to motherhood. And that's when I feel like, okay, this, like, is part of my past, like, what does that mean for me? And that's when I started having dreams of, a couple of different, like, spirit babies, you could say, and then one in particular that was has really been with me that whole time. Yeah. So with for me, conscious conception, as I said, it's it's really such a unique individual process and I started also teaching about it in the recent years and through doing that, I realized that like my intention is always with the women that I'm working with to really guide them in their own intuitive process. And I think we can get into these patterns around conscious conception of like, okay, you need to do like a three month cleanse and you need to do x y z. And it's really for me in my own experience and what I've witnessed with other women is it's such an unraveling of linear thought processes and how you can arrive at this place where you're really surrendered to the great mystery of it, because it is a really mysterious process. So in that regards, I came to came to this place of, like, wanting to consciously conceive through this connection with this other being, with this spirit baby, with this person that's wanting to come through, through, like, a great healing experience over several years. And then when as the time got closer of, like, talking to my partner and, you know, taking care of some of those more logistical aspects, you could say, of, like, where are we gonna live and, like, how are we gonna navigate all those daily things bringing in another person. I also got really clear on just like what I needed to do for my own physical body and spiritual connection in as a way to integrate that in. So it's like so many different layers and levels happening simultaneously, I feel like. And for me, what was the most interesting part of the process of, like, connecting to the baby through dreams or through meditation, was how how this being who's not yet in physical form is informing my decision making process and informing the way I'm moving in the world and informing the way that I'm creating something to facilitate that whole conscious conception. Yeah, so the this being kind of guiding me to create this, create the life that the baby's gonna be joining us in. It was almost, for me, like, as we were approaching that kind of time where we were really doing some more intentional, like, calling in of the child, of the pregnancy, outside of, like, as I spoke to, like, outside of what I was doing for my physical body, which of course, like, includes the dietary and lifestyle things that support physical health and vitality. So, for me, over the past several years, just due to my interest in women's health and supporting just feeling my best in like a day to day sense, a lot of these things I had already kind of integrated in a way that felt pretty easy for me. So, just eating, you know, organic food, minimizing, like, I don't drink alcohol, I haven't for several years, minimizing caffeine, sugar, getting rid of a lot of, like, endocrine disrupting chemicals in my home or in my skin care products or cleaning products. All of that I took into account, I would say, several months before conceiving and also for my partner as well. Nice. That was something we were both, you know, wanted to do just to facilitate the process. And we live, like, in a time where fertility is really a challenge for a lot of women. And I think of that that's happening for a lot of different reasons, but I I recognize that lifestyle and diet plays a big role. So I just wanted to, yeah, support my body in the best way possible and, and also feel good during pregnancy because I knew that if I was entering into pregnancy, like, from a depleted state or from a state of just not optimal health and not feeling my own sense of vitality, That, you know, how can I share that with another being and nurture another being if I'm having trouble just maintaining my own my own health? So, that and, you know, like balanced physical activity and by that I mean not overdoing it, not pushing myself to extremes. I used to run marathons and, like, was really into that sort of thing. This was several years ago.
Speaker 4
And
Speaker 2
yeah, I just I don't do that anymore. I really try to honor where I'm at in my menstrual cycle. So that was a big part of it is like honoring my menstrual cycle, honoring which which phase of my menstrual cycle I was in and how my energy could be used in the most constructive way during that phase. Whether that's, you know, physical, what I'm doing physically, and I'm a long time yogini, so a lot of times I would just adapt my yoga practice for the phase of my cycle that I was in. Or, you know, I would try to plan things around my cycle, actually. So, if I knew I was going to go on a long hiking trip, you know, I would try to do that during ovulation and not during menstruation. So, simple things like that, that just really helped me over the course of the last few years, like, regulate my own energetic system and regulate the use of, of my resources, essentially, because we, you know, we our resources, energetically, or they're not always unlimited. And, and I just want to be aware of how I'm using that in like a day to day basis. We kind of had a timeline in mind of when we would be, you know, I mean, we were preventing up until basically up until the month I conceived. And by preventing, we were I was just using the fertility awareness method for several years. So, I was tracking ovulation through cervical fluid and basal body temperature charting. So, I had a pretty good idea of when I was ovulating. And then, yeah, there was a couple of, like, ceremonial type things that I did before before I conceived last July. One was for me personally. I, did a photo shoot with this really talented woman, photographer in San Diego and she's also a somatic experiencing practitioner and it's like a very body based experience. And my intention was really to celebrate, like, my years, in the role of the maiden. So I did that for myself and that was really powerful and it was really after that session with her that I was like, I felt really rooted in myself and really rooted like in my body's desire to like carry life. So that was really a profound experience because I felt like all these all these pieces were coming together of, okay, you know, I've done like, I've taken care of my physical body, like, I've been in connection with with this spirit baby on a spiritual realm, like, I feel this connection, like, things with my partner are going really well. So, like, so many pieces came into place in that moment and I felt like, okay, now I'm really grounding myself in the physical body because pregnancy is like this very earthy process and, like, conception is, like, this very human animal thing that we get to do that's so surreal in many ways. And I just felt, like, from that point, it was so clear to me that, like, this was the next step in my own evolution. So that was kind of something I did on my own, separate from my partner. And then together, we did like a, we did a ceremony using so I've done a lot of ceremonies and ritual using menstrual blood. So that's something I've been exploring for the past couple of years, and so I included him for the first time in something like that. And essentially, it was just, like, self directed ceremony of calling in support and calling in and, like, just letting the the spirit maybe know that, you know, we welcome him or her and we're ready whenever that may be or however that looks like we're available. It's interesting because I so, I kinda have to give you a little bit of background. I work with fertility a lot. I'm an acupuncturist and herbalist and a lot of the work I do is around fertility and, I think somehow that was still influencing my view of like, oh, it just, you know, like you can't expect to get pregnant right away. So, so I was like, oh, okay. We're like, we're, you know, we're totally open to this. And it's like, we, you know, this is the first time, like, we've really been open to it. So I just I think I was in a little bit of denial. But I mean, I still found out I still knew fairly soon, I would say I knew like, eight days after ovulation that I was pregnant. Based on how I was feeling, I I can remember there was a morning, so, yeah, there was a morning where I woke up, and I just felt like this small pulsation, like, in my womb, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, and it was in that space, like, between sleep and wakefulness, where it's like you, you know, like you're still in a little bit of a dream state. And, I have like a practice of kind of trying to hang out in that space on occasion. So I was in that space for just like, long enough to pick up that, like, I really could feel my heart beating in my womb. And I
Speaker 5
was like,
Speaker 2
yeah, it was like, that is new, you know, that is a new experience. And so then I kind of went about my day and like, I still remember feeling like a little uneasy. Like, I
Speaker 6
was just like, why do
Speaker 2
I you know, like, I just felt different in my body. And and what was very notable like in the days that came after that was, it's like I could feel my mind slowing down, which sounds strange but with progesterone and any anytime after ovulation and you get a rise in progesterone, like progesterone is the hormone. It acts as like a natural anti anxiety medication for the brain and the nervous system. So, you can kind of tune into that just in a regular cycle. You can notice that your the way your brain processes information changes after ovulation. Yeah. So even in your men's even just in your normal menstrual cycle, if you don't conceive just
Speaker 1
because progesterone
Speaker 2
is more more dominant in the second half, you'll notice that or you can notice, there's potential to notice that the way you process information changes the brain. Yeah, it just shifts a little bit. Progesterone really encourages nervous system repair. So, that kind of manifests in different ways for different people. But, what I noticed, like, being pregnant was, like, yeah, I could tell in previous cycles when I was not pregnant that, yeah, progesterone was present and, like, my brain was was operating a little bit differently. But with pregnancy, it was just, like, it slowed way down. Like, my thought process and, yeah, just the way I was taking in information and also, like, giving out, like, or acting externally, you could say. So I noticed those couple of things and, yeah, I just kind of knew that, like, that I was pregnant at that point. Yeah. So I'm, I mean, I'm just really, I'm always reiterating that I'm open to all forms of communication. That's something that, like, I'll come back to, really probably every day is, like, I'm really open to hearing from you in all the all the ways that you wanna communicate with me, whether that's through dreams, which has been often, or just through, like, something I experienced during the day where it's like that clearly was a sign or a way for the baby to communicate something with me. And then I communicate with, him or her just by speaking out loud, by journaling, by also just being in silence sometimes. I think silence is, like, so profound, especially during any phase of conception or pregnancy. Because a lot of times the answers are in the silence. Mhmm. And, yeah, it's like if I'm constantly having input, if I'm constantly on the go, if I'm constantly having even even sometimes just music on, like even that can be some form of interference. So so trying to like spend more time in silence, spend more time in nature, minimize external influences so I can be available.
Speaker 1
That was Kristen, and I'm thrilled to say that she has since had a wonderful birth and is doing well with her baby boy. Lastly, we have Crystal, who I had the privilege of attending her birth seven years ago.
Speaker 5
Hi. I am Crystal D'Angora, and I am Los Angelian, live in Los Angeles, raised here. And I wanna share about my experience with, what we could call conscious conception. And my journey with conceiving my child starts, probably back in around two thousand and one or so, when I stopped menstruating. And so, the reason I say it starts back then is because a lot of my journey toward having a child was, built around this kind of interesting relationship I was having with my body and my fertility, and I stopped having a period. And, I always have tended toward Eastern medicine and the philosophy of trying to use, more of nature to connect with my femininity and my, natural cycles. And when I didn't really have as much of that happening in my body, meaning I didn't have a period coming every month, I was feeling a little disconnected. And so I used, as much as possible, I would go to acupuncture and talk to different Eastern doctors about just what might be happening with me. Around that same time, I was also getting very involved in yoga and meditation, and so those were tools that I was using to explore what might be happening inside my body. So part of that process was taking herbs and getting acupuncture, and meditating on how to maybe reconnect with my with my body. I was aware that there were some of my old programmings maybe coming into play where I didn't totally, want to own my femininity at times, that there was trauma around that. So through just exploring all of that, I kind of assumed, like, my period was just gonna come back and everything was gonna be back in the flow pretty quickly and easily. But after quite a while, I'd say a good three years of doing more of the the natural realm, nothing was really changing and I didn't have a period. And I also just didn't have, like, monthly cycles. Like, I didn't feel my mood change and I didn't have any kind of, like, tenderness in my breasts and all these things that I had had completely. I was had my period when I was eleven, almost twelve, and I had cramps, and I had, you know, swollen breasts and bloating and moodiness and all of the normal stuff, and then all of a sudden that was just gone. And there was this level of, like, am I a woman anymore? Like, I definitely started to feel this sense of lacking femininity. And so I remember when I was at UCLA and I thought, Okay, I have great health care at UCLA. I'm gonna try the Western side and make sure I get all the tests and find out what might be happening with my body. And I'll never forget, like, after getting this full blood panel and sitting down with a female doctor there at UCLA, which is, you know, highly renowned, and her saying, You know, you should consider yourself lucky. You don't have to deal with your period each month. And basically everything looks good on paper, so I don't know. You're fine. And just feeling this, like, like, hopelessness kind of At this point, I wasn't even necessarily going to have a child someday. It was more like, If I want to down the road, that would be great. I was in my early 20s, and I was just like, I want to feel like a woman. And so that was a moment of kind of feeling very saddened by our Western way of seeing things and this whole, like, you should consider yourself lucky because you don't have to be a woman, basically, is what I was hearing from this other female doctor. What she offered me was basically I could go on progesterone and that that would kick start my period, and we could do do it that way. And she knew I was feeling very hesitant to do anything in the Western side of things, but I was like, okay. I've tried a bunch of stuff. It's short term. Maybe it'll do what she said and kind of get it going, and then I can supplement with other with more Eastern stuff. So I took the progesterone, took it for a couple months, I think maybe three months. I think I got a little bit of spotting the first month. Felt like crap, like felt a lot of the negative symptoms. My skin broke out. I was feeling moody. But that was it. No more blood. Again, next two months, kept taking it. No more blood. I was like, screw this. And around the same time, one of my good friends had told me she was pregnant. And she was like, hey, I know you've had issues with your period. I was told I was infertile. And I went to see this woman. She's like a witch doctor and she made this crazy potion for me and I'm pregnant. So it's like, okay, I'm gonna check her out. So I went to see her in Santa Monica and I, at this point, had been feeling basically like, Yeah, probably nothing's gonna work, but let's do it. And I went to see her. She did muscle testing. So she was, like, pressing on my arm and counting out loud. And I was just like, I have no idea what she's checking, but she's talking to my body. And she said, okay, this is what you need. She had this formula for me. It did actually have some a lot of animal, like, spleen and liver and things like that, which I had been vegan for a long time. Another thing is I had asked Western doctors, like, do you think being vegan is part of the issue? And they're like, no, it shouldn't. You know, you everything else seems fine. But for her, she said a big part of it was my body wasn't doing what it needed to do without the support of, like, blood and organs. Like, I needed my organs and my blood to be supplemented and fed by animal product. But I was just willing to give it all a shot. I took that pill. I think she gave me, like, five pills before I left the office. I had a full on period that night, and I was just I was totally blown away. Nothing like that had happened. It was eight years that I hadn't had a period. And it was that night. And I was just like, Okay, she's a witch doctor. And so at this time, I was married and feeling very connected to my partner. And we had also done a lot of work just together on really thinking about what it meant for us to be parents, like, how we felt about basically coming into an acceptance that we weren't going to be parents or that maybe we would be adopting a child. And so I see, you know, I'm talking a lot about the physical aspect of my experience, but simultaneously along this path, there was a lot going on for me spiritually, emotionally. I remember there were times when my husband and I agreed that we really did not want to bring a child into this world, that we felt like, you know, this is this is probably okay, that we can experience our partnership in many other ways. And, you know, okay, maybe there's a child who already has been born that's gonna need a home. And so there was some a lot of acceptance, a lot of talking about that. And I was also feeling like I did a lot of work to heal my own relationship with my mom, heal sexual trauma. So this whole path of conscious conception was it was happening without me really thinking about it as preparation to conceive, but more like preparation to be the best woman I could be, to clear and open myself up to whatever my work as a woman or mother would be and how it would look and, like, trying to just open myself up to all the different ways that that might happen. I've worked with kids for many years, so I thought at one point, like, well, maybe my mothering is mothering through teaching children and working with kids. So there was a lot of that work kind of happening while I was trying to get my body in line. And then one of one piece of that was actually through using Ayahuasca plant medicine. And during that work that I was doing with a shaman, one of my questions was why why do I not bleed as I was going in working with the plant medicine? Like, what's what's happening around my relationship with my my fertility? And I had done a few different sessions, had a lot of mixed experiences where there was a lot coming through, but I just didn't know what to make of it. And finally, the last Ayahuasca ceremony that I did, I got this extreme, clear sense of mother energy. And it was so sad. It was so heavy. There was this feeling like what it means to be a mother is to hold the weight and the sadness for all born and unborn souls. And I just felt like it was the heaviest thing, but that it was part of the work, that I had to be able to hold that sadness. And in that place, I felt very stuck there for a little while during that ceremony. And I asked for help from the shaman, and she got behind me and held my heart. And when she held my heart, it was like the mother held me as I was the mother and so that I would always be supported in that space as mother, that I could trust that there were gonna be, like, all the mothers before me, my grandmother, my mother holding me, and that I could handle it and that I was just part of this this flow of what it means to be a mother. And that was one of the most transformative moments that I felt like I was really able to see now that I could be a channel for a child to come through. Like, just to know that I could hold that, that I would be able to be what I needed to be as a mother. And I could see how before that time I was afraid. I was really afraid that I wasn't gonna be able to handle the weight of that. So that was pretty pivotal. And it wasn't long after that that I met this witch doctor lady who got me my period. And I always say that she got me pregnant, but my husband did have something to do with it. And so I got that period. I had two more periods after that first one, like, on the dot when it was supposed to come the following month. And my husband and I hadn't been using protection all that time. And we had gotten very comfortable with the idea that, like, that wasn't something we had to think about. And so we weren't quite in the moment going, like, We're ready to have a kid now. We were just like, Okay, cool. Now this seems like it might be a possibility. So there was, like, this sort of not trusting it. And then I remember this specific day. It was June. We were driving up to see my my husband's mom, his family, and we were in our van, and we were just, like, being very playful and very sexual, just kind of suggestive as we were driving. And we both just had this, like, urge, like, we need to pull over now. We need to hook it up. And we pulled over into a parking lot, bdalton books, off the side of the one hundred and one going north, Ventura County. And we had sex in the back of our van, and it was very hot and passionate. And we were just, like, didn't hold back. Everything was just all up in there. And it was just like this moment that had to happen and we hadn't really had a moment specifically like that before. And I remember we were just glowing afterward, and he I don't know what the the thing that was said, but we both kinda had this sense of, like, something just happened there. And I found out very quickly, like, I could feel the shift in my body not long after that that something is different. And I think I took a pregnancy test, like, I think maybe only two weeks after that and was like, yep. I'm pregnant. Okay. So that spirit is ready to come through. And there was this immense shift for for me, like, where I just felt like, okay. Now I am full on ready to embody that mother energy that I felt. And it was really such an empowering change, like, just from the moment that that my period got restarted and how I felt like I really grew into feeling the power that it is to be a mom. And so that was where where the consciousness came in was just whatever I had thought it might mean when I was younger was really being shed over those years of having to rediscover and find out how to bring my femininity back into my body in a way that was true for me as opposed to, like, what had been programmed before that. So that's kinda my story.
Speaker 1
And Crystal went on to have a ecstatic, one may even say orgasmic, birth experience. That's it for today. Thank you to all the contributors and for everyone listening. The death of the maiden, the birth of the mother, it's quite a process, and there may never be a clear beginning or end. I don't know. Thank you all for tuning in, and I wanted to end with a quote that I saw today that caught my eye for all of you listening. It is in your self interest to find a way to be tender. Thank you all. We'll see you next week.
