(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
Welcome to the birth prep podcast. I'm Taylor, your birth bestie, who's here to support you as you plan and prepare for the unmedicated birth of your dreams. If you're ready to ditch the fear, conquer the hospital hustle, support that bump and bond, and walk into the delivery room like the HGIC you were born to be, then buckle up, babe.
This is where it all goes down. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the birth prep podcast. We're going to just dive right into it today because I'm going to be busting some of the biggest myths we've been fed about birth.
And I don't mean just like little misunderstandings. I mean, straight up lies that keep women stuck in fear and confusion and feeling like they have absolutely no control over their birth experience. And I'm sick of it and we're done with that.
So I'm going to shed some light today. Are we ready for it? If you're planning to have an unmedicated birth, especially in the hospital, then you need to know these because the more informed you are, the harder it is for anyone to take the control from you. So grab whatever you're sipping on today because I'm coming in hot with the truth.
Number one, you have no control over your birth. Here's what they always say. Birth is unpredictable.
You can't really plan for it. You just got to go with the flow. It is what it is.
It just happens. Let me tell you why this is a lie. This one gets me so fired up because yes, birth can be unpredictable, but that doesn't mean you have zero control.
The idea that you should just go with the flow is often code for just do what we say and don't ask any questions because going with the flow doesn't serve you. It serves your providers. The truth is you have a ton of control over how your birth unfolds.
You get to choose your provider and whether they truly support your goals or not. You get to choose where you give birth. You get to choose who's in the room with you.
You get to choose what interventions you accept or decline. You get to choose how you prepare your body and mind for your labor experience. Oh, it just started raining.
I love a rainy day. Okay. Anyways, you get to choose so many things about your birth experience and you need to be making these from an informed place because every choice that you make will affect the experience that day.
In the home birth community, which I'm a part of because I have my babies at home, we always talk about how leaving your house is an intervention. It disrupts the physiological process of birth and that's not necessarily a bad thing per se, but it's like even something is so simple as leaving your house can change how your birth unfolds. And it's so important to be making these decisions from an informed place, actually understanding, okay, it's not just a cervical check.
What does a cervical check come with? Every choice that you make has a trade-off and depending on what that trade-off is, it can either push you towards your goals or keep you away from them. So it's very important to understand that you have so much control over your experience. Because if you're sitting here believing you have no control, you're never going to sit there and do this work and figure out what's actually going to serve you and what's not.
And then your provider just gets to decide and choose what serves them. So here's my tip for this. If you want an unmedicated birth, you can't just wing it and hope for the best.
You need to train for it and prepare for it. Learn your options, practice your mindset work, get your birth team on the same page as you, your page. Like everybody needs to be on the same page that day, your page.
And then set up your environment for success, whatever success looks like for you, because this is how you create the birth that you want, not by going with the flow. I hope you guys are preparing. I'm proud of you for doing this work, but I need you to actually like keep doing it and keep working on it, not just listening and consuming, which is great.
We're getting information, we're doing the things, but I need you to actually be taking action steps. And if you are working on action steps, how about you DM me and let me know what you're working on this week, because I would love to celebrate you. If you're not already following me on Instagram, I'll put the link in the show notes for you.
Anywho, let's go to number two. Hospital policy equals law. Actually, no, it doesn't.
What they always say is, oh, you can't do that. It's hospital policy or, oh, we have to do it this way because it's hospital policy. So why is this a total lie? Listen to me loud and clear.
Policy is not law. Policy is not law. And I'm going to say it louder for the people in the back.
Policy is not law. A hospital policy is a set of guidelines that the hospital prefers to follow. It is not something you are legally required to obey.
Okay? For example, many hospitals have a policy that says you must be on your back to give birth, or you must have continuous fetal monitoring, or you must follow our no eating policy. But guess what? You get to say no to these policies. You get to do it differently than the policies say, because they're not laws that you have to follow.
They don't own you. Look into your rights as a if you have not already. Here's my tip for this.
If a nurse or a doctor tells you something is policy, ask this magic little phrase. Can you show me the legal requirement for that? Nine times out of 10, they'll fumble because there isn't one. And suddenly, you'll see how much of birth is just following outdated routines, not evidence-based care.
If you use phrases like that, the switch is going to flip real quick. Oh, this girl actually knows what she's talking about. She's the head girlie in charge.
Oops, we messed with the wrong girl. Like they make their profits off of women not knowing things. So if you go in just a little bit educated, like guys, it doesn't take that much.
It really doesn't. You can probably Google your hospital, and they probably have your patient rights in a nice little form for you ready to read. And it's really that simple.
And they're just banking that you don't know. But when you show them, hey, I actually know what I'm talking about, and I know what I'm doing, they're going to back off, because they have no legal ground to stand on. And if they're going to keep pushing something that they're not actually allowed to push, they can get in major trouble for that.
So odds are they're just going to drop it nine out of 10 times. Lie number three, the only pain relief option is an epidural. The amount of times everyone has said to me personally, why would you go through all that pain? Just get the epidural.
I had literally, I had a family member offer to pay for the epidural, because she could not imagine why somebody would want to choose to not go through it without an epidural. Like what kind of crazy person would ever choose that? Me, I would, because it's not that crazy. It's actually how our bodies were designed to experience it.
Newsflash. But listen, I'm not anti-epidural. If that's your plan, you do you.
But I am anti-misinformation. And the idea that the epidural is the only or the best way to manage labor pain is just a flat-out lie. There are so many tools that help your body work with labor instead of numbing it out.
There's hydrotherapy, there's movement, there's counterpressure, there's massage, there's deep breathing, there's visualization, there's mindset techniques. If you want an unmedicated birth, don't just hope you can handle the pain. Train for it.
Your body is designed for this, but your mind has got to get on board too. And having those little tools in your toolbox for that day is incredibly helpful. I'm going to be doing an entire episode soon about breaking down all of the natural pain management techniques and really talk about those things.
So stay tuned for that. I'm excited for that. Okay, moving on to the next lie.
Bigger babies equal harder births. They're gonna say, oh wow, your baby's measuring big. We might need to talk about induction or C-section because your baby's just going to be way too big to birth.
So basically your options are stop your baby's growth and remove them now via induction, or we schedule a C-section so that you don't actually have to birth your baby vaginally. Because there's just no way that your body could actually handle that. This one gets thrown around all the time.
And let me tell you, it causes so much, like so much unnecessary fear because there's honestly zero evidence. Do you know how many mothers that I've heard have birthed their 11, 12 pound babies at home? Completely fine. No tearing, no nothing.
Itty bitty women, not like these like big birthing hip ladies, like just itty bitty women, their body's working with them to birth the baby that their body grew. Can we just all agree to unsubscribe to the lie that our bodies are broken and our bodies don't know what the heck they're doing? You're telling me that the body that understood how to grow tiny little fingers and toes and optical nerves and your whole nervous system and all these little teeny tiny organs and piece them all together so perfectly and intricately and just the way they're supposed to be, doesn't know that it has to birth said baby at the end of that process? I'm sorry, I can't, I can't get behind that lie. So first off, ultrasound weight estimates are wildly inaccurate.
Studies show that they could be off by one to two pounds in either direction. So when they say your baby is measuring big, they could actually be totally wrong. Second, your body grows the baby it can birth.
A bigger baby doesn't automatically mean a harder labor or C-section. What actually matters is your positioning, your movement, letting your labor unfold naturally, so minimal interventions. Those are the things that are actually going to make a difference, but those are the things that are never talked about because helping you move and get in better positions doesn't make them more money.
So if your provider starts warning you about a big baby, ask them, what's the evidence-based reasoning for your concern? Or how often are ultrasound weight estimates wrong? If my baby is larger, how can we support my body's ability to birth vaginally? Because that is my plan and that it will remain my plan. Chances are they're using scare tactics and you don't need to be bullied into an early induction or unnecessary intervention because they wanted a specific way. I had a personal experience with this.
My provider told me my baby was going to be well over 10 pounds. He was already measuring over eight pounds at 36 weeks and that he needed to be removed via C-section. And I said, absolutely not.
I'm not going to just choose a C-section. If it comes to an emergency situation, okay, great. We can figure that out, cross that bridge when we get there, but I'm not going to opt for that.
My provider straight up stood across from me and said, if you do not induce, your baby is going to die. And I believed her. I loved her.
She was a seemingly great doctor. I trusted her. I was really appreciative of how attentive she was throughout my prenatal experience.
So I believed her when she said that my baby would die if I did not choose the induction she was offering me. At no point did she share the risks of the induction. And I was unfortunately incredibly uninformed and I didn't know how to do that work.
So I opted for the induction. At 39 weeks, I went in for my induction. I had my sweet baby boy.
He had shoulder dystocia because he was honestly not ready to be born. And it was a little bit traumatic and he was fine. Thankfully he was unharmed and he was weighed and everything at the end of it all.
And he was eight pounds, even eight pounds, which fun fact is my smallest baby out of all five of my children. Fast forward two weeks postpartum, I called the office to make an appointment to speak with her about some stuff that I was going through. And they said, Oh, she's on vacation.
She didn't tell you. No, she didn't tell me because that would have been a little bit of a red flag. So I was manipulated into an induction.
And I'm not saying that every provider is doing that, but I am saying that it happens. I'm not this like rare, super abnormal experience. Like this happens a lot.
I've talked to hundreds, if not thousands of mothers that have experienced things like this over the years and it shouldn't be happening. And it unfortunately is, which is why I need you to be prepared for it. I hope that is not the case for you.
I hope you don't encounter a provider who is so selfish, but I would much rather you be prepared for it than to be underprepared and encounter a situation like that. And my final lie, which is one I hate so much because it really dismisses you guys in a huge way is a healthy baby is all that matters. And I hear it all the time.
All that matters is we have a healthy baby at the end. And that's not true. But of course we all want a healthy baby.
Like that's bare minimum, but that is not the only thing that matters because you matter too. You matter a lot. When that statement gets thrown around, I'm like, okay, is everybody just unaware of the fact that that baby is going to be depending on this person for all of their needs to be met, to survive and to stay alive.
So of course you matter how you are treated in labor, whether your voice is respected, how you feel about your experience, those things have lasting effects. A traumatic birth can impact your bonding experience, your mental health, and even your future pregnancies and birth experiences. So don't let anybody gaslight you into thinking your experience doesn't matter.
A respected birth matters. A supported birth matters a birth where you feel like the head girly in charge that matters. That's so important.
And it really is game changing. I remember sitting in the hospital bed with my newborn baby on my chest, first time mom, 22 years old, after just having one of the most traumatic experiences I've ever had in my life and sitting there, everyone being like, oh my gosh, you did it. You pulled off your plan.
It's so amazing. Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, well, I feel like garbage.
I did not feel amazed. I felt like I was being gaslit. And honestly I was because it was a very traumatic experience.
So many decisions were made for me. I had zero voice in the matter. I was a passive participant.
Everything was happening to me. I wasn't even like acknowledged half the time. I felt like I was, everything was being done to me and I wasn't even a human being.
That's how it felt. And I felt so awful. And everyone's sitting there being like, oh my gosh, you did so great.
You did it. No epidural, vaginal birth, just like you wanted. Blah, blah, blah.
And it's like, oh gosh, does anybody see? Does anybody see? And then like, what do you say at that point? Like, no, it's not great. It sucked and blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, your baby's here.
Everybody's happy. Everybody's healthy. It's so wonderful.
And it felt like I wasn't even allowed to share how I was feeling because I should have been happy and I should be excited and I should be feeling accomplished. And that's not how I felt, not even close. I was excited that she was here, of course, and I loved her so much.
And it was so wonderful to finally have her in my arms. But all the other feelings were pretty trashy and you don't deserve to feel that way on your first day of motherhood. Nobody does.
And if you can avoid it, which you usually can, if you do the work in advance, I'm here to help you do that because it's so, so worth your time and energy, I promise. So if anybody tells you that you have no control over your birth or that hospital policy equals law, or that the only pain relief option or the best pain relief option is the epidural or that bigger babies equal harder births, or that a healthy baby is all that matters, you can just tell them that they're wrong, that they're a liar, that that is not the truth. And then you can send them my way.
I just want to have a little chat. That's all just, you know, just a little chat. I joke.
I joke. Anyways, that's all that I have for you today. Thank you for hanging out with me as always.
Listen, before I go, I want you to join my birth prep lounge Facebook group. I am reopening it. It's been closed for a few months now, and I am just, I'm ready to do live streams with you guys again.
I'm ready to hang out with you guys again. I won't say in person. It's not in person.
Like I get that, but it's like there's more engagement there. I can actually talk with you guys. I love podcasting.
It's so great, but there's nobody talking back at me. I want to, I want some feedback. I want to have a conversation with you guys.
So join me in there every single Friday. I'm going to be doing birth prep power hour again at 1 PM, Eastern standard time. And there will be replays.
If you can't make it live, you can drop questions in advance if you'd like. And I'm just going to be there to support you guys. We can talk about all the things we can talk about your crazy mother-in-law trying to name your baby.
We can talk about the appointment that went totally south. And then you're just like, do I need to fire my provider? Now we can talk about how annoying your husband has gotten with your pregnancy hormones. We can talk about all the things.
Okay. We can talk about your hospital bag and all the fun stuff, your baby shower planning, your gender reveals, like all of that. That's what I'm here for.
I'm here to hang out with you guys. So go to the show notes to grab the link for that. And I can't wait to see there.
Once you're in, make sure you do a little intro post. I'd love to get to know you more. Just tell me a little bit about yourself.
You can tell me where you're from, how many kids you have, how far along you are, how the preparation's going, how you're feeling about your upcoming birth experience. Cannot wait to hear from you. I will chat with you guys again soon as always happy prepping.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
