Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - “Your Birth Experience Is Your Baby’s Too.” - Home Birth w/ Midwife Lindsey Meehleis

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

The downsides of epidurals are rarely discussed and midwife, Lindsey Meehleis, wants you to know what they are and that you have options even if you opt to get one. Alex and Lindsey discuss why mothers might have trouble breastfeeding and listener-submitted questions about ultrasounds, dieting, Group B Strep and the cost comparisons of home vs hospital birth. Website | Therembering.com Instagram | @lindsymeehleis [GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING ⚠️] WATCH "Nourished - Nutritional Wisdom For A Healthy Pregnancy | Mini Documentary"    • Nourished - Nutritional Wisdom For A ...   . Get ticket details for Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit at https://ywls2024.com and use code ALEX for 25% off admission! Interested in making a tax deductible donation to support The Spillover? ☕️ Visit https://donate.tpusa.com/donate to contribute to guest travel, set needs and more! . Elevate your skincare routine with NIMI SKINCARE! Go to https://www.nimiskincare.com/ and use promo code ALEXCLARK to get 10% off your order. Ditch artificial fragrances for your family by switching to ALEAVIA organic prebiotic body wash and use code: ALEX15 for 15% off. https://www.aleavia.com/ Get 100% Organic tampons & now PADS! Try GARNUU today at https://garnuu.com/ and use code ALEX for 15% off. . Looking for like-minded friends? Join the Cuteservative Facebook group: ⁠  / 1234544066933796  ⁠  Interested in making a tax deductible donation to support The Spillover? ☕️✨ Visit ⁠https://donate.tpusa.com/donate⁠ to contribute to guest travel, set needs and more! Listen at 6 PM PST/ 9 PM EST every Thursday by subscribing to ‘The Spillover’ on Apple Podcasts and Spotify ☕️✨ AlexClark Instagram | ⁠  / realalexclark  ⁠ Instagram | ⁠  / poplitics  ⁠  X | ⁠https://x.com/yoalexrapz⁠  Spotify |⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7M0C7cl...⁠  Shop Real Alex Clark Merch! https://tpusamerch.com/collections/real-alex-clark

Three, two, one. That's how fast why WLS tickets are going to sell out because the speaker names this year are unbelievable. Like the best we've ever had and I have never lied to you. You know that. If you're a longtime cute servitive, you know I do not lie. New speakers just announced. M is for Mama, Abby Halberstadt, House and Habits, Jessica Krauss, Katie Faust, Suzanne Venker, Dr. Jolene Brighton, Candice Owens, Yomi Park, Ali Stucky, Eric.

Kokomazard, Taylor Dukes, Riley games, and Megan freaking Kelly. That's not even all of them. There's still more coming. If I could throw myself dramatically over some train tracks right now to get your attention on this year's Young Women's Leadership Summit, I would. It's never been so good. I made sure that we got the coolest people in culture and the conservative movement for you. YWLS is June 7th through 9th in San Antonio, Texas, right on the river.

Come alone. Come with a group. bring your baby if you must. There's a mother's room and everything. Make friends with shared values on non-toxic living, Christian parenting, conservative values. It's never been more of an electrifying lineup. Tickets will not last. It is not unlimited seats available. We will cap out at capacity and quickly. Go to YWLS24.com to get your tickets. That's YWLS24.com with code Alex for 25% off general admission. YWLS24.com with code Alex for 25% off general admission. Find the link in the show notes and I'll see you in San Antonio June 7th through night. I cannot wait. This is one of those YWLSs where like I am going to be

devastated that I'm not sitting in one of those seats with those girls to watch every single one of these people. You may have noticed an explosion of more and more women wanting a natural birth or home birth on social media. What could be behind that? Well, we're going to explore the topic. of natural birth with my guest today, who is a mother herself and traditional midwife. You probably actually know of her if you're following the natural birth world. To her, midwifery is not just a job. It is who she is and her passion. She is deep reverence for the pregnancy and birth process

and offers different modalities of things that help with the process of pregnancy, birth, and parenthood. In addition to being a midwife and graduating from the only California state accredited midwifery school, she's a doula, lactation consultant, prenatal yoga instructor, CPR instructor and an emergency medical technician who is a provider in neonatal resuscitation. She is based in Orange County, California, and flew to Phoenix today to speak with us about all things natural birth, breastfeeding, and interestingly enough, the benefits of the carnivore

diet in pregnancy. The spillover is produced by a nonprofit and is only possible to produce with the generosity of cute servatives like you. If you would consider pledging even a small amount each month to go towards set costs, guest booking and travel and equipment needs, we can keep educating people on how to heal a sick culture physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Support the show financially by clicking the link in the show description. It is tax deductible. If you can't, please leave a five-star review that really helps us too. Each episode is available to watch on the real Alex Clark YouTube. Please welcome Lindsay Meles to the spillover.

Lindsay, I was sent over 300 questions from my audience for you. Don't worry, we're not going to go through all of them. But I did get a lot. I got a lot. But it was really encouraging and interesting to me that they were so excited about a natural birth episode. I don't know about you, but it just gives me so much encouragement that seems like moms of our generation are willing to stand up to a system that historically has tried to indoctrinate women into thinking that they don't know best when it comes to birth and parenting and breastfeeding and all the things that go with that. Why are we seeing such a huge increase in women interested in natural birth? It's interesting because we're in a really interesting time of life right now, right? Anything that's post-2020,

everybody's starting to really question everything. I feel like it's been the great awakening. And I've been at this since 2003. So I've seen this like tsunami that's slowly approaching because I will totally give credit to Ricky Lake. She did a documentary back in 2009 that was called The Business of Being Born. And that really started opening women's eyes up and open to like, whoa, I can have a different experience. I mean, it had Ricky giving birth in her bathtub in our house in New York. And so with that momentum paired with everybody's starting to question everything with 2020, it's just been like a tidal wave post-2020. I remember when we had the lockdowns in March, and I was literally getting like 80 to 100 calls a day for people that were wanting to not be in the

hospital and give birth at home. And obviously, I can't, I'm one person. Like, I can't accommodate all of that. Is that just because they didn't want to be forced to wear a mask or what was the reason? At that point, we were even unclear if partners or husbands were to be allowed in the birthing rooms. And so there was so much change. And like in New York and some hospitals, dads weren't even allowed in. Like they were literally outside of the window watching their wives, like, wave to them from the labor and delivery units. And so I just think there was so much uncertainty that people were like, okay, like I have three months until I'm going to give birth. Like, let's plan for like the worst case scenario at the hospital.

and let's make sure that we have a completely different experience than something that we're going to be shoved into. And so it's so beautiful to witness this tidal wave because it's something that we've been fighting for, even if you look back into the 70s, which is really the true resurgence of natural birth. And we can look at Ina Mae Gaskin, who was a midwife that left San Francisco

and they all caravand out in these big school buses to find their commune. And, you know, there was nobody, qualified that was there to help these women have their babies. And so Ina Mae just got some old textbooks and looked up things and she became the midwife for what's now referred to as the farm. And they had quite a bit of really amazing data. I think they looked at over 4,000 bursts. Their C-section rate was under 4%. Like there was so much good that was coming out of this. And then you look at the LaMau's method that showed up around that time where women were actually

being taught some sort of childbirth education in the hospital setting and not just going in and getting what was commonly used is called scopolamine, which was an anesthetic that would cause an amnesia effect. So women would go in, they would be given this amnesia, they would be drugged and not be able to do anything. Like they were basically tied to a bed and then doctors would drag their babies out with forceps. They would still be knocked out so we would cut and clamp the cord right away. The baby would go with the nurse to the nursery and moms would wake up. but not remember a single thing. And so with the Lamas push, it was really like, well, that's not good.

We don't want to not remember our births. Like, yes, we're grateful for some advancements in medical technology. But when are we giving away all of our rights? Why are we doing that? And the history, there's so much history to birth. And I could go into that for hours and hours and hours. But basically what happened is like right around 1780, a lot of doctors were being trained by midwives in London. That was kind of like the precipice of training for obstetrical care at that time.

And at that time it was more of this Victorian, very kind of like prude way of living. Like we really weren't like showing anything. And women didn't want to accidentally poop. They didn't want to have to make noises like they were, you know, moaning through a contraction. And so they agreed to all these weird forms of anesthesia. They were even doing bloodletting. at one point. What is that? They would cut the moms and let blood leak out of them.

And I don't even understand how that would have some sort of a pain relief method. But I was talking to Stu about it and he was like, maybe they were passed out. I don't know. Like, I don't understand that at all.

But it's one of those things that you're like, okay, there's so much history here. But really what it boiled down to from that point forward. So like 1700, 1780 is when these obstetricians came in and they said,

like, we're going to take over, we're going to kind of boot out all of these midwives, healers, you know, witches, medicine women, and we're going to be in control. And throughout all of time, and still, if you look at areas that don't have access to modern medicine, it's always women that are surrounding women giving birth. It's always our aunties and our sisters and our grandmas. And the lineage of midwifery has been passed down by storytelling, by apprenticeship, by going into the woods and learning what herbs there are around you. What herbs will help lessen bleeding? What herbs will help.

with the cramps. Like, there's so much that's just outside of our back door. And when we moved into the Western medical system of medication and, you know, the Rockefeller petroleum-based pharmaceuticals and all of these different things, birth significantly changed at the same time. And so the first male obstetrician that actually claimed the first OBB practice in the United States, which is in Massachusetts, was a doctor that had trained with midwife. in England and he came over and he said, I'm going to open up the first OB practice. And then he was teaching doctors midwifery, but women weren't even allowed to be in those classes. So they completely bypassed that woman to woman care. And so like I said, we, you know, we look throughout time.

There's the resurgence with INA Mae. There's the resurgence with LaMas. There was even something at that around that time that was called LaBoye, Dr. LaBoye, it was saying like, baby should be welcomed and like really peaceful. And the life. should be low and we should actually put them in water to restimulate how they would feel in the womb. And that kind of had a little bit of spark there. But again, that tidal wave hit after 2020. I mean, we see that in the data very well. So you're saying COVID was one of these resurgence that we're going to look back in history and be like, and this was another resurgence of everybody getting into midwifery care and wanting to have natural births. A hundred percent. Natural health,

right? Like we're moving away. Like there's a big distrgence. trust right now within the medical system. And so people are like, well, they let me down. And everything that we were being told wasn't really true. And my, you know, aunts and uncle and grandma are, they didn't help them. And so why would I trust them to take care of me with birth of my child? And so there is definitely that piece where people are just questioning everything. And it's, It's wonderful because it's something that I've been fighting for since 2003 of, like, no, this is not how it should be. Like, women should have options.

We should be able to not have a hospital with a 40 to 50 percent C-section rate and an epidural rate of always over 80 percent. Most hospitals in, you know, metropolitan cities have epidural rates over 95 percent. 95 percent of women do not need epidural anesthetic to give birth. And it's a shame that we think that because what happens is then we live. lose all of our power. We forget how freaking strong we are. And then we're dependent on a system that's taken away pain, which is actually a right of passage. You know, you leave that experience of birth after you've had a natural birth. And this isn't a podcast to knock anybody that's not had the

experience to have this or doesn't even desire this. Like, I don't give a crap if you give birth, you know, with deer in your backyard by a tree or you schedule your C-section. The most important thing to me is that you know that you have options and that you're making informed toys. And that you're making an informed choices throughout the way because if informed choice was truly given the way that it's supposed to be given, most people would not be opting for these things. They would say, oh, there's a side effect to that? That affects my baby? That affects how my breastfeeding might go. There's all of that would be questioned. And then most people would usually find some other alternatives and find ways to give birth in a different way. And so, you know, we just have to take a step back again

with this resurgence and say, okay, people, like, let's look back. Let's look back how we've done it through all of time. I always have my like little tagline of great grandma wisdom. Like, what would our great grandmas do? What are our great grandmas do throughout all of time? Like, worse here is a booming population. And it's not because of the last hundred years of the advancements of medical technology. We were booming before that happened. And so it's, it's really just coming back to trusting the process. Trusting the body as a healer. I mean, that's, that's huge. And that's another thing that's happened so much with the resurgence of natural medicine is that we realize that we have immune systems that work and that they can take care of us when we become sick. And yes, it's so fantastic that we have the availability to use Westernized medicine if we need it. But it shouldn't be the first line of defense. It should be there as needed. And that's something that I think is just such an important message to get across. Yeah, absolutely. You're just such an encyclopedia of knowledge on this topic. and I was introduced to you watching Nourished,

which was the short YouTube documentary that Dr. Paul Saladino made all about natural birth and also really like the carnivore diet during pregnancy and the differences in women who eat a more ancestral-based diet during pregnancy than those who don't. Talk about how long you've been a midwife and why midwives are so crucial to the birthing experience, especially today.

I had a C-section with my first. I always like to put that out there. Like, I'm not this crazy person that's, like, had all these natural birth and I don't know what it means to have, you know, an induction and interventive birth. Like, I had every single intervention possible with the birth of my daughter. I ended up with, which is pretty standard with a first-time mom with a cascade of interventions, you have about a 50% chance more likely to be needing a cesarean if the induction doesn't work. And I want you to imagine a rose opening. So if there was a little tight-close rose bud, And we're trying to like peel back each little petal, each little pedal. Imagine what that rose would look like if we basically manually opened it. It wouldn't be beautiful. There'd be lots of petals that were on the floor. And it's really the same thing when we think about like how our cervix is open. Like, you know, we're supposed to let them soften. We're supposed to let them open.

And when you go straight at it with medication, then you're peeling back the rose buds of that rose. And if your body's not ready, it just doesn't work. We have all these receptor sites in our brains and all these hormones that are talking. And it's like this perfect hormonal cocktail that's there. And, you know, all the things have to be in place. We don't really know what starts labor. There's a lot of speculation that there's a protein that's released from the baby's lungs when they're perfectly ready to come.

We don't have the exact science on it. So we try to duplicate it. But when you duplicate it, there's no guarantee that it's going to work. And so I didn't have a good experience with my first. And I really was like, oh, my gosh, what does happen? Like, that was horrible. And I was young. I was already in the medical field at that time. I had worked on an ambulance. I had worked in an emergency room. And I just went with this standard doctor that was at the hospital that everybody recommended. And for like a year after my daughter's birth, I was like, I missed out on something. And I really couldn't tell you what it was. And I kept searching and thinking, like, there's something that's missing here. And I really realized in that moment after lots of soul searching that it was the rite of passage that I missed out on for my childbirth. And so I jumped. straight into everything childbirth. Like it consumed my whole life. And at that point, it was like

me trying to be a savior. I was like, I'm going to save every single woman from this experience. Nobody should have this experience. And like my second birth in the hospital, it was a C-section. You know, it was like, okay. And I had done hundreds of births as a doula in the hospital. And I finally got to a point where like I couldn't handle going back into the hospital. My nervous system couldn't actually be back in a hospital because I felt like I was an accomplice to a car. Like I would sit there and it's not like I could scream at the doctor and jump in front of a doctor and say, don't do that. I had to be a patient advocate, but they had to advocate for themselves. These were procedures that were being done to them.

So I couldn't just be there and tell them what to do. And so I just felt like I was in this room sitting on my hands, watching basically abuse in some situations. And one of the biggest things for me was how they treated babies. And I would sit there and they would, you know, cut the cord and they would whisk the baby off to the warmer. and the way that they even just wiped the baby down because of the babies were wet from the amniotic fluid was so rough. How is that somebody's first experience here on Earth? Like, what a crappy way to be born, you know, what a crappy way to, you know, think how life is here on this planet. And they were separated from their moms. And then, you know, we ended up with all these

breastfeeding problems. And it just wasn't, it wasn't good. And the other piece of it is that fathers and dads hold the charge for the birth. And what I I mean by that is that all of the weight of what happens in the family unit, especially around the birth, the dads are supposed to be the protector. If you think about cave grandma, the dads were outside of the cave making sure a lion didn't get in, right? Like they were protecting the space. Now let's make it modern. They're still protecting the space. So the charge of making sure that nothing bad happened to their wife is all on them. Socially, you know, culturally, religiously, like it's still that charge is there. And when they're in a system that's not in their home,

they're stepping into somebody else's, you know, treading grounds, if you will. And there's these experts that are there that are telling them that their wives need certain things, but they're actually watching their wives be abused. You see these men just like shrink down into their bodies. And they're not being that protected. They should, I mean, some are. But that was really interesting to witness too. And so I, I said, okay, I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm not going to be in the hospital setting anymore. And I was I was already in the hospital setting as a lactation consultant too. And I would go in and I would look at the postpartum board and I would see all the moms that had given birth. And it was like, C-section,

C-section, C-section, C-section. And I was like, okay, well, all of those moms are going to be in the lactation clinic today because those babies aren't breastfeeding good. And it was just like so stereotypical. Like I could just literally call everything by just looking at the postpartum board. So around that time, one of my colleagues and mentors was opening up the first state accredited midwifery school. And she was like, Lindsay, let's just come. Like, you have to, you have to do this. And kind of was like, I don't know, that's a lot of responsibility. That's, you know, like 24-7 on call. And then I was like, there's no way I can't do this. Like it was truly a calling. It's not a job to me. This is the essence of who I am. And, you know, I graduated in that time I gave birth to my son.

and he was the exact opposite. He was born in my jacuzzi, in my backyard, underneath the stars in the middle of summer, and I had, you know, a 180 different experience than I had with my daughter. And I had already had so many clients from being a doula and working in the hospital that I was busy, like, straight out the gate. Like, literally, like, I had somebody that was waiting to give birth while I was waiting to get my license in the mail to make it legal after I had passed the test. And, you know, birth, birth is always going to be birth, but birth, birth is changing too.

Like in a post-2020 world, I'm like learning to have to navigate a completely new world of everybody being indoctrinated by fear. And when fear shows up in birth, there's always going to be more issues. Elaborate on that. Women are indoctrinated with fear when it comes to birth. So I think that everybody would agree across the board that 2020 was a campaign of fear. You know, COVID was a campaign of fear. It was literally fear porn. Like it was spewing at us from every single angle. There was billions of dollars that were spent for fear and coercion.

And that was for fear and coercion of our own bodies. We were scared of our neighbors. We were told to turn our neighbors in if they weren't adhering to guidelines or not wearing masks. And so what that did is it gave women this deep-seated fear that like something was wrong with their body. It all happened at the same time of a resurgence. So it was like this positive thing. Everybody didn't want to be in the hospital. Everybody was seeking different options.

But like unless you were literally hiding underneath a rock, all of us were affected in some way. I mean, I had my own discernment. And within the first week after all the lockdowns, I was like, oh, hard no, something's happening here. It took me about two weeks. So, and that's the thing. I was really like terrified thinking this is the end of the world for the first week. Like, I believed everything. Yeah.

It was like, oh my gosh. I can't believe what's happened. And then I was like, oh, no, wait a minute. Yeah. They're pulling the wool over our eyes here. Yeah. Yeah. And so it depends on where that discernment kicked in, right? Like if people had it for a year and a half, then you're going to have to deprogram all of that stuff.

And so, and then I have clients that are like, I never thought anything about it. You know, we went to Costa Rica or whatever it was. And so it's just like this navigation piece. And there's sometimes that people will still come into my office wearing masks. And I'm like, you guys, how are you sitting here? here at a home birth midwife's office knowing that your body is capable of wonderful and amazing things and you still don't trust your immune system so do you say something like hey we may be like on different wavelengths here as far as me being your midwife do you say anything or no so i get

curious so i don't ever like to be the person that's like i mean i have trust me there's times where i'm like there's no way we're aligned at all and i don't do it in a mean way i just say like oh sorry like you know i'm full yeah i do like to get curious with people. And sometimes it's repeat clients, which is, which can be hard, right? Like, it's like if someone's already had multiple babies with me. But then they change. And then they change. But you're like, like, lean in with me. Like, like, I want to hear why you're still scared. Like, what are you, what are you actually scared up at this point? You know? And so, um, I think, I think that's what we should do as humans. I don't think we should ever be judgmental. I think we should always be curious

because that that, that just opens everybody up to love. And then it doesn't create the divide that's been so drastically created within the world at this point. And so it's just an interesting space to sit back and watch as an observer because I've seen such drastic fluxes in my career span. But also like the belief systems of our basic needs, like our immune system, our bodies, how we nourish ourselves. Like how we nourish our immune systems is going to change everything. Pro tip for those looking to get the most out of your luxury skin care, wait about 45 seconds. between each serum or products so you get all the benefits from each and they can really sink into the skin. When I'm using my Nimi skincare, I apply everything thinnest to thickest. First, I cleanse with the

vitamin C cleanser to brighten my skin, get those antioxidant benefits. Then I tone with the hydrating toner, which really helps remove any leftover makeup that I may have missed with a quick swipe. And then I'm using the vitamin C serum and hyloronic acid from Nimi and topping it all off with Nimi's retinol-infused hydrating cream. And you go nip to dip. Nipples to the top of your face. Nimi is modern skincare with timeless values. They are openly Christian and conservative own company, and part of the proceeds of purchases with them go towards causes that you and I support and believe in,

something that is really special and crucial all the time, but especially during an election year. Try them out at neemieskinkare.com, get 10% off with code Alex Clark. That's neemieskinkare.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off. Nipst and tips. Find everything in the show notes below. If you've not watched this documentary

that Lindsay is a part of, that Paul Saladino made, It was so unique. So what did he tell you the documentary was going to be about? And why did he think that you were going to be a good person to have spotlighted in this doc? So I had done a previous podcast with Paul. I love Paul. He's a friend of mine. And we had talked about placenta health. And, you know, he has a good podcast. He definitely has a lot of people listening to his podcast. And he was like, I want to know what you think. Because he's talked to many midwives that won't take vegetarian or vegan clients. And he's also talked to many midwives that said that the vegan or vegetarian placentas were comparable to that of a smoker, which isn't good. That's like we're looking at like calcifications and we're looking at just not something that you would want to be nourishing a baby with. And so we did this awesome podcast and we kind of went through all the things and we talked about what the function of the placenta is and, you know, how big it is and what it's doing with nourishing the baby and what it's passing down and all of this stuff. team was like that podcast was rad. There was so much good feedback from it. And we're going to, we're going to do a mini documentary on pregnancy. And we're going to come out and record with you.

You know, we're going to fly in from Austin and set up everything and record with you. And I was like, awesome. So the night before that they flew in and it set everything up, there, I had two bursts that day. And it just so happened. Like the, I actually know this happens all the time. This is like, not coincidence. It's supposed to be like this. You know, I had this amazing visual of one of my clients who was a vegetarian for quite a while. She had added in beef liver because her iron had dropped but it was at the end of the pregnancy. So there was multiple years of her being a vegetarian. And then I had a client that was like full carnivore, like literally ate meat with every meal, like nourished herself. She had never been vegetarian or vegan. And I had these two placentas that

were sitting in front of me that were like, oh, these look so drastically different. And so I got permission from both moms. And in the vegetarian mom, she wasn't ashamed. Like, she was like, I know better. I should have listened more to my cravings that I had throughout pregnancy. And she was like, yeah, show this, please. Like, I want the world to see, like, what, what this can do. And I promise you. So the thing that's funny about all of this within that documentary is there is so much criticism. Like you can't even believe What was the criticism? Oh, I was attacked by every single vegetarian or vegan there is.

And what were, okay, they're seeing the proof. Yeah, so what was their defense? In their defense, they're saying it's anecdotal. Like, it's just one placenta against one placenta. And then there was vegetarians and vegans on there that were showing their placentas. Now, am I saying that every single vegetarian or vegan placenta is going to look like that? No. You know, I even would ask a question like, are you the first born of your mom?

What is your nutritional content like? Because we know as moms have more and more babies than those children's nutritional needs are a little bit less. And there was an interesting study that was done with famous celebrities. And the better looking celebrity was usually the firstborn. And then the kids kind of got a little bit funkier as they went down. But we know that it can affect so many different things. So, you know, I would say to these vegetarians are vegans like, hey, I'm not attacking

you. Like I'm literally just sharing information. I'm showing you. yes, it's an anecdotal. Yes, it's one placenta against another. Do I think that vegetarians and vegans can have healthy pregnancies if they work really freaking hard at it and they're not what I call the cracker box vegetarian or vegans? You know, yeah, fine. I'm not denying that. Your baby is beautiful and healthy. I'm not saying that. But when you're looking at two drastically different placentas, you can't not say that there's a difference. And so, and you know, it's within my practice. I

I rarely do take on vegetarian or vegans. And it's not like they come in and say, hey, I'm vegetarian and vegan. And I say you're fired. Get out. I just, you know, there's certain things within blood work. Like, the state gives us restrictions of, like, you have to have a certain hemoglobin over a certain amount of number in order to give birth at home. Because if it's too low when you hemorrhage, then you're not in a place where you could get a blood transfusion. And so there would be times where these women would risk out. And so I usually took them on and would really encourage them to listen to their body and really encourage.

encourage them to listen to their cravings. And, you know, what are you eating on a daily basis? And is there something that your body is telling you that you really need? And like 90% of the time, these women would start eating some sort of meat throughout their pregnancy. I had a mom once that was like a professional vegan chef. It was like her whole life. And she was eating freaking hot dogs. Not that I recommend eating hot dogs. But she was eating hot dogs at the end of her pregnancy. And I was laughing at her so hard. I'm like, here you are, Miss Organic Vegan eating your hot dogs over there in the corner. So it's like you just have to be in a place of, again, being curious, leaning in with these women, encouraging them to listen to their bodies.

My sister, my own sister was a vegetarian for most of her adult life. She became a vegetarian in her teenage years. And the first thing that she said to me when she got pregnant, I was like, I'm craving beef. And I don't even know what that tastes like anymore. I'm like, okay, go get some beef. Start eating beef. So why carnivore diet for pregnant women? Why are organ meat such a game changer for pregnancy?

They're nutrient dense. And when they're nutrient dense, that means that they are packed full of every sort of mineral and vitamin that we need to grow our healthy babies. And we can look at, like, people will argue like, oh, there's crackheads on the street that give birth to babies. Like, anybody can eat anything and the babies will be fine. You can make the argument and say, yeah, your body's going to be the one that suffers, not your baby. but I promise you, your baby does benefit from all of that. And it's one of those things that, like, it sets them up for a lifetime of good nutrition if they have that first building block that's right there with it. And so that's always the most important thing for me. Nutrient does. Like every single thing that you're eating should have some sort of protein in it. You want to make sure that you're, you know, hydrating with good mineral rich fluids throughout the day. You want to make sure that you're listening to your body. You're going to have different needs at different times. Many of my clients will be like, okay, so like, what about raw milk and sushi? And I'm like, I don't give anybody permission, nor do I tell people not to do something.

Like, if you feel like you need it, women in Japan eat sushi every single day. If you grew up on a farm, you were drinking raw milk every single day. My grandmother grew up on a farm. I knew she was drinking raw milk every single day in her pregnancy. So to vilify it is one of those things that you're like, oh, no. If the FDA comes in and makes all these recommendations, it's like, maybe you should look the exact opposite way. because those recommendations are usually not great at all. And I see women just have amazing pregnancies.

Do you think that women who are not eating organ meats during pregnancy are more at risk? It's a bold statement. I would say that they are depriving themselves of optimal nutrition. So that could also entail that they are higher risk for other things happening throughout their pregnancy. We know that just looking at protein alone. So there was a doctor, his name was Dr. Brewer. and he realized that if women got a certain amount of protein throughout their diets, that they had a much significant incidence of preeclampsia. Preeclampsia is not a good condition. It usually happens at the end

of pregnancy. It's where we have higher blood pressures and then we're spilling protein in our urine. And typically if we have preeclampsia, our babies need to come right away. Like it's not like we wait a a couple weeks and see if preeclampsia goes away. If we're showing signs and symptoms of preeclampsia with high blood pressure and we have blood work that's not. supports that, those babies are usually induced right away. So if you have a baby that's 34 weeks, gestation and mom gets preeclamps, then you're ending up with a baby that's 34 weeks in the NICU because that's a near-term baby that is not going to be just chilling outside of, you know, giving birth, those would present risks. And so Dr. Brewer, what he found, because he was in a low-income

area, is the cheapest way to get dairy or get protein into these women was through dairy. And not something I advocate. I think that there's other ways you can get good protein in. Dairy's fine, but it's not the only thing that should be given. And, you know, these women were having such better outcomes within the community because they were eating anywhere from 80 to 100 grams of protein a day and their incidence of preeclampsia and other things like help syndrome, which is a worse version of preeclampsia, if you will, were significantly less. And, you know, we see that all the time. I always make sure that I'm checking in with my clients with their protein intake, especially in the third trimester. If you're listening and you're pregnant, that's one of the

biggest pieces of advice that I can give is make sure you're getting enough protein at the end of pregnancy. Make sure you're getting enough salt at the end of pregnancy. And usually people think like, oh, I'm swelling. I should stop eating salt. Yeah, why salt? Because it's full of minerals. So not like the crappy table morton salts. Like you're getting like really nutrient dense like Celtic sea salts or I love this brand, Vera salt. No heard of that. No microplastics. Amazing. Yeah, that's a really good brand. Yeah, that's rad. There's like, there's other ones. There's like redmins. You know, there's definitely really good products out there, but you want to make sure that you're getting the good salt. Like, I will literally tell women to put salt in their water if they're swelling.

And then you look at, like, pop culture. And you're like, I always call it out. Like, I can always start to see the pregnant celebrities and they start to get swollen. I remember Kim Kardashian was pregnant. And there was a picture posted of her. She was wearing these clear stilettos. Yes. And her, like, ankles were, like, fallen over the sides of the plastic.

And I was like, she has preeclampsia. And my husband's like, stop. judging her. You're so bad. I was like, she is preeclampsia. And like two days later, she was, you know, scheduled for a C-section because of her pre-eclampsia. So it's just like pretty basic things. And she had such a bad experience with North that, I mean, after that, I can't remember, are all the rest of her kids surrogate? Yeah, they were all surrogate. They were all surrogate, which is, and I mean, don't quote me. I'm not like one for pop culture, but I'm pretty sure that she had all surrogates after that. I think you're right. I mean, how did we get to this place,

Lindsay in America where it's totally safe drinking this brominated dyed liquid while you're pregnant, but it's super dangerous to have raw oysters. I know. I know it's crazy, right? So you're referring to the 28-week blood work that's done for gestational diabetes and it's done different times throughout the pregnancy depending on the risk factors for women. And this, if anybody's been pregnant and they've had this, they will remember this because you're literally drinking 50 grams of high fruit corn syrup that's full of crap and it tastes awful. So you go in fasting so you don't eat anything overnight and then you go in fasting and you drink this drink that's, you know, looks like a little mini sprite or something like that. And it's this horrible orange taste. And it actually says on

the bottle, do not consume in pregnancy, which is hilarious because that's the main thing it's used for. And they take your blood an hour later. And just that alone, they don't, they don't ask any other questions. That alone, if you're over a certain amount of numbers for your blood sugar, then you're diagnosed for gestational diabetes. And they send you to a registered dietitian. I'm not knocking registered dietitians, but registered dietitians give FDA guidelines. So they'll go there and say, have three saltine crackers and have a half a cup of rice and you're like, oh my God, they're eating all carbs. Like where, why? Why aren't we asking them to eat nutrient-dense foods? Why aren't we asking them to eat a freaking

oyster. And it just is like this cycle. And so I have people that come in and I do way more than I've never done that test ever, by the way, in my practice. Yeah, what do you do instead of making them drink that nasty drink? So I do something that's called a hemoglobin A1C, which is an average blood sugar percentage over a three month period of time. It gives us this percentage. Typically anything over 6.0 is consistent with an increased risk of diabetes. So I, you know, I get them usually around nine to 10 weeks. And if anybody's over 6.0, it's like immediate, like, let's talk about what your nutrition's like. But the majority of the population is not over 6.0. The majority of the population is typically under 5.5. And then you really can't tell a mom in the first trimester what to eat

because they all feel like crap. And then they feel guilt if they're eating like bagels to get them through the day. And I'm like, just get through the first trimester. And then we'll talk. In the first trimester, eat whatever it is that you can stomach. stomach, within reason. Like, you don't want to like hang out at McDonald's every day. Right. You know, but you definitely like, it's usually like very bland foods. It's like bagels and cereals and just like bland easy foods. And it's fine. Don't feel guilt over that. Just survive at this point. And anybody that's had morning sickness knows that you can't like go eat a fresh salad if you're feeling that way. You'll literally throw it up. And then once we move out of that and they start feeling

better, then it's like, okay, let's have the discussion. Are you prioritizing protein with every single meal? Are you making sure that, you know, if you're feeling sick still passes the first trimester, are you making sure that your blood sugars aren't too low? Are you eating every two to three hours? Sometimes I have women keep like some sort of a fat protein substance nuts by their bed. And if they wake up to go pee in the middle of the night, I'll have them eat a couple of cashews just to balance their blood sugars throughout the night because you're technically fasting throughout the night, right? breakfast is breaking the fast. And then we retest that hemoglobin A1C between 26 to 28 weeks. Now, I know that not everybody that's listening is going to choose a midwife and they're still going to go the

standard industrialized route. And there's other alternatives to that drink that we're talking about. So the drink that we're talking about is glucaola. It's at every single main lab there is. But there's certain things you can do. There's something that's called the Fresh Test. And it's 50 grams of sugar, but it's like organic. It tastes like lemon. And then you can like do jelly beans. There are certain, you know, like smoothies you can get. You can find out the sugar content. And if it's 50 grams, then that's comparable to that.

I mean, geez, you get a drink at Starbucks for 50 grams of sugar, Dunkin' Donuts. 100%. So, but, you know, usually what happens if they do start with the hemoglobin A1C that's higher, then they just move to more protein nutrient dense foods and that A1C goes down. And if they need to, they can poke their fingers at home and get blood sugars at home. And that's also really empowering. I always recommend people do that if they have high blood sugars. Check your blood sugars.

You're capable of doing that. You're capable of seeing what your body is doing. And then you're going to see high blood sugars. And you're going to say, what did I eat an hour ago? And then you're not going to eat that again. What are the real risks of a medicated pregnancy that we're not being told? Like I said, if you're in a metropolitan city, then you usually are having a hospital that has this epidural rate of over 95%. And this is because you're stepping into a space where people are just taught to turn.

boxes and they're not trained to support anybody physically or emotionally through the birth process. And, you know, they're just basically looking at screens outside in the nurse's desk. And someone that is in that experience, it's really hard. Like, I don't even know if I could go into a hospital and give birth without medication if I wasn't prepared for it. Like it's, it's, you're up against a system at that point. And, you know, if you're walking in and you're pushing, and you've been at home laboring the whole time, then yeah, it's going to be a lot easier. But if you're walking in there for an induction and you're getting all the medications, an induction uses a medication that's called potocin.

And potocin is a synthetic form of oxytocin. Oxytocin is what our body naturally makes on its own to start contractions. But if we have potocin in our system, it's on a drip. And that drip is artificially pumping this artificial hormone into our body. And they turn it up every 30 to 40 minutes. And, you know, you can get to the highest. dose and your body's basically being taken over by this artificial hormone. The contractions don't ebb and flow. They usually are one on top of each other. They usually, with normal labor,

there's this peak and you might get a really strong one and the next one might not be as strong. But potocin, it's like bam, bam, bam, bam, every single contraction. And so right away, straight out the gate, if you have potocin, you're going to have a huge increased need for some sort of anesthesia, epidural, whatever it is. And these aren't things that are even talked about. You look at the potocin rates in our country and most of the time it's like over 80% of people they get potocin in labor. If a woman gets potocin but doesn't get an epidural, would you consider that a natural birth or no? So the terminology for all of these, most people for this day and age are calling a vaginal birth, a natural birth. Because what? Because C-sections are just like, that's now the new thing, that everyone gets a C-section.

so just giving birth vaginally is considered natural? I hear it all the time. So that's not in my world, obviously. Like all of my clients that give birth, give birth at home, we don't have the ability to access epidurals at all. That is so backwards. I can't even believe you're telling me that. Yeah.

So, I mean, any sort of medical intervention, as long as you have a vaginal birth, that's usually what people are calling a natural birth. And I usually have to clarify, because people will come in and I'll be interviewing them and I'll be asking them their past birth stories. And they'll say, like, yeah, I had a natural birth. And I'm like, a vaginal birth or a birth without a marriage? medication. Whoa. And so there has to be that clarification there. So it's, you know, that's, but that's where we're at with birth right now. Like if someone achieves that, then that's,

you know, a natural birth to them. Okay. So you get the epidural and then what are the risks we're not being told about an epidural? So the epidural has many different risks. And if you have a good provider, if you get the anesthesiologist that's on call should really go through and give you all the risks. Now, does that happen all the time? Hell no, it doesn't happen all the time. You know, who's reading the forms that you're signing, especially if you're asking for something that's going to take pain away. You don't even have the cognitive ability to read through those forms. And prior to, I don't even know what year, but over the last 10 years, I've really seen a big shift in the medication that's being used. So it was typically some sort of like new morphine

and they would use morphine dosages. They tighter in the anesthesiologists are like scientists bedside. They have all these different formulas that they have for different epidurals, and each anesthesiologist is going to have a different preference with the dosages that are used. It's also weight dose and height dose and everything like that. Certain medications are getting harder and harder to get. So now we've really switched everything over to a fentanyl-based system for epidurals. And what we're noticing, this is so interesting, and people don't know this, is that if a mom comes in and there's a suspicion of any sort of substance abuse. So like if like the nurse is like, shoot, I wonder if this mom's a drug addict, we now know through studies that if the baby, the mom has had

an epidural for longer than 12 hours and that baby is screened. So that's what they do with. They'll screen mom and then they'll screen baby for medications, for drugs, anything like that. The baby's been in contact with an epidural longer than 12 hours, that that baby will test positive for fentanyl in their system, a brand newborn baby, because it's going through the epidural system. So when these babies are testing positive for fentanyl, then they're getting taken away because they think that the mom is using fentanyl throughout their pregnancy. And so there was a study that was done, and I'm going to read it. It says the purpose of this study was to look at the most important clinical implications of the findings of positive neonatals that tested positive for

fentany. What they found is that this test cannot be used to identify a mother who is receiving fentanyl containing epidurals. They say that it's usually anywhere from 24 to 72 hours that fentanyl will be present in urine, as well as hair tests that can be present for three months, and they find that it can stay in the baby's blood for up to 48 hours. I also have a lot of postpartum nurses that are are my friends and I hear from them quite often when there was this switch. And again, I don't, there's not like an exact date that everybody switched over. And there's lots of like hearsay that when we pulled our troops out of Afghanistan that we lost access to the poppy fields, which were opium containing and was our main source of morphine. And we moved more into this fentanyl-based system,

which by the way, fentanyl is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. So we're getting much stronger epidurals and we're getting much stronger medications that are going to these babies. And, you know, not only is this an observation from postpartum nurses that are watching these babies in the first 24 to 72 hours in the hospital setting, but clinical data will show that these babies are having withdrawal symptoms if they have longer epidurals. So a common withdrawal symptom for a baby could be something like flesiness, arching their back, lethargy. Like they're, which is huge if we're breastfeeding our babies, right? Like we don't want a baby that has lethargy

because then they're not going to be able to establish a good breastfeeding routine, which is going to then signal to the mom's brain to make milk. And that can have the long-term implications of not having human milk for human babies. So anyone essentially in the last 10 or so years that's gotten an epidural, if their kids were struggling with breastfeeding or fussiness and things like that, it very well could have been withdrawal. Yes. especially in the first 72 hours, those babies could have been withdrawing from fentanyl.

They were incapable of having the neurological signaling to actually help them do what their body was supposed to do. Like breastfeeding is actually a reflex. If you think about a cat or a dog or any mammal that gives birth, there is not a lactation consultant there helping that baby breastfeed, right? We have these puppies and kittens that will just come out and their little eyes are closed and they'll just start to smell around the mom's nipples and they'll make their way to the nipple. It is a survival instinct. And so one of the things that we're looking for that baby has intact with a postpartum exam. So if I'm looking at this newborn, there's certain things that I want to be looking at. One of those things is a step reflex. So you think, why? Step reflex. Now, I want you to imagine a brand

newborn baby that's just been born and we place this baby up on mom's chest. If the baby has a step reflex. There's two things that are happening. When they're stepping, they're actually stepping on mom's uterus, which will help it contract down and lessen any sort of postpartum bleeding. So that's another survival right there. We don't want our moms to bleed out, right? Like we want to make sure that we ensure that they're not bleeding too much. So the natural progression of that baby stepping on that mom's uterus, and we call it, you know, making sure the fundus is firm, the top of the uterus is firm. That's already not. actually happening. In the hospital year, there's nurses that are trained to go in. In the United States,

I need to specify because everywhere else in the world, they don't do routine fundal massage. And anybody that's had a baby will tell you that they remember that when these nurses go in and give this fundal massage, that most of the time it was harder and more painful than actually giving birth. Okay. So that's a whole other topic. But these babies are naturally doing this. And I see it all a time because I don't do fundal massage unless it's needed, which is very rare. And I let these babies breast crawl. And I have a really awesome video on my Instagram of this baby naturally breast crawling. And then they start to get up towards the breast and the nipples become much darker in pregnancy because it becomes a bullseye, if you will, right? Oh, that's why that happens? So babies can

visualize that darker spot. And then there's little ducks that start to secrete a substance that smells like amniotic fluid. Okay. So they're like, oh, that smells like a place that I've been. So they start to kind of like bob their heads around and they start to step up the belly and they start to make their way to the breast. Now when all of this is happening, another thing that the body does is it starts to release oxytocin. Any sort of nipple stimulation, even if it's the baby's like hand batting at the nipple or their nose smelling it, the mom's body starts to make oxytocin. Remember, I said earlier that pitocin is a synthetic form of oxytocin. So when there's natural oxytocin that's being made, then the mom is releasing that to her uterus to help it clamp down and minimize the

risk of bleeding. So this whole natural process of the breast crawl, if we have a baby that's high on fentanyl, isn't really happening. I've never heard any of this before. Never heard anyone talk about this. Yeah. Yeah. And this is. And this is. this even happened. Like, yes, the drugs in the epidurals prior to fentanyl being in epidurals wasn't being found within baby's urine or blood or anything like that that they were looking for. But we still knew that there was clinical implications. We still knew that the medications that were being used in the epidural crossed the placenta barrier, the brain barrier there. Like they moved through the placenta and they got into the baby's brain. So no matter what, no matter what medication you're using,

no matter what year you're receiving an epidural, there still was clinical implications of these medications affecting the baby. Now, the longer you have the epidural, the more these effects are going to compound. So you might think like, oh, well, you know, my best friend gave birth and her birth was five hours. So like maybe that baby didn't get as much epidural great, amazing. But when you have these women coming in and you have these obstetrical journals that are recommending induction for every single woman at 39 weeks of pregnancy. Now I'm going to give you a little lesson on how many weeks pregnant you should be. So they due date that we calculate as 40 weeks of pregnancy, right? You get, you get pregnant. We ask you what your last menstrual period was. The first day of your last menstrual

period, we input it into this little calculator that's on everybody's phones now, or we have a wheel that we used to use prior to apps. And when we would have these dates, that would date us at 40 weeks of pregnancy was our due date. About 2 to 3% of women give birth on their due dates. And And what we know for a first time mom is that on average she's eight days late. That is the most common thing for a woman to give birth when they're first babies is that they're eight days late. Now, this is based on a bell curve. So the bell curve goes up and right at 40 weeks is what we're calling the due date. But the same amount of women give birth at 38 weeks that give birth at 42 weeks. That bell curve is right there. But the average is about 40 weeks. A few years ago, we had this

this study published that said at 39 weeks everybody should be induced. It's going to decrease the risk of any sort of neonatal mortality. And that means that regardless of first-time moms, they averaged being eight days late, that these women are all being put in a hospital. They're all having IV started. They're all having a synthetic form of oxytocin pushed into their veins for an induction. They're having more medication than just potosin because typically speaking, and if the cervix isn't soft, then we have to give other medication to soften the cervix. You're telling me that every single woman has to have this. We've lost so much trust in our bodies that we have to induce every single woman.

And then I already said that if we have Pitocin on board, that we're going to have a much higher increased need for epidural. So all of these babies, and if we stand true to the recommendations of what these doctors are telling us, that all of these babies are being bored with some sort of narcotic in their system at birth, which is then inhibiting their ability to breastfeed, which is then inhibiting their health throughout the rest of their life. We know there is huge health benefits of breastfeeding. So it's again, just another cascade of interventions. And we don't even see the long-term implications of it because we're not even looking at breastfeeding being an issue that can be compromised

with all of these interventions that we give at birth. I mean, dang, that right there is such a powerful story of, I mean, to me, why a natural birth, you know, would be the preferred way. But if you had to give like an elevator pitch to discuss the greatest benefits, physically, spiritually and emotionally of a natural birth, what would you say to somebody? So I think that I would come back to great grandma wisdom. Throughout all of time, we've given birth this way. We have the ability and the strength to do so. And every single woman that gives birth, regardless of the first,

regardless of how many births that she has, will tell you that every single labor is different. And so when you look at each labor that's different, and then you look at those babies, I find that in those lessons that we learn from each and every single one of our labor and births, we actually receive the gifts and the knowledge that we need to parent that child throughout the rest of its life. it's so drastic it's so different for each baby and each mom that's had a natural normal physiological birth without interference looks at me and i'm i don't stop care at six weeks you know you usually hear like you have a baby you go to the ubgyn they say come back at six weeks i'll see you six weeks postpartum and then that's it. I typically see my clients after they give birth and he were,

you know, typically day three to day five postpartum. I see them at two weeks. I see them at four weeks. I see them at six weeks. I'm constantly checking it on them. And those babies come back and see me for years, for years. And typically mom gets pregnant again. And then I watch these babies grow. They grow. And what I see is now I have babies, the first birth I did, gosh, almost 20 years old, maybe just turned 20 years old. Wow. And so I've seen these implications. I've seen these labor patterns. I've seen the gifts and the knowledge that these moms were given through these births. And it directly coincides with how these children are. And so that's not a short elevator pitch. But, you know, I really always go back to that place of saying, like, is this great grandma wisdom? We've done this throughout of time. We had never should have given back our rights here. We should have stood in our power and realize that birth is a right of passage and that we have the strength and ability to to do so. Now, can every single person have a natural birth? No, I'm not saying that. I'm not asking every person to have a natural birth. But if we look at data in the 70s, the C-section rate was around

5 to 6 percent. Now we're looking, the national average is about 33%. The World Health Organization says that no nation should have a C-section rate higher than 10 to 15 percent. But what's changed from 1970 to 2000 and, you know, the 2020s. Like, yes, we're definitely a sicker nation, but our vaginas still work. Our ability to give birth still works. It's not like if you get pregnant, you know, we should have the ability to also birth that baby. And so am I grateful for Western medicine and medical technology when needed? Hell, yes, I am.

My C-section rate within my practice typically echoes what the C-section rate was in the 70s. And that's even with, you know, the change of scenery within the birth post-2020. Like, I feel like there is more complications that can present themselves with all of the different terrain that we're navigating in this new world, if you will, with after our awakening. And, you know, I still have a C-section rate that's low like that. So for us to make any sort of other assumption that we aren't capable of this is a disservice not only to ourselves, but to women in general, our daughters, our granddaughters, you know, I always like to think seven generations out. Like, I have to think that what I do right now in my life is a legacy

for the next seven generations of my family. And if I tell people that they're not capable of one of life's most natural things, if we didn't give birth, we wouldn't be here. You know, there's two guaranteed things in life. You're going to be born and you're going to die. And so we have come back to realizing that just the basics of that is still there. It should have never been taken away. We should have never doubted ourselves. And we all have the ability to tap into that and come back to the basic returning of it being a ride of passage. I'm flying this week. It's a two-day trip, so I'm going in and out and I'm doing everything in my power to not check a bag. But I also don't want to cut corners on all my non-toxic stuff. I have to have it with me. That's why

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Okay, so that's an interesting question. So usually what happens is people will come in and they'll be like, how do I know that I can manage the pain? And I'm like, why would I think anything different? Of course you can manage the pain. It's not even a figure of the timing of where we're at in this world. There are people right now in parts of Africa, in parts of Asia, that don't even have access to epidural anesthesia. They don't have access to any medications. They still give birth. So it's not. because that you need an epidural. Now, if a mom is exhausted, an epidural can be a great tool. And, I mean, I've transferred moms to the hospital that it pushed for quite a few hours and wanted to rest and have an

epidural and then continue to push and have a vaginal birth. So there's never a time where it's too late. But the interesting piece about when people think that they can't do it is in a time that we call transition. If we look at the medical textbooks, I call it transformation. And it's typically when mom is dilating from seven to 10 centimeters and sometimes that takes two contractions and sometimes that takes longer than four hours. But when a mom looks at me and she locks eyes with me and she says, I can't do this anymore. I know that mom is close to giving birth. And I get so excited when they say that to me because I'm like, oh yes, this means baby's coming. Why would that mean that the baby's coming, her wanting to give up because the pain's getting worse? It's the pain, but it's also, so it's the

intensity. So the contractions are really close to each other. Like they're long. they're coming back to back. The sensations are changing from the cervix opening to now the uterus pushing the baby lower into the pelvis. So there's more of a pressure sensation that's coming. Like you have to poop almost. And so it's very intense. There's an intensity to it. And that's what I call the transformation piece. It's the breakthrough piece. It's it's the point in labor where you realize that nobody else can do this for you, that you are the only one. I always usually say the only way out is through. And you can compare it to somebody like running a marathon, like in the 22nd mile, right? Like they're like, oh my God, this is so hard. There's no way I can do this.

My body's going to give up on me. But there's like a light at the end of the tunnel. And they keep pushing themselves. It's such a mental piece. Labor, natural birth, when you're giving birth without any medication is so mental. When I have an athlete that walks through my door and they tell me like, oh, I was an athlete. I'm like, oh, you've got this. You can be fine. Because they know the mental to it. So you remind these women that nobody else can do this for them. And then they dig deep and they realize the freaking strength that they have within them. And they give birth. So it's, it's not like a place where you walk into a hospital and you're strapped to a bed and there's bright lights and there's people walking in that you've never met before. And in those moments of feeling very, very, very

vulnerable, you think, oh God, I need the epidural right now. It's not like that at home. You're in your space and you are surrounding yourself with people that you know and trust and they're reminding you that you have all of the ability to do this with inside of you. And in that moment, you usually give birth to your baby. Okay, just be real with us. I want to know how severe is the pain in a natural birth compared to a traditional hospital birth with an epidural. So everybody's going to be different, right? Like I just recently posted a video on my Instagram and it was a mom who said she had zero pain during her birth, right? So she was her fourth baby and she texted me in the middle of the day which is actually very rare. I usually get calls in the middle of the night. And she said, I think this baby's on their way.

I think you should come over. And so I went over there and she was hanging on her husband. She's kind of squatting and moving her hips. And then she said, let's fill the tub. Very matter of effect. And then she stepped into the tub and I think it was two or three contractions. Whoa. She started pushing her baby out. She looked at me and she said the head's out. And then I said, okay, and the baby just came right into our hands. And she, you know, a couple minutes after the birth looked at me and I was recording the baby nursing. And she looked at me and she said, that was painless.

That was actually kind of fun. And so you're going to have a wide variety of women. So why is it, why is it that some women, it's like the labor is so quick. The baby comes out. You don't even feel anything almost versus women that they're in labor for like two days, you know, excruciating pain. What causes those differences? So there's a couple different things that cause that. So if you've already had a baby, birth is going to be easier most of the time.

Like you've already kind of paved the way with the first baby coming through and the body remembers and the cervix opens easier. And then you don't really have the fear because you've already experienced it, right? Or you have the fear leading up to it going, what the hell am I doing this for again? And then you're like, oh, no, no, I remember why I'm doing this. I'm going to push my baby out at home and then you have your baby. You get more excited to meet your baby at the end of the pregnancy than you do with fearing the birth itself and then you just let everything happen and it transforms. So I see moms that are requesting

any sort of pain relief for exhaustion because it's been a few days. You know, they started having contractions and those contractions kept them up. The number one piece of advice, if anybody ever calls me in the middle of the night, is try to go back to sleep. If you can handle it, go lay back down and try to go back to sleep, even if you're resting for a few minutes in between, make sure you're trying to rest. But it's usually my first time moms that are like so excited and they've never experienced this before and they think this is for sure active labor. And then they're up for like three nights and you're like active labor hasn't begun yet.

And then they are exhausted. So, you know, it's not, it doesn't happen that often. My epidural rate within my practice in any given year is anywhere from 4 to 6%. But it's it's something that, you know, thank God it's there if we need it for exhaustion. It works. It's a really great tool if we need it for exhaustion. But everybody's going to have a different sensation for pain. Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's like, you know, how you compare your period cramps to another person. It's really not quantifiable. It's like, it's just how you're experiencing it within your body. And I've had like literally like four foot five,

tiny little Asian mamas that just push out these 10 pound babies like it's nothing. And and then I have these, you know, six foot moms that are like struggling to push out a six pound baby. So everybody's different. Everybody's anatomy's different. It depends on the baby's position. It depends on their mental state. It depends on how much fear they've worked through. There's so many pieces and equations to the puzzle that just to say like across the board, this is how it is, isn't really true. Like we have to individuate every single person. We have to individualize the way that we're looking at every single person's birth. We have to like, how's your relationship with your partner? Do you feel supported by your partner? Is your partner giving you support throughout this

process? Do you feel safe? You know, could you take a poop in front of me? You Do you feel comfortable taking poop in front of me? Because that's what you're going to do. You know, and so that's the beauty of midwifery care is that we give this care that has this continuity of care where you get to know each other throughout the process. When somebody comes into my office during the first time that I meet them, I say, I want you to feel like you're going to come in here and have coffee with your girlfriend every single prenatal appointment. It's really important to me because I want you to feel like you can cry in front of me. I want you to feel like you can tell me your deepest, darkest secrets. I want to work through your fears with me.

And I want to have that established prior to moving into the birth. In a hospital, you've never met the nurse before. You're lucky if you get your doctor because they usually have big practices and they have on-call rotations with 30 other doctors. And so it's unfamiliar faces. It's strangers. They've never, they don't know your baby. They don't know your body.

They don't know what you've done throughout the pregnancy. They don't know what, you know, you've had to accomplish throughout the pregnancy. And it's literally just walking into somebody else's space. At home, you're comfortable. It's your own house. You can dim the lights. You can drink your mineralized water. You know, like it's a completely different environment. So let's say somebody's listening and they're eight months pregnant. And everything you're saying sounds so beautiful and wonderful. And this whole time they thought I'm going to do the traditional hospital birth route. But now hearing Lindsay speak, I'm like, what if I should do a natural birth? What if I should get a midwife? Is it ever too late to switch in your pregnancy to wanting to do a natural birth and get a midwife? So no. But with the caveat being that it's going to be.

be hard to find a midwife that's not booked out. Okay. And it depends on how saturated your, your city is with midwives. There's lots of cities that have lots of midwives. And then there's some cities that have like one. I usually book, I mean, I'm like the first person that's told usually before the husband because they're like, put me on your schedule. I'm pregnant. And it's, I'm so honored by that. It's such a wonderful thing. But like I book out, usually I'm full within, you know, two weeks of people finding out they're pregnant. So I'm always like, tell me right away. But there's always ways. There's always ways to find midwives within hospital-based systems. You're going to have a much better experience if you're low risk with a midwife and a hospital-based system if the local midwives are full. You know, people travel too. The furthest somebody's traveled to come and give birth with me came from Greece. Okay. Now, wait a minute. How is that possible? Because if you know you're going to be in labor, how do you get on a plane? So they come usually a month before. Oh, and then they like live around you?

And they live around. They get an Airbnb or stay with family. And then they typically stay for about a month after they give birth. So it's a commitment. It's not like they come in labor and come and give birth with me. Like it's definitely a commitment. Boy, that must have been like a huge honor that she would fly international just have you deliver her baby. It's so amazing.

You got to put that like front page on your website. And I flew from Greece so Lindsay could help deliver mine. Like that's pretty good endorsement. It is. Okay. What is the difference between a doula and a midwife? Okay, so Adula is somebody that is trained to give physical and emotional support. That's it. Typically, Adula training is a weekend long. So you learn the basic comfort techniques, you learn about different interventions, you learn hopefully how to effectively communicate in situations where a mom is up against different things that are being presented so that there's proper informed consent that's being given. Typically, Adula meets with a family. family one to two times prenatally and they go through their birth plan and what their needs and

wishes are for the birth. And then there might be one follow-up visit. A midwife is somebody that has been trained medically in some way, shape, or form. Within the state of California, we have different guidelines and different ways that we practice according to the medical board. nationally speaking there's a certified professional midwife certification. I have both. And I could go down a whole rabbit hole of licensure and how restricting it is and how it's really not serving the woman. But I won't go down that one right now with this one. But we have the ability to be licensed through the medical boards. And then we also have the ability to have a certified nurse midwife. So there is a difference between that. Certified nurse midwives go through nursing school first. And then they typically have anywhere

from 18 months to three years of education after that. It is typically hospital-based. Not always, but certified nurse midwives don't usually have the training within the homebirth setting. And I'm saying not always, because I know some of you certified nurse midwives do. But when I was looking at it, I'd already been in the medical field. I was already accepted in a nursing school. And I was looking at one certified nurse midwifery school that's in my area was 18 months. And it was all hospital-based. And I was like, oh, that's not what I want. I don't want. to be in the hospital. And then this state accredited midwifery school that had opened up was three years of specific home birth training. We had didactic learning every single week. And we had all these

different modules and assignments that we had to move through alongside of a preceptor. So I had a teacher, another midwife that taught me through hands-on learning. And that's traditionally how midwife said how always learned was through apprenticeship. And so there's variations with all of this. And people will say, are you a midwife? Are you a medwife? And it really just depends on where your philosophy lies with birth. You know, some really good questions to ask are, you know, like what's required of me? What do you use after birth? Do you require every single woman to receive Potosin after birth? Or do you trust the process? Is there any sort of testing that's required? I think those are red flags. Like anything that is used with required should always have a red flag. And sometimes those

midwives are bound by the state. You know, there's certain things that the state or their licensure says that have to be required. Why do you need a doula and a midwife? Why not just a midwife? So remember I said doulas are physical and emotional support. Now, most midwives will also provide physical and emotional support. If you have a good midwife, she's giving you that. But I usually only recommend dulas for first-time moms, not to say that I have any opposition for a doula for somebody that's already had a baby before, but first births or longer, and to have somebody there supporting the husband to take the charge off, like I mentioned earlier, so the husband doesn't feel all that pressure. So what does she do to him? So she's guiding him in ways to help mom navigate through labor.

And she's giving education along the way, especially if you're in a hospital setting. If you're in a hospital setting, I think that a doula should always be there. But in terms of a home birth setting, you know, first time mom's great. but you know, you're not navigating as much at home as you are in the hospital setting. Okay. And so it's just one of those things. It's great. Dulas are great.

They're worth their wedding gold. I actually do a Dula training. I bring women in it that want to be Dulas and I give them all of this information and education. And then we have all these support groups and they can ask questions. And it's one of those amazing things that, thank God for Dulus. You think it is possible that a first birth could be a home birth? Oh, yeah. I see it all the time.

Okay. My transfer rate is 4 to 6%. So, you know, that means that the rest of that statistic is giving birth at home. What questions should somebody be asking their OBGYN to confirm that they'll be on board with their birthing plans? First things first, does your OBB have a group practice? Because if your OBGYN is on board with all of your natural wishes, but your OBGYN is not on call, then there is no guarantee that the OBGYN that's on call will be okay with your birthing wishes. So you need to see if they have a practice.

If they have a practice, then I would have something signed by your OBGYN that. that approves a birth plan. So if another doctor is on call, then you can say, I've already discussed this with all, you know, all my wishes I've been discussed with my OBJN. This is really what we're trying to achieve here. The doctor said that all the doctors in the group would be okay with this. Now, it's nice to communicate that prior because when you're in labor, it's really hard to communicate your needs if you're breathing through contractions every three minutes. And that's where a doula comes in really handy. That's where a very well-educated husband comes in really handy. But it's tricky. It's really tricky if these are people that you've never met before and everybody's

going to have a different philosophy of what they think about birth. They're going to have, you know, some doctors might say like, we're going to cut the cord at one minute. Other doctors might say it's fine to be cut after it's done pulsating. And there are little things that add up. And so it's really making sure that you have a doctor that has a low volume practice, if possible, somebody that's not in a big practice that has on call time. Who would a natural homebirth not be ideal for. So I actually had this conversation with Dr. Stu yesterday and there's lots of different guidelines and I think that high risk kind of lumps everybody into a category without having any conversation around the individual person. So our state, California, has certain things that says like

if the mom is HIV positive, let's just like say something like drastic like that. If the mom has preeclampsia. We risk those moms out of care. You know, there's certain things that you can come into that makes you high risk to not even start the pregnancy with. And then there's other things that you can acquire that make you high risk throughout the pregnancy. And so I say it's worth a conversation. Like there's definitely things that one midwife might consider high risk and for me to have a conversation with somebody and say, okay, yes, you have this. But what are we doing about it? How are you navigating your health throughout the pregnancy, which will continue to make you low risk, even though you have a high risk condition. And so it really has to boil down to what the midwife's

comfortable with. But there's definitely like, you know, if a mom has a heart condition where she faints every single time that, you know, she's in pain, then she's not going to be a good candidate. Okay, somebody wants to know, is that eye goop that you put on a baby right after the born really necessary? That's a good question. So the i goop that you're referring to is erythromycin. It's an antibiotic that is given topically. We squirt this like gooey gel in their eyes. Typically it was given right at birth. And this is an antibiotic because when you step into a hospital setting, they don't really trust that everybody's had adequate prenatal care. So you could be Joe Blow walking in off the street or you could be Susie Q that's had, you know, 15 prenatal appointments

and every single test there is under the sun. So we make this lump assumption that, not everybody has had screening for chlamydia agonorrhea. And then we also make an assumption that throughout the pregnancy that your husband could be cheating and have chlamydia agonorrhea. And if you had an active chlamydia or gonorrhea infection, it would not be good. It actually would be horrible for your baby. It could cause an infection that could lead to blindness. So we put this blanket stamp on every single person that enters into the hospital walls that they potentially could have an active chlamydia-a-gonorrhea infection, and every single baby should be treated for that and receive antibiotic waitmen in their eyes. Now, I've never given it to any one of my babies. It causes temporary

blindness. You're introducing an antibiotic to their system at birth. You know, my clients don't have active chlamydia gonorrhea infections. Now, on the caveat, I will say that STDs have risen dramatically since 2020. Why? I think it's the like Tinder hookup culture that we're seeing here. Like we're seeing like a significant increase up to 50% of rise of chlamydia or gonorrhea. Cipolis is included in that statistic too. So, you know, it's one of those things that like if you have a care provider that's very wary about that because of the rise of all these STEs. Just request to test a couple weeks before you give birth. Okay. You know, say like I'd like to test again for chlamity or gonorrhea because I will be refusing that, the antibiotic eye appointment. Are there any foods or

exercises in the third trimester to help naturally prepare your body for a natural delivery. I think being intuitive is the most important piece of this because I never make a generalized recommendation. Every single person is going to benefit from different things. So if we really become in tune and we listen to our bodies and really follow what our bodies are telling us, then we are preparing ourselves naturally for what's best for our body. You will read different things like eating six dates per day will help naturally soften the cervix. And there's a study about it. But here's the thing. Dates were really high in sugar. So I don't think that dates are good for every single person, especially if we're trying to minimize

blood sugar spikes, then we shouldn't be giving each person six dates a day. You'll read things like Red Raspberry Leaf Tea is really good for helping minimize the length of labor and strengthening the uterus. Red raspberry tea is so good for you. It's full of minerals. It's something that most of my clients drink throughout the whole pregnancy if they like the taste of it. Now, if I have somebody that has a hyperactive uterus and they're getting more frequent contractions. I'll say, maybe don't drink that until the end of pregnancy. But, you know, you think that there's all these like warnings for this and warnings for that. And it's like, no, come back to individual. If you have a risk factor, then you get to mitigate your own risks. But we can't say that every single person needs these certain things and every single person

doesn't need these things to certain weeks. So just, you know, wade through that. What are the risks of waiting for a placenta to be birthed on its own? And when should a doctor or midwife's step in to help with that process. So the active third stage management of labor is basically wanting the placenta to be delivered within 30 minutes. That is the medical model of care. So typically what that means is if you're with any sort of practitioner, home birth midwife hospital doctor that's practicing the active management of the third stage of labor, they will facilitate the birth of the placenta within the first 30 minutes if the placenta has not come on its own. What that means is they're typically giving some sort of medication. So potocin would be the number one medication that's usually given.

And they're typically using cord traction, pulling the cord, because the cord is attached to the placenta to deliver the placenta. Now when we do that, we run the risk of mom retaining her placenta. So the placenta is adhered to the uterine wall. It's a spongy substance. There's these little tissues that are called codylidins. And it attaches to the uterus. And the uterus is is giving all that blood and nutrients through the placenta to the baby. And the baby is getting the nutrients from the cord. So if we have these spongy-like substances that are attached to the uterus and it hasn't detached naturally on its own and we start yanking on that placenta

and a placenta stays inside, then we can end up with a risk of infection. We can end up with a mom needing to be back in the hospital on IV antibiotics. We can end up with a mom that isn't signaling through the brain that all the hormones have left with the placenta so it can decrease milk supply. So we don't want a situation where we have a retained placenta. That's not good at all. Another thing that I've seen done, and unfortunately, I've seen this done in the hospital more than a few times, is if we're yanking on this placenta and it's attached to the uterine wall, we can have uteruses that invert out of the body, which would end up with mom probably needing some sort of blood transfusion and they would end up in the OR,

with a surgical procedure to get that uterus back in the body. So I don't practice active management of the third stage of labor. I let placentas come naturally on their own as long as bleeding is within normal limits. So typically my average placenta comes within about an hour. I let the cord naturally pulsate on its own until it's done. I don't clamp or cut the cord until baby's nursed for the first time. And that usually happens within that first hour. I've seen cords pulsate as short as 30 seconds.

And I've seen cords pulsate for longer than 90 minutes. So again, individualize. We don't know what each cord is going to do, but if we allow it to do what it's supposed to do, then it's going to do exactly what that baby needs and they're going to get that blood, I call it their own blood transfusion back. That's their blood. That's not extra blood. That's blood that should be within the baby. We should be practicing optimal cord closure. We should not be cutting or clamping these cords until they've stopped pulsating. And so that's a great question to ask your practitioner. What do you do with the placenta? How comfortable are you waiting for this placenta to come out.

Like I said, naturally, I see them usually come within about an hour without any fuss. No tugging, no potocin. My bleeding rates are really low. All right, girls, who's on Strawberry Week? Not me. Sorry, if you're on your period right now, well, we are not synced up, but listen up. Garnu makes 100% organic cotton period products. Pads, panty liners, tampons, overnight psalm.

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What do you say to the woman who is terrified of a home birth because of hemorrhaging? So every state's going to have different stipulations with what medications are allowed. So in the state of California, and most states, you are allowed to carry the synthetic potocin, the synthetic form of oxytocin. The training for hemorrhage, if a mom is to hemorrhage, is to utilize medications, is to replace fluid that's being lost with IV supplies. you know, we really do replicate a standard low-risk labor and delivery room. So the less interference that we have in that third stage reduces the risk of bleeding significantly. My bleeding is so low in my practice. It's not anywhere near to compared to what national average is with hemorrhage. And so once we, you know, minimize that, recognizing that we have the ability to treat hemorrhage at

home. I mean, I've transferred to the hospital three times over the last 15 years for hemorrhage. Incredible. So it's something that, you know, it's not usually to be feared. And having good nutrition is so important for minimizing the risk of bleeding. Really? Well, you have all the iron stores back up, right? Like you have, you have all these nutrients in your body. Our blood volume doubles in pregnancy. We have something that's called hemodilution. So we have this doubling of blood volume because we know we're going to lose blood. And if we have higher iron stores, then bleeding, you know, even just a little bit more than normal, you're usually fine. And it's possible to do a natural birth with twins. Yes. And breach. And breach. So I have to caveat that, though, because we do

have a lot of restrictions within our medical board. So the state of California says that we cannot do twins or breaches at home. I spent a ton of time on breach and twin birth with Dr. Stewart, Fishbein, several months ago. So you can go back and listen to that whole episode. I mean, we went really in depth on that because that's his specialty. Yes. So that's a good one to go to if you had a lot of questions about that. What do you think is actually riskier, a C-section or delivering a breach baby naturally? It depends on mom's health. And it depends on if the practitioner has been properly trained how to deliver a breach baby. And usually the best way to catch a breach baby is by not doing anything. Hands off the breach is my protocol.

for breach unless we need to go in and perform some sort of assistance and help baby out. If the practitioner doesn't have breach training, a C-section is going to be safer for that mom and baby because they can screw things up so bad. But if we have a team of people that know what they're doing, a breach vaginal birth is going to be much safer. Can you push a 10-pound baby out with a history of C-sections? The biggest baby that I've ever witnessed be born was 12 pounds, six ounces, and that was after a C-section. Cool. Okay. But you have to have the caveat.

12 pounds, 6 ounces is actually like a pretty artificially big baby. Like that mom was consuming probably too much sugar. Like that's a big baby. Is it possible? Yes. But we, you know, babies shouldn't really be that big. Okay. Yeah.

If you're prioritizing protein, you usually don't have babies that are much more than 10 pounds. Is a natural birth possible for a type 1 diabetic? So I just did a whole podcast. with Dr. Stewart-Fishbein on this. And the answer is yes with lots of gray area. Okay. So if it is a managed type 1 diabetic that is fully in control of sugars and we're averaging a hemoglobin A1C under 6.0, then there should be ways to navigate a mom having a home

birth with this situation. Within a hospital setting, all of the protocols are set in the 1970s and they haven't really changed for our type 1 diabetics back in the 1970s. these, we really didn't even have access to checking our blood sugars. We didn't have glucometers that were readily available. So we were checking it through urine. We didn't have good insulin systems. Now we have continuous glucose monitors. We have insulin pumps. We have moms that know what their blood sugars are doing on a regular basis every single day. So if they're well-managed, then I don't see any reason why a mom shouldn't be able to at least have the option of having a home

birth with type 1 diabetes. Are you recommending that your clients eat their placenta or no? I do. I really recommend placenta and capsul. I think it's a great medicine that's used. If I have a mom that's bleeding a lot, I'll actually advocate for raw placenta, like, I'll make it into a smoothie right at birth if needed. You can't taste it if you use strawberries. And every mammal eats their placenta. If you look, always, the first thing that mammals are doing are eating their placentas. And our great cave grandmas, we're definitely not just letting them sit out because we would be attracting predators. So, again, our great cave grandmas were eating our placentas for sure. So I've had lots of moms

that have done not the first time they haven't encapsulated and they've encapsulated the second or third time and they will say anecdotal, of course, but they will say it's a world of difference. And when people throw the term anecdotal at me, I get so mad because, you know what, I listen to moms. I don't give a crap what a study is saying. If a mom is telling me something, that means that I'm listening to her experience and that is so much more beneficial than anything I will ever read in a journal or a study. Are we doing too many ultrasounds? I'm seeing this trend of crunchy moms being like, I only want one ultrasound or I don't want to do any. What do you think about that? It's a tricky one. So I typically only recommend the anatomy scan, which is done between 18 to 20

weeks. I think it's a good idea so that we look at the, you know, the heart and the lungs and make sure that the placenta is in a good position to give, you know, give birth. If the placenta is blocking the cervix, it's not a good idea to have a homebirth. And then there's also research that, you know, says that the Doppler, which we use to listen to the baby's heart rate, is actually worse than an ultrasound. So is that the thing that people can buy and like do themselves? Yes. Yes. That's not good for the baby? No, because it's a sound wave. And it can create cell disruption. There is a famous, I don't know if I'd call her famous, but she writes all the midwifery textbooks. Her name is Anne Fry. She's like this super, you know, like geeky, academic,

person that sits and just reads journals all days and then translates it into midwifery books. And the data that she says is that one minute of Doppler is equal to 30 minutes of ultrasound. So it's questionable, right? Like you could say, I have a little ultrasound machine. I try to use it very minimally. But if a mom comes into me that's 10 weeks and wants to hear the baby's heartbeat, I give informed consent. I let her mitigate her own risk.

and I say it can take me anywhere from three to four minutes searching your belly to find your baby's heartbeat with an ultrasound. I can potentially find that baby within five seconds. So I'm going to have a lot less exposure time with ultrasound. And if we look at what the data from Anne Fry says, then we have a significantly decreased risk of having that exposure to baby because of the risk of Doppler being worse than ultrasound. So it's all debatable. I'm sure midwife listening will be like, I don't know if I agree with that. Fine. Do your own. research. But what what I find with Anne Fry's research is that I feel a little bit more comfortable being able to find a baby quickly if they do desire to see a heartbeat on their baby.

Are synthetic prenatal vitamins just expensive pee? Yes. Yes. And the other piece of it, not only is it synthetic and it's expensive pee, but if you don't know your M-T-H-F-R gene status, so that's like a word that's been flung around the last couple years, it's one of those things at the crunchy world, it's like, well, do you have MTH of our gene mutation? If you don't know that, then what's going to be in all those synthetic prenatal vitamins is folic acid. And if you have the MTH our gene mutation, then that folic acid is actually going to be detrimental to your health. You should be taking some sort of folate, which is not a synthetic form that's methylated, so it processes in your body much better. Is treatment for group B strep really necessary?

So there's really interesting data. And the way that I like to look at, any data that comes out is not just in the, you know, vision of what the United States is saying, but within the vision of the whole world. So GBS is a bacteria. It's called group beta strep. Yes, people think strep, strep throat, it's within that bacterial family. We have this in our intestinal tracks. And 35 to 45% of the time, we have the potential of it being in our vagina. Now, if we had a baby that came through the birth canal and contracted group B strep, which there is potential if the test is showing that it's there, then that baby has the potential of being sick. And the data from the United States, and this was on my informed consent form, so this is why I always say look bigger, shows that if there

is a mom that has group B strep and is not treated with IV antibiotics every four hours in labor, that the chance of baby contracting GBS is one in 200, right? That kind of sounds scary. Like one in 200, maybe I want IV antibiotics. And then you look at the data that's out of the UK. And what they did is they factored out healthy, low-risk, full-term babies. So the data from the U.S. includes all babies born. It could be a 23-week baby. It could be a baby who has other congenital anomalies that makes their immune system less. It clumps all those babies together. But for a healthy, full-term baby, the data shows that a baby is a one-and-five-thousand-finding and chance of being affected by GBS.

Wow. Now, of that, it is a one in 39, 682 chance of the baby experiencing death or serious illness from group Bistrup. That's a lot less scary than one in 200, right? Like that data shows a lot different perspective, if you will, on how and when you would choose antibiotics. Now, for a home birth midwife, I can, I think the last time I can, I can, I think the last time I gave IV antibiotics was like six or seven years ago. And the mom had risk factors, so it made sense.

If we have prolonged rupture of membranes, if we have any sort of indication of infection like a fever, then yes, please, let's protect that baby. But if we clump all these moms together and we give 35 to 45% of women, IV antibiotics prophylactically, prophylactically basically just means just in case. Okay. Then that means that 35 to 45% of the population starts life with a completely compromised gut. Okay. All of those babies will have their gut biome completely wiped out at birth. So then what's the best protocol if a mother has had the antibiotics for group B strep gave birth? What should she be doing now in the post-partum stage? There is a huge push right now for making. sure that we are taking these babies' guts into consideration. Maybe with probiotics, you know, there's different things that we can do to help kind of reseed their guts. But really what we should be pushing for is a rapid test because the test that we do in pregnancy is a test that's done around 36 weeks of pregnancy. We see the test is usually good for six weeks. The test can change,

it really could change on any day. Like you could have GBS one day. You could have it on another day. And so we really should be pushing for a rapid test. That's what the UK is doing. That's what Japan's doing. They come in and labor, they get tested. You're positive or you're negative. Then you make decisions based on what your risk factors are. But that does not, that's not the case here in the United States. And I will say, like, if you're giving birth in a hospital and you're tested positive for GBS, you're going to be up against a big system if you push back against antibiotics. And then there's going to be a pediatrician that wants to monitor your baby. Some will probably want blood cultures to make sure that baby doesn't have GBS. It's all liability. That's what

happens in our culture. We always are practicing based on liability. So you really have to be careful within the system of the hospital if you're pushing back on antibiotics. Can you do it? Sure, but you need to be educated about it. You need to have the data behind you and you need to make sure that you're making a convicted decision that's right for you and your family. How do you know if you've had birth trauma and if you do, what can be done to address it? I think a lot of people will leave situations with birth with PTSD if they've had birth trauma. It will come up in different ways. They'll be different ways that they get triggered. Usually birth trauma presents itself as some sort of violation to the body. If you read, you know, any study on ways that women describe birth trauma, it's usually described as a

rape, you know, any violation to the body. If you look at the definition of rape, it's a violation to the body. And so I really encourage women that have experienced birth trauma. I think that they might have experienced birth trauma to talk to other women. There's lots of different networks that are out there, even finding your local midwife and having some sort of consultation and talking through your birth and saying, like, is this normal? How, like what I'm feeling, it doesn't feel like this is normal. Usually midwives will always provide that to the community of women. But there's, there's a lot of different books out there that move through birth trauma. But it's something like, please, please, if you're feeling like that, try to seek out how you can ill yourself and move past

it, especially if you plan on having more babies. If you could only give three books that every woman wanting a natural birth should read, what should they be? I love Ina Mae. She's been canceled in the cancel culture world. But she's a gem. She has such good experience, and she has a guide to childbirth. Ina Mae's Guide to Childbirth is amazing.

There's a really fantastic book that's called Burthing From Within. That's by Pam England, old school, but still amazing. And then I like to make sure that we really incorporate postpartum in because we spend all this time talking about pregnancy and the birth experience. Pregnancy, obviously, you know, that's not 10 months, 40 weeks-ish. But birth is typically like very short, you know, like you can have a really fast birth. But typically we're talking about one or two days, but we don't plan for postpartum in at all. And then we end up with people that have overprepared for the birth process. And then there's no attention put to the postpartum.

So I love the book, the fourth trimester. And that's just a way to really prepare yourself, making sure that you have like nutrient-dense meals, postpartum, making sure that you have things taken care of to feel emotionally supported. I super emphasize that you stay in the house for two weeks after you give birth. And most cultures around the world throughout all of time and still today, it's 40 days. So my two weeks is a shortened Western way of it. But I say five days in the bed, five days around the bed and five days around the house. Like, fine, go get some sunlight in the backyard. like I really want women in bed for the first five days and then they can start to kind of venture out if

they want to go on their balcony and get a little bit of sun. But the healing process, the fourth trimester, making sure that that is prioritized would change so much in this culture. It would change postpartum depression. It would change postpartum anxiety. We would have so much more emphasis on taking care of ourselves and preparing ourselves to avoid all of those things if we just did a couple simple things. All right. As we wrap here, let's talk numbers. How much is it on average to hire a midwife and do a home birth versus hospital. And will insurance pay for a midwife? Yes. Okay. So average is going to vary state to state for sure. So typically in Southern California where I live, the average birth is anywhere from $8 to $10,000. Okay.

Midwest, you're probably looking anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000. With a midwife? With a midwife. And then what's hospital? Hospital is interesting because you go in and you say, okay, they cover and insurance covers everything within the hospital system. Now, it does, but it depends on what type of insurance you have. It depends on what type of deductible you have. Typically for a standard vaginal birth, if you were to go in cash pay, you're looking at a minimum of $20,000. Okay, minimum. Now, if you have insurance, and let's just go PPO. PPO is usually they pay 80%, and then you pay 20%. Now, the hospitals negotiate with insurance companies. So what the $20,000 might be, it might be look completely different once you get your explanation of benefits.

And so you could be paying anywhere from $5 to $10,000, sometimes even more. If you have an epidural, you're going to shoot up another $10,000. A C-section rate, I've seen C-section bills, you know, up to $60,000. I have a friend who just had a baby that was born with a congenital anomaly that she didn't know about prior. And that baby had a five-month NICU stay. She just got a $5 million bill that came through. Now, she has insurance.

But when you get a bill in the mail that says five-mings, million dollars. You can't help but have so much fear. I mean, that's, that's who has five million dollars laying around. So, um, there's, there's interesting ways to look at all of this. Most midwives won't take insurance. I don't touch insurance. It's a massive headache. Now, with that being said, I have an insurance biller that people can get reimbursed. Families can get reimbursed after the birth, but you can't even bill insurance until you give birth. So all that 40 weeks leading up to the birth, we don't bill anything until we have a birthday for the baby. So you're looking at maybe anywhere from six months to a year following the birth to get reimbursed. And most insurance companies

will maybe pay to $3,000 for a home birth at best. I'm going to have another push here where families look into health shares. So I don't know if you've ever heard of a health share before, but a health share is the rogue, if you will, outside alternative to health insurance. So it's outside of the Blue Cross and the Cignas and that and all of that. There's a couple different health shares that I work with, Christian health care ministries, Samaritan Ministries. If you Google it, you're going to find different ones. They love homebirth. Cool. They usually pay 100% of homebirth. They usually pay for supplements. The caveat to these is that they usually you have to have them for a certain amount of time prior to getting

pregnant. So like 180 days or something like that. Each one's different. But I always... So when you get married, get that. Yes, health shares are amazing and they usually are always for the natural healthers out there, like they pay for chiropractic and acupuncture and all of that. So I definitely push health shares. Lindsay, I just, this could be, I'm so mad. I know my listeners like, no, don't wrap, but we have to wrap. So all the questions that I didn't get to, people that really want to talk to you or have additional stuff that they really need answered, where can they go? Is there an interview that you've done that you recommend or your Instagram or website? Yeah, my Instagram is a great source of knowledge. It's just my name, Lindsay, Males, I'm sure it will be

in the show notes because it's spelled a little funny. And then my website is the remembering.com. And I have all of my previous podcast listed there. I have all my courses on there. I have free ebook content on there. And it's just a place where you can go to find me. And that's where people can also hire you as their midwife? Yes. Cool. Awesome. You have been so fun. I've learned new things. And I just also think that you are such a compelling speaker. And you speak with knowledge. I love that you have such a strength to you. Like, I can tell that you're not going to let any BS fly when it comes to your patients, your clients, but you also have such compassion and I see the joy in what you do. It's just, it's so fun hearing you talk. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me. It was so fun to be here and hopefully we get a part too. We absolutely are getting a part too. Yeah. You have to share this episode like, leave a five-star review. Tell us if you want to hear another one with Lindsay. Thank you. Yes, you're welcome. I love doing these birth episodes and I know that you guys are really, into them too. If you want more like this one, I interviewed Dr. Stu Fishbein last fall. He's an OBGYN who specializes in home births and twin and breach delivery at home. That is season five, episode 12. I know that Lindsay touched a little bit on diet during and after pregnancy, but what about feeding kids who are a little older? I have a guest next week that I have been

so excited to get. She's BFFs with Hilda Labrata Gore. If you remember Hilda, she is a mother of five who created a program that is teaching schools in California how to make nutrient dense ancestral-based meals for kids. She's going to let us know how to change what's being offered in your school's cafeteria or your church or even homeschool co-op, how to get kids interested in nutrient-dense meals and dropping processed food altogether and even started a training program where anyone in America can come to learn how to cook like this. Look for that next Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern, anywhere you get your

podcast or the real Alex Clark, YouTube. Don't forget to please leave a five-star review and let others know why they need to be listening to The Spillover. Make sure you're subscribed so episodes automatically download. I'm Alex Clark and this is The Spillover. Love you, mean it. Bye.