Happy Homebirth

Have you ever lost something so specific that the people around you didn't even know to name it?

Marley Collins is a wife to her husband Clayton, mama to Maren and Lenora, and an engineer in Temecula, California who's currently doing part-time consulting and teaching herself to sew. Her family is from the Netherlands, where several of her aunts gave birth at home, so she knew she wanted a homebirth before she was ever pregnant.

In this episode, Marley shares two births. Her first, in Texas: her water broke at 39 and a half weeks, and what followed was the better part of two days of labor and pushing against a cervical lip that would not move, an unhurried transfer, and a cesarean. Her second, in California: an HBAC at home in the water, with her mother's hand in one of hers and her husband's in the other, and Marley reaching down to catch her own baby herself.

She's honest about the very specific grief that sat between those two births — not the surgery, not the transfer, but the fact that she missed Clayton becoming a father — and honest about the exact moment it lifted. She's also wonderfully clear-eyed about choosing her birth team, switching midwives mid-pregnancy, and knowing precisely where she stood.

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What happens when the birth story that scares you most is your own sister's?

Shey Munoz has given birth to both of her boys at home in South Florida, and both times her baby came faster than anyone planned — under five hours the first time, under two the second. Both times her husband set up the birth pool, and both times she never got in it.

In this episode Shey shares the midwife who made the decision simple, a first labor that was over by 8:18 in the morning, the fear she carried into her second birth after her twin sister gave birth in under two hours with no midwife in the room, and the one question her midwife asked that shrank that fear down to something she could actually answer. She also tells us about her mother's twin cesarean in India in the nineties, what she counted on to get through her contractions when she had nothing else in reach, and the work she does now helping mothers understand what's actually normal in the first year after birth.

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Has someone who loves you ever told you what your body would and wouldn't be able to handle? And did some part of you file it away as true?

Emily Lewenczuk had already done the research — for a client — and found that nobody in St. Louis would take twins at home. A few weeks later she was looking at two positive pregnancy tests of her own.

Emily is a wife to Josh, a mama of three, and a birth and postpartum doula and childbirth educator who was working in birth long before she had babies of her own. In this episode she shares her first homebirth — gestational diabetes managed through diet, a Christmas Eve baby ten days after her due date, and a postpartum transfer for a tear — and then her twin pregnancy: MoDi twins, a velamentous cord insertion, biweekly scans from sixteen weeks, and an MFM ready to induce her at thirty-eight weeks.

She also shares what she said back to him. The top goal of healthy mom, healthy baby, Emily told him, is the floor. It isn't the ceiling.

Her boys were born at home on the one day her midwife had said she couldn't come, with three midwives, a student midwife, a doula, her mom, her husband, and her almost-three-year-old in the house. Baby A arrived in the caul in about four pushes. Baby B came an hour later. Emily is honest about the bleeding that followed, about the fear she carried into that morning, and about what it meant to have her daughter in the room singing Jesus Loves Me while the midwives joined in.

If you've just found out you're carrying two, or you've been told there's only one way this can go, this conversation is for you.

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Have you ever come through something so hard that when it was finally over, the smallest ordinary thing felt like a miracle?

This week, we're speaking with Chelann Watt. Chelann is wife to her husband Sam– who she met in Glasgow, Scotland and married ten months later, because when you know, you know– and she's mama to a little boy named Clyde. They live in Yakima, Washington in a 1918 house with English gardens that she is absolutely obsessed with, and she and Sam run their advertising company together, side by side, all day long.

In this episode, Chelann shares the diagnosis nobody gave her for ten weeks and the ER doctor who finally did. She shares the birth she got anyway– hands off, at home, with a sunny side up baby and a midwife who never once lost her calm. And she shares her husband, who I'm telling you is one of the best characters we have ever had on this show, and he barely says a word.

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Student Interview episode: Abby Johnson/Carley Overbey

"I would have definitely panicked if I hadn't known."

If your first birth went nothing like you'd planned, does that tell you anything about how your next one will go? Or is it possible that your first story doesn't get to write your second?

Julia Moore is a wife to her husband John and a mama of two, living in Northwest Arkansas. She's a birth videographer and a new doula, which means she had spent a couple of years in other women's birth spaces with a camera in her hands, long before she ever had a labor of her own.

In this episode, Julia shares two experiences that could not look less alike. Her first: bleeding at seventeen weeks, her water going at twenty four, a month of hospital bed rest while she finished her last semester of college from the bed, spontaneous labor at twenty nine weeks, a cesarean for her frank breech daughter, and then a diagnosis nobody saw coming and months in the NICU. Her second: a homebirth she prepared for in a state where she couldn't hire a licensed midwife to attend it, a misdiagnosis that cost her a month of fear, and an all day labor at home with her husband and a doula she had turned into a real friend on purpose.

We talk about building a birth team from scratch, about deciding whose call your care actually is, and about the postpartum she finally got to have. You're going to love her steadiness, and how honestly she holds both stories at once.

I want to tell you about two births.

Same woman. Same husband. Same house, more or less. And afterward, two completely different marriages.

Not because one birth was easy and one was hard. That isn't what made the difference. I've thought about this for years and I want to tell you what I think it actually was.

Have you ever tried to relax on purpose– and realized you had no idea how? That you could feel the tension sitting in your body, but you couldn't figure out which part of you to let go of first?

In this episode, we're speaking with Sabrina Brooks. Sabrina is a wife to Sam, a youth pastor, and mama to Freeman and Whitley, who are four and one and a half and who were both born at home. She grew up in California and now lives in a small town in southeastern Illinois. And some of you will recognize her already– Sabrina is Cynthia's daughter, from episode 338. Cynthia went first in her family more than thirty years ago, and today we get to hear from one of the babies she birthed.

Sabrina shares a year and a half with almost no cycles, the friend at a pickleball game who changed everything, and conceiving without ever having a period that month. She takes us through a first birth at forty-two weeks where she hit the wall and lay there certain she was about to be labeled failure to progress– in her own home. And then a second birth where she finally understood what everyone meant by embracing a contraction.

Here's something I've watched happen more times than I can count.

A woman prepares beautifully for her birth. Really well. And she's still blindsided.

This doesn’t happen because she was lazy about it. It happens because she unknowingly prepared one part of herself extremely thoroughly and left the other four areas almost untouched, and she didn't know there were five.

That's what today is about. What actually needs preparing, and what happens when you only do some of it.

Have you ever felt like the Lord told you something about your birth… and then watched every circumstance line up to tell you it wasn't going to happen?

Gracie Gould is a wife to Jesse and a mama of four in Greenville, South Carolina, where they work with a local Christian theater and homeschool their crew. She came to homebirth by watching her own mother do it — and one of her midwives turned out to be the daughter of her mom's midwife.

In this episode Gracie shares four births: a planned homebirth that became a transfer and a short NICU stay, a homebirth in a fifth wheel camper trailer with a double shoulder dystocia, a hospital birth with midwives that surprised her, and a water birth at 42 weeks and 3 days after a pregnancy that tested her at every turn — breech at 32 weeks, GBS positive, two snowstorms, and castor oil that failed her twice. All four of her babies are here and healthy, and her youngest is on the recording with us.