77. Healing Birth Trauma with Diana of @HealingBirth

Have you ever considered the profound impact of childbirth on a woman's spirit and emotional well-being? My guest, Diana from the Healing Birth Podcast, joins me to explore the depths of birthing as a transformational experience, complete with its trials, triumphs, and the undeniable role of faith. Through an intimate recount of my sister's journey from multiple C-sections to a heartwarming physiological birth, we illuminate the influence of supportive environments and the unwavering trust in God's design for birth, challenging the disenchanting labels like "failure to progress" with uplifting personal victories that honor the natural capabilities of our bodies.

Childbirth can leave scars deeper than the physical, as many women can attest to the lingering pain of birth trauma. Acknowledging this shadowed aspect of motherhood, Diana and I delve into the importance of validating these experiences and the therapeutic power of sharing them within a safe space. We dissect the intricate spectrum of birth trauma, from its subtle onset to its dramatic peaks, and emphasize the necessity of attentive, compassionate listeners to aid the journey to recovery. Recognizing and navigating the emotional terrain of traumatic birth experiences can be transformative, allowing for a reclaiming of power and autonomy that is essential for healing.

In the spirit of redemption and empowerment, our conversation culminates in a heartfelt discussion on the diverse paths to healing from birth trauma. We examine the role of physical memory, highlight somatic therapies, and advocate for movement and self-education as tools to overcome feelings of guilt or blame. My own story serves as a testament to the resilience of mothers, shedding light on the politics of midwifery and the sacredness of the birthing process. Each narrative shared in this episode is an invitation to embrace healing, and to support each other with empathy, as we navigate the aftermath of challenging births and the radiant mission of motherhood.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Toomey and we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through this life and with your relationship with Christ. We are currently in a series called God's Design for Birth and today we have a very special guest returning to talk more with us today Miss Diana from the Healing Birth Podcast. Welcome, diana. Thank you for joining me again.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Thank, you, Rebecca. It's a real honor to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:04

I love it. I keep saying us because my sister is my co-host and she's usually here and so I just mentally am like us and I'm looking around. Where is she? She's not here today. It's a little tough to get her to schedule these days, ever since that third baby. You know those babies.

Speaker 2: 1:23

I got to listen to her story. I didn't realize she had a home birth after two Cessarians. That's amazing. I'm going to listen to her story. Get her on my show.

Speaker 1: 1:30

There you go, there you go. There's another. There's a healing birth story for you, because she had a very traumatic second C-section and then I went through what I went through. She thought it was crazy and she'll tell you that when our midwife backed out and we decided to move forward, she was one of the ones that was like are you sure you should do this?

Speaker 1: 1:54

And I'm like yes, you've got this, the Lord is with us and everything. And she was a little bit nervous. But then, when it all came down, I think that it was healing for her too, in a way, to kind of watch that experience unfold. And it was funny because she had said to me I love this. It's kind of like you know how we say in 2023 or 2024 now, I love that for you. How people say that I'm like, oh, I love that for you. That was kind of her. She was like, yeah, I love that for you. Home birth love it, love it for you.

Speaker 1: 2:31

And then she got pregnant with her third baby and she was right down there looking for providers that could take her, that would help her along with her you know VBAC and turns out that doesn't exist. She didn't find one. So then she started looking for midwife. She ended up finding a midwife. So you'll hear that in her story. But it was just cool to see that progression that. You know. She was kind of like I love that for you, not for me. Then it was like, yeah, I'm going to pursue this. Then it was like, yeah, I'm going, I'm going headed on this.

Speaker 1: 3:07

And then I flew out there. I don't know if you heard this part of it. I flew out there to be with her for her birth. I was 33 weeks pregnant with Bryn, my third and I was with her for her whole entire labor. You know her husband woke me up in five in the morning.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Whatever it was, it was like, I think, that she's in labor and I got to be with her through the whole thing and the amazing part about it was her baby's head was asynclinic, which we kind of realized after a little while, because we we could tell where, how far along she was. You know that he was about to come out but he was kind of turtling a little bit and she ended up obviously gave birth. But the thing that's interesting about it is my first was asynclinic and that was one of the big reasons why they deemed that whole thing failure to progress. So I'm getting like goosebumps saying this, but it was such a full circle moment that I had this asynclinic baby no one believed in me.

Speaker 1: 4:12

I was at the hospital, you know, went into this whole thing and now here she was having her first physiological birth and she did it and I was like it made me even more on fire for birth. To be honest with you, because I got to see that you can do it. It doesn't matter what position your baby's in. Your baby's going to come out If you have people that believe in you that aren't going to go try to cut you open or rip that baby out with some sort of utensil. The baby's going to come and that was so beautiful about it is he did, he was born. So anyway, you'll have to listen to her story because it's just awesome and that was my first time seeing a birth besides my own in person.

Speaker 2: 4:57

So cool.

Speaker 1: 4:58

It was a great learning moment and it was great for me, even though I was close to the end with Brynn. It was great to see that and get to experience it, just to learn. You know, I'm over there looking like what's coming out now. What is that? Because there's a lot of stuff that comes out and it was interesting to see. I had a great time learning, but anyway, I'm so happy for both of you.

Speaker 2: 5:22

What a powerful testimony that you guys have. That's just you guys, I think you're like came to the planet to help us all heal this whole birth thing that we've got so wrong. Because that's powerful.

Speaker 1: 5:34

It may be, and this is all. This is all the Lord, though right, this is all his design. He made us this way. We were convinced by the world that we were broken and we couldn't do this, both of us and we are. Two people led astray, and now we're two people that have rediscovered the truth in a way or maybe we're discovering it for the first time. We didn't truly believe in it the first time right, because it is. You have to have we'll use the word radical last time you have to have a radical trust and faith and belief in yourself and in the Lord for his design in order to get through it successfully. So, but I think you're right, though. He's leading us to share what we've learned, and that was the whole reason.

Speaker 1: 6:23

You know that I was inspired to, after you and I had our talk to continue this conversation. There's so much that the Lord has taught me, not just about birth. Birth is a big one, and birth kind of cracked open this like deep cavern of other things that I feel like I was led astray on Last time. We talked about programming. There are all sorts of things that I think were programmed to believe for whatever reason, be it corporate profits or otherwise. Not just birth, but also in the medical system, with pharmaceuticals and with how we handle even simple sicknesses, colds and flus, and allergies and things like that. We're such an overmedicated society and anyway. So he's led me down a lot of paths with health in general, with birth, with spiritual warfarin, the spiritual side, and that's why I'm talking about this stuff, because I know other women experience this stuff too. We're experiencing birth, we're experiencing spiritual attack, we're experiencing health problems with our kids, with ourselves, and I just want to get at the root of this, which is God created us, he created this earth, he created all the plants, the animals, our bodies. So how can we all live in harmony with Him and each other and our bodies as part of it? So let's continue to dive into this, because today we're really going to focus on healing from birth trauma. Last time we wanted to kind of extrapolate some of the common themes that you heard that we can encourage other women with. The thing that I really love about your podcast is that it's focused on healing, which is an important aspect of the whole birth trauma conversation. Right, experiencing the trauma is one thing, but being able to move forward from it, that's where the real battle is.

Speaker 1: 8:29

My statistic might be wrong. Last I checked, they say that a third of women will experience birth trauma. I don't know who they're surveying, though, because I never got that. I never got that survey in my email. I think it's a lot more. I do too. Right, they say a third, but I think it's probably like, if you're having birth in the system, it's probably 80% of women, because if you were to talk to the women on your podcast, which you're talking to every day, basically, you know you're talking all the time to women that experience birth trauma. It's all of them. That's why they're on your show. It would seem that this stat is much higher.

Speaker 2: 9:08

I think it's much higher.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Yeah, yeah. So that's too many. I would say A third is too many, but I think it's more than that. And of those that have experienced healing versus those that struggle, I really just want to ask what do you feel the difference is from the women that have healed from birth trauma, and what can we learn from those who have found healing?

Speaker 2: 9:32

I think that, first of all, a lot of women I don't think realize that they've experienced birth trauma, especially if they didn't have a really acute thing happen like a C-section. There are a lot of things that happen within a medicalized birth that can be quite traumatic to our systems. There can be very invasive exams I mean even stuff like that that we just accept we have to do and go through in order to have a baby. For some women's nervous system it's too much, especially women that have experienced sexual assault, which is a lot of women have, and so I think that birth trauma is sometimes misdiagnosed as a postpartum mood disorder, and I think this is why we see such a huge explosion of postpartum mood disorders. I think some of it is actually unresolved and unrealized birth trauma, and so, in order to heal, you got to at least know that you're struggling with some part of your story, and I want to really emphasize that there's no too big or too small when it comes to this. Like if you had an easy birth but you still have feelings about it that are unresolved and that don't feel good. Your trauma is no less important than someone who had a crash C-section. It's all about how you feel about your birth experience. So I think it's really important that we just acknowledge the reality of what has happened to us and then I think the very first step for any mom that is postpartum has a baby. It's important to be able to tell your story to someone safe who isn't going to say, well, at least you have a healthy baby, or minimize what you went through in any way.

Speaker 2: 11:18

And it can be challenging to find someone like that. I mean, not everyone is blessed with someone like that in their lives that would sit with them and hold their story, but it's so important to talk about it and to find someone safe to talk about it. In some cases that could be a therapist. I do find that many therapists, traditionally trained, don't fully understand birth trauma because their training doesn't include information about how much a woman's brain changes when she's in a state of labor. So there's like a missing piece for them. Many of them also have their own birth trauma and many of them are also part of the same system that has traumatized many of us, so then they may not be able to see clearly what happened to their client. So there's just like different things about therapists that I just have a little bit of a caveat for. But I mean, I think if you can find any therapist who's trained in birth trauma, that would be so, so, incredibly helpful in healing.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Wait, I know someone who would listen to women's traumatic birth stories you.

Speaker 2: 12:24

Yes, I do a lot of that. Yeah Well, thank you for saying that, because I there are a lot of non clinical people, but people that have some training, like me I'm one of many women who do this who will, you know, sit and zoom with you and, like you, can unpack your whole entire story and we maybe have been through it, we maybe have some additional knowledge about birth. We could maybe offer you some reflections that might be helpful. We will not judge you. We will not give you any trite statements. If you don't have someone in your real life, there are women out there who will meet with you and help you impact that.

Speaker 1: 13:00

So thank you for saying that Definitely reach out to Diana. She's being very humble but she is a fantastic listener and I know would be the one to listen to your story if you don't have someone to process it with. So just want to say that.

Speaker 2: 13:17

Thank you, Rebecca. I appreciate that. I think that, wrapping up my answer to your question, the last thing that I would say about healing from birth trauma is that it's important to know and this is often overlooked that there's trauma that gets stuck in our bodies, and I think, especially when a birth gets interrupted for whatever reason, there's like an energetic flow to birth. Someone else smarter than me, articulated this perfectly. I think it might have been Kimberly and Johnson.

Speaker 2: 13:41

There's an energetic flow to birth. That's like going down and out, and if that gets interrupted in any way if you have a C-section or if you have some other sort of interruption in the birth process your body remembers it. It really does, and so one way that that is often resolved that I hear other women talk about this all the time, and I totally experienced it myself was the next birth. Like when the birth completes, it really heals that somatic feeling of stuckness or something that's wrong with you. But there are other ways to heal. Not everybody has more babies, and so I think it's important to touch on that too. So somatic therapies there's like all different kinds of somatic therapies. I'm of the opinion that someone could use a movement practice that they really loved as a somatic therapy. That's just my opinion, but I think that that's a that is a piece that people often forget about.

Speaker 1: 14:32

How important our bodies are. Can you explain to our audience what somatic therapy is? Can you say it all now?

Speaker 2: 14:40

Somatic therapy is body-based therapy, so it's like, instead of talking about your trauma, you know, like you would in a traditional therapist office, you are using your body and there are practitioners. There's actually like a modality called somatic therapy that I'm not trained in and I can't really speak to it, but they used body-based practices to help you work through your story. I think that EMDR might be considered somatic therapy and EMDR is the rapid eye. I always get the acronym mixed up, but it's a rapid eye movement. Tapping is another one. I've done some tapping. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 2: 15:13

I don't understand how it works, but you can talk about your story and tap certain meridian points on your body and for some reason it's almost like it diffuses the emotion or the target around it. But I mean, like I said, I also think this isn't technically somatic therapy, but I also think that something like a dance practice could be somatic therapy, because I know that I sometimes use my body to work through big emotions, like I'm just going to express my anger in this yoga class or something like that. Silly like that. But it really does work and it really does help me.

Speaker 1: 15:49

That is good stuff. What else? What else am I missing?

Speaker 2: 15:53

In terms of what can help us heal from birth trauma. Yes, ma'am, the other part that I would add that I didn't touch on, I think knowledge is really helpful. I think that we don't really I don't think most of us really understand birth and actually, up above that, I don't think most people really understand how our own bodies work and I think that it can be really helpful to maybe request your records and talk to someone you trust or who has more knowledge about birth than you, or educate yourself and learn more about your body and like what happened in that process, because I think a lot of us leave a traumatic birth feeling like something was wrong with us or our body is broken or oh, my baby just didn't know how to some story that was probably handed to you by an external authority, and I believe that that is rarely true that anything is wrong with you or me or our bodies. And when you really understand how labor and delivery works, I think particularly the hormonal matrix that happens can be really helpful to understand, because it can help you take some of the blame and guilt off of you and I think that also might help you make future decisions about future babies who you might invite to your birth, who you might not, how much trust you have in your body, how much you don't. So yeah, I would say, getting more information when you feel ready.

Speaker 2: 17:22

I know that I wasn't really ready to do that for a long time because I was so traumatized and angry and hurt I couldn't really look clearly at what had actually happened to me. I kind of just wanted to drink a glass of wine and not think about it truly for a long time, and I think that's okay too. I kind of think it takes as much time as it takes and not everybody will be ready to heal at the same time. I think another and this is like the trickiest thing too about birth trauma is that anyone who experiences birth trauma also in most cases has a newborn baby that they have to care for, and so then how do you even carve out time for yourself?

Speaker 2: 18:09

I mean, it's already hard enough to get a shower every day. Cook, do just the bare minimum. It's really hard to do that with a new baby, and so I do feel like it's like an extra challenge to begin to heal. So yeah, I want to say that everyone has my permission to take as much time as they need and don't ever feel like you're in a rush, because healing is always available. I really believe that too. I believe that an 80-year-old woman on her deathbed could heal her birth trauma from 60 years ago if she wanted to. I really do.

Speaker 1: 18:44

Yeah, yeah, because I think that a lot of it is about forgiveness Not just forgiving another person, but forgiving ourselves. So often we don't. We're hard on ourselves. Like you said, we often blame ourselves for the situation in my body. I couldn't do it, my baby couldn't fit, whatever it might be, and it takes acknowledging that we were sold to falsehood and forgiving ourselves for believing it, for giving ourselves, for being in that situation.

Speaker 1: 19:22

I mean, I know that for myself. I heard myself in your response that it took years for me to heal my birth trauma. It did take the process of having another baby to get there. Could I have gotten there if I didn't have any more kids? Maybe, but I think it would have taken longer because I wouldn't have been able to resolve it the way that my mind knew there was a resolve, meaning I felt lied to about needing a C-section, my baby was going to come out.

Speaker 1: 20:00

They said it now, and the act of having another baby was kind of for me, the closing of the loop. Now, in that process I also learned and felt forgiveness was what I needed to get to that point, and it came up close to that birth too. It took me almost until I was giving birth a second time before I finally had that release of emotion to say I forgive the previous provider, anyone else that was involved, and I forgive myself for all the things that I've been blaming myself for all these years. So I definitely you have great advice, because that was a path that I worked down myself personally.

Speaker 2: 20:50

Amazing, oh it is tough that looks pretty much I really do.

Speaker 1: 20:53

I'm not going to say that.

Speaker 1: 20:56

I just my heart breaks that women are experiencing this and that we have to heal from this. And I didn't know that my own mother experienced birth trauma until I started, until I went through with Brooke and then was kind of talking about things. After that, when I was processing with Ben, and then to hear her stories, she doesn't classify it as birth trauma. She didn't even know that she had birth trauma, but when I listened to the way that she talks about it today my oldest brother is 50 years old. She has been carrying this trauma with her for 50 years and so that's something that Rachel and I actually mentioned this on a previous episode.

Speaker 1: 21:42

That birth is the most important event of a woman's life. Like your wedding is important, obviously, and you're going to remember your wedding and pieces of your wedding. It's a busy day. You might not remember every detail, right, but I can tell you to remember every detail of your birth. You're going to remember, and physically, how you felt, emotionally, how you felt, and again, maybe not every detail when it's 50 years down the road, but you're going to remember the traumatic parts 50 years from now, and so it's all that more important to prepare for birth, going into it so that you don't end up with this baggage that you then have to heal from after the fact.

Speaker 1: 22:28

Now we can heal and that's okay. We're going to become damaged at certain points in our lives. We're going to experience traumas. We're not promised this carefree life down here on this wild earth, but there are ways to heal from the things that do hurt us and I love that you're sharing that. And anyway, last time we talked about some of these common themes that you've heard across the many, many birth stories that you've heard on your podcast, and I hope that those tips help moms that haven't yet entered birth, or maybe for the second or third time, to really be prepared. But since we're putting a focus on healing from birth trauma and some of those tips for our moms, I'd really just love to ask you mentioned last time learning from other stories is the best place for us to get knowledge and really gain an understanding of birth. What about birth trauma? Do you have any go to episodes of women that have just had such beautiful healing stories that you would like to share Yours?

Speaker 2: 23:45

I'm going to shout out yours. I titled it the Spiritual Battleground for Birth. It was great titles, great story. Your story has something in it for everyone, I think.

Speaker 2: 23:56

But other than that, there really is something in every single story for someone who is trying to heal from birth trauma on my show.

Speaker 2: 24:07

And the thing is that not all birth trauma is the same. Whatever happened to you during your birth is not going to be the same as someone else, and so I would say that in the titles of all of my episodes I always try to put something like a description of what actually happened during the birth or a C-section, a free birth, a V-back. I try to put something in there that's a descriptor of the story that you're about to hear. So if there's someone that's looking like, if you're looking for a specific episode, I would suggest scrolling through and finding something that sounds relevant to you and relevant to your story, because birth trauma can be obstetric violence, it can be an unwanted C-section, it can be a provider who violated you in some way, and it's just not all the same. So it's really hard for me to recommend a few specific episodes because they're all different stories, as different as women are. So I think that find the story that resonates with you based on the title and listen to that one, but definitely check out Rebecca's episode.

Speaker 1: 25:14

Hey, that's a good advice, though to look at the titles. You actually inspired me with the way that you title things, because I tend to be more. I'll give a fancy title. Sometimes just give it a keyword, let's say and I find myself more and more saying I need to summarize this information better so that listeners know what to look for. Like when Rachel had her story, it was specifically an episode on preparing for a VBA 2C, because not everyone is preparing for a vaginal birth after 2C sections.

Speaker 2: 25:49

Yeah, a lot of women are just preparing for birth. The people who are, though, they're going to search for that term. Yes, I mean, I know, if I was, I'd be like where's the podcast on VBAC after 2Cs? Exactly, and they'll find it, yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:05

And it's basically not even the same someone who had one VBAC or someone who is currently pregnant and it wants to have a VBAC, versus someone who's currently pregnant and wants to have a VBAC for the first time after 2C sections or even three. Their stories are going to be different because the path that they go down is not the same path. You can find a midwife, a home birth midwife, pretty easily for a VBAC for one baby, but if you have had 2C sections, the chances of finding a home birth midwife that would attend is pretty slim, and so it is a different story. So it is important. I love that you do that with your titles. I think that's very smart. Anyway, getting off on a tangent Thanks. Well, I'd love to just kind of open forum here a little bit about your thoughts on healing from birth trauma and maybe you could share a little bit about your journey and what that's looked like for you, because I'm sure you don't get to share that very much.

Speaker 2: 27:12

Yeah. So my journey was when I was pregnant with my first baby. It was about 10 years ago and I planned a home birth with a midwife. I didn't do any research, I literally picked the closest person to me and I really didn't have any fear. I really thought that this was something that my body is designed to do and I can do it, and had a very uncomplicated pregnancy and I understood that there were real problems with the maternal medical system. I wanted nothing to do with obstetricians or hospitals and I understood that.

Speaker 2: 27:48

But what I did not understand at the time is that many midwives you'll encounter many of the same problems with licensed midwives because they have some of the same rules that the state imposes on them because of their licensure.

Speaker 2: 28:04

You may be pathologized in the same way with the same diagnoses that in hospital care would give you A bunch of stuff like that. I really didn't understand the politics of midwifery too, that there are there's more to that world that I had not yet delved into, and so I had an easy, uncomplicated pregnancy, went into labor at 41 weeks and had a kind of long-ish labor Like it's crazy to say this now, but it was like at the 24 hour mark, I remember my midwife saying you seem really tired, I think we should transfer. And I was deep into labor deep, like you know, couldn't speak, couldn't you know? I don't know, I don't know what dilation I was or anything, I don't think it really mattered. I was very deep in labor land and so my thinking brain was turned off and all that I heard. And, by the way, rebecca, I honestly think she was tired. I don't, I wasn't tired. I honestly think she was tired.

Speaker 2: 29:02

All I heard when she said that was that we need to transfer. I didn't. I didn't like go whoa, stop, is anything wrong? I didn't question it Cause I was not in my normal frame of mind. I was in labor, naked in a pool in my living room, like I was not thinking.

Speaker 2: 29:17

And so when we transferred, happened was the total, classic cascaded intervention sadly, the breaking the water, pitocin, epidural, emergency, c-section, and that's how my birth played out and I was completely shattered by this experience. The C-section itself was hugely traumatic, terrifying experience, and I was left with PTSD flashbacks, breastfeeding problems, bonding problems with my son. My son has some health stuff going on that I think even to this day I connect to that birth experience. I think that he was hurt by it. You know we talked about this in the last episode about the impact of birth trauma on infants. That is often overlooked and I think that I saw that firsthand with my own child, especially now that I've had a second. So that experience was it was not the way that anyone should be initiated into motherhood and it's so sad how common it is.

Speaker 1: 30:16

And it's normalized, right. It's like, oh, oh, you had an emergency C-section. They saved you. Yeah, oh good, oh, your baby's healthy, great. Yeah, it wasn't great, and mom was totally pushed to the side, as if we don't have emotion and feeling and anyway.

Speaker 2: 30:37

No, it wasn't great. And some part of me knew, like I didn't emerge from that experience thinking, oh, thank God the hospital saved me. I emerged from that experience thinking what just happened? I knew about that, like I even knew about the term, the cascade of interventions. I knew that term. How did it end up happening to me? And so I really didn't do any healing around it until I became pregnant the second time, very unexpectedly. And I'm telling you this pregnancy was 100% a gift from God. I mean they all are, all pregnancies are precious gifts from God. But I mean this was the gift that I did not know that I needed and I was so scared I didn't know what I was gonna do.

Speaker 2: 31:22

I lived in a state where it was actually illegal for women to be back at home with a midwife. It was not legal at the time. I think it has since changed yeah, your face exactly. It's crazy. But at the time it wasn't legal. And so I was just like, am I gonna go back to that same place and have them cut me open again? Like what am I?

Speaker 2: 31:42

gonna do I just was completely like very scared and shocked. But I really leaned on my faith during this time, got real serious about my praying to God and asking for help, and I really could feel like a God's presence was with me during this experience and showed me the way. And there was a set of circumstances where I was able to connect with a woman, a midwife, who was willing to like basically lie and not say she wasn't attending me, but attend my birth at home and I ended up giving birth to that baby at home. It was a beautiful labor and birth experience. It happened really fast and I caught my own baby and pulled him up under my chest and the healing that I experienced was just profound. I mean, it was so profound, the healing that I experienced from that, that I just like again, like you said in the last episode I just like became on fire for birth.

Speaker 2: 32:46

I was like I have to change my entire life and do something to support other women who have walked the same path that I've walked, because I know that what happened to me the first time is not a unique story. It happens to a lot of people. But I want people to know that there's healing and redemption after that and that you know those feelings of brokenness are lies. It's just not true. You're not broken. I mean, there's nothing special about me at all, by the way. Like I, just if I can do it, anyone can do it, and if I can experience that type of healing birth which is how the name of my podcast was created then I knew that other people, anyone, could do, and it really is just a matter of you know, sharing your story, changing your mindset and getting out of the way to let your own body do what it's supposed to do. I really believe that.

Speaker 2: 33:40

So, yeah, that's the highlights of my story and that's how I became so passionate about this work, and I've done some things along the way. I've done some birthing from within, birth story listening training. I've listened to a lot of birth stories. I've hopefully been an empathic and compassionate ear for a lot of other women who've walked this path, and it's just been a massive blessing and I really feel that this was something that God really wanted me to do during my life is to share stories and talk about this topic, because this is something that is so common. It is so common for us to have traumatic births and it's not God's design and it doesn't have to be this way. There really is a better way, and you are such a wonderful, shining example of that, and I hope that something in my story inspires someone else too, that it doesn't have to be that way.

Speaker 1: 34:37

Well, you said something in there that wasn't true. You said I'm not special. You are special. You are a child of God, first of all. That makes you special. But also what you're doing is just so beautiful and I can't thank you enough. You helped me through some things.

Speaker 1: 34:55

Just talking and sharing my story with you was healing, and so I hope that our listeners if you've experienced a trauma in healing, talk to Diana, because it will be even more healing when you get your story out fully. And I think it's so important for us to share our stories because this is how we can come together as a community. We've got to use these tools of technology for good and not for evil. There's so much bad out there when it comes to technology. Like we're trying to protect our kids from seeing the bad side of the internet, and I just wanna focus on being a good side of the internet, sharing things that are going to help women to heal from their births. But also, let's prevent that. If we can, let's arm you up with some information so at least you know going into it. And now, even the most prepared woman can experience negativity or be pulled astray during their experience, and I think that that can be hard to heal from too.

Speaker 1: 36:05

I heard a story recently of someone who, for all intents and purposes, did all the right things. She read all the right books. She, like you, knew the word cascade of interventions, knew, knows, understands how it works, hired a home birth team and had people come in and was prepared for this. But honestly, it sounds a lot like your same situation. She just labored for so long and the midwives finally said oh, the heartbeat's dropping, let's transfer. And same exact situation Ended up in a C-section in the end, and now she's feeling very just like I don't know how to heal from this. I don't know what to do and of course this is something we actually talked about last time is my big mouth and I don't know how to sometimes just listen. I wanna help people figure it out, right. I wanna be like okay, let's figure out where it went wrong and then you'll feel better and then you can move forward. But that might not be where everybody is. Some women they need to start way before any of that, way before like let me figure out what it did wrong now or not, what I did wrong or what went wrong. I'm kind of on the other side. I wanna know every detail.

Speaker 1: 37:29

You had mentioned getting a hold of your operations report or your hospital report, whatever it is that you have. I do find it interesting that I never had the desire to read mine. I never asked for it. I never got it after that birth, but because my midwife needed it, I got it for her when I was 35 weeks and that's kind of what led us down the next path. I think that it happened the way that it did, intentionally, because God has a plan for everything, and I think that's how it was supposed to go, because if I think back on it and the words that it said on there, if I had carried that with me where it said last sentence, not a candidate for TOLAC I probably would have believed it. But the fact that I, first of all you and I haven't talked about this.

Speaker 1: 38:29

I actually had a repressed memory come back after I had been I wanna say it was, it was pretty recently, Like it was. Maybe it was maybe when he was six months old, maybe a little bit older, I don't remember exactly, but I had this memory of the doctor coming in and standing in front of my bed and saying she was talking and she said and so you aren't going to be able to have any more babies, naturally You'll need to have C-sections. And I remember crying and being like no, like I didn't, I didn't believe her, I didn't want to believe her. You know, I didn't, I didn't want it to be true, kind of thing, and I literally just had this memory pop into my mind one day and I went to my husband and I was like, did this happen? And I recalled what I was remembering and he's like I think it might have.

Speaker 1: 39:31

And both of us kind of had this moment of when she told us that we shut our brains off and we were like no, we don't want to, we're not, this is not entering into our space, we're not believing this. And so the fact that I didn't have my operations report for the whole time after my daughter and then through my whole pregnancy with my son and it surfaced after I had already made all these decisions and I was going with God's plan to have this baby at home, no matter what, I do think it was very interesting timing, Because it's almost like if I had had it earlier and ruminate it on it, you know, I might have believed. Anyway, that's amazing, rebecca.

Speaker 1: 40:14

Wow, isn't that interesting, really interesting, Because I just remember thinking like I was never told this, but I in in. I was never told this, I never got a copy of my report, I didn't know, but I think they mentioned it. Anyway, this is just all to say that they're you like your own, like you're saying. I'm corroborating what you're saying here that everyone's journey is going to be different. And if you don't feel like looking at your birth details or your operations report, then that's okay, because maybe the Lord is hiding that from you for a little bit, or not hiding, but you know what I mean. He's just holding back, yeah, but maybe it's the opposite and you know he needs you to dig into that.

Speaker 1: 41:02

I'm a big believer in my personal relationship with the Lord and I'm praying for my own convictions, and my convictions aren't going to be the same as your convictions, aren't going to be the same as your sister's convictions, etc. We have to follow our own path. We're not all on the same path. All of our journeys are different and so what that looks like for each person is going to be very different. But I guess I do. I am curious to learn have you experienced or found that there are any universal truths when it comes to birth trauma. As you've been listening to these stories, or universal untruths, I mean that might be even a bigger place.

Speaker 2: 41:48

I mean, the only place that I can take this question is super deep for me personally. I think that there is this big, big, big, big untruth that birth is a medical event that needs to be managed by external authorities, whoever they may be, and that that is the theme that I hear over and over and over again. That is what causes the trauma. I am leaving out lost stories from this conversation because I feel like that's a different thing than what we're talking about here, and I can touch on that if you want to, but it's just a different answer to your question.

Speaker 1: 42:29

I think you're right. Yeah, loss is a bit different. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:33

And I think also like within that umbrella, it's that we have a fundamental, complete misunderstanding of what birth actually is. Not only is it not a medical event that should be managed by external authorities. It's a very, very profoundly important initiation, the culmination of a spiritual journey in a woman's life. And on the other side of birth we will either emerge triumphant, feeling powerful, feeling like we can do anything, feeling that we can trust our bodies, trust our intuition, trust our baby and mother this child, or we can emerge numb, disconnected, not trusting ourselves, not trusting our intuition, and now, for the rest of that child's life, potentially seeking an outside, external authority to tell us are we okay, is my baby okay? And so that really is. Rebecca. The big theme is that the way that birth is, what birth is understood to be, in the way that it is handled In our culture and, as far as I can tell, pretty much everywhere, is a complete misunderstanding of what it actually is, to my mind anyway.

Speaker 1: 43:51

Yes, I totally relate to what you're saying and, man, it's got me thinking about so many things, as is this whole conversation, because it's just so good. It's like all of the important things that we're focusing on from a big perspective, but then also from a more granular perspective, and the little pieces that lead up to all of this becoming initiated into motherhood, and it's interesting the way that you phrased it, because I think it was. It was last episode. You mentioned there is a trophy, because that's a joke. A lot of people were like oh, you gave birth. Naturally, there's no trophy. And it's like there is a trophy, though, and the trophy is that your body has now done exactly what it was supposed to do, and all of the hormones that you're supposed to have trigger the right way. Everything with the baby is triggering the right way, and it's like you know, you're not going to go through the experience of coming into motherhood in the way that your body was intended to. When we go through birth and the way that our body is not intended to go through birth, there are consequences, and those consequences I was literally thinking, as you were. You were mentioning about what comes next. I had my own mini revelation in my mind because I went whoa. It all comes together with commercialism, which we've kind of mentioned some of that.

Speaker 1: 45:29

But if you think about it, if you've been sold on this like, just have a C-section because it's easier and let's say that a woman goes into it just as a C-section because it's easier, and we're not even talking about a scenario where they've had the emergency quote C-section. What lie are you being sold into? Now you're on narcotics, you're disconnecting yourself from your relationship with your baby and from breastfeeding, and then you're going to go well, it doesn't really matter anyway, so I'm just going to buy formula. And then you're told well, you know your baby, you shouldn't sleep with your baby, you're going to kill your baby if you sleep with your baby. So then you're like, oh okay, let me put my baby over here, where my baby is not going to be close to me at all. So that's where they're severing the divide between you and baby. And then it goes on and on and on for the rest of their lives.

Speaker 1: 46:17

It's like a constant disconnection and actually I think that that's really what the culmination of all of this conversation is boiling down to or coming down to is that we are being separated from birth intentionally, because if we're separated from birth, we're separated from our children, and what happens then? There is not a close relationship between a mother and a child, which that's important. If we don't have that now, we have a child who's disconnected from their parent. And of course I can keep spiraling this. But I think that what has happened with birth, I think the enemy has his hands on it.

Speaker 1: 47:00

Is what I'm just going to say. That's my opinion. But I think that it's by design of his intention to medicalize birth, because if he can sever that relationship between mother and child, which is the most important relationship, let's remind everybody here, god didn't send Jesus to this earth in an egg, he didn't just drop him here. He came to the earth through a woman's body. He was born to a woman, nursed by a woman. It's part of life here on earth. It's a sacred experience, an event that happens to us, and if that is completely severed by this corrupt medical system, I mean I'm on a rant now, I'm on a tangent.

Speaker 2: 47:56

I'm on a preach, yeah, and I mean you kind of danced around this, but I think you're spot on. We're good little consumers after that. If you have your baby in power and no one takes them from you, no one messes with you, you don't leave that experience with trauma. You are very hard to convince to buy the formula or to do certain other things that people will pressure you into doing to that baby. You're hard to convince because you trust yourself and I love that. You're not scared enough to that. You're not scared to touch on the spiritual dimension of this because I absolutely believe that it is satanic. What many of the things that happen to women and babies within the medical system? I think it is by design. It's by design to separate us from our babies and to disrupt that bond, and I can think of a hundred specific examples of what is done to women within that system. But it is absolutely a spiritual battleground, like I titled your episode. It really is.

Speaker 1: 49:05

It is. What other instances of spiritual attack or spiritual warfare have you heard in some of these stories?

Speaker 2: 49:18

Rebecca, I have heard some stories that are so dark that when the woman telling me the story on the screen, I could almost see darkness come into her eyes as she was telling her story. I'm thinking of one person in particular, obviously, but what I hear from most hospital births is a complete inversion of what actually needs to happen and what naturally would happen if a woman was not birthing within that system. And I tend to look at satanic things as being an inversion, an inversion of God's design, an inversion of what is good and an inversion of creation. And that's just without getting specific on specific stories I've heard that's generally what I hear. I mean, it's just it's mind. I talk about this all the time.

Speaker 2: 50:25

It is mind blowing to me that we let strangers put their hands inside women's vaginas when we're trying to like that alone. That happens to every single woman giving birth in the hospital everywhere across the world. Never heard of a single story where it didn't happen. And just that alone, that first violation alone, is such a violation and it's so shocking to me that even that happens and someone listing this might be like well, diana, don't they need to know how dialy? No, they absolutely do not. It has no bearing on when you're going to give birth at all Tons of research on this, it's simply to. I see it as simply something to break us down initially, and once that initial breakdown happens, you're on the road to separation, like you said.

Speaker 1: 51:12

Yeah, it's pretty grotesque actually when you think about it. And this was something that kind of I had my own moment with where I was like they're priming us for this. We've been primed to have someone else's hands in our vaginas from young, young, age 13. You go to the OB for the first time and they're like, okay, let's do a pap, as if that's really necessary, and the way that they do it is just so dramatic and anyway they prime for it. You go every year to your appointment and you have them.

Speaker 1: 51:52

I mean, and think about how many women have trauma just from that, because it is traumatic to have someone else's hands inside of you. Like that. That is a sacred space and place. I mean, do we not teach our children that you don't allow anybody into your private space? And yet, oh, it's okay, if a doctor is doing it, it's fine, it's just routine, it's normal. And then you get to the point where you start having kids, whether that be in your 20s or 30s. If you're in your 30s, you've now had these people's hands and you dozens of times by this point. So, like you said, you're primed for it that by the time you get into the point where you're having birth. You're having a baby. It's part of it, and it's not until you really step back. I think for me, it was experiencing the trauma and then stepping back from it and going wait a second. This is what we're doing. This is what's happening in the world. This is messed up, not right? Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2: 52:57

But we don't question it enough.

Speaker 1: 52:59

We just are like, oh well, everybody else does it, I question it. So just because everybody else does it doesn't make it okay. Everyone else got their hair burned off. Would that make it okay for you? And then you have to do the radical thing right and you say no more, and that's people is like whoa, but what's the alternative? The alternative is being violated. If I have a choice, and my choices are never have someone stick their hands in me or have someone stick their hands in me, I mean it's a pretty easy choice. Yeah, just say no, amen. That's the beautiful thing about autonomy, right, and us having the choice. At the end of the day, we are the ones that get to make that choice. And you've shared some really great things about healing from birth and healing from birth trauma. Is there anything else that we missed that we need to make sure women know or are aware of?

Speaker 2: 54:08

No, I think we covered it all. We went so deep Like we just got right to it. I think and I love that you're so down to like go deep and go spiritual and bring God into this conversation. I think we, I think. I just would like to end on a slightly more positive note, okay all right fine.

Speaker 2: 54:27

I think I just wanna say you know, Rebecca and I like we've talked a lot about and I've said some pretty radical things you know, radical for most people about the medical system and medicalized birth, and I just wanna say that the great thing about it, the great news about it, is that you can totally just nope out of that. You don't have to participate. You actually really don't. You don't have to participate in any of it. So much of what people think you have to do during pregnancy to ensure healthy pregnancy or a medical perspective is completely unnecessary. I'm not a medical doctor. This is not medical advice, I'm just a podcaster. But I believe it to be true and I think it is demonstrably true and you can just step away and for anyone who's listening, if that resonates for you, I think that's kind of your clue, that that's your path.

Speaker 1: 55:21

Absolutely. Hey, they know they've heard my stories. They know they can walk away. I love your story. No, but I love the encouragement Cause you can walk away and you can say no to all of this. And you can say no to cervical checks. I had two babies and my cervix was never checked. How did that happen? Wait, it worked, isn't that amazing? Wow, they just came out.

Speaker 2: 55:43

It still came out.

Speaker 1: 55:45

Somehow, some way Miracle. No one told me to push either. Can you believe it? But how did you know what to do? It's a miracle. It's just a miracle, right, it's so. It really is a miracle, though it's such a beautiful thing that, when you get to that point, your body knows what to do. Listen to your body, stay in tune with your body and listen to that intuition, because it's gonna push that baby right out. Yep, well, diana, thank you again for being with us. This has been such a treat to have you on the show.

Speaker 2: 56:19

Thank you. This was so fun. I loved connecting with you again and I do hope that everyone goes and seeks out your episode on my show because it really is one of my favorite episodes I've ever done. You're such a delight. Thank you so much for inviting me onto yours.

Speaker 1: 56:33

Thank you. I'll link the episode in the show notes you can go tune in. It's actually the shortest version of my birth story that exists, so that's a great one for people to listen to, cause I retold it here, but with my husband, and it took us like two or three episodes. It took us so long.

Speaker 2: 56:49

I believe it. There's a lot to your story. It's like it's a big story.

Speaker 1: 56:54

There's many layers and I still need to do Brynn's story, which she was after Ben, but it'll probably be a shorter story cause it was quick. I mean, I was on a zoom meeting and was like, okay, I think it's time to have the baby, and then when upstairs in two hours later she was here, so it'll be an easy one. But thank you for being here. I love it. And if you would like to find Diana outside of this show, please visit her website, healingbirthnet.

Speaker 1: 57:31

You can find her on Instagram at healingbirth, and I didn't give her a proper intro on this episode because I'm assuming everyone is here after listening to her last week, but if you haven't, she is the co-founder of Healing Birth, which is a perinatal support organization dedicated to supporting women in various ways who have experienced birth trauma, and she is trained with birthing from within as a birth story listener. So she offers one-on-one, non-clinical support to mothers who seek help to process their birth experiences. So this is you. Please, please, reach out to Diana. I know she would be very, very happy to talk with you and to help you. So please take advantage of that, because she's amazing. That's all I gotta say.

Speaker 2: 58:24

You're amazing.

Speaker 1: 58:26

Thank you All right, and if you would like to follow along outside the podcast, you can join the mission on Instagram, at the Radiant Mission, and on Facebook at the Radiant Mission podcast. And, of course, as always, if you're not watching this in video format, you can. It's on YouTube and you can find us at the Radiant Mission or by searching my name, rebecca Toomey. Today we are going to close with Jeremiah 1714. Heal me, o Lord, and I shall be healed. Save me and I shall be saved, for you are my praise. We are wishing you a radiant week and we will see you next time. Bye, everyone.