EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Birth Your Baby, Rebirth Yourself
My Body, My Birth.
***
Who Is in Charge of Your Birth?
Most people will say:
My OBGYN!
That’s definitely what decades of medical programming have encouraged you to think.
MY assertion is that the most powerful, wise and accomplished guide for your birth is your own body and intuition.
After all, your genetic code has been doing this for millennia longer than a “doctor” who spent a few years in school, learning how to best interfere with the natural birthing process of women.
Who would you rather?
I’m not being hyperbolic when I use the word “interfere”.
I’ve demonstrated it over several podcast episodes on this topic, how the only thing the medical system “delivers”, is YOUR power out of your hands and body and into theirs.
In this week’s episode, I’m letting the bodies and vaginas speak for themselves.
I’m interviewing two women all-stars who are graduates from my Sexy Mama Salon.
They have two very different stories, but one similar thread runs through each of them:
My body, my birth.
In both of their experiences, these women had previous births where they allowed other “self-proclaimed authorities” to tell them what to do.
What I ADORE about all of these women, is that they took their subsequent births into their own hands and said: “
I’m in charge here. I trust that my body is the ultimate midwife and birthing genius, and that I’ve got this.”
And they did.
In these conversations about pregnancy and birth, one of the main messages I want people listening to walk away with is:
- The ability to birth children is encoded into every ounce of your DNA.
- The modern industrial birth system is designed to manufacture crises, that justify additional interference.
- This interference ensures that OBGYNs and the medical profession have jobs. If you had not problems birthing your baby, they would have nothing to do, and no day to save.
- By turning birth into a medical emergency — and they’ve had to work hard to do this, as it isn’t one, by nature—they’ve created a place not only in their profession, as seeming necessary, but they have also done the much larger disservice of imprinting upon every person who goes through this system, that they, in effect, are powerless. You and your body have no power and wisdom—-they have it all. And then this imprinting is put upon every mother, father and baby who has the misfortune to birth in a hospital.
- By defaulting to this system of entrenched powerlessness, a woman is missing out on one of the biggest gifts and rites of passage of her life in a female body: giving birth.
I came across the birth story of a fitness influencer the other day.
Her name is Emily Skye. She’s Australian and one of those people who has built a massive following by way of her workouts.
She was pregnant with her second baby, whom she was planning on having at the hospital, as she did with her first.
Here’s an excerpt from People magazine on the story:
“Fitness influencer Emily Skye has a “new appreciation” for her body after she unexpectedly gave birth to her baby son Izaac at home in June.
“I didn’t know the body could actually do that,” Skye tells PEOPLE of how she pushed out her newborn all on her own, without any medication or assistance.
Izaac was due on July 3, but instead made his grand entrance on June 18 — on his big sister Mia’s play mat.
Skye, 35, says that the afternoon before she gave birth, she did a workout with Mia on her back. “I was feeling very heavy between my legs and down my legs, my inner thighs.”
Skye remembers that she went to bed pretty late that night — around 12:30 a.m. — and “felt different.”
“I felt kind of weird and calm,” Skye says. “I went to bed and woke up with some cramps, which I had been having for about a week leading up to [my delivery].
They were like period cramps that would come and go, but they got a bit more intense in the night. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t.”
“They were six minutes apart, so I was like ‘What does this mean?’ and I started googling “when do you go to the hospital”.
I quickly ran around the house, just packing a few extra things because I had already packed my [hospital] bag.
I then told my partner Declan, ‘I’m 98 percent sure I’m in labor.’ “
“I was leaning over the couch downstairs, and my daughter was climbing on my back — we were playing ‘horsey’ — and I started screaming ‘Get my underwear off!’ “
“My daughter tried to help and I ended up getting them off and my partner was on the phone trying to get someone to watch Mia because my mom hadn’t arrived.
Then he called the ambulance and I was screaming, ‘He’s coming!’ ” Skye recalls.
The moment I took my bottoms off, the water just broke, and it went everywhere. It was a lot
“I knew by my partner’s face the head was coming out, he had gone white.
He told the lady on the phone, ‘Yeah, I can see his head. It’s half out!’
Meanwhile, I’m roaring and my daughter Mia is screaming in horror and ended up running off and hiding because she was terrified,” Skye shares.
The next thing Skye remembers is medical personnel rushing into her home, and that Izaac was already “three quarters out.”
“I delivered him on the ground,” Skye says. “I felt like I wanted to be up on my knees, but they needed me to be on my back and I did a lot of breathing to get me through it.”
*********
So she ended up giving birth on her daughter’s playmat, in the middle of the room, on the floor.
*********
Skye says that before she gave birth at home she had dreamed of having a natural birth.
“A few days earlier, I told my birthing coach that the ideal situation for me would be to labor all at home. That’s literally what happened. I manifested it,” Skye says, laughing.
“I cried when I first saw my body in the mirror after I gave birth to Izaac. I
t wasn’t because I didn’t like what I saw, it was because I was IN LOVE with my body & was in complete AWE of what it had just done.
It had literally birthed my son on it’s own at home – I didn’t even have to push – it did it itself! ??? HOW FREAKIN AMAZING ARE OUR BODIES?!!!
I’ve never in my life loved my body more & instead of criticising it & picking out our every little so called “flaw” (which I’d done for many of my younger years) I cried with joy & gratitude & thanked it.
“I had done it all at home and all on my own.
I did it. My body did it.
My body went into pushing out the baby itself, and I think it’s so amazing,” she says. “I said to myself, if I ever feel I don’t like my body I need to remember this moment and remember what my body has done.”
***
This is fucking amazing. I get emotional just reading it!
You can feel her awe and wonderment and the gift of her own power, that she has received from this experience.
The reason I am hammering this point home, is that THIS is what I want people to understand.
THIS is how you were supposed to feel, coming out of your birth.
Like you were reborn, with all the power and strength you need to fully care for your baby and triumph as a parent and as a woman.
Birth is the universe’s great gift to you as an experience to go through, to rebirth and self-actualize yourself.
It’s a giant enlightenment shortcut, that only women have access to.
And for whatever multitude of reasons—and some literature even hints at a long-standing patriarchal resentment towards women for even having this magical skill—men have thwarted women in this power and tried to control it themselves.
And, through the process of internalized oppression and Stockholm Syndrome, women now volunteer it.
So as you listen to these stories, also listen for the confidence, strength and ultimate self-love and power that was also BORNE out of these births.
These women took their power back in their births, and instead of others telling them what to do, and assuming they knew what was right for them, both of these women said:
“Nope!”
I KNOW what is best for my body, my baby and my birth.
***
Our first guest is Yvonne. She Dutch, living in Dubai, and very much wanted to have a home birth, which are illegal in Dubai.
KIM: Welcome, Yvonne! I am delighted to have you here to share your story. You’re coming to us from Dubai today.
YVONNE: Yes! I am. And I am so happy to share my story. Thank you for having me.
KIM: My pleasure. I want more and more women to know what is possible, so I’m so glad that you’re up for the task of sharing that and being a beacon for them.
You took the Sexy Mama Salon and prior to that, you had a child. Tell us, to start with, what was your first birth like?
YVONNE: Pretty good. I love being pregnant. My pregnancy was great. My first birth, I did a couple of preparations to have a good birth. The first birth was pretty quick.
Here in Dubai, home birth is not allowed, even though I wished I had a home birth, so we went to the hospital. The car ride was sort of the most unpleasant part of the whole birth itself, even though it was just 15 minutes. We reached the hospital around 6:15 and she was born at 8:34. I had a water birth, and I had pressure on my tailbone, but I didn’t have any pain. I did think at the time, sometimes, “when is this going to end?” because it was so intense.
When you’re in a really difficult yoga pose, you think, Okay, five more breaths and then I’m done. With this, you just don’t know when it is going to end. My biggest takeaway from the first birth was “I can birth for three days. If need be, that’s what I’m going to do.”
KIM: Excellent. Well, it sounds like you did very well the first time out of the gate
Then you were inspired to take the Sexy Mama Salon. What were your goals in taking the salon? Were there any particular blocks that you wanted to shift? It sounds like you had this goal of timelessness. You wanted to be in a place where you felt you could handle anything that came at you, and you weren’t going to be worried about the time that it took. What were your goals in taking the salon?
YVONNE: I had been following you on Instagram and on your mail list for quite some time already, even before the salon opened up. When I had my first daughter, three years ago, and I heard about orgasmic birth, I thought, Who doesn’t want that? [Laughs] Who wants to have a painful birth if it can be orgasmic?
I did do a lot of things to try with my first birth to have an orgasmic birth, and even though it wasn’t orgasmic, it was pain-free, which I was amazed about. When I saw your salon coming up, I was pregnant already. I was halfway through, more or less, and I said, “I’m signing up. [Laughs] This is what I need to have. This is what is going to set me up for success and give me an orgasmic or ecstatic birth.”
I had a few blocks to clear. I think it’s because there’s so much negativity out and about. I work in a women’s salon. I’m a hairstylist, and I hear a lot of birth stories and a lot of concerns from gynies. Here, you don’t go to a midwife, you have a gynie. At the hospital, midwives are there to help you and guide you. But that’s the first time that you meet them.
KIM: They don’t let you see them before that?
YVONNE: No. You have a tour around the hospital, but other than that, the first time you see them is when you are in labor. Then you hand over the birth plan—well, that’s what most people do here—and then you just have to hope that they will follow it. And then the gynie comes in at the last moment.
One of the other reasons I wanted to follow the salon is that I wanted to gather information and educate myself as much as possible because there are a lot of Caesareans here in Dubai. A lot. The percentage is huge. And I didn’t want to have a Caesarean. I had a doula the first birth, and I wanted to have a doula again for my second birth, as an insurance type of thing so that I wouldn’t be pushed into a Caesarean or an epidural the minute I walked through the hospital doors.
Education is one of the things that sort of set me up for success. This time around with the pregnancy—and I’m getting goose bumps now, because I have never felt such a strong sensation in my body—I knew how this birth was going to be and how it needed to be. I knew it was going to be fast. I knew it was going to be pain-free. I knew that I didn’t want to go to hospital. I wanted to have a home birth, and I wanted it to be orgasmic.
There was some clearing of fear, of actually going to the hospital and having to go to appointments with my gynie, so sometimes I held off on that a little bit. I kept extending the time before I saw her again because I felt so amazing.
KIM: And your own self without any outside interference or opinion.
YVONNE: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I hear my colleagues say, “Even when you’re eating, you’re so healthy.” I have chocolate, and I have a croissant here and there. But I eat mostly organic, from what I can find. I like to be fit, so I do yoga and lots of walking.
Clearing the blocks and the fears was, I think, one of the major mind-shifts to believing, “I can do this. It’s going to be orgasmic. The doctors are not going to interfere. I’m my own person. I know what’s good for my body. This is what I’m going to do.” That intense sensation in my body of “I know what I want”—I’ve never felt something so powerful in my life. We women, our intuition, our gut feeling, is so powerful.
But in Dubai it is illegal to have a home birth. I did look into lots of options for how I could do it. But then COVID started, and I thought, This is not going to work. And in the end, I did decide to go to the hospital because there was still that tiny little voice, “What if?” But there was a lot of listening to the affirmations and the subliminal—
KIM: Work that we were doing.
YVONNE: Yes. Exactly, which really, really helped. And obviously, orgasmic birth isn’t orgasmic birth if you aren’t comfortable with yourself. In the salon you say to touch yourself, to be comfortable, to massage your breasts, and to have a birth team around you that you trust 100 percent.
I did speak with my husband quite a lot about what my fears were if we were at home or if I had the baby in the car. Because I knew, gut feeling, it was going to be fast. Or if we were in the hospital and something were to happen.
I wrote a lot of my fears. I burned them. I tore them. I changed them into positive sentences. Every time I had something in my mind that I didn’t like, I just switched that thought around straight away.
KIM: Wonderful. You did a lot of preparation, psychologically, to overcome any implanted beliefs or ideas. I think in the world these days, unless you’re living perhaps in a really isolated tribal setting where you’re not influenced by the ideas that are propagated around modern birth, you hear that it’s a crisis and an emergency and excruciatingly painful. We have to consciously prepare to make sure that we haven’t had that programming imprinted upon us and we’re able to move out of that space and really consciously direct what we want to have created as our birth experience.
What were some of the biggest takeaways? You already described some of your preparation, but things that you pulled out of the salon that you think really helped you to forge this birth experience that you had with this second child.
YVONNE: The subliminal soundtrack, I listened to that day and night. Even with my daughter. And being really comfortable with myself. Touching myself. Being more comfortable.
KIM: More sexually comfortable?
YVONNE: Yes, exactly. More sensual. Even though I love being pregnant, that doesn’t mean that you’re touching yourself sensually. Before, I had never really lit a candle or done little things for myself. Because of the salon, I took more time to be with myself and feel better in my own skin. I touched my inner thighs, my tummy, my belly, and just really connected with myself a lot more.
I had a yoni egg already, but I never really practiced, so I used that a lot more. Because at the end of the day, I might have the birth team around me, but I’m the one who’s going to give birth, so I want to feel orgasmic already, even before I give birth. That’s one of the things that really set me up for success.
KIM: Amazing! How did you feel when you were going into the second birth after doing this preparation?
YVONNE: I felt really sensual and really good. I said, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to rock this.” I did have a little bit of doubt because I was going to go to the hospital, and that was so against my feelings.
KIM: You were less worried about yourself than you were about being in a hospital setting and how that might interfere with what you were creating and cultivating, yes?
YVONNE: Totally. One hundred percent. I didn’t want to be in a hospital, but I also didn’t want to get into trouble in Dubai.
KIM: Right. Yeah, understandable
YVONNE: Giving birth was easy. No issues. I didn’t have any fears around that.
I’m the eldest of six. My mom had six kids, four of them at home, and I attended their births.
KIM: Wow! So beautiful.
YVONNE: Yeah. And in Holland, back in the day, there weren’t really epidurals. Maybe they’re used more now, but when I was young, that wasn’t the case, and I loved seeing my siblings being born. And I know that the oxytocin will rise with the people who are around the birthing mother as well. I said, “I want my daughter to be at her brother’s birth.”
KIM: Beautiful!
YVONNE: Yeah. I’m sure that if my mom had taken your salon back in the day, she would have had at least five or six orgasmic births, for sure [laughs], and I just imprinted that in my brain as well. My mom had six births, and it didn’t look overly painful. Yes, she was sort of groaning and making noise, but she was absolutely fine.
And then I read an article which gave me a lot of inspiration. It was about the most fertile woman in the world. She’s in Uganda and has 44 kids.
KIM: What? [Laughs]
YVONNE: She had four sets of twins, five sets of triplets, and five sets of quadruplets. It didn’t seem like she was in an area where she had lots of medical care immediately around her, and I thought, If she can have ultra, ultra, high, high, high-risk pregnancies in Uganda, I can birth one baby.
And that’s what I had in my mind, and your salon helped as well. It’s easy. You just have your perfect team around you, so you feel comfortable. I was also ready to touch myself sexually, even if there were people around me, and I was ready to ask certain medical staff to leave the room if I didn’t feel comfortable.
Those were a couple of the inspirations that I had because in the salon, we also talked about visualization. So, I visualized myself being in my bedroom, giving birth there, wanting to have a water birth, even if it was going to be in the hospital. But I visualized being at home for as long as possible. We have a big Jacuzzi bath on the balcony, and I dreamed twice that I was giving birth in there.
KIM: You did it there first. As above, so below. We practiced.
YVONNE: Exactly.
KIM: Well, let’s talk about. How was it? Let’s hear the story of your second birth. How did it go?
YVONNE: It started around nine thirty in the morning, and I was lucky that my mom was able to fly over here.
KIM: The master.
YVONNE: Exactly. [Laughs] I felt something, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure. It was sort of a butterfly-tickly feeling. And it was every 10–15 minutes from the get-go.
I said to my mom, “Do you think this is sort of starting?” And she said, “I don’t know.” And I said, “But you had six kids!” And she said, “Well, let’s just wait and see, right? We’ll just have a good time here and relax.” Around noon, I messaged my husband saying, “I think things are sort of starting.” And he said, “Do you want me to come home?” I said, “No, no, no. It’s absolutely fine.” And I did my hair and my makeup because my doula was going to take some pictures. I said, “If it’s going to happen today, I might as well look good.” [Laughs]
Around one thirty, I said to my husband, “It’s moving along. It’s definitely going to happen today or tomorrow.” He said, “Do you want me to come home?” I said, “No, no, no. It’s fine.” And he asked, “Do you think it’s going to happen today?” And I said, “Yeah.” I was thinking maybe around eleven or twelve at night. He said, “Okay, if you think it’s happening today, I’m coming home.” So, he finished one of the meetings and he was home around quarter past three.
I was downstairs in my bedroom, listening to the subliminal sounds and just relaxing. My mom and my daughter were there, which is what I wanted. I had my husband call the hospital. He asked, “Could you please prepare the water-birth room?” They advised us to call them when I was in labor, to let them get prepared. And I 100 percent wanted to have a water birth.
Then the doula came around quarter past four, and I felt a bit awkward because at that time, I was trying to relax and be as calm and as Zen as possible. I was lying in bed, and my daughter was with me.
Then the doula started to massage my legs for the upper pressure points to stimulate the surges a little bit more, the contractions. I said, “I feel a bit awkward because I know things are moving along, but it’s so gentle.” She said, “Can you tell me when you have a surge?” I said, “Yeah, I’m having a surge right now.” She said, “When you’re talking to me?” I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “Oh, you’re in the very early stages.” And I said, “Yeah.” But about that time, they were about five minutes apart or so. I was feeling a bit awkward that she was there already, but I thought we needed to have that support, and she was absolutely fine being there. It was just that I was feeling so good.
She said she knew that I did the orgasmic birth salon, and she was totally up for it and absolutely loved the idea. She said, “You know what? I’ll go and sit with your mom and your daughter upstairs, and you and Kevin just act as if you’re teenagers and have some fun.
KIM: [Laughs]
YVONNE: [Laughs] That was, I think, around four thirty or so. So, Kevin and I were slow dancing and giving each other cuddles and kissing a bit and just joking. “Oh, is this orgasmic birth going to happen?” Just really connecting and being together to have the oxytocin, because that’s the natural epidural.
KIM: Yes.
YVONNE: That is what’s going to give you a pain-free birth, so I wanted to have that as high as I could. I actually haven’t said this to my husband, but I really treasure that moment that we had together, so deeply connected and kissing and cuddling. It was just so lovely.
Around quarter past five, I had the longest surge. It must have lasted for about two minutes or so. I walked out of Kevin’s arms, towards the bathroom, and the bathroom was completely dark. I said, “We’re going to the hospital.” Kevin said, “Are you sure? Because this is the first intense surge.” I said, “We’re going.” I put on my dress, and he got everybody ready upstairs, because I wanted my mom and daughter to be at the birth. We locked the door, and the elevator had to come. I had another long surge and was breathing through it. I said, “I need to go back in the house. I need to go back in the house. This is going to go quick.”
I was sort of moving backwards and forwards, torn between the thought of “I need to be at home,” and then, “No, we need to go,” and it took forever before the elevator arrived. I don’t think we had ever waited so long for the elevator to get there. Even my mom said it took a very long time.
We were all in the car, and my mom and my daughter were sitting next to me in the back. I remember I felt very vulnerable in the daylight, and I was wearing sunglasses to keep everything dark, to keep the oxytocin.
But the vulnerability of thinking “I’m going to have him in the car, and it’s daylight, and people can see me,” was quite uncomfortable. Then I said, “I can feel him coming.” The doula said, “Okay, if you can, lie down on your side and do short breaths so it will calm things down.” I don’t know how to explain it…it was sort of deep sounds, like, [making hmm sounds], those types of sounds. And she said, “Okay, just breathe sort of quickly through it.” And so, I lay down on my mom’s leg. My daughter was two and a half at the time, and she started to touch my forehead with her finger, moving it up and down. I just felt so delighted that she was there. I thought, I’m not even going to try to get out of the car. I’ll have him in the car. The thought of being in the parking lot was comfortable for me.
But I got a second wind. I felt a lot more energized when I reached the hospital, and I said, “Water birth, water birth, water birth.” We ran into the hospital, me up front, everybody else behind. And they wanted us to sign in. I said, “No,” with cheap-ass sunglasses, in bare feet, in the emergency hallway. I saw people looking at me, but I said, “I just need to get into that water birth.”
The water-birth room door was open. I was ready to dive into that water-birth pool. And I heard from behind, Kevin said, “Yvonne, you can’t go in.” A midwife came out from behind her desk and said, “Sorry, but you can’t go in. Somebody is in there.” I said, “Yeah, preparing my pool, right?” Because by that time, Kevin had called an hour and a half before to prepare the water-birth room, and he called three times in between, twice in the car, saying, “It’s going to go fast, and we need to have the pool ready.”
During the tour, they said, “We have never double-booked the pool room, so most of the time it’s free.” They also had a blow-up pool. I assumed that the pool was ready for me because there was a lady in there an hour and a half before, and she was going to be transitioned because she only wanted to labor in the pool, and I wanted to birth in the pool.
The midwife said, “No, no, somebody is in labor in there.” I said, “But we called, and I need a bath. He is coming right now.” “Okay, okay,” she said, “You know what? Let’s go to another room.” And I said, “I know the heart-monitor room has a bath. I’ll go in there.” And she said, “No, you can’t go in there because they’re cleaning it. Come into this room and then we will transition you.” She walked into this room and into the bathroom area and I followed her. Looking back, I can see myself walking in. I asked her, “Does this one have a bath?” As soon as I saw it only had a shower, I said, “This one doesn’t have a bath,” and I walked straight out. I walked into the heart-monitor room and she just followed me.
The lady who was cleaning came out of the bathroom. It was soaking wet, which meant, for me, it was clean. The room just before that, where the heart monitor was, had bags and tissues from somebody else, but I said, “I need to get into this bath.”
Then they put on the tap and filled up the bath. I took my dress off. And then my mom and daughter went to the family room because it was a little bit hectic at that moment because it was going to happen. And that’s when I sort of relaxed because even though there was only maybe 10 centimeters of water, at least I was in the bath. I skipped the heart monitor, which I didn’t want. I skipped the vaginal checkup, which I didn’t want. And then she asked me, “Can I do the portable heart monitor?” And I said, “Yeah, okay, that’s fine.” She did that once, and she said it sounded fine. I mean, it was more for her than for me.
KIM: Right, yeah.
YVONNE: And so, she left. My back was towards the door, so I was facing the wall. Only my doula and Kevin were there. I could feel the baby crowning, but it was only us three. I didn’t want to have medical staff at my birth. Maybe in the background, yeah, but not necessarily with me. I knew the midwife was gone, and I could feel him coming, and I put this smile on my face because I was just so happy that I was in the bath, and I didn’t feel pain. I thought, This is my time to enjoy myself. I touched my breasts and was just happy to be there and wanting to get the oxytocin up a lot more. I thought, Yes, this is it. I’m just going to enjoy this moment. I could feel the water bag break, and I could feel him coming and merging through me.
Then I said, “Head is out!” And my husband said, “What?” Because we had only been in the hospital maybe for six minutes or so, from parking the car to being in the bathtub.
With the second surge, I picked the baby up and held him under the water a little bit. We had this reflex that I wanted to see before bringing him to my chest.
I have goose bumps now on my arms because it was such a beautiful moment. It was just me doing everything, having no pain, and just feeling so delighted that everything was coming together, more or less how I wanted.
Then his cry started, and then all of a sudden the bathroom was full because there was my midwife, a doctor, and two nurses in the room. I said, “What are all these people doing here?” My husband said, “Get out,” and the doctor said, “No.”
KIM: [Laughs] Good husband! That is the role of the man. “I’m protecting my wife, and you get the fuck out of here. Get away from her.” Good job. Tell him I said so.
YVONNE: I will. Yeah, he knew exactly how I wanted things to be. We did so much research, and he supported me so much in the way I wanted to birth, and also afterwards. Yeah. He just told them to get lost and to let me have my golden hour. We stayed in the bath for about an hour and 20 minutes. And I also wanted to have a dark room to birth the placenta, to keep the oxytocin high.
Now, when I gave birth, the light was actually on. Because it was such a small room and there were no windows, which was absolutely fine, my doula could take pictures.
With my first birth, it took quite a long time before the placenta came out. Normally, after about 20 to 30 minutes, you get a Pitocin shot. With my first birth, I didn’t want that, and the placenta came after an hour and 20 minutes, more or less.
This time around, I said, “I’m going to do that again. I don’t want to have that Pitocin shot in my body.”
I got out of the bath after that cuddly time and breastfeeding, just coming to terms with the baby being here, and my mom and my daughter were in the room. That was such a nice moment because my daughter and my mom only left for about four or five minutes, and then he was born. They basically were there at the birth as well.
I got on the bed to birth the placenta. I was on all fours. To get the oxytocin flowing again, or to keep it up more and more, I started to massage my breasts and my tummy to get the placenta out. Right at that time, a gynie came walking in the door. [Laughs]. I was touching my breasts, and I said, “Hi! I’m just birthing my placenta.” And he said, “Oh hi, that’s fine. It all went quite quick, right?” Because he wasn’t even in the hospital.
I said, “Can I have a few moments?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, sure, fine, no problem.” And after a couple of minutes, the placenta came out and everything was fine.
I was touching myself when he walked in. It was a bit awkward, but I was so happy because I felt so comfortable with touching myself because of your course and because of doing the salon, just owning what I had to do to have the birth I wanted. I was determined to have the placenta naturally as well, without any medical interventions.
After that, it was just all cuddles and hugs, and my daughter said, “Now we are together.”
KIM: Aw!
YVONNE: That really touched me. Yeah, that was really lovely.
KIM: What typically throws women off is that they’re in their home and things are progressing. They’re cultivating that safe space where they’re not being disturbed. They’re in their own energy, and then when they make that transition to the hospital and suddenly there are all these people and this energy and all these outside influences coming at them, that often stalls out labor. That’s very common.
But you were very aware of all those stages and came to terms with having to move locations, even though that wasn’t your first choice. Through your visualization and your intention, you paved the way for what was going to happen so that the OB/GYN wasn’t even there.
And you just barrelled through, ensuring that you got what you were envisioning and what you were there for. You created this layer of energetic protection and intention around you that allowed all of that to manifest the way that you had envisioned it.
YVONNE: Absolutely. I wasn’t going to have it any other way. Like how I spoke to the midwife when I said, “Listen, I need a bath; he is coming right now.” I was really firm, and I really wanted to make sure that it came across as, “This is serious. I’m going to go in a bath, and I’m not going to have it any other way.”
Then when she tried to make me go to the bathroom, I said, “No. I’m going to go into a bath.” I walked to the other room, and it was good that I had had that tour beforehand. I looked on purpose when I went into that heart-monitor room, to see if there was a bath.
Maybe somewhere at the back of my mind, 20 weeks prior, I was sort of planning for what I was going to do in case that water-birth room wasn’t available. I felt it in my bones. “This is how it’s going to be,” and it worked. But it wouldn’t have worked if I hadn’t done all the preparations up front or if I didn’t watch the orgasmic birth or do the meditations. If I didn’t listen to the Hu sounds that you sent over. If I didn’t have all that fear-blocking out of my system. That’s the only way I can describe how I felt.
KIM: That’s amazing. It’s incredible what you did. In all of those circumstances, to supersede any potential diversions of outside influences where we know that, ideally, a woman is able to just stay in her space and be undisturbed. But throughout your movement and transportation, you kept that bubble around you.
YVONNE: Yes. And that was one of the things that I probably also really worked on, protection for myself. This was what it was going to be, and nobody was going to change that. Yeah. [Laughs]
KIM: Amazing. What would you want all women to know about birth? Let’s say they have not had a baby before, or they had a difficult birth experience. What would you like them to know from what you learned and experienced?
YVONNE: Get comfortable with yourself.
KIM: Sexually and in all ways?
YVONNE: Yes, exactly. Clear out any of the fear or doubts that you might have. You might still have some conflict in your mind, but by knowing exactly what you want, even if it’s not necessarily going to unfold exactly like that, it probably will happen in one way or another. If you don’t visualize or plan your birth, other people will take over, and it’s not going to be the way you wish to birth. Even if you think, “I don’t know what’s going to happen” and “what if something goes wrong,” then you still have a form of control. You still have to make decisions for yourself. Do you want to sit on all fours? Do you not want to move? Then don’t move. Even if somebody is telling you to, if you know that in your deepest sort of self, if that’s your core feeling at that time, nobody can shift that.
One of the most important things is that you’re so open when you’re giving birth, so everything can come towards you. But when you are in your power and you’re educated and you’re feeling good, then you can transition straight away into your Zen moment of having your ecstatic and orgasmic birth.
Educate yourself and get comfortable sensually, sexually. Have your best team around you—that’s what I had. I had my doula and my husband, and that’s what I wanted. Have the people around you that you want to have there.
KIM: I think what you’re saying is so vital because you’re either cause or effect. Most people, I believe, when they go into the hospital setting, very quickly become effect.
Other people take control and direct the activity, and you’re on this timeline where they tell you what’s going to happen. Unless you consciously take the reins, like you did, to direct them—“No, actually, I want you to leave, and I want to be in this room.” You tell them what to do, which is how it ought to be. And your team is there as a strong support to back you up.
It’s amazing that you were able to be in this calm and ecstatic space and yet still take control. Because some might think that to be fully surrendering within yourself, the energy of surrender might make it difficult to then also be directing people around you [laughs], “No, I said do this.” You know?
YVONNE: Yeah. The midwife and staff were actually quite perplexed.
KIM: “What’s going on?” [Laughs]
YVONNE: Yeah, exactly. “What’s happening?” I went to the bathroom where they told me not to go to. They were really shocked. And the baby was right there a couple of minutes later.
You own your own body, and you own your own power. How is it possible that we have been birthing for so long and hardly anybody knows about orgasmic birth? That just blows my mind, and that’s why I’m here to talk with you as well, because I want women to feel empowered and have orgasmic births.
How is it possible that we’re getting cut open? Okay, if it’s really necessary and in emergency cases, I totally understand. But so many times it happens because there are interventions before they’re necessary.
Nobody else is giving birth but us. If we can do it orgasmically, why not? This is the way it’s supposed to be, and that’s what I 100 percent believe.
KIM: What would you say that this did for you as a woman, as a person, in terms of your belief in yourself? My whole philosophy is that yes, births are meant to be pleasurable and even orgasmic, and the fact that we’ve gotten so far off track tells us a lot about the system that’s been set up to direct us in this other path.
If we establish that a beautiful, blissful, pain-free easy birth is normal and that you have transcended all of the programming and conditioning and imprinting, then you create the birth experience that you envisioned. You had that.
What would you say that has done for you as a woman? Because I talk so much about the experience of birth as being this self-actualizing, rebirthing portal, where, yes, a baby is born, but the mother is reborn, or she’s born into a deeper, more powerful version of herself.
Did you notice any kind of shifts or differences in you because of the fact that you did this? This is what you envisioned, and you did it. What did that do for you after?
YVONNE: It felt as if I was on top of a mountain. The biggest challenge possible, I’ve overcome. It’s such a powerful, intense feeling. I did this. And it made me a lot more confident afterwards. “I’ve got this. I’m in control. I had a pain-free birth twice, and the second one was ecstatic.” I want to give birth again, and I want to have a home birth. And I want it to be orgasmic. I want to do this again because I love it! [Laughs] It just feels so empowering afterwards. It’s just the most amazing feeling.
What you just said about rebirth, that’s so true because I do feel sort of like a new me. It’s so good. It’s such a strong feeling and connection with myself. I did this. Not any medical stuff. Nobody else around me did it. Nobody helped me. I knew what I had to do. It was I who did it, and that is what’s giving me such a strong empowered feeling.
KIM: Amazing. I think the thing that so many people and women don’t realize is the cost of going into a situation where they give that power away, or they don’t know that that’s even theirs to have. I would say that one of the biggest gifts and rewards of being a woman and having a baby is having this opportunity to really go to the cusp of life and death. You are the gatekeeper. You are the facilitator of bringing life from another dimension, or however you might look at that spiritually. You are your own midwife, bringing a life into this world.
Because it’s been so sidelined and minimized, women are sort of patted on the head and told, “Look, it’s fine. Your baby is fine. You’re fine. What are you upset about? So, you were cut open or you were totally out of power or had all these things done to you. So what?”
There’s a term now, “birth rape”, for the number of violations that are done to women in these situations. They’re patted on the head and told, “Just don’t worry about it.”
I think a major source of PTSD—postpartum depression is actually PTSD—is women coming out of these experiences absolutely traumatized from what’s happened, but there’s no room to actually acknowledge that.
On the other side of that, what they’re really missing out on is this massive, spiritually transcendent opportunity, and rebirthing, self-realizing experience through giving birth and directing that and having utter faith in themselves, in their body, in the eons of genetic coding that have set them up for this very moment. The energy of life itself.
YVONNE: Yeah, definitely. I didn’t want to have other people taking control of my body. I had one situation with my gynie at just over 36 weeks where there were two hospitals that I could birth in. In one, I had my first birth, my daughter, and I wanted to go there again. But throughout this second pregnancy, I heard so many bad stories about the hospital. And the second hospital was so far away. It was at least a 30-minute drive, if there was no traffic. I wouldn’t have made it, and I knew that.
I made an appointment with another obstetrician in another hospital, which was where I gave birth in the end. I wasn’t really 100 percent comfortable with her because I asked, “Do you work with any sort of timelines? I want to give birth on my schedule. If it’s going to take three days, it’s going to take three days.” And she said, “Well, you know, after about 12 hours, that’s probably when I would ask you if you want to have a little bit more help to move things along.” And I said, “No, I don’t want that.” And also, I didn’t want people checking the heart rate every few minutes. I said, “No, I want to be in myself. I just want to not be touched, and I need to be in my zone to birth my baby.”
Some women maybe have the first birth and it takes 24 hours, and the next one could take three hours from the first surge or first contraction to the baby arriving. Where is the timeline there? You birth your baby at the time that it’s supposed to happen.
I went back to my initial obstetrician and she asked, “Did you go and see somebody else? Did you have your medical checkup?” I said, “Yes.” And she said, “Sorry, just to inform you, because you missed your appointment, I’m not going to take you on as a patient anymore.” I said, “What?” My husband said, “What?” I’m 36-and-a-half weeks pregnant. Where is this coming from?
She said, “You missed an appointment with me, and there are other ladies who would love to have an appointment with me, and you have seen somebody else. Therefore, I’m not taking you on anymore.” I said, “I actually wanted to ask you if I could maybe take your phone number because I heard so many bad things about the hospital and I wanted to have more personal contact with my gynie. My friend had a traumatic birth because they didn’t call the gynie, and I didn’t want that.”
She actually pushed me away before I even was able to explain.
KIM: You bruised her ego. Poor little gynie. Aww!
YVONNE: Exactly! And she said, “Yvonne, your birth is going to be fine.” I said, “Yeah, I know I’ll be fine, but this is not the way you support pregnant women.”
This is the reason why I think women need to educate themselves and be in their full power because nobody else is going to do it. My doctor wasn’t there. My initial doctor pushed me away at 36 weeks. Who does that to a pregnant woman?
KIM: I’m sure a lot of them do all kinds of weird power-trippy stuff. We hear these stories all the time, honestly.
YVONNE: Yeah. And if I hadn’t been strong in my own mind, and if I hadn’t done my fear-clearing and block-clearing, I might have had a completely different birth.
KIM: Right! You could have been full of anxiety and stress that really could have thrown somebody else off their game. Because it is a real assault in a way. Maybe not for you because you are in your power, but for somebody else who would’ve been reliant on this person, it is a big thing.
Well, I am so glad that you were able to direct your own experience and have the kind of birth that you envisioned. It’s a testament to the work that you did. The proof is in the pudding. Realizing that you had to use this time throughout pregnancy to really pave the way, to create that reality and make that nonnegotiable and set in stone. This was what it was going to be. And you did it. Amazing work.
YVONNE: Thank you. Thanks to you, also.
KIM: Is there anything else that you’d like to add before we stop?
YVONNE: To any pregnant ladies, trust yourself. You’re going to do it, and you might as well do it orgasmically. [Laughs]
KIM: Fantastic. Thank you, Yvonne.
YVONNE: You’re welcome. It was a pleasure.
********
Our second guest is Sky.
She’s a Canadian, living in Germany.
Both of these women were strangers in a strange land, and despite that, still took their power into their own hands—and vaginas—to direct the course of their births and destinies. 🙂
It comes out later in her story, but I wanted to mention that Sky had a C-section with one of her previous children, and so she would normally be put in the category of “once a C-section, always a C-section”, but she rejected that.
And how!
**********
KIM: Welcome, Sky! Delighted to have you. I’m so excited to hear you share.
SKY: Thank you, Kim. I’ve only followed your work for a year, but it’s been so powerfully life-changing that it’s wonderful to be here in person to speak to you. I’m excited to share.
KIM: Fantastic. When I created the Sexy Mama program, my whole vision, my ideal, was that women would really come to build the faith and the trust in themselves and their bodies and the integrity of their connection with their partner and with the universe. Then they could go into having a home birth, an unassisted birth, with full faith in the power of their body to be able to do this.
I especially love your story, because you went from having two births that were much more in the system, with all of the things that go along with that, to then with your third child, after doing the program, going into a fully sovereign home birth, unassisted. I’d love to hear that evolution for you.
SKY: Okay. Last year, in the middle of summer, we found out, surprisingly—this was totally unplanned—that we were with child. When I say it wasn’t the plan, we had a previous boy and a girl, and it was perfect. It was balanced, and we had expected it. Then we ended up finding we were pregnant with another child.
We live in Germany now, and I’m from Canada. It was a little bit scary to think that I was going to be in a whole new system, having children, speaking a foreign language, and being in an unfamiliar environment.
A friend had sent me a link to your course, and you were just launching the Sexy Mama Course for the first time. The main thing that really got me is I’d heard that an orgasmic birth was possible. Somebody had told me that’s the reason that they had a home birth, but I had no idea how or why that was possible. I was really curious, and you were offering that information.
It was really divine timing that the course was being offered at the beginning of the pregnancy, so we were able to not only take the course but have working time after the course was over to continue learning what there was to know and do the work.
I easily got my man convinced because the big thing for him was “we’re going to work on our sex life” and “we get to practice.” It was a no-brainer for him.
What really got me, too, was that I’ve been through these other experiences before. I know what it’s like in the hospital system. I’m a nurse, so I have a medical background. I’m not a baby nurse, but I have a fair understanding of the inner workings of the medical system, so, been there, done that.
And then I found out that maybe we could have a birth that was orgasmic and pleasurable versus painful and really out of control, which was the way my other ones were. I thought, Okay, even if I don’t get there, I’m going to try for this. I need to try to know how to have a blissful, pleasurable experience rather than all the pain and all that kind of stuff. It was a no-brainer to give it a shot. It was a bit of an investment, with the money for the course and everything. But we said, “You know what? We’ve spent so much money on other education…this one is for us. We’re going to do it.”
We signed up for the course and as we got deeper into it, I started thinking, Okay, what gets the baby in, what gets the baby out. One of the big things that you say is that there’s this element of sexuality, and this attention to that component of our relationship and the whole birth process.
It doesn’t really work in a hospital, in an environment where you’re surrounded by strangers and bright lights. I really understood the whole idea about being in a safe space. I need to be where we’re alone and we’re not going to be interrupted and I’m comfortable. And if that’s the way that we wanted to go, I decided I was going to have to give it a shot at home.
KIM: Do you want to back up for a moment and just briefly share what your two previous births were like? You don’t have to go through the whole story, but just give some idea of where you came from before stepping into this.
SKY: Yeah. Although I’m a nurse and I’ve done a little bit of reading about the birth process, I knew very, very little about the birthing experience. I just basically said, “Okay, here I am at the hospital.” I took a two-day prep course, but basically I just went along with what everybody else told me about the birthing experience. I just kind of listened. With both of the children, I wanted a water birth. But aside from that, I pretty much said, “Okay. Whatever people tell me I need to do, I’ll just go along with that. I’m not really the expert on this. I have never done it before.”
I had a doula, but what ended up happening with both pregnancies is that they were both late. Seven, ten weeks late or whatever, and I needed an induction with both of them. Both the inductions ended up making things very complicated.
The first one, Angelica, was a vaginal birth, which was great. My water broke. It was a tiny trickle, and then I had nothing after that for hours and hours and hours after my water originally broke. I didn’t have any contractions, and the time frame I was given was that you need to have the baby within 24 hours of the water breaking due to infection.
I got to the hospital, and they tested my waters. They said, “Okay, we need to start this birth, and you need to have this baby within 12 hours.”
They induced me, and it was pretty straightforward. When it came time to push, it was only several pushes and she was out. It was a very quick actual birth once I reached the pushing stage. But up to then, it was very, very intense. The Pitocin just brings on such strong contractions. I kept thinking, Slow this down, please, I’m not ready for this. And they said, “No, we’ve got to up it. This is the algorithm for what we have to do at this time.”
I was attached to an IV, and I said, “I’m ready to go in the water now.” They said, “No, you can’t do that. Now this is high risk, and you’re attached to the Pitocin.”
My two requests at that time were I wanted to be in the water, and I wanted them to slow down the Pitocin, and they said, “No, we can’t do either of them for you.” I thought, Okay, whatever. I’m going through this now, and I’m going to get through it, but it’s out of my control. Out of my hands. The things that I wanted to do, I wasn’t able to do.
KIM: What’s interesting is that when you started the story, you said, “I’m not the expert. They know. I haven’t done this before,” which is the mindset that women are programmed with. “No, you just sit there in the corner, you poor little thing, and we’ll do it for you.” Women then come in with that sense that they don’t know what to do. Their bodies don’t know what to do. Somebody has to tell them what to do. That’s amazing.
Women are told, “There’s no way you could possibly know. I’ve gone to school for this, but your body and your genes and your genetic code that have been doing this for millennia, ever since the species has existed, have no idea. We know best.”
SKY: Yeah, exactly. Un-programming and deprogramming for this birth was really a big part of it.
That was Angelica. It wasn’t super complicated. It just wasn’t what I’d envisioned or what I wished when the time came. Phoenix’s birth, which is what we’ll talk about later, wasn’t as I envisioned it either; however, it was within my control. I still got to say, “Okay, I’m going to do this now because that’s what I feel is right. Not because what somebody else is telling me I need to be doing.”
Second time around, I was pregnant with Jasper. He was upside down. They were both upside down. Also, he was overdue, and he had a really big head.
Two weeks after my due date, he was still not coming, and they said, “Okay, we’re going to induce you again.” I said, “Do I really have to?” And they said, “Well, it’s better that you do.” Okay, go with it.
This time instead of the Pitocin, I chose the prostaglandin insert into the vagina. It was so strong and intense. All of a sudden my body was writhing, and oh my God, I’m going into labor. Now.
At that time, I had been at home, because they’d given me prostaglandin. I’d come home, and I spent a bit of time in the tub, which felt really good. I was comfortable and relaxed. But the person I was with said, “Okay, we’ve got to get you to the hospital; the baby is coming.” I had to get out of the tub, and at that point everything was just excruciating.
I got to the hospital, and they hooked me up to the monitor. They found my body was not open enough. His head was too big or whatever. At some point, the umbilical cord slipped between my pelvis and his head and started giving him heart decelerations. They said, “Oh, you’ve been through birth before; we know the baby can pass through the canal. A little bit of help with the contractions and some pain meds and you should be all set.
But it ended up being an emergency C-section. The anesthetist didn’t numb me deeply enough, so I ended up feeling all the cutting that he was doing, and that was quite traumatic. And he was a real jerk. I really wanted to smack him and cut him after, but he told me that if I didn’t stop howling because I was feeling what he was cutting, he was going to put me under. I thought, Oh gosh, you have no idea.
That was probably the most traumatic component of the whole birth experience. I had to get out of the water, it was out of my control, and it ended up being like an operation.
I wondered, was that necessary? Had I waited until maybe he was ready to come out, and had I known about opening my body a bit more, maybe his head would’ve engaged in the pelvis. Looking back, at first I kind of thought it was necessary, since his head was too big. But my body wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready. Looking back, could the whole chain of intervention have possibly been avoided?
Anyway, baby number three, Phoenix, I said, “I’ve got to try a different way. Those were my first two experiences. I’ve got to try something else. This time I’m going to do a water birth, right?” [Laughs]
I had a tub. We had just refinished our bathroom and it was a big open space. I was going to do this water birth, and I prepared the image boards with all my birth wishes and stuff like that. It felt good to have a space dedicated to where we were going to do the birth.
We did all the work. We cleared the slates between my husband and myself and talked about things and worked on this—
KIM: Within your relationship. Just so people are clear.
SKY: Yeah!
KIM: That work, when you’re talking about this preparation, you’re talking about really positive visions of what you want to have and then clearing any kind of detritus within the energetic space of your relationship with your partner. Because we talk about that being so important. What shows up in bed, shows up in birth. [Laughs] Or within the energy of the relationship.
The work, the preparation that we do, is really clearing that slate and making sure that we’re deeply connected from a very authentic and honest place. When there’s stuff from the past and unresolved issues, these things don’t just get swept under the carpet; they show up in these very crucial moments like a birth. So, you spent time working on that.
SKY: Yeah. Lots of time on that. Lots of time getting to know myself better. Getting the jade egg.
KIM: Getting to know yourself better sexually.
SKY: Sexually, yes, knowing that there was such a thing as a cervical orgasm. Had no idea. I had heard about the G-spot, knew about the clitoral, but the cervical orgasm was news to me. “Okay. Where is that? I know the anatomy and physiology, and what that looks like, but what does it look like in me?” All these things.
That continues to be our work. My husband and I are working on that part. That’s never happened yet, the cervical orgasm, but it’s interesting and it’s wonderful to know that we have something to work towards.
As we were working on all this, I looked into getting assistance from the health-care system, like a midwife or a doula that could come and assist me to have this home birth. At this time, midwives in Germany are few and far between, and the regulations have changed because there’s much more liability.
I wasn’t able to find a midwife that was available at the time that we were having the baby, and for my husband, it was a really, really scary thought that we would do this home birth without any assistance from a medical professional or anything. Really, a lot of the work was also building up the trust and inner self-belief. “We can do this. I know I can do this. I can feel it. And if not, we have a backup plan.”
The backup plan was that we could call the local ambulance or drive to the nearest hospital, which is 20 minutes away. But we kept cultivating the belief within ourselves as a couple that we were going to do this together.
Then my friend Petra said, “This is so interesting. I want to be there.” And she’d been through a couple of home births herself—not by choice, but she’d been there, and those were the circumstances. She was fully on board with being there to support me, and she was exactly what we needed.
Yeah, we did the work, and then after the course was done in December, the baby wasn’t due for a couple more months, so we had time to just keep working and growing that belief.
KIM: And the sex. Before I had you go back and talk about your earlier births, you were talking about how the sexual energy and thinking about how part of choosing a home birth is realizing that, “Okay, if what gets the baby out is what got the baby in, we need to have privacy. We need to be away from people walking in on us. [Laughs] We need to be at home so that we can actually be sexually intimate as part of the birth experience.”
SKY: Yeah. There were a couple of other points that you made about being in our own environment, being introduced to our own normal flora rather than hospital flora, and you talked about the lights and the control. All those kinds of things.
Fast-forward to birth time. Phoenix was four days over. We were intimate up to the very end. The morning that Phoenix came, his contractions were induced by sex. We made love that morning, and I had a clitoral orgasm; they’re wonderful for me. That was the beginning of the contractions. At first it was very mild, but they rolled out in waves and got stronger and stronger. My husband, Michael, went to work that day, but shortly after that I called him back. I said, “Phoenix is coming sometime today.”
We had that privacy and we had made love and I was at home and I didn’t have to get ready and go anywhere. All I had to do was prepare and be present for that moment right there, right where we were. It was good. I had my candles. I had my lights. I had my music. I had my birth playlist. It was how I wanted things. Then as I was feeling contractions getting stronger, I did some cleaning because, what am I going to do, right? [Laughs]
Afterward, I ran the tub and got in and out of water as much as I wanted. It was so good.
The contractions were going strong. We had the intent to do this experience, but of course, there’s a whole lot of fear. Am I going to be able to do this? Am I going to be able to handle the pain? What if something goes wrong? I thought, Whatever is meant to be, will be. I knew that. However, I will just go with it, and if I know that I need to go to hospital, I don’t need somebody to tell me that it’s okay. I can feel and I can tell and I can be the authority on that decision.
KIM: The authority of you. What an evolution from the other experiences. This time you said, “I’ll know if something isn’t going right. I will know intuitively. My body will know.” Beautiful.
SKY: And to really go with that and be strong on that because, of course, there were fears, like this little voice, but I journaled about it and I got it out. That was in my birth affirmations as well and in the subliminal birthing messages that we did with the waves. I really got out the fears.
Then there were my husband’s fears. “Is she going to be okay? I believe her. If she says she can do it, she’s a strong person, but what if?”
Then there’s the external family. “What are you doing?” In Germany, this is unheard of.
KIM: What? Home births are unheard of?
SKY: Well, unassisted to this extent.
KIM: Right.
SKY: They do them, and there are midwives. There was a move towards them, and now they’re kind of pulling back again because of the liability issues. There aren’t as many midwives available. They are more liable for circumstances than they used to be, I guess. That’s what the midwives told me.
To have an unassisted birth, lots of people told me, “You shouldn’t do that. It’s very irresponsible.” I said, “What are you talking about? This is the most responsible thing I’m doing. I’m taking total responsibility.”
It’s funny how people think you’re being naïve. I said, “I’m becoming so informed and so much more aware, doing this internal and external work to come to this point. How is that irresponsible?
KIM: The way you described yourself in the first birth sounds more naïve, right? “I don’t know what I’m doing. These other people are experts. I’m just going to listen to them. They know better than me.” To me, that’s more naïve than you, as you’re saying, being fully informed and researched and grounded and confident in yourself and knowing all there is to know. And having a really unshakable faith in your own body and self.
SKY: Yeah. I had a few doubts, but I realized, “No, I can do this. I know I can.”
People said, “Well, you shouldn’t be doing this.” I had a doctor, and I said, “I don’t want to birth in the hospital. I want to do this at home, and these are my reasons.” I sent her some of your work. Right up to the end, she said it was such an irresponsible thing to be doing, and how could I be putting myself and the baby’s life in danger like that? I said, “Well, thank you very much. My decision, not yours.”
KIM: [Laughs] Good for you! You’re getting it from all angles and still able to hold your ground. That’s amazing.
SKY: Yeah. Just being conscientious of where that came from and not even going there with that stuff, because I didn’t need to waste my energy on convincing other people. I needed to be paying attention to what was happening to me and take care of that.
Back to the day that Phoenix was born. The contractions started coming, and I thought, Oh my God, this is really exciting. I’m going to meet him today. He’s coming. But what if I can’t handle the pain? But no, I can. I did a lot of the circling because all my other births had had pain medications, the gas, the Dilaudid. This time I was going to do it on my own. Can I handle this? Can I breathe enough to get into it? Can I circle enough?
There was a lot of eyes closed and going in and thinking, Every feeling that I’m feeling is bringing me closer to meeting my baby. It was so exciting. Of course I can do this. I was meant to do this.
Phoenix was a surprise. We weren’t planning on him, but I think he really came to allow us to have this other experience. To see that there’s a different way. Because it wasn’t a choice that I would’ve made on my own. I was done having kids. I’m 40 now, and I didn’t want to go through another pregnancy. As beautiful as it is, it’s long, and it’s very demanding on my body. I wasn’t going there again, but Phoenix came to, I feel, allow us to have this other experience that things could be different. That’s one of the reasons he came. I think there are many, but he allowed us that.
KIM: I love that.
SKY: Yeah. He was divine, but I know I summoned him subconsciously because just before I was pregnant, I did my first yoni painting, and it was of the tree of life and roots because being in Germany was a new thing. I painted roots to ground myself and the tree of life growing in the shape of a lot of fire and all that kind of stuff. It was a yoni painting and that was one moon. The following moon, I found out that I was pregnant. I summoned him without even knowing it.
KIM: Wow.
SKY: When Michael said Phoenix for a name, it was just perfect. Because there was fire and grounding, there was earth, there was renewal, and it was just divine.
All of this understanding, all of this journey that I traveled brought me to this point of, “Yes, I’m going to get through this, and it’s going to be no problem.”
But I was still very open to how that would unfold because I didn’t know.
The contractions came, and it was circling and spiralling, as you call it. I was breathing into it, and going into the bath a lot, and Michael came home. He picked up the kids, he drove them home so we could have our alone time. Petra was back and forth dealing with her kids and then coming back to check on me, and I had a few periods of being alone, but then finally everybody was there. Petra and Michael were there, and all the kids were gone.
I was in and out of the tub and kind of did my own thing for a long time. Because I was so relaxed and so comfortable with everything, it felt like my labor wasn’t progressing at all. Hours went by and I wondered, Am I opening? Of course, I’m opening. With each contraction, I’m opening. But I don’t see anything. I’m trying to feel. Do I feel anything? My cervix is very far back. It’s tilted posteriorly, so I couldn’t feel anything, and it was just, Okay, I’ve just got to trust that I’m getting there.
Then Michael got tired because by this time it was getting into the night. He went and lay down for a little bit of a rest. I’d been in the tub and I decided, Okay, I don’t want to be in the tub anymore. So I walked around. And then I felt like I needed to lie down. I ended up side-lying on the floor. I made a nest beside the tub and the pillows and blankets, because we have a really big shower area. I made a nest there, and I ended up lying on my left side and having one leg up on the tub. When I say I wasn’t sure if my contractions or my labor was progressing, my contractions were coming so irregularly, five minutes, and then one minute apart, and then 30 seconds to the next one. Then it was two minutes. I said, “Okay, it is what it is.”
And then all of a sudden, everything changed. I got that feeling. “Oh my God, I don’t know if I can go through with this.” I was very tired because I’d been up and excited all day long and my body was just getting weary. I wondered, Can I do this? Can I handle this? And then I had the urge to push. What do you call it when—
KIM: The fetal ejection reflex.
SKY: The ejection reflex, yeah. The contractions were coming. I was kind of breathing through them and circling through them and being warm in the bath through them. And then all of a sudden, it was baby’s coming time. I had one big push and his head started crowning. A second big push, and his head was through. And a third push and the baby was out. It was just—boom—he was there.
I was doing this myself. Petra was there. She was helping to hold my leg up just so that I could have the space open. She was there, but she wasn’t in my face or down there or anything. She was just present and supporting me. Not invasively present. Just present.
I got to do all of it. I could feel his head coming. I said, “Oh my God, the baby’s head is there.” And then I was getting all excited. Three pushes and he was out. I got to pull him out of me. I thought, Oh my God, my baby’s here. We’ve done this.
Afterwards, I was so tired, just weary in my muscles, and everything was shaking. I was on my side. I couldn’t even sit up with the baby in my arms.
Petra had to help me to sit up, and his cord was wrapped around his neck. But he was still attached, and so I just unwound it. It wasn’t tight or anything.
KIM: Which is common, right? I forget what the stats are, but they’re really high of the cord wrapping, which is, just like you’re saying, typically very loose. Most of the time it’s not a cause for concern or intervention. It just is what it is.
SKY: Yeah. And I knew that, too, so that really made me feel okay. All these things were okay. All the things that were conditioned to really freak us out, “Oh, this is a complicated birth,” or “with these birth complications, you can’t do anything without the medical system.” No.
I’d read a lot of the birth stories and seen the birth videos of the people who had babies that were born upside down or in the water bag. One lady had the four totally different births—one on the toilet and one upside down and one in the water bag, or twins or whatever. And they were all so different. If they could all go through that, that really helped me to see that these things that are so scary- sounding are actually quite normal, and we can get through them, too. We need to believe in ourselves to get through them. We don’t always need the medical intervention and the knife to fix the problems.
We unwrapped the cord and he was a little bit snarky. He had mucus and stuff in his nose and his mouth, and I kind of sucked it out. And then he was breathing. It was very dark because we had left the lights off. There was only candlelight in there. I looked at him and thought, Oh my God, he’s here!
We left the cord on and let the placenta stay on for four hours because I wanted to give all the extra nutrients to him through the umbilical cord. I did homeopathic medicine and placenta encapsulation.
KIM: Beautiful!
SKY: There are time limits before the placenta starts to go bad and it can’t be prepared any more, right?
KIM: Right.
SKY: We did the four-hour time limit. After that, I went back into the tub. Maybe 5, 10 minutes afterwards, I birthed the placenta. That was kind of a juggle, getting the placenta in a container that I could carry around with me, but I wanted to go into the bath. He and I, we had our first bath. “I get to do whatever I want right now. My baby’s born. He’s here. He’s beautiful. He’s strong. He’s doing great. He had good Apgar scores.”
I was free, and we were free to hold him, and he never left my side. We washed, and then we had a nap, and afterwards, I worked the placenta myself, cut the cord, and prepared the pieces that we needed to send off and freeze and do all the medicine with it. It was fantastic. It was just, “We did it.” We were so proud. It’s just so confirming that we have this knowledge, we have this wisdom inside us; we have the ability to do that. Thank you. It was divine timing. Your course came exactly when I needed to know this stuff. It was like…aah!
You mentioned once you go through a process like that, knowing what you’re able to do, your response to the rest of the world is then, “No, that’s not how it is for me. Thanks for your ideas.” You’re so much stronger. You’re so much more likely to stick to your guns because you have that inner knowing. It’s been really awesome!
KIM: This is an amazing point here. What you’re saying about the rebirthing process is such a huge thing that gets overlooked in the rush to tell women, “Oh, it’s okay that you had all those things done to you; at least you’re healthy and your baby is healthy.” Maybe that’s the case. But it’s overlooking this incredible rebirthing, self-actualization potential that lies in every birth for every woman.
I love hearing that that was already very clear to you—your confidence, your inner knowingness and not taking shit. “You can’t tell me what to do and override my knowingness, because my knowingness is me. I have my own truth. You may have your own truth, but I can stick to mine. I’m not going to be subjugated to yours.”
SKY: Yeah. We needed that. We needed that strength after the birth.
KIM: You had this invincible attitude throughout, and this is despite the fact that you wanted to have a vaginal birth after a Caesarean. You said, “I’m still going to do it. I’ll do it at home.”
SKY: Yeah. I’ve seen so many other birth stories and read some. I’d heard of the other women who had done it, so I knew I could do it. And it was really about just embracing the idea of opening. My OB/GYN said, “You shouldn’t be risking something like this. You’re high risk because you could tear.”
My response to that was, “Okay, I would be tearing if I was too stressed and tense and my body wasn’t ready to open up to this baby. But I can allow that opening to happen. I can allow the space to be created and just surrender and let things happen through openness.” That was the one thing that I needed to overcome, was being too tense and out of my control, and being open in this.
Getting back to the amount of strength that we needed to have within and stand up for what we did, knowing that what we did was right against the system. When we got back out into the system, people were wagging fingers. “How could you do this?” My OB/GYN, who I haven’t gone back to since, was wagging her finger and really flustered. Just really taking our decision personally that it could’ve been high risk and it would’ve reflected on the practice or something.
KIM: It goes against every bit of indoctrination that they’ve received, that you can’t do this, they have to help you. You’re not trying to throw it in their face by saying, “Well, we did it and we kicked ass.” Without a hitch, girl!
SKY: She was one of the ones that gave us a lot of problems afterwards. Then also, to register a baby here in Germany, you need a midwife or a doctor to sign, to say that the baby actually came from you. It’s to avoid possible human trafficking. If nobody else witnessed this baby coming out of you, then who can say that it’s your baby?
But I know it’s my baby. My husband knows it’s my baby. I was pregnant two weeks ago, and now, this baby is in my arms. Yes, this is my baby, but you need to have a professional declare this for you.
We really didn’t know how things were going to roll out. We said, “Let’s just have the baby, and he’ll probably be born at home, but there’s a chance we may need to go to the hospital.” We didn’t really look into too much, and then afterward, we showed up with this baby, and people didn’t want to declare that it was my child. To get registered and even have a birth certificate and stuff like that was a big struggle.
Michael and I had to really come together. People said, “Why didn’t you just birth in the hospital?” “Because we wanted to do this at home.” “Why didn’t you have a doctor?” “There wasn’t anybody available and that wasn’t going to change my decision for wanting to do this at home.” “What if something happened?” “Then we would’ve done A, B, C, or D.”
KIM: I think that this is another key thing that people don’t realize. A positive outcome of having an empowered birth is that it bonds you, even though your partner happened to not be in the space—well, he was adjunct, I guess—but he supported you, and this was a collective endeavor with you guys.
Then the bonding that that creates between the two of you gives you the strength and the confidence to go out into the world.
You had a particularly unique circumstance where you had to prove that he was your baby [laughs] or just deal with people’s reactions to your decision. But overall, I would say as parents, where most people have the experience of having a disenfranchised, disempowered, even violent birth, the trauma then disassociates the couple from that experience, although they don’t really know why. They can’t articulate it. They just buy into the story that, “Oh, it’s normal. After you have children, you kind of grow apart or don’t have that much sex.” They placate themselves with that.
Versus the couple who actually pivots off that experience to become a stronger couple. It makes them a more solid parenting unit. They’re more alive afterward. In my vision, that’s what an empowered birth does, versus a disempowered birth, which creates a chasm between a couple.
SKY: Yeah, it definitely bonded us, strengthened us, and we’re looking at doing the next course for him, which is the Sexual Mastery for Men. So we’re going to continue on our relationship work between that.
Germany has a very strict school system. Attendance is mandatory. You are not allowed to homeschool. You are not allowed to have your kids home for maybe more than a day or so without a doctor’s note. There’s no discretion. You must attend school, otherwise, the police can come and not only force the child to go back to school, but involve the system to the point where people are threatened with having children taken away.
There’s a whole different schooling system here. When my brother and I were younger, we traveled down to Mexico for a couple of months, but my dad brought our schoolwork with us. We did all that kind of stuff on the road.
We really got the benefit of traveling and having schooling in different ways. I really want to do that with our kids. Who knows? Maybe we’ll go to Indonesia, because my mom is Indonesian, so I know all your stories about Bali.
Maybe we want to go to Indonesia for a year or something, to have the freedom. That’s the next step in this. The babies are born. They’re growing up. Now they join the school system for the next 18 years. Michael and I need to be strong and together and honor decisions about what we believe is right or wrong for our children.
Yeah, that relationship building for the well-being not only for ourselves but for our children and us as a family unit is so powerful! It’s so important. We need to have this good foundation to propel our family into the world. We’ve come to realize that we have this stuff within.
KIM: So beautiful. Is there anything that you want to say to women who are perhaps where you were at some point? Who are unsure and doubtful?
SKY: I would say just really open to that possibility that there is another way, I think the big thing for me, and even at this time, has been the message of “go within” because sometimes we don’t know what to think by looking out in the outside world. Sometimes we don’t know what to believe.
But my strength has been within, learning that when I go there, I will find the answers that I need. It’s a lot of inner, inner, inner stuff. Be open to it and be willing to have a look on that insight. That’s a really good message, too, during this corona time, because fall is coming. The world is telling us it’s time to go within. It’s a really good time for inner reflection, inner work, inner knowing.
KIM: Fantastic! Thank you so much. I’m so happy for you. Your story is incredible.
*************
How amazing were all of these stories????
I LOVE that each of these women took the reins on her birth.
Which is a metaphor for her life.
And each of them, in so doing, came out of the experience, stronger, wilder, wiser and more grounded in her inner knowing and appreciation for herself, and the knowledge that SHE CAN DO ANYTHING!
This is the biggest gift and parenting preparation that women receive, in birthing their children of their own volition.
This is what millions of women, every day, miss out on. And don’t know what they don’t know.
I believe that so much PTSD/ i.e. postpartum depression, self-loathing, and lack of parenting confidence could be totally transformed, in women having a natural birth through their own power.
Transformed into bliss, confidence, power, and a strengthened inner knowing that serves us in ALL parts of our lives.
***
THIS is why I created the Sexy Mama Salon.
I want to help you shed whatever conditioning and fear and programming that has been SUPERIMPOSED on top of your innate wisdom, the intuition and genetic programming that we all have, that can guide you fearlessly and confidently through this entire process.
You heard the levels of confidence these women had in themselves. You heard it in their voices, and through their actions, and how they dealt with every possible obstacle that was in their way.
THEY KNEW they could do this.
And so can you.
The Sexy Mama Salon is open now, and just started yesterday. You can sign up for the salon here.
Kxx
