TONTS. - The Great Birth Rebellion with Dr Melanie Jackson

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Matrescence AlbumMatrescence FestivalDr Melanie Jackson is a private midwife providing homebirth services since 2009. In 2015 she completed her PhD, called "birth outside the system: wanting the best and safest" This work sprouted academic publications and has also allowed her to work as a researcher and midwifery lecturer at Western Sydney university, as a peer reviewer for academic journals and as a project officer at the Australian College of Midwives and motivates the work she now does on her social media and youtube channels.Melanie also hosts The Great Birth Rebellion which aims to dismantle western beliefs and management of birth and presents an evidence-based alternative to modern birth practices. They believe that calculated rebellion against medicalised maternity care is the evidence-based and preferred path to having a great birth. Melanie is a mother of two and lives on a permaculture farm in the Blue Mountains of NSW.Website - www.melaniethemidwife.comInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/melaniethemidwife/For more from Claire you can head to https://www.clairetonti.com or instagram @clairetontiOriginal theme music: Free by Claire Tonti Editing: RAW CollingsSocial Media: Maisie JG Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I create, speak and write today, the Rwandan people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respect to their elders past, present and emerging, acknowledging that the sovereignty of this land has never been ceded. I want to acknowledge the people who have given birth on this land, raised children on this land, connected to country and spirit for thousands and thousands of years. Hello, this is Tons, a podcast of in-depth interviews about emotions and the way they shape our lives. I'm your host, Claire Tonti, and I'm so glad you are here.

Each week, I speak to writers, activists, experts, thinkers, and deeply feeling humans about their stories. Now, I didn't get an episode out last week because I just got overwhelmed by life and everything. I don't know if that ever happens to you and all the wheels have fallen off. Part of that is because I'm planning a tour in June, which is really exciting to the UK and to Ireland. I thought I'd quickly pop in with all of my dates. I've just announced another show. So June 12th in the evening, it's a Wednesday night at 8pm. I'm going to be playing some of my brand new songs. I haven't played them live

anywhere. And I'm going to be doing them at the Bello Bar in Dublin with my cousin, Woody Sampson. I'm going to be singing some songs from my album, Atrescence, as well. And then Woody's going to be playing some great funk and covers too. So I'll have some sing-alongs as we go with some pints, hopefully. So that's on Wednesday, the 12th of June. Then on Friday morning, which is the 14th of June, I'm going to be working with Mum Talks to do a panel, a brunch for mums and bubs to come and share and listen to stories about motherhood and some of my songs. Then on Saturday, I'm going to be playing on the festival stage at Every Woman Festival in Cardiff in Wales. And then you can book in for a workshop with me. It's limited places. It's a small

workshop in the afternoon on the same date. So that's the 15th of June at three o'clock. Then I am heading over to Abergavenny with the beautiful poet Lily Redwood. We are doing an evening show together at the Acoustic Lounge there. That's going to be starting at 7.30pm. Cannot wait. Lily's going to be reading some of her poems on motherhood from her brand new work and I am going to be singing my songs. And then we are doing a workshop in the morning on Monday on motherhood and creative writing. We're going to be singing and we're going to be exploring how to get those stories out in a way that feels right and good in our bodies.

So that's Monday in Abergavenny. And then lastly, I'm heading to Exeter for the Matressence Festival that I'm founding with Lizzie Humber. We are going to be exploring all things the metamorphosis of motherhood. Tickets for all of these shows and events are available on my website, claretonte.com forward slash events, or at the link in my bio on Instagram at Clare Tonte, and there's a link in the show notes too. All right, on with my guest today. Her name is Dr. Melanie Jackson. Now, I found Melanie through her incredible podcast,

The Great Birth Rebellion. I've been so curious about the ways in which we can create birth to be safer for women and how we can prevent birth trauma. And even though the idea of home birth, and Melanie is a practicing private midwife who is a real advocate for home birth. And that phrase often scares me, I think, in our culture. We're so reticent to think about the idea of giving birth outside of a hospital. I know particularly in my community here, this interview really opened my mind and made me think so deeply about the hormones of birth, about what I really did need during that time to prevent the birth trauma that happened to me. And maybe just that there's a different way of thinking about birthing.

I really, really encourage you to listen to this episode with an open mind. Melanie actually has a PhD, which is incredible in birthing outside the system. And her work dismantles the Western beliefs and management of birth and presents an evidence-based alternative to modern birth practices. She has so many qualifications. She's got a Bachelor of Health Science in Naturopathy from the Western Sydney University, of which she now is a lecturer. She has a grad dip in Theology, a Master's in Nursing with first-grade honours from Sydney University, a grad dip in midwifery with distinction from Western Sydney University, a grad cert in pharmacology from Griffith University,

and as I said, a PhD in midwifery, birth outside the system from the Western Sydney University as well. Now, I've put a link in the show notes below to Melanie's PhD thesis too. The reason I say all of these qualifications is I think it really puts into context the depth and breadth of knowledge that Melanie brings to this topic and really gives me security in sharing her story about birthing outside the system and a new way of birthing. Well, actually I would suggest it's actually an old ancient way of birthing that with knowledge that has been passed down through the centuries. I'd also really encourage you to go and find her on Instagram at Melanie the Midwife and MelanieTheMidwife.com on her website. I just was blown away by the level

of information I didn't have when I went through my own births and the information that I wish I'd had. Some of the information Melanie shares in this episode blew my mind so profoundly that I wish I'd had. Some of the information Melanie shares in this episode blew my mind so profoundly that I just swore out loud. One of the things she talks about is the potential for birth to be absolutely joyful and that birthing hormones are shy, something I'd never heard before. And that if we interrupt women during that process and ask too many questions, we can bring them out of that really deep place they need to go to in order to birth their child. And then that can slow down the hormones of birth and create a cascade of intervention, something that I experienced in my own birth. I think as well, it's important to note, and I understand from the research that one of the best ways we can give ourselves the possibility of a really safe and joyful birth

is to have continuous care, probably from a midwife really, before, during and after the birth. And as Melanie talks about in this episode, and I've read over and over again, continuous care pre, during and after the birth from a qualified midwife who really understands the ins and outs of birth and understands you midwife who really understands the ins and outs of birth and understands you as a person and what you need to feel safe, gives you the best possible outcome for your birth and a level of control. Because even if things do go wrong, even if your body doesn't function the way you expect it to, if you feel really deeply in control of the events and have an understanding before you start laboring

of all of the things that could happen and the choices that you would like to make. You therefore leave that experience feeling empowered rather than disempowered, which I think is what can often happen through this experience and definitely what happened to me. All right, I'll stop talking and let Melanie talk now. Here she is, Dr. Melanie Jackson. Thank you so much. Now, do I call you Mel or Melanie? What do you prefer? Look, Mel's like when people get to know me, it's Mel. So let's do that because you know, we're friends now. We are, we just jumped on. But I feel like having started preparing for this interview, I just already feel like you're like a started preparing for this interview I just already feel

like you're like a kindred spirit because I was just looking through everything you do and I'm so in awe thank you so much for coming on to taunts let's just start at the beginning I want to ask you how you became a midwife in the first place what drew you to that line of work oh yeah okay so I was first a naturopath and that was just a product of my upbringing. My mum was into all natural therapies and that's kind of what our life was like. So it seemed like a really natural, easy thing to go into. So I became a naturopath and then pretty soon after becoming a naturopath, I noticed that a lot of the people who were coming to see me were women and they had children and babies or they were pregnant or trying to get pregnant.

And I just became interested in helping women in that stage of their lives. And so, but I felt ill-equipped. I thought I'm not a parent. I was quite young and I didn't really know anything about that stage of life. And so I just was looking for courses that maybe would prepare me more and came across midwifery. I'd not really heard of midwives or midwifery before. And at the same time as coming across midwifery, a friend of mine was pregnant and she asked if I would come to her home birth. And I thought, gosh, I know nothing about birth. I know nothing about home birth. I was way on board. I was like, yeah, sure. That sounds great. But I knew I had to prepare myself. And so at the same time as making the decision then to enter midwifery, she invited me to her birth.

So I was just looking for books and information about home birth and came across Ina May Gaskin's book, Spiritual Midwifery, and read it cover to cover. And it basically just changed my entire, I think it changed my neural pathways in my brain actually, where I could no longer view birth in any other way except for a physiological event that a woman can go through and it's life-changing and that we need to support that physiology. And so I was way on board with the home birth idea. And then in my journey as a midwife, just couldn't shake the idea that this is how birth should be because that was my very, the beginning exposure that I had.

So I kind of accidentally fell into midwifery because I wanted to learn more about that time of women's lives as a naturopath. But here I am now as a very full-time midwife. I love that. It's sort of actually, to me, quite a natural pathway in so many ways, right? What was it like to go to that first home birth? Well, I, and actually the midwife missed it because yeah, everything was so far. She went into labor and they had someone come to collect their other two children and her partner was outside putting them in the car for that person to take them and she gave birth while he was outside oh my god yeah he came in to sort of just the last minute to catch the baby he suffered from hitting the ground so we I missed it and but she invited me over after and she showed

me the notes that the midwife made and I got to sort of experience all of her care through these the records that the midwife had kept and then serendipitously when I was a student we were allowed to do a placement with a midwife for a few weeks and I happened to be placed with that midwife who had been her midwife and she became my midwifery mentor. And yeah, it just, I fell into it. I didn't really know what it was, but then as I learned what it was, it just made sense. It was in line with a naturopathic idea that the body has an amazing capacity for healing and amazing functionality if you allow it to function as it should. And so it wasn't a big philosophical leap into midwifery. So interesting, isn't it? What is it about birth that you think is spiritual?

Well, I don't know. I don't necessarily think it's spiritual, but it's a journey. I think it's an essential journey for a parent. And in a world where it's so easy to tap out of hard things, lots of people can choose not to do hard things. Medicine and medication has allowed us to bypass a lot of hard things. But I think there's something important about doing the hard thing of labor and birth and the hard thing of pregnancy. The whole journey of pregnancy, labor and birth, it forces you to confront parts of yourself that are not serving you and potentially even people in relationships that aren't working. It forces you to connect with your body and it also forces you to do hard things that you never really thought you were either capable of or that you

were going to do. And I think it builds a character and a person that is then built for parenting. So yeah, I think it's less about the spiritual aspect and more just, I don't know, developing the characteristics that you need to be a parent by going through that. And people might be hearing this and thinking, well, I didn't go through labor. Do I have the characteristics to be a parent I mean parenting gives you the characteristics you need to be a parent as well but it's amazing if you get this head start through pregnancy and through doing the really transformative thing of of labor and pushing out a baby I think you get a bit of a kickstart into parenting it's a big thing to say, right? Because there's for so many reasons, women's births are interrupted. They have cesarean. I mean, I had a cesarean with my daughter. I experienced a huge amount of birth trauma with my son. Why did you then start

researching and why did you write your PhD birthing outside the system? Like that's a massive thing because to me, and I'll just be really honest and I think there might be people listening to this as well because of the trauma I experienced in my son's birth the idea of home birth the idea of going through that is so terrifying to me and I feel like I went I came the closest to death that I ever have right we're going very deep for a Wednesday morning but that's it and so I'm really conscious of holding multiple things to be true, right? Like there's the ideal of what we want birth to look like and the kind of messaging that I would receive from the hospital. And I thought I'd done the courses in that I did the hospital course, right? Which I now know is really

inadequate, but I just get frightened when I hear this kind of rhetoric or language. And I don't mean that it's rhetoric or that it's not accurate, but I feel like there would be people listening who would also say that. So could you talk into that? Why did you do your PhD in birthing outside the system? Yeah. So, and I'd love to speak to your experience as well through this PhD, because part of the PhD was looking at the full spectrum of the choices that women make for their next births and interestingly when you look at the research on birthing outside the system and why women choose that and then the research on why women choose an elective cesarean section for example for their next birth a lot of it is rooted in the desire to have autonomy and control over

their birth experience and so it's a similar motivation just a different decision on the spectrum of birth options and so partly well I'll go back to the question what what led me to do the PhD and so the PhD was called birthing Outside the System. And the finding was, is that women will always choose what they believe is best and safest. And so again, just like falling into midwifery, I fell into a PhD, a tripped and fell into a PhD, apparently. So I ended up doing a Master's of Nursing for two years, and then a year of midwifery because it was a I guess a higher level pathway into midwifery considering I already had the bachelor of health science and naturopathy I thought if I can do a master's in nursing and a postgraduate degree in midwifery maybe that would

open up opportunities for me in the future that maybe another bachelor of midwifery wouldn't I love the idea with the bachelor of midwifery, but I already had a Bachelor and I thought, let's like, yeah, let's progress up the academic chain. So I did a Master of Nursing and then did my PhD. And at the end of both degrees, I didn't realise what they were telling me, but a lot of my lecturers were kind of saying, hey, what are you going to do after you finish your lecturers were kind of saying hey what are you

going to do after you finish uni degrees and I thought what do you mean I'm going to be a midwife that's the idea and one of my lecturers said have you considered a PhD and I said what is that what is a PhD and then so she she kind of rolled her eyes a bit and went really you don't know what it is so then they sort of talked to me about what a PhD was. And when I heard that, I thought, oh, no, that's not me. That's for really smart people. Really smart people do PhDs and I'm not that person, which is the story I got throughout my life was that you're not one

of the smart ones. You're not the sharpest tool. So I didn't believe I was capable of a PhD. And so my lecturer at the time said, look, go and see Hannah Darling, which you might have heard of, Professor Hannah Darling at Western Sydney University. When I finished my midwifery degree, she had just started at the university. And she said, look, go take your transcript to Hannah and ask her if you should do a PhD. So off I went, I was like, okay, still not really sure what this thing is, but took it off to Hannah. She looked at my,

my academic transcript. She said, you should definitely do a PhD. And what I want you to do is go home and think about a topic that you would want to write about for three years, because by the time you get, right, by the time you get to the end of it, you are going to hate it. So I thought, righty-o, went and I was thinking and I was thinking didn't really know what I would do and then one night just shut up out of bed and went birthing outside the system that is what I want to do and the next day ran into Hannah's office I said I've got it we're gonna do birthing outside the system and she went yes she just yelled yes um okay so we had a topic and then I had to one of the things when you want to do a PhD you have to basically convince the university to let you study that thing so I had to write a ten thousand dollar ten thousand

dollar ten thousand word sort of document and explain to the university why they should let me do this PhD. So I did that. They said, yep, we agree this is necessary. And part of the reason why it was necessary is there was no one looking at free birth or high risk home birth in Australia, full stop. There was no literature. I found two, I have found one PhD thesis in America by Rick Safrees called Born Free. And there was a few other little papers written, but they weren't really academic. There was only that PhD by Rixa and that was in the US. And I thought, right, there's a massive gap.

No one has looked into free birth in Australia. And I knew it was happening because I had friends who had done it and I was a home birth midwife. So we knew what was going on in the community with sort of what women were choosing for birth. So that's how it happened. And then I applied. So the uni agreed, yep, we think this is a good idea.

I applied for the university program and I got rejected. They said, no, you haven't got enough points. There's a little point system for letting you in for a PhD so Hannah said that's okay we're gonna you're gonna work for me for a year and I'm gonna we're gonna do research projects together and you can write some research papers and then next year you'll get in so that's what she we did she took me under her wing she taught me how to research. She sent me out into the field doing interviews and collecting data and writing all kinds of things.

And so we published some papers. And the following year, I got into the PhD with a scholarship. And that's how it happened. Right. Okay. So that's how you decided to do that. But you were already a home birth midwife at that point. Can you explain to me what the difference between free birth, home birth is?

So a home birth, if a woman's planning a home birth, that typically means that she's going to give birth, not in a hospital, at home with a midwife or with a care provider who's experienced in, or I guess qualified, registered care provider who's qualified to care for a woman in that way. A free birth is the decision to birth outside of a hospital at home, but not hiring any expert, a person that's considered an expert in attending your birth. So no midwife, no obstetrician, no nurses. You know, there's discussion in the free birth community as to what exactly is a free birth. Some people believe that if you've got anybody there, a doula or anybody else helping, that it's not a free birth, that

it's just something else. It's obviously not a midwife attended birth, but it's, yeah. So there's some disagreement, but essentially it's the intentional decision not to have a care provider present and you know there's those home births where the baby comes before the midwife does that's not really a free birth that's just you know the baby yeah yeah it's kind of it's it's the intentionality of not having a care provider coming to you. And what did you discover? I know a PhD is a huge amount of work, so it's a bit like, just tell me in a few words, what did you discover in your research? What were the things that really jumped out to you? Yeah. So the question I asked is what motivates women to choose free birth or the other group of women that I included in this research

was women who had risk factors who intended on birthing at home with a midwife. So it was birthing outside the system and anybody who was making a choice that was considered, you know, the choice to have a home birth if you've got risk factors is considered inappropriate from a medical perspective. So I was looking at decisions that women made that were completely outside of what a medical perspective. So I was looking at decisions that women made that were completely outside of what a medical person would consider reasonable. So if you wouldn't be accepted onto a home birth program or into a birth center and you were considered a higher risk person, then these are the women who I wanted to talk about what motivates you to actually plan a home birth, considering that

this is outside of what the system would consider appropriate. So what we discovered is that essentially women will most of the time make a decision for their birth that they believe is best and safest. And through these women's experiences of previous trauma, previous understandings of the system, a lot of them just had this belief, this rooted belief that birth was not a medical event so couldn't understand why you would go to a hospital because they're not sick. So there was all this background as to how they came to that belief

that pre-birth or high-risk home birth was the best and safest decision. And so then we also looked at the characteristics because I interviewed them. There was about 47 women, gosh, it's been a while since I've read my own work, about 47 women that we interviewed and gathered information from. And yeah, we looked at the characteristics of these women and they just generally through their lives were autonomous people and trusted their own knowledge. So one of the things that we have been conditioned to allow, what women have been conditioned to allow in today's society is for medicine to define

what is normal for our bodies and what's abnormal. And so somewhere through history, medical people decided that birth is going to be a dangerous thing for women, that birth is dangerous. And then they positioned themselves as the experts to rescue women from this danger. And so over time, this what we call authoritative knowledge about birth has been built by medical people, not by women who actually understand birth. It's been built by medical people who are invested in women being fearful because then women build a fear of birth and that gets transferred down through generations so and then we go to hospital because we're frightened because birth is dangerous and in hospital all these experts are there to rescue

us from the danger they've got tools and they've got skills and they've got qualifications that qualify them to rescue us from the danger of birth. So that's the authoritative knowledge around birth. And it's been built over time. The women who choose free birth and high-risk home birth don't subscribe to that authoritative knowledge. They call that out as false. And so then what they start to lean back into is historical knowledge of birth, midwifery knowledge of birth, their own intuitive feelings about birth. And they see themselves as the authority instead of the appointed experts. They actually have a distrust of the appointed experts. So the person they trust is themselves. And so for that reason,

they remove themselves from a system that values the place of expertise and that tells them that their body is dangerous and is a danger to their baby. So that was a unique part of women who chose birth outside the system. And so isn't it the case though that birth can be really dangerous? Birth can be dangerous. There's a danger in birth, just like there's a danger in getting into your car and going for a drive. There's a danger in crossing the street. There's danger in our lives everywhere. You know, when I go for a bike ride, it can be dangerous. When I get on the netball court, it can be dangerous. There are lots of risks to everything that we do in life. And so what we get to do is decide what we're going to do with that risk and how high is the risk. And so

what I think has happened is that the risk of birth has been inflated higher than what it needs to be. There is definitely times where women are in danger when they're in labor and having a baby. And that's the role of a wise person in the space. And historically, that's been midwives. And so yes, we're all acknowledging that things can go wrong at birth, but there's a plan for that. And that could be to have a midwife. In this day, we can sometimes predict which women are going to be in more danger and which are in less danger. And so there's justification for some women to be giving birth in hospital because we can predict some danger. But we're actually really bad at predicting

the exact danger that women are in. So it can be dangerous just like anything can be dangerous, but it's about deciding how dangerous and then what we're going to do in response to that danger. So, you know, we're all at risk of having a car accident when we get in our car, but we put our seatbelts on, we learn to drive, we stick to the speed limit, we don't drive under the influence of things, we do things that enhance the safety of that activity in the hope that we will be safe on that journey. But we don't not drive because it's possible that we'll crash

and we don't sort of bring with us a paramedic in case we have an accident. You know, if we have an accident, we activate the emergency strategies. So it depends. So yes, there can be a danger to birth. There's no doubt about that. That's inherent in birth. But what you're going to do about that, the decisions that you make then as a result of that are what women get to choose yeah

so what I'm really interested in now then in your expertise in what you've done in your research in your work as a midwife can you talk to me about birth physiology and what should we know because I just feel like I didn't know enough I loved on your Instagram there's a little post six ways to promote birth physiology as well, which I just wish that I'd known before I went into my first birth. Yeah. So birth is a physiological process. And when we say that, you know, we say that line, yes, birth is a physiological process. Our bodies involuntarily know how to do that. So there's a whole hormonal cascade that needs to happen. There are things that facilitate whole hormonal cascade that needs to happen. There are things

that facilitate that hormonal cascade and things that will put you into labor or slow down labor, things that can help your baby move down in your pelvis, all these things. So it's a process that your body is designed to do. And what the very fundamental thing that medicine has tried to instill in women is that your body probably doesn't work without us. And so there's a good chance that it's going to malfunction. So maybe come to the hospital here so that when, and if it does, we can help you with that. But our bodies, I mean, we're all capable mostly of doing a poo in the morning and getting our period when the time comes and passing urine and digesting. So birth is another process that our bodies can do.

That's how we make babies. And so physiology is that process, that natural process of what your body will do to get a baby out. So you need to have contractions and then your cervix needs to open and then your body has all the capacity, the expulsive capacity to push your baby out. So that can happen for a woman who has no knowledge and who has no medical help. That can happen without all of that and will most likely be completely fine. And so that's the physiology of birth. And then we know what things facilitate physiology. So what things will not get in the way of that process unfolding.

We also know what things interrupt that physiology. And when you interrupt physiology, you introduce additional risk into the birth process. So when people ask, is birth dangerous? My first thought is physiological birth is less dangerous than an interrupted birth because physiological birth has less chance of deviating from physiology than a birth that has been interrupted because then what you've got is a birth that is deviating from physiology, you've introduced danger and risk into the birth space. And so now whoever's there, if you're at a hospital, your care provider, or even if you're at home and something's been interrupted, whoever's there is now responsible for trying to correct that pathology that's been injected into the birth space. Now, sometimes physiology doesn't work. There's no doubt about that. You know, I've heard people say, oh, look, physiology always works. Babies will always come out. That's not the reality of physiological birth. The reality is that most of the time it

goes completely fine, but that sometimes it can become pathological. Like all of our physiological processes, they don't always work. our bodies aren't perfect but they're capable so the things that facilitate physiological birth are anything that will facilitate the flow of oxytocin and oxytocin is the love hormone it's what gets released when you orgasm it's what gets released um in states of happiness and bliss the. To counteract oxytocin, you don't have oxytocin when you're frightened or uncertain, or if you're on high alert, that's not an oxytocin state. That's a state dominated more by adrenaline. And so if a woman enters a space or someone comes into her birth space that frightens her or that she's uncertain

of that's interrupting the physiological flow of birth because you've interrupted oxytocin and there's lots of things that they do in hospital to try and get things back on track so sometimes women's labors stop and they'll give them artificial oxytocin to to to speed it up and bring it back on track so physiology needs you know you know, Sarah Buckley, private, safe, unobserved is what Sarah Buckley talks about as the way to protect oxytocin. But if we look at the research, the women who are most likely to have a physiological birth are ones that are under midwifery care

who know their midwife ahead of time because that really removes a lot of the fright of having a stranger in your birth space and ones that that opt not to have interventions into the birth into the birth process so keeping the physiological process intact is a way of reducing the risk of the birth what does that mean? midwife. So all through my clients' pregnancies, I come to learn what they expect at their birth. And I come to learn what they expect of me at their birth. I've had some clients who say, don't ever, don't leave my side. I need you right there. Last time I was left alone and I didn't like that. And I go, right, I know exactly the type of midwife I need to be for this person. They want me close by in their space, right there giving words of affirmation and

encouraging them. And then I've had other clients, like I had one the other day, who basically said, I will call you into the birth space if I feel like I need you. But otherwise, what I want is for you to be over in the corner in the other room and I'll let you know if I need you. And so I go, right, that's the type of midwife I need to be for this woman. And so when I arrive to a birth, I very quietly bring in my equipment. I don't need to ask the woman any questions because I already know what she wants because we discussed it in detail through her pregnancy. And when women are in labour, what is happening in their brain completely changes. So they actually turn off parts of their brain that are required for complex decision making and having conversations,

and they go into a part of their brain called the limbic system. And a surefire way to bring someone out of their limbic system and draw their brain back into a non-labour state is to ask them questions and ask them to make a decision. So even something like, would you like a glass of water? That's a hard thing for if a woman's gone right into her limbic system and is in labour land and is completely in that zone. If you ask her a question and she's required to engage part of her brain that had to turn off in order for physiology to function properly, you've started to introduce interruption into the normal flow of labour. And so my intention when I get to the birth is to not have to ask any questions, to not ask her to make any decisions and to leave her in this, it's this subliminal state where she goes completely internal

and that's what needs to happen for her body to function in labour. Whereas if you are going to hospital to have your baby, you have to make a decision of when do I get in the car? Is this labor strong enough for me to go to hospital? You're discussing it with the people in your birth space. You take yourself out of the safe space of your home where you feel safe and comfortable and cozy and you get into the car. You drive to a bright shiny place where there's people you don't know and you have to navigate your way into the hospital. You have to discuss things with the admin person and tell them your name and what's been going on. And then you meet your midwife and you go into this strange room.

And all of a sudden, all of the parts of your brain that were concentrating on being in labor are now activating different parts of your brain and you've been distracted from the labour process and your body's been distracted from it and then the hospital goes oh I wonder why your labour's slowed down things aren't really progressing in the way that we thought they should would you like us to try this this and this and can we give you a vaginal exam and do you mind if we listen to your baby and hey we've noticed you're a bit dehydrated maybe we'll put a cannula in maybe we'll give you some IV fluids and so everything that you do to drag a woman out of her limbic system her brain and the zone that she has to get in into labor is an interruption in the physical

physiological process and every time you interrupt it, you introduce the possibility that it's not going to find its way back again to physiology. That is so helpful. Because if I bring it into my story, I was 29. I'd done the hospital kind of active birthing thing they give you. I had a fit ball and like a plan. I had no idea when I started contracting what the bloody hell I was doing. I just had my husband with me who didn't really know either. And I was kind of just told ring when it gets to a certain point, however many contractions through, but I was so scared already. I was like, bloody hell. And the contracting. Is this a contraction? I don't even

know. I don't know what this is. So I was ringing, I was kind of desperate to get into the hospital. And I remember having to ring them. The woman on the end of the phone, like accidentally knew, recognized my surname and knew my dad. So she's like, oh, he's that guy, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like contracting being like, I don't know, should I be coming in? And she's like, stay at home. You're safe there. And I, in my head, I'm like, no one is here that knows what they're doing. I'm not safe here. I need to come in. And so I remember then driving in my obstetrician and I thought I had a private obstetrician. So I was like, great. I've got a private obstetrician. That's what I need. Safe as much as I can be safe, safe, safe. And so he comes in and goes,

well, not my fish is progressing. I can send you back home again, or I can, um, you know, get things moving, break your waters because your waters haven't broken. And I was so tired at that point because I'd been laboring on and off for like two weeks. So not sleeping, which is something else I didn't really know was just something that can happen. Like things would start and stop and start and stop and so he broke my waters which was incredibly painful and then stuff started to happen and I remember coming out of the bathroom and saying to the midwife who was there oh I think this contraction is really intense it's the first really painful one she's like and she actually just said to me we know you're in labor you don't need to tell us every time you have a contraction remember like that and then I started I'm a singer so I tell this story in my

in my performance but I started singing like this low humming sound which I use my voice to soothe me all the time and I had no knowledge of like what that is about in your nervous system how good that is for you. And she just said, be quiet. You're so noisy. Get back on the bed. You're going to annoy everyone in the room. Plus also they put a heart monitor on me and said, I'm not allowed to get out of bed.

And I, for me in my head, I'd said I'd wanted an active birth. And so the lights were just left on. It just kind of cascaded and cascaded. And I know you know lots of stories, but it was like 16 hours and I was freaking out about having any kind of epidural. Eventually I had to have an epidural. It was an hour before I could even have one. And then things just escalated to a point where I ended

up in surgery afterwards away from my son. My brother and my mum were in the hospital and they're both medical so they're both doctors and they came into the room after I left and was in surgery and they were like oh my god this is a scene from Dexter it was just like everything everywhere so this is a lot to tell you the reason I share that is because it resonates so deeply with me that there was already interruptions, so much so. And if I'd known that idea of private, safe and unobserved even, because I remember a midwife came in when the shift changed and she changed everything. She turned all the lights off. She got me in the shower.

She was so soothing in her presence. Her name was Prue but by that point I think things are so far down the road and I just wasn't dilating as much as they wanted so it's just so interesting isn't it and I think my story is quite common in your story is incredibly common and this is what then perpetuates the idea that birth is so dangerous is that women get given and it was by no fault of your own that that was your circumstance because women you know even telling you to be quiet and telling you like you don't need to tell us if you're getting contractions we know It just shows such a disrespect for the

labor process and for women. And it disrespects the knowledge that you had for your body where you thought, right, I need to be soothed. This is what I feel like doing. And so, you know, you, yeah, your care providers didn't do the right thing by you. And then, you know, beautiful Prue who came in for the rescue mission of trying to get things back on track and turn things down. And, you know, and you remember her name, right? And how that probably felt to have the lights dimmed and to get into the shower and how cared for you were. You can see how the care that Prue gave could actually open the doors for labour to feel safe and appropriate to progress whereas when confronted with the other midwife our bodies know when we're not in a safe place

and where people don't care for us and and your body almost sort of goes well why would I let my baby out here why would I let my baby out into this situation and so we can hold on to our babies because we just don't feel safe and then the cascade happens and we're told wow you know like aren't you lucky that we saved you from this situation and no one asks like did they put you in that situation in the first place yeah I remember the meet that same midwife I had wanted a heat pack and she made me write a letter and sign it in front of her saying I wouldn't sue her if I burnt myself on the heat pack which in my brain as a 29 year old who was a people pleaser, I think that's a very common

story for women. I had no idea about the, you know, having advocacy for myself in the system or knowing I even needed that, that I just, that good girl mentality. Oh God, I've done something wrong by asking for a heat pack. All of that, which seems small now in that lens of what promotes birth physiology even just asking a question you're telling me is disruptive so someone making you write a letter and sign it to say you won't sue them of course my body went no I'm not safe here and that kind of fear I'm really interested in what you mean by like unobserved, low, slow, quiet. Can you talk into that more? Yeah, so quiet, safe and unobserved is Sarah Buckley's, you know, summary of things.

And then in that Instagram tile that you're talking about, low, slow and quiet is how I conduct myself in the birth space. And the low, slow and quiet, so low, like low voices, quiet voices, you don't want to inject noise into the space that will startle somebody and low physical positioning. So this is also about, I guess, communicating where the power lies in a room. So in a hospital space, women are often put on the bed and strapped to it in some way, either with stirrups or the CTG monitor, or in some way they're kind of trapped up there. And people walk in and they stand over them and talk to them from above. And it's quite a domineering and vulnerable, it's a domineering situation from the care

provider and the woman is placed in a vulnerable situation. They often take her usual clothes from her and replace them with hospital gowns. And everything about that scenario is about stripping the woman of her usual power and it gives it to the people who have the clothes who have the equipment who have the knowledge who own the space so the woman virtually has very little control and ownership over anything in that scenario but when you approach a woman low and you get down to her level, so if the woman is on the floor, then that's where I exist for the birth as well. I'm crawling around, staying out of her way as much as possible. But also if she has a question,

I'm almost like lying on the ground to get to her eyesight in order to have this conversation. And it just, I feel like subconsciously transfers the power back to the woman, is in this scenario, I'm going to be the one who will get into positions that suit you, not the other way around where I need you to be where sometimes clinicians need the woman to be in a position that suits them so they need you on the bed to birth so that they don't have to crouch down on the floor and so they don't hurt their back when they're doing certain things and so they can get access to you whereas I work the other way around so low kind of is the the strategy that I use that that that hopefully communicates to the woman that you have all the

power here. I'm coming to you on your terms, not my terms. Again, slow is about reducing urgency in the birth space. So there's not rushing around, there's not clattering, There's not chaos. You want to facilitate a relaxed environment, low, slow and quiet. Again, yeah, it's about not startling the woman and not interrupting her physiology so that she can stay completely focused. And yeah, that's the idea behind it. That is so helpful. I'm really curious about neurodiversity in women. Do you know anything about women who are neurodiverse

and how important this stuff is or how they're affected in birth? I don't specifically, like I haven't specifically looked into how, in terms of internal brain function and how that would alter things. But our physiological needs in birth are universal. We all need to feel safe, unobserved. And I can only imagine for women who are neurodiverse would be more affected by the chaos of some birth spaces than other women. So, you know, there's some people who can deal with clutter and noise and bright lights and activity and, you know,

that just overstimulation of things in the birth space and others would, their threshold for feeling overwhelmed by that would be a lot lower. So, I mean, at a very basic level, I can imagine that. And then the very fact that in a hospital you can't escape and put yourself away if that's how you're feeling like you know just I can't imagine that you would feel capable of having a baby when already all of your senses and capabilities are feeling overwhelmed and like they want to run. So I can only assume that the process, that anything that facilitates physiological birth

would also be soothing and beneficial for people who are neurodiverse. It makes so much sense, right? I'm so interested in this topic because I think light, sound, sensory issues, clothing, fabrics, like all of that stuff can be so huge for people who are neurodiverse. Even the smells, the smells in hospitals. So everyone's using hand sanitizer and soap and the cleaners have cleaned the room with bleaches and, you know, and women in my study talked about that, like, gosh, have you smelled a hospital? You know, and the midwife's wearing perfume and all of the senses need

to be so focused on birth. So, yes, smells. It's so interesting, isn't it, all of this stuff. You have a podcast called The Great Birth Rebellion. So tell me what is The Great Birth Rebellion? Not the podcast, just the whole thing. Tell me about it. Yes.

So The Great Birth Rebellion. So I'm an academic and obviously a clinical midwife. And so I love to bring together what I observe at birth already and what I learn from birth and then also what I learn from research. And what we know from research and from watching physiological birth is that a lot of the standard care that's offered in hospital is not evidence-based and it doesn't facilitate normal birth. And there's so much research on this. We know that. It's not a personal opinion of mine, whereas maybe 30 years ago it could have been put down to personal opinion now I could undoubtedly and with full confidence write a book

on why the hospital is not the best place for most women to have a baby that with full confidence and it would be so academically rigorous and I'd be so confident that no one could dispute it with the amount of research that we have. And so the Great Birth Rebellion is about rebelling against the messaging that we've been given as women, that birth is dangerous and because it's dangerous, we need to go to hospital all the time and that it's always dangerous and that it always needs a hospital and that always someone has to be there otherwise it will go wrong that's not true and so we're rebelling against the subliminal messaging that we've been given as women that birth is dangerous and also the other

messaging that we've been given is that hospital is safe and that hospital is the most appropriate place to have a baby and we're learning more and more by you know through research through collection of statistics our rising and new understanding of the impact or that hospitals are having on birth trauma for women that maybe hospital is not safe and that the lies being exposed it might be safe for some people physically, but usually not emotionally or socially or psychologically. It's probably not as safe. Yeah. You say women's experience of childbirth worldwide or women's experiences of childbirth

worldwide are marred by mistreatment. That's from, is it Bowen et al 2015? It's an evidence-based fact that women are globally neglected abused and disrespected during childbirth that's such a huge thing to really contemplate but I think when we look at the birth trauma inquiry that happened in New South Wales or is happening and the fact the site crashed really gives you an indication doesn't it of how things need to change so in that what do you think we need what do women need if you're listening to this and you're pregnant what would you do yeah so my thesis at the end when you write a thesis you find out all these things and then you make

recommendations for maybe what needs to happen and what I recommended in my thesis was that it's clear that the current state of maternity care is actually driving women out. They're either choosing cesarean sections next time to not have babies again. They, you know, some of them are led to choose free birth and high-risk home birth. And so actually we are generating trauma and damage to women. They go in one way and they come out damaged. Not all the time.

I know I'm being really sort of broad sweeping. Not all the time. Lots of people have amazing experience in hospital. But what we know is if we prioritize giving every woman a midwife that they know. So imagine if you got pregnant and you thought, oh, I know which midwife I want. And you picked that midwife and she said, yep, I can be your midwife. Great. Where would you like to have your baby? And so women get a choice of care provider

and a care provider who'll care for them all through their pregnancy and birth and afterwards. Some people need an obstetrician to be this person because they've got complexity. And what we say is that every woman needs a midwife and some women need a doctor. So even if you've got risk factors that risk you out of the option of home birth or you need medical attention, I mean, it's amazing that we have it. Still, everyone should have a midwife. And we've studied this, is what happens for women who have midwifery care, even if they're higher risk. And there was a study done here in New South Wales called the Mango Trial. And they looked at women who had risk factors that were cared for by midwives and compared that to the ones who had standard care. So they went through the obstetric clinic at the

hospital where all the other higher risk women go. What they found is that they could improve the outcomes, a lot of the outcomes by giving women a midwife there was no increase in morbidity or mortality so babies who were unwell or died and they reduced the cost of care by about five hundred dollars per person without impacting the well-being of anybody except that the obviously the women who had midwifery care felt way more positive about the care that they got but you know on paper looked very similar, but it was cheaper and women enjoyed it more. So the very first thing that women can do, regardless of where you're going to give birth or what your complexities are, is to find yourself a care provider, preferably a midwife,

because that's where the evidence lies in terms of satisfaction and good outcomes is find somebody who aligns with your philosophy so if you think to yourself right I definitely want a home birth you need to find a midwife who can help you with that and who's aligned with that or if you say right I'm through this pregnancy I know I'm planning a cesarean section all right that's okay Find the person who's going to nurture you through your pregnancy and help facilitate the type of birth that you're after. So that's number one. If we could give everyone the midwife of their choosing and then allow them to choose the place where they're going to give birth, that's the most amazing thing we can do for people and when we look at the things that are going to most impact your birth outcomes it's the person the people you have with you and where

you choose to go to have your baby it's probably not your body that's going to impact what happens to you in labor and birth so do you mean then because at the moment if women go through the public system they could just are they just kind of given a midwife in that way? They're not even given a midwife. So standard care in hospitals in most places, there are some unicorn countries who do this a lot better than we do here in Australia. But if you arrive at a hospital and say, I'm pregnant, you go through just standard care, which they have a big antenatal clinic and you arrive there for your appointments and you'll see whoever calls your

name that day. So there's a big pile of folders. And as midwives finish their appointments, they'll come out and take the next folder off the desk and go, right, I'm seeing this person today. And so you might see a different midwife every single time you go in for your antenatal care then you arrive for your birth and there's there's birth unit midwives so they always work in the birth unit and you'll get whichever one of those is on and then you'll get transferred to the postnatal ward where all the postnatal midwives work and so you'll get to see them and so what you've had is what we call fragmented care, where you are the only same thing in your care. Everything else is broken up, different people, different locations, different everything.

That's the most likely option you've got here in Australia. Then if you're lucky, if you get in early and if you satisfy their criteria, you could get onto a midwifery group practice program where you get your own midwife. You might not be able to choose them. You might be allocated a midwife or a group of midwives, but it's the next, I mean, it's a better step than fragmented care unless you get a midwife that you don't align with. You might get a midwife who is a lot more physiologically minded than you are all the other way around.

And so you're still fighting for the type of care that you want. And the benefit is that you can have the same midwife through your pregnancy, birth and afterwards. You might not get to choose them. They're still hospital based, but there's also some publicly funded home birth programs where you will be allocated a midwife who's actually happy to come out to your home to have your home birth and that's a hospital program they are governed by policies and rules and things so they still have to follow the requirements of the hospital and a lot of women

are risked out of that model so they might not actually satisfy the criteria for getting in that program but your biggest chance of having a midwife that aligns with you and having the option of multiple care places, so birth at home or birth in the hospital, is if you hire a private midwife. So obviously that has a financial cost, but you get to choose and they care for you for your whole pregnancy, birth and afterwards. And if you want to go to hospital, you still can. So you have someone there with you the whole time. It's so interesting.

I often think about how much money women or people spend on their wedding and then they come to birth and they go, oh, couldn't possibly spend X amount of money on this. And I just think, oh, my God, we spent like $2,000 on flower arrangements or something. Yeah. People buy cars and they go wow yeah I really I do need a car and I and I'll happily spend fifty or sixty thousand

dollars on that and just get a loan and pay it off over time and commit to getting a car and then when you say yeah look it's about six and a half to seven thousand dollars to hire a private midwife, I get, oh, oh, that's a lot. But yeah, I mean, and I often encourage people to think about what will it cost you not to have a private midwife though? Because if you end up having a birth experience that's very traumatic, that's going to take some recovery. You probably will invest time and money into that recovery. And I just, I just think it's such a valuable thing to invest in, in your health that everybody has to make that priority for themselves. But yeah, there's certainly, I don't apologize for how much we need

to charge as private midwives, because I really believe in the quality of the care and the long-term impact that it has and that ultimately we're helping people to be hopefully better than they were when they found us instead of damaged and worse and again I feel like I'm just like poo-pooing the hospital there are so many women have so many amazing experiences in hospital, but we do know that we can't deny that trauma rates are showing a picture that at least a third of women are coming out with profound trauma symptoms. So yeah. And that's so scary, isn't it?

So here is a question for you around breastfeeding. If you experience a really traumatic birth, is there a correlation between having difficulty breastfeeding? Yes, definitely. So breastfeeding is just a continuation on your pregnancy, birth and postpartum journey. It's the same. It's the same thing. You still need to feel safe. You need to have support. You need to have someone who's there to encourage you and support you in that journey. You need to help. You need someone there who's willing to help you troubleshoot things and encourage you and bring you water and tell you you're doing an amazing job and give you advice if you need it. I committed to breastfeeding with my kids and, you know, my husband made sure I had a comfy chair at night and

my water was full and there was a table next to it and there was blankets and that if I got up, he would sort of go, do you need anything? You know, all these little things support women in their journey to breastfeeding. And if they weren't there for the birth and they're not there for breastfeeding there's a lot of motivation to give up but physiologically if you have an uninterrupted birth you're probably going to have an uninterrupted physiological breastfeeding journey as well because babies benefit from physiological birth too and they have all these instinctual desires to feed and they have physical capacity to feed but if they've been impaired by the birth process or by medicines given at the birth or by being separated from their mother then their physiological breastfeeding

process has been interrupted too just like the woman's physiological birth process so if there's there's a physiological there's a way to support breastfeeding that allows the physiology to keep flowing and again the more you interrupt that journey the more problems you're going to have it strikes me that it's continuous care then continuing into breastfeeding. So I remember I had about 50 different people give you 50 different opinions of this like rotating door of midwives and some I liked, some I didn't. All of it seemed confusing and overwhelm I feel like is a big factor in like there's just so much information and it just all doesn't like it's like contradictory half the time and then

you have someone grabbing your boob who you've never met before it's 3am being like you need to hold your baby like a football and you're bleeding so we're going to put this thing on you and you you need to kneel on the ground and drop your nipple into your baby's mouth or something and you know just like all this and all that and then you never see that person again and you're like, thanks, Cheryl. All right, see you. You know, it's so confusing. But also, not all places will allow the partner to stay. Yeah. And so you're doing this in the middle of the night when you're tired,

you've just had a baby, you're with strangers, and some, you know, a lot of women have had surgery, some are feeling traumatised by what just happened, and then some stranger comes in and man handles your breast and shines a torch at you like it's just it's a bit barbaric actually you know to be putting women in that situation then expecting everything to work i completely agree i'm i'm conscious i've taken up a lot of your time. So headline things that you wish all women knew about birth other than what we've talked about. I'm thinking things like hormones. I'm thinking things like placenta, things that can aid you in that process other than what we've already discussed.

Wow. Okay. So all the things I would love to tell women, I mean, this is partly what the Great Birth Rebellion podcast is about, is being able to tell women everything I mean, this is partly what the Great Birth Rebellion podcast is about, is being able to tell women everything I'd like them to know about a particular topic. But if I had to tell women anything, it would be get a midwife, trust. Well, I say trust your instinct, but sometimes that's the first time women have ever actually trusted their instinct in pregnancy and birth. So there's a whole journey with actually trusting your own knowledge and capacity but there's a knowledge that you have in your body about your baby and about you that no one else has not your midwife not your doctor no ultrasound can tell you no blood test can tell you about what's happening

in your body that's only knowledge that you have. So if you can somehow work through your pregnancy or beforehand on how to connect with your body and find out is your body well, is it unwell and then actually trusting if you have a connection with your baby, trusting that that's real and not imaginary because medicine would have us say there's no way you can know about the well-being of your baby so what I want to tell women is that there is a hundred percent absolutely a way for you to tell the well-being of your baby but it's subjective and we can't medically record it and so the best explanation that medicine can give you is that that's not possible, but you do have a knowledge inside you that no one else can tap into. So my advice would be to tap into that.

And then also confront fears and truths that you have about birth. So Claire, you mentioned one of your, one of your truths was that, you know, birth could be dangerous and, and maybe that elicited some fears in you. so then it's about challenging those thoughts and going okay is birth dangerous like if it was would we be here you know modern obstetrics is probably only about 200 years old so how did we get to such a massive population when only for the last 200 years we've had modern medicine helping with birth. And so, yeah, I think that's probably what I would say to women. Thank you.

Yeah. And go listen to the great birth rebellion, right, because there's so much information. I mean, I'm really passionate about us understanding our bodies overall, right, and hormone health is huge. I love that phrase you say hormones of labor are shy which I think speaks volumes just as a curiosity for listeners so you have do you have two kids two yeah two what were your births just overall like like what did you choose for you so I was

already a private midwife before I had my baby. So I'd been a private midwife for four years. So I chose to have them both at home. And actually I'm doing, I'm recording a podcast episode today. My first was born, he was premature. So he was 36 weeks and two days when I went in, when I had him. And it was a long labor. And he was so tiny when he was born he was 2.3 kilos which is you know they usually put those babies in special care nursery but I committed to keeping him at home

and I did and he's he's 11 now and taller than me and so lovely and healthy and he was he really adjusted well but that I intuitively knew he was going to come early. I told my midwife he was coming early. I prepared for the fact that he was going to be premature and knew that I had things to do. I don't know where that knowledge came from except that I felt it came within me and I trusted it and I just acknowledged it and went, okay, having an early baby. So, yeah, he was brought at home after a very long labor with my midwives.

And then my second baby, she was brought at home as well as planned, but she stayed in another four weeks, which I wasn't expecting. I thought that all my babies would just be early. I was early baby. My mom, you know, that was her story. So I thought maybe we just don't gestate very long. She stayed in until 40 weeks and her birth was the peak of bliss. So I was already over being pregnant.

So when I went into labor, I was so excited. I'm like, finally, yes. And it went really fast. I acknowledged that maybe I was in labor at about 8 p.m. And by 10.30, she was in my arms. And as she was emerging, as I felt full stretch, my first thought was, ah, that's not so bad. And then I erupted into hysterical laughter as she was emerging

because it just felt so good. What? What? It felt incredible. Like I would give birth every day by how amazing it felt. What? Just like I didn't feel pain or, you know, people call it the ring of fire. I don't like that term, the ring of fire.

It's just a stretch. or, you know, people call it the ring of fire. I don't like that term, the ring of fire. It's just a stretch. I felt my body working at its full capacity and it was amazing and I laughed hysterically. What? Yeah. Her birth was just the best. It was the best. God.

Yeah. But, okay, because I'm sure people are listening being like the birth to me birth was the worst one of the worst things that's ever happened to me like hands down the most terrifying worst pain i've ever been in how is that like part of it must be physiological and genetic, do you think? No, I don't. I think, so I think birth is designed to be blissful and joyful at its full physiological capacity. So it's oxytocin that governs birth. Oxytocin is the hormone of love, of bliss, of laughter, of joy. So it makes sense that if we're in a state of oxytocin, like birth is governed by oxytocin, physiological birth is governed by oxytocin, we should feel bliss in that time. That's the hormonal plan. And actually you get your highest

peaks of oxytocin. The moment your baby emerges is the highest peak of oxytocin even that you'll get through labor. And partly that's physiological to stop you from bleeding because that's going to clamp down your uterus and make sure you don't lose too much blood. But also it wires us the minute your baby comes out. If you meet your baby in a state of flooded oxytocin your whole life is bonded and and linked to the joy you felt when you met this baby and you would jump in front of a car for this child and we're actually physiologically wired to be bonded to and love our babies because we need to keep them alive and protect them and nurture them and love them in order for them to grow and flourish. And so birth sets us up to be that type of parent.

You can get there. There's ways to get there. And I did an episode with Sarah Buckley, and we talked about hormonal gaps, where if you didn't get that kind of experience at birth, how you can claw it back in the months following birth. There's ways to reinstate that physiological process. But the lie that we're told is that birth is dangerous and an ordeal and it's horrific and you have to endure it and it's hard and horrible. But the truth is, is that physiological birth feels incredible and that's how it was designed. But we're supposed to feel incredible. But there's so many, like because of the birth that you have had,

isn't that the lens that you're looking at it through? But I was a midwife before I had my babies. And when I attend women at home having their babies, they're all having, most of them, are having the same experience as what I had. And the truth about birth is that it can be and has the capacity to be blissful, but nobody wants us to know that.

Because if we know that, we challenge the entire medical authority around birth and that's not considered good for business or hospitals or the status quo and so the great birth rebellion is exactly that actually trying to tell the truth about birth and I've been a home birth midwife for 15 years and every week I watch women experience bliss in birth wow right this is what happens right now your whole neural pathways and understanding about birth is being challenged and you're like right where did I get the information that birth is dangerous and horrific where did that come from

who put that in my brain because it's not the truth somebody that's a fabricated story about birth that has been passed down to women and that now we inherently believe and we don't know where it came from and we don't know why we believe it and it's not anyone's fault that that's the belief but now we've got to tell people the truth so that's a lot of what motivates my work as a private midwife and on the podcast it's so interesting because I think it speaks to a broader thing right of how powerful how we feel and what we think and our emotions are Like part of the big thing about this podcast is really just talking about emotional lives and our emotions. And when I said that, that's my show, I had a lot of shame around it and was like, well, that's just like, not really interesting.

Like, what do you mean people's emotional lives? How do our emotions shape our stories? But actually what is that emotions, energy in motion? It it's so for women but I think for all of us it's kind of the crux of everything like Brene Brown would say that it's not soft it's actually life-changing earth-shaking I've recently heard this concept what it's not a new concept I guess it was for me the idea that our whole society is built around patriarchy and I'd never thought before about what that needs to be replaced by but it's matriarchy and that phrase meaning in the beginning the mothers and patriarchy meaning domination of the fathers and how rather than a triangle we're aiming for a circle of women like or people

humans equal love reciprocity and birth to me seems like all of it encapsulated in that here's another i love another question for you before we finish matcence, that word changed my life. Have you heard of matrescence? Have you have an insight into that word? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And actually a guy who's doing a lot of work in this field is Dr. Oscar Serolak. He's written a book called The Postnatal Depletion Cure. And he talks about in the stage of matrescence where we are growing babies and having babies and raising babies, that our brains actually undergo a change that is comparable to the change that children go through when they become teenagers.

So it's the adolescence of motherhood and the massive, basically our brains get reorganized in the same way you've got, there's a window of time where kids become teenagers and they move into their, you know, they hit puberty and they move into the adolescent phase where their brains reorganize themselves, you know, quite dramatically. The same thing happens in matrescence. And so we become new people and we have new brains and nobody's nurturing women through that. Women have to find their own way. So there's no acknowledgement that that's the change that's happening in our bodies during matrescence so the very very beginning I think we need to do is acknowledge that matrescence is a time of

incredible physical change at the very very least and then how that impacts the fact that we're about to become new people and then that women need to be need to be nurtured through that in the same way as you would re-parent and strategize around how to help your adolescent child transition into adulthood. It's the same attention that a woman needs as she's moving from being a maiden into a mother and that process of matrescence. Yeah. That's so beautifully said said thank you so much for the work that you are doing I know that it must be wonderful but also exhausting when you're trying to change a system right yeah I just remind myself you can't do everything but you can do something so I'm just doing something the most exhausting part is when people try and get in your way.

That is annoying when people say things online and when you get emails from people saying, you should not be doing this. This is irresponsible. That's the most annoying part. But no, I just remind myself and everybody can do something, but we can't do everything. Absolutely. do you want to tell us for people listening about the inaugural convergence of rebellious midwives oh yeah thanks yes so the inaugural convergence of rebellious midwives this is it's a bit of a mouthful but I was like it's the first one the inaugural so the convergence of rebellious midwives conference it's happening in August 2024 depending on when you're listening It's the first one, the inaugural. So the Convergence of Rebellious Midwives Conference,

it's happening in August 2024, depending on when you're listening, in Sydney, and we've already sold 260 tickets. We've got capacity for about 400 people. But basically the speaker line-up is just an insane level of quality and I can't believe almost everybody I asked to speak is speaking. And it's going to be, it's aimed at midwives in terms of the knowledge, but everyone is welcome. And you can go to the web, you can go to melaniethemidwife.com

to find out all the details about the Convergence. But I think it's a conference that no one's ever seen before and I have a big dream for it and I hope I get to do it every single year. But, yeah, it's a conference but with a twist. The food is going to be lush. The venue is amazing. It's right on Darling Harbour.

The idea was to just nurture and love and honour the work that midwives do and give them a big breath out and a rest. We've got quite a party planned on the Saturday. There's people coming to nurture us with some breath work. There's morning restorative yoga classes. And, yeah, it's just all designed to cater to the emotional but academic and career needs of midwives, but I'm hoping it will be just a big breath out and a nervous system reset

for the people who come and that they just feel benefit and not drained from the whole journey. Because that's a piece too. I have friends who are midwives who say they've left or are struggling in the system themselves because who is caring for the carers and being a midwife who has beliefs in both camps in wanting to keep women safe in medical knowledge but also has this beautiful trust of women's bodies and physiological birth when you're working in the system sometimes things happen it's quite traumatic or it must

be exhausting I've heard that story so often that they leave even yes because of that exactly and this conference is for those midwives who just feel so downtrodden by what they're seeing in the hospital and they just need a breath of fresh air where they realize they're not alone and that they're not the crazy ones and that yeah and this is a place to be with with your people who feel the same that's such a massive piece about womanhood in general and learning you are not crazy trust yourself trust your body trust your intuition so often once you start to do that, it's so curious the things that come to us and nature is such a teacher. I spend a lot of time in nature for that reason and you can start to really reconnect with that colonised mindset that we've been given,

this kind of patriarchal way of thinking about ourselves and our bodies that we are dangerous or that having free thought, having that deep intuition is somehow not right or true or not to be trusted. There's a very deep thread, I think, that we need to put in the bin, find some joy in rebellion, you know, trust ourselves more. Yes, joy in birth. That's a phrase I'm going to be thinking about was so long now you really like

blow my mind apart i need to go and like sit with a tree for a while i'm really cold i'm like that thank you so much you're welcome thank you for having me it's been really great i don't often get to be interviewed by people so it's been nice to have permission to talk oh great oh no you've got so much reason i could have asked you a million more questions but um that was so helpful so thank you so much i'd love to have you back on another time to get into more nitty-gritty stuff but um yeah that was such a beautiful chat thank you thanks for having me you've been listening to a podcast with me claire tonte and this week with dr melanie jackson you can find more from Melanie at MelanieTheMidwife or MelanieTheMidwife.com on her website

and listen to the Great Birth Rebellion podcast. For more from me, you can head to ClaireTonte.com or onto Instagram at Claire Tonte where I like to tell stories and you can find links there to my music, Matrescence, which is an album I wrote about my experience of motherhood and overcoming birth trauma. You can find that on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music. And I'd love to see you if you are in the UK or Ireland. I've got details of my tour and events, as I said at the beginning of this episode. Okay. Thank you as always to Royal Collings for editing this week's episode

and to Maisie for running our social media. Okay, time's up. Freedom, we want all of it. Spent so long being good girls, can't breathe through it. We're gonna rip it up, we're gonna tear it down. This cage you want us in no longer fits our crowns because we are fire and we can be free we can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be because we are fire and we can finally breathe we can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be We can be free We can be free And don't forget that bodies can break

They want us hungry and humble, thinking our worth isn't our weight Thought if we starved ourselves to fit their box and fit their mold They want us hungry and humble, thinking our worth is in our way. Thought if we starved ourselves to fit their box and fit their mold, we'd lose our fight, stay small, wait to be told that we are fire. And we can be free. We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be Cause we are fire and we can finally see We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be We can be free We can be free

We're gonna rip it up, we're gonna rip it up. We're gonna eat it all. Hear my voice now. We're gonna take it all. We're gonna rip it up. We're gonna eat it all. Hear my voice now. We're gonna take it all.

Because we are fire and we can be free. We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be. Because we are fire and we can finally breathe. We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be We can be free We can be free We can be free We can be free We can be free We can be free

Oh, we can be free