Ever heard any of these approaches to birth: couples birth, daddy delivery, husband and wife birth?

Well today our guest Lynn Griesemer, who is a mother of 6, marriage coach, podcaster and author (among many other things) joins us for a conversation about including your partner in the birth experience. Giving them an active role and making birth a family-led experience. 

We chat about some of Lynn’s own experience with 4 hospital births, followed by 2 unassisted births (or free births), as well as her insight into creating a safe and trusting environment for birth that can influence and empower later parenting experiences and decisions.

This is a great resource for those families who want their husband or partner to be very involved in the birth experience. 

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What does a midwife do? 

Might seem like an obvious answer if you’ve been in the birthing world for a while. But if you’re unfamiliar with different models of care or exploring home birth for the first time, it’s a very legitimate question with answers that could be very significant in your birthing journey.

Today we’re joined by Sarah McClure and Charli Zarosinski, midwives of Hearth and Home Midwifery and hosts of The Homebirth Midwife Podcast. 

We unpacked a lot of really great topics in this conversation including:

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Meet Megan, mom to 6-year-old Aurelia and 19-month-old Leonardo Iztali from Denver, Colorado. We connected with Megan via another DIAH mom, Marissa (whom we interviewed a few weeks before). Megan had sent a banner to Marissa to decorate her home in preparation for home birth. The same banner has made its way to other mamas since then, and Megan plans to continue to send it to friends as they want it.

Besides supporting other women in their home birth journeys, Megan has an amazing story of her own. After having a great experience with her first birth in a birthing center, she felt inspired to move into home birth for the next time around. She says she felt empowered and knew a home birth was the next step. 

In between Aurelia and Leonardo, Megan experienced a miscarriage at 10 weeks. Megan shares openly on the fear and guilt that crept in during that time, and how she embarked on a journey of forgiveness, back to grace, comfort and love. 

By the time she was pregnant with Leonardo, Megan felt in full trust of her body, her baby and herself. She listened to the flow and went the whole pregnancy and birth almost completely unassisted. She did yoga, meditated, read, watched home births, created affirmations and playlists -- all to create the sacred space for her birth.

Megan is a total inspiration. This episode has a lot of great quotes and mantras to pull from. My favorite? “PURE MAGIC!”

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Were you surprised when your labor started?

For mama Caitlin Thompson, she shares that even though she felt somewhat ready, there was still a part of her that didn’t expect it. Today’s home birth story is a followup to our interview with Caitlin back in episode 126 when we spoke to her about the emotional journey to conception for her and her wife Sho (definitely listen to that episode if you haven’t yet - it’s amazing).

Now today we have Sho joining us (and even a little cameo from baby Florence!) to talk birthing day. From the moment they realized labor was starting to Caitlin taking a work call during contractions (Say what?! Go mama!) to baby Flo’s arrival. Plus their dogs hung out and provided emotional support. And they had a sweet friend offer to photograph the birth. Basically, it’s a magical story that you need to listen to right now. The whole crew agrees that home birth was “the most amazing thing we’ve ever done!”

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• Part 1 of Caitlin and Sho’s story - https://p.podderapp.com/1587082483/chrt.fm/track/D349DG/traffic.megaphone.fm/POD5346009855.mp3?updated=1660573238

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Any mamas out there who have birthed in multiple countries?

Today’s guest, Lindsay Wolff shares her two home birth experiences with us. Her first with her daughter Isla was in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and her second daughter Marin was in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 

Both times Lindsay and her husband Jeremy had to navigate entirely new birthing communities, laws and care systems. 

Some of the highlights of our conversation include her water breaking 5 days before labor starting in her first birth, along with 7.5 hours of pushing!

And now 3 years as a doula, Lindsay has attended over 200 births and works to support women like herself. 

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How do we prevent birth worker burnout?

This is one of the great topics we dive into this week with Martha Lerner, birth doula and photographer. 

Martha shares her wisdom with us around the following topics:

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We have a fun and little different kind of episode for you today. Katy emailed us after her great friend and fellow DIAH mama Katie McCormick (from episode 73) shared the podcast with her.

Katy thanked us for what we’re up to with the show. As a “non-mom” (though she plans to be in the future), she’s always been fascinated by pregnancy and birth. She’s been exploring the option of home birth for herself when that time comes. 

So we figured...let’s get on the phone, hit record and see what happens! 

We believe that what Katy’s doing is an awesome example. If women who are not yet mothers are interested in exploring their future options, educating themselves, having conversations with other women at different stages of motherhood, then that means we have a lot more women empowered, confident and supported in their decisions. We are all for that! This doesn’t mean all women need to be doing this. It’s whatever works for you. We would just like to see more positive energy around conversations of pregnancy and birth, regardless of what phase of it someone is in. 

So Katy shares with us some of her thoughts on why home birth would be a good fit for her. For one, she likes to take the most natural route possible with things. She’s also a more private person, and looks at birth as a very sacred time. 

We also talk about how resources like the Doing It At Home podcast have helped, supported and informed on home birth related topics. 

So if you are not pregnant yet, but considering home birth as an option, this is a perfect episode for you!

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Would you consider using an enema during the labor process?

In today’s birth story, we’re chatting with Alyssa Reeves, wife to Kirk and mama to twin boys Sam and Niko and daughter Zooey. And while there’s a lot more and totally magical elements to Alyssa’s story, she’s the first mama on the show to share her experience of using an enema during her transition phase of labor. We’re so grateful for her open and informative sharing on how helpful it was for her in preparation for pushing. So now other mamas listening to the show can learn from Alyssa’s experience and have another possibility for themselves if they have similar challenges during birth.

As a long-time listener of the show, Alyssa was excited to pay it forward and be a part of the conversation that helped her in her own journey.

We talk about her process of choosing home birth and the comparison between that and some of the traumatic elements of her first birth with her twins. Also the support of her birth team and a lot of the resources she used in preparation and during birth itself.

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Has anyone ever felt like a failure because their birth didn’t go exactly the way they planned?

We think this happens far too often. That’s why we’re happy we have conversations like the one we have today on the podcast. Allison Rich joins us to share her birth story. 

After a false diagnosis of PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) medically mismanaged miscarriage, Allison and her husband Rafe wanted a different experience the next time they got pregnant. 

Allison actually met with a group of midwives after her miscarriage (before becoming pregnant again) to talk about her experience, process and discuss what it could look like in the future for her. 

Finally when she was pregnant again, she felt both excited and terrified at the same time. We go into her birth planning process and then the “incredible blur” of the birth. Allison talks about extending grace to yourself and realizing how hard we can be on ourselves when it comes to our births. This is a must listen for anyone nervous about hospital transfer or who experienced one and could use some extra support and affirmation.

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Warning: this is an amazing episode. Full of conversation around pleasurable, joyful, ecstatic birth. It may cause you to feel empowered and excited around birth. There, we gave you a heads up!

But seriously, we are so honored to have Debra Pascali-Bonaro join us on the show. She’s another one of the powerhouses of the birthing community that we’ve been anxious to meet and chat with. She is the creator and director of the documentary, “Orgasmic Birth: The Best-Kept Secret.” She’s also the co-writer of “Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying and Pleasurable Birth.” Oh and also a Lamaze International childbirth educator,  birth and postpartum doula trainer with DONA International. And the Founder & President of the revolutionary online childbirth class Pain to Power, which prepares expectant mothers, fathers, and partners to be positively prepared for birth and focuses on the intimate and sacred nature of birth.

Debra’s passion comes from her over 30 years of working with women, men, midwives, doulas and physicians in over 40 countries bringing comfort, love and pleasure to birth and life!

In our interview, we talk about her path to being obsessed with birth, learning from her own birth story. We also chat about the concept for the documentary and where it came from. We explore themes from the documentary and the impact it’s had on the conversation of birth. Plus we talk about other cool projects that Debra has her hand in, and a surprise for any of those interested in checking out her online childbirth class “Pain to Power.”

Thank you to Debra for her knowledge, passion and tireless effort to serve and inspire!

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