Realfoodology - Natural Birth, Epidurals, + The Real Risks of Formula | Lindsey Meehleis

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

244: This week, I’m joined by Lindsey Meehleis, a certified midwife, doula, lactation consultant, EMT, CPR instructor, and neonatal resuscitation provider. Lindsey brings a truly holistic approach to birth, and our conversation dives deep into the importance of honoring the natural physiology of labor. As someone on my own fertility journey, I asked all the questions I’ve been curious about — from how to find a midwife to what real support during birth looks like. We explore the over-medicalization of birth in the Western world, how to prepare for a more empowered and informed birthing experience, and why individualized care matters so much. Lindsey’s wisdom and passion for supporting women through this rite of passage is incredibly inspiring — I left this conversation wanting her by my side when I give birth someday. Topics Discussed: What is the difference between a midwife and a doula? How can I prepare for a natural birth in a medicalized world? Are epidurals and Pitocin necessary for every labor? What are the risks of relying on baby formula over breastfeeding? How to find a trustworthy midwife or doula? Sponsored By: Our Place | Use code REALFOODOLOGY for 10% off at fromourplace.com Timeline | Go to timelinenutrition.com/REALFOODOLOGY and use code REALFOODOLOGY for 10% off Qualia | Go to qualialife.com/REALFOODOLOGY for up to 50% off and use code REALFOODOLOGY at checkout for an additional 15% off. Pique | Piquelife.com/Realfoodology That’s P-I-Q-U-E life dot com/REALFOODOLOGY.  Graza | So head to Graza.co and use REALFOODOLOGY to get 10% off of TRIO which includes Sizzle, Frizzle and Drizzle, and get to cookin’ your next chef-quality meal! Cozy Earth | Go to cozyearth.com and Use code REALFOODOLOGY for 40% off best-selling sheets, pajamas, and more. Trust me, you won’t regret it.   Timestamps:  00:00:00 – Introduction 00:03:42 – How birth became medicalized 00:06:51 – The "PuberTea" and early health education 00:08:17 – Navigating pregnancy in the Western world 00:13:18 – Epidurals, fentanyl, and early latching challenges 00:18:10 – The risks of baby formula 00:22:25 – The impact of high fructose corn syrup 00:24:14 – Maternity leave and postpartum support 00:26:34 – Latching tips & working with lactation consultants 00:31:51 – The truth about breastfeeding 00:33:46 – A brief history of birth practices 00:35:01 – C-sections, vaginal seeding, and gut health 00:37:40 – Learning to trust your body 00:39:31 – Pitocin, natural birth, and informed choices 00:44:11 – Advocacy and the MAHA Mom Coalition 00:48:44 – Environmental toxins: Glyphosate and fertility 00:51:52 – Understanding gestational diabetes 00:55:40 – Birth centers vs. hospitals 01:00:04 – How to find a midwife or doula 01:02:13 – Managing emergencies during birth 01:07:10 – Why individualized birth care matters 01:09:10 – Midwife vs. Doula: What's the difference? 01:10:53 – Addressing concerns about home birth 01:13:58 – Where to find Lindsey Meehleis Show Links: Sperm counts have declined by over 50% globally The U.S. fertility rate has dropped from 2.48 in 1970 to just 1.64 toda The U.S. maternal mortality rate has increased by over 60% in two years Black women are 2.6 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. Hispanic maternal mortality rates The World Needs 900,000 More Midwives Breastfeeding rates Worker protections need to be implemented Check Out Lindsey:  Instagram https://www.theremembering.com/media https://www.maha-mom-coalition.com/ Check Out Courtney:  LEAVE US A VOICE MESSAGE Check Out My new FREE Grocery Guide! @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Produced By: Drake Peterson

On today's episode of the Real Foodology podcast. We can go into leaky gut, we can go into all the allergens, we can go into the fact that most formula is made up of seed oils and high fructose corn syrup. Like how is that a good building block and foundation for the entire nutrition basis of your life? That's not it. Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast. On today's episode, I sit down with the midwife, Lindsay Mihielis, who is just incredible.

She's also a doula, a lactation consultant, a CPR instructor, and an emergency medical technician who's a provider in neonatal resuscitation. We sat down to talk all about giving birth and why normal physiological birth is so important and what it means when you have this rite of passage. I asked her so many questions because as you all know, I am on this fertility journey myself and I'm trying to learn everything I can before I get pregnant and I'm really interested in having a midwife and a doula and I just wanted to know everything, the ins and outs of it. So this was such a great episode. She is truly incredible. We talked about so much and I don't want to give anything away. I just think you need to listen to the episode and I hope you enjoy it as

much as I did. As always, if you could take a moment to rate and review the podcast, if you want to tag both of us, if you love this episode on your Instagrams, tag me at real foodology and she shares her tag at the very end. And I just hope that you love this episode so much. A lot of non-stick cookware still contains harmful chemicals like Teflon, PFASs, which are forever chemicals, and these can leach into our food, the environment, and our home.

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more endurance, and so much more. Timeline is offering 10% off your order of Mitopur. If you go to timeline.com slash realfoodology, again, that's timeline.com slash realfoodology. Amazing. Lindsay, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's so nice to have you actually in my space here. I know. We were just saying this before recording. I was looking around the room and I'm seeing all of your photos from births that you've done and it's really special to be in this space talking to you right now.

Yeah. It worked out perfect. Okay. So I want to get into the meat of all this because I want to make sure we have time to cover everything. You and I texted about something recently and I was like, we have to talk about this on the podcast. And you were talking about how birth is a rite of passage for women. And you're concerned or I want to let you really tell what your thoughts are about this, but your concern is that a lot of women are missing out on this rite of passage because we medicalized

birth so much. And I want to be very clear that obviously, thank God we have medical interventions for when there's emergencies. But can you talk about that? Maybe, yeah, talk more into women's power when they give birth. So I even like to start by saying that I'm so grateful that we have the interventions that are there for even outside of emergencies because you can't talk somebody into having a home birth. Now we also have to realize that for all of time, we've all given birth, you know, in a hut in a cave, surrounded by all of our aunties and our sisters and the, you know,

wise medical women in the community. And so like, like, it's a modern day convenience that we have these things. But I never want to come on and just be, like, abrasive and be like, no, everybody has to do this. But when we actually think about the ritual of giving birth, like, it's an actual art, and it's one of our first experiences as a human. So as we were born as a baby, that was our first rite of passage here onto the earth. And so how we were born and how we were treated at birth actually gives us these deep imprinted, primal patterns that we can create throughout our whole life. And that could be a whole podcast in itself. But you know, if we're welcomed in in this gentle way and we're talked to with soft voices

and the lights are low and you go straight up onto your mom's chest skin to skin and then you have the primal imprint of crawling and doing a breast crawl to the breast. You really think that life out here is pretty good. Opposed to, you know, if you look back at videos in the 1930s to the 1950s, the most common thing you think of is a doctor holding the baby by the foot and spanking the baby. What a rude awakening to Earth.

And so while that's our first imprint here as humans, I always like to take it into the rites of passage that we have through all of the things throughout a woman's life. So we move into when we first menstruate. That's a really beautiful rite of passage. And back 50 years ago, we weren't even really talking about it. It was something that was the curse. You weren't allowed to really, you would hide your maxi pads or tampons. And if you had, if you were lucky enough to have a mom that would talk about it, then

maybe there would be some conversation around it. Whereas when my daughter got her first period, it was a full celebration. So I hosted at my house what we called the puberty. And we had all of her classmates over. And she was horrified by the way. She was horrified. I was going to say that's so cute. It's really, really sweet.

But she was horrified. And we talked about the different things that their bodies were going through. And so we talked about their breast changing and we talked about the different phases that happen throughout a female's body in the, you know, anywhere from 28 to whatever day cycle it is that your body has. And we really lifted any shame around it. And so we did that. And then we moved into when my daughter actually got her first menstruation. I actually took her to a Korean Day spa and we did this whole celebration around it.

And then we moved into preparing our bodies to give birth. So there's a big piece that's missing when we talk about birth is we need to talk about preconception because really your body is a fertile ground. We should be tilling the soil. We should be making sure that you're taking good care of yourself, that your partner is taking good care of themselves. We know that there's such huge factors involved in both of you guys being in good health moving into conception. Then I always say that we consciously call in our babies. So I recommend if somebody comes in for a preconception consult to like actually start writing letters to your unborn baby, like, like, what are the things that you want for

this baby? Like, how can this baby come here to be your teacher? Right? And then we move through the pregnancy. And we in a Western world, we go through the pregnancy in a very, very beta brain. Like, we are just like constantly driving and moving and there's all these things that are happening and we don't get to really come into the space of being in an alpha brain and that slows everything down.

We get into our feminine space. We should be like, you know, out in a field picking, you know, and planting and knitting or sitting by the fire singing, all of those things that just slow us down. And it's really hard to do in our culture. And so if we start to like weave those things in, even if we are in our modern day culture, like let's not have phones in the room, let's have that like contact with your partner, let's have the oxytocin start to flow, which then helps everything,

all of your receptor sites get ready for birth. And so if you are just conscious about those few things, it really does change moving into the next rite of passage, which is birth. And so I think that we've all known what's happened over the last 20, 30 years, and we've softened our generation. Like we've really made it so we don't do

hard things. Let's numb the hard things. Let's give every kid a trophy. Let's make it so it like everything's fair. Like we've taken away that hard is actually beautiful. That's the contrast of life. Without hard, then you don't see the good. You don't have those experiences, those rich experiences where you really get the contrast see the good. You don't have those experiences, those rich experiences where you really get the contrast of the two. And so I always say, you know, for out all of time we've given birth without any sort of medical intervention. Really grateful we have it. But if you actually learn the reason of why, it's so important to go through those stages and learn what your body is capable of

It's hard work like I've set across from Thousands of women who have given birth and I've last night. I had two births I was with two women last night that gave birth One women gave birth to a ten pound three ounce baby and she's looking at me for her fourth baby She's given birth with me before. We've met in this space before. And I just had to remind her, like, the only way out is through. Like, you can do this. You were made for this. Your body was made for this. The sole purpose of you being here is to welcome your babies and to do this, to give birth. And once you get through on the other side,

first of all, you meet your baby, which is the greatest gift that there ever is in the whole entire world But then you get this rush of hormones which doesn't happen in medicalized birth And you get this rush of hormones and it you are like high as a kite for days like in the most beautiful way you are literally Programming yourself to fall in love with your baby. And so, like, of course, if you have a medicalized birth, you will still fall in love with your baby. That's not my message. But the extent of how high those hormones go is nothing you've ever

experienced in your whole life. Like, it's nothing like an orgasm. It's literally the greatest gift that you'll ever get. So it's this beautiful rite of passage where on the other side there's just something that's so wonderful. And, you know, it's to watch women walk through that, to watch their partners watch their partner move through that is one of the greatest gifts that I've ever had in my whole lifetime. And when I enter into that space, it truly feels like heaven on earth. Like it's a different energy than anybody. It's something that I really can't even describe because it's something that's so holy and

sacred. And so it's just, you know, you get to sit and be in that energy and you get to sit at the feet of these women and you get to watch them walk through the hardest thing they've ever done. And then on the other side, they get this beautiful baby. And yeah, I just wish that that was talked about more because it's such a profound rite of passage and we're missing out on so much when we take that away. And then it affects postpartum. Which I want to talk about. Yeah, that was going to be my next question. But I did just

want to say, as someone who has not been able to experience that yet, I very much hope that I get to. But you were really speaking to me when you said all of that, because I've always had this notion and this feeling of there's a power in all of us that sometimes needs to be unlocked under hardship. And I can imagine that when you go through something that tough, it unlocks this new magic in you that I can imagine of like, wow, I am so powerful. And I remember I texted one of my best girlfriends about this months ago, because she said something like, you know, this isn't for everyone. It

isn't for the, you know, the faint of heart. And I said, well, I actually believe it's for every woman and that we're designed to actually go through this because then it helps us really see the magic and power that we have in all of us as women. And again, I want to be very careful and say like, obviously, like if you have a medical emergency and intervention, thank God we have all that, right? So this is not to like shame anyone that didn't, that has gone through it in a different way. And we're going to talk about all that too. But the postpartum thing I think is really interesting too, because there's a couple

things that I've learned that I want my audience to hear about. One is that I heard that epidurals are now adding fentanyl to them. And so if you don't know this, you and your baby are getting fentanyl if you don't ask for it. And then I heard that it affects postpartum mentally for the mom. And then sometimes it can help the baby or it affects the baby where they may not be able to latch on right away. Yeah, this is so very controversial.

Yeah. Well, we dive latch on right away. Yeah, this is so very controversial. Yeah. Well, we dive into all of it here. So what happens is if there was a study that was put out that basically was the length of the epidural. So however long, the longer the epidural, then what we were finding is that if there was any possible, anybody thinking that there was something that the mom was on, if the baby had a talk screen and a baby tested positive for fentanyl, what they had to start realizing is that sometimes it was from the epidural, like it was crossing the placenta barrier

and it was going in. So it was like, you know, 12 hours, there was a certain percentage and then you go into like 15 hours, it was a higher percentage and 24 hours and like, that's a long time to have medication flowing through your body. And so in regards to the postpartum part with mom, with the emotions, even prior to their being fentanyl and epidurals, any time that we're going in and we're having any sort of intervention that's knocking the connection of the feeling that's happening within the body, because when you get an epidural, the goal is that you're numb from your nipples to your toes and so you're completely

disconnected from the process that's happening with your body and so it does interfere with some of the hormone receptors in the brain and when that happens then that can impact many things I mean you know we can talk about postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety we can talk about breastfeeding success rates like there's so many things. Sadly, there's not great studies on any of this because when you look at Big Farm, like this is their bread and butter. And they know that if they get, you know, it's womb to tomb, cradle to grave, you know,

it's that they know right out the bat. Like if they get women, like they're making decisions for that family for the rest of its life, they have a good experience if they have all of these things happen that they're going to making those decisions for their family involving that specific like medical group or that specific hospital and so they really try to like make everything early. Yeah, they get you in early. So well, and it's also why they try to get you on formula before you're out of the hospital because then once your baby's on formula, your body stops producing enough milk, right? Yes. Yes. And so then you get the baby on formula and then you can't really go back.

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the sizzle, the frizzle, and the drizzle, and get to cooking with your next chef quality meal. Again, that's realfoodologycode at graza.co. No. So that's a really big problem. And so we've been dealing with the issues of Nestle, which is one of the biggest formula makers for, gosh, since the 60s, where they're going into impoverished areas in Africa and giving out baby formula, where these people literally couldn't afford it at all. Like there was no way that they were going to be able to afford this for their babies.

So then they were watering down the formula because they were losing their milk supplies and there was I mean there was thousands and thousands of babies dying from this. It was a really bad thing. And so like yeah great we're here in America and we don't have you know as much of the poverty as some of the places in Africa that this was happening. But like, hello, it's still America. Like, we still have high unemployment rates. We still have people on, you know, WIC. We still have people on all these governmental systems. And so when you go in, I mean, it's across the board.

So I used to be an international board certified lactation consultant. I did all of the schooling. I had all the certifications. I worked on the hospital system for years and years. I saw thousands and thousands and thousands of babies in the hospital for breastfeeding. And I would walk into the hospital and I would look at the board, which in the postpartum unit was all the moms that were there and what their births were. So they would, like, it would say, you know, C for cesarean or V for vaginal birth.

And then it would usually have some sort of indication of there was an induction. And I would go in and I would say, okay, I'm going to see her, her, her and her because anytime that there was any massive intervention, I knew that there was going to be a problem with breastfeeding. And so I got so disheartened by the system because every time what it really came back to is like, if we fix birth, then we're not going to see as many breastfeeding problems. And that was one of the main reasons that I pushed myself to midwifery is because that to me was fixing birth.

That was empowering the mom to have an experience that she was in control of even if we needed any sort of medical intervention. She was the one making the decisions. And then the next thing is that it was also taking babies' experience and the consideration of their experience into what happens during the birth. And so, you know, I talked about, you know, earlier, like how we would dim the lights and lower our voices and we would let the baby breast crawl and all those things. And if those things aren't in play, then it disrupts the natural pattern of a successful

breastfeeding. So, you know, I have deep sympathy for women that have issues with breastfeeding. I mean, I was the top, I knew so much about breastfeeding when I was breastfeeding my son. And I had issues for like a good six weeks with him. And I had successfully breastfed my daughter for years prior. So I was like an expert on all of this. And so we struggled and it wasn't because of the birth. It was just because he had issues with his latch and we had to do some body work

and craniosacral and stuff like that. So I understand how hard it is to breastfeed and I remember like looking at him at three o'clock in the morning and being like, you're so lucky that I'm gonna keep going because this is hard and I'm just gonna keep going because I know this is what's best for you. And so we have to take into consideration that there

are situations like, you know, there's this whole thing right now, or it's like Fed is best and it's like, I cannot, I'm sorry, that drives me nuts. It drives me. It's the bare minimum. And like, yes, thank God we have formula and alternatives to breast milk if we need it. But that should be our last resort. It truly should be our last resort. We should be able to have milk banks across the country of donor milk. You can pasteurize, you could even dehydrate milk and make it in human milk into formula. You know, like you just basically scoop it out and put it in.

But live human milk for our babies is what we should be promoting. This is the building blocks of the entire future. We can go into leaky gut, we can go into all the allergens, we can go into the fact that most formula is made up of seed oils and high fructose corn syrup. Like how is that a good building block and foundation for the entire nutrition basis of your life? That's not it.

No, it's not. And I do want to say, so I said, I'm laughing not at you, I'm laughing because I got into this whole thing with this registered dietitian like last year who we've talked about before and I don't even want to give her any sort of like air time. But I will say this. So I said high fructose corn syrup was in baby formula on a podcast like three years ago. And this RD has had it out for me for the last couple of years. And apparently now just to set the record

straight, so this doesn't happen again. Now it's corn syrup solids, not high fructose corn syrup. I know we're both rolling our eyes by the way. Which is probably just a mislabel. They're just relabeling something to say. Well, I think they relabeled it so that mothers weren't as concerned anymore because now all the RDs that are more on the traditional route and really all about the big formula, they're all in lockstep now saying, well, corn syrup solids are actually really healthy for a baby and it's lower in fructose and it's really good for you and yeah anyway so I

just wanted to correct that because it's yeah you know there was some stuff circulating online so yeah now it's corn syrup solids but my whole thing is is it comes from genetically modified corn unless if it says non-gmo on there most of them do not say non-gmo which means higher glyphosate also, babies weren't supposed to be eating corn right out of the womb. No. Most people are allergic to corn now because we have so much corn in our food supply. But anyway, so I just wanted to say that. But yeah, so let's talk about, because I was actually reading about this the other day,

and I read it's actually on our CDC website right now, that babies who are breastfed actually have a lower incident of obesity, lower incidence of asthma, allergies, like you name it. It was just like down the line. It's a little incidence of SIDS. Yes. Because it's not as heavy of a protein. The babies that are breastfed actually are supposed to wake up more frequently.

And so if they don't go into that deep sleep period, then they wake up and they're not more susceptible to SIDS. Like there's so many things that, I mean, why are we not promoting something that's optimal? Nicole Because it doesn't make money. Aliza Of course. Nicole Because breast milk is free. Aliza Of course. Nicole Let's be real. That's really what's happening there.

And you know what's even more insidious? I'm actually going to do a podcast specifically about this. We don't talk a lot about it, but a lot of these formula companies are lobbying in Washington to- Aliza Huge money. Nicole Because they don't want women to have longer But a lot of these formula companies are lobbying in Washington to… Huge money. Huge money. Because they don't want women to have longer maternity leaves because the shorter maternity leave they have… Then they have more customers.

Exactly. The more likely they are to put their baby on formula. That is insidious. Yeah. I mean, there's really no mother that wants to go back to work at six weeks. Like, that's insanity. Like, you're literally just finishing bleeding. Like if you had any vaginal tears, like all of that,

like you're literally in the throes of it at six weeks. Like to tell a mom, like, sorry, go put your kid in daycare. Let's have you go back to work full-time. And then you go straight into the cradle to grave. Like you're a customer for life at that moment. And so when we look at other countries, I have my sister that lives in Sweden. And so she has a year and a half off. And the partner does too.

And the partner has six months off. And if the partner doesn't take the six months, then it applies to they just transferred over back to the mom. I didn't know that. Yeah. And so you look at their breastfeeding rates compared to ours, and it's so significantly different. And then you look at their health. I mean, you know, just that alone, you can easily contribute it, not just to them just being breastfed, but them to being with their parents, to them, you know, outside is so important to them. It's just a different, such a different community.

And oh my gosh, you know, and I think that's why it's so important with the movement that we're, you know, pushing so hard for right now with the maha movement is like this is why. So where you are in the spectrum as far as like formula and like breast-making goes, let's just say because I always like to have a conversation around, I'm going to get a lot of heat for this. My general thinking is that most women can breastfeed. A lot more women are actively choosing to go to formula because I have heard from multiple my friends it is very hard to breastfeed and a lot of women are running their own businesses. I have several of my girlfriends who are working and it's hard.

I heard it's really hard. It's hard. So a lot's really hard. It's hard. So a lot of women are wanting to go on formula because it makes their life easier. And by the way, just to be very clear, I am not here to shame anyone. No. Like I am like whatever you think is best for you and your baby, like I'm all here for it and I'm a huge champion of you. But I just like to talk about this because let's say that there's so that for the small subs of women that just

like really cannot like let's say they they have breast cancer or on chemo or something there's insufficient glandular tissue which is something that we can see every now like there's there are things like if you've had breast reduction surgery like there's there are definitely things that can impact breastfeeding but I can tell you I don't have any formula reps in my office I'm not giving formula to any of my clients. They don't go home, you know, they don't leave the office here with any formula. I have a hundred percent breastfeeding initiation rate. That means that every single baby that is born with me has the opportunity to do the

breast crawl. They go straight to the breast. They are always on latched within the first hour after birth. And I mean, there's not always, always is a hard word, but you know, within most situations, they're always latched. And by six months, I would say that my population of moms that 95% are still breastfeeding. So I'm going to bring it back to the rite of passage. Right? Birth is hard. Breastfeeding is hard. You are made to do hard things, right? And so if we look at it from a different standpoint and say like, yeah, this is really hard, but it's optimal for my baby and I'm going to keep pushing through it and I'm going to gather

the resources that I need to make this easier for me, we would have such higher breastfeeding rates. But what happens is you're in a hospital setting, there's a formula room in the hospitals, and within hours, I mean, I see it all the time, within hours. If I ever have a transfer to the hospital, you know, again, thank God we have the resources available when we need it. The first thing I say is, don't listen to anything that they're going to say because you're going to have to unlearn everything. Basically right now they're checking boxes. They want to know that your baby's feeding every two

hours for 15 minutes on each side and if there's any nurses listening they'll know exactly what I'm talking about. They're checking a box that the baby's you know has the voided diapers, has the output, has the input and then what happens is if anything veers outside of normal the first thing they'll do outside of normal, the first thing they'll do is give formula. The first thing they'll do is give formula. Some hospitals will send lactation consultants in, but some of the worst advice I hear is from lactation consultants, which is why I dropped my international board certified title because I was like, this is too complicated.

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Yeah, it would definitely change the health of the children for sure. I think we'd see less, you know, obesity, asthma, all of it. Yeah. And it's so unfortunate that whenever we have conversations like this, people just, I mean, I'm already envisioning my DMs, like they're just going to be filled with attacks and it's fine. Like I think that this is- For both of us, it's something that we do all the time. We speak the truth and it's not, we're not saying this to offend anybody. Or hurt anyone or make anyone feel bad. And we honor you for the choices that you do. But listen to the whole conversation.

You know, don't just take the sizzle reel in attack because of us saying that this is what's optimal. Like let's have an actual real conversation about this. But I also want to know why are women getting so mad when we're trying to just share that that breastfeeding is ultimately the healthiest for a baby. This is what I don't understand.

I think it's the shame of the women that haven't breastfed their babies, you know, the ones that choose not to breastfeed their babies, which is their choice. Yeah. And we honor that. And so they think that they're doing something wrong. Like they're not doing the most optimal thing for their babies. Yeah. But I think a lot of women have also been duped by our medical system and lied to, you know, because we tell them formula is just as good, it's just as healthy. They say that big formula creates these formulations

that are that mimic breast milk, which is absolutely insane. You could never mimic God's perfect design. No, you can't even mimic it from hour to hour, you know, like the milk that you have at 9am is completely different than the milk that you have at 4pm. If I walk into a room and there's people that are sick, my body's gonna automatically start making antibodies to give to my baby when I sense that there's a sickness in the air.

Like it's so finely tuned. Like I always say, you're walking around with a medicine chest. Like you're literally, like it's medicine what you have on your body. It's just incredible. So you can't. That is so cool.

You can't duplicate that. But when we look back to, I always like to look back a couple of generations, right? So like birth in 1900, 100% of babies were born at home. By 1950, we were down to like almost 5% like of babies that were being born at home. Drastic change in one generation, right? During that time, what we saw was big pharma. So we had the Flexner report that came out. We had the Rockefellers that knew that they were anything with petroleum, they would profit

off of. So they went straight into pharmaceuticals. They totally villainize anything natural. Midwives, chiropractors, naturopaths, acupuncturists. Breast milk probably. They were all quacks, right? Yeah. So then what happened is they actually said back in the 50s that formula was better than breast smoke. That was part of the message.

And so now as we're coming out of that, like there's so much residual that's still there because you know, I look at my parents, they were born in the 50s, right? So that's how they were raised. That's what their parents were told. And so that's what they brought into raising us. And so there has to be this flip. And you look at like the organic, like the Le Leche League in the 1970s,

it was just these like hippie moms that were like, that is not true. What are your thoughts on, well, I can already, I'm pretty sure I already know what you're gonna say about this, but I wanna talk a little bit about C-sections. And I don't know if a lot of women know this, if you have to have a c-section, the wiping

of the baby's mouth with the mom's vaginal flora? Yeah. So it's called vaginal seeding. Okay. I forgot what it was called. So I would like to start by saying I had a c-section with my daughter. So my first birth was a c-section and my second birth was in my jacuzzi in my backyard. So I've had the whole gamma of the spectrum of that. And so what happens when a baby is born vaginally

is there is a lot you're going through the vaginal canal. There's lots of different microbiomes that are there. You know, we could have Zach Bush on and talk about the microbiome of life. And you think about it, our vaginal opening is really close to our anus, right? So like it's almost every mom poops when they give birth. Like that's a very common thing. And so, you know, in a hospital, like you have a sterile drape on and they spray you down with betadine and they make sure that everything's quote unquote sterile, which is a joke because there's no way you can make that sterile. And so you forget that for all of time when we were birthing in a cave, we had like probably

some straw leaves or something and there was no betadine and there was no sterile drapes and there was no sterile gloves. And birth wasn't sterile because it's not supposed to be sterile. And when that happens, there's so much benefit to the baby's gut and their microbiome of passing through and having all of those exposures. So when you bypass that with a C-section, there is a lot that they miss out on. And so it was pretty trendy, I would say like 10 years ago, where moms would actually take like a long swab Q-tip and they would swab the inside of their vagina and then they

would swab the inside of their baby's mouth. And that was to kind of replicate the seeding that was happening that they missed out on during the vaginal birth. It's smart. It's smart. But there's certain things you have to take into consideration. So if a mom is group B strep positive, I wouldn't recommend swabbing your vagina and swabbing your baby's mouth. So this is why I think it's so incredibly important. And I've heard you talk about this before and I want to hear you talk about it more is why it's so important to individualize

this. Yes. Because I think, right? The entire healthcare system though. Like this is not just a birth thing. Like we need to individualize care for everybody. Like we need to look at everybody as a whole person. We don't need to be looking at just symptom specific things.

And so when somebody comes into my office and they sit down on these chairs and we have our first conversation, the first thing that I'll say to them is that I want you to know that I inherently trust that you know your body better than I know your body. And then I'll go into saying that everything that we do while I'm going to sit here and tell you like this is the standard things that we do and these are the standard appointments that we have, if there's anything that needs to be individualized for you, then just communicate that throughout the entire process. You know, I have families that will come in with five kids and like it's a total family

centered experience and the kids are partaking in each prenatal appointment and listening to the baby's heartbeat and help me measuring the belly. And then I have first time moms that are in here and they're like, tell me what to do, you know, and every time they ask me a question, my favorite response is how does that feel to you? This is what I think. This is a couple things that you could try, but how does that feel to you? This is what I think. This is a couple of things that you could try, but how does that feel to you? Because anytime I take away their power and I'm the one that's actually telling them

what to do, then they're going to lose their intuition on what they should do when they start parenting their babies. And that intuition is the greatest gift that they will ever have. And I was just thinking about how whenever we go through the whole process with the doctor, and this isn't even about birth necessarily, but just in general with the medical system is that we've gotten to this place where so many people put their doctor on a pedestal as if like they're a god. Doctors god, yeah.

Exactly. And then as a result, they let the doctor take all their power away and then they're not in touch at all with their intuition and What you just said is so true a doctor will be they can be an expert on the human body But you are the expert on your own body Yes, and it needs to be this symbiotic relationship You can't just give somebody else all of your power away because then you're not going to be able to listen to your own intuition And your own intuition knows what you need exactly for your body Exactly what you need. Yes. Wow, that is really That's powerful. So I want to ask you we talked about

We talked about Epidurals, what are your thoughts on pitocin because I've been hearing about a lot of women Actually a girlfriend of mine did this where she had a natural birth, but she had pitocin Yeah, so okay. So natural birth is kind of interchangeable now for just vaginal birth. So a natural birth to me is when there's no intervention. That's right. There's no medication that's on board. And a vaginal birth is a vaginal birth. But a natural birth means that you haven't had any sort of medical intervention and then you

move through a different process within your body. But it's whatever. It's just a way that we're rewording things. I think that the greenwashing that's happening across all of everything, big ag, all of it tries to make things more natural. You like, we'll look at a box of food and it says natural and you're like, but what does that mean? Exactly. You know? What's natural?

Yeah. So I, I, I'm really grateful for Pritosa. I'm going to start by saying that I carry it in my med bag. I have it everywhere I go to any single birth that I go to. It is a great anti hemorrhagic medication. Okay. So if I have a woman that is bleeding excessively at home, for me to have that as an option is something that's wonderful. Right now in the United States, there are many states where midwives aren't allowed to carry that medication, which is crazy because if you're at home and you have a time away from the hospital for us to not be able to administer

a medication which could potentially save somebody's life, there should be zero question for that. That's one thing with the Maha initiatives that I'm like, that needs to change. There's 13 states right now that don't even have licensure for midwives, which means it's either illegal to be a midwife or it's illegal so that they could be prosecuted if somebody feels like prosecuting them. So Texas isn't one of those. No. Okay. Texas has Texas has great midwives.

Okay, good. Yeah. But but like that's ridiculous. I think today in 2025, the fact that there's 13 states that don't have legislation around a medical provider that's providing care, individualized care to women is just bonkers to me. So back to pitocin. So if you look at the data, typically about 90% of women in a hospital receive pitocin and that doesn't necessarily mean that they're induced with pitocin, but they'll typically receive it after giving birth because it's there's something that's

called third stage active management, which the third stage of labor is the delivery of the placenta. So the hospital usually wants the placenta out within 30 minutes and they will give any sort of anti hemorrhagic medications to contract the uterus and expedite that process. Is that painful by the way when you pass the placenta? So it depends on how you're doing it. So if you're getting it yanked out of you, yes, it's super painful. If it just comes out naturally, it actually feels really good. There's no bones in it. Typically they're about one to two pounds and it's warm and it's like kind of gelatinous

when it comes through. So it, your body cramps like naturally. So you give birth, the baby comes out, the baby comes up on the breast, the baby nursing starts to release oxytocin, which pitocin is synthetic oxytocin. And so if that's happening, then the mom starts to get stronger contractions. As she starts to contract, the uterus starts to detach and move down and through. And then I refer to it as kind of like a dry tampon. So you're kind of like pushing something out of your body and it's uncomfortable. you're crampy and like you're like get this out of me. And then once it comes out, it's like, oh, that felt so good. And then and then you get inspected and you know, everything like that. But in the situations where we have a true hemorrhage,

I think that Pitocin is amazing. But for the majority of women that are being induced with it, we go back to the conversation that we had with all the other interventions. Anytime that we're giving something synthetic, it's going to knock off what's that dynamic feedback with all of the hormones in our brain. There's some studies that say significant things about pitocin. There was one, gosh, I don't even know how many years ago, that was looking at the possible correlation of the increase of autism. Like if a mom's had a pitocin induction,

there was a higher correlation with that child having autism. And if we look at the autism rates right now, we're at one in 32 children, which is crazy. I mean, it's not. I mean, when our parents were growing up, it was like one in 10,000, and then you're gonna have all these people

that will argue and say, well, we're diagnosing better. No, sorry. We did not have one in 32 kids that had autism about 50 years ago. Our parents' generation would have noticed when more people are nonverbal, you know, or like putting their head up against the wall and stemming. I mean, all of that. There's no way that that would have gone underdiagnosed. No, no way.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really sad. So let's talk a little bit about Maha because you and I are both involved in this. Yes. And you're working on a Maha coalition for moms. Can you talk more about that? Yeah. So it's really exciting. So basically what we're doing right now is we're launching a coalition. It's called the Maha mom coalition. And there's a lot of moms that were very heavily involved when Bobby Kennedy was running for president.

But prior to him running for president, one of the reasons that we all love him so much is that he was with us fighting up in Sacramento during a couple different laws that passed in California. So in 2015 and 2019, there was two laws, SB277 and SB276. And that basically took away the religious and personal belief exemptions for vaccines from parents. And then the one in 2019 took away the medical exemption rights for doctors to say that there was an exemption.

And so Bobby was there, he was listening to us and he was in the snake pit. He was every step of the way, flying back and forth and really helping us with legislation because that's what he knew. He had done that his whole life. And so when we moved in, basically he launched his ma-ha alongside of Trump.

It was interesting because all of these moms that were, you know, voting for Bobby and the independent race and all this stuff were like, okay, we're lumped into this. And it's taken off. I mean, he just got, you know, he just got through with the secretary of HHS, thank God. And so what I'm doing with this coalition, it's me and four moms that founded it, and we are super passionate about birth, but more so we're calling it the roots of the nation. So what we see with this coalition is that we're going to have our symbolism is going to be a tree. And if we do not address the roots of our nation, so if we do not address our infertility rates

that are plummeting right now, they're saying by 2045, the sperm rate is gonna be zero. Like, how do we have kids if we don't have a sperm rate? Like, that's something that we really need to talk about. That's not far away, that's my grandchildren. Like, you know, that's the next generation of kids. And so we have to start talking about ways that we can improve that. We can't just look to IVF and think that we're

going to have all this technology for reproduction. We have to like actually take a step back and say, why is this happening? Can we look at the atrazine? Can we look at the glyphosate? Can we look at all the plastics that are mimicking estrogen and causing all of these issues with infertility? Like that has to be the first thing that we start to do. And then we start to look at pregnancy. We start to look at birth. We start to look at our breastfeeding rates.

We start to start talking about how we can change postpartum for moms. Can we not have a six weeks maternity leave? Can we have something that's much longer than that? We need to start valuing children in this country again. We need to start valuing motherhood and giving women enough time. It's the greatest gift that we can give to ourselves as women. It truly is. And you're talking to somebody that also worked while I had my babies.

I was at birth when I had a six month old on my back. But if you ask me right now, like my greatest memories of my life in the last 43 years that I've been on this planet, I will tell you that it was raising my babies. I will tell you that it was the nights where I would wake up and I would turn on my Himalayan salt and I had a pink glow in the room and I sat and looked at my babies when I would breastfeed them in the middle of the night. Nothing will ever replace that time with my babies. So we have to bring back the sacredness of that. And so as we move up that tree, the trunk of that tree is now

our children and our children's health. And we have to start really valuing what we're like the food at the schools. What are we giving them at home? What are we, what are we think, what are we educating moms on that's healthy? Like goldfish crackers and fruit juice are not healthy. So we need to kind of come back to that like ancestral like what my great grandma and my grandma ate growing up on a farm. You know, they were out milking cows and drinking raw milk and they were, you know, having, probably making bone broth, bone broth and tallow with

all of their food and liver eating all of it, you know, like that needs to be the foundation right there. And then as we move up that tree, then we there's so many things that we can involve. So you think of this big tree with the branches and you think of like, clean water. We're already talking about taking Florida out of drinking water. But let's talk about clean air next. Can we stop with all this spraying? That's not a conspiracy theory anymore. They just passed a bill in Arizona today, blocking it, banning it.

And that just happened in Tennessee. And I know that there's legislation right now in Texas for it. And there's also legislation in Florida. Yes. So it's 1000% not a conspiracy. It's not a conspiracy theory. It's literally moving through our courts right now.

Yes. And so it's really just making sure that we look at the, like like not like same thing as medicine, right? Let's have individualized care. Let's look at the whole person. Let's look at the whole tree. Like, let's make sure that we're starting from the ground up.

Is the soil rich? Do we have fertile soil? What are we going to do for that person's health for the rest of its life? And so as we launch this coalition, there's a manifesto that we've come up with, and there's so many different things that we have. And I'll make sure that you have a link to that so your readers can listen to it. But we have this amazing launch that we're doing on Saturday. And it's just, it's so exciting. There's so much momentum behind it all. And I just think it's because everybody's ready. Like, like us moms are sick and tired of seeing our kids so sick. Like us moms are sick and tired of seeing our kids so sick. And so it's this movement.

And if you would have asked me in 2019, this question, I would have said everything was hopeless because when we lost our right to have medical exemptions for our kids to not have vaccines to go to school in the state of California, it felt hopeless. And the army didn't stop. The passion, the power that is behind a mom, like do not stand in the way of a mom. Like if there's one thing that's going to change the earth, it's the moms.

I know. That's what's so exciting about this whole Maha movement is I really think, obviously there's a lot of people involved that are very passionate, but I think it was really driven forward by the moms because there's just… It's just so beautiful to watch. I mean, there's a fire behind that. It's very cool. And it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier of, you know, giving birth and women realizing waking up to this like magic and power they have inside of them, right? And then it's just then now they have that power and protection over their children and it's been transferred

forward and now it's this fiery movement that we can't stop. And it's amazing. It's a freight train right now. It is. Yeah. And it's just going to get bigger. A lot of people are associating the maha movement with Trump. And I just keep screaming like, you guys, this is a bipartisan movement. This has nothing to do with any political affiliation.

This is the health of our generation. This is the progression of our future. If we don't start right now, there is not going to be a future. Like 2045 is so close. And if we do not start connecting the dots and fixing all of these things, then it's like there's nothing left. So it's that passion that's just going to keep driving us forward. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's unfortunate that some people can't see the forest through the trees right now, and they're so focused on their hate and whatever towards Trump that they can't see that this is actually something that's beneficial for every single American, you know, but we just have to keep forging forward and I hope that in the next couple of years this won't be so political and so divisive and that more people can just come together for the betterment of society and for the betterment of our children. I want to ask you a couple of questions about some other stuff regarding birth. I love it.

While we still have time. Yeah. So there's that, okay, so what are your thoughts about testing for gestational diabetes? I know that there's some camps where they just say don't test for it at all. There's other camps that say do it, but then you can eat the jelly beans or my friend when she was doing the test, they just had her eat a standard American diet, which how funny is that? It was just like pancakes and orange juice. And I was like, huh, we'll do something. Which equivalates to 50 grams of sugar.

Exactly. So I think it's really important to test for, I'm not going to say gestational diabetes, I'm going to say diabetes. Because if you look at our metabolic health, 93% of us have some sort of metabolic condition. One of the biggest things right now is insulin resistance or, you know, high blood sugars. And so I whenever I have somebody that comes in through my clinic, it's the first thing we do with blood work is I run a hemoglobin A1c. So hemoglobin A1c gives us an average blood sugar over a couple months period of time. We have a percentage as long as that percentage is within normal

limits. I mean, I would right away would be able to tell if somebody was already a diabetic, you know, like a type two diabetic. And I've had that too. I've had women that have come in and I'm like, Oh, wow, your blood sugars are through the roof. Let's get this under control right away. But then we continue to watch it throughout the pregnancy. And so I have a really good guideline within my practice, which is not the standard guidelines. And I will like 100% say that I've had such beautiful success with watching A1C throughout the pregnancy. And if I have anybody that goes over 5.3, which is a very low number, like usually they'll say anybody over 5.7 is an increased risk of diabetes. So I bump it down to 5.3. If anybody's over 5.3, I

have them get a continuous glucose monitor. And I put two weeks on, I just say, let's start with two weeks. And you know, everybody's like, Oh, gosh, this is, this is bad. Or like, you know, I'm like, you guys, this is empowering. You're going to see what your body's doing throughout the pregnancy, you're going to see every single meal that you eat, every single time you have a stressful event. Like there's so many things that impact our blood sugars throughout the day. And so if they have this, you know, monitor and I don't like the fact that there is the, you know, the EMF and Bluetooth, but the good thing is a lot of them, like I know Casey Means, their levels company, it's just when you

scan it. So it's not like it's a continuous Bluetooth that's going back and forth. It's just when you scan it and you get the data and then you do that every couple hours. But it gives you this data that's just lifetime data and then you're able to see what like, oh, the rice that I just ate that just spiked my sugars to 180. I probably shouldn't do that. So what I'm telling you right now isn't accepted across the board for Western medicine. So if you have a doctor that is insistent on testing for gestational diabetes, ask them to write you a prescription for a continuous glucose monitor. That's smart. They will.

Even if they don't do, if your insurance doesn't cover a continuous glucose monitor, you can get a glucose monitor at home. You can monitor your blood sugars when you wake up with fasting in the morning and then one hour after every meal and it will give you some sort of a picture. It's not ideal. The CGM is definitely ideal, but it will give you some sort of a picture of what you're doing throughout the day and kind of give you that guidance of what to avoid throughout the rest of pregnancy, but also the rest of our lives. There's certain things that we really should be careful with. You know, like we really should be, you know, making sure that exercise is a priority after certain meals.

And there's just so many things that you can do with that. And I actually did a whole podcast on this. It was with a type one diabetic mom that we had taken into our care with one of my colleagues who's actually writing the manifesto with me, Dr. Stuart Fishbine. And he has an amazing podcast called Birthing Instinct. So if you need more information on that, I would definitely suggest checking that whole podcast out because I spent an hour and a half talking about just this topic. Okay. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. That'll be super helpful for people. So I'm curious what your advice would be. Well, let's just say me. So I'm 40. I really would like to have a natural birth. I'm still trying to decide if I'm

being honest, if I want to do a birthing center. If I'm being super honest, I'm freaked out to have my first baby also at my age, which I know I've had a lot of conversations with people about this. It's more about, you more about how healthy you are and how well you take care of yourself. And I realize all that. I still am like a little bit freaked out and debating whether or not I want to do at home or like doing a birthing center. And so my question is, because I'm assuming that I know there's a lot of women that are in my shoes.

What would be your advice to someone about making that decision? Yep. So there's really no difference in safety. So there is no safety net that a birth center has. So they don't have an anesthesiologist on call. They don't have an operating room five minutes down the hall. There are some birth centers that do operate within like a hospital system, like either within the hospital itself or like that are connected to the hospital. So that's a different story.

But when I talk about the difference between home birth and birth center. So anytime that you leave your house and you're going to somebody else's space, you have to think about how you would be in that space if you were to need to take a poop or you wanted to have sex. Okay. So normally most women don't really like to poop outside of our houses, right? And to be able to like have sex and have a good orgasm when you're in somebody else's space, not only in someone else's space, but when there's someone there that's watching

you, that changes everything. And so there's this like myth that the birthing centers are safe. It's like the in between place. But unless you live, you know, if you live three hours away from a hospital and your birth center is 20 minutes from a hospital, then that might be something to take into consideration. But if you live in a major metropolitan area, the safest place you're going to be is your own home. So it's all your own germs, right? There's nobody wiping down your space with like the nasty germicide stuff that they have, which is what they're doing at birth centers. And then, and then you're going into that space,

which is somebody else's space. The other thing that I really don't like about birth centers, and I like birth centers, I think it's a great alternative, but like you leave a birth center, typically three to four hours after you give birth. So when you're in the throes of labor, you have to get in a car, and you have to figure out how you're gonna deal with your contractions from the car ride

from your house to the birth center. Then you have to get there and maybe wait for the midwife to open the door, you have to kinda get checked in there, and then you have to get back in that pattern. That's the same thing that happens when you go to the hospital, you have to ride in the car and then you have to get admitted. And typically what happens is labor slows down because your body was in this great pattern and you had all these hormones that were operating really good. And then you're like, invaders, there's somebody

outside. Yeah, it's literally just that simple. Like it's literally like a fight or flight response. And so your adrenaline picks up and then that usually decreases the oxytocin and all of that. And then you give birth and then you're there and then you have to get your butt to just push the baby out three to four hours afterwards that's bleeding and you have a brand newborn baby that you're strapping into a car seat, which really should just be on your chest, skin to skin at home, drive yourself home and then get really cozy again if you

will. So I mean, again, I'm not saying that birth centers are bad. I think that it's a great alternative. A lot of insurance companies will pay for birth centers opposed to home birth. So it's just one of those things that like that's sometimes what people can afford. But every time I've been approached to do a birth center, to, you know, create a business with a birth center, I turn it down just because I'm like, no, that's not where I'm going. That's not the environment I want.

Home birth where I can tuck you into your bed and give you all of the instructions and say, I'll see you back here in a few days with your baby still skin to skin and you're in your bed for the next five days is what I feel most comfortable with. Yeah, I mean, that makes so much sense. I mean, because also I'm really stuck between a rock and a hard place with all this personally, because I'm also terrified if I'm being honest to give birth in a hospital. I have heard so many horror stories. Women go in, they have a plan that they want to stick to. And then the plan and we can never make a plan

and like have it go exactly how we want it. Tis is life. Exactly. Yeah. But in a hospital setting, it is way more likely to go haywire. And I feel like in the hospital, once you get in that system, it's just you're in lock step and it's so much harder unless if you really have someone strong advocating for you to not just be in the boom, boom, boom, boom.

But then you're fighting. Like, you know, like if you're still in the fight or flight, because even if like you like say it's your husband that's advocating for you, like then where is he supporting you? You know what I mean? Like he's fighting a system of everything that you don't want. So that's why I always say to women, I'm like, if you want to have a birth that is natural and you want to have the least amount of intervention and you want to have individualized care,

you have to separate yourself from the system because the system is not made for that. The system isn't broken. The system is working exactly the way that it's intended to work. So if you're seeking something outside of that system, then it has to be somebody that's aligned with what you think. And not all midwives are created equal either. When you're looking for somebody that's providing individualized care, there's a lot of different opinions within the midwifery community,

a lot of different opinions. And so you wanna make sure that you're finding a midwife that aligns with your core values. And so that includes like what it is that you want. Are they gonna actually provide you with individualized care? Because anytime that you have a care provider, there is the opportunity to put that care provider on a pedestal and then you end up with that same crap that they have in the hospital.

Like care provider is God. And so like will your care provider let you listen to your intuition? Is that what's most important to them? Are they going to, you know, kind of oversee your care and tell you this is how they do things? Like there's just so many different things that you have to consider when you think about one of the most sacred experiences of your whole life. Yeah. I heard a horror story once. It was a, well, I watched her talk about this on Instagram. It was a friend of a friend and she goes, watch her stories right now. This is insane. And essentially she was having a home birth with him. I think she had a midwife and a

doula if I remember correctly. And she was laboring for a long time. I think she was laboring for like almost two days. And she kept telling the midwife, like, I think I need to go to the hospital. And they, I don't, this story is so insane to me. Apparently, they told her that they called the hospital and the hospital said that they were full and they couldn't take her. Which can happen. But, get this, her mother-in-law called the hospital and they were like, what are you talking about?

We have plenty of beds. And what ended up happening is, thank God, everything was okay, but she just ultimately had the most traumatic birth. Of course she did, because she wasn't heard. She wasn't listened to. Well, and what happened was, I don't remember what her medical emergency was, but she had

some sort of emergency where she actually did need medical care. Of course. Her body was telling her. Her body was telling her. And remember, it's a dynamic experience between both. So anytime that I'm in those situations, it's not just the mom, it's the baby as well. And the babies will give us signs. If I ever had a mom that said that she wanted to go, I mean, okay, in transition right before you're going to

push a baby out, like everybody says, I can't do this, take me to the hospital. That's normal. I hear that almost every single time. Maybe not necessarily take me to the hospital, but I can't do this. And then it's like, oh yes, you can. Anytime somebody says that, I'm like, oh my gosh, you're going to have a baby in five minutes. But like, if it's a long drawn out labor, and there's other things going on, and the mom keeps saying that she needs to go to hospital, my gosh, I would never ever, ever doubt a mom's intuition. That's the most important thing. So again, coming back to you have to make sure that you're selecting the right care provider. Now, I will tell

you that the politics of all of this has made it hard for midwives to transfer to the hospital. So when you know, I've been doing this since gosh for 21 years now and Just recently like I mean, I don't care anymore Like, you know, I used to get offended by what people would say to me and now I'm like give me a freaking break Like this is not happening. Let me talk to your supervisor But just recently in November, I had a situation where a nurse, I had to bring somebody into the hospital, there was definitely a medical emergency that was happening, she wasn't even in labor.

And the nurse said, well, let me talk to the doctor. And I said, no, you're the closest hospital we're coming in, we need to be somewhere within a relatively fast period of time. And they called me back and they said, well, we don't wanna take you here. And I'm like, you guys, this is Orange County. Like this is this is this was the end of 2024. Like it is against the law for anybody to turn away somebody for care. And so I so what I said in that moment was there's another hospital five minutes

further up the road. We're going to go there because I don't want you to be treated like crap in this hospital. But I threw a fit. And that night at 9 p.m., I had basically the president of the hospital texting me apologizing, saying that they had made a very big error and that would never happen again because they knew they screwed up. You know? And so-

I mean, they could get sued for that, I feel like. It's very big malpractice. So when it comes back to this story with your friend, there are really sad situations where midwives are hesitant to transfer in because this is their livelihood and if they're up against a system that's against them, then if they're turned in for something or other, then it's like they're in a court case and it's thousands of dollars. So the system isn't set up to help that, but that's where this initiative comes in again. This is where the Maha manifesto comes in.

Let's bridge these gaps. Let's not have these conflicts that create oppositions for delayed care. Like that's not okay. We have one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world. We should be at the top. Why is that? There's many reasons. I think that the most important thing that we could talk about is the health of our nation. You know, with all of us having such bad metabolic diseases, you know, what they say, 93% of America has some sort of metabolic. Yeah. And so that that's a really big issue. But it's the way that our health care system set

up too. So you look at Canada, like our we touch Canada, like our neighboring country, our maternal mortality rate is double what Canada is. It's ridiculous. I mean, that shouldn't be the case. And I don't think Canada is that much more metabolically healthy than the United States is. Yeah, I think they're right behind us. But you know, you look at the statistics and it's like, it's safer to give birth in Cuba than it is in the United States. Why? You know, and so we can look at the metabolic health, but then we also have to look at our intervention rate, our C-section rate, our, you know, what are we giving to our babies? What are we giving to our moms? And so we can look at that in

a really beautiful bright light and just say like, we're not here to cause division. We're here to fix this and make things better because our moms and babies deserve better. Yeah, absolutely. My thought would be is that, yeah, because we're so unhealthy that that's probably what's driving a lot of that. And to, I mean, like we have been saying a lot this episode, I feel like there's no individualized care anymore. It's like everyone's just crossing off boxes.

But Canada doesn't have that. You know, you hear Canadians talk about how horrible their health care system is. But they have midwives, you know, like if you're getting care, if you're a low risk woman, it's cheaper for them to hire midwives to take care of you. So that individualized care comes in. I mean, even if it's big, huge facilities, you know, like you're still getting more holistic, individualized care. And so we just have to like take a step back the World Health Organization, which I could care less about, you know, all the three letter organizations, but the World Health

Organization in 2021 had a report that came out about the world and a sense of what we're missing with midwives. And they said that we are short 900,000 midwives in the world. And that midwives can be the ones that I always say were the original family doctors. So we cared for women through labor and birth and pregnancy and all that. But then we kind of became the wise woman in the village that was the pediatrician. And if someone was sick, they would come to us because we knew the herbs and different things to give and then when you work with birth you also work with death. It's the same door you're just leaving and coming.

It's different energies and so the midwives were always the ones that were you know in that space and so when we took that out it really changed the way that our wise woman centered care is throughout the whole world. And so the fact that the World Health Organization recognized that is huge. It's a really important piece that they said that there was 900,000 midwives that were sure. I mean, I was licensed in California and there's only like a thousand midwives that have been licensed in the last 20 years there's only like a thousand midwives that have been licensed in the last 20 years. Like how is that possible?

California is huge. Yeah, my hope is that there's going to be more. I feel like there's such a resurgence of women wanting to do more naturally and wanting to have a midwife and a doula and how does that work? So if you're birthing at home, you have to have a midwife and then a doula is like optional, right? Yeah, so the midwife is there for your medical care. So, you know, they're the ones that here in the state of California, like I can do your blood work and I can do ultrasounds and I can take care of you throughout the whole pregnancy without having anybody else there.

I can really act as an individualized care provider for you don't need to do anything else. I can refer out for certain things if we need to. And a doula is there purely for physical and emotional support. So they're not doing any of the medical stuff. So it's, it's, I mean, I always bring like my doula self with me. I'm always giving that physical and emotional support. But having a doula as part of the team is always such a fantastic addition. Yeah. Well, I could imagine too, for first time parents, like I can already see my fiance needing like someone there also to help with support. I love him. It's for the partners. Seriously, it's so nice because it's suggestions for them and

then like they don't feel the pressure. Like for all of time, I promise you it was not a man and a woman in a cave while she was giving birth. Oh, there was definitely like her tribe. Yeah, it was always our aunties and our sisters and you know, everybody surrounded. If you look at elephants giving birth, there's a group of female elephants that circle around the elephant giving birth that stand in a circle to protect her and they sway their hips back and forth. No, that's so cute.

You know, like it's it's that's just how it's supposed to be. So for a doula to be there for the partner is just amazing. Yeah. I can already see Hector needing that. Just because, you know, it's new time is kind of scary. So what would be your advice to someone who is concerned about the quote unquote risks of doing it at home birth? Do your research.

There's a lot of research out there and I wouldn't say do your research within the United States because remember we're a for-profit system. So anytime that where there's a for-profit system then you have to look at where the data errors lie, you know, where there's bias. There's a beautiful study that came out of the Netherlands that had 500,000 homers and you And everywhere in the world uses midwives. It's really the United States that don't like Japan, everywhere. Midwives are at the root of care. And so you look at the data outside of the United States

and you see it's just how it's always been. But you have to have a good built-in system. You have to have a good collaboration of systems. So for the story that you told me with your friend, like that sucks. That's not how it should be. We should be able to just transfer into the hospital as needed. My transfer rates for someone transferring into the hospital for a non-emergency situation, and this is first time moms, so someone that hasn't given, hasn't had a vaginal birth before, is about four to 6% any given year, and it's typically for exhaustion.

For someone that's already had a vaginal birth, my rate of transferring into the hospital is less than 1%. And I take low risk, healthy women. I'm not taking high risk women that have cardiac issues or something like that. The majority of childbearing women should be low risk, you know, like we shouldn't have all these weird health complications in our 20s and 30s.

Yeah, I mean, that's why we need maha. I mean, that's the thing. And you know, as a 40-year-old woman that's hopefully going to be pregnant within the next year, I'm so tired of this narrative of, well, it's why does that we're just what do they call us after 36? So geriatric maternal age I don't know why that just like left my brain horrible because I don't claim that for myself Of course not because you're not exactly it's ridiculous But the oldest client I've ever had in my practice that gave birth at home was 47 years

old Wow, yeah, yeah Oh my god, it was her fifth baby And there I mean, you know, she actually thought It was her fifth baby. Wow. And there, I mean, you know, she actually thought she was going into menopause. She has kids in high school and she's, she's like, I'm actually pregnant. I'm not in menopause. So, and she had a beautiful, beautiful birth and yeah, there's risk associated with different

complications in terms of genetic stuff when you're older. So like there's, that's the risk. If you have a healthy baby and you remain healthy throughout your pregnancy, you're not going to have a higher risk of giving birth just because of your age. You know, nothing has changed. All the same body parts are working the same. So it's it's we have to take that narrative out. The geriatric pregnancy is just such BS.

I mean, it's such BS. I don't claim that for myself at all. It's just, you know, it is hard. Like sometimes you hear it over and over and over again. And so it's like, you're fighting a system set up against you essentially, you know? Yep. Yeah.

Well, for the essence of time, please let everyone know where they can find you. Yeah. So the best place to find me is my Instagram, which is just my name, personal last name, Mielis. And then I have a website that's called the remembering.com. And then I also, we've just launched this Maha mom coalition. So it's just mahamomcoalition.com. Yay. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. This was so fun. Thank you so much for listening to the Real Foodology Podcast. This is a Wellness Lab

production produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Mike Frye. Theme song is by Georgie. You can watch the full video version of this podcast inside the Spotify app or on YouTube. As always, you can leave us a voicemail by clicking the link in our bio. If you like this episode, please rate and review on your podcast app. For more shows by my team, go to WellnessLoud.com. See you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical

and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider-patient relationship. I am a nutritionist but I am not your nutritionist. As always talk to your doctor or your health team first.