72. Embracing the Miracle of Physiological Birth with Courtney Valdez

Are you aware of how powerful your intuition can be during childbirth? We invite you to join us on the latest episode of the Radiant Mission podcast, where we discuss the magnificence of physiological birth and the profound impact it has on the birthing experience. We're joined by Courtney Valdez, a fervent advocate for autonomous birth and a mother who shares her transformative journey from a medicalized hospital birth to an empowering birthing center experience. 

Courtney's story is a testament to the power of making informed choices, and she passionately emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit and our God-given intuition in birth. We don't shy away from sharing our personal encounters with medical interventions during childbirth and the effect on our connection with our newborns. Our reflections center around the significance of skin-to-skin contact for initiating milk production and our choice for a home birth for our next child. Together, we hope to inspire you to research and unlearn traditional birthing methods for a more natural and peaceful birth experience.

As we dive deeper into the episode, we explore the invaluable role of midwives in shaping your birth experience, discussing our experiences with interviewing them and understanding the importance of trust and rapport in this critical relationship. We touch upon the different types of midwives, their legal implications, and the concept of free birth. We end with a beautiful home birth story, a story of redemption that encapsulates a peaceful and supportive environment for a positive birth experience. Our hope is to empower all expecting mothers to remember their authority over their birth and to courageously explore unconventional paths. This episode is a celebration of birth, the lessons we learn from it, and the empowerment it brings.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

ари.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Welcome to the Radiant Mission podcast. My name is Rebecca Tumey and I am here with my amazing sister and co-host, rachel Smith.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Hey everyone.

Speaker 2: 0:42

We're on a mission to encourage and inspire others as they're navigating through this life and with the relationship with Christ, and today we are continuing the conversation of birth with Courtney Valdez. She is a wife and a mother of two daughters under two, and she is very passionate about pregnancy and birth, as they have been catalysts for her passion and love for autonomous birth. She shared last week about her experience moving from a medicalized hospital type of birth into a birthing center. Birth that resulted in a continued amount of medicalization, let's say, ended up with her daughter staying in the NICU unnecessarily and some breastfeeding delays and things like that. And so today we're going to continue hearing from Courtney about her story, what she learned and, most importantly, what the Lord taught her through all of this, because he brought her to a very different place the second time around when she had her second daughter. So, courtney, thank you for being here with us again today and for your willingness and openness to share your story and testimony.

Speaker 3: 1:55

Yes, thank you, it's a long one.

Speaker 2: 1:58

It's a good one and it's one that needs to be heard and shared. And to kind of recap what we talked about last time, we make often make choices because we don't know that there are other choices that we can make, and that was something that I fell into the first time and it's something that you experienced the first time with your birth where we kind of outsource our autonomy to other people and we allow things, even when the Holy Spirit or our intuition that he gave us is saying don't do that, no, no, no, that's not right, something about this isn't right, but we don't know how to say no in those situations. Or maybe it's just that we're not in our thinking brains, as we talked about, and we're not in a position to fight. Where we're not in fight or flight, we're in. I just had a baby like okay, whatever is going on around me, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 2:53

And I think one of the things that broke my heart the most about what happened with your first daughter and then forcing her to go to the NICU is you literally were still contracting. You know you're contracting for a while after you give birth and you're literally having these contractions birthing your placenta and in this post labor scenario and they're just doing all of these things instead of letting your baby be with you the way that your baby needed to, and it just breaks my heart that that happened. But I also know that that experience God got you through that experience for you to learn about birth, and it sounds like it set you on a mission and it set you on fire to say never again. I'm not going to allow my birth to be outsourced by other people in the future. Is that?

Speaker 1: 3:57

the case.

Speaker 3: 3:58

Yeah, absolutely it was, and I just I made a promise to myself it was so.

Speaker 3: 4:05

It was right around when I had had her, there was a sermon at church and our pastor was talking about, you know, being a victim or a victor, and I just knew that I wanted to come out of that situation and, even though it's hard, take out all the good and spread good, because I think way too many of us were just spoken over in ways that are not they're not from a place of discernment or grace when we're pregnant or about birth.

Speaker 3: 4:36

And I was just like, even though I experienced that, I am not going to go tell everyone in the world how traumatic and terrible birth was None of the people that were there to save me did they, you know, really created all the problems that had happened, and I just wanted women to know. Like you know, our intuitions are God given and we have to start abiding by them. And birth can be a beautiful thing when we make the right choices and we honor God's design. Sometimes I sit back and wonder if God looks at us and is like you imbeciles everything on a silver platter and you guys keep doing weird stuff.

Speaker 2: 5:17

Yeah, yeah, I totally think that's what he thinks. He's probably like Can you believe these clowns down here, Can you believe?

Speaker 1: 5:26

just just look in the Gospels how Jesus talks to his disciples and gives a good example. Like most of the time the disciples were so dumb he literally said it. Several points like can you be so any more dense, and so, while of course you know God is a loving father, you know, sometimes we also look at our kids like that.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Really, it actually reminds me I think we talked about this a while back, rachel about the correlation of Jesus being the shepherd and us being sheep and how sheep are. Sheep are are like one of the. They're very intelligent in some ways, but they're also very silly creatures. Like they'll fall in a pit and they can't get out.

Speaker 1: 6:16

They're not intelligent at all. They're literally the dumbest creatures.

Speaker 2: 6:19

They're not intelligent at all.

Speaker 1: 6:20

They have no sheep have no intelligence whatsoever. That's why they follow each other like they'll follow each other into a ravine. They won't even go off the path if like dogs can run circles around them. Dogs are smart sheep.

Speaker 2: 6:38

That's a good point and that's why dogs can herd sheep, because dogs are even smarter than sheep. So when we take that correlation and we correlate it to ourselves and the fact that the Bible says that we are sheep, I definitely think that God looks on us when it comes to birth and says look at them, leading each other into the ravine.

Speaker 3: 7:02

And look at the disconnection that was. That happened to me and my daughter, to you, to countless other women, and you go the devils in the details.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Sure.

Speaker 3: 7:13

The devil loves the disconnection that we're creating in women in these moments and then we sit back and somehow, there again, we're silly, we're going. How are women so depressed and postpartum? Why are women so full of rage? Why are women not succeeding in breastfeeding? Well, because this disconnection has been being is just so generational between mothers. Absolutely. I just I see so much for lack of a better word demonic stuff surrounding birth and, like so many people like I get it, are quick to be like new age and birth and I'm like holy cow, like let's, let's look at this first. The disconnection we're creating at birth is legitimately demonic. Let's face that and then face the rest together.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Sure, the enemy is certainly trying to find his way and find strongholds during the birth experience, because is there anything more beautiful than the design that the Lord created? Why would he not want to sabotage it? Why would he not want to sabotage the bond between a mother and her child that sets the mother and her child up for the rest of their lives together? I mean, it's the easiest. It's honestly one of the easiest things places, experiences that he could crawl his way into to destroy. You know, it seems like it would only make sense that he would. He's here to seek and destroy and to separate us from the Lord, and that's certainly a place to do that. You know that I've said something along these lines, that there's something to it. I see it in the birth system. I see it in the modern day way that birth works, that the Lord has designed our bodies to grow in birth babies, in the peace and quiet and harmony of whatever hole we decide to go into when it's our time to give birth. Yet we've made it into a spectacle. I mean, what do they call the? Or Don't they call it a theater? In some scenarios you go into a theater to get cut open, and that's not how God intended babies to come into this earth. Now, granted, there are 2% of scenarios where some assistance may be of need, but that's not the rest of the 98% of women. Yet we've made the 100%, the 2%, and we've retreat birth as if it is a medical disease that needs to be managed and babies coming out as if they're flawed before they're even given an opportunity to live. So that's what you know.

Speaker 2: 10:06

Kind of where we left with your story was you got, we were in the car and your milk came in and when you told me that it was like clicked, just like in birth, we can't really open when we're uncomfortable, and I know you had that midwife that you are uncomfortable with. I had a doctor that I was really uncomfortable with and every time she would come in the room I feel like my cervix was like closing. I think that the same thing happened with your milk. You know you were under so much pressure in the situation of your daughter going into this NICU during COVID. There was so much stress. She was taken away from you, your body wasn't functioning the way that it should. You were under pressure and stress, and then, as soon as you are out of the clutches of the enemy, that clutches of the medical system. Your body did what it knew it needed to do.

Speaker 3: 11:04

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 11:05

And it opened up in the floodgates of milk.

Speaker 1: 11:10

And that's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 3: 11:12

We spent so much time at home I joke, we were all naked. We just wanted the skin to skin, we just wanted to in whatever way we could. We couldn't get those moments back, but we wanted to go home and start reinstating that of just being so gentle with our daughter and really just loving her as much as we could. And that is what I wanted to be so gentle when I changed her diaper God forbid because she had been poked for so many days or whatever. We just really wanted to love her all we could.

Speaker 2: 11:45

I think we all relate to the nakedness of those early days with babies Like, nope, just skin to skin and as much as you can, because you know how good it is for the baby, but also for the connection between mother and baby and milk. It's amazing that skin to skin so a mother's naked chest against a baby's naked chest stimulates milk production. Isn't that a miracle?

Speaker 3: 12:14

Yes, oh, it's like God's mind right.

Speaker 2: 12:17

Yeah, he totally did.

Speaker 3: 12:19

That's why I say anyone that could experience pregnancy and birth like to come out of it and not believe in God. I just I can't relate, because I had never felt so closer to him and been so led to dive even deeper in the word once. I was, like you know, allowed this honor of being a mother.

Speaker 2: 12:39

Absolutely I feel the same way. It reignited something new in me as well after my first, that it was like this is amazing. Even during pregnancy it comes on as you're getting those ultrasounds and you're like, oh my gosh, this is a miracle, this is amazing. And when you realize how early babies develop, that's another thing that I don't want to get into the whole pro life, pro choice abortion conversation. I'll just say it.

Speaker 2: 13:10

Really, I mean I already had my opinion on it prior to, but it really solidified it extra because it's like this baby is fully developed and it's 20 weeks. It's fully developed. Granted, there's continuation of continuing growth, but it's amazing to me. I was amazed. I had a miscarriage after Ben and this baby was six weeks. That's it six weeks. And if you look at those apps, I mean they're like it's like a pee pod, right, and I found the baby in my pad and it had a little nose already, its eyes were starting to form and it had a cord and a placenta at six weeks and to me that was just so incredible, like it's amazing that the creation that God has created in these babies just growing inside of our wombs is beautiful.

Speaker 3: 14:04

It's like a mustard seed. What's that it's like a mustard seed.

Speaker 2: 14:09

Yes, yes, a mustard seed, exactly. So then, what happened after that? You had your first daughter, and then you guys decided we're gonna go for this again. You learned before you what was the next step.

Speaker 3: 14:27

Yeah, I think that we were just totally united because of that as a family, Like my husband and I were brought closer together than ever before. We could have taken that to mad at each other, had distrust in one another. I could have been angry, but we really just leaned into one another and we were so in love, you know, and we were like maybe we weren't thinking clearly but we were like we want another one and I was just so like hell bent into researching physiological birth and kind of just starting to unlearn and understand what had happened to me, and I just knew we weren't gonna do that again.

Speaker 3: 15:10

And my husband and I had said like we will be doing this at home forever, and I just started. Your husband said that, or?

Speaker 2: 15:18

you said that.

Speaker 3: 15:19

Both of us, both of you. Okay, we finished each other's sentences. You know, I went through that heated in a different way, but he also. He had some things to heal from too, and we just knew that we weren't gonna do that again, we wouldn't be in those walls again. And so I got pregnant five months postpartum. My daughters are 14 months apart.

Speaker 2: 15:42

I love it. I'm pregnant right now and our Ben in the next few. We're gonna be 15 months, so I'm right there.

Speaker 3: 15:48

Yes, it's so fun. It's fun, it's so amazing to like give your child like such a beautiful gift of a sibling.

Speaker 2: 15:57

It is, it's beautiful, it's the best, yeah.

Speaker 3: 16:01

And I don't know, like, once you have a baby, one time your body's like I've done this. You know that's cool too. Yeah, I just started researching it. I knew I wanted to do a home birth and I did want support and you know, there's like this whole like dogma around, like wanting support is bad and I like I am fully endorsed and support and love free birth and unassisted birth, but it wasn't where my heart was at the time and I just I like knew I was like there has to be a woman out there who can simply hold the space for me. Simply hold the space, like I hear about these fairies that are out there, you know, and I'm gonna find them.

Speaker 2: 16:42

Unicorns exist somewhere.

Speaker 3: 16:44

Yeah, unicorns, and I kind of created some of these questions I wanted to ask and I really just like I set on this mission of I will lean into my intuition, my God given intuition, and I will abide, because it's one thing to have the Holy Spirit, you know, talking to you and around you, but to abide by it is another thing. And I just was like I will run every single thing by God and his will will be done, but I am not gonna have not listened to him again, you know, and like now with this daughter, that was very tangible and in front of me and we had gone through that. It was like I am the protector. I am the protector of myself and my children and like this is so far beyond me you know, the decisions that you're making for birth.

Speaker 3: 17:32

It's about your baby too. So I interviewed a lot of midwives and I mean usually like within the first, even some of them like I heard their voice and I'm like, nope, that's how serious.

Speaker 2: 17:44

I got this time. And that's how it is. When you interview, though, you know within the first 15 seconds if you're gonna click with that person or not.

Speaker 3: 17:52

One of them. I'm so happy I had the interview on the phone, because my face would have just given it all away she was like yeah, well, I'm still requiring masks and I limit the amount of people you can have at your home birth. And you know I'm only doing home birth three days a week because the rest of the week I'm in the hospital and I was like bye, you're like okay, great, thanks so much.

Speaker 2: 18:12

Have a nice day, goodbye.

Speaker 3: 18:13

Why, though, like kind of tying into like our conversation today is midwifery isn't necessarily answer. It is really being informed and pretty clear on who you were allowing in your birth space.

Speaker 2: 18:27

You're making a great point, because I think something that it's important for everybody to understand is that a licensed midwife has to report to the state. They still have to abide by rules and they still what was the word you had used they're in conference with the hospitals. They still consult with doctors at hospitals and have to abide by. Oftentimes, even if they do a consult with a doctor and the doctor says do or don't do this. If they don't listen, they could get in legal trouble Legal trouble. So it's something that I didn't know either until my midwife dropped me because of these potential legal ramifications. But it's important to know. And there are other types of midwives birth workers, the underground railroad of midwifery that exists. There are a lot of options, but tell us more about kind of what you continue to do as you were searching for a midwife.

Speaker 3: 19:39

So I had just kind of learned about free birth and an assisted birth and it was really interesting to me and I just thought like that's amazing, I would love that, but I also-.

Speaker 2: 19:49

I thought that those people were crazy.

Speaker 3: 19:53

After my experience it was like there was so much intervention yeah, we were also broken that it was like what do you have to lose?

Speaker 1: 20:02

Yeah, exactly, it's true, yeah.

Speaker 3: 20:05

So, even though I wasn't necessarily ready for that, yeah, even though it wasn't your path. And I still were able to appreciate it.

Speaker 3: 20:13

I landed on. I'm gonna ask midwives, I'm gonna ask them what they think about free birth and unassisted birth, and that's gonna give me such a beautiful idea of who these women are Smart. And it was so. That's how you know what was spirit led.

Speaker 3: 20:25

I can remember walking into my midwives, just where she was at, and I was like, oh, it's just felt, it felt like home and just immediately speaking to her and just how she talked to me. She had even brought up unassisted birth before I even asked. It was truly just a mash made in heaven. And I kind of like, in a nutshell, laid out kind of my experience with my first daughter, what I didn't want, what I wanted, my expectation of the person who would be witness to my birth and walk with me in my pregnancy. Like I knew I wanted no testing, no, I did one ultrasound and it was like, are you cool with this? Are you not like let's just lay it all right out right now and let's really get serious, because I don't want you to say yes and then, at 40 weeks, you know, get weird?

Speaker 1: 21:14

And.

Speaker 3: 21:14

I mean she still technically could have, but like I really just felt like she was. She was a licensed midwife that was with women for women and I can't imagine the things that she goes through that maybe I don't know about when you're. You know you're treading those waters, which I'm sure aren't easy because the majority of them don't. But I had a super straightforward pregnancy. Like I think about this pregnancy and I think about this birth and it's like it's a short story because it was so straightforward. You know our appointments, like our.

Speaker 3: 21:54

I did go into my prenatal appointments. It was completely optional to do but I enjoyed the conversation so much. She actually had a student and we would all sit around and have tea and talk and nine times out of 10. It was not about a baby, it was just about life and birth and we would talk about like a birth video we saw or something we saw on Instagram, or you know, she gave me the book, she lent me the book, or Gazz McBurth, and like we would just talk about what we had read. It was. It was like a little girl's circle, you know, just like the friendship I needed because I also had no other women in my life who I could go be ecstatic about birth with.

Speaker 3: 22:33

Well, I like, looked for it, you were building a true relationship with her.

Speaker 2: 22:37

It wasn't just about the checking the boxes. You guys were building a bond between the two of you.

Speaker 3: 22:43

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 22:44

I think that's what a good midwives their goal is is to have a bond and a real friendship and relationship established so that then when you're going into the birth, that you actually have a mutual trust for each other and that you know what each other expects or wants from each other. I interviewed a lot of midwives too, and my biggest question was always what do you do with moms who have a breech baby? Because that was my previous experiences and most of them are like, oh well, we transfer to the hospital because we don't do that. But one of them who did have a breech experience she said I get, I get moms calling me all the time because they're 39 weeks and their babies breach and they want to transfer care to me because they heard that I will deliver a breech baby. But I'm not going to take on a mom like that when we don't have any relationship established.

Speaker 1: 23:42

Like it's different when it's from you know week, you know the first trimester, through the whole thing, that we have a relationship established and that bond formed, that then we can trust each other. But to just take any mom in a desperate situation, it can go really bad and I think that's kind of what's reflected in your previous experience of having these rotating midwives. You never really get to know any of them that well, or maybe you did one of them and that's not the one that you end up getting, so I think that that's really important in reflecting what you experienced the second time that you were able to become friends with even the student midwife too. I think that's great. We're still friends for this day. Yeah, that's awesome, yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:31

There's a camaraderie there that you were able to build, so that's awesome. We're talking tea together, talking about what's important, and it sounds like, when the time came, you know you had a team of people that trusted you just as much as you trusted them.

Speaker 3: 24:49

Oh yeah she. I will never forget this and I've said this so many times. One time she was like I don't think I'm going to make it to your birth. You're going to do great, and it was just. It was like if you want to do an assisted, that is great. If you want to call me, that is great, but if I am not there for whatever circumstance, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2: 25:08

You've got this.

Speaker 3: 25:09

You are the best for your baby. You know, because I did, like one of the things that I struggled with the whole pregnancy was what? What if my baby doesn't breathe? And it was like that was so like nailed into me from that first birth that that is what I had to sit on and pray on constantly, and like I would talk with her through it and she was like maybe it's going to come around. You're the best thing for your baby in those moments and you will know if things aren't getting better. You know things like that. It was just. It was so nice to even be able to like work through fears and move, move forward no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 25:54

Yeah, so when did you go on to labor the second time? Was it the same amount of time, or did you go over, or how did that go?

Speaker 3: 26:03

So first baby was 39 and five and it was 23 hours start to finish. Second baby I was 40 and one which, like everyone around me, was like I had told people my due date, never doing it again.

Speaker 2: 26:16

Yeah, always add like three weeks to it, right.

Speaker 3: 26:20

And everyone in my town is being induced Like I mean, honestly everyone at the hospital right now is like 39 weeks. So if you see a 40 week or beyond, it is a sight to be seen.

Speaker 2: 26:33

Right, it's great. Yes.

Speaker 3: 26:35

So I was 40 and one and I had this time. I took off work at 37 weeks because, you, just like I, wanted to lean into that slowness. And I also wanted the time with my daughter Because I knew I didn't ever worry about the space to love another one, but I wanted to savor the last moments of her and I.

Speaker 1: 26:55

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 26:56

So we got that time to just be at home and hang out and also I'm a hairstylist, though like approaching birth I didn't want, unfortunately, to hear all the trauma stories, because that's really like doing what I do has really opened my eyes to just the amount of women who have positive experiences to the latter and, like I would you know, proudly share that I was having a home birth and there at the end it was like, nope, I am guarding, we are putting a protective bubble.

Speaker 3: 27:26

I'm taking a word, don't even talk about it, yep, and I just wanted to like lean into my family. So, 41 I had woke up and like I started having those really like low dull cramps and I was like this is it. And I went to the bathroom and went pee and I had a blood tinge mucus and I was like oh, it really is it. But my first labor was longer, which I think 20, even, I think up to 30 hours is still like a variation of normal for a first time mom. So maybe it wasn't long, it was just normal long to me. So I was like we'll probably be doing this for a while and things were so they weren't even timeable throughout the day, but they were different.

Speaker 3: 28:00

I will say that like I made Jordan stay home from work and then he was like well, why don't you time them? You know he was, I think he more so after our last experience, once things started kicking off, you could kind of see like not necessarily worry, but he was more responsive and I started timing them and he was like they're timeable, you should reach out to the midwife. I was like I'll reach out to my midwife when I'm ready and I think at 830 things had really picked up more so that they were timeable. They were intense. I wanted to breathe through them a little bit more. I was still up and walking around.

Speaker 3: 28:34

We got our daughter down, stevie at 830. I like gave her her final kisses, you know, and like knowing that that was the last time I would kiss her, of her being my only, and I went in and I had had my birth space ready since like 37 weeks because it was just, it was like a fun thing for me to do and I had like the cheesy twinkle lights and all the things because it was my birth and I was going to have it. However, the hell I wanted it.

Speaker 3: 28:59

I know everybody hates other twinkle lights, but I'm like do they?

Speaker 2: 29:03

I thought everybody was into that I don't know.

Speaker 3: 29:06

There's so much like dogma around anything anymore. I'm like I love what we want to love. I'm not even supposed to watch birth videos anymore. I'm like, oh my God, I can't talk to a dramatic bird. No, I can't talk about good birth. Where's the room for anything anymore?

Speaker 3: 29:22

Yeah yeah, I started feeling at my tub and, honestly, what was crazy about this birth was I didn't float away into La La Land Like I really I had. I had really prayed on, like I want to feel it all. But I want to be present, because in my first birth, like I said, I kind of went away to labor land and I didn't want that, like I wanted to be really present. And what was so crazy and why? I think Jordan was like we're not going to have a baby until the morning was even well into transition. I could come out of it and be like so how's everybody's day? It was just so, but I think because I wasn't, I would never worry about getting in a car or, you know, getting checked or all those things, like it was just us at home. There was nowhere to be, it was. It was so amazing.

Speaker 3: 30:09

And things did get really intense once Jordan came in from putting Stevie down I want to say it was like 1030 and he was like we're going to call the midwife and I was like, okay, that sounds good, we can let her know.

Speaker 3: 30:19

And so she heard me having contractions over the phone and she was like if Courtney wants me to come over, not you. And so she ended up heading over and once she got there, I think I went into transition because I was over talking to absolutely anybody through those waves and my water hadn't broken. I think I had said with my first labor my water broke 10 hours before I had her and that was really interesting, just like maybe that attributed to it being kind of less intense. Maybe my dilla was right, I don't know. I was in and out of the tub on my own accord. I labored a lot on the toilet. It was super intense, but I just kept, you know, attributing that intensity to like working, like I could really fill her coming down when I was on the toilet and I wanted to make sure I was like peeing and all the things and I had had like one really grumpy contraction and that was the only time, once my midwife had gotten there, that she said anything.

Speaker 3: 31:22

She's like maybe you'd really enjoy the tub, because she had heard me get grumpy and I think she knew like she's about to have this baby. So I got in the tub and then the guttural just fetal ejection reflex just washed over me and her and the assistant were at the complete opposite end of the room just watching, you know, and bearing witness, and things got intense. I could genuinely, I could literally feel my daughter maneuvering in my birth canal and she was like why don't you reach and see if you could fill your baby? The next was that she said and I reached and I could fill her head, and then seconds, my water bursts in my hands and then I was like, oh, she's coming and I could she moved again, could fill her head and I was like, okay, I don't want to rush this.

Speaker 3: 32:12

Even in that moment I was like I don't want this to be over, so I really like breathe through it. And then, in one more contraction she was out and I just had like this moment. At that point I think they had turned the lights on again because I had wanted it dark and she just got to stand there still under the water for a bit, just completely. I left alone, you know, and I got to take her out of me, fill her and merge and then take her right up to me and all by myself, and no one was touching her. She had a quarter round her neck and I was able to take it off. She was a mucusy and I removed her mucus and no one was telling me that I couldn't touch her the way that I instinctively wanted to. Gosh, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: 32:58

No, don't apologize, You've got me like my husband was there, you know, just touching me and awe, and I think he was like Cal, like look at how this unfolds when it's completely left alone In my midwife just looked over and she was like good job, you know, like I'm so proud of you. And I just looked at Jordan. I was like that's how it's supposed to be, you know, and even in that moment, like you, you're not ready for a redemptive birth to then bring up so much more emotion, knowing like you just wish that your first have that. You know, it's like this concept, it's like this double edged sword and I felt all those things in that moment. But then I was just like just flooded with love of this, like little cheesy vernix baby. He was gurgling a little too, and that's what was like so interesting about the midwife was she was still way away, as she was working through that mucus and, you know, really starting to come about herself, and we were just completely allowed to navigate that ourselves.

Speaker 3: 34:09

It's been beautiful 15 minutes after I was having contractions and I was like I'm gonna, I think I need to deliver my placenta. Delivered my placenta. We hung out in the pool for a little bit longer. They were like admiring my placenta. I mean they're just amazing. They're like complimenting me a bunch. I'm like I just want to give birth every day.

Speaker 2: 34:32

That's so beautiful, what a redemptive experience after such a hands on experience. And I understand where you're coming from when you say that it brings up a lot of emotions about the first, because it's like I wish I would have had this with my first. But I think sometimes, you know, those negative experiences are our lesson and the future experiences are us putting those lessons and knowledge and what we've learned into place. And sometimes we can't get to that place unless we've had the hard lesson. You know, and I think that that's what I'm seeing in your story. That's just so relatable and so beautiful is that you know you went through something tough and you came out the other side even stronger and then you continue to grow from there and you knew what to look for. And these, these ladies sound wonderful, the way that they just sat back and left you alone and they let you catch your own not let you, I mean to say let you, but you got to catch your own baby, which is how it should be.

Speaker 3: 35:37

Absolutely, I have this thing. It's a me thing. I think because of my first birth, that when I'm like witnessing this beautiful birth online, I do love watching them and I see the mother fully capable. And then it's like there's a midwife's hand and she's got to like in there even for five seconds and just like get a little touch. You did not need to do that. So unnecessary right, because I would imagine even that body, that baby's body, would recognize a touch that's not from its mother.

Speaker 1: 36:08

Well, yeah, and it's like they ask for, or they should and it sounds like your first word asking for consent to touch us, the mother. They should also be asking consent to touch the baby, because that is an autonomous human being and, as the mother, we are the gatekeepers of that baby until they can speak for themselves. So you know, nobody needs to be grabbing their hands in there to touch anyone without asking permission.

Speaker 2: 36:35

I know that you watch a lot of birth videos, courtney, did you see the one where it was? She was? I don't, she wasn't. I think she was speaking Portuguese, so I didn't. I saw the translation, but I didn't know exactly what she was saying. But she was having the baby and they kept touching her and she was screaming at them stop touching me, stop touching me. And they're like no, we have to touch you or your baby could die. She's like stop touching me. Those types of videos make me so viscerally, like angry and upset for these moms, so like get your hands off.

Speaker 2: 37:15

Or the woman who was having a hospital birth. This was one that's been circulating over the last couple of weeks. She's having her hospital birth and she was standing up and she was leaning against the bed and this nurse, or whatever she was I don't know, she's a nurse, she was. I think she was a nurse because they were saying her midwife, your midwife's not going to make it. You need to, you need to stop. And she just was a tuning them out. I was so proud of her. She just tuning them out.

Speaker 2: 37:41

And they're like you know, you're not complete. You can't, you can't give birth. No, you're not complete and she's just like not listening. Not listening. They're like you can't give birth like that, Don't push, you have to like at least lay down or something. And she just stood there and she delivered the baby herself, but this lady kept putting her hands all over her.

Speaker 3: 38:03

You know, you know and. I just like how to call that what that is, and it's abuse, right, because we teach our kids from a really early age about consent and that follows into every area of our life, and one is enough.

Speaker 2: 38:17

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. This goes into, you know, I feel very strongly that I think that the vaginal exams that we receive as teenagers and as young women are kind of grooming in this way, and grooming for this, these birth experiences where they're going to stick whatever they want to stick up there or cut whatever they want to cut. They're just, they're grooming us for their comfort and the things that they want to be able to do, versus, hey, how about we don't put anything in there or touch anything unless you know something needs to be done? I don't know.

Speaker 3: 39:00

Absolutely and, I think, telling, like in my situation, if I wouldn't have had the wherewithal, or, you know, my faith of even when my baby emerged from me I'm not smart enough of how to touch her, you know. And then you, just you're like heedlessly abiding by your midwives, your I don't know your pediatrician, everyone else it's like no, you are innately designed by God to know how to mother, how to give birth, how to do it. All you know and these people don't know because they've never been witness. Yeah, you know, they have people go to them who are like just do this for me. So they, I truly believe they just don't even know how to support something like that.

Speaker 2: 39:47

Yeah, I think that they, a lot of these Western medicine practices probably really miss the Twilight days. Remember they used to put moms in Twilight sleep back in our grandparents era. They just put them out. I mean, what better patient could you have than someone who's unconscious?

Speaker 3: 40:05

and can't talk back. Have you guys ever read a childbirth without fear by grant Grant Lee, dick Reed? No, I got to check that out.

Speaker 3: 40:15

He started in like the late 1800s, talking about how, like when birth got extremely medicalized, and he talks about all of those early interventions and you know how soon to be, like the Twilight sleep and crap like that how they stopped because it was so dangerous and that's why we call it practicing medicine. Somehow we're not coming to our senses about the interventions we're having now, even though our outcomes are gruesome.

Speaker 2: 40:41

Yeah, absolutely so I'd love to ask you a couple of questions about your experience, and the first is what was the biggest lesson that you learned from your two experiences?

Speaker 3: 40:56

I feel like it's my motto now. It's to lean into my intuition and abide by it, and to not not be scared to take roads less traveled. And even if I feel alone, I'm not scared to be alone because, you know, god's always with me.

Speaker 2: 41:15

That's beautiful. It's great Now if you could go back and change something, would you? This is a tricky question.

Speaker 3: 41:24

No, I don't think I would. You know, I think that, as hard as it was to live through, I think that those hard things are like our biggest lessons, you know, like to get through hard things like, and those hard things take us to the better things, kind of. You know, like, of course, in my perfect world, without knowing that through hard things come like so much wisdom, right, like I wouldn't be able to go through that and have the wisdom that I have now.

Speaker 2: 41:54

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 41:55

So I don't think I would change it.

Speaker 2: 41:56

Yeah, I totally get that. It's hard, but it shapes us right. It makes us who we are. Now, what is something that you would want to share with an expecting or soon to be mom, whether it's her first time or her fourth time? What do you want moms to know about birth?

Speaker 3: 42:20

I'm going to try and tie it into my experience that you are the authority over your birth. You know you are so beautifully connected to that baby and your womb that you know you know in your heart the right places to be to give birth. Do not settle for birth. Where you give birth, you know. If you're looking for a happy medium for the sake of other people's comfort levels, that's really something I encourage you to explore, because birth is not something we should be settling for and how we birth sticks with us forever. If the fight feels hard which for most of us it is you've got to ask yourself what can I live with? What decisions I make can I live with? And kind of how we said, I think, in the first episode of when we're picking our hard, what's harder, you know, firing providers standing my ground, sometimes standing alone, or healing from a traumatic birth, potentially.

Speaker 1: 43:23

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 43:27

Courtney, this has been amazing. Was there anything else that you wanted to share with listeners today?

Speaker 3: 43:33

Oh, I think that's it. I hope that my experience just helps people out there and that you know, if ever they wanted to ask me questions, they can, because I didn't suffer for nothing and if I can help people through that, I would love to.

Speaker 2: 43:53

Awesome. And yeah, you can find Courtney on her blog, southwestbirthworkercom, or on Instagram at southwestbirthworkercom, and I will add these links along with the books that she mentioned into the show notes, so be sure to refer to those if you want to get a quick link to access her. But thank you, courtney, for being with us. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 3: 44:16

Thank you guys. Thank you so much for having a platform for Christian moms and you know talking about uncomfortable truths.

Speaker 2: 44:24

Yeah, of course I mean. This is what the Lord is calling us to do to do the hard things right, and we hope that it helps others. That's our whole goal. So thank you for tuning in today, for being on this journey with us. If you'd like to follow along outside the podcast, you can do so on Instagram, Facebook and on YouTube at the Radiant Mission. And today we're going to close with Courtney's favorite Bible verse. It is 2 Timothy 1 7. And she mentioned that she finds it most resonating to motherhood and all of the things inside of it. She says for the spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self discipline. And we are wishing you a radiant week and we will see you next time. Bye, guys, We'll see you later. My people say Bye, Bye.