Welcome to at Home with Kelly and Tiffany, where we share powerful tools, exciting education, and relatable views about holistic health, physiological birth, and thriving in the female body.

We are home birth midwives in sunny San Diego.

Passionate about the alternatives that give women control and confidence in health, in birth and in life.

We've poured a lot of love into creating very in depth and high value offerings.

A monthly membership, a physiological birth course, and holistic guides for the women who really want to dive all the way in.

But this podcast.

We want to bring zero cost information about health and natural birth and make these important topics accessible always.

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When you leave a review, share an episode and join our newsletter.

It really helps us keep this space open, ad free and full of honest, valuable conversations.

Now let's dive into today's show.

Welcome back to at Home with Kelly and Tiffany.

I am midwife Kelly, and I'm midwife Tiffany.

And today we are recording together and I gotta say I've really missed it.

This is great.

Yeah.

If you guys have not watched this on YouTube, I bet.

If you have watched this on YouTube.

We put all of our videos up there, we really have no idea why we're doing it.

Just seems smart content wise.

The content's already there.

Might as well put it up.

Yep.

But being together in the same room, it's luxurious.

It is luxurious love.

We'll see.

We'll see if we do this again.

I'm very excited about what we're gonna talk about today.

I know you have a review to read, but I just have to say this is gonna be a good one.

I'm excited too.

It was actually really fun to plan out and write the.

Notes form stuff.

It's great.

It is great.

Today's review comes from Becca Boo.

1 1, 1.

My little boo thing.

My favorite thing is when you guys send us messages or emails and you say, I'm Becca Boo.

1 1 1.

And I'm like, are you my little buck?

Becca Boo?

No.

Becca Boo.

Becca Boo gives us five stars.

She says, Kelly and Tiffany make holistic options easy to understand and access with.

All the resources they provide, including this great podcast.

The topics are so relevant to every aspect of women's health.

I use their podcast to educate myself before, during pregnancy, and now I listen to help improve my general health.

They are down to earth and fun to listen to.

With each episode, you really feel like you're just chatting with your crunchy BFFs.

That's what we are.

Your crunchy BFFs.

That is super sweet.

I noticed that we have a 4.9 ranking guys.

It's been that way for a while.

Yeah.

Someone just got in there and left a one star review.

Why you gotta do that?

Maybe they don't like women probably.

I dunno.

Maybe they're the worst.

Okay.

We won't be reading that one.

Nope.

On the internet.

But you guys just go rate us.

You don't even have to leave a review.

Just go rate that helps us so much.

If you just click the five stars.

Maybe the, maybe our rating is like 4.997, for example.

And maybe we can recover the 5.0 at some point with enough little blo de enough little five stars.

Also, fun facts.

Kelly, I don't know if you knew this, throwing this in there.

We have our podcast on all listening platforms.

I think Apple Music is, or Apple Podcast is probably the most popular.

But second to that is Spotify.

I would say like the Android people are on Spotify.

And you can leave comments on specific episodes.

I have no idea.

Yeah, I probably should go over there and look and manage some of them.

The only one I saw, I can't remember why I was over there.

I think I was linking one for somebody who said they listen on Spotify and they were looking for a specific episode and I just felt.

Kind, kind.

And the one that I, the one that I saw was a lady who was like.

This information needs to be out there.

I am a grandmother of blah, blah blah, and this happened to my friend and my neighbor and whatever, and was like, I'm so glad this information is out there.

It's this is saving lives.

She said, wow.

I know.

So you never know what kind of comments are gonna end up places.

So I have to look at those on YouTube too.

'cause YouTube's a weird place to be sometimes.

I know.

Even we get weird co.

We get weird comments on our blog posts too.

It's just like quite a lot.

Quite a lot.

So if you wanna leave a terrible comment somewhere that's not on Instagram or on this review platform on Apple, we won't like, we won't see it.

You could probably get it up there, say something nasty and it could stay for months.

But I'd encourage you to not do that.

But if you wanted to.

If you wanted to.

That's the way to get us, that'll really show us and talking about things that, hey, this is your prerogative.

Watch me segue this.

That's what we're talking about today.

We can agree with the fact that you can do what you wanna do.

Yep.

And one of those things might be free birth, comment, weird things on the internet, birth your baby at home with nobody with you.

That's the fun of it.

You decide you're in charge.

It's a choose your own adventure situation.

We're not communists yet here in the us.

Yes.

So you have, you still live in a free society.

That's for another podcast episode.

I don't know, we might just keep going down the controversial topic train and that could be the next episode.

We don't know.

Okay, so free birth.

Free birth.

Oh my gosh.

We get asked about this all the time, what we think about it.

There's so much traction on social media about free birth, people sharing stories, people saying.

Do you really wanna know if you have a good midwife or not?

Ask them what they think about free birth.

That's the ticket.

And of course strong opinions.

Birth brings in strong opinions from everybody, and we're not too unfamiliar with that.

We're not gonna shy away from that just because it can be really polarized sometimes.

So if you're unfamiliar with free birth is basically an.

It planning to have an unassisted birth usually at your home.

So you are saying, I'm not gonna have an attendant at my birth.

I'm gonna take the responsibility and for this experience and have it for without somebody who is a trained attendant.

So we've got.

Another option thrown in the mix, and we don't often talk about it as midwives.

We're usually like, Hey, your option is, the hospital with the doctor.

There might be some midwives there.

Your other option is a birth center with usually just midwives there.

Your option is a home birth with midwives there.

We sometimes we talk about the unplanned unassisted birth where.

You meant to go to the hospital, but you didn't leave your house fast enough.

You meant for your midwife to be there with you, but you had your baby while she was still on the way or something like that.

Free birth means you've intentionally decided to.

Plan your birth to not have an attendant.

Yeah.

I think that's helpful too, because I think I hear that, especially the oh, I had a midwife this whole time and then the baby came, so I had free birth.

And it's like there is some nuance there between free birth and unassisted, right?

Because it's an entirely different paradigm and mindset of somebody going into specifically.

Shoot for a free birth.

Oh, totally.

And like when someone says, oh yeah, I had a home birth.

I just didn't leave for the hospital fast enough.

It's oh, we're on a spectrum here.

The intentionality behind you having your baby at home is completely different and philosophically different then just because that's what happened, or that's where you had your baby.

It's different than what somebody who planned to have a.

Midwife, attend them at home the way that she prepared for the pregnancy, the way she prepared for the birth, the way that she'll be supported postpartum.

Totally different.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so let's talk about why women free birth, because I know that there's a little bit of stigma involved with this label, right?

Like everything, and one of the reasons that I wanted to bring this topic to.

A place or even to be able to talk about it on the podcast is because I think that free birth sometimes gets put in a category of it being dangerous or irresponsible or, and we're gonna share, I'll share my opinion about that.

I'll force Kelly to share her opinion about it too.

But I think we need to be really careful about how we handle this topic and discuss it as a community because.

We have lots of people saying that it's irresponsible and dangerous to birth at home with a midwife.

And so we need to like, we need to look at the spectrum and the options, and we need to understand women and their stories and the reason that they make some of these choices.

So if you're very unfamiliar with why somebody would choose a free birth, it's the same reason that women move from the norm of hospital birth to home, right?

They want autonomy.

Maybe there was prior trauma in a previous birth.

Maybe they've just heard stories that sound traumatic and they don't want that.

Maybe they're rejecting the institution.

Which is the same reason women are choosing to come to home for birth anyways, right?

Maybe they just simply value birth as a normal and natural event and having that with an un ha having that without a trained.

Provider feels like they're gonna get the most out of that experience.

Not all women who have access to hospital, oh, not all women have access to.

Alternatives from the hospital, right?

So there's tons of communities, we call'em midwifery deserts, where your only option within an hour or two drive is a hospital and maybe they're terrible hospitals with really awful outcomes.

That to me is.

Is a really attractive reason to wanna do free birth.

Not all women have access to good midwives.

Maybe you're not in a midwifery desert.

Maybe there's plenty of midwives in your community and they all suck.

Maybe that is just the standard in your community is the way that midwifery is practiced is so opposed to the philosophy that you would like to have.

So I'm just bringing these ideas up and stuff because.

I think it's important that we identify a piece of it as home birth loving people, alternative autonomy, personalized, loving people that we can see all of the reasons why somebody would choose free birth.

It's not that extreme when once you really break it down.

Yeah, I think every time I've heard about it or prior to a lot of my birth, experience, I was like, wow, that is like so other and so alternative.

But seeing women that I know are not even in midwifery deserts or have access to midwives, that could be good supportive options, still continue to choose free birth.

It has been really illuminating for me to figure out where I don't know where I personally land, where I professionally land, where I wanna land as a friend and not a midwife.

And just recognizing.

Yeah.

Like it is a viable like choice and women make it, you mentioned quite a few reasons and sometimes it's just this is what I want to do.

I'm like, wow.

I don't know.

It's just helpful to remember again, once you start getting into the alternative space, right?

It's like how I felt about coffee enemas for a long time.

Oh my gosh, that's great.

That's so great for you.

But that's so crazy, right?

And then experiencing it, I'm like.

Oh, actually, let me talk about this more.

'cause I think it's very beneficial.

Or whatever.

Anyway, free birthing and coffee and whiz and like free birthers are on a spectrum, right?

Just like anyone, their motives and their needs and their desires are all different.

Someone who's choosing it as a first birth is very different than someone who's choosing it in opposition to the hospital, potentially, right?

Or wanting an attendant but not being able to find one and not compromising.

Year birth and handing it over to the hospital.

So I want to make sure that even though it sounds radical that you guys understand, our opinion of it is that women who choose a free birth are not careless.

They're not flippant.

They are often the most intentional, educated, and prepared women out there because they are so willing to take on.

That responsibility.

Yeah.

And it is it feels very other because birth in our culture is very we don't, women don't take a lot of responsibility in it because it's, whether you recognize it or not, it's given away.

And so there are different types of care kind of paradigms around birth in general.

So recognizing and pulling, recognizing what your own thought is about birth and what that means, like if somebody else knows better than you, usually in the medical model of that's what we generally think walking into an OBS office or that's what they think, right?

I know better.

And, what are their protocols and their monitoring and the interventions that they're prone to do.

Sometimes that is what our paradigm is that makes us feel safe and that makes us feel good, or whatever.

Some people can have that kind of view on things.

And helpful to say too, I mentioned.

Oh, this is how obs practice.

There are midwives who practice very similarly as well.

So not lumping only one type of, care provider into one type of care paradigm, and then there's other women who are like I can do this.

I know that I'm taking, I can take responsibility.

I can have this wonderful birth, but I would prefer to have some help.

I'd prefer to be like out of the system, but also still be supported in particular ways.

That's where our clients land, I would assume, for the most part.

Yeah, as seeking out a home birth midwife, I want the support, I want the care.

I know that this is me who's doing it.

I'm taking the responsibility here, but I just need some support, right?

And having somebody who is trained and educated and in a lot of situations, part of a, like we, we are licensed, we're part of the system, the institution in some way, right?

So we are beholden by certain laws and rules in our own state, which differ from state to state, obviously.

But that is, that's one of the thoughts about birth.

And then there's also the free birth kind of paradigm, that they're looking at birth as.

I want full, complete autonomy, meaning, yeah, that's nice that you could help me and give me care, but I, what I want is to do this completely on my own.

And so I want that full control.

I want that full responsibility.

Again, like Tiff was saying.

I think we think oh, you're just choosing to birth at home like flippantly.

But really it is such a level of responsibility and control that we can't just like shove under the rug either.

And so that feels like the greatest reward in a lot of in a lot of experiences is that yes, you walked through that completely on your own.

And that's not to say that you don't have.

Love and care from somebody.

But it's just, it's very different than seeking out a provider to provide that love and care and I think it's worth mentioning that it's.

It's okay.

We're living with the tension in those paradigms.

It's okay that the hospital-based provider is really uncomfortable with the midwifery care model.

It's okay that those who would choose a midwifery supported birth feel really uncomfortable with the idea of free birth.

We're like, it'd be better if we didn't, it'd be better if we could just look at women's choices and say, oh, you had a lot of information.

You made this choice off of, I wanna support your choice.

But it is there's tension in that because there's identity in it.

And are you saying them, my choice is wrong if you're choosing something.

Like we can get all into that.

And so if you're listening to this right now, or.

You wanna send this to somebody, if you have someone in mind you wanna send this to that there'll be some tension in that space.

It's okay, that is true.

Like we're talking about extreme things, we're talk, talking about important things, and it's not my choice or decision to say that there's a certain way that you should be birthing that is going to be better for you, or which.

Model, which paradigm is actually riskier?

Who does have the intuition?

Who does hold the authority?

Like I can't tell you for you what that is.

So your philosophy, of course, your personal philosophy as.

Someone else's.

Also, their personal philosophy is gonna affect their decisions.

It's gonna affect how they wanna interact with consent, their feelings of control, their satisfaction, the outcome of their birth, we're all making decisions from that place.

So we actually have a lot more in common with people making informed decisions and taking responsibility than it might feel sometimes.

So the tension in the midwifery model is, like why?

So I think it's common for free birthers to look at home birth midwives and say, I'm rejecting you.

I'm rejecting what you bring to the table.

And so the tension there in that is because it varies state by state what all of the different regulations are.

Who do midwives really work for, right?

If there is regulation in their state.

And there's a lot of chatter out there about no matter how great your midwife is, no matter how much great informed consent she gives, no matter how much she values your autonomy and wants you to choose and wants you to have the power there's no possible way that she actually can 100% work for you if she is regulated and licensed, because ultimately she answers to the state.

She answers to her license, she answers to the governing body.

She can't, you can't be the highest one on the totem pole.

So that's a, that's loaded, right?

That's loaded for us as midwives because while I'm writing this outline up, I'm like, I'm the, I consider myself to be an expert in this autonomous informed consent natural physiological birth space.

But I'm not an expert in free birth.

I've never been to one.

It's impossible.

I could never go to a free birth.

Yes, that would be like completely, I'll never be invited to a free birth.

Maybe I will be, but then it won't be a free birth anymore by the time I get there.

I don't know why this is like just crack, just the visual of that is like cracking me up.

But it is really, there is a lot of tension and especially even just deciding to talk about this on here of being like I did create my entire working life and, around doing this work.

And then to also recognize some people.

I think I came to the realization, right?

Some people reject that and they're rejecting it because they're like, the hospital is the safest.

And I think I really wrapped my brain around the fact that some people reject it because it's still providing this level of medicalized, however you wanna look at that care.

And I was like, oh, it can be rejected for so many different reasons.

And so can hospital birth, so can free birth, right?

And I think recognizing, like you mentioned, finding those like common grounds, we're really thinking about it instead of letting it trigger us is so important because honestly, I do, I hear when people are like I don't wanna hire a midwife because they're beholden to the state.

I'm like, dude, I am beholden to the state on that particular level.

And do I like that?

Is that the way that I think, and so it, it brings up a lot, but I think if we don't get triggered, we can actually have these conversations and think about'em a little bit more logically.

Yeah.

So I know one of the things that is really on everybody's mind on this topic is safety, because it comes up, of course, when we're talking about midwifery attended home birth, that already feels like there's an extra level of risk there.

Really depends on how you view risk.

But when people talk about free birth, you're like, oh my gosh.

You just took your whole safety net out.

How let's just, let's dive into that.

What does safety mean for home birth and how much does it matter?

And how are free birthers navigating that?

And obviously there's like a whole different, there's lots of different types of safety, right?

But like outcome wise.

Of course the research is, it's just not that robust for free birth.

So our best home birth stats are for planned attended home births, right?

You can look at the link in the show notes for some more information research about some free birth, links and things like that.

But again, like the research really isn't quite there.

But most of our training as midwives.

Is right in normal birth, we are the experts in that, but.

I, because we are such experts in that there are certain complications that pop up that we spend quite a bit of training being prepared for emergencies.

And we can recognize when they're happening because it is not in the realm of normal that we are experts in.

And it's not because like we're not spending that time training for emergencies because we were like, Ooh, they're gonna pop up right around the corner anytime.

And we're like so afraid of them.

But we want to be prepared so that we are not afraid when they, when and if they do happen, right?

That we can take a deep breath, feel our feet on the floor and do what we need to do to keep mom and baby safe, right?

And so you wanna be prepared for it.

You wanna be knowledgeable about it, right?

Things like we talk about what with our clients what will we do if there's a shoulder dystocia or hemorrhage, or need to resuscitate your baby.

So those things yes, are rare in our practice and plant, home birth, all of that.

But they're also unpredictable, right?

And so you don't quite know.

Most of the births we go to straightforward.

Wonderful.

We put all our emergency equipment away after, prophylactically, putting it out just to be prepared and then we go on our way.

But obviously it's unpredictable, so you don't know, right?

When something like that might pop up, you might not know, you know how much there, there might be something that happens where all of a sudden yeah, we do need to transfer.

This is so much more than we can handle even here at home.

We have to just keep things as stable as possible till we move up.

And so there's, the issue of being able to say, can I recognize that fast enough?

Especially without the training of seeing it often, of understanding what to do next and those kinds of things.

And so that comes up a lot of times when we talk about safety of can you recognize.

The risk if it is, or the complication if it is happening.

And can you recognize, next, what do I do next?

Versus do we need to get more support on board, and when can we do that fast enough?

So that's a helpful, kind of piece to remember about the complications part of it.

But like I mentioned too, like there's a bunch of different types of risk also.

And so who gets to actually define what risk is?

For you, for the woman who is pregnant, who is planning her birth, and so many, like I would say, much more medically modeled providers are going to use labels, right?

If you have been pregnant before, you may have already seen that in your notes.

Certain type of history that you've had, or certain body type that you have, or maternal complications of some kind that either are currently being managed.

Or, have been managed in the past.

And so that is, something to recognize of that type of risk.

But midwives may be more open-minded to understanding the individualized risk, understanding, this is, the type of care that this person needs given her history or given what she's dealing with right now but still have right.

Professional, personal, legal restrictions of some kind on what they actually believe or their protocols and things like that.

And so talking with your provider about this in an interview before working together, that's gonna be essential to understand how they are identifying risk.

And then obviously too, what is your assessment of risk and what is that to you, matters so much as well in terms of looking at what your history is, what you are currently working with.

All of that too.

But obviously the ultimate responsibility is for life and the greatest fear.

For most women walking into this is death.

And that is just how, that's just life in general.

Especially when we're talking about something of bringing in life, right?

And we're like really bad about talk, like about bringing that up as a society in general.

Everybody wants just the miraculous, just the beautiful, just the wonderful parts of birth that it's really hard to talk through.

What if that's, but what if that's not me?

What if I, what if that's what, and then how people process a bad outcome in light of the decisions that they made and the choices that they made.

So I feel like it's so important, and this is probably one of the biggest reasons that Free Birthers end up enjoying the greatest reward because they do take the greatest responsibility.

I think they understand this.

I think that free birthers have to come to this.

Place of, yes, this could be something that is potentially a problem.

It could, we could have a about bad outcome.

We could lose the baby.

We could lose the mom.

That is a potential in all birth, in every single setting.

Coming to terms with taking that responsibility on is the key there, right?

That's the big piece.

Yeah.

And I, right now on social media, there's, the story of an influencer, somebody whose baby didn't make it.

They had a planned, they had a planned attended home birth.

And the big story is that it was at home, right?

And this was like the major problem.

And now she, she needs to look at her decisions and, live with that because she'd made this decision that now her baby didn't make it.

And so what it, obviously that's loaded too, and there's a lot to say about that, but there's not these same conversations of what happens in hospitals too, right?

And so there is risk.

Anywhere you have a baby anywhere, anywhere in life there is gonna be risk and it is on a spectrum.

And you have to be able to step into that and say, I'm willing, like I understand the risk.

And I think that is just so terrifying for so many people.

That it does make it uncomfortable to talk about.

It does make it uncomfortable to think about, and nobody wants that outcome.

Nobody signs up for that.

But just recognizing the responsibility factor in every decision.

There are situations where even having the, or two minutes, 30 seconds down the hallway isn't enough.

And there are some situations where the baby is in a better situation because they were at home and were able to, stay with their mom or something like that too.

And yeah, we just have to it, it's hard in our society to talk about death in general and.

So I recognize that makes it really uncomfortable for sure.

And so no one, I feel like even though, even if you're thinking about it, no one's actually prepared, right?

For you can't fully emotionally prepare yourself for that type of outcome.

Both families, but providers as well.

It's heavy.

It is heavy the burden of supporting women in this situation.

But it is a reality, right?

It is a reality in birth.

Nobody can make it a hundred percent safe a hundred percent of the time.

But again, that concept of safety is just so subjective.

There's obviously physical safety, but there's the emotional safety, there's, there's spiritual there's just so many different layers of that too to consider.

And I agree with you, TIFF.

I think free women who walk into free birth with their eyes wide open of all of their options have really grappled with this idea in a way maybe that.

Others, including myself, may not be able to be as comfortable doing.

Okay, you guys, this is a long conversation and we wanna take time with it and we really wanted to dive into the nuance with you all.

So we will be back with part two next week.

Sorry for the cliffhanger, and we'll continue discussing.

Free birth.

We'll chat about are women really meant to birth alone, the legal pieces of free birth.

How to approach free birth with the ultimate responsibility and being responsible with that, and how free birth challenges and reminds all of us about what really matters in birth.

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