Welcome to the Calm, Collected & Consented Childbirth Podcast

What if birth prep is broken because we've only ever prepared half the team? Certified Nurse Midwife, Katie O'Brien, opens her podcast by naming the blind spots: birth prep that stops at delivery and also leaves support partners sidelined. In this founding episode, she reframes childbirth education as a shared skill set, not a spectator sport, and sets the tone for everything ahead: no "right way" to birth, honest conversations before the big day, and permission to adapt when the plan changes. A grounding first listen for anyone expecting a baby — and anyone standing beside them.

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to the first episode of my podcast, Calm, Collected, and Consented. I am your host, Katie O'Brien. I have been a certified midwife since 2007. During my career, I have worked across the spectrum of midwifery services. I've worked in birth center-type practices as well as high volume and high risk practices, and I've helped many women and families welcome babies into this world in lots of different settings and to lots of different types of families. Over my career, I've become increasingly passionate about the preparation of the family unit for welcoming a new member into their lives. I believe that our focus on preparation is often too narrow. We don't prepare enough for what comes after the delivery of the baby, and we definitely don't adequately prepare the support people in their roles. I started a business in childbirth and women's education, and this road has led me to podcasting. Why podcasting, you might ask? Podcasting is a great platform. You can listen to episodes while you are in the car, while cooking, while cleaning, or preparing a room for your baby. You can listen to the same episodes as your support people listen to at different times in different places. The flexibility is endless. You can start and stop as much as you want, repeat episodes. I want people to come out of these episodes with a complete picture of the information they are getting, not a TikTok clip, but the whole story. It's also very important to me that we support our support people, and honestly, particularly men in their roles I want support people to come away from these episodes with as much information as a birthing person would. Many times information in childbirth education is completely geared towards the laboring partner, and that limits the success it's gonna have because our support people make our birth process better. Culturally, in the United States, we ask much of our partners. They're expected to have never been to a birth and yet show up completely calm, cool, collected, and helpful. When else in life is this expected? It's like expecting a person who has never played baseball to try out for the major leagues and make the team. It's completely unrealistic. The problem I see with this too is that particularly with men, when they feel left out of the conversation from the beginning, it translates into a lack of confidence ending with child rearing Let me give you an example. Let's say you as a partnership have decided that you're gonna breastfeed. You're both completely on board with this. Immediately from the delivery, breastfeeding care is completely on the woman, and this can turn into complete care otherwise. Like, you're breastfeeding, now you're changing diapers, now you're doing the bath, 'cause hey, you probably wanna do the bath. But where does your partner start feeling included in this? And let's say that your partner goes back to work soon, maybe just a couple days or a couple weeks after delivery. If you've been doing all the diaper changing, doing all the feeding, doing all the, bathing, the confidence that you have is gonna be so high, but your partner is not going to have that same confidence. That's a problem. We need to educate on how partners can become capable from the very beginning, that they can have their own skill set while still supporting breastfeeding Also something that I know to be true is that it is hard to see a loved one in pain. There's a skill to learning how to help someone when they're in pain because you have so many questions when you're helping this person. Is this pain normal? How much pain is normal? Are they suffering without purpose? How can I help? Should I be helping? You have to have a bit of thick skin to be a helper when somebody is in pain because they will be constantly giving you feedback on whether or not that feels good, and that could change minute to minute. So it really is important to learn how to help someone that is gonna be going through labor, and that is one of the goals I have Support people should feel calm and able to support effectively. But support does not look like taking over the medical decision-making. Support looks like confidence in what you both want in the best case scenario, but also confidence in how to adjust if the plan can't go to the best case scenario. Throughout this podcast, I will be talking a lot about how to go into labor and postpartum as a family unit, as a team. This involves a lot of communication ahead of time. There are many things that can be talked about and finessed prior to labor starting, but a lot of times couples and families don't even know what they don't know. So throughout this podcast, we're gonna talk about things that could come up throughout this process. You're gonna find that you and your partner and family members, might be some disagreements that happen. That's natural. But the goal is for you to approach them now when you're not in the middle of things and be able to communicate about it and move forward Another thing I really wanna talk about in this first episode is the polarization that is happening in childbirth and child rearing. There's a lot of language out there that implies that there is one way or a right way to do things, that there is a right way to birth. This podcast does not subscribe to that. There are many ways to labor, birth, and care for your baby. Each partnership, each family will discover what is best for them. My goal is to present the many ways something can be done so that you can explore what you think will work best for you, and also so that you can pivot if something is not going according to plan. I titled my podcast Calm, Collected, and Consented for this reason. After listening, I want you, whether you are giving birth or supporting someone giving birth, to be calm throughout the process. I want you to be collected in your thoughts, words, and actions, and also to feel that you have consented to the treatment you are getting. This podcast is not called The Right Way to Give Birth because there is no right way. There's only your way, and your way may be different every baby because every baby is different. Lastly, it's important for me to discuss the limitations of this podcast. I am a medical provider, but I am not your medical provider. I will not know your medical history or the nuances of what you need for your care. As such, this podcast can't be viewed as medical advice. I will present scenarios to consider, information that can be found in medical literature, and information I have gathered from almost two decades of welcoming babies into the world. But you can't know if this information applies to you without your care team weighing in. I want to empower you to be able to talk to your providers intelligently and with confidence about your care. I want you to feel collected in your knowledge, but not unmovable. There is so much gray area in pregnancy and labor, and it's important to give your providers the opportunity to individualize your care and tailor your care plan to you specifically. So that wraps up the information episode. Episodes will vary in length depending upon the topic, but they will be released on a schedule. I look forward to sharing information with you so you can feel good about your preparation for childbirth. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast for future episode alerts. I look forward to talking to you soon