156. MyMaine Birth: Katie's planned home birth turned cesarean followed by two free births

A home birth plan can unravel fast when fear, deadlines, and other people’s priorities start driving the room.  Katie joins me to share three very different birth experiences that span from Maine, to France, and then Connecticut and what those births taught her about informed consent, and physiological birth.

We talk honestly about her first pregnancy during COVID, the move to midcoast Maine, and how pressure when she was overdue shaped her options. 

Katie walks through a castor oil induction, a manual water break, a hospital transfer, and a cesarean birth, then names the real postpartum fallout: recovery limits, breastfeeding pressure, and the emotional weight that can linger for years after a C-section.

From there, the story turns toward redemption and self-trust. Katie describes preparing for a VBAC abroad when providers won’t support her, using education, movement, rest, and a calmer environment to create the conditions she wants for labor. She also shares the side of free birth that rarely gets discussed: the bureaucratic and legal intimidation that can follow an out-of-system birth, and the hard choices families make to protect themselves.

Additional Resources:

MyMaineBirth.com

Closing song by Kate Sutherland.  You can find Kate's community songs and deep nature connection work online at KateSutherland.ca

The Guardian Article - Title: Infludencer's made millions pushing 'wild' births - now the free birth society is linked to baby deaths around the world

The Guardian Article - Title: She was like a deer in the headlights': How unskilled radical birthkeepers took hold in Canada

The Guardian Article - Title: Five Key Findings from our investigation into the Free Birth Society 

The Guardian Article - Title: Friday Briefing: How the free birth society's philosophy contributed to a preventable death 

Interview - Exposed: the business linked to baby deaths around the world

The Guardian Podcast - the BirthKeepers

Transcript

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Stories, Support, And Receiving Help

Katie 0:00

And some women, like you, it's all about the stories we tell. I mean, like you might have this internalized story about motherhood being really hard and you're unsupported. So then you might not even feel like you want support. But is that because you don't need it or it's because you have this like inability to receive in your life, right? And I've seen that come up too. So I just feel like I had to work through all that stuff. And it's awesome receiving support and like setting it up for success.

Welcome And What Katie Shares

Angela 0:28

I'm Angela, and I'm a certified birth photographer, experienced duela, childbirth educator, and your host here on the My Maine Birth podcast. This is a space where we share the real life stories of families and their unique birth experiences in the beautiful state of Maine. From our state's biggest hospitals to birth center births and home births, every birth story deserves to be heard and celebrated. Whether you're a soon-to-be mom, a seasoned mother, or simply interested in the world of birth, these episodes are for you. Hey everyone, welcome to episode 156 of My Main Birth. Today's birth story guest is Katie, and she's going to be sharing her main home birth story, followed by her free birth in France, and then she's going to be sharing about her free birth in Connecticut. Alright. Hey Katie, welcome to My Main Birth. Awesome, cool. Well, thank you so much for having me, Angela. Yeah, thanks for taking the time to chat with me. Well, to get started, would you share a little bit about you and your family?

Growing Up Without Real Birth Education

Katie 1:35

Sure, yeah. My name's Katie. Yeah, I'm from Connecticut originally. And my husband's from Argentina. We met in Connecticut, not in Argentina. We now have three children together. I don't know, we like to sail. I guess I consider myself like an artist writer type of person. Um, as loose as that can be, right? So, um, so yeah, that's who we are, I guess. We like music and art. I don't know. And that's my brand. I guess now I would consider myself like a physiological birth advocate in my own life, right? But I don't like attend births or anything in a professional context.

Angela 2:16

Awesome. So yeah, so now getting into birth, would you start by sharing like a little bit about your ideas on birth growing up, like maybe some birth stories that you heard when you were younger that kind of shaped your opinion on birth, like leading up to yeah, like when you became pregnant?

Katie 2:33

Sure. Okay, sure. Definitely. And I guess the way that that first birth unfolded, like a lot of it had to do with like really not having very many personal stories or experiences with birth. Um, I'm from like this kind of town that like wants the school system, like wants to send you to college and pump you out as a kind of like PhD doctorate person or like industrial worker, right? So um there's also that factor. My mom never was really open about that type of physiological body stuff. Even with like our period growing up, she was pretty like less is more, didn't really have very much to say type of person. So I think that, and then her own birth experience of me, I was like a 30-week, eight-week baby. So I think there's like stories of like not being ready, kind of she felt unprepared, like kind of thought that she was gonna have two more weeks of maidenhood, I guess. So, but it was not really this thing that was out in in the open, and then yeah, the way that the the school education and the school culture kind of also was like with my mom being kind of that type of person, then the school system kind of does just like push contraception. Birth isn't really like even talked about maybe you like watch a birth video in like a weird co-ed classroom setting with like other teenagers, you know what I mean? Like, and and again, it's within this kind of like like I don't know, like platonic model of sex education. And so it was kind of like, oh yeah, like what a what a oh to be a woman in your period, oh like and then just like really ignorance too, like, oh no, it sounds really intimidating, daunting. So I just felt like that definitely was like like like a factor in not feeling then prepared. And then our we didn't do like now it's kind of popular to do like conscious conception where you're like calling in your baby in advance and planning, and that's just not how the pregnancy happened for us, and that's okay, right? I'm like the type of person who kind of flies by the seat of my pants, so and that can be good, right? But then, yes, this there was definitely ignorance and fear around the topic of birth, and then just the female body, and I always had kind of difficult periods growing up, but never was like too into like birth control. Like, I don't know, some people's parents put them on birth control for like acne when they're 13, and my mom was never like that at all. So I appreciate that about her. We were not even allowed to go take birth control while we were living in her house, so I just think that that's just at least for now that we know what we know about how birth control can impact your fertility in the long term. I appreciate that I wasn't like cracked out on birth control from a very young age. Um and so yeah, let's answer your question.

Angela 5:22

Yeah, wow, that's really interesting. And a really good piece that you bring up about like the education from the school systems. I I'm sure it's like a little different in Connecticut. Uh what county in Connecticut do you mind sharing that you grew up? Haven County. I'm from Madison, Connecticut. Yeah, yeah. So it is like kind of a different vibe down there, but still, like overall, and like all of the schools, like you're not getting a good education on these things. And yeah, I wish that would change.

Katie 5:50

Hey, sure, yeah, no, I agree. Like, and then like you're you're and again, it's this kind like within this uh like they kind of are like, Oh, we assume you're gonna have sex. So here's this information to empower you to do so, basically. And like then there's like this porn culture that also kind of I think spreads through a lot of the school systems. You have like kids, like, and then you just get like ideas about what that sex is and what is being sexy for a girl and what is the guy, you know what I mean? So then that all can just I think be mixed up and then like birth later, right? Like that set the stage for me to be like kind of vulnerable to have a traumatic birth experience, right? Whereas if I had more, even if I had more education about like undisturbed physiological birth before um like deciding my birth plans and stuff, maybe that would have like like helped me, you know what I mean? And then also like how secure do I feel with my own female body? Like, was I an insecure person? Definitely, because it's like again, all the stuff we're kind of talking about, like wanting to seem attractive and wanting to be like this good. This they always start saying the good girl type archetype or whatever. And I just do agree with some of that, like to to say that it just I'm set in the stage. So I I always thought I was like this holistic person, I guess. But then, like, I guess you really learn who you are, like when birth happens, you know what I mean? It kind of does like it's just there's a spiritual component to pregnancy and birth for sure. And I guess I just really learned like I guess, like, yeah, like trigger plot twists or like like giving you the end before of the story, like, yeah, the my first birth experience did end up like a home birth transfer to C-section, and I just feel like a lot of these things that we're discussing really like set the stage for me to be very vulnerable to to have that happen, and then it also was like lifting the veil of like all these things about myself that then kind of because I allowed my, you know what I mean, to I put myself into the position by not I wasn't very educated when I got pregnant. I didn't have a lot of I was the first one of my friends who ended up getting pregnant in my friend group growing up. My husband's mom unfortunately passed away when he was 18, so there's not any female lineage from his side of the family either. It's only the men kind of so then my own mom didn't really have this open, comfortable relationship with her own body to then like share that with her daughter. So then it just uh kind of set me up to yeah, be kind of this like even though I was like crunchy, I was definitely still like struggling with a lot of this like holistic application of the female body, which I still was like, I don't know, medicalized in a lot of ways. So um, but when I got pregnant, I will say I did want home birth. I did at least know that I was like not really trying to give birth in the hospital, at least in my head. But again, I just didn't have really any good idea of what any of it really meant or how it really went to how it really is until there's and there's no education on not only pregnancy and birth, there's also not really a lot of education on like well, obviously because the schools are like educating you to like go to medical school, right? So then they're gonna make it like one thing. And but it there's just like I realized along the way that a lot of medical professionals don't actually know very much about the female body either. So that surprised me. And that started, but I guess right before I got pregnant. I was like, I was doing the fertility awareness method for a while. I had had an IUD in the past that like was falling out, and then they didn't like believe me that it was falling out, and then I went and they're like, Oh, yep, it is falling out, and then I got it removed, and then I was kind of like, Well, I don't remember what I asked about the painful periods, maybe like is there anything to like reduce cramping? And the doctor basically the guy was like a younger doctor, wasn't one of these old timers, but like uh the younger doctor was kind of like, Oh, I don't know. I mean, all I can do is prescribe birth control. I have no idea. And I was like, You have no idea, that's all you got. Like that kind of surprised me. And then I just I don't know, there's again a lot of red flags along the way that I ignored, but that's just like again, like just framing the context for like my worldview, I guess.

Early Body Lessons And Medical Red Flags

Angela 9:55

Um yeah, absolutely. It it's deep, like the journey, like it's it is, it's very deep. Um, so at what point did you get into like the free birth community? Did you had you discovered this leading up to when you became pregnant with your first, or was this a like afterwards?

Katie 10:14

No, okay, yeah. I guess that is um, no, I I kind of got involved with the free birth community. I was never like affiliated with the free birth society, but I was in the membership. I went to a festival. Um, and I met a lot of people. I don't know, the way the story all unfolded, I really used that as like a resource to network on the ground. So I ended up going to a lot of women's circles, but that was after I had a I had ended up having a free birth after C-section. But then with this first pregnancy, kind of what we're talking about, like, yeah, like I kind of understood like a medical, like, because again, there's like a medical midwife, and especially because we can talk about like Maine as a a state that has this licensure of midwifery, and then when you have licensure of midwifery, you have a lot of random rules that the state makes you follow, like the midwives have to, and I believe a lot of it is to like kind of for, especially in a state like Maine, where everybody is kind of into home birth, like it's kind of a way to force you to participate in the hospital, even if you like otherwise wouldn't, and really don't even need to, because a lot of the stuff I found that like um the they were doing in pregnancy was kind of like not to be like BS or fake, you know what I mean, but kind of like fake, and we can get into that later too. Um, so no, I kind of understood a home birth midwife to be the natural option, right? Like you're either gonna give birth in the hospital with a gynecologist and like the nurse midwife's there, or you're gonna have a home birth with a home birth midwife, and that is like this cool romantic. I guess I'll and I guess this is back to that education component. Like a lot of people do think that. Like you don't really understand that it's this regulated licensure problem that makes it so it's not like that where they're like gonna give you pitocin anyway, and all this stuff. And so um, well, first year did you get pregnant?

Getting Pregnant During COVID

Katie 12:00

This was in 2020, so yeah. So in 2020, I got pregnant, the start of COVID, so it was a lockdown pregnancy.

Angela 12:07

So this was also just in the reference of like main licensure. Um, during my birth, which was in 2019, licensure had not taken effect yet. And I had an elder midwife who was really against licensure, like throughout my whole pregnancy. So this was like a topic that kept coming up because she's like, You're gonna license midwives, and this is a terrible thing, and da-da-da-da-da. Like throughout my whole pregnancy. And then I she birthed in gave birth in October, and then in 2020 of January was when the licensure took effect for midwives. So then to keep into your story, this is a very new thing in Maine at the time. Like, so how did you find out you were pregnant? Um, like, yeah, for the first time. Sure.

Katie 12:47

Um, yeah, so we got pregnant. My husband's 11 years older than me, and I had a friend that kind of like gave me a hard time about that, like as if it would cause, like, if we had a kid to like, I would my kid would have like health problems because my husband is 36 years old. And I was like, Well, and then she's a veterinary, so I was like, You're not a doctor. And then she was like, I'm really offended that you said I'm not a doctor. And I'm like, I'm really offended that you said my kid would have problems because I was like dating someone who's 11 years older than me, and we're again talking about a 36-year-old person, like I not like a oh yeah, you're dating like an 85-year-old. I don't know, like something like that. Where so then we kind of were like, let's show her. So then we kind of rolled the dice a little bit, like after that conversation, um, and got pregnant right away. I was doing fertility awareness for like two years before that. So it was just like like I don't know, the window, and it's just lucky strike, I guess. So uh then we were pregnant, happy about it. We were still we weren't married yet, but then we got married right away. And it was sweet because it was like my uh it was during COVID, so I was planning on just having like a person come to the yard. I had like a friend that like would come and take pictures, kind of. But then I told my aunt about it, and she like kind of was like, No way, like she was 80 at the time, and she's like, I don't care, like you're having a wedding. And so then in like a weekend, she like we pulled together some people in the yard, and it was nice, so it was I appreciate her doing that. I don't know, and everybody was like kind of hanging out, it was like nice for them too, you know. My one aunt who's like loves horses, found another horse person that got in trouble like talking about horses during the speech. So um it was like a happy time, and then I don't know, people like all and I was still in Connecticut. I guess that's also a factor in the story is that there was a move to Maine during COVID.

Angela 14:24

Okay, and what month did you find out you were pregnant?

Katie 14:27

I think April. Okay, April of 2020, April or May, but I think April. Um, and uh so then everybody's kind of like go to the Crescent Street gynecologist people in Middletown, that's where everybody goes, fine. And so then I went, like, told them I didn't really do anything until like whatever that maybe it was a 12-week ultrasound. Now I like don't do ultrasounds or anything like that. I don't think it is gives you anything that like what like what information is it gonna give me that I would do what am I gonna do to terminate my pregnancy? Because I just discovered something in the ultrasound that I don't like, so it's like if I'm not willing to terminate my pregnancy, this is what Sally Fallon and Wise Stradition said if you're not willing to terminate your pregnancy because you find the information like why are you getting the ultrasound for validation and assurance? But it's just culturally, you're supposed to show everybody the picture of the ultrasound, so then it's like proof to your Instagram fans that you're pregnant, you know what I mean? There's all this cultural stuff and validation and the woman, and again, it's because we're like so out of touch, like I'm so out of touch with my own body at this time, even though there's like hints of me, I'm doing the fertility awareness. I want to work with a midwife, right? Okay, and so I found these um midwives in Middletown after I went, okay. So I went to the one gynecologist appointment and it was during COVID. So it was like, oh, your husband's not allowed to go in with you. So then, like outside of the building, there's like all these guys like hanging out outside, like waiting. So then we do the ultrasound, whatever. And it's true, like the ultrasound technician doesn't have any information that you can't see either. So but we did that. I was in there, we tried to like video call my husband outside, like funny. I don't know, and like just what? And I don't know, I was so in it, and I don't know. I I I have to also, because it kind of was traumatic and went badly for me, like have to be like patient with my fat past self, and I have to forgive my past and laugh at my past self for for being so young and naive, right? Um, and that's part of I guess like healing from a traumatic birth too, is like allow like being soft. I'm I can be really hard on myself, which is also how I got into trouble, I feel like. Um, so anyway, so then I was like, I'm not gonna work with these people. It was like terrible. The certified nurse midwives always to me are pretty rough. And so, and that was part of my birth story too at Yale, my Ivy League birth. Um, they were like talking to the certified nurse midwife on the phone before they came to the hospital. And before she hung up, she was like, stupid people and like hung up on them. So I feel like that was like I already was like, I'm not working with those people again. And so uh I was like, okay, let's find a midwife, you know, a home birth, right? Let's get that going. So we did, and the primal roots midwife people, they were really nice, and I think they would have been probably a better fit for me at the time. I was like drinking ice lattes a lot, and I was like worried about like that somehow causing a problem in my pregnancy makes no sense, but people don't know, and they make it like anything. The pregnant woman needs to be policed. Like, you know, you can't do anything anymore because you're pregnant, and I'm gonna like discriminate against you and not allow you to like drink a soda or anything. I'm gonna judge you. So I was like, and the the the the one mid, I never there were two midwives, the one I would talk like the one that I saw. Um, she was like, Don't worry about it, like no problem, relax, take it easy. And that's just like the type of thing I feel like that's just the type of care I needed at the time. And then when I moved, we so then what happened is we were living in this old house, and the bathroom was not on the same floor as the kitchen, and it was this weird open floor plan where the master bedroom was like open to the whole house, and there was like this curmudgeonly ghost that would like drink at night type of vibe with like this like a bachelor ghost. It was it didn't give you the and it was three stories, so the kid bedroom is like on the third floor. So we like got it in our heads that we like needed to like move to a different house for the baby, like to give the baby a good life or something. And so, um, even though I had a friend that was like kids like are raised in trailer parks, like it's not what matters at all. And I'm like, no, like right, we just are trying to be trying to do such a good job, and it was getting a little stuffy where we were during COVID too. The town, it was like the the select woman, it's this really small town in Connecticut, Chester. She was like sending these emails like she was Winston Churchill in the war, like during COVID, the select woman of the town, and we were like, This is getting a little kook kooky around here, you know what I mean? So we started looking for houses, but the New York City people were buying all the houses in Connecticut really fast, and that's really was abnormal before. And so then we were like, Well, where else will we live? We sail, like I said, so then we oh, maybe Maine. I woofed in Blue Hill during college, spent some time up there, so I already kind of knew Maine. We always would go to York Beach on vacation my whole life, so I kind of felt like that was like a familiar, cool, spiritual place and all this good stuff. So then we decided to look there and we eventually found a house in Darmuscada and moved. Probably we moved in like September. Um, and then the baby was due around like January.

Moving To Maine And Choosing Care

Katie 19:16

So then um we established new care up there, and it was kind of like, okay, who's around and also who's gonna call me back? A lot of midwives that I called like did not call me back, or they were really far, like down east, me like down east, and we were mid-coast, you know what I mean? And so we did end up going with Sarah Ackerly in Northern Southern Family Health. And I feel like part of my choice in choosing Sarah was um like kind of like, oh, my mom was so worried about like the home birth projecting all this fear. And then I was like, Oh, well, she's a naturopath and a midwife, so it's like safer. And then that was kind of like not the right reason to choose your care, you know what I mean? Like that could be good for some people, and I think Sarah is like, I don't know, she's she was good and bad for me, like right, and a lot of the stuff that I don't know the way it all happened, and it makes now it kind of shines a light what you said. I didn't know that it was like right when the regulation of midwifery started. So maybe that's why she was like so concerned about some of the stuff that she was concerned about. But I just felt like, and again, for and I saw people that like had we did like birth classes together. I think Sarah Ackerly's a very good educator on birth. I think that it was nice to establish a relationship with her. She like didn't make me wear a mask at the appointments, and then that was part of it where there were some red flags in our relationship, and I'm not trying to like trash talk her or give her a bad review per se, but there were I want to like just give a try to be objective about my experience, the good and the bad. So then if you're listening to this, like and you're gonna decide to choose your care, like just to know what works for you, right? Because it really depends on where you are, and that's why I was trying to illustrate myself as kind of this insecure person who really needed validation and reassurance. But I think that then those fears be, and especially because Sarah is a naturopath. So then if I'm like concerned about something, she's like gonna look into the problem. And then actually there is a problem, and then there's like a supplement to take. And so then I was finding myself like putting myself in a position of being really stressed out in my pregnancy, kind of like doing all these like random, like food sensitivity tests and all this stuff. But it was kind of like, well, I don't know how to find a new provider that doesn't make me like wear a mask all of a sudden and have to like switch care again. We just moved, so I kind of like sat with some stuff in the relationship that wasn't that great for me. But again, I saw the other people working with her at the birth classes that had a great experience with her. And I think that if you're the type of person who like doesn't care what other people think about you, then she probably would be a very good choice. You know what I mean? Where it's like you don't care if she's gonna be like, don't drink a Coca Cola, you can be like LOL, Sarah Ackerly, whatever. And then I think that that would be a good relationship, but I just wasn't. That wasn't what I needed. But then she did provide a lot of like super good birth education classes on like breastfeeding, the pros and cons of vaccine scheduling, stuff like that. I thought like so she had a I had a girl, so circumcision wasn't as relevant to me, but there was like a really good circumcision workshop, just different stuff like that. She had a lot of things to offer. If you don't have a space, the birth center was also very nice. So again, I'm not it was complicated, I guess. But um yeah, so I guess the care was kind of going like that. I was and I was driving from Dermascata to Topsum, and that means you gotta drive through Wiscasset. So we were like driving through Wiscasset to get to the appointments, and then that was like super stressful. And I will say also that during COVID, like compared to Connecticut, Maine was like super intense. I think that Maine is a state where people are more politically driven, which can be cool. You got the back to earth movement, you got people really like doing it differently and living their truth on both sides of the spectrum, right? Like, so then you know, in Connecticut, everybody's like, whatever, you're gonna wear a mask at the store. But people like us again, my 80-year-old aunt was like, Let's have a wedding party, we're not gonna not do this. It was totally normal, you know what I mean? The family and stuff like that. And then moving to Maine while pregnant and trying to like make friends was really, really stressful because everybody was like obsessed with COVID in a way that they were not in Connecticut. So then we were kind of like, whoa, struggling to make friends. So then the relationships we already had established, I was like sitting with stuff that I like wouldn't have otherwise maybe sat with just because of like the the desperation of making friends and stuff, right? I mean, of course, everybody needs human connection, so it was just not a very good idea to do that maneuver, probably while pregnant. And again, the if if we had moved when it wasn't COVID, I think a lot of stuff would have been a lot differently. But I'm like stressed out about that. Then I'm also already like again the type of person who's nervous about my first pregnancy. I'm not really that educated about it, and so then yeah, like Sarah was kind of like, yeah, like we're looking into all this random stuff. And after I had the baby, I was like, Do you think it was a good idea to like do this blood work on a pregnant person? Wouldn't it like affect the results? And she was kind of like, I guess you're right, like, yeah. And so we were like doing all this stuff, and then again, the regulated midwifery. So then it's like, oh, well, we got to test for group beta strep. And if you don't want to take this medication, you got to do these crazy suppositories, like all this stuff. So then I was like, and then again, we were doing like these food allergy tests, all this stuff. It was like super, and again, I do believe my my understanding of naturopathic doctors after this experience is that they kind of look for problems to holistically solve, right? It's kind of like a like a doctor. So if you are talking about something, and then the doula I found through her, because again, it was COVID and everything. She, anytime I would bring up some type of like fear or nervousness or something I wanted to talk about, just really looking for like sistership. She'd be like, ask your doctor if that's right for you, kind of. So then I was like, oh my gosh, really in this headspace that made me super stressed out and kind of wanting to please my midwife. And Sarah is like this vegetarian, really small little lady. And I'm like, I don't know, I'm not sm I'm not huge, but I was like, I don't know, and and I think that like just moving all the stress of everything, I was like gaining weight in pregnancy, but I was pregnant, right? So every time I would go there, she'd be like, you're like gaining weight in pregnancy. And I would be like feeling like I'm in trouble, and then having to do all these random things to like whatever, and then yeah, because of the regulated mood warfare, it would be like, oh well, this and that. And if you want to qualify for home birth, you have to do this and meet this metric, or else you're not gonna be able to do it. So then I was feeling like I was having to do all this stuff to like qualify for a home birth, and then what ended up happening is that it was a longer gestation, so then it was like, oh, we're reaching the due date, and no,

Due Dates, Licensure Rules, And Pressure

Katie 26:05

no baby. Oh, well, if you get you're only allowed to go to four to three weeks in the state of Maine, and then you have to go get an induction, you know what I mean? So then that kind of started, and I think that really we talk about this like, would I have like a negative experience if that I mean, I I don't love all that naturopathic like meddling and like trying to look for problems and like stuff like that about the care with Sarah, that's not what I'm looking for anymore. But I know a lot of people like that, you know what I mean? So, like that isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but then because of the deadline imposed by the state, she was kind of like, Oh, well, if you don't want to go to the hospital and do an induction, and there wasn't really any information about what that really was. And I didn't like, I wish I had looked into C-sections and stuff too, a little bit more before. And she was like, Oh, you gotta have a birth plan, and the birth plan always includes like what if to the hospital, and that can be dangerous just because it does like put you in a headspace where you are like, if I go, like I wanna be like I want my mentality before I give birth to be like I'm having home birth, I'm not going to the hospital. There is no emergency, like, I'm not afraid, right? That to me, and that will get into with the V back mentality. I feel like you really have to look birth head on in order to have a V back and succeed.

Angela 27:23

Um, but that whole mentality of like, okay, let's give a plan in case you have to go to the hospital. That's what licensure was all about. Like the midwives working it more like easily with the hospitals and having transfers go more smoothly. And in return, the doctors, you know, are able to provide the midwives with more medications and they are allowed to do a little bit more, even you know, medical things. And yeah, yeah. Okay, so she's setting you up, kind of talking about you know, all of these plans where you're like kind of like, well, I'm just probably gonna have a home birth and just want to think about that.

Katie 27:55

Sure, right. And then you don't learn. I mean, this is this isn't just her, like, this is how I've heard from a lot of people. This happens where you don't know there's gonna be like another random midwife at your birth that you didn't even know about until like the very last, like you're 38 weeks. And by the way, here's this person. I worked with what's her name, Mel, something, I think, but I don't, she was really nice. I actually really liked her. So it wasn't like a person that I didn't trust. But then what happened is it was like the the duela I found was like, oh, well, I'm actually going on vacation these days. So if you bird give birth during this week, but it was like again, it's supposed to be pasture due day, it's after 42 weeks. I am going on vacation or whatever. So then it was like another dual was gonna be the stand-in. So then it was like another person that I really didn't know very well, you know what I mean? And so that is another thing that is like not, I don't think, a good idea for birth. I read a lot of Michelle Odant's work. I really think he's like just the best for like a real, and especially for people who are like not fringe people, like you're not a radical, fine. But Michelle Odant is like a doctor, and he like did not come from a background of studying gynecology, he kind of inherited a hospital maternity ward through his military surgical background. So I think that is nice that he didn't have this like indoctrination into a one way of thinking. So he's really able to give a lot of good insights on the tra the conventional obstetrical practices, especially in France, where I think they're even more brutal than here. And so um, they look so women's cervixes shut, he said, anything like that. But anyway, he just talks about how like really the best conditions for giving birth are the same conditions that are like for making love, like a nice intimate space. So then you have all these random people showing up in your birth, and I didn't even know the house very well, and it was like kind of spookier than we thought. It was like this karmic lesson for us, the property we ended up buying in Maine. And so we were just kind of like in it with a lot of things, but anyway, so then she's kind of like, well, her hands are tied, and you know, if I were to like retrospect on a lot of this stuff, like what would the if I'm the midwife and I'm in this situation, what's the first thing I'm gonna do? I'm gonna be like, due date's not right, we got the due date wrong. Let's just change the due date, right? Easy, oops, due date's obviously wrong because the baby's not here. So that could be a way to do this, right? If in the future a midwife wants to try to be like, maybe my due date was wrong, and women don't even like I remember being like, what was the first day or last period? I was like, I have no idea. So a lot of women really are in the dark, so then that leads you susceptible to all this medical, nefarious predatory stuff. Because as we love to talk about, my husband's from Argentina, like it's a business, right? The medical, a doctor is a business too, even though they're a hero, right? So, um, so what Sarah suggested is like, okay, well, you don't want to go get induced at the hospital where they like shove a balloon in your cervix and rip it open or like give you crazy pitocin, that's more likely to cause rupture than a VMAC by like 100 million percent. And uh, pitocin can cause uterine rupture even if you don't have a surgical scar, because it's such an intense situation for women. So I'm grateful that I didn't have any of that stuff. It's true. I don't think I could have handled like vaginal abuse in my first birth in a way. The C-section is so asexual, it's so removed from like you're so removed from it that it's like I just couldn't, I just am glad it wasn't this like crazy, you know what I mean? But she was like, why don't you take cast oil? Do a castor oil induction. And now that I know about physiological birth, because again, I didn't at the time, I'm like, why in the whack would you ever suggest that to anybody? I know some women like who go really hard, like that. What do you know, that that ballerina farm girl, she like takes her castor oil induction, has her baby, and then like does the Miss America pageant two weeks later. If you like go hard like that, maybe the castor oil would like work for you. But I'm the type of person who like freaks out under pressure, don't rush me. So I just really so but we went for

Castor Oil Induction And Labor Chaos

Katie 31:43

it. We went to the King Rider pub in Dermascata, Maine, and we got two screwdrivers. And that's what she because you you cut it with the alcohol and you um cut it with the uh orange juice. This castor oil is like this thick oil. It's not like oh, your little olive oil, it's like this thick, thick, thick. I didn't know that, so it was a disgusting. And it says do not kinsam internally on the bottle. Sure, no, yeah. And it creates a lot of problems, like for your birth. Because then you're having, and then what happened, and I didn't think about it. So then I took it at like 11 a.m. We got back from Topsum, and on the way home, we hit the King Rider pub right on the way back because we lived off of the Bristol Road. Um, and so um, I don't know if you're familiar with Darmuscana, but if you are, that's where we were. So then uh we hit the King Rider pub, did the screwdriver, and it was like 11 a.m. And so then I proceeded to like have diarrhea and be sick all day. So then all day I'm like sick AF pooping my pants, and then that will cause your baby to poop their pants too. So then if you're gonna like let then your midwife's gonna freak out about meconium later, just FYI, like your castor oil is gonna cause the meconium that then they're gonna use to justify more intervention, right? And that's the cascade of intervention. So then, and and and you're not even guaranteed to go into full labor from the castor oil, and I feel like that might have even been happening with my birth. So, anyway, so then I'm sick all day, and then it's 11 o'clock at night. My husband's like going to bed. We're all about to go to bed, and then it's like, oh, I think the labor is starting. So then it was like nobody slept, we were not prepared at all. It was not this natural rhythm. And then it was like uh super intense because it's this castor oil induction. Whether you induce with castor oil or you induce with pitocin, I think that you are like forcing, literally forcing your body to go into labor and to contract and stuff. So it's just gonna be a different sensation than normal physiological labor starting. I think it was really intense, really fast, and not very like pleasant, like it was just a very painful because it also has this digestive cramping mixed in because it's the the castor oil. So it just started out really strong and unpleasant right at bedtime. So then, and then and that's a lesson I think for all women is always let your like partner and birthing team sleep as long as you can, like do it alone as long as you can, like have faith, be strong, and like let that husband sleep till 5 a.m., 4 a.m. And then once you can't go no more, but like really if he had rested more, and if I had rested more, like this, and and and if I hadn't called the birth team so soon, once that all went down, I called the doula and she uh came like midnight, I don't know, something like that. But then it's like the middle of the night for her, she's got three kids, so then she kind of and then my mom had a pretty fast labor with me, and I was a like a seven-pound something baby, and so um there was kind of this story being written by the birth team that it was gonna be a fast delivery, the baby's gonna be born by morning. So then we get like, okay, the labor, we had the birth tub set up in this tiny little bedroom upstairs because I didn't know like what the needs were, also of like the birthing woman. I know there's like books about that. What are you like for birthing woman in labor or whatever that book is that I didn't read, but there are resources to to learn about what a birthing woman might actually need in labor, right? So we were not prepared at all. And then the room was super crowded with all these people and stuff, and the table was Sarah's stuff, and uh in this pool kind of confined. So then, yeah, at like 2 or 3 or a.m. we call Sarah and the other midwife and they come. And then yeah, everybody's like, it's gonna, baby's gonna be here by morning. But then it just like didn't progress. We went in the morning, the sun rose, and it was this snowstorm in Maine, and I got to sleep like an hour or two in the tub. My husband made me this awesome toast with eggs, and then I don't know, it just wasn't progressing anymore, and just calm down. I don't know, resting, I don't know. And it was this castor oil labor that very well could have faded, you know what I mean. Maybe it was just the castor oil, maybe the baby's not actually coming out yet. So then it was like 11 a.m. and Sarah was like, let's break the waters. Sometimes the baby

Breaking Waters, Transfer, And C-Section

Katie 36:10

just shoots out. So it wasn't like letting it, you know, they were tired and they wanted to go. I just think it was really like that. And you know what? Because it also messes with her schedule. She's got two other women in the next window. Like, I'm going into the wind, the calendar of the other two people that are after me. And so she's got a vested interest, even if that's like a soft version of a professional having a vested interest in you giving birth on time, there's lots of examples of the birthing professionals wanting to have you give birth on time and all this stuff. And there's also like limitations to V back in hospitals in Maine because of like them wanting to have the operating room available and ready to go. Like, Dare Mascata is a pretty nice hospital, all things considered, where I ended up having the Z-section. And it's like really beautiful by the water and stuff, and they don't do VBAC because they say it's just now you have to go to the big hospital that everybody hates Penobscot or the other one just because they just want like more than one operating room, you have to just in case. And so it's like this whole like, I don't care about your needs, it's my needs that my schedule matters first, kind of thing. And I felt that a little bit, and that's just with like any professional that's taking on a lot of clients and has like she's got the birth center and she's got home birth clients. Um, but yeah, I would never ever do that, break somebody's waters manually. That was like, and there are photos of me. They were like taking pictures of we have because I do film photography, so we had the cameras and we had the everybody using them, and um there are like pictures of me in so much pain, like with her like doing that, like popping the water manually was like really terrible and awful. And then that created like then the labor became so painful that then after like a couple hours of that, baby still didn't come out. She was like, Maybe you should transfer to the hospital, get some relief. And I was like, Oh, well, if you're the professional, and I again was really looking, I really didn't have and I think every woman ought to like take more responsibility for her own birth education than I did at the time. And then I proceeded to do so with the subsequent birth CA, but I definitely was like, Oh, well, if this birth like I I didn't know that like a birth professional would just kind of hand it over like that, I guess. I would imagine that it was because there was an actual reason to go to the hospital. And I will say that a reason to go is that all of these interventions create the emergency for the baby. So once you like do the castor oil and the meconium, and then once you manually break the water, then you actually created an environment where your baby's in danger, right? And then we went to the hospital. They wanted me to get a COVID test, and I was like, no, I'll leave. But then they like were like, okay, you don't have to. And I'm like, oh, whatever, oh well. Um, and uh, but it was this environment of like people in a mask, like, oh boo-boo, COVID. And I was like, Whoa, I'm like in so much pain right now. I just capitulated completely and was like a huge baby about it once they got to the hospital, like boo-hoo, whoa, it was me. But they were basically like you can have a c-section now, or you can get an epidural try for two hours and get a c-section anyway. And that's basically how they framed it at the hospital. And my husband's foreign too, so he kind of understood it like you have two hours, and then you have to have a c-section, kind of like, and I was just again so done, I don't know, lost and tired, and the whole thing was super stressful and like upsetting, you know what I mean? The way it all went down, and so I kind of and I didn't know what a c-section was. I didn't know what that was. I didn't know the repercussions for myself, for my baby, for anything. So I capitulated to that and then yeah, had the c-section. I'll say all things considered, at least that Dermoscata Hospital is pretty naturally minded. They didn't take the baby out of the room. They did like they gave her to me chest to chest, like skin to skin right away. But still, the C-section was like suit. I still am like not fully, I'm there's still like carried trauma from that, and that was like five years ago almost. And again, I've done like, and I feel like I'm somebody who's really done a lot of work to try to like work through it, and it's just so many layers to unpack physically, emotionally. I do think it affects your ability to bond with your baby. I I believe it affects your baby, like your baby, I think is more likely to be like kind of maybe like higher needs, special needs if you have a c-section. Every c-section baby is born prematurely, right? Just by nature. So it's just something to like, I just like think that that education is important of what that is. They're like severing like your uterus from your bladder, taking out of your body, ripping your baby out of you, ripping the placenta out of you. That I think really was like something I still will like feel in that position of like where they ripped the placenta out. Um, so that was super eye-opening. And then to not be able to walk after it's like, oh, I didn't know I couldn't walk for like three days, have this catheter. My like underwear is annoying to wear because of this stupid scar on my freaking lower abdomen. There's just so many like layers, so like it's super upsetting. And so then we were in the Dermoscata hospital, did that, and then and then after, I don't know, like then you're like in this, the you're suddenly your home birth candidate who then is suddenly like in that hospital system, which again the state regulated midwifery funneled me right into based on like these arbitrary decisions by the state of Maine, you know what I mean? That you can't go past this date, whatever, and then you have to do this crazy move. And so um then it was like being criticized for the breast breastfeeding is being criticized. I'm suddenly in the hospital, your baby, your the performance of your baby, this and that. So that was also a super stressful component of like having that experience. Was then it was like, I think it did affect the breastfeeding because people were like because I think the biggest thing with breastfeeding disruption is like if somebody like says something to you, it can really disrupt a new mother of like, oh, then I start to think, oh, I'm feeding the baby too often, oh, this and that not enough. And then it was like, you gotta pump because the baby, or maybe donor milk. I was like, Oh my god, I like I'm a failure. I felt like such a failure, and then there's just all this pressure, and then the bit the weight, the curve, you know what I mean, all that stuff. So then we eventually were able to like extract ourselves from that hospital relationship because then the hospital wants to keep going back, and then I gotta like go with the car seat. They don't want my husband to go, but hey, I just had a crazy abdominal surgery, I can't carry this heavy ass car seat by myself. Like, you know what I mean? All these little details. So it was just super annoying and inconvenient. And again, it really was because of this like state regulation. I doubt that Sarah Ackerley would have suggested doing a castor oil induction if she wasn't like, and again, she hadn't like figured out maybe she hadn't done that very often either, if it just kicked in in 2020. So, how many times did she even manually ever break somebody's water before that? You know what I mean? Maybe that was like something she would she just heard about, you know what I mean? She might not have even had a lot of experience doing that, you know what I mean?

Angela 42:27

If it just spoiler for like just in comparison, which is I don't know, interesting because my midwife for my home birth was although my whole pregnancy against licensure, against licensure, against licensure during my birth, she broke my water. And I'm like I was not expecting any of that. I'm like, I thought she was against all these things. Like, what oh well, yeah.

Katie 42:48

So you never know, yeah. So what the people think, and there is this like, yeah, ideas of how to do it, and and yeah, people and I do feel like the midwife has to feel like she's like contributing in some way, she's part of your birth, you know what I mean. And I think it's important to like your job is almost not to be part of the birth, right? I don't know, like hold space. And I did for my third birth have a traditional birth attendant, and that was really nice because yeah, she mostly I she wasn't even in the room, and I'm not this person who's like sovereign birth, free birth is only when you're alone. It's like, I'm sorry, what like that doesn't make any sense, like community supported free birth or so, you know what I mean? Like it's a free birth if it's like this, yeah, sovereign free birth. It's okay if you have a birth attendant watching your kid, right? How come your mom can watch the kid and it's a free birth? But my birth attendant watches the kid and makes soup, and I'm not having free birth anymore. So I still will just use it. Yeah, we don't follow that dogma, right? Sure, exactly. Yeah, just to clarify. But the birth attendant, the traditional birth attendant was nice because it was like she was helping with stuff that was more like supporting the husband. She helped clean the blood out of stuff after getting the towels, making soup, feeding the mother, like bringing stuff like that. Perry bottle, not like I'm gonna look at your pussy and I'm gonna meddle around and touch you and do a fetal monitoring and stress you I don't know it just was it the hands off nature of having support was in the end really nice for the last birth experience that I had. Um but so how is your postpartum for your your first then after that like um like getting home did you still have were you still able to have that relation that midwife like relationship in your postpartum or well it was still more driving with the girl through Whiscasset to check all these appointments and it was more of the same type of like you're in trouble if you don't like meet your curve type of care you know what I mean like where it's like having a follow like I just felt like making the making the grade you know what I mean so then I don't know something that Sarah did that kind of insulted me is that after the c-section happened she like came to my house and her mom knits baby hats. So she's like I brought a baby hat I brought the biggest one that I could find and she brought like a hat that was like for like a two year old child. You know what I mean? So it's like oh your baby's head was so big you like I'd have a c-section oh you didn't have a vaginal worth here's this huge hat so that was like I thought kind of really bitchy not to like swear on your podcast but I just didn't like that at all and I'm just trying to give an honest review of my experience is right. Um and that just there I part of me has wanted to be like this this was wrong the way this all went down but I also like I'm letting it go you know what I mean I got out of there. So and luckily like the way things all happened I would have almost ended up I was so insecure and it was so crazy in Maine during COVID with all the people were like wigging out especially because there's so many older people in Darmuscotta so it was like super dressful.

Hard Postpartum And Finding Healing Tools

Katie 45:24

We weren't having a very good time in Maine because of all that stuff. The house we bought was crazy and it was just a monster house and the birth experience the postpartum like yeah to answer your question was pretty bad. Like we didn't have a lot of support didn't have a lot of friends or nourishment. I was doing this herbalism apprenticeship with Melissa Boynton and natural donnings in Whitefield, Maine. And that really was like the saving grace going to Whitefield and hanging with her. We did some cranial sacral therapy with Josephine and myself my daughter after that I think that really helped work through a lot of that c-section trauma for both of us was doing that cranial sacral with her. And then I learned all about like herbal medicine. So I feel like it was this catalyst into like actually practicing what I preach and like actually like I said I thought I was this crunchy person. And then I ended up having this like super upsetting medical midwifery c-section transfer experience. And I was like whoa I can't even believe that I like had that happen to me because I thought I was this other person that I actually am not not yet. So then it was part of this empowering journey but yeah I was feeling like it was like yeah the breastfeeding wasn't going very well I think that it makes your body harder it's harder for your body to breastfeed when you have a c-section even if people do succeed at doing it which is awesome like I do think it creates a lot of obstacles in your way and so I struggled with that and then yeah the way that that was going it was like pump pump pump so stressful. And then Sarah was ready to like funnel us right into the tongue tie like laser surgery experience. And I think that's also kind of like a snake oil like they just like are gonna look for that. I mean I don't know how much I mean I think you would have to have a very serious like oral deformity in order for that to really affect your breastfeeding there can be so many factors that can be addressed before it comes to that point. So I just felt like she was like really ready to refer me again out to somebody else. And so my husband said no way to that I was ready to be like oh I'm trying to please everybody and I'm so wigged out and I'm so toasted after this whole experience. So he was like no way we're not doing that. And then I started making the homemade milk formula via West and Price because Josie was like underweight. We had this sailing trip for a month when I was three months postpartum which also in retrospect was like the dumbest thing ever that we did. We moved our boat from Connecticut to Maine. We sailed it up with my father in law with my baby and my husband and it was just so not good for like the new mothers like feeling secure and comfortable so I feel like that also like killed my breastfeeding ability and so then the homemade formula I think was a really good way to like redeem that and feel like I was still like giving like it's an act of love at least to make the formula every day not like doing it out of a can and then it took the pressure off a little bit from the breastfeeding because it was like so much pressure and everybody's like giving me such a hard time so that didn't feel very good. And it was this dark time in my relationship with my husband too I think the C-section has a lot of sexual implications obviously and the guy has to like watch so if we're talking about like industrial birth conspiracy I'm like it's a way to like kind of cuckold the guy to like do this crazy surgical birth that he has to like watch. So that was like a lot for everybody.

Relocating Abroad And An Unexpected Pregnancy

Katie 48:34

So then my husband ended up accepting a work relocation to Paris France we had to get out of Maine. So we ended up leaving Maine. We went to another place that has a lot of regulation of women in birth Paris France it was the belly of the beast right obstetrical medicine is from France and they're again more brutal than us so during the moving process we went to Argentina where my husband's from and it's like summer when it's winter in Maine. So I think that that seasonal shift going from the freezing cold of Maine to the hot summer of Buenos Aires like I just my fertility was all whacked out. So then I actually unexpectedly got pregnant while we were in Argentina right as we were moving to Paris, France. And so then that was a very complicated situation to find myself in but good because I would have just worked with Sarah again and been in this stress relationship where I'm like not satisfactory and there's all this meddling and stuff I have to do in order to like please her and qualify for whatever care. So I think it's good that we like didn't end up I would have and I would have just so gone right into it and you know what I mean. Luckily and I did like write a thing for this that Maine allowed home birth after cesarean where I wrote like a piece about like what and and I said in the thing that I submitted like what what position does that leave me in like I'm either gonna be funnel right into the hospital which I know I'm gonna have a bad experience and just based on knowing more about who I am and how I operate like or I'm gonna have to do it by myself kind of you know what I mean and then and I didn't know still that that is possible for a woman to actually have a positive undisturbed birth experience like by herself or with just like support of a different nature than like this medical midwifery model that kind of was what I understood to be the holistic natural care.

Angela 50:21

Yeah and for anyone that's not um sure like kind of what we're talking about there when licensure first took effect in Maine for Bidwives in 2020 the midwives were not allowed to attend your birth if you had had any C-section at all. And so the letter you submitted and there were others that submitted similar letters they did end up changing that law. I think it was in 2021 in September. So now in Maine they're allowed to attend births if you've had one prior c-section as long as it's not I think within 18 months but for women who have had more than one C-section you can't have in Maine a licensed home birth midwife attend your birth yeah it's true yeah in the tw in the 18 months I recall because I was going to have 20 month separation with this next baby and I um was like definitely a little nervous about that.

Katie 51:16

But now that I've had the experiences that I have have and I've done a lot of just personal education and meditation on this V back concept just from my own experiences right I don't attend births probably I could be a resource for somebody who's like trying to have a V back like the mental shadow work part but um I haven't like watched all these other women give birth or anything like that but I definitely think that um in most surgical cases you want to exercise the muscle right away they say get off your leg you gotta move your hip you got hip replacement you got to use it. But then with the uterus they're all freaky about it and they're like oh you can't it's dangerous so I just don't know if that really is an issue. Of course if it's like the actual scar like the wound has not healed maybe that could be an issue but I think normally like it's actually good to exercise your muscle when you have a surgery so actually I don't know if that that is a an actual concern. I don't know if that is is really something that you should actually be scared of if you have like a 20 month separation between your births like me and you're scared that your C-section will somehow affect the outcome. I at least felt no pain at all. I think if you were gonna have a problem you would like feel crazy pain. And there's of course there's ligament pain that you could get scared about you know what I mean like but I think you would really have to be in like crazy pain like if you had a real issue and I never had any type of issue like that with my subsequent pregnancies. I'm pregnant again for a fourth time here right now and I've never had any problems with the uterus scar or anything like that. I have done some scar work in my life right but at the time of this pregnancy I really hadn't done very much soul searching about my C-section. I saw some lady in Lewiston that was like a scar massage person I learned a little bit about fascia but not it was it was very basic and not geared at all towards like women or womb care. Right.

Angela 53:05

So um and like we said in the beginning like you mentioned anyone that is going through the hospital system for that if they like recommend an induction and you're on Pitocin, that's arguably you know pretty dangerous also.

Katie 53:17

Sure yeah no and I definitely like learned that like slow stress free as Charlotte's from Charlotte's web would say never hurry never worry I really feel like that's like the key to a successful V back is like low stress. So that's what I like was reading about we're moving to France

Searching For VBAC Options In France

Katie 53:34

and I still hadn't discovered the free birth movement. So I was um looking desperately for a midwife to help me with a home birth after C-section in Paris France and everyone's like contraindicatif no like and I only speak preliminary French at this time right so they were all like no it's you got to do the plateau technique which is basically just like a midwife in the hospital you're having a birth in their little room with the chair you know what I mean like and I was like no way there was like a woman in Tours I think her name is Isabel and she's like for a French midwife pretty badass. She was down to do a home birth if if we had moved to Tours which would have been crazy for my husband commuting to Paris we were like scheming and tripping out like oh well we'll move to tours and you'll take the high speed train every day for an hour to go to the office so we can do this home birth with this midwife. But then she was like because she's still French and they're very orderly and precise and they have their methods and they want it the way that they want it. And so she was like you can't work with me unless you have two ultrasounds and at that and I was gonna go to the Dermoskat hospital and I was going to get the ultrasound but I I was kind of like through the raw milk formula I was kind of learning about like food healing via the Weston Price Foundation I went to that Wise Traditions 2021 conference when they started to allow events again and it was so awesome. And um I already was questioning ultrasound technology both the efficacy and the safety to learn that like the ultrasound is like the equivalent radiation of 125 chest x-rays for your baby just made me feel like whoa like I don't really think I need this and what's it gonna do it's just gonna find problems and then there's gonna be more fear and then I'm gonna be doing the same thing jumping through all these hoops for my provider to be able to qualify for the thing you know what I mean and I just had learned so much about how I was like from that experience with Sarah Ackerly that I was like I'm not doing that again. So then I decided to just we move to Paris we didn't do this crazy tourist plan. But good for that midwife that she would do a home birth after CS section because she was the only one. The birth centers in France don't allow it. I was gonna go to like Bordeaux and go to the birth center to make it happen. And it was like and I remember writing someone in like fonts and blue like what am I supposed to do? Like I'm prostituting myself out all these people and what I'm just gonna have the birth by myself and then it was kind of like ding ding ding I could just like educate myself and do the birth by myself like it was so this the C-section for me was like so traumatic and upsetting and like and women say this like if it makes you feel like a failure and you feel like you're not even a real mom. I felt like only the top half of my body had given birth I felt like I hadn't given birth and I really think there's a lot of hormonal stuff that does not happen when you don't have that vaginal birth experience it really confuses your body and um after I had the successful movie back in France I was like whew it feels so good not to be pregnant anymore because I really felt pregnant the whole time. And so I was just really not whacked out you know what I mean so then it was so important to me to have that V back and to do it right that I was willing to then say yeah I could do this by myself. So then we found I think I found like a radical birthkeepers website via this recent first I was listening to the home birth after cesarean podcast which has examples of people with providers and without providers having successful home birth after c sections and someone in that podcast had an unassisted birth due to the lack of providers and all it does is create a situation where the women do have to like you have either these shy providers that are going to funnel you into this business scheme and the hospital makes two times as much money off a c-section as a vaginal birth and you still have to pay your midwife. So Sarah Ackerley still got paid even though she did all that stuff and didn't deliver her home birth you know what I mean doesn't matter to them. So then you I mean you have whole health insurance obviously covers a lot of that stuff but still what if like we didn't have health insurance like a lot of people and I saw eventually in the Free Birth Society group that even like people who did take that radical birthkeep school were still ending up having c-sections. And I think that like this it's it's so important to trust your body la la la but the la I trust my body like I definitely think there's tangible birth and labor preparation that you can do so that you are like I said well resourced well nourished well rested. Like if you don't let your husband sleep you don't drink water for 48 hours and you don't eat then yeah probably you're gonna transfer to the hospital because you're not feeling very good right like that's not so I do think that now like my my mentality when I give birth now is like I'm gonna prepare for like literally to be in labor for like a week have everything and then I have to be like mentally ready for that. And then I remember my last labor was like a really long gestation and a really long labor. And there were moments of like doubt and I was like well how much effort is it gonna make I'm gonna get dressed drive to the hospital have a C-section like probably I can just like deal with this and move around and you know what I mean have the baby here kind of trying to quantify it like that. Like um but anyway I digress. Um so we're kind of in this preparation space so I found the then through looking up the unassisted birth concept I discovered a radical birthkeepers website I did a birth trauma debrief with that girl and then I discovered via that radical birthkeeper title this free birth society and I did the free complete guide to free birth and I think that that honestly was very good for what we needed.

Angela 58:57

I was looking and again I was it kind of gives you this false sense of everything is going to go fine and there's nothing that could really come up ever. Right. Right well it's just a bad space to be in but if something comes up it's like well I'm totally unprepared for this but you know right.

Katie 59:12

Well I think for me who was so worried that I really needed like that provided me like a really nice refreshing like okay cool and I will also say that I definitely did all the extra resources. So like I read all the essays about V back that they link you to right so I was watching the videos but I was also um like reading all the did that Davis essay about like technological birth as a right of passage. So there's a lot of cool like resources that they link out to I definitely think that they were really young when they recorded that stuff right like Emily had like a tie-dye shirt on. She seems like she changed a lot since they recorded Complete Guide to Free Birth. They probably could use like redoing it now that they're like older and wiser right but um I definitely I I personally I mean there's problems with that organization and we can get into that a little more after the free birth I get like more once I moved back to the US I got into the free birth society during this birth I only had the complete guide. And then I was also trying to contact local radical birthkeepers in France. I was really talking to a lot of people anybody want to attend this birth because I was still open to having a birth attendant right like but I was not able to find a provider willing to meet me where I needed to be like I this is what I need I'm the client and this is what you need to provide and no one was willing to do that. And there was a one duela who would have attended the birth but she was actually going to attend her own daughter's birth in Ireland at the time it was like the international community so there were some pro free birth people but everybody in France was like be very careful be very careful they'll get you they'll come for you you have to do it right the medical like there the law in France is that the husband can declare the father the baby can declare the birth there's no real necessary stuff but then on the form the websites of the town halls they are like told to request a medical exam form from a doctor so everybody was like you got to get the medical exam paper if you don't you got to go with the baby to the to the Marie to declare the birth this and that and um so I was really trying to find but nobody was like it's okay then who's the doctor you're using like like where do I go to do this? I need I just and the problem was that I had was moving to France and got pregnant unexpectedly during the moving process. So I didn't have a lot of time to like set up shop. Ideally you would like not move to a new country where you had no care or resources or even really fully spoke the language when you're gonna have a birth and you want to do things differently than the conventional hospital schematic. But that's just not how it went for us. That's okay. So I was like looking around like crazy to find somebody and then what happens is and and I learned a lot of things from my previous birth experience and maybe that's also why I liked the complete guide to free birth because I already had learned that you need to do like the labor prep and the delivery prep is like important, you know what I mean? So then I was like and I was still talking with my herbalism mentor from Maine. So during that pregnancy with Melissa we did this kind of like birth and labor final project of like herbal ally preparation. I was taking this really good pregnancy prenatal yoga um with a girl in Paris who would like come to my house and do yoga with me. And I think she was doing like Wapio's doula program. So she had like a lot of good like ideas of like the face and staying open and like getting movement techniques and again being able to rest. So I just was able to like my own like do a lot of this prep work that yeah maybe that's what we're saying the radical birthkeepers that like had c sections even though they took that program like maybe there's not this emphasis on like the actual practical stuff that you can like do. Same thing with like let's say you have like a shoulder dysocial situation. Well like how much like movement is that mother doing what does that birth look like what is if she's like you know what I mean like and then how's she taking her own contractions right? Is she like oh whoa's me or is she like like I can handle this I got this so a lot of this mental stuff with the V back I was really thinking about in my own time. And I just really think that's so helpful to have a good birth outcome. I mean if you're prepared with like tools in your toolbox like to get through your birth as if it's like a marathon or a sports event then it really makes a huge difference than if you're like exhausted and hungry and have no idea. And I also had learned and they told me this in France too like because you can only go to 42 weeks in France before they get you. So I was like oh man I couldn't even do the 43 weeks in Maine like 42. So then we have originally we talked to Adula when we were still looking into the traditional med medical midwife model and she was like lie tell them that the due date is farther. So then you don't have that problem. So in my head I was like this baby's not coming till October everybody bugged me like and it was right during the presidential election to my first birth so people before I had the C-section would be like where's your baby Joe Biden like Donald Trump where's your baby and I would be like oh my gosh this is like this time in America everyone's so divided and suspicious of each other and scared and it was like so stressful that I was like okay now I'm like not even telling anybody I'm pregnant. I'm gonna tell everybody that the baby's coming in October so that no one bothers me. Right. It was this no stress and it was so much more relaxing than that medical pregnancy. Even though I was like doing something that was like this underground radical thing like oh don't be careful you know what I mean in Paris. Um it was really relaxed the pregnancy was super chill despite everything we had like a lot of problems with our housing in Paris it was like so much other stressful stuff going on but the actual prenatal felt much better than doing the yoga and just finding my own like taking responsibility for my own prenatal care. And that looks different for everybody. I did a little bit of the oh baby school of holistic nutrition during that time too but the way everything unfolded I had to stop that program. Um so then what ended up happening I was kind of like oh October October the baby and then it's August and all of Paris, France shuts down during August. Everybody goes on vacation and it was during this time where even to get a doctor's appointment you had to use docdolib.com and like do the virtual booking because it's COVID still like the end of the COVID stuff. They had already lifted all that like train pass stuff when we moved to France but it was still like you got to do the virtual appointment with your doctor. So if you

Freebirth VBAC In Paris And What Helped

Katie 1:05:50

wanted to like book a doctor's appointment in August the earliest one is like September 6th because I remember looking. So then what ended up happening it was August 13th at night and I started to like Feel early labor contractions, and I was like, Oh my gosh, it's starting. And so I was like, I'm not gonna tell my husband. So I kept it to myself. He went to bed. I was like, I need you to help me clean the bathtub. So then I like had this like Valerian chamomile bath I had already like prepared. Then you make it special for yourself, right? Like you got whatever, and maybe herbalism like doesn't matter to you. Do something else, right? Whatever feels like it resonates with you. And I felt like I was like putting on ears with my first pregnancy. Like Sarah was like, Some people do birth affirmations on the wall, and I was like, okay, doesn't matter to me at all, but I'm like doing it, you know what I mean? So then finding stuff that was like actually meaningful for me and doing a little soul searching on my part made the birth go easier, right? And so then I was allowed my husband to sleep till like 5 a.m. And that's when the real labor started. And so then I got him up and he and my daughter went to the store to buy food for like a whole month postpartum. We learned all about postpartum meals and stuff too, since the first birth, where people were bringing me like lasagnas, you know what I mean, the neighborhood. It would be like people I'd never met before in a mask, being like, This is the new normal. Here's the lasagna in me. And I was like, Whoa, this is just so intense for this postpartum person, you know what I mean? And so um, we were ready to have this awesome postpartum. The birth was all day long, but I was like really emphasizing movement, doing like different things, and just not staying in one place, especially because it was an apartment. So I didn't want to like make too much noise and like be disconsiderate to the other people in the building, right? So just moving around. My husband played guitar, that really resonated the music. And I think part of a successful birth, like, imagine my daughter during that first birth experience. Like, like, you gotta kind of convince the baby, you and the baby are doing it together, like the baby is crawling out, and you are like doing stuff to get the baby to come out, kind of. So the music and stuff they say, you can kind of be like, come on out, baby. You want to kind of encourage the baby to say, This is lit, I want to come out, versus like, get out of here, we're breaking the water, we're gonna get the forceps. It's like, well, that baby's probably like not trying to come out, right? Like, so I just think that's uh just again, like if you're listening and are gonna have a baby, just important stuff that I found super helpful in my experience. And so then it was like 8 p.m. and my daughter was born. It was this hot summer day, and then as soon as she was born, it was like a crack of thunder, and then it started this like torrential thunderstorm. It was like so amazing. And yeah, she was born. Luckily, like, I mean, I just I now have more education about like the newborn first breath stuff and like how to like kind of help a baby like come to when they are born and not to necessarily panic about that. There's stuff you can do, and then there's like signs, you know what I mean? And so luckily, my daughter was just crying right away and healthy 30-week old big 38-week baby. It was the Monday was a holiday. You had like three or four days, five days, business days to um declare the birth. So then my husband went with my daughter one day to do it. We didn't have the medical exam, but again, we didn't, there were no doctors like open on Docto Lib to like get an appointment. And if I could do it all again, I probably would have gone to the American hospital of Paris and said, Hey, I'm an American, I just had this birth. I could have like they kind of made it like stretch the truth, say you were gonna go home or something, and you that the baby came early, you know what I mean? Like that's how the Paris culture is, is basically like lie to do what you want and the government, you know what I mean? And so, um, but then when and you know, something that came out is that in Paris, France, they really do hate Americans and they also really do hate Argentinians. So I don't know like what went down with my husband in the town hall with the town hall clerk, but and they say, like, and France has this argument culture and this legal battle culture that also I think is important. So they're like, if the person refuses to give you the birth certificate, you need to have a written form that says they refused, and then you know, fight with them, and then you're gonna bring that as evidence. So my husband didn't do any of that stuff, so he left empty-handed, and he's like, Oh, well, they're gonna give it to me later and call or something. He needed to check that it was all good with giving me the birth certificate. And then we got this phone call from like the lady said she was like the prosecutor of the Avantem Arendus where we were living, um, the 20th arendus of Paris, and she was like, What, you know, asking questions, what's going on? And they were basically like, You're not in the United States anymore. This is France, you can't do whatever you want. Maybe you should spend more time taking care of your baby and less time reading French law. Like they were really aggressive and upset, and then they were like, We want you to get the medical exam. And I was like, No problem, love that. I was not able to find a doctor, like, would love to get your medical exam, no problem. Super trying to be like amicable, no problem. And then again, I didn't think of like a hospital, I didn't know about the American hospital, like something like that, maybe would have been a better place to go. But I just saw like, oh, the hospital near Gambetta, oh, a hospital Tinon in Gambetta, it's right there. Okay, uh, we'll go there. So then we went there, and then it was basically like the next day, we like I remember I got my daughter in her cute blouse, and we're gonna go and look

Hospital Coercion And Bureaucratic Threats

Katie 1:10:55

nice and get this done, whatever, no problem. I was riding a pretty big high from having the V back, which was so awesome. And it just feels so good to have the V back. I mean, you don't feel you don't realize you don't feel normal till you have a V back, and then you're like, whoa, again, like I was pregnant this whole time, my body is like was whacked out, my ankles look different. I think it affects the shape of your body. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff that I think the c-section is like way more harmful than they say. And even if you loved your C-section, it still causes a lot of like repercussions for your body and your baby. There's just to consider, even if you like were like, I loved this so much. Um, and so um then they held us hostage at the hospital for like nine hours, no food or water. I've never had a hospital experience like that where the nurses aren't like, Can I get you anything? Right. Like, even in Maine, they were still like, hey, you need something, like you can press this button and we'll help you. I don't know, normal hospital. But this was like, I had to get the nurse taken out the trash, like, yo, can you like bring me an apple for my two-year-old that is like no food in this hospital room? It was like a jail. And then eventually they were like, I don't know. And I'm the type of person who, even with the first birth, I refused all like types of interventions for the newborn, the vitamin K shot, the eyeball, a wipe, or whatever. I said no to any of that stuff. I just think newborn babies don't need anything. It's a lot for their it's pretty shocking to the new system of the baby to like inject it with anything or to like rub stuff in its eyes. I just think that's not the experience I want to give a newborn, so that's fine. Um, so then we were like, no, thank you, no, thank you to all this stuff. And they didn't like, they were really offended that my husband cut the umbilical cord. That seemed like a big cultural offense, like the doctor cuts the umbilical cord. And again, it's like birth as this rite of passage. I mean, France has socialized medicine, which sounds really nice on paper, but really what that means is that you're not allowed to say no. You know what I mean? So everybody gets the health care, and you have to get the health care, you know what I mean? So it was super offensive to them that we did it ourselves with the umbilical cord. And some people have midwives that come after, like they say that the baby came too soon, but we didn't have it all set up like that. And if I were to do it all again, I wouldn't have even told anybody it was a V back, so then people would have been willing to work with me. You know what I mean? But um, but still that's messed up that I would have to do that. So anyway, we were like held hostage, we were refusing all this stuff, but because they were offended uh by the umbilical cord, they made a big stink about the risk of tetanus, which makes no sense because it was like a new stainless steel knife, but whatever, it didn't make sense and it wasn't a risk. And I think if you really had an infected thing, you would be able to tell. But um they but I didn't know that they were like making a big deal out of it, so then I was like, no, thank you, no, thank you. We don't want that, whatever. And then they made me like sign a form that was like, I refuse this tetanus thing. And I was it wasn't a vaccine, it was an immunoglobin injection. Um, but I was just refusing everything. No thanks, no thanks. I want to get out of here. And in the US, you're allowed to do that. I don't know. And so then they had me sign this form that was like, I refuse this thing. That's normal, liability, sure. But then they like had these two new people come in and they're like, We're social workers because you refuse this thing, basically, like you either get this injection or we're gonna like report you and take away your kids. And I was like, Whoa, like didn't realize it was that extreme. So obviously, I was like, fine, yes, you can like do your immunoglobin injection. So they did that. I was like, You're holding a gun to my head. This isn't really how someone should be making their medical choices, right? Like, I just think that's not like your and then you're they're like, What are you afraid of? I'm like, Do you see how you're behaving? Like, but anyway So, how many days postpartum are you at this point? This was like, I don't know, five days.

Angela 1:14:23

That's crazy that they're like, You cut the umbilical cord, it's five days later. Like, of course, you cut the umbilical cord.

Katie 1:14:29

Well, they're upset, and then the risk of tetanus was really seemed crazy. Like, yeah, I'm using this rusty knife to like cut the umbilical cord, I don't know, whole thing. But then they like were trying to catch me, like to say, like, you planned this and this was premeditated, you know what I mean? So it was super scary. So then we did the injection, and then after I was like, Okay, can I have a record of this medical visit? And can I have the paper back that I signed because I got the injection, and they were like, No, so they wouldn't give me the paper I signed back, and they wouldn't give me the records. So I was like, Whoa, that's really sketchy, and that wasn't things were already going pretty badly for us in France, so I was kind of like, I'm I I'm full, I'm ready to like literally get out of here right now. This is so terrible. So then um the next day, my husband went back. They said they were gonna give the stuff, it was all set, so you can go pick up your birth certificate. And so he went back, and the guy was like, Oh, like there were no police, they let you leave. And he was like, uh oh, yikes. So then then we got this phone call from someone who was like, in France, the the Sage Femme, the midwife, will offer like a home visit to the mom after the baby's born, like, care. So someone asking to do a home visit, but it wasn't Sage Femme, it was some other word like pure cultrice. So then that doula that was uh in Ireland for the home birth of the daughter had a friend who was this former Brazilian supermodel turned doula who did not want to support free birth at all. But she was like, Why doesn't Mariana come over and do some uh rebozo for you, just check in on you? Because it's been a rough experience after that hospital. So she sent her friend over, and uh I was like, Hey, you know, you speak French better than me. Like, can you just like translate this voicemail that I got? Like, who's calling me? I understand the voicemail, but I don't know what this person is. And the lady was like, Oh, it's like the the the baby nurse of the like CPS of France, like wanting to come do a home visit. So the way that that happens is that they and then during this time in 2022, the whole nation of France was persecuting even French people for having uh unassisted births at home, free births. I think that was getting kind of popular, so they were trying to like crack down on that because it is this culture of like you're not allowed to say no to the doctor, it's socialized medicine. Um, and so uh like a couple in Brittany had had their kids taken away for like two weeks in like this lengthy court battle. And then at the end, they're like, Oh, we were wrong. Sorry, you didn't do anything wrong here, your kid's back. But it's like to punish you with this French argument court culture, it's like this bureaucracy, you know what I mean? So it really is. And so that was a fear. And then they then mark then the duela was like you they're running the playbook that they ran on these people. First, you get they they have three professionals. First, it was that person at the hospital with the immunoglobin shot, the social worker. Then it's this poor cultrice who does the home visit, and they could have said anything like, I don't like how the cat goes in the room of the baby with the people in Brittany, they were like, The baby looks thin. Let's take it. And then on Friday, we got a letter later that was like, Come to this appointment on Friday to the psychologist's office. And then if two out of three of those professionals say take the kids at the psychiatrist's office, they take the kids. And so they're like, they're running this playbook on you. And she was like, I have a fancy Airbnb in La Moray that is open right now. Why don't you guys like go in hiding? So then we ended up going in hiding at the Brazilian

Going Into Hiding And Leaving France

Katie 1:17:39

Supermodels uh Airbnb. And what we did is we went on this was Friday. No, I'm sorry, this was Saturday, Sunday. All the police and everything closes in France. So that's the day we moved to the new space. And then Monday, when business day started, we went to the embassy, had to get an emergency passport with the newborn baby. We had to get the certificate to fly with the cat the next day. And then all these people were like, come home visit. We had the doula call back the people and say, sure, Thursday, you can come. I told the one lady at the hospital, like, you're telling me my baby has all these problems. Like, you didn't even look at the baby. Like, you didn't, you're not even the pediatrician who examined my baby. So, who are you to come in here and tell me that my baby's got a problem? You didn't even, and that I think did affect that one. It was like a younger doctor, and she was like, I want you to come back next Friday. I want to look at the baby. So she like wanted to like then, yeah, okay, we're gonna have this appointment and you're gonna come back, and we're gonna so we were like, sure, Friday, Friday, sure. And then that's the day they wanted us to come to the psychologist. So we were like, sure, Friday, sure, Thursday. And then Wednesday, an emergency affordable first class plane ticket to Montreal had appeared. So then we had the emergency passport. So Wednesday we got emergency passports. We fled the country, took the kids out of there. We said, No way are we gonna risk having the freaking French court system that hates Americans at the hospital, too. They were like, Welcome to France, you're not in the US anymore. Like, this is it was a super, like, I think there was definitely like the the culturally, it was shocking for them, but um, there was definitely like an element of persecution of like you're an American and and they hate Argentinians too, isn't that funny? So it was just, I don't know, we offended them. That's not the French way. So I was like, I'm not gonna risk like doing this court battle with my two kids, how traumatic. Even if they give the kids back after two weeks, that's like the most upsetting traumatic thing. I'm not willing to risk that at all. So even though it was only a week and a half postpartum, we went to the to the to the airport and we flew out of there. My sister lives in Vermont, so she picked us up in Canada. We had like a nanny through those doulas that like was from Columbia and was the best childcare I've ever had in my life. She was like cleaning up after me. I would like make a mess, she would clean it up again, make me food, watch the kids. She watched my daughter when we went to the embassy, so she didn't have to like come with us. And then she helped us like with the bags to get on the plane and everything. We had to mail the baby bassinet full of stuff to the United States. So it was like all this drama, you know what I mean? And um, so then we were able to escape, but definitely it was like this whole disrupted postpartum, right? For for this really awesome redemptive V back that happened. And again, it was this like it's this huge women's rights issue where it's like this control of women's bodies, right? Obviously, in like this real tangible way. Like, it's okay to get an abortion, but how dare you have a birth of your baby at home alone? Like, even though there's no problems at all. And even if there is a death or something like that, like I think it's I think culturally we're more willing to accept birth at home than we are death at home right now. Um, and I don't know, of course, that's like everybody's and uh so much of birth is like spiritual practice as well, right? Like what you're able to hold space for, and what you're not able to hold space for as a mother, you might want to outsource to the hospital or some other, you know what I mean, entity, and that's a different conversation. But um, definitely it was disruptive to have all that happening. I had a big tear with that birth, and I would say that having to do all that movement was not very good for the tear. And then what ended up happening is that um we had rented out our house to do this abroad trip. So we had we ended up being homeless in the US for a little while, um, and we couldn't go back to Maine because the lady was in the house, so um, just we didn't expect to be back from France so fast. So that was a little bit of a sticky situation. I did kind of have this really nice redemptive. There was a girl in France that did the innate traditions postpartum care and was also a photographer. Her name was Zoe Wilson. I don't think she's practicing anymore, but she was willing to come to Connecticut instead. We found a place to live in Connecticut, so she did come and do this like awesome, like innate traditions style traditional postpartum care, and that felt and closing of the bone ceremony, stuff like that. And that felt like a nice initiation into motherhood, and I felt like I really like earned it, if that makes any sense. I mean, I had to have this like super the first experience went so badly, and a lot of it was my own making, right? Like, I was even telling my husband during that first birth experience with Sarah, like, I wish I could change providers, but it's COVID. I don't want to have to deal with it. I'm like just gonna basically sit with this relationship that I'm not satisfied with. And so, like, if I'm gonna give a bad review to somebody, like that's right there, really what was the core of the issue, right? I was ignoring a lot of red flags in my life. And then this postpartum experience just was so intense that it felt like um like I had really earned this motherhood title. I like really had that V back, you know what I mean, against all odds. And I do think that like, I mean, I definitely had the meditation on death when I was pregnant because it's like, yeah, if you're gonna have a V back, you have to obviously like come to terms with the possibility of your baby like being born still, as everybody does. You know what I mean? In any birth, if you're pregnant, you might have a miscarriage, your baby might not be alive when they're born. That's just like part of the motherhood walk, is meditating on that. But I think that like it can be in your head when you're having a V back and you're looking for like an excuse to have another C-section, basically, or you're not ready to have a V back, that could be a factor. So I felt like I really had to just like look at a lot of fear head on and really sit with that and say, you know what? I am like I was kind of this insecure person who was looking for validation from other people outside of myself. And so I really learned to like find my own, like stand my ground and to really show up and like protect my family and do what I think is right for my family and right for my kids. And then we lived in the place we lived in in Connecticut for like two years and I got pregnant again.

Back In The US And Freebirth Community Reality

Katie 1:23:29

This is when, oh, and then after we after we moved back to the US and we were homeless, that's when I joined the Freebirth Society membership. I just had this super intense experience. I was looking to network on the ground within the free birth community because we ended up moving to a part of Connecticut that I'm not from. We live on the coast, and this was like northwestern Connecticut where we were able to find a house. And through that Freebirth Society, there was actually a girl who freebirthed in that town. So I did make some connections and stuff like that. Um, but this is when I kind of got into like the free birth movement. We were going to, I was going to women's circles all the time. I was going to Adelaide's women's circles in Cape Ann. I was like part of a women's circle in Vermont that was really new. There was one in Connecticut too that I was going to. I wasn't going up to Maine all the way. I had some contacts up there because we still had the property. So we went up there a couple times every now and then. But uh it was very hard with the lady living in the house to like go to Maine. We didn't have a place to stay. And then the Airbnbs are like really expensive. So that was kind of botched. There were a lot of people I wanted to meet and see, like Amy Robertson Griffin moved to Maine. And I really had wanted to like connect with her, some other people. I know that in southern Maine in uh Arundel, there's a really good women's circle community, but I was never able to go up there. Um, but it was super nice to like connect with other women on the ground and stuff like that. But I will say that like I think that my story was pretty sensational, and I think that my story definitely highlights a huge women's rights issue, right? When it comes to birth, like they're gonna like freak out and punish me for having this home birth. And again, nothing went wrong. And I really did educate myself like on how to deal with the placenta, if there's any type of emergency, what can I do to mitigate an emergency at home? You know what I mean? Definitely trying to be like actually prepared, right? So like I was trying to be responsible. So I think there was a women's rights issue that we could really highlight here that, like, you know, there really could be like some constitution, like how Maine did that constitutional amendment for the right to grow and harvest your food and and hunt food, whatever that food constitutional amendment was. I do think a constitutional amendment like that for women, women having the right to like birth in the way that they choose and not be forced to like bring their kids to an allopathic doctor could be super powerful, right? And I was surprised to see that basically the Free Birth Society really had no interest in the story at all about the persecution. So I do agree that yes, like obviously, and it's of course it is um, it's like something that is championing free birth and is advocating for free birth. So I understand to a degree that you're gonna be like like not trying to highlight the problems that you could run into. But I definitely felt like they were not willing to because she's like, it's not illegal anywhere to have a home birth, right? But actually in Saudi Arabia, they say you do go to jail like if you have even if it's by accident, they will like try to persecute you as uh uh extreme example of a place like Saudi Arabia, right? But I definitely I felt a little frustrated with the Freebird Society that there was no like conversation about that crazy experience because it was really fresh, and I'm sure there's a lot of there's a lot of histrionic people in that group too that like want to be a star and touch elbows with Emily Saldea Egomaniac, but I just felt like they could have really it was just a learning opportunity that I felt like they didn't even care. They almost look were like we are actively not witnessing you with this persecution, and again, it's really pretty. You had to like flee the country postpartum because they're gonna try to take your kids because you had the the free birth. I just think again that that could have been like a little bit of like something we could highlight and talk about, and again talk about it within the framework of like what legal protection can we provide women so that women do have the power to like make their own birth choices, you know what I mean? But that's okay. Um, I went to that Matriarch Rising Festival too in 2023. Um, so I was like in it with a with the underground birth movement for sure. I don't know, and it was definitely important to me at the time. Um after this like redemptive experience. But then I think I had I got pregnant with my son after that festival.

A Long Connecticut Labor With A Big Baby

Katie 1:27:39

And then I just like got to safely say I had like a super boring, super lame, super long. I swear it was like 45 week gestation. She didn't want to write it on the form. Um we put 44 weeks just because I think it was too upsetting. But I swear it was a 45 week pregnancy, and it was like a three day long labor. My son was like an 11 pound. Baby. And it was like just super redemptive and boring. I don't know. I had a normal home birth. I had the traditional birth attendant. Her name was Davora from Southern Vermont. I was friendly with her through the Freeber Society. Um, and so I I thought that was really good. I thought Davora did a great job.

Angela 1:28:15

How did it get started? And what like how did it kind of unfold?

Katie 1:28:18

Sure. I found it super redemptive from that first birth experience. Um, again, I was like just I'm gonna be pregnant forever. Nothing I can do, right? You know what I mean? There's this this myth of like overcooking your baby. I just think that's a hospital myth. I don't, at least with this the experiences, and I had a 30-week, eight-week delivery with my daughter, my second baby too. Um, and then people say, Oh, I just have long deliveries. Well, no, I have it all over the place, right? But Astor was like a huge baby, and it was like this huge long pregnancy. And I had a birth scare on my my father-in-law was visiting, and it was his birthday, and I had like just such an early labor scare that I was like, oh no, they're gonna have the same birthday, like it's gonna be so annoying, like, oh, same birthday, uh. But then from January 13th until March 18th, I was like, baby's gonna come any day. I had that false labor, and now I'm like waiting and waiting forever. And so then it was the weekend. I don't know, I just started to have like really slow, really, really minor, I guess, contractions starting to feel like, whoa, okay, baby's starting to come. And then they just slowly, slowly got more intense over time. And then the actual like active labor was probably like probably like 18 hours. Maybe it was like that Saturday. I think it was Sunday afternoon, things really started to pick up after like two days of just like like light labor. Like, I obviously know I'm going to labor right now, but it's not happening very fast. So just hanging out.

Angela 1:29:48

Your water hadn't broken.

Katie 1:29:50

No, no. The water, the water with him broke at the very end. So we had no water breaking or anything like that. With my daughter, too. I guess that that first that the first V back, right? Um, the water broke like during the the labor, but it was nothing like in a movie where oh my water broke, I'm having the baby. So no, that the water breaking wasn't really a big part of the story. I will say with the with the C-section baby, I did lose my mucus plug before we did the castor oil. And it was like, come on, like I was gonna have the baby anytime. Couldn't have just tried to botch the due date. Like, come on, give me three more days, you know what I mean? But then I never had that mucus plug ever come out again or anything like that with any of the babies. So then, yeah, it was just um I did for this labor, like we put the I think it was awesome, and I so recommend this for like if you're having a home birth, like putting that rebozo scarf in the doorway and like having it to hang on was just the best. And then from that position, I would like stomp. Because again, that movement of like open and down and like stuff like that, I think is super important. Yolanda's portal book had come out that year, so I was like hope I was having in my head like this like zen meditation pregnancy, zen meditation birth. I'm gonna like sit in a Buddha pose and the baby's just gonna come right out and it's gonna be. I was having an orgasmic pregnancy. I felt like I was really just into it, and I feel like the pregnancy with the daughter and the son is very different. I'm very interested in my own time and my own study, just with people I meet. Like, can I tell? Like, are there are there signs with the woman that I can like tell if it's a girl or a boy? You know, like just from the energy. If it's two girls together, it's like this type A energy. But then when it's a boy, the girl is like riding in the backseat of a convertible car, like she's the passenger in the car with the boy with the guy. You're like almost more like you're more like chill, almost, I guess, with like a boy baby. So I was just feeling that like super chill. My husband was feeling so outnumbered by all the girls, so everybody was like, It's a boy, it's a boy, you're having a boy. And so then, yeah, it just was taking a really long time though. He crowned forever. And then I like my husband was behind me, and I was like, Stop like touching the baby. Are you like pulling on it? And he's like, No, I'm not touching the baby, but he was just like moving around. Well, no, my son, no. Well, I think the water had probably broken, but maybe it hadn't. I don't even remember if it broke when he came out, but it just was like this sensation of the baby's head is like coming out, but he's crowning, but then he's like wiggling, he's like crawling, and his arms are moving, and it just was just too much, and it was like this labor going on forever. And I felt like my meditation pregnancy was like getting in my way, if that makes sense. So then there were moments where I'm like, this is gonna last. I it was like six o'clock in the morning on Monday, and I was like, this can't go on another day. It's already been since Friday that I'm like in labor. And again, I had the traditional birth attendance, so Davora was like watching my daughters, helping with the food, like getting stuff for my husband, helping him. So that made it a lot more sustainable. I do think having some support is good, and it doesn't disqualify you from a free birth. I do think that was just like a free birth society way to like try to get you to like, you know what I mean? You're not, you didn't actually have a free birth, you need to like do this and take my class or whatever on whatever. But I never took like the radical birthkeeper school or anything like that. Everybody said you just listen to the podcast and like read the books by other people, and you basically can get the same thing. And I really think that Michelle Odon is like just the best if you're trying to read about birth, like it's just he has so much to say, and he has actual clinical results to back up what he's saying. Like birth reborn also has these beautiful photos of like women giving birth. That really helped me. Um, even though it ended up being a long gestation, I did have like this meditation because he writes a lot in that book about like early early births, like how early is too early. He has examples of like three-pound babies not going to the NICU and not even using the incubator because he's like, well, normally a premature baby you would give it like more attention, not less. So he just wrote a lot about that. So I was like meditating on all these different things that didn't end up being applicable at all to the pregnancy, but I just think that is like just if I'm gonna like say a resource to really educate yourself on birth, I think that that is a better resource than the free birth society. The complete guide was really good for like you're preparing, and if you're coming from a traumatic birth, I found it to be really formative. I don't know if it would have been enough if I had like been a new mom, right? And I do love talking to like I have a friend in Connecticut who's like a mom who free birthed the whole time and like has no traumatic birth experience, and she just like chose to do that because it was like good for her and not bad. And I'm like, wow, that's so nice for you, like right to not have to come from this traumatic place. I just think is really nice. Um, and I will say also on Michelle Odont that in his writing, even though he had these great results at his hospital, like 10% C-section rates, way lower than other places, not transferring babies to the NICU and having good results. It's not like the babies all died because they didn't transfer, it was like successful premature baby care. Um, there was still a 50-50 chance of failure with a V back at his hospital. So I just think that really shows like the head game of birth and like how much you could easily talk yourself out of having your vaginal birth because you're scared, it's taking too long, you're tired, oh boo-hoo. And I definitely did have that come up as well during this super long labor of like, even though I had already had a V back, I know it's like so worth it to have the V back. I definitely still was like grappling with different components of myself. Like I can be lazy, I can be a victim, I don't want to have to do it. Well, you know what I mean? And so that like I was proud of myself for like getting through it and having this, I don't know, boring birth experience. And then those first midwives in Connecticut that I didn't end up working for because I moved to Maine, they were actually the people that came and then helped. Like they looked at the baby, did the birth registration process. So that also felt like this huge full circle healing as well. And then again, brings up too. I mean, part of why those midwives were able to be really supportive is because Connecticut does not have licensed midwifery. So Connecticut is not put, I mean, of course, a midwife could still, like you said, about your own midwife, like have a pedantic approach and have her own ideas in her head about what birth is supposed to be like. But it helps when there's not pressure from the state, like your license is going to be revoked if you don't get these women to deliver on time and you're being forced to like keep all these notes and disclose all this stuff to the state. So I we talked a lot about that during um during the uh the birth of my son. And we were doing all the women's circles

Regulation, Money, And Why Community Matters

Katie 1:36:30

then too. Like I was going to Vermont a lot. I know you had Nikki Sunshine on your podcast too. I did a village prenatal with her, and so we were just like just discussing like she talked because she works in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, and each state has different rules. So then, like, you can call yourself a midwife in Massachusetts, but in New Hampshire you're gonna get sued. Like it's kind of stupid. Like it's like depending on where you are, the woman is capable of more or less when it comes to the birth of her baby. So, in that way, I guess I'm I'm grateful for Connecticut for being like surprisingly less annoying than Maine. You'd think Maine would be this state where it's so holistic and so awesome, and it has this reputation of being, like I said, the spiritual place. But then you learn that Maine has this huge full-time government that really has a big heavy hand in how it works. And and when we sold our house, um, once the woman that we rented it to moved out, we were like, okay, we're like not moving to Maine, and we want to like move back to where we actually came from in Connecticut because we were like in the middle of nowhere. Northwestern Connecticut's where they like alien abduction territory, you know what I mean? So we were like, we got to get out of here. So we sold our house in Maine in order to buy a house in Connecticut where we live now. Um, but we were like having to, there's all these like non-resident taxes and all this like tourist industry, like government stuff that you don't, Maine makes it like, oh, so great, so nice. And then you go and you're like, whoa, there's like a lot of stuff I didn't know about the state of Maine that it's like not as holistic as I thought. And it's true, like the same thing with the religious exemption in vaccines, like whether you like vaccines or not, it does speak that Maine almost like like to get people to continue to participate in the system, they almost have to do all these like shady, nefarious like pieces of legislature because it is this naturalistic place where people are more likely, I think, to want a home birth, and people are more likely to want to like have it their way and Maine do it their own way. And so I just saw the other side of that with that government, and then you go to Augusta and it's like this huge mansion government building, and it's like people like on Downer's heroin wandering around everywhere, and you're like, Okay, like whatever. So that's just for your since you're the main podcast. I just wanted to like kind of to end on that note of like, yeah, you know, that regulated midwifery and that the government, like it it sounds and and France taught me the same thing, right? Like, it sounds so good, like health care for all, but then like what does that mean? It means you have to do it, and sometimes the healthcare is a business, and so sometimes they're not always like looking out for you, and the doctors are being trained to just do surgery because it's like this industrial model, and so it's just a question of like care, and it does create a situation like we're seeing with this like free birth society scandal where women don't have a lot of options, so there are gonna be women that um like are doing it not for the right reasons. Like, I think free birth is awesome and perfect and amazing, including if you have a traditional midwife, if you have like your uncle, your uncle, your aunt, like helping you, grandmas, watching your kids, it's a sovereign birth, it's a free birth, whatever. Like Emily Saldai didn't even coin that term. People have been saying free birth since the 70s, so that's okay too. I just want to highlight that because it's like a hot topic. Um, but I think that like, yeah, people are gonna be susceptible and and not doing it for the right reason. Like I found that with the Free Birth Society, especially as they tried to grow and scale, right? When I joined that membership, I feel like it was right at the end of its like true radical form where Emily was still kind of in it for the right reasons. And then I noticed there was like this huge shift where she like started making money, and then it like became about the money, right? And then she started letting people into the free birth society that actually weren't with it, so that's when you have an issue. It's a page that's like no medical talk, great. That's what I'm paying for, right? Like, I I don't want to see, I don't want to be triggered by women's traumatic hospital story that they're choosing to work with this midwife and it stresses me out because I'm trying to just have a free birth, right? I'm trying to look for resources, and that archive was so good for like finding information about herbalism and like troubleshooting a problem, all this umbilical cord drama with my daughter. She had a small umbilical hernia in the end, and it was just so nice to like search that that group and find information about what people did to treat that at home, and you know what I mean? This and that are the other thing. But then you start getting people in that group that are like not ready to receive that information and are not actually trying to have a free birth and aren't actually even into free birth at all. And then I think that got them into trouble. Like they had a lot of people in there that were gonna like screenshot their page and freak out about stuff, and they weren't actually like ready to deal with it. And then they had all these people signing up for that program that sounded like a fake, the match birth thing. And all those women were like, maybe some of them were expecting a medical midwife program, and they got like crazy, crazy BS instead, the free BS society, right? So then I uh I think that that got that's what really did them in is this like super greedy. And I know that like because again, I was going up to Cape Ann to Adelaide Meadows' last circles before she like moved to North Carolina as part of that like whole commune experience, which I just think is so crazy. Everybody was annoying, everyone was tripping out with COVID. I'll give some people some benefit of the doubt, right?

Angela 1:41:51

But like, yeah, it was it was all fueled by COVID for sure.

Katie 1:41:54

Well, she articulates it really well, like like light because she Adelaide Meadow, like she had these women's circles where it was like it was like Adelaide's this radical feminist with like a shaved head and a nose piercing and all these tattoos, and then it's like the some women were like, My uncle designed the COVID vaccine and I only eat pureed baby food. It was like she was so good at like getting a really diverse group of people together. There were Christian scientists, the Christian scientists brought the televangelist mother to the circle. It was all these people that never would have ever interacted ever, but she was so good at holding space. And she at the end of all this Friday Society stuff was like, like, like-minded values does not equal community. And I think that's so true. Like, so then all these people ran like it and it and it is really hard. I think that like a lot of people in my own life, especially because I mean, people could handle the sensational V back in France because it was like this, and no one likes the French, so everyone was like, Yeah, take that, France. Like, how dare they try to do that? You know what I mean? But then I think a lot of people were like triggered by my decision in my life to just have like a boring, unassisted free. Well, it was assisted in its own way. I did have the traditional birth and tend to have a home birth, free birth out of the medical system, right? Free birth equals outside of the medical system, right? Sure. And so that I think has been really hard for a lot of people in my life to be able to handle, you know what I mean? Like, let's say I'm making a new friend, my kid's hanging out with the kid, and then that woman had a C-section, and then it comes out that I had this like kind of accidentally crazy experience with all this V back stuff. Like that person might not actually be able to handle that, and then that is just something that I have to like be use my own discretion of like what I share in my life, but that's pregnancy too. Like, you're encouraged as a pregnant woman to like share all your information, post online, your Instagram, your ultrasound. So then it like gets you in this headspace. Then all these people are gonna be like asking you, where's your baby? What are you doing? This and that, and then it puts all this pressure and stress onto the woman. And I think that all that stuff is just a really great lesson, too, of like using your discretion, actually tuning in with your body. I mean, like, what do I actually like need? Am I just like really scared right now and I'm looking for like like I need to do some like fear meditation, or do I actually have a problem? You know what I mean? Because a lot of the stuff I was just like so nervous at the beginning of my motherhood journey that that allowed me to be super susceptible to like a method of treatment that's like, let's look for problems to solve and let's try to medicate or mitigate something or find an issue, there's something wrong. And then we also live in this culture of like problem as personality a little bit, you know what I mean? Like, so it's like my special problem, my baby has a special problem, and I have all this stuff, and then that's how like people learn to get attention in this medical model in which we live, right? Same thing with like mental health, it's all mixed up to me. You know what I mean? You're meant you're mentally ill because you like haven't taken birth control since you're 13. And like I took a birth control only for like a very short amount of time in college, and it made me feel very different than I the hormonal stuff. I at least found that it did affect me personally. I was able to tell. I'm somebody who is pretty sensitive and does like try to introspect. So I did find that I could feel I did feel a little different taking that. Other people might not notice about that, you know what I mean, depending on who they are. Um, but I just think it's just all a lesson of like women really like we gotta like get back in touch with our own womanhood and like know that it's okay. Like, like it's not a burden to be a woman, right? It's like a blessing, and it's so awesome to be able to have pregnancy and birth and and rising to the occasion of your birth, like can really be such an empowering thing. You can really like work through so much and learn so much about your own power if you like trust yourself enough to have an awesome, empowering free birth. And I think that like as someone who's had only good birth experiences and birth outcomes, of course, like if I have a stillbirth at home, what will that be like for me? I don't know because I have not had that experience. What would a stillbirth be like at the hospital for me? I don't know, right? And how much is it my audience's opinion that matters to me more than like actually holding that space, right? Like to hold death in your house versus to hold death at the hospital. It's just different. And I think that birth in general is this spiritual journey. I think it's so true. Like what Jen Pavardi Baker said is like motherhood is a spiritual, a spiritual practice, and I think that's just so true. So that that means that like am I a bad person because I had a c-section because I was like not spiritually in a place in my life that I wasn't like ready for that, but then I like did the work that I needed to do to get there, right? And that's I think what matters. And I think it's not like even if I'm not like I don't like support hospital birth, if that makes any sense, I'm not gonna like demonize somebody for the birth choices that they make because that's like where they are in the spiritual journey, right? And I while I think birth sets the story, it sets the tone. The spiritual work continues long after birth, right? And I think innate traditions, Roshella Garcia Soliga is true about that. That like birth is a I think birth is more important than she makes it out to be. She's like, birth is just a blip, and then it's the postpartum. But I agree that that that motherhood journey after, like, is just as important. And you can do a lot of work in your postpartum and with your subsequent subsequent pregnancies and births to like heal from whatever traumatic experience you might have had in the past. So I just think just to end it on kind of a positive jovial note, that that's awesome for women. And the more we lean into that as a culture, we're I think better off. I mean, our kids being raised by other people and us working, it's not even very good for our bodies. So I just think that it's uh I'm so grateful coming from this like Ivy League culture, advanced placement culture of like you're gonna get a job and you're gonna have this career, that's what everybody thought I was gonna be. I just uh am so grateful that it didn't work out that way for me. And I just like got knocked up by my husband, and we had this awesome motherhood journey, and now I I feel like with this next birth, like we'll see, it's just gonna be it's just gonna be at home. And now that I kind of am empowered with knowledge, it's less like urgent and important and scary and daunting to me. It's less of a big deal. And that's just like having multiple kids. And I will also say, and then I'll stop talking and talking. Um I think a lot of people have a traumatic experience, and then they assume that like the next birth might also like like another kid would be more stress, like two is enough. But sometimes maybe having that next kid like actually could be more healing and actually easier because the more kids you have, the more you grow, and the kids all support each other, and you get to kind of almost restart with a new birth. So I just found that too to be true that having two kids I thought was harder than having three kids because it was this crazy postpartum, and we were all over the place. It was like the two girls pulling me one hand, like pulling me apart, fighting over me. And then that third baby really did did bring a lot of balance to the equation. So I look forward to seeing how like the next child will like further allow us to like expand and to like heal and to to just re restart as a family and and grow, right? So I just um I'm grateful and I'm grateful for the space on your podcast to to discuss all this stuff. It's so much fun talking about pregnancy and Bruce.

Angela 1:49:03

This is my favorite topic to talk about. And yeah, it's a journey of transformation and yeah, whatever kind of the ups and downs, it's all it's all part of it. And I thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today, Katie, and share all of your stories.

Katie 1:49:18

Thank you so much for having me. Like I said, it's just a blast. And I don't know, like I have all these little kids right now, but I think someday I would like to like when I'm older, I would could see myself getting more into like attending births in in in a real way, right? But right now I'm definitely not trying to do that at all. But I just love I I still just love birth and womanhood, and the women's circles have been so nice too. So I just am I'm super

Womb Healing Resources And Final Takeaways

Katie 1:49:42

grateful. And I will say, just to bump like a positive business before we go, because I've been like, you know, giving reviews on everybody, right? Like there's this woman in Boston named Kenzie Travers. It's this find your soft spot is the name of her business. And she did the Moss school with Carly Ray Boudry, the uh womb continuum care. And before I got Had this next pregnancy in between birth and pregnancy, I feel like my body wants to be pregnant and I start to like have all this grief about my c-section show up. Um, even though I have like regular cycles and everything's all good, you know what I mean? But I will say that going to see her in Boston has been like so good for like the actual physical and spiritual like healing of the womb from that c-section. So I would just definitely, if you're in the New England area, especially if you're in Maine, it's so easy to get to Boston. I definitely recommend looking up that that Kenzie Travers soft spot body work. It's just been so awesome. And she does like these long three-hour sessions and it's all oriented to the uterus. So even better than your aniocral. It's just been so that's been super helpful. I'm gonna go back to her once I'm like, now that I'm not in the first trimester of pregnancy, you know what I mean? It's like the kind of a lie, like imagine if I get the body work and then I like have a miscarriage and I'm like, your body work caused me to have a miscarriage, right? Like, I get that. So uh so I just wanted to to also say that that there's a lot that you can do if you did have birth trauma to like work through that and to reclaim your own physiological physiology.

Angela 1:51:06

So yeah, absolutely. That's really important. And I'm gonna link her information as well as a couple other links that you mentioned um throughout this podcast, and like um Michelle Adon's books and some of his other papers and some other resources that you just kind of mentioned in this throughout this episode.

Katie 1:51:25

That's great. The innate traditions directory too, like so awesome. That postpartum care was top-notch and it was like so supportive. I just think every woman like deserves this awesome postpartum experience, right? And some women, like you, it's all about the stories we tell. I mean, like you might have this internalized story about motherhood being really hard and you're unsupported. So then you might not even feel like you want support, but is that because you don't need it or it's because you have this like inability to receive in your life, right? And I've seen that come up too. So I just feel like I had to work through all that stuff, and it's awesome receiving support and like setting it up for success. So I hope every woman listening to this says, yeah, ding ding ding, like let's just like like treat yourself. Yes, you deserve it. It's awesome, and everybody in your life, like you're the mother of the children, you gotta be nourished and rested and taking care of yourself. So that's all. Thanks so much, Angela. This has been so awesome.

Kate Sutherland 1:52:21

So follow the walk of the wild ones into the woods and the darkness. Rebirth the ways of the ancient ones whose tracks were washed away in blood. It falls to us now to open up and taste beyond what we've been fed. Take up the feed, expire of cleansing, change to light the path of stead. Follow the walk of the wild ones into the woods and the darkness. Rebirth the ways of the ancient ones, whose tracks were washed away in blood. It falls to us now to open up and taste beyond what we've been fed. Take up the feet, expire cleansing, change to light the patent. Step by step through the unknown, I'll be our light and you'll be mine. In darkness, let love light the way to feed the soil of changing times. Step by step through the unknown, I'll be our light and you'll be mine. In darkness, let love light the way to feed the soil of changing times. Follow the walk of the wild ones into the woods and the darkness. Rebirth the ways of the ancient ones, whose tracks were washed away in blood. It falls to us now to open up and taste beyond what we pretend. Take up the feed, expire cleansing, change to light the path instead. Step by step through the unknown, I'll be your light and you'll be mine. In darkness, let love light the way to feed the soil of changing times. Step by step through the unknown, I'll be your light and you'll be mine. In darkness, let love light the way to feed the soil of changing times.