Latest / MyMaine Birth / 125. The Free Birth Society Scam: Victoria's Freebirth Story and Her Experience with the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute

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125. The Free Birth Society Scam: Victoria's Freebirth Story and Her Experience with the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute · MyMaine Birth

• 0:00
  Victoria: There was some attempt by one of our fellow students to kind of rally some support for a woman who had lost her baby in a free birth, who had been part of the program, and that was responded to by like no, that would be rude, like that would be invasive, why would you do that?
• 0:25
  Victoria: And it was just really bizarre after we had been taking classes about supporting women through laws and like, well, what else are you going to do?
• 0:38
  Victoria: Are you just going to brush that under the rug?
• 0:40
  Victoria: Like is that how you actually deal with supporting a woman with loss?
• 0:43
  Victoria: It was uh, so it felt very hypocritical and not like sound logic.
• 0:51
  Angela: It just started to feel like maybe what I was being taught was not actually being embodied by this woman for sure maybe what your husband said at the beginning right like, let's go back to listening to our husbands, like all of us all of our husbands, I think, said this at the beginning of the program also and I actually, on that note, that's been a an interesting journey that I've gone through recently is really understanding what it looks like to be a respectful wife, because I think a lot of our societal programming does really push this.
• 1:23
  Victoria: Like independent woman, vibe and like feminist, you got this girl and I really think it's toxic for relationships.
• 1:31
  Victoria: Personally, maybe it's just the age and maturity that I'm at, but it hasn't worked for me and my relationship and it's really illuminated, you know, areas that I'm just trying to control really, and not surrendering.
• 1:45
  Victoria: Like speaking of surrendering and birth, it's like surrendering is a whole thing, it's not, it's not just in one area of your life.
• 1:54
  Victoria: And I was taken aback a couple of times.
• 1:57
  Victoria: I heard these women talk about their husbands in a little bit of a disrespectful way was my impression, and yeah, so it's.
• 2:10
  Victoria: I think it's interesting that maybe I was drawn to that at that time because I was somewhat in alignment with it.
• 2:18
  Victoria: So, yeah, starting to break free from that rebellious nature was a huge part of my healing, of coming out of this program, and something that I did notice was being emulated by these women.
• 2:30
  Victoria: But that call really really kind of sobered me up, you could say.
• 2:37
  Angela: I'm Angela and I'm a certified birth photographer, experienced doula, childbirth educator and your host here on the my Maine Birth podcast.
• 2:45
  Angela: This is a space where we share the real-life stories of families and their unique birth experiences in the beautiful state of Maine, from our state's biggest hospitals to birth center births and home births.
• 2:58
  Angela: Every birth story deserves to be heard and celebrated.
• 3:02
  Angela: Whether you're a soon-to-be mom, a seasoned mother or simply interested in the world of birth, these episodes are for you.
• 3:10
  Angela: Welcome back.
• 3:13
  Angela: You're listening to episode 125 of my Main Birth.
• 3:18
  Angela: This week.
• 3:18
  Angela: I'm doing something a little bit different and sharing some of the stories and experiences of some of the other women that I met while in the Free Birth Society's MatriBirth Midwifery Institute, which I started around this time last year.
• 3:31
  Angela: The purpose of these episodes is not to criticize or dismiss the choice of a growing number of women to have free births.
• 3:39
  Angela: Instead, I want to highlight the stark difference between the beautiful and powerful idea of birth freedom and the dangerous ideologies that are promoted by the free birth society.
• 3:51
  Angela: There's a lot of misinformation and manipulation that's happened in this community and I think it's important to shed light on the realities behind this movement.
• 4:00
  Angela: Today's birth story guest is Victoria, and she is here to share all about her beautiful free birth and her experience with the Match-A-Birth Midwifery Institute.
• 4:11
  Angela: Hi Victoria, welcome to my Main Birth.
• 4:14
  Angela: Hey, so to get started, would you share a little bit about you and your family?
• 4:21
  Victoria: Yeah, so I live in Gatineau, quebec, which is right along the river between Quebec and Ontario.
• 4:28
  Victoria: Me and my partner are actually from the English side, but we've been living over here for the past seven years.
• 4:36
  Victoria: It's really beautiful in this area.
• 4:38
  Victoria: There's really amazing nature and we don't quite have the mountains of Maine but we have, like, the Gadno Hills and it's a really beautiful area.
• 4:48
  Victoria: So we're here with our two dogs, a border collie and a husky, and our new baby boy, chael, and yeah amazing.
• 4:59
  Angela: Yeah, oh, that sounds beautiful.
• 5:03
  Victoria: Yeah, it's wonderful.
• 5:04
  Angela: Now jumping into birth.
• 5:07
  Angela: What were some of your views on birth when you were younger and growing up?
• 5:12
  Victoria: I don't think I really thought very much about birth.
• 5:15
  Victoria: I've been trying to reflect on this a bit and I didn't really have any strong stories one way or another growing up.
• 5:24
  Victoria: I mean I had heard that my mom didn't have an epidural stories one way or another growing up.
• 5:28
  Victoria: I mean I had heard that my mom didn't have an epidural and I was like, hey, that's pretty cool.
• 5:32
  Victoria: Like definitely have always been attracted to doing things the natural way I guess you could say.
• 5:38
  Victoria: So I was like that's pretty badass, but I didn't really have the inclination to ask more.
• 5:42
  Victoria: It wasn't like a big talking point in my family and I didn't really have a strong pull to start a family at all growing up, so it just wasn't really on my radar.
• 5:58
  Victoria: The same way, I definitely fell, I think, what I would consider it's now to be.
• 6:13
  Angela: I think what I would consider now to be kind of the trap of the modern woman into just the working cycle, not really at all thinking about a family.
• 6:17
  Victoria: What sort of things did you do after you finished high school?
• 6:18
  Victoria: I worked a lot on different farms.
• 6:20
  Victoria: I've done a lot of different things, like I've worked on a few different farms, I started working in kitchens and worked my way up to chef and I've worked in a few different like design stores, working on making clothing and just like a lot of cafes different uh yeah, a lot, I guess service industry kind of stuff playing around in all sorts of different puddles.
• 6:47
  Victoria: You could say, but uh, yeah, it wasn't really until I guess my early thirties that I started thinking like I think it was like my biological clock too.
• 6:59
  Victoria: You know, they say once you get into that age it just starts to become a thing.
• 7:04
  Victoria: So yeah, I didn't really have too many narratives going in.
• 7:09
  Victoria: I assumed that I wanted a home birth and just started looking into that kind of when the time came.
• 7:18
  Angela: Yeah, so how did you find out you were pregnant and what were your thoughts in choosing your care when you found out?
• 7:32
  Victoria: Okay, well, we, we decided to try to get pregnant.
• 7:33
  Victoria: So I was tracking my cycle.
• 7:34
  Victoria: I'd been doing that for close to 10 years.
• 7:35
  Victoria: I found that to be a really effective form of birth control.
• 7:39
  Victoria: So I was always very in touch with when I was ovulating, had a really regular cycle, really blessed in that way.
• 7:46
  Victoria: So, yeah, we tried for about two months and got pregnant on the second go and yeah, it was just kind of a kind of a knowing, I guess, and excitement and anticipation and just like wow, it felt like like a timer had been set, like I could feel it just dawning on me this next age of my life, you could say.
• 8:15
  Angela: So I was super excited and yeah, what were your thoughts when you were choosing your care?
• 8:28
  Victoria: you were choosing your care, ah, yes, well, at that point I had been very much immersed into the kind of the stuff that FBS does purport to.
• 8:34
  Victoria: As far as doing wild pregnancy, I had done a couple of courses with Kim Inami, who is another internet space holder, you could say.
• 8:43
  Victoria: I got introduced to her work first by doing one of her programs on like sexuality, because I was just at a place of wanting to know more about my body and be more in touch with how everything was working, and so I really, really enjoyed that program with her.
• 9:01
  Victoria: And then she had a program called Sexy Mama, which I took right after the first program, and that was a brief introduction to like wild pregnancy.
• 9:15
  Victoria: Orgasmic birth I guess the whole orgasmic birth was the main kind of draw to taking that program.
• 9:23
  Victoria: And she touched on what I now would consider to be kind of a balanced approach to birth like Jews and midwife.
• 9:32
  Victoria: If you want, you could technically go to a hospital, but you probably won't have an orgasmic birth like it.
• 9:39
  Victoria: Really, really, you need a lot of you know for that.
• 9:43
  Victoria: And then, ultimately, she was definitely a proponent of free birth as well um, doing it at home, just with your partner, um, so that was where I first started to pick up the language of like birth being the continuation of the sex act in some ways and just being this place that really benefits from, you know, privacy and just a warm, loving environment.
• 10:10
  Victoria: And so she had a few suggestions for doing more natural care as well and ways that you could kind of avoid going and getting too many scans and things like that.
• 10:24
  Victoria: So that was where I was kind of introduced to that.
• 10:27
  Victoria: And then I found free birth pretty much on the heels of free birth society, on the heels of getting pregnant, and that just kind of put everything into focus a little bit more that I was definitely having a wild pregnancy.
• 10:40
  Victoria: So, yeah, that's what I did, I actually pregnancy.
• 10:45
  Victoria: So yeah, that's what I did.
• 10:47
  Victoria: I actually it's a little bit tricky to get a doctor here in Quebec and I don't really find myself needing to go to the doctor too often, so I actually don't even have a personal physician at this time.
• 10:58
  Victoria: So I was like cool, no big deal, like I was feeling amazing.
• 11:04
  Victoria: Honestly, I didn't have any symptoms in the beginning of my pregnancy other than a little bit of like meat aversion.
• 11:11
  Victoria: Um, I was feeling amazing.
• 11:14
  Victoria: I did a bunch of cleansing, like leading up to getting pregnant, and everything was going really well for me.
• 11:22
  Victoria: So it was certainly very relaxing and felt very good in that way.
• 11:29
  Victoria: I didn't really feel a need to do anything.
• 11:32
  Victoria: I got a little bit of melasma.
• 11:34
  Victoria: This was the one thing that I did end up getting a little bit of like discoloration on my upper lip, but I wasn't you know, it was a totally cosmetic kind of side effect, I guess you could say.
• 11:46
  Victoria: As far as I understand, so yeah, I had a totally wild pregnancy.
• 11:51
  Victoria: I didn't do anything.
• 11:53
  Victoria: I went to acupuncture a couple of times and just let it roll.
• 11:58
  Victoria: What?
• 11:59
  Angela: were your thoughts like as you were discovering Free Birth Society and kind of, were you starting to like to listen to the podcast or were you doing like their workshops, or how did that unfold?
• 12:11
  Victoria: I was just listening to the podcast.
• 12:13
  Victoria: I had taken a training as a doula back in 2016 and had like this small understanding of birth work.
• 12:23
  Victoria: I attended one birth in the hospital, um, and so at that point, like fairly early on in my pregnancy, I was like maybe I'll get a midwife.
• 12:31
  Victoria: I'm not sure it's super easy to get a midwife up in Canada because it's all paid for by the government, so it's not really the same kind of, I guess, stress or investment that it could be for other women.
• 12:43
  Victoria: Um, so I was actually just listening to the podcast and I felt very emboldened by the stories that I could totally do.
• 12:54
  Victoria: This I did.
• 12:55
  Victoria: I did have a deep trust in my body's abilities and I think sacred capabilities were something that I started to hone in on.
• 13:05
  Victoria: I'll say this whole journey really brought me closer to God for sure, just dealing with the weight of bearing new life.
• 13:18
  Victoria: It really flipped a switch for me, and so I felt very emboldened to just do some basic reading but to base a lot of my research actually on the podcast, which, looking back, was like a very bold move indeed.
• 13:36
  Victoria: I fully believe I got very lucky or very protected with this birth.
• 13:44
  Victoria: Everything went so well.
• 13:46
  Victoria: But yeah, I basically just did a lot of my research listening to birth stories and was very much aligned with their philosophy of don't put any negativity in your head.
• 13:59
  Victoria: You know you are the source, you are the origin of anything that could go well or bad, you like your mental that is.
• 14:09
  Victoria: So I definitely bought that hook line and sinker and I was just immersing myself in positive first stories.
• 14:17
  Victoria: If I had a potential emergency that I was concerned about, I was just like looking at podcast episodes and being like, okay, well, this chick pulled it off, you know it'll be fine.
• 14:30
  Victoria: Like I live seven minutes away from a hospital, worst case.
• 14:34
  Victoria: And uh, yeah, I did have my mother's support.
• 14:40
  Victoria: She was, she was really sweet, she did the guide to free birth that's just a way to support me and she kind of tried to wrap her head around what I was doing and it's the first grandchild coming in and so that was really really loving and sweet of her to do.
• 14:57
  Victoria: I felt really supported by that.
• 14:59
  Victoria: But I didn't do it myself and you know my partner had this very calm, still kind of support.
• 15:08
  Victoria: He was like, yeah, you can, you can do this, like I'm not worried about it, like he was very chill about it too.
• 15:14
  Victoria: So you know that just all lined right up and yeah, that was kind of my my birth prep was just listening to a lot of podcasts.
• 15:25
  Victoria: Honestly, I don't know if I would recommend it, but hey here we are oh man, you know that beginner's luck is a thing I think I don't really know.
• 15:39
  Victoria: I'm still really grappling with that, honestly so it is.
• 15:43
  Angela: It's such a hard thing because, like in many cases, like birth just works totally fine, but like then obviously there's some things that are maybe a little more than just a variation of normal right totally and even if they are a variation of normal.
• 15:59
  Victoria: I've come to realize now, since going through the birth experience, like I don't know if I would necessarily be grounded enough to to hold that, to be able to decipher in some cases I'm not sure I've.
• 16:16
  Victoria: Uh, I found this whole experience to be very sobering.
• 16:21
  Victoria: You, it's one thing to intellectualize and only focus on the good beforehand, and then there's the other experience of like going through the birth process and like the reality of holding my baby in my arms now and like what if something had happened to him.
• 16:40
  Angela: It's so, it's still tripping me out a little bit and yeah, I love that your mom was so supportive that she took the whole complete guide to free birth like that's amazing oh, it really is.
• 16:54
  Victoria: Yeah, yeah, I was super blessed by that so what were her thoughts?
• 16:59
  Victoria: do you remember like when she was, like some conversations you might have had like during your pregnancy, like as she was going through that course at all, or I mean, she has a tendency at this time in our relationship not to come on too strong about things, because I think we've had a bit of a push and pull over our lives together of me probably not really responding very well to too much criticism and just like withdrawing.
• 17:26
  Victoria: So she was very, very delicate about it.
• 17:30
  Victoria: But she did yeah, she did express like I don't really understand what you're doing.
• 17:35
  Victoria: You know, and her births were all in the hospital and they were uneventful.
• 17:42
  Victoria: They were, they went well.
• 17:44
  Victoria: So I think for her, the impetus to do something so potentially radical or drastic, she couldn't really really quite understand that and part of me didn't really either.
• 17:59
  Victoria: I think that I recognize in myself that I have been drawn to some more extreme poles of various topics throughout my life and I did feel very deeply in my heart that this was going to work out, really felt like birth is God's design and you know why shouldn't we trust our bodies?
• 18:21
  Victoria: Like that's the whole catch 22 of this.
• 18:23
  Victoria: I do believe that is true.
• 18:24
  Victoria: You know, if shouldn't we trust our bodies?
• 18:25
  Victoria: Like it's the whole catch-22.
• 18:25
  Victoria: I do believe that is true.
• 18:26
  Victoria: You know, if you think something's going to fail, chances are it will fail.
• 18:31
  Victoria: But, yeah, she was very tender and stepping lightly around it, but it really brought us closer.
• 18:37
  Victoria: It was really awesome, definitely brought us closer in our relationship.
• 18:44
  Victoria: And here we are on the other side of it and it certainly has impacted just the way that I, you all women honestly just having a baby, you start to appreciate how personalized all of these birth choices really are.
• 19:04
  Victoria: And that was really humbling and really appropriate for me to experience, because I think I did have a lot of judgment around that at various times in my life.
• 19:12
  Victoria: Just thinking like this is the only way to go, like similar to what a lot of the free birth society dogma kind of illuminates, is that it's like the enlightened kind of choice, you know.
• 19:27
  Angela: So yeah, so for the last weeks and then days leading up to like when your labor started looking like well, I stopped working.
• 19:35
  Victoria: I was working a pretty demanding job.
• 19:37
  Victoria: I was a chef and so I was standing a lot and so I was getting tired towards the end.
• 19:43
  Victoria: The kitchen was incredibly hot and so I was really, really excited to just be home and resting and sitting in the AC and relaxing, just doing a lot of connecting with my body and my baby and doing acupuncture and just visualizing my birth and getting all of the things ready.
• 20:05
  Victoria: And, yeah, it was a really relaxing, sacred time, a time that, now that I have a baby, I can't picture ever having again.
• 20:14
  Victoria: It was like such a sweet treat.
• 20:17
  Victoria: I don't know if I appreciated quite how much I could relax with that first baby, but it was awesome.
• 20:24
  Victoria: You know, I felt really good.
• 20:25
  Victoria: I had like just some mild leg cramps and, yeah, I was getting up a lot to pee, but you know, telling myself like this is, this is probably like training for when my baby's going to be up all the time and so really just getting myself in the headspace of welcoming my new, my new baby, and I really had a feeling that he was a boy pretty early on, so I was just talking to him using his name.
• 20:52
  Victoria: You know all the sweet lovings that, yeah, mama's do.
• 20:56
  Victoria: So, yeah, it was pretty seamless the last few weeks, just relaxing.
• 21:03
  Angela: Yeah, so how did your labor start?
• 21:07
  Victoria: So a little bit of backstory.
• 21:09
  Victoria: My partner was working at a job that was about an hour and a half away at the time and our car had broken down on the Friday of the week and so he had been like rushing around looking for a new car because this one was just done.
• 21:28
  Victoria: It was like not able to be fixed, and so it was Tuesday.
• 21:32
  Victoria: He had like taken a couple of days off to like try to find a car.
• 21:37
  Victoria: Things kept falling through and he finally finds this car late Tuesday and drives it home and we go for a little, a little joy ride.
• 21:49
  Victoria: Like close to midnight and I don't know what the gentleman who sold him the car was really hoping for, but basically right after Corey had paid for the car, I think he went home and got something he needed, but he doused the car in so much air freshener it was just wild.
• 22:11
  Victoria: It was like okay, like we already bought the car, like it's okay, you don't need to do that.
• 22:16
  Victoria: So, anyways, after this like very short ride, we were both like we need to get out of this car, like can't handle this.
• 22:23
  Victoria: My hair smelled so strongly like air freshener.
• 22:27
  Victoria: I was like, wow, this is wild, like I'm just gonna try to go to sleep.
• 22:30
  Victoria: I'm starting to get a headache, so went to sleep, woke up like earlier in the morning, before he had to go back to work, just had like a wig and headache and my hair just like reeks like air freshener.
• 22:42
  Victoria: It was just wild.
• 22:44
  Victoria: So I decided to try to take a shower and wash it off and that worked somewhat.
• 22:51
  Victoria: But I went back to bed and woke up later in the morning.
• 22:57
  Victoria: My nephew is going to come and walk the dogs, so I was waiting for him to arrive and you know young teens, he kept shuffling the time.
• 23:06
  Victoria: So I'm just kind of like okay, well, he's going to show up, whatever at some point to walk the dogs and that'll be great.
• 23:10
  Victoria: And then around noon I was 12, 30 or so I started to get like full on contractions, just like completely out of nowhere.
• 23:21
  Victoria: And I'm still kind of lying on the couch trying to like recover from this headache and I will say contractions are a perfect headache remedy.
• 23:32
  Victoria: My headache completely went away in that moment.
• 23:36
  Victoria: I was after the first one.
• 23:38
  Victoria: It was completely gone and I was like holy moly, that's a contraction.
• 23:44
  Victoria: I was really taken aback.
• 23:46
  Victoria: You know like this, this common jargon that oh, it's just like a period cramp or something, and it's not.
• 23:54
  Victoria: It's really not.
• 23:55
  Victoria: So I went right into active labor.
• 23:58
  Victoria: My next contraction was like roughly four minutes after that and the next one was three minutes after that and I was like, okay, I had about five contractions.
• 24:07
  Victoria: And then I called Corey and I was like, okay, you're gonna have to head home because I mean, you might want to rest.
• 24:12
  Victoria: You know, I wasn't sure where things were gonna go, but he had been, you know, up so much looking for this car.
• 24:19
  Victoria: I was like, for sure he'll be able to come and chill out a little bit.
• 24:22
  Victoria: So he's like OK, great, I'm on my way.
• 24:26
  Victoria: He got home a couple hours later and after I hung up with him I was like there's no way I can see my nephew right now.
• 24:36
  Victoria: Like I just texted him and I was like no, please don't come over.
• 24:40
  Victoria: It's all good, the dogs will be fine.
• 24:42
  Victoria: I'm going to try to fill up my bathtub and just work through this.
• 24:47
  Victoria: I had had the plan to fill up a little birth tub, but I was not game for that at all.
• 24:53
  Victoria: They were coming on so strong.
• 24:55
  Victoria: Uh, I had a really hard time getting comfortable through the whole labor, uh, you know all these little plans that I had made, my birthing ball, my birthing tub, nothing felt good.
• 25:10
  Victoria: It was, uh, it was on, and I think the position I felt the best in really was kind of just like gripping onto my knees and like a semi squat, and so I did that as much as I could.
• 25:27
  Victoria: I hung off off my pull up bar a little bit and it just felt like things stayed at that pace for for quite a while.
• 25:38
  Victoria: Stayed at that pace for for quite a while.
• 25:43
  Victoria: Yeah, corey got home and my dogs were both just like side eyes, like what's going on, like my husky was so taken aback and my border collie was really sweet.
• 25:50
  Victoria: She followed me around like everywhere.
• 25:52
  Victoria: I went, like from the bathroom to the bedroom just kind of quietly with my shadow the whole time.
• 25:58
  Victoria: Your doggy doula, my doggy doula, yeah, my, my midwife so many cute names for it.
• 26:05
  Victoria: So that was a blessing and I mean I had also envisioned maybe Corey would be there rubbing my back.
• 26:13
  Victoria: Nope, did not want that.
• 26:14
  Victoria: He tried a few times and I was like nope, nope, don't touch me, this is not, this is not the vibe right now.
• 26:21
  Victoria: So, yeah, things just progressed and my water broke around 530, I think Roughly.
• 26:30
  Victoria: I wasn't keeping track at that point, but I think it was around then and then just began the slow dance of crowning, which I actually did not understand at the time.
• 26:44
  Victoria: I was like, okay, I can feel his head a little bit and I'd be like Corey, do you see anything?
• 26:49
  Victoria: Like he's like no, no, I don't see anything.
• 26:52
  Victoria: And then I'm like, oh no, I went back again.
• 26:53
  Victoria: I added after the contraction, like I was very much just letting my body do all the pushing that felt.
• 27:06
  Victoria: That felt like enough, but that was.
• 27:07
  Victoria: That was very puzzling for me, like I did not do the research on what crowning was.
• 27:10
  Victoria: So after after a little while of that maybe an hour and a half or so I did get to the point where I was like I think I'm gonna have to push this baby out, and so I prepared to do that.
• 27:24
  Victoria: I was able to get all onto all fours, which had felt really terrible up until then, but I was able to manage it at that point and just I guess, leading up to that, once I made that decision that I was going to have to push him out, I was so scared I was like you know what?
• 27:47
  Victoria: Like I don't want to push him out, I don't want to tear, like I had this narrative going in my head and and then I do remember hitting transition somewhere in there and just exclaiming like I can't do this, like I can't do this for much longer, and Corey had been in the other room kind of just trying to relax and I don't think he even realized that I heard him, but he said under his breath like well then, who's gonna do it?
• 28:15
  Victoria: That was exactly what I needed to hear.
• 28:18
  Victoria: I was like, okay, you know what, you're right, I'm just going to do this.
• 28:22
  Victoria: Like it's going to work out, this is what's got to happen.
• 28:25
  Victoria: So, yeah, I was like, okay, I'm going to start pushing.
• 28:29
  Victoria: So I pushed for two contractions.
• 28:31
  Victoria: His head came out the first, and then his body the second and wow, it was so amazing, corey was there there, he caught him and I will say actually in between those two contractions there was probably the longest break that I had in my labor.
• 28:47
  Victoria: His head was out and I was just waiting for the next contraction and it didn't come.
• 28:53
  Victoria: Didn't come.
• 28:54
  Victoria: It was about eight minutes actually between when his head and his body came out, because I was just waiting for that contraction and yeah, but it finally came and he was crying right away.
• 29:09
  Victoria: I didn't even get to grab him soon enough, but he was, yeah, just pink little baby crying right away.
• 29:17
  Victoria: His cord was like a little bit short but I could still just kiss the top of his head and, wow, it was so amazing.
• 29:27
  Victoria: My dogs were there, my partner was there.
• 29:30
  Victoria: It was just so peaceful and slow and that first hour just completely dissolved.
• 29:40
  Victoria: I don't remember that time passing at all.
• 29:43
  Victoria: It was just really amazing.
• 29:44
  Victoria: So, yeah, it was so fortunate and just such an amazing experience.
• 29:52
  Victoria: How did your placenta birth?
• 29:54
  Victoria: So, I guess, when we realized that it had been about an hour, I was like, okay, let's go to the bathtub and I'm going to just see what's going on.
• 30:03
  Victoria: And he was holding the baby and I just got into the tub and just started to try to pull on the cord a little bit and was really taken aback by how the cord felt.
• 30:16
  Victoria: It's like what a strange feeling.
• 30:18
  Victoria: But I was like, okay, I can do this and just bear down and and push the placenta out, and at that point I released a lot of blood.
• 30:29
  Victoria: I hadn't been bleeding at all up until that time and so I released a lot of blood when the placenta came out and started to feel it started to just feel a little bit agitated, getting a little bit impatient, and I was expecting Corey to do something and he didn't do it quick enough.
• 30:49
  Victoria: He was like whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 30:50
  Victoria: So it was interesting.
• 30:53
  Victoria: I really felt that switch when I lost all of that blood, which was interesting.
• 30:57
  Victoria: I don't know if it was just the visual I'm still interested to dive into the mechanics of that a little bit but yeah, it came right out, did a little placenta print and cut the cord and yeah, it was a very, very easy process for me.
• 31:17
  Angela: Amazing, oh my goodness.
• 31:19
  Angela: So was your like immediate postpartum it was really sweet.
• 31:24
  Victoria: I was very much taken aback at you know the next couple of days, how much pain set into my body.
• 31:31
  Victoria: I was for sure, on that birth high for the first you know earth, high for the first, you know, 36 hours or so I was like, oh, I can't wait to do this again.
• 31:45
  Victoria: Like, just like.
• 31:45
  Victoria: And then the next day I was like, wow, my butthole feels like its soul has left my body.
• 31:50
  Victoria: Like I did have some some prolapse going on there, so that was I had completely forgotten about that, I was not really expecting it, and so I was like, okay, I know what this is, but was not not envisioning it to be this way.
• 32:08
  Victoria: So I was able to do a little bit of acupuncture using like some moxibustion and able to help resolve that a little bit.
• 32:20
  Victoria: But that was an interesting navigation, for sure I didn't tear, so everything else you know went pretty smoothly.
• 32:31
  Victoria: I mean that first pee is like also not something you're really expecting or you can't really prepare for, but a whole par for the course.
• 32:40
  Victoria: So all in all it was.
• 32:42
  Victoria: It was a pretty smooth um time of recovery.
• 32:48
  Victoria: I I thought that jail had latched, fine, but we found out in the coming months.
• 32:57
  Victoria: It was about a month he wasn't gaining like a ton of weight and so did a little bit more digging, and I think it was closer to his two-month mark that I had started to reach out to some local La Leche League team members and I had been hanging out with a girlfriend and she was like, oh, his latch doesn't seem right.
• 33:22
  Victoria: And I'm like, oh, okay, um, so I basically had his lip kind of curled in and he wasn't getting enough, and so I went home from that hangout and I was like, okay, I'm gonna just pump and see what I'm producing.
• 33:38
  Victoria: And it was so low, I was like barely producing anything, basically because he was just not stimulating it enough with the poor latch.
• 33:48
  Victoria: So that was really really emotional for me.
• 33:53
  Victoria: Going through all of that and being like, wow, I was really riding high, I think, on on fumes and I feel like I just totally washed over.
• 34:02
  Victoria: This super important part of my first step as a mother is like feeding my baby, and so thankfully, everything got, of course, corrected in time.
• 34:16
  Victoria: I put him on formula for a bit, which again was something I was like really, really judging myself for, which is so silly.
• 34:25
  Victoria: Looking back, there's a lot of a lot of pressure that I didn't need to put on myself.
• 34:31
  Victoria: But again, some of these ideological groups that I surrounded myself by it was like formula, formula that's disgusting.
• 34:40
  Victoria: Why would you ever give your baby that?
• 34:42
  Victoria: Like, can you think about eating formula?
• 34:45
  Victoria: Like I had all these lines running in my head and I was yeah, I I definitely dug myself a bit of a bit of a hole with that one, but then again it was something that I needed to kind of bring me back to reality and soften my heart towards towards myself and to women in general.
• 35:06
  Victoria: And thankfully he was fine and didn't take too long before my supply was up again and, yeah, I really got to experience a bit more community.
• 35:16
  Victoria: I think that was something I recognized through my birth and my birth experience of postpartum that I did not have sufficiently.
• 35:27
  Victoria: So that was how I began to to learn.
• 35:31
  Victoria: That is like, well, if I had more people around me, maybe somebody would have kind of seen the latch earlier.
• 35:37
  Victoria: You know all all these things, but for the most part it was.
• 35:43
  Victoria: It was a truly blissful time.
• 35:44
  Victoria: My partner was able to take off a little bit of time at the beginning there and it was so sweet just hanging out all of us as a new family and integrating with my dogs.
• 35:54
  Victoria: And yeah, I'm, he's just over one year now and I'm starting to have little flashes of feeling like myself again.
• 35:59
  Victoria: But yeah, I'm, he's just over one year now and I'm starting to have little flashes of feeling like myself again.
• 36:01
  Victoria: But yeah, it was also a whirlwind, I realized, going through MMI for a good portion of my postpartum.
• 36:09
  Victoria: So, looking back, I I'm not sure if I would do something like that again.
• 36:15
  Victoria: For me it's been just such an amazing time to learn how to be present, having a baby.
• 36:22
  Angela: Yeah, oh, my goodness.
• 36:24
  Angela: So what month was your son born?
• 36:28
  Victoria: He was born mid July, july 17.
• 36:30
  Angela: So so when did you make the decision to sign up for MMI?
• 36:34
  Angela: Was it when your pregnancy, or was it just after?
• 36:38
  Victoria: It was during my pregnancy, so I kind of got initiated into all of their dogma and I was like, wow, like I love birth, Like I think my birth is gonna go great, Like maybe this will be something I could do as a mom, you know, not really embracing the notion of staying at home fully in my head.
• 37:01
  Victoria: I think I wanted to do that in my heart, but in my head I was like, no, I'm going to like work, you know, like whatever.
• 37:06
  Victoria: So I thought, oh, this would be a really great thing to do and was totally swept away into Emily and Yolanda land and it was like, oh for sure, I want to do this.
• 37:22
  Angela: Yeah.
• 37:22
  Angela: So when you say like this is what I wanted to do, and you're kind of thinking about it like as a job, like what were you envisioning, like you wanted.
• 37:31
  Victoria: Well, I, like I mentioned, I had taken a doula program back in 2016.
• 37:35
  Victoria: I attended one hospital birth and at that point I had been toying with the idea of taking a licensed midwifery program and for some reason it didn't.
• 37:49
  Victoria: It just didn't click.
• 37:50
  Victoria: When the time came to choose what I wanted to put that money towards, I chose acupuncture, and that was in 2020.
• 37:58
  Victoria: And, long story short, I wasn't able to finish the acupuncture because COVID came along my natural school that swore they weren't going to implement the vaccine mandates, ended up doing that, and so I had to drop out partway through.
• 38:16
  Victoria: I decided to drop out part way through.
• 38:17
  Victoria: I decided to drop out part way through and then I got pregnant, you know, pretty soon after that.
• 38:24
  Victoria: So I was in a bit of a limbo with where I wanted to go and finding free birth society and just really resonating with a lot of their interpretation of what birth really was.
• 38:39
  Victoria: I was like, oh, this is amazing.
• 38:42
  Victoria: I think this is why I waited to do midwifery school.
• 38:46
  Victoria: That was really present for me.
• 38:48
  Victoria: I was like this is the program I was waiting for.
• 38:50
  Victoria: You know, this gold standard, holistic immersion into midwifery.
• 38:57
  Victoria: This is perfect, like it's a one-year program, it's.
• 39:01
  Victoria: I mean it's expensive, but it's certainly much less of an investment than doing a four-year program up here.
• 39:09
  Victoria: And yeah, that was that was very much how it appeared.
• 39:15
  Victoria: To me is like this was the program I was actually waiting for.
• 39:18
  Victoria: So, yeah, I decided to do it.
• 39:21
  Victoria: All those pregnancy hormones like dissolving my gray matter as I made the decision.
• 39:29
  Angela: So were you curious when your mom was taking their complete guide to free birth?
• 39:32
  Angela: Had you watched any of the videos like before you decided to sign up or no, I didn't.
• 39:38
  Victoria: I like was literally just listening to the podcast and, like, maybe watching a few things on Instagram here and there.
• 39:46
  Angela: So you're on the email list with all of that marketing.
• 39:49
  Victoria: Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, definitely in there.
• 39:54
  Angela: So, so what were your thoughts as things got started?
• 39:57
  Angela: So what?
• 39:57
  Victoria: were your thoughts as things got started?
• 39:58
  Victoria: Well, I felt again like my ego was coming through so strongly because I was like, yeah, I just had a free birth, like my first baby, like I mean it was uh, it felt like the place I needed to be.
• 40:15
  Victoria: I was like a hundred percent birth works.
• 40:17
  Victoria: Any woman can do this, like I.
• 40:22
  Victoria: I mean, I just researched using podcasts and it worked out for me.
• 40:25
  Victoria: You know, everything was confirming my bias that this was the way to do things.
• 40:31
  Victoria: I was digging it.
• 40:33
  Victoria: I can't, I can't go back and like deny that version of myself.
• 40:39
  Victoria: Looking back, I really can't.
• 40:41
  Victoria: I was, I was super into it.
• 40:44
  Victoria: I mean, there's many aspects of that school that were really awesome and, on point, the self mastery tools.
• 40:51
  Victoria: They make complete sense that you should, you know, get your own stuff under control and certainly something that I was realizing I needed to work on as a new mom and being flooded with all the emotions and all the things and holding space.
• 41:10
  Victoria: That was something that I was particularly attracted to learning more about how to embody.
• 41:16
  Victoria: And so you know, there was a lot of truth in that first quarter and the mentorship pods were amazing, like just being under our pod leaders, influence, and it was just wonderful meeting all of you women who were so like-minded and so inspiring to me as a new mom as well.
• 41:36
  Victoria: I was just like wow, like these women are so amazing and I just really want to emulate and learn from all of them, not just Emily and Yolanda but I was really feeling my cup was filled in that in that aspect.
• 41:51
  Victoria: You know, I've decided to live in an area that the main language is French and I don't speak French, and so I was able to kind of bypass that a little bit before having a baby.
• 42:04
  Victoria: But since having a baby, being out and about in my area, I'm feeling that a lot more just the language barrier.
• 42:12
  Victoria: So I was naturally drawn to this online space even harder.
• 42:16
  Victoria: Yeah, for better or for worse.
• 42:18
  Victoria: I mean, I truly have met some amazing women through all of this.
• 42:23
  Victoria: So that was the big part.
• 42:26
  Victoria: That I really really enjoyed was that and the accountability partner meetings every month.
• 42:31
  Victoria: So on the outset everything was going really well and it's funny actually, my partner did comment pretty early on because there's so much content.
• 42:42
  Victoria: I was just listening to the lectures like all the time he's like I don't like these women, like what's going on with them like, why do they have this attitude?
• 42:53
  Victoria: Like, like they're, they're rude, like, and I was like what, no, like, I totally just like was not, was not on that timeline yet of really understanding what I now would kind of call like the strong disgust factor that I see as a current running through a lot of their approach.
• 43:18
  Victoria: And I think that it was something that I actually aligned with at that time in my life and that's why I wasn't really able to see it so very, very humbling to go through that journey of understanding.
• 43:37
  Victoria: Like, like, why was I really drawn to these women?
• 43:40
  Victoria: Why was I enraptured by their teachings and them as people?
• 43:46
  Victoria: And, um, that was something that I've identified in the times, in the months since is like, for some reason, I was really drawn to that kind of indignant judgment that was coursing through the veins of that program and became very hard to ignore once we got into the anatomy physiology quarter, just looking back their disrespect for any other kind of medical professional, other kind of medical professional it's not, not sisterly, I don't think which, ironically, was a huge, I think, uh, overshadowing that I don't know.
• 44:28
  Victoria: It gave the impression that this was like all this sisterly stuff that we're doing, you know, throughout the program and in the end not very sisterly, we're just not very respectful.
• 44:38
  Victoria: So yeah, it was once we got into quarter two that every single video just seemed to kind of end up with the same results.
• 44:47
  Victoria: It was like, well, you know, if you're enlightened enough, like, your birth will go perfectly fine, and so that at that time definitely was inflating my ego as well.
• 45:02
  Victoria: I was like, well, I just had this rebirth and it was fine, like um.
• 45:07
  Victoria: So there was a lot of tug-of-war that was happening with me because I was recognizing that the content was lacking as far as like real actionable opportunities for any of these problems like hemorrhaging oh it just doesn't happen, okay.
• 45:27
  Victoria: Breech births, oh they just.
• 45:30
  Victoria: You don't have to worry about it.
• 45:31
  Victoria: You know, as long as your energy is on point, as long as you are maintaining that self-mastery that we've been teaching you and that we obviously follow, you're going to be fine.
• 45:44
  Victoria: So starting to grapple with the weight of that pressure by the end of that second quarter was like I can't do birth work, I am not holy enough to do birth work.
• 45:58
  Victoria: It did certainly flip for me and I was like I don't want birth work, I am not holy enough to do birth work.
• 46:00
  Victoria: It did certainly flip for me and I was like I don't want to mess up somebody else's birth, like I have my shit, like I'm not I'm not holy enough to do birth work.
• 46:12
  Victoria: That was like the place I landed myself in and it was really refreshing to come together with the other women who were feeling this consensus lack of of the content as well.
• 46:25
  Victoria: So, yeah, it was interesting how it started to shift for me.
• 46:31
  Angela: What were your thoughts after the class where Yolanda basically trauma dumped on everyone after she had just supported a difficult birth and summed it all up to if any of us are going to attend births, we need to be prepared to go to jail and shifted into.
• 46:45
  Angela: We should all just really focus on online birth coaching after we'd all just signed up for what was advertised and sold as the world's leading sovereign midwifery school, like we didn't sign up for the world's leading birth coaching school.
• 46:59
  Victoria: That really shocked me.
• 47:00
  Victoria: I was like what?
• 47:02
  Victoria: She's not practicing birth anymore now.
• 47:04
  Victoria: Like has she not been to births that have gone bad?
• 47:08
  Victoria: Like what is this really?
• 47:10
  Victoria: What is this showing about her?
• 47:12
  Victoria: And then, at the same time, I was also like, well, I mean, I wasn't really gonna go to birth right away, like for sure.
• 47:20
  Victoria: Like the coaching is a good thing for me to start with.
• 47:23
  Victoria: So that was something that I had come to terms with as well.
• 47:26
  Victoria: Throughout the program.
• 47:27
  Victoria: I had been hoping to attend one of my sister's upcoming births and then slowly realized, like I'm not going to have the space to do that with my new baby.
• 47:38
  Victoria: I'm not going to feel comfortable enough.
• 47:41
  Victoria: Yeah, leaving him.
• 47:42
  Victoria: That was not the way I wanted to do things at the time, so part of it was a little bit like okay, I mean I don't want to go to jail, so I guess, yeah, I'll just do the coaching.
• 47:54
  Victoria: Like it certainly had a strong effect on me.
• 47:57
  Victoria: That call is very bizarre.
• 48:00
  Victoria: Looking back, everything's more bizarre looking back.
• 48:05
  Angela: So you started to notice the course content was lacking in the midwifery section and that was about the time when a lot of women started to connect and get on calls to talk about it.
• 48:15
  Angela: And I think there was a group email that was sent to the teachers.
• 48:19
  Angela: That was kind of like maybe you could add on this information to the course at some point, like we would all be fine with that, but we are noticing that this information is lacking and we do want this information.
• 48:30
  Angela: And a lot of women were commenting that there was less information in MatriBirth Midwifery Institute than there was in the Complete Guide to Free Birth.
• 48:39
  Angela: So the sentiment was like we noticed a lot of information is missing, but if you could add it on, like we're okay with that.
• 48:46
  Angela: What was your experience during this time?
• 48:49
  Victoria: That felt like it was going to be enough.
• 48:51
  Victoria: I was like, yep, I'm happy to continue with this program.
• 48:56
  Victoria: I was getting, like I said, a lot of benefit from it at that time.
• 49:01
  Victoria: So I was like, yeah, for sure, Like these women care about women, they're going to, of course, respond positively and understand where we're coming from.
• 49:10
  Victoria: And for me it felt like maybe this course is being displayed by them.
• 49:18
  Victoria: It was their inaugural year, you know.
• 49:19
  Victoria: There were so many things that were going through my head.
• 49:21
  Victoria: I was like, well, maybe they've just they're just so experienced that they don't really get what it feels like for somebody who isn't experienced.
• 49:28
  Victoria: And this must just be an oversight, you know.
• 49:30
  Victoria: Know, I was like totally hopeful that that things were going to get resolved and certainly the way that a couple of our fellow students approached them was so respectful, so well thought out, well written.
• 49:46
  Victoria: It was not like an emotional rant during a class.
• 49:49
  Victoria: It it was like very thoughtful, genuinely concerned and truly supported by the network of students.
• 49:58
  Victoria: So it was.
• 50:01
  Victoria: It was interesting to see how things spiraled out of control pretty quickly.
• 50:06
  Victoria: For sure, it's not not what I was expecting at all.
• 50:09
  Victoria: Sure, it's not not what I was expecting at all.
• 50:11
  Victoria: Yeah, and around that same time, four of the pod mentors all left like at the same time, and one of them was our pod mentor, right, yep, that was a huge catalyst for me to start to dislike the program as well.
• 50:25
  Victoria: Yeah, for some reason I totally forgot about that, but that was like a big deal for me.
• 50:29
  Victoria: I just adored our pod leader and, uh, those, those meetings were my very favorite.
• 50:34
  Victoria: I really felt like that was where I was getting a ton of benefit from as well.
• 50:39
  Victoria: So that became very interesting to see their response to that.
• 50:44
  Victoria: I remember posting in the mighty network being like you know, I'm not, I'm finding this to be a little bit destabilizing.
• 50:53
  Victoria: Like can we have a meeting to talk about this?
• 50:56
  Victoria: Emily and Yolanda, please Can we talk about what's going on?
• 51:00
  Victoria: Because at the time our mentors were just very like hush hush about it.
• 51:04
  Victoria: They were like sorry, you got to go, like don't want to get involved, and all credit to them for that.
• 51:10
  Victoria: But then Emily and Yolanda just responded like no, there's nothing going on.
• 51:15
  Victoria: Like what do you mean?
• 51:16
  Victoria: Like people leave?
• 51:19
  Angela: They all left for different reasons.
• 51:21
  Victoria: It was unrelated.
• 51:22
  Victoria: Yeah totally Like just totally gaslighting them.
• 51:25
  Victoria: And that was where it started to become a little more apparent.
• 51:31
  Victoria: You know what the intentions were for Emily and Yolanda.
• 51:35
  Victoria: What I can assume were just their modus operatum, yeah, so that was disheartening.
• 51:40
  Victoria: And then to see other fellow students just getting kicked out left, right and center, also from our pod group, it was like just felt like blow after blow in a way and really, really downgraded my experience of the whole thing I think understandably so.
• 51:57
  Victoria: And then I felt like it was a bit of a slap in the face.
• 52:01
  Victoria: They agreed to have this meeting to kind of join our hearts I think that was the language that was used.
• 52:09
  Victoria: Once they had joined our hearts in connection, you know, as sisters, like once they had kicked out all of the women who had been pointedly standing up to them and I was like, oh yeah, of course asking questions like are you going to teach anything about midwifery and the midwifery school that you promoted and advertised like as such?
• 52:33
  Victoria: Exactly Well and like, because it started off so genuine and respectful, like I said, and then I think once they kind of brushed that off it was it began to become like well, you are a fraud, like you are not marketing this course properly, and surely they felt really shaken up by that realization.
• 52:57
  Victoria: So, yeah, it definitely got intense.
• 53:01
  Victoria: It was a big investment for so many women and I can understand why women stayed in the program as well.
• 53:09
  Victoria: I don't doubt that some of the women who did not leave at the time that I chose to leave, or women got kicked out.
• 53:18
  Victoria: I don't doubt that some of them were dissatisfied with the program.
• 53:22
  Victoria: But it is such a huge investment Like I only had a couple of payments left by the time I quit in April.
• 53:30
  Victoria: And what can you do?
• 53:35
  Angela: When did you know for sure that you had to withdraw from the program?
• 53:39
  Victoria: It was shortly after this joining our hearts call, I spoke up in that class and just asked a few questions about like why did you feel like it was necessary to kick these women out?
• 53:51
  Victoria: I wanted to know.
• 53:52
  Victoria: And Emily and Yolanda both turned on me pretty quickly and they were like well, you're only asking that because you're clearly like ignorant of business and like of course we would do that, like it's our right to do it.
• 54:10
  Victoria: You know, they just got very defensive and basically made it seem like these women really had nothing going for them and they were just being little troublemakers.
• 54:21
  Victoria: And that was very strange to see.
• 54:25
  Victoria: And as well in that call there was some attempt by one of our fellow students to kind of rally some support for a woman who had lost her baby in a free birth, who had been part of the program, and that was responded to by like no, that would be rude, like that would be invasive, why would you do that?
• 54:52
  Victoria: And it was just really bizarre after we had been taking classes about supporting women through laws and like well, what else are you gonna do?
• 55:05
  Victoria: Are you just gonna brush that under the rug?
• 55:07
  Victoria: Like is that how you actually deal with supporting a woman with loss.
• 55:10
  Victoria: It was uh, so it felt very hypocritical and not like sound logic.
• 55:16
  Victoria: It just started to feel like maybe what I was being taught was not actually being embodied by this woman.
• 55:23
  Angela: For sure, maybe what your husband said at the beginning, right, like, let's go back to listening to our husbands, like all of us all of our husbands, I think, said this at the beginning of the program also.
• 55:33
  Victoria: Yeah, and I actually, on that note, that's been an interesting journey that I've gone through recently is really understanding what it looks like to be a respectful wife, because I think a lot of our societal programming does really push this like independent woman, vibe and like feminist, you got this girl and I really think it's toxic for relationships.
• 55:57
  Victoria: Personally, maybe it's just the age and maturity that I'm at, but it hasn't worked for me and my relationship and it's really illuminated, you know, areas that I'm just trying to control really and not surrendering, like speaking of surrendering and birth, it's like surrendering is a whole thing.
• 56:16
  Victoria: It's not, it's not just in one area of your life.
• 56:20
  Victoria: And I was taken aback a couple of times.
• 56:23
  Victoria: I heard these women talk about their husbands in a little bit of a disrespectful way.
• 56:28
  Victoria: In a little bit of a disrespectful way was my impression, and yeah, so it's.
• 56:42
  Victoria: I think it's interesting that maybe I was drawn to that at that time because I was somewhat in alignment with it.
• 56:45
  Victoria: So, yeah, starting to break free from that rebellious nature was a huge part of my healing, of coming out of this program, and something that I did notice was being emulated by these women.
• 56:56
  Victoria: But that call really really kind of sobered me up, you could say, and especially chatting with you women after that and just really, just really witnessing that flip-flop of these, really just really witnessing that flip-flop of these, of these two, these two leaders who are spouting so much about sisterhood and then acting like it's so off base and like you know, sisterhood is earned like it was just too much hypocrisy for me to really continue.
• 57:28
  Victoria: I I had reached a point where I was like I don't even want to go to class anymore, like why would I stay in this program?
• 57:33
  Victoria: And was starting to really understand what motherhood was requiring of me and settling more into a knowing that I wanted to focus on that instead of trying to be a boss, babe.
• 57:48
  Victoria: And really again coming back to this, like I guess you could call it traditional relationship roles of like putting my husband on the pedestal of being the provider and really sinking into that and so that's, I think, a place that I want to go right now in my life.
• 58:04
  Victoria: And so, yeah, it was just, it was like I don't, I don't need this anymore, I'm just going to get pissed off.
• 58:10
  Victoria: I think being in class now and yeah, too many stories about about what other people were feeling, and anyway, just decided it was not the where I wanted to spend my energy.
• 58:23
  Victoria: Basically, after that call, yeah, definitely.
• 58:28
  Angela: How have your views on birth shifted to like where you are now, like right now, like what are your views on birth?
• 58:34
  Victoria: Oh man, it was like the education I was not expecting, but the one that I really needed for sure.
• 58:41
  Victoria: I feel so much less judgment towards women.
• 58:44
  Victoria: I've finally been able to like shed that at a very deep heart level and start to understand that birth is.
• 58:53
  Victoria: I do believe it's designed to work, but you know, women are all at different places and they have different conditioning and different experiences, and what's comfortable for one woman is not comfortable for another, and that's like, really, I think what is at the heart of a birth going as I guess maybe nature intended it.
• 59:11
  Victoria: We could say it's not successful is not the right word Having a beautiful birth.
• 59:17
  Victoria: It's not my business to tell any woman what she should be doing or what should feel good for her, just like it's.
• 59:23
  Victoria: Nobody can tell me what feels good for me in that way, and so I've really been brought down a notch, and I understand that that is really what's going to help me if I decide to serve women in this capacity in the future, with women in the way that I need to in order to do this work.
• 59:55
  Victoria: And so that prayer was definitely answered in such a different way than I expected, and as far as having my own babies again.
• 1:00:01
  Victoria: It's been interesting to reflect on that, what I will do.
• 1:00:05
  Victoria: I definitely recognize that I'd like to get more training in birth.
• 1:00:09
  Victoria: I hopped into Adelaide Meadows Born Through Movement course and it's been amazing.
• 1:00:16
  Victoria: It's like what I learned in the first video.
• 1:00:20
  Victoria: The preamble of this course was like what I was looking for in the physiology section.
• 1:00:25
  Victoria: It was the tip of the iceberg, really, and so that was just a huge blessing to realize that you know, you don't have to pay an arm and a leg to learn real information, and I think that that is going to be something I would use as a red flag identifier.
• 1:00:45
  Victoria: Moving forward with who I choose education from is like if they're trying to, you know, consider what the price tag is here, ladies like so yeah, it's something that I do recognize I want to get more training on if I'm gonna have my own free birth and my partner's like no, we can totally do it.
• 1:01:02
  Victoria: Like it's cool.
• 1:01:03
  Victoria: So he's like, don't doubt yourself.
• 1:01:06
  Victoria: Like so I really appreciate that energy coming from him as well.
• 1:01:10
  Victoria: But what I also realized, I think, is I have been pushing away like I guess, sisterhood, the true sisterhood, and community in a way in my life that I would like to experience differently next time around.
• 1:01:24
  Victoria: I think it would be a huge blessing to have somebody there to help clean up and, you know, just do little things like that that I don't think I was in a place of receiving before.
• 1:01:36
  Victoria: So just the beauty of, yeah, women witnessing women is something I'm excited to experience in my next birth.
• 1:01:44
  Victoria: And, you know, without the pressure of thinking that they're there to judge me, that's totally been lifted now and, yeah, I feel so much more free.
• 1:01:54
  Victoria: I just there's something about losing that judgment.
• 1:01:56
  Victoria: You know that's really gone a long way for me.
• 1:01:59
  Angela: Not the education we were expecting, but this was really just what a lot of us kind of maybe did need.
• 1:02:06
  Victoria: Yep, a hundred percent.
• 1:02:07
  Victoria: It was a big wake up call, I think, for a lot of women.
• 1:02:09
  Victoria: And, yep, it's an interesting time to be alive and to have access to the Internet and just the amount of information we have access to.
• 1:02:18
  Victoria: It comes with the responsibility, ultimately, to not get too emotional about your investments, to really take your time, I think.
• 1:02:28
  Victoria: And, yeah, you're never going to be faulted for taking your time, I think.
• 1:02:30
  Victoria: And yeah, you're never gonna be faulted for taking your time with making decisions, and the internet certainly can prey upon that.
• 1:02:37
  Victoria: That quick dopamine hit, you know.
• 1:02:40
  Victoria: So, yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 1:02:45
  Victoria: So I see birth work now as something I might do kind of in my my crone era, think I.
• 1:02:52
  Victoria: I would love to serve women in that way and it's certainly been a thread for me of interest in my life.
• 1:02:57
  Victoria: So right now I'm focused on just raising my family and I felt a real call to finish my studies in traditional Chinese medicine.
• 1:03:08
  Victoria: I just adore that framework and I felt a lot of healing from that wisdom and knowing and it's super applicable to kids.
• 1:03:18
  Victoria: It's just like kind of what I'm feeling right now.
• 1:03:20
  Victoria: So I think that's where I'm gonna focus my energies for the time being.
• 1:03:26
  Victoria: Did you like the Wapios program at all?
• 1:03:28
  Victoria: I did, yeah, I went on the call with a few of a few of the women from MMI and we were just listening to that program and that sounds like the one stop shop that I was really looking for.
• 1:03:39
  Victoria: I know you're taking it, is that correct?
• 1:03:41
  Victoria: Yeah, yeah, so it seems amazing.
• 1:03:45
  Angela: Yeah, it really is everything that I originally like was looking for in MMI and yeah, it's like we weren't looking for this medical, all this medical stuff, but we wanted to know about physiologic birth, you know, like we wanted to know.
• 1:03:56
  Angela: Like you know, like you mentioned, about your placenta coming out.
• 1:03:59
  Angela: You're like I, you know, I wanted to know more about, like maybe, what was actually happening, like during that process.
• 1:04:05
  Victoria: Yeah, no, it's important to know, and like it's not enough to be teaching each other in this program.
• 1:04:12
  Victoria: I felt like that was another thing that stood out to me.
• 1:04:15
  Victoria: It was like one of the main assignments we had about learning about the hormones.
• 1:04:20
  Victoria: We were just teaching each other, we weren't gaining it from the content that was provided, and so it's just anyway.
• 1:04:25
  Victoria: Yeah.
• 1:04:26
  Victoria: Now you know hindsight's 2020, they say.
• 1:04:28
  Victoria: So I find that really encouraging to hear that somebody like yourself, who's been to so many births already that Wapio is really it's really filling the gap that you felt like you needed.
• 1:04:40
  Victoria: So that's encouraging.
• 1:04:43
  Angela: Thank you so much, Victoria, for taking the time to chat with me today and share your story.
• 1:04:49
  Victoria: Oh, thank you so much.
• 1:04:49
  Victoria: It's a pleasure to be sharing it here and share your story.
• 1:04:50
  Victoria: Oh, thank you so much.
• 1:04:51
  Victoria: It's a pleasure to be sharing it here Before you go.
• 1:04:54
  Angela: I just want to remind you I have a ton of resources for pregnancy and birth.
• 1:04:58
  Angela: If you're pregnant, whether you're a first-time mom or if this is your fifth baby, I want you to check out the show notes because I have some free trainings and free downloads that you can sign up for, as well as the link to access my Labor of Love, a comprehensive, self-paced online childbirth education course.
• 1:05:16
  Angela: I created this course specifically for moms who don't want to be told what to do, regardless of where you're birthing or who you're birthing with, and I'd honestly love to teach you everything that I know so that you can prepare for an autonomous birth experience and prepare to step into your role as the leader of your birth journey.
• 1:05:36
  Angela: So click to the show notes, check out all of those links and, if you ever have any questions, feel free to DM me at my main birth over on Instagram.