Ask The Nurses Episode 126

In this episode of Ask The Nurses Podcast, we are joined by the remarkable Nickita Starck, a leading figure in childbirth, health education, and human rights. With 14 years of experience as a traditional birth keeper, Nickita has been recognized by esteemed bodies like the World Council For Health and The People's Health Alliance for her outstanding contributions.

Nickita is the founder of "When Push Comes To Shove" (WPCTS), a groundbreaking initiative that has become the world's fastest-growing decentralized maternity structure, spanning over 10 countries. WPCTS is more than an organization; it's a movement that provides holistic maternity care from early pregnancy through childbirth. Their services include one-on-one sessions, continuous care from birth keepers, a range of online courses on pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal healing, and intensive training for aspiring holistic birth practitioners. They also collaborate with The Autonomy Hotline to ensure families are informed about their human rights in birth.

Beyond her work with WPCTS, Nickita is a prominent advocate for women's health and spiritual development. She is pursuing a PhD in Lifestyle Medicine and is known for her impactful talks that aim to heal trauma and empower women. Her teachings on physiological childbirth are highly sought after by midwives, doctors, expectant mothers, and birth enthusiasts. Nickita's approach emphasizes that true transformation in childbirth and women's lives comes from self-development and healing core wounds.

Nickita's influence extends to various well-known platforms, including podcasts such as Richard Vobes, Doc Malik, Mark Attwood, and Tess Laurie. She has delivered talks at prestigious events like The Better Way Conference, The People's Health Alliance, universities, and various freedom events. Additionally, she authors a popular blog focused on healing core wounds and spiritual self-development.

Join us as we delve into Nickita Starck's inspiring journey and explore how she is revolutionizing the field of maternity care, empowering women, and reshaping traditional paradigms. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in holistic approaches to childbirth, women's health, and spiritual development.

Connect with Nickita
https://whenpushcomestoshove.co.uk/
https://artemisbirthattendantacademy.com/
Instagram - @‌when.pushcomestoshove
Facebook - @‌wpctsfilm
Substack - https://nickita.substack.com/

Transcript

Hey, everyone. It is Nicole Sirotek with American Frontline Nurses once again on Ask the Nurses podcast. And we are continuing with the Reclaiming Birth series that we've dedicated to making sure that everyone is prepared kind of for the September birth boom is what I like to call it. And we have the Reclaiming Birth Conference, September 20th and 24th. It's in Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. I just want to specify that because people are like, we can't fly to the UK. I'm like, no, it's Canada. But they also have a virtual Zoom link where you can virtually watch the conference as well. And they have a guest speaker named Nikita, whose business is physiological birth. She is a subject matter expert on that. We wanted to bring her in to talk a and the medicalization of birth ultimately. So let's bring on Nikita. Hey, Nikita. Hey, how are you doing? I can't like, and you guys, everyone, just in case you don't know, Nikita is all the way in the United Kingdom. So she is coming onto our podcast. We haven't had anyone from the United Kingdom for like a while. So that's really great to kind of see the differences in the healthcare systems. And thanks for coming on for us. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. You know, you always have a nice accent. We can only get some Irish people on here too. I'm like, man, I can listen to you all day. Just read the dictionary. Okay, so Nikita, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. Sure. So my name is Nikita Stark. I am founder of a company called When Push Comes to Shove. And essentially, we are a decentralized company. maternity structure and what that means is well basically we stand for choice in education we don't have any dogma in our approach to birth we don't think women should go to hospital should give birth a home it's about celebrating choice and informed consent but what we do is offer care to women, we offer holistic non-clinical care for those who want to be empowered in their birth experience, have autonomy and continuity of care. And we provide, like I said, non-clinical birth keepers and birth practitioners to support women through their entire pregnancy, birth and beyond. We also train people to do this too. We have several courses so you can help change the landscape of birth in your own backyard. and help women to become empowered in their choices. And yeah, just change the landscape of birth. I really believe that the fundamental difference comes from starting from within, which is what I will be talking about at the Reclaiming Birth Conference. So tell us a little bit about that, because people want facts and figures, and this is so much deeper than just facts and figures. Yeah, this is deep. This is nuanced. So in We, let's talk about trauma of women first to get a little bit of backstory. So women suffer with incredible trauma, be it generational or core wounds. And with most women, the core wounds are either I'm not enough, fear of being abandoned and fear of rejection. And because of our rich history of having to act as handmaidens, you know, we have to be agreeable. Yeah. societal expectations on women. This feeds into generation after generation. Just imagine it's a snowball that continues to get more and more momentum. But our job now is to cut the generational trauma and start something different. Now, most people think that your reality, you're kind of a victim of your circumstances, which is true to an extent, but What I teach is we have to go within. You know that inner peace everyone is searching for? It's underneath the uncomfortable feelings we don't want to go to. Now, women are nasty to each other. There's a lot of competition, a lot of scarcity. A lot of women hold that energetic space of scarcity and defensiveness. Women have lost their ability to go within to that divine, feminine, deep inner standing. Women are constantly in their head. Now, I believe the presence of intelligence without wisdom is dangerous. And if we're constantly seeking external salvation, external validation, you know, in order to be okay, we're going down a slippery slope. Now, in my 16 years of being a birthkeeper, I've never seen a woman's intuition wrong. And I'm not saying you exclude the external because we bring both together. We provide incredible birth education, your human rights, how physical birth works, how your body works, resources to help women empower themselves. But that alone is almost superficial because if we don't begin to do the inner work and heal from our wounds, we're going to keep perpetuating it generation after generation. I spoke at a conference recently in the UK, midwives, and they were saying, yeah, but what about bullying and midwifery and what about this? And I'm like, you can't fix a problem from the same level of energy that created it, i.e. fear. You have to go within and find that authenticity, that place of love inside you. That causes the byproduct of change. If you want to see different fruits, you have to change your roots. And that is what I talk about a lot. I really like that because, you know, that's a huge issue in, and I think like healthcare, cause like nursing is like 80% women and it is hostile. If you, and I mean, not even in nursing, I worked in a department in, in a corporate business with all women and, you know, we worked in safety and health and everyone on the front lines were men. And I'm like, I would rather deal with the men. then be in my own department with these women because they're so hostile. They're so backstabbing. And I'm like, look, we're all going to get to the finish line together. It doesn't matter. There's enough for everybody. Like, I don't even know what enough is. We're all getting the same paycheck. Like, what's the issue here? But I definitely see that the hostility and you can't fix that with the same tools that you created that. yeah and women are nasty to each other and they react instead of respond because they can't regulate their emotions because they haven't been taught to and if we keep occupying this energetic space of fear fear fear it's just gonna snowball you can't put out a fire using another fire and it's caused by well one you've got generational trauma we do carry that around We don't consciously do this. It's a subconscious thing. There's a great parable I love which demonstrates this. So there are two monks and they're on a pilgrimage and they come across a body of water and there's a young woman sitting there and she says, can one of you carry me across the lake on your shoulders because I can't swim? And the younger monk says, sure, I'll take you across. So they get the young woman across And then the monks continue on their pilgrimage. And after a few hours, the older monk is noticeably irked and irritated. And he starts saying, why did you do that? You're meant to be celibate. You can't be carrying young women across the water on your shoulders. That's disgusting. And the younger monk replied and said, I put her down four hours ago. You're the one that's still carrying her. And I think that is a very beautiful metaphor of what we do on a subconscious level. We have all these threads of our experiences and our belief systems And we carry them with us without thinking, why am I acting this way? So a really good example is when women are triggered. I remember I put up a breastfeeding post about the benefits of breastfeeding. And I triggered so many women. Oh, my God, yeah. Now, if you don't believe you're doing anything wrong, why does it trigger you? Why? Yeah. What inside is hurting so much? What mirror is being held up to you? We have to dissect this. We have to heal the core wounds. In When Push Comes to Shove, we have got the most incredible sisterhood of women. I never actually thought it possible to have such a large group of women who weren't nasty to one another. But they're all there. They're all ready to do the inner work. They're all there to say, I don't need to react anymore. I'm going to respond. And we've got a 77% home birth rate. wow, 100% of our babies are breastfed. And yes, 50% of that comes from the really great education we provide and informed consent. But the other half is we don't have women attending births in survival mode. We don't have them in competition. We're there to learn from each other and not compete. There's abundance. And we need to occupy that space rather than this energy of I'm not enough. there's not enough um we don't need to do this empire building we need to work together man I could just like can you just be my life coach and like tell me like all this like nice stuff on like how to self-improve like this is this is the first module of one of our courses because I can't have women who are living in fear attending birth This should be done in nursing and midwifery and any professional where you're caring for someone. So the first module is usually the hardest for most because they are majorly triggered, but you don't grow in your comfort zone. You grow by going underneath those wounds. I mean, just look at where women have illness. They don't realize that your health is mind, body, and soul. It's always ignored in Western medicine, but A very popular core wound for women is I'm not enough. And that manifested right down in the root of your body. And then we see things like endometriosis. We see things like colitis. Women who don't feel they have a voice to talk. They're scared to say their truth. Thyroid problems. Illness will manifest in the body if it's not dealt with emotionally. And we need to let go of this blame thing. It's not your fault about your trauma. It is not your fault what happened to you, but it is your responsibility going forward and what you decide you're going to live like and if you're going to carry that with you. So I'll try and break it down. And if I trigger someone, I invite you to see that as a good opportunity to see, okay, well, what's causing that? Can I go deeper here? when you're born you're the most authentic you'll ever be you will cry when you need to you'll express your feelings freely because you're being authentic we need one basic thing and that's an attachment to a caregiver because that we need that to survive now this is not our parents fault they're not doing this on purpose they don't have the tools either So when a child is acting authentic and their parents can't deal with their authenticity, stop crying. It's making me feel like this. Stop it. You're making me feel this way or whatever. No, you can't have a tantrum in front of other people because I am so much of a helicopter. I have to make sure everyone else is all right so I can be all right because I can't go inside myself. The child every time will choose an attachment over authenticity. And then the ego develops. Now, the ego is not something to be judged. Most people are triggered by the word ego and they think narcissist or something like that. But even a people pleaser has a big ego because that people pleaser needs other people to see them in a certain way in order for them to be OK. Again, external, outside stuff. We need to talk about inside stuff. So these egoic archetypes start to form to protect us. You get them in the form of givers. Saviors. I know I was guilty of that. Had to save people because there was no way I was willing to sit with my own wound. The rescuer complex. That's a whole lot of women. Yep. Especially in helping professions. Yep. Then you've got the bleeding empath. They don't want to sit with their own feelings and feel their own pain. So they help other people. And then you've got controllers, helicopters. They have to make sure other people are doing certain things so their world can be okay. There's loads of different egoic archetypes, but they are not to be judged. We need to have empathy for others. And I understand why you're triggered right now, because I can see how this defense has evolved. And you know, when you're in confrontation with someone and they start acting unreasonable and screaming and shouting, you know you're not talking to an adult, right? You're talking to a child at whichever age they develop that core wound. So if their core wound developed at four years old and their core wound is I'm not enough, you're not talking to an adult, you're talking to a four year old. And this is so important to understand, to have empathy for other human beings, to not judge. And instead of judge, we have discernment. Because when you're angry with the world, it doesn't hurt anyone but you. It's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. We need to understand forgiveness. and starting with ourselves and to love ourselves and forget all the shame. Anything that promotes shame, think about it. You know, whether it's your social conditioning, whatever it is, self-love for yourself and for others is the key to a greater awakening in love with this world. You can't fix birth and you can't fix the landscape of birth until you decide that you want to remember who you are. You're on mute, Nicole. It's like 6 a.m. It's almost 7 a.m. here because of the time difference. So my dogs are getting restless and the kids are like... They know as soon as I get behind this camera that they can sneak any snack out of the pantry or do whatever they want because I will agree to it because I'm filming. It's like, I'm pretty sure they're ransacking all the treats right now in the pantry. But I'm just like, girl, that was pretty deep. Very, very accurate. Very, very accurate for I think what's going on, not only in the birthing world, but I think in the world in general, because there's a lot of unhealthy people out there right now. Yeah. We've all forgotten who we are because social media says that they are with that social contagion. Yeah. There's a lot of that. It's, it's, it's external validation and external salvation. People look to others to be okay. People look to other organizations and social constructs and body image, whatever it is, they look externally, but you won't fix anything by doing that. I mean, I'm not saying you have to do it because you have to be ready and willing to do the inner work and nothing good comes from force ever. Yes, we learn in our, not in our comfort zone, but no one, no one is forced into a revelation. No one is forced into that light bulb moment. Man, if we could force people, we'd get a lot more work done. If we love ourselves and we let people be, that's the ultimate form of love. Just let them get on with it. That's just a very popular saying, and it's so basic, and it's let them. You know, I've noticed within, like, say, the freedom movement, for example, people who have realized maybe the powers that be don't really have our best interests at heart. Great. That's level one of an awakening, I suppose. But what they're doing is they're out there on social media and And they're doing the same thing that they defend against. They're coming at it from a place of fear and calling people names. And even if it's systemic practice, they're being nasty about the system. That's the same level of energy that created the problem you're trying to fix. So go within. my my massive mantra at when push comes to shove is don't criticize create we understand that there are problems within the maternity well that's easy to discern but we don't need to keep going on about it we don't need to to create more of that fearful energy that won't fix the problem create a new one do work within yourself arm yourself with information it's funny women doing a hell of a lot of research when they're planning their wedding or the makeup they're going to buy. But when it comes to birth, they assume that's taken care of because they trust the system. Yes. Uh-huh. I mean, I got to tell you, I didn't do any research other than what I was going to have my nursery look like, um, and how to prevent stretch marks and stuff like that. Like that. I mean, the basics, you know, how to like, nobody even told me what, like, proper nutrition was like, I didn't even think about that. And my whole thing postpartum was that I was so nutrient deficient that it medic, like it mentally messed me up. They kept saying I was like having a, what was it? A postpartum depression. I'm like, do you want to put your baby in the oven? I'm like, I don't want to put my baby in the oven, but something is wrong with me. And, uh, you know, I did absolutely no research, absolutely no research at all other than like Pinterest or what I wanted my nursery to look like. Yeah. You're only as informed as the information you've got in front of you. And if you assume that part of your life is taken care of, that's you. Yeah, it was somebody else's job. Yeah, but this is the point, right? We're getting to the point in the divine feminine uprising where we're taking responsibility for ourselves, our health, our babies, our births. And that is the empowering choice. It's not like, oh, you have to do that. You do whatever you want. And if you want to hand your birth over, do it. But there's consequences for everything. There's consequences for giving birth in hospital. There's consequences for doing it at home. There is no foolproof way. There is no like, well, if you give birth in hospital, you'll definitely be safe. Well, that's just not true. You're far more likely to have problems if you give birth in hospital. But equally, no one can promise a safe home birth. But if you make decisions externally constantly by being in your head, because no one's living in their bodies. Everyone's in their head. If you're trying to think, all right, oh, I will give birth at home because the person thinks that's a good idea. Well, that's not empowering. That's handing your power over again to another human being. What about what you feel? But because we're so scared to go underneath the feelings and actually connect with our true nature, we don't do it. And then we blame it. Yeah, I can definitely see that. Let's talk a little bit about that medicalization of birth. Because even though like here in the United States, we have a capitalist healthcare system, Canada and the UK have universal healthcare or what we call a socialist system. I'm pretty familiar with the NHS, but many people may not. Let's talk a little bit about the medicalization of birth through the NHS. Well, first of all, don't think that the NHS is free because... It's hard. Yeah. Well, we do pay for it. And I think it's slowly becoming privatised anyway. It is. And people assume in the NHS that, oh, you know, it's free, so therefore there's not going to be any sort of capitalist gain here. Well, no. There's something called the Care Commissioners Group, in the UK, and they pay the NHS nearly 4,000 pounds, which is about $8,000 for every emergency C-section. The over-medicalization stems, all stems from the same place, which is fear, fear of litigation, So if a woman, her child were to sustain a birth injury, if that's taken to court, they're going to be questioned. The care providers are going to be questioned. And if they don't tick every box, which says, I tried this intervention, this intervention, this intervention, when really those interventions cause the problem, but it's not just like that in court. Oh, you ticked the box, you did this, you gave this drug, and you definitely tried that. Well, you're off the hook. Then you've got the other thing. element of fear women are taught to be afraid of their own bodies starting from word go when they get their period then we have to go externally for everything else so just think about it like this let's go through a pregnancy journey how do women find out they're pregnant typically somebody pees on a stick because their period's late like literally yep so they need external confirmation that's the outside stuff then they need a scan Yeah, they honestly, like I thought I was pregnant, but I didn't believe it. So I went to the ER to go get a blood test. There you go. But really, if you sat with your feelings, you knew you were pregnant. Yeah, but I need that validation of that physical test. Yeah. Okay. So the sternal starts, then the scans start, then the blood tests start. And I'm not saying don't get them. I'm not, that's not my job. It's none of my business what anyone does with their, with their body. I'm just highlighting that we probably need a bit more balance. And then the NHS will say, right, well, you've got no continuity of care for a start. You don't see the same midwife through your pregnancy. It's Russian roulette. You don't know who you're going to get. And then they start adding more scans now at the end of your pregnancy. Oh, you've got to come in for a growth scan. Oh, your baby's big. which means we have to induce you. What? Okay, define big, please. And what's the only accurate way of weighing a baby? I would say after it's born. And you could ask them, well, what margin of error do your scans carry, please? And if you're being very conservative, you'd be kind and say 15% minimum margin of error. And then you might want to ask them, What percentage of your induced babies end up in a neonatal intensive care unit? But it's almost a conveyor belt process, not just with the women, but with the midwives that are trained within the system. They don't ever learn, for example, the correlation between blood volume expansion in pregnancy and protein. It's not taught. So how can they teach women? So, for example, preeclampsia. a very common but not normal pregnancy ailment where blood pressure soars and it's an emergency, the baby's got to be born. If midwives were taught using the Tom Brewer method, that when you're pregnant, your blood volume must expand by up to 60%. Most people will agree they already know that. But in order to do that, your liver has to perform 500 metabolic functions. In order to do that, you need 100 grams of protein per day. Now, at the end of pregnancy, if your blood volume has not expanded sufficiently, your body thinks it's hemorrhaging. So it starts to draw water out of your cells. And when you draw water, you have swelling. Then your blood pressure goes up. Now, if women just knew, just changing that and understanding 100 grams of protein a day could help prevent preeclampsia instead of being gaslighted and told them that their body failed them. Yeah, because I'm just like, I'm about to go over here and Google, what are the causes of preeclampsia again or eclampsia? Because I'm like, I'm like, nobody told me. See, nobody told me to eat more protein. I mean, I just assume because I'm building a body, I needed to eat more protein and I lifted weights. So I always... consume more protein than I feel the average woman did. But nobody told me that, you know, eating more protein could have prevented that. They wouldn't because they don't know it because it's based on a medical model and medical models give you drugs and medical models fixing it rather than preventing it because that doesn't, healthy people don't make money. It doesn't happen. And then you've got a customer for life. You've got a woman with a traumatic birth. So she's released an insane amount of adrenaline and cortisol during her birth. And her baby's born into a sea of adrenaline instead of oxytocin. Then she's confused why she can't breastfeed. How can you breastfeed when you're in survival mode? Then she's confused why she's got post-nasal depression. So then because she has surrendered to, in almost like a Stockholm syndrome fashion, she has surrendered to the experts. And has said, right, well, what drugs do I need to take for this? Well, you've got depression, you need to take this drug. And you can't breastfeed, so then you've got to start putting formula into your baby. And the baby's been born into a sea of adrenaline. And we wonder why children end up with issues like attention deficit disorder. Everything starts at birth. you've got a customer for life who is more prone because a woman has walked away and gaslighted herself thinking her body has failed her she can't bond with her baby correctly society has told her she's got to hurry the hell up and get out of bed and get back to a size whatever and entertain guests and get back to work so then you've got the trauma of emotionally sitting in the back of your mind, which will, if you don't address it, eventually manifest in the body in some form or another. And then Big Pharma has got an amazing client because they're on antidepressants. Then they've got to go on blood pressure medication because they're so incredibly stressed and they don't know why because everyone around them is telling them, you've got a healthy baby. What have you got to worry about? Do you know the number one cause of maternal death? Do you know the number one cause of maternal death? What? Suicide. Oh, really? I was totally going to think it was like, you know, something pregnancy related, hemorrhage, bleeding to death, throwing a clot. Suicide. I could see that now. I mean, I wasn't suicidal, like postpartum or anything like that, but nobody would listen to me that something was wrong. They just kept telling me, well, you're a new mom. I'm like, no, something's wrong. I don't feel right. And then women are afraid to talk about how they feel. So a lot of common issues after a traumatic birth is intrusive thoughts. And women don't want to talk about intrusive thoughts because they think their baby's going to be taken away from them. Yeah. It's kind of weird. They kept asking me if I wanted to put my very specific, do you want to put your baby in the oven? Why is it? Do you want to put your baby in the oven? It was very bizarre. I'm like, no. I mean, my audience may know that I went, you know, we, my husband and I went through IVF to make our babies while we were trying to adopt, you know, whichever was going to give us a baby first. We didn't care, but it was like a hundred thousand dollars. And I'm like to make a baby, but ultimately I broke my ankle on a tarmac and you know, transporting a patient made a baby the normal way after all this money was spent. And I'm like, I just went through all of this. And you think I want to put my baby in the oven? I'm like, I'm literally just telling you something is wrong. And, you know, metabolically there was, but my labs kept coming back normal, like normal. So yeah, I see that. When, you know, when they take blood tests and stuff, they don't test, they only test the plasma. They don't test the cells. So let's say for example, someone's anemic, If your hemoglobin or your ferritin levels are showing low, they are really low by the time they're showing up on a normal blood test because they do not test the cell. They test the plasma. And then when they're like, well, is there something wrong with me? Everyone else thinks I'm okay or should be okay. Then the emotional gaslighting starts. You know, there's only three things that ever cause disease, ever, and that's toxicity, deprivation, and trauma on a level of mind and body. If we don't address them, like the Western medicine just looks at the body. Seldom do they look at functional reasons. They just look at, oh, we'll put a bandaid on that and we'll give you this drug for that. Functional medicine is amazing and progressive, but what about the emotional side? Why does dis-ease manifest in the body if we don't address our emotional problems? That is never looked at. And when it is, the empowerment that people get from taking responsibility for their own health and their own body, it's just palpable how magic it is when people think, right, okay, I've done this my way. I've had women that have cured themselves from Graves' disease. um because they're looking at several levels of health instead of just the body and just what the hospital are saying um I've got a friend and colleague of mine she's type 1 diabetic but she hasn't had to take her insulin for 32 days because she is doing somatic work um looking on all these nuanced levels rather than just this tiny little box that we have been given that's your health that there this is how you fit Yeah, if people listen to you, we'd end up bankrupting pharma. Right? Well, you know, honestly, I do believe that there's a lot of, you know, psychological work, emotional, spiritual work that needs to be done. But people are either afraid or don't know. Or there's that complete disconnect from whatever their higher power is. Because most of the people that I noticed with the social contagion, have a a dysfunctional relationship with whatever their higher power is you know what I'm saying I you know I used to say god but you know we have such internet like international uh followers and stuff like that that they're not always christian but I'm just like maybe you need to connect with something maybe you need to connect with something and work on yourself yeah let's just use the word god for argument's sake because yeah it's a changeable that there's a book that I studied for years and I teach it in my course. And it's called A Course in Miracles. And A Course in Miracles says, we think we've got loads and loads of different problems, but we've only got one. And that's separation from God, authenticity, connection to higher self, whatever language you prefer. The answers always lie within. They really do. And when we go within, the byproduct is solutions present themselves. When they're, Just look up. Have you heard of the 100th monkey? It sounds familiar. It's collective consciousness. There was an amazing finding that there was an island and they were observing some capuchin monkeys and the monkeys were learning to use tools in a certain way. Then on another island where those monkeys had absolutely no contact with each other, they started to do the same thing as the monkeys on the other island because of the collective consciousness. it's it's absolutely beautiful and we have that too we have that when it's time new ideas will be presented if we can all connect if we can all find and remember who we are look if if you think you are a separate wave in the ocean the ocean's a very scary place to be but if you know that we are the ocean and we can all work together And we have to get rid of this illusion of separation because we're not separate. We may be in different bodies, but we all inhabit the same energy field. And if we can fill that full of love and empathy and compassion and stop the judgment instead of filling it up with fear, fear, fear, fear, more fear, judgment, anxiety, think what world we could live in. Mm-hmm. And the byproducts can change. So let's go. Well, I want to go off onto a tangent here because the ruckus is getting louder in the kitchen over here. So I'm like, I'm running out of time. Let's talk about the Artemis Birth Academy. That was one of the websites that you showed us. And I want to talk a little bit about that and what it offers. Certainly. So that was originally from when push comes to shove. So in 2021, the NHS was starting to say to midwives, no jab, no job. Oh, yeah. So I had a flurry of midwives call me and they said they want to leave. midwifery profession and work as a birth keeper so I created a course called the midwife lifeboat course kind of offering a literal lifeboat to help midwives empower themselves and become self-employed rather than relying on their salary and during this time I met the most incredible woman her name's angela chamberlain and she's an award-winning midwife and she left the system and we felt such synchronicity And such shared passion and drive, we founded Artemis Academy because it goes beyond, I wouldn't say they're basic courses, but we have like doula courses, childbirth advocate courses that when push comes to shove. But what we wanted to do was get our heads together and make the course for the most passionate birth nerd. You know, somebody wants to know everything there is to know about birth. while doing all this self-work, okay? And Artemis Academy is a year course. Now, in the UK, if you want to become a midwife, you're going to be in 50 grand's debt. This course is four grand, and it's a year, and we teach you all the functional side of things, like I was saying earlier about blood volume expansion, protein, And because me and Angela don't know everything, and if anyone tells you they do, be wary, we don't know all there is to know. So we have 20 guest experts from homeopathy to cranial osteopathy. Module five is incredible. And just to give you an idea, there are 55 modules. And in module five, it's six hours. And that is by a lady called Nikki Adolfi. And she founded the Autonomy Hotline Foundation. uh, advocacy for medical people, uh, people needing help in the medical field. Um, so vulnerable people in care homes, um, pregnancy, but this is, we work together with the autonomy hotline. We kind of triage to each other and Nikki Adolfi has got a master's in medical ethics and she's a lawyer and she teaches module five. So our students understand ethics and it's not just UK. We have, um, people in Canada. US, Australia, New Zealand. Now, while we teach mainly about UK law, we give you a template so you can go away and understand your own acts and legislations or whatever you have. We do actually give quite a lot of detail about the US. So you can help clients navigate the system, understand their rights, understand their choices, how much evidence is maternity care based on And it becomes more and more nuanced. We have a whole module about nutrition. We have a module about female genital mutilation. We have modules about the placenta. It's an insane amount of information. Now, it should take a year. And we started it last year. And most of our candidates still haven't finished because at the end of every module you'll see these resources and then you kind of go down your own rabbit hole and find out more and they're like oh I've just found out this and it's all online but we have monthly meetups so we can talk about what they've learned if they've got any questions and then after they've trained with us they can join when push comes to shove as a birth practitioner where we can offer them work we can't guarantee work but we get an awful lot of inquiries saying have you got a We can't do this on our own. We need an army of passionate, empowered women who want to empower and help empower others and help them find their superpower. Women have their births sabotaged unwittingly. I was certainly a victim of that myself. And I say victim, I had a gut feeling I shouldn't be acquiescing to what they wanted me to do. But I didn't have the wherewithal and the gumption to say, no, bugger off. I was very young and I didn't have the emotional tools that I do now. So when you join When Push Comes to Shove, you have a sisterhood. And like I said earlier, of women who are all here with each other. They're not bitching and fighting. We have regular meetups. It's so beautiful. It's gorgeous. And It's the most important. We had a lawyer. She trained with us. She said, I've done a lot of courses, especially law, and this is superior, as it says, superior education. She loves the format. We've got former midwives on the course. We've got people who've never done anything in birth before because this should be accessible to everyone. You'll get a mentor to help you find your own work and support you on your journey to make sure that you're okay here as well as consolidating your knowledge here. And then you get to add to the incredible statistics of when push comes to shove. Look, I'm not resting on my laurels here because we can always improve. And we're not serving hundreds of thousands of women yet, only hundreds. So we can't have direct, like, comparable statistics. We can't. But I do know this. If you... speak to three pregnant women, ask how many of them have had C-sections. And if you ask three when push comes to shove women, how many of you have had C-sections, you're going to get very different answers. Yeah. The C-section is just a money grab, I think. So Nikita, tell us how our audience can connect with you. Certainly. Well, I'm on Instagram when dot push comes to shove, but the easiest way to get hold of me It's going directly to my website, whenpushcomestoshove.co.uk. On there, you'll see a contact page, the little blue box top right. If you want our services, you want to find a birth keeper in your area. If you want to train with us, we need as many wise women like you as possible so we can help women empower their own choices and make informed decisions. We're not interested in telling anyone how to give birth, by the way. We're not like, we've got to give birth at home, and that's best. That's not empowering. There's already a system that tells women what to do, and I don't want any part of that. This is about choice and what feels right to the woman. And, you know, we're there to hold space for her. We're not there to save the day. We're there to go, what do you want? How can I help make that happen? We're on Facebook. I'm on Twitter, but I don't use it. I don't know how to use it. I think I've got like five followers. I don't really use it. Twitter's kind of a, it's its own beast right now. And then you also have a sub stack that people can subscribe to. Yeah. So if you're interested in all my chat earlier about self-development, check out my sub stack. There is a mountain of free information there to help you, to help you with the tools to start healing your wounds and it's not just about self-development. As you can see there, there's two, um, sub stacks. There's when push comes to shove and unity project. Um, I run workshops continuously for women who want to do the, the, the inner work. I'm actually starting a new course at the end of the year and it's called heal her. So if you want to book on the waiting list for that course, just email me, find me at the website and, uh, you can begin your journey, um, heal yourself to help heal the world it's uh it's an empowering place to occupy when you do the self-discovery yeah and I could just listen to you all day I'm just a positive person. Okay, well, thank you so much, Nikita. I've been on mute for a bit of time because it's getting rambunctious. So I'm like, I don't need a kid barging in here with like, you know, cookies and candies at like 7am trying to you know, bully me into giving them stuff so I can finish my podcast. So, all right. Thank you so much, Nikita and folks make sure to check out all of the links that Nikita mentioned. They're all inside the episode description and make sure to sign up for the reclaiming birth conference, September 20th and 21st in London, Ontario, Canada, but there are virtual tickets available, which I'll be attending virtually. All right. See you folks. Oh, wrong. See, I'm like getting flustered. I'm like, we need the outro, not the intro.