Soulful Birth Stories

This episode the amazing Ash shares her birth story with Billy.

Ash and Ryan had planned a homebirth with me, but as you’ll hear, Billy had other plans. Ash shares about the heavy weight of decision making in the last weeks of pregnancy, the pressure to make the ‘right decision’, and how she cared for herself - tuning into her inner knowing, and deciphering what was most important to her, amidst the noise and confusion. 

And Ash is a doula! Her info is in the notes below, so if you want her on your birth team, get in contact!

And I love to hear from you, so please let me know what you’re enjoying on the show, and if you have a story you’d like to share, please reach out. Enjoy!

These stories are intimate, raw, inspiring - parents sharing their birth experiences - the highs, the challenges, the growth. How did they prepare, what was unexpected, what do they now know?

Join Cath Tan, holistic homebirth midwife in Geraldton, Western Australia as she speaks with local families about their transformational birth journeys.

'Stories have always been powerful ways of sharing information and wisdom; soul maps for significant life events we humans traverse. I hope you'll find these stories educational, uplifting and comforting.' xx Cath

www.soulful-birth.com

Ash Tomlinson - doula @ashtomlinson_  https://www.instagram.com/ashtomlinson_/

Breech Without Borders https://www.breechwithoutborders.org/

I’m Cath, your host and holistic midwife. It’s raining here today in Western Australia in southern Yamatji country. I actually don’t know how long it’s been since we’ve had rain. It’s beautiful. I’m also a little scared- will this rain bring all the babies at once?! Hopefully not, hopefully they space out every few days. But this is out of my control.

I’m excited to bring you today’s interview with the gorgeous Gemma. Gemma is a passionate perinatal mental health advocate, a teacher, a wife, and a mother to two little girls. 

Gemma uses the terms consent, and informed, and educated to describe her positive and healing second birth, concepts that she was less familiar with for her first birth, as well as her realisation of the importance of continuity-of-carer for her and husband Jono.

She also shares her journey with postnatal depression and anxiety, having a baby with reflux, her emergency cesarean birth, and her fast hospital VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean), following a family bout of gastro. 

Enjoy x

These stories are intimate, raw, inspiring - parents sharing their birth experiences - the highs, the challenges, the growth. How did they prepare, what was unexpected, what do they now know?

Join Cath Tan, holistic homebirth midwife in Geraldton, Western Australia as she speaks with local families about their transformational birth journeys.

'Stories have always been powerful ways of sharing information and wisdom; soul maps for significant life events we humans traverse. I hope you'll find these stories educational, uplifting and comforting.' xx Cath

www.soulful-birth.com

I’d like to ask you for a favour. If you’re enjoying this show, would you please rate and review it, and share it widely with your contacts? I‘d love for these stories to be heard beyond my immediate circle. A fair bit of effort goes into recording and editing as well as recognising the time and generosity of my guests in their sharing - so please, rate, review and share the love! 

PANDA - Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia – supports the mental health of parents and families during pregnancy and in their first year of parenthood.

https://panda.org.au/

Today we have Louise joining us, talking about the birth of baby Florence. She shares about the lesson of vulnerability and I have to say, this birth experience was vulnerable for me too, as Louise and Cody’s midwife. At that time, I had placed a lot of pressure on myself to be ‘perfect’ - that is, to have impeccable practice that was impossible to criticise. An impossible task! 

So when we discovered that Florence was breech at 40 weeks of pregnancy, it was very difficult for me to accept that I’d missed detecting this earlier - and how might things have been different if I had. And isn’t it the case that we’re always our own harshest critic. 

Sometimes babies hide their positions from us, do they have insight that we don’t? If we’d known her position earlier, would there have been more stress and anxiety during that time? 

But I’ll let Louise tell her powerful story.

These stories are intimate, raw, inspiring - parents sharing their birth experiences - the highs, the challenges, the growth. How did they prepare, what was unexpected, what do they now know?

Today’s guest Hannah wants you to know how healing, beautiful and sacred cesarean births can be. I know that many of you may also feel this way, or know this on some level. 

There is a general understanding that our cesarean birth rate in Western Australia is too high for optimal health and wellbeing, and also that women can be left traumatised afterwards, and for this reason there can be a lot of stigma and unhealed stories surrounding surgical birth. And as Hannah shares, going into her first birth, she hadn’t heard any positive cesarean experiences, perhaps reflecting a reluctance to share the positive sensitively. 

Those stories are out there, absolutely, but as first time birthers, there is a tendency to only focus on the type of birth that’s wanted, and less so, on the depths and variations and inner growth that comes from all birth experiences.

For Hannah, it was her second cesarean birth, following a VBAC attempt, that transformed and healed her first cesarean birth. 

Ben describes the moments directly after their son Jacob was born at home, after their unplanned home VBAC (or vaginal birth after cesarean). This is part 2 of Jemimah and Ben’s story. 

In this episode they finish the story of Jacob’s homebirth and share Livvy’s waterbirth story (baby number 3), and how they prepared their other two children for the homebirth.

For me, Jemimah and Ben were the perfect clients or ‘test case’ as a midwife, providing care for my first planned home VBAC.  They were well educated and informed of the pros and cons, they’d already experienced two very unexpected births and were prepared (as best as one can) for the unexpected twists and turns that labour and birth may present. I also felt reassured that Jemimah had already had a vaginal birth and that this was to be her second one.

These stories are intimate, raw, inspiring - parents sharing their birth experiences - the highs, the challenges, the growth. How did they prepare, what was unexpected, what do they now know?

Join Cath Tan, holistic homebirth midwife in Geraldton, Western Australia as she speaks with local families about their transformational birth journeys.

'Stories have always been powerful ways of sharing information and wisdom; soul maps for significant life events we humans traverse. I hope you'll find these stories educational, uplifting and comforting.' xx Cath

www.soulful-birth.com

Jemimah's favourite birth video for helping to prepare her children for her homebirth: https://youtu.be/4yrrg-rwybc?si=3GHo62enOCsO_OT3

I could listen to Jemimah and Ben talk about their births for days. They are both so knowledgable and have so much to share about their three very different births, their own personal journeys and paradigm shifts, and how they prepared for each birth, each experience building upon the lessons and skills acquired from the last. Each birth can only be shared within the context of the others.

And we did talk for so long that I have split their story into two episodes. This is Part 1.

Their first baby, Marney was born by cesarean following a placental abruption during labour, where the placenta prematurely separates from the uterus, occurring in about 0.4 - 1% of pregnancies, and even rarer in Jemimah’s case with no risk factors.

Jacob, their second, was a planned VBAC in hospital, but as they share, Jacob had his own plans and with the support of their midwives Sophie and Rhonda, he arrived swiftly at home.

Livvy, number 3 was a planned home water birth with me as their midwife.

In this episode Jemimah and Ben share their first two birth experiences and the journey to choosing a VBAC. 

These stories are intimate, raw, inspiring - parents sharing their birth experiences - the highs, the challenges, the growth. How did they prepare, what was unexpected, what do they now know?

Join Cath Tan, holistic homebirth midwife in Geraldton, Western Australia as she speaks with local families about their transformational birth journeys.

'Stories have always been powerful ways of sharing information and wisdom; soul maps for significant life events we humans traverse. I hope you'll find these stories educational, uplifting and comforting.' xx Cath

⁠www.soulful-birth.com

Resources:

Ina May Guide to Childbirth, by Ina May Gaskin

The VBAC link www.thevbaclink.com

VBAC Birth Stories podcast

Sophie @yourmidwifesophie

Rhonda Bradley www.byyoursidemidwifery.com

A taster of Jemimah & Ben's two-part (two episode) story coming soon.

This preview recaps their quick decision to stay at home to birth their second baby with the support of their midwives Sophie and Rhonda - an unplanned, but welcomed, home VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean).