Homecoming Podcast

Alabama-based homesteading business owners, wellness practitioners, and bee keepers, Stacey and Tommy Fluker describe their unassisted birth in Alabama. After being supported by midwives for their first two home births, Stacey and Tommy felt comfortable and empowered to birth without any birthworkers or medical providers present for the birth of their third child.

For more information about Stacey and Tommy and Healing Exchange AL (H.E.A.L.) click here.

Stacey and Tommy Fluker are parents of three children and the owners and operators of Healing Exchange AL. Stacey and Tommy are healers, thai yoga massage practitioners, bee keepers, and lovers of nature and music. Stacey is also a doula who witnessed her mother birth birth at home and was inspired to birth her children at home. Her first two births were assisted by underground or "rebel midwives." Her third birth was unassisted and is featured of part two of this episode. Read more about Stacey here.

It's been a year since Alabama legalized homebirth midwifery by granting midwives an opportunity to become licensed after a 40-year struggle. Until this point, Alabama had not issued an out-of-hospital midwifery license since 1976.

Another cloth diaper episode, ayyyee!! We interview Kristin Mejia-Greene a birth and postpartum doula, placenta encapsulation specialist, and Certified Lactation Counselor. Kristin serves the greater Nashville, Tennessee are and is the owner of exBreast Yourself Festival Pumping Suites. She provides luxury pumping suites for festivals and trade shows in the mid-South. Kristin is also the founder of Homeland Heart & Birth Wellness Collective, a collective of Black doulas and wellness workers in Nashville working to reduce Black maternal and infant mortality rates. When she's not working, she's homeschooling her children, Kennedy and Kruze, and loving on her new husband Terrance.

IG: @exBreastyourself | FB: exBreastyourself Festival Pumping Suites

IG: @homelandhearttn | FB: Homeland Heart Birth & Wellness Collective

In part II of this episode, Nuola, mother of 3, answers the question, "Why did you have a home birth?!" despite everything she endured with her first two pregnancies including D&C and stillbirth.

For more info about Nuola visit www.nuolaakinde.com

*content warning: pregnancy loss, D&C, stillbirth*

Nuola shares her first experiences with pregnancy and birth. She first became pregnant as a college student. Her doctor ultimately convinced her to terminate a potentially difficult but wanted pregnancy. After experiencing a coerced D&C and later a stillbirth, Nuola went on to have two health children born in the hospital--first with an OB then a nurse midwife. When Nuola got pregnant again, she opted for a home birth and tells us why.