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My Wild Pregnancy and Free Birth Part 1
138 Plays3 months ago
This week starts off a mini series all about my recent wild pregnancy and free birth! We’re chatting about why my husband and I chose this route for this pregnancy specifically, and a resource that helped us. Come back for the next few weeks to hear more details!
Links from today’s conversation:
Book: Home Birth on Your Own Terms
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Themes
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to the eat like a mother podcast where we take complicated topics surrounding hormones and metabolism and make them simple and applicable to your daily life as a woman. I'm your host castie well fell.
00:00:25
Speaker
My hope is that you walk away feeling empowered to start taking radical responsibility for your health and lean into this body God created for you. Are you ready to eat like a mother? This podcast is meant for educational purposes only and is not meant to be taken as medical advice.
00:00:43
Speaker
Please consult your physician before making any dietary or lifestyle changes.
Cassie's Wild Pregnancy and Free Birth Experience
00:00:47
Speaker
Welcome back to this week's episode of the podcast. Today marks the beginning of a mini series I'm doing all about my wild pregnancy and free birth.
00:00:57
Speaker
which if you're new here, hi, I'm Cass. I have three kids and with my last pregnancy, I did not follow the standard prenatal care at all and went on to birth a completely healthy baby girl by myself without the assistance of any medical professional.
00:01:13
Speaker
It was wild. And now I'm going to tell you all about it. Now before I get into the whole free birth story, I want to give you a clear picture as to why I chose a wild pregnancy and a free birth.
00:01:26
Speaker
And I want to be very clear that I don't think that choosing these things is necessarily good or safe for everyone. There are a couple of factors that went into my decision to have a wild pregnancy and free birth.
00:01:42
Speaker
Number one, after a really hard third pregnancy with my son, i spent two years preparing my body for pregnancy and birth. I did not make this decision lightly or haphazardly.
00:01:55
Speaker
It was during my son's pregnancy that i actually told my husband that our next baby, i did not want to utilize a midwife. Not because I had a bad experience with midwives. I've only had amazing experiences with our midwives in the past.
00:02:10
Speaker
But because I truly didn't see the point of having one, having a midwife after i had two healthy, low risk pregnancies and easy birth processes.
Journey through Past Pregnancies
00:02:24
Speaker
After walking through two really beautiful and peace filled births that were free of any intervention, I realized the only reason I had a midwife for my first two births was to have a professional there in case of emergency. and Now I would not have chosen a wild pregnancy or free birth for my first two babies because with my first born she was conceived after a loss and I severely hemorrhaged during the miscarriage.
00:02:51
Speaker
So there was a chance that I would be at risk for hemorrhaging again when I carried a baby to term. Having a midwife with this pregnancy really brought me more peace. For my second born, my son, the year I was pregnant with him ah was probably one of the most traumatic years of my life. Pretty much everything that could happen happened.
00:03:13
Speaker
Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did. Now with him, I didn't actually start receiving prenatal care until about 27 weeks pregnant, but our life was legitimately crumbling around us and I had no mental capacity to care for myself.
00:03:29
Speaker
I also got extremely ill twice during his pregnancy where I had emergency medical care two times. And if you know me, that is insane because I pretty much...
00:03:40
Speaker
have to be near death in order to seek medical care. So with this, you know, me being so severely sick and then needing to seek medical attention in order to survive, just felt more at peace with a midwife with him as well.
00:03:57
Speaker
But during this time when I was pregnant with him, I kept thinking, man, if things were a little different, I would probably do a pregnancy and birth a little different too.
Trusting Personal Knowledge Over Medical Advice
00:04:06
Speaker
Now, another thing that's important to note here is during my prenatal care for my first two babies, I never actually listened to the advice my midwives gave me.
00:04:16
Speaker
I know that sounds bad, but most midwives are not actually well-versed in the metabolism and how to truly deeply nourish the body, especially during pregnancy. prenatal care with a midwife these days is actually a lot more medical than i personally like so whenever my midwives in the past would see something on blood work or with my vitals and give me advice i pretty much would always ignore their advice and do what i knew to be true and right when it came to improving whatever the cause of concern was and sure enough whenever we'd retest my numbers would be improved
00:04:52
Speaker
all while doing the exact opposite of what I was told to do, which if you're listening to this and this is frustrating to you trust me, I know. Like if you get your numbers done or blood drawn or tests done or whatever, and you do what you were told to do and your test hasn't improved, that's frustrating.
00:05:11
Speaker
It's because these tests are not always super accurate and we'll talk about that later on in different episodes.
Embracing Free Birth: Trust and Decisions
00:05:17
Speaker
i tell you all of this to say i truly do know my body better than anyone and I am much more in tune with my body than most people are in tune with theirs.
00:05:26
Speaker
I know that sounds weird to say and i'm not trying to say that in a way that's like oh yeah i'm better than everyone but i've truly taken time to understand my body understand human physiology and know my metabolic markers know how my body responds to things so when i say i know my body better than anyone and better than most people know their bodies i'm not just i'm not just blowing smoke like i i know these things and i'm very confident in that And i also deeply trust my body, really radically trust my body is probably a more accurate phrase.
00:06:01
Speaker
So managing my own prenatal care, I understood all of the risks of not having any scans, ultrasounds, or blood work done. Most labs, like I said, or tests during pregnancy, I don't really think are necessary for me specifically.
00:06:16
Speaker
And there's a lot of risks associated with doing things like ultrasounds or different tests that that I wanted to avoid this time around. So during this pregnancy, I didn't have any cause for concern whatsoever, which gave me a lot of peace going into a free birth.
00:06:31
Speaker
I had next to no symptoms, tons of energy, felt vibrant and strong, was more active than in any of my other pregnancies, and felt well grounded, really more so than I'd had in any of my other three pregnancies. So when I say i did not have a single doubt in my mind we were making the right decision,
00:06:50
Speaker
I didn't have a single doubt.
Navigating Concerns and Strengthening Relationships
00:06:53
Speaker
I did take time to prepare for every possible outcome. We had dozens of conversations about any possible scenario that could happen. While I felt perfect peace and my husband supported me 100%, he obviously had concerns mainly because he's never given birth before and he had dozens of people calling him telling him how dangerous our decision was, which more on that later.
00:07:18
Speaker
But this was actually really awesome for our marriage to talk through all of those fears and separate out what was actually a valid concern and what was truly just fear trying to take root and steal from how truly natural and simple pregnancy and birth can be.
00:07:33
Speaker
One book that we both, my husband and I both read in preparation for our free birth was Home Birth on Your Own Terms which I will link below in the show notes. And while I felt truly confident managing my own prenatal care and having a free birth and i also felt confident in knowing what to do should really any actually real emergency occur, this book was a great resource.
00:07:57
Speaker
to both confirm my intuition and give me the knowledge I needed to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible. We both felt confident and trusted my intuition to know if something was off with baby during pregnancy, birth, or directly after birth, we were prepared.
Positive Birth Outcome and Prenatal Management
00:08:15
Speaker
And we truly had the most simple, relaxed, and amazing pregnancy and birth experience because of it. I really have a lot to say on this subject, so stay tuned for next week when I chat about how I manage my own prenatal care without all the standard things that they say are necessary in modern pregnancy. and But this week, I really just wanted to kind of give you my why around why and how I chose a ah free birth and a wild pregnancy.
00:08:41
Speaker
And the very simple answer, if you didn't take anything away from this podcast, is... Very simply, and i understand my body. i trusted my body and i trusted the process of birth and knew that my body was absolutely created for this.
00:08:57
Speaker
And I didn't have a single doubt in my mind that this was the way that we needed to go. And with that, we'll see you next week for the next part of this little mini series.
00:09:12
Speaker
If you found this podcast helpful or encouraging, would you mind leaving us a rating or review? I love hearing from you. So be sure to shout us out on Instagram and tag me at Cassidy dot well bell.
00:09:22
Speaker
And we'll be sure to shout you right back out. Let's get this message to as many women as possible until next time, friend.