The Surprising Reason Childbirth Can Kill a Couple’s Eros

(00:02) we have been duped by feminism sexual Liberation and anti-depressants we have been told that we are powerful and free now as women but we feel tired wired and bitter we’re mostly eating right exercising and meditating wrangling to-do lists and arranging playdates and yet there’s a haunting hollowness beneath the huge complaint what if I told you that there is a huge Storehouse a reservoir of energy inside of you that has not been tapped that you could feel light and pulsing excited and alive in ways that a wellness lifestyle

(00:49) cannot deliver that you could trust yourself that the world could feel safe and that unexpected and expected Delights could start to illuminate your path no coach therapist doctor or Guru required just you learning to get real present and attentive with you I feel like I’m here to matchmake your inner parts for the greatest love affair ever written I want to help you learn first where you’re buying eggs from the hardware store which is the source of all pain I want to help you master entering through the upset which is the

(01:27) only spiritual practice You’ll Ever Need and to get real comfortable putting on your villain Crown which is in my opinion the key to True power and then you’ll attune to your inner yes so you can live the life defined by the specific pleasure of who you are I am so excited to announce my latest book called The reclaimed woman which is available for pre-order now so if you head to the link in show notes you can learn more about bonuses events and companion offerings and I cannot wait to see your gorgeous face on the

(02:07) [Music] path I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pole dancer or honorary member of the disinformation dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my inner victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and

(02:44) your expression so that you can finally truly own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of who you are this is Reclamation radio a soulfire production the conversation that follows is from my sovereignty series living Library where you can find my most provocative discussions and my deepest effort to connect dots from homesteading

(03:22) to relationships to the shape of the earth and the nature of reality you can purchase the ongoing series at Kelly Brogan md.com and at the link Inn show notes hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and I am super jazzed for this episode because I feel like this is a culmination of many many years of my work and the merger of so many advocacies including Health Reclamation manwoman relating and euros and today I want to talk about childbirth so if you’ve listened to my first episode The 25 ways that I have become

(04:05) that which I have judged you know that one of my greatest credentials is that I have inhabited many different sides of many different dialectic polarities and childbirth and my perspectives on what childbirth is all about and that includes you know pregnancy and postpartum even conception have moved from antithetical views over the course of my life experience so I also recorded an episode on the Trap of feminism if you listen to that you’ll know that I was a card carrying righteous [ __ ] feminist for many many

(04:42) years of my life and when I was in medical school I was very very excited not only about specific injections that were available to support women but also about you know birth control in general and I thought that if I ever have a baby which I wasn’t particularly interested in for most of my life I would certainly have an elective C-section because why would you ever needlessly expose yourself to discomfort like that’s just masochism and that is probably some form of mental illness right so as my journey

(05:18) would have it I became pregnant in my fellowship year when I was specializing in treating pregnant and postpartum women with Psych IC medication and because there is a light side to every dark process I learned through my expertise I was one of the first 300 reproductive psychiatrists in the world and this burgeoning field became a necessity because one in Four Women of reproductive age at the time it’s probably more now were on anti-depressant or psychotropic medications considering or going into or having an unplanned pregnancy so I

(05:57) actually was trained to read the literature with scrutiny and because of that training I was able to develop a comfort with the medical literature and how to read Beyond just the abstract and the author’s stated conclusions how to learn what makes for sound scientific methodology Etc and so I actually approached not only my pregnancy but childbirth through the lens of top tier science right and it was through that experience that I came to the conclusion that obstetrics which actually is a field I had considered going into

(06:38) because of my native feminist impulse that obstetric is predicated largely on what’s called consensus medicine so what you will experience as a patient the kind of treatments and interventions that you will be delivered no pun intended are not actually based on the best scientific evidence that available they are based on what most people are doing what is convention what is the doctor related consensus around what is acceptable and this raised a lot of red flags for me because of my interest in studying the literature which came from

(07:17) a place in me of my kind of shadowy know-it-all part right so I said you know I’m going to research for myself what is the safest kind of a birth that I could have and I’m going to research every single intervention because I’m already comfortable researching well that led me with my first pregnancy to have a natural birth and I was literally still eating McDonald’s at the time so it’s not like I was some like crunchy Bohemian woman trying to like commune with her Sisters in some orgasmic process of bringing forth life

(07:52) into the world you know with the sage burning in the corner that was absolutely not where I was and I had a natural birth in a birthing center because I decided based on the available literature that that was actually the safest birth that I could have and as my story goes when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis postpartum and was launched into this next chapter of my exploration experience and personal Discovery I came to appreciate that all of the avoidance of interventions that I was engaged in in the birthing center

(08:33) was really unnecessary if I just changed the setting right so I had no interventions I had a natural birth and there was a vigilance that was required on the part of me and my the father of my children and we decided you know again based on the available literature also based on the culture of holistic health that I was coming into because of my interest in resolving my own autoimmune condition to have a home birth and I remember when I was in labor at home staring out the window and feeling this energy move through my body

(09:10) feeling this intensity move through my body and I remember feeling connected to every woman who has ever had this experience since the dawn of time and held in that fabric of feminine power and that was my initiation to myself the experience of that moment in the Lial space where I looked up at my Midwife and I said you know how much longer I don’t know if I can do it right so that that ego death and moving just moments deeper into the process to welcome my daughter into the world into our arms in my own living room was a Reclamation the

(09:52) order of which I am only now beginning to understand and that is what I would like to highlight today not only why home birth is the natural extension of an investment in one’s own health sovereignty Health freedom and bodily appreciation but also the implications for birth decisions on the man woman relationship and even on the erotic future that that couple may enjoy and I I just don’t know a lot of people having this conversation so I will be bringing on one of my best girlfriends in the entire world Aya quena who is a birthkeeper and

(10:38) one of my most important allies and sisters in this process of self-discovery and this exploration of what it is to be a woman we also have so much fun together so I am excited and also like a little nervous to have this conversation with her it’s always funny to talk to my closest nearest and Dearest in this setting so one other thing I just want to mention before we get started is that there is some reason that this topic is arguably the most controversial of all of the topics I have ever spoken on now if you know me

(11:16) you know that I am I am a naughty provocator so I enjoy apparently semiconscious touching on topics that can be quite polarizing and when I wrote a Blog which I’ll link to ju Below on home birth and my perspective on home birth from really this sort of evolved feminist Viewpoint I actually garnered death threats with aerial photos of my home this was back in 2016 that has not occurred before or since so there is some reason that this topic is the jugular and we’re going to talk about that today so there was a quote that was

(11:58) part of the incendiary material from that blog which is this is why saying no to Pharmaceuticals is an act of feminism because every time you open that pill bottle you are saying nope you don’t got this to your body and you are instilling a message of Oppression by A system that says feeling anything is dangerous when we know full well that feeling is where our feminine power lies so that was the quote that really rubbed a lot of people wrong and on some level having been the kind of feminist that would feel

(12:30) affronted by this I get it I also know what is at stake I also spent 10 years in clinical practice working with women who are socioculturally gasit and personally gastate told that because they have a healthy baby even that though they endured medical trauma during the birth experience that they should feel well as they are you know post-operatively caring for this child by themselves when their husband goes back to work they should be fine and if they don’t something is wrong with their brain chemistry so the stakes are

(13:02) enormous not only for women for children for men for partnership but literally for the reorientation around Faith trust and curiosity when it comes to this Human Experience and the relaxing of the reflex of fear that would otherwise Drive control-based interactions with ourselves so I’ll start us off with the quote right so who knows right if these quotes are ever really true but this is attributed to Dr Hugh hod who in 1938 reportedly said if females can be induced to believe that their sufferings will be diminished or shortened and

(13:44) their lives and those of their offspring be safer in the hands of the profession there will be no further difficulty in establishing the universal practice of obstetrics all the prejudices of the most ignorant and nervous female all the innate and acquired feeling of delicacy so characteristic of the sex will afford no obstacle to the employment of male practitioners so in case you did not know or think that medicalized birth is driven by a very strategic agenda this may be some of the evidence so I want to

(14:17) explore what is our role today as women as men I want to talk about the Alchemy of initiation and I want to talk about the role that child birth plays in the indoctrination of the population to A system that is predicated on and founded on disempowerment welcome woman I gave like a little a little tea up and also an acknowledgement that is always so funny for me to talk to women that I speak to every day and have intimate relationships with to pretend like we’re in this like professional interview space like I just have to presence that

(14:54) and you are the person that I want to have this conversation with of all of the women I have interacted with over my career when it comes to the conversation around birth and advocacies related to that but the reason you are the person I want to have this particular conversation with is because you and I have been in a deep exploration over the past couple of years into polarity Dynamics manom relating erotic Reclamation and where it is as women that we can take responsibility get in our Lane and work with men to co-create

(15:34) experiences that we actually want right so like that span of topics from like you know the health Reclamation you know aspects of birth when it comes to you know like what a child’s microbiota looks like when they’re vaginally versus surgically born is somehow also related to you know what the erotic experience that a couple has in their parenting future and we can look at it through the lens of what decisions are made when it comes to birth so yeah you yeah I want to I want to just sort of like Orient a

(16:06) little bit because there’s so many knowing you the way that I do there are so many things you could be out in the world speaking on as an expert I mean you have deep wisdom deep knowledge and deep experience in many many different Arenas and you have chosen to focus your time and energy and to bring your light the world on this topic of specifically you know anti partum child birth postpartum support for not only women but for couples and so I’d love for you to just sort of like preface this with why like why that why that topic of all

(16:45) of them yeah well thank you for that introduction and I’m so happy to be here with you it’s really an honor you know just to be in this glow with you and to be able to talk about this today because I’ve been reflecting recently on why I do this you know and I’ve been asked that question a lot and really when I experienced my own personal deep grief around losing a life I recognized that every other relationship every other field that I was participating in had something to do with this grief like I saw it all at

(17:20) once it was this tapestry right and so when I experienc that personal loss I said oh this is reflected in my relationship this is reflected in the way that I eat this is reflected in my health this is reflected in my day-to-day routine and like how I relate to my family and my parents and like you know it was just this moment of recognizing that when I created something in my womb and when it became lost or it appeared to be lost everything else came into question and that’s when I saw like oh this is where

(17:48) I need to focus my energy because if we can if we can harness this if we can access the power of this alchemy that happens in the womb we can then start to Unbreak every other area of our life if we want to and so that’s how it all ties in for me it was pinpointing at this moment of grief that I experienced or this period of grief that I experienced in my own life and that’s where I saw that this was the place I wanted to spend some time yeah so you saw that there is a choice point that then reverberates like

(18:19) throughout all of these dimensions in a woman’s life absolutely I imagine you also recognized either at that point or shortly thereafter that it’s not just about information and that’s why you know you and I spend most of our time talking about you know woundology and exploring like how it is that we can enter through our you know trauma to find the little nuggets of gold inside but that they you know when I first started on this path I thought well here’s what the science actually says and therefore that is what should occur

(18:53) and sharing science as we know now is just sort of like a sport it’s not actually a means of inspiring people to make empowering decisions so I wanted to structure what could be like a whole weekend Workshop this conversation into like three or four specific myths yeah I love me some myth busting so I wanted to I wanted to talk about some of the myths when it comes to hospital birth when it comes to home birth when it comes to you know vaginal birth even in a hospital versus surgical birth and what happens

(19:31) when a woman conceives and she recognizes that there are as you said these these Choice points these decisions that she is in a position to make she recruits others in her life to support that decision- making which is part of what creates also this this culture of belief in her world right and I want to talk about sort of like some of the Unseen dimensions of those beliefs like what does it imply what is the subliminal messaging when you make one decision versus another so I was like digging out some I don’t know like

(20:02) little stats right so yeah so if the first myth is that it’s safer to give birth in a hospital that’s the sentence it’s safer to give birth in a hospital yeah the implication is right like if you give birth at home that you’re you’re kind of like taking maybe indulgent risks right but I want to talk about the fact that like we have gone from birthing 99% of babies at home I pulled out like in 1920 let’s say to 99% of babies now born in the hospital right and since 1950 and the section

(20:39) rate in that time has increased by 50% with no improvement in neonatal mortality so we would look at neonatal mortality if we want to learn about safety because we’re thinking oh right right like a whole unhealthy baby is how I know I did good as a woman and maternal mortality in the US has actually gone higher so since the 40s but do you find and we’ll talk about this that women are even thinking about that right like are they even thinking about their own safety or is it really just this externalized this like

(21:07) narcissistic extension right like I am a good person if I deliver a safe and healthy baby so I want to talk about like that I’ll just say it’s a misconception right like that misconception that it is safer to give birth in a hospital so you’re making the point for Mom and for baby like when you counsel people how do you speak to them about you know the actual facts but then also you know sort of Their Fear which is that they are doing something Reckless if they choose otherwise okay so I’ll preface this by

(21:41) saying that we will come back I wanted to like bring this in at the end I thought that we might but really it’s important maybe to bring it in now that it all comes down to permission field which we can we can bring back in because what I see here is that a woman has actually afforded herself a very small permission field and that’s where the dynamic with her partner or whoever is participating in the field with her whether it’s her mother or her mother-in-law or whatever it is there is a deep constriction there’s a power play

(22:10) happening with all of these people and it’s really not about what the mother wants and it’s just like you said she’s really coming in like a sacrificial lamb and saying well I’m G to do what’s best and what’s safest for the baby and what what appeases everybody else who’s watching you know it’s the bottom line really and so she’ll say the most common thing I hear is I contacted you because I really want a natural birth and I’m thinking of home birth but not for the first one we’ll do it for the second one

(22:39) once we can like kind of see what this is all about you know I’m like okay so you know and I’m I’m taking notes and I’m keeping up and really trying to absorb their experience but it all is kind of coming down to the same thing which is I have needs that are not being met I don’t know how to express them no one’s ever invited me to express them so I’m just going to behave in a way that allows everybody to continue to support me and so that I don’t lose love that’s kind of like what is coming through and

(23:09) then we get into what is existing in the field of myths you know and it’s like well my friend she had an emergency csection you know and it was in the hospital and thank God she was there right because then they were able to do this and so then I asked a little bit about the friend you know well what was her experience like and did she have an eth aural was she induced and 99.

(23:33) 9% of the time like I can trace why the C-section happened and why the emergency happened you know and this is the the trauma field that everyone is just kind of like bouncing around in is in the myths you know the Sea of myths oh someone’s the baby’s umbilical cord was wrapped around the neck and so what if that happens at a home birth how could we ever fix that you know the baby needs neonatal resuscitation so when they come to me it’s a matter of like trying to do as much reorganizing of those myths and the myth busting you know as I can in like 90 minutes or 60

(24:02) Minutes or 30 minutes but it really comes down to that it’s just misinformation and like a bunch of people ping ponging medical facts back and forth statistics trauma stories getting ping-ponged back and forth and then this desire to please in order to keep love that’s really like where the women are coming from when they approach me and so there’s a journey we can go on you know and we do often go on this journey and it’s really about helping them or guiding them back to their knowing that they are safer where they

(24:31) can express their needs and so we start to identify where that place is and who’s who’s there and what does it look like and what does it smell like and what does it feel like and I mean we get down to the nitty-gritty detailed design to like the more macro experience you know and she really starts to paint this picture and it’s paired with mythbusting it has to be you know because some women feel like they have to be able to quantify this in this more kind of evidence-based scientific realm you know

(25:01) they still haven’t access their woman’s logic they’re still functioning in the clinical logic of birth or the legal logic of birth cultural logic of birth which now our culture has a very different perception of birth than it did 150 years ago so she’s functioning in those Logics so it’s about kind of bringing her back into the woman’s logic and the intuitive logic and it’s quite a journey because even the men in this process who really like to see how we get from point A to point B pretty

(25:26) clearly you know they don’t want the fluff I start to just show them like this is the amount of women who end up in C-sections based on pre-existing interventions or you know interventions that occurred prior to to the C-section right induction and epidural being the most common and they’re like no one’s going to get one over me like no way you know and they start to understand that they’re being duped and men in particular can can sniff that out it seems like more easily than women because there’s so much like gaslighting

(25:57) that we do of ourselves as so these men are like no one’s doing that to my wife no one’s doing that to me I’m not paying someone to like basically apprehend her ACC cost her and abuse her which is what they start to see is happening when they get into this field of Hospital birth so the buyin from them comes pretty quickly actually and when the buying comes from him then I see the woman start to feel like she has permission to then Express what she wants you know with confidence and from the heart and

(26:26) she becomes more at eased you know she feels more at ease to say to him look you know now that you see this why don’t we try this you know and then we we start to get into Dynamics between the two of them and that’s a whole other you know field but when they start to see that home birth is actually safer that women are not being exposed to the variety of interventions to strangers to an entire field that like I mean even if you get into the hospital parking lot I start to feel it like I’m like oh we’re

(26:52) walking into this field like I can already see the way people are walking I can already see the way people are moving moving interacting like we’re walking in you know and I don’t go to hospitals anymore but I used to sense that I mean just turning the corner at the light to go into the parking lot I would start to feel it and when they start to see that that place is not there for her experience it’s there for quantifiable outcomes they start to really kind of gain back the inner wisdom that I’m safest where I

(27:23) procreated I’m safest where I made this baby I’m safest where I can you know be naked where I can eat where I can relax where I can look into my partner’s eyes I’m safest where I can dance you know I’m safest where I can move and express and that is not here you know and it really comes down to that and you know these things that are meant to help us right the antibiotics you know all of these interventions they just have to see a few numbers of how this depletes her body her mental health the baby’s

(27:53) body and she’s often convinced but no one is showing her that you know so it’s exposure to those realities that start to help her turn over into finding what’s right for her okay and so part of the frame shift is to recognize that birth is not a medical illness right that you know getting the gown on getting the tubes hooked up getting your little patient you know uh number on your sticker you’re right and your bracelet your bracelet oh my gosh it’s so funny you know I remember my mentor

(28:28) Nick and is saying that the medicine is the last remaining True Religion hiding in plain sight because all of the you know the language and all of this like cult performativity I mean it’s so normative culturally normative that we don’t see it for what it is which is we’re treating this natural sacred opportunity as a medical illness and so when you talk about sort of what sometimes it can take in terms of the intellectual framework to orient around the facts when when it comes to the risks of interventions you know whether

(29:02) it’s like you said induction or let’s say photomy fetal monitoring section and couples start to see oh okay well so I guess it’s not so simple that like I either do it the safe way or I honor this you know sort of esoteric priority which is to like have a birth the way it was like quote unquote meant to be like that sort of like dichotomy Falls away that it’s not quite that simple right so if it’s like not safer in the hospital necessarily then why would somebody go to the hospital and I the second sort of

(29:34) like myth I want to touch on is like that there’s such a thing I mean listen I’m I like absolutes I’m a radical you know sort of polarity oriented person so I’m not big into the middle path like I’m not big into integrative approaches and this is what I find and I’m sure you do too that often people want to ride the divider is that the saying whatever they want to sort of like walk down the middle and take the best of both worlds which is to have their birth plan like tattooed on their chest you know and

(30:03) like walk in there all Vigilant and make sure you know that these things don’t happen but still enjoy the emergency protocols available like through a hospital and I know that you know as a doula you have I mean I remember saying to you like I just don’t know how you do it you know like you have a lot of capacity and experience holding space for people who are in that middle space of sort of like Best of Both Worlds like we’re going to try to have the natural birth in the hospital kind of a thing

(30:33) and so I wonder you know like what you think about whether or not there is such a thing like is there such a thing because you’re talking about the field of this place the energetic field of this Hospital like do you enter that field and are you subsumed by it or can you sort of like hold your own you know have a sovereign experience in the hallowed Halls of the of the Cults is that possible the answer is the simple answer is no there is no midal path when it comes to birth because when you enter into that

(31:05) field in the hospital you’re entering into a field of meritocracy it’s almost like a video game where you do certain things and then you receive a cookie you receive certain treatment from the nurse or from the staff and if you’re a good girl and you accept the IV and you let them give you the fluids and like anoint you or whatever it is then you’re going to get to the next level and they’re going to continue to like keep you under their wing so so if you’re looking for that comfort you have to play by the

(31:31) rules but if you go in there and you’re like here’s my birth plan no no no no no you’re not touching me there you’re not doing this I refuse all care it’s like why are you here why you there yes so I say to my clients who come I mean a lot of women do come to me with that approach I want a doula and my husband’s taking this class and I have my birth plan and no one is touching me or my baby and then I’m like okay why are we going to a hospital well you in case anything happens we just want to be

(32:01) there because what if and I’m like what if what what like what are the wh ifs let’s just go to the wh ifs first and then let’s see if we can get rid of them and then maybe we’ll be we’ll be good and we can move in a different direction and often these women have no clue what the wood ifs even are it’s just an es extensional fear crisis that they’re in probably from you know like again the the psycho Terror of the stories that they exchange with their girlfriends you know over a latte it’s like oh well did

(32:27) you know what you know hear what happened to so and so and it’s because of this and thank God you you know so we go back to that whole thing so if we can access what the real fears are which when we do when we start to peel it back we do this fear inventory deepest fear inventory around what could really happen and once we get past that surface layer we go deeper into the most common one is I just don’t want to feel alone and so what’s afforded to a woman in the hospital setting is that she believes

(32:54) she’ll never feel alone there right there’s these kind of like you know maybe matronly type of this archetype that can support her in the process maybe her mother has been absent maybe there’s a wound there and so she’s she’s searching for that female support you know maybe that’s one dimension of this whereas at home she might feel like well how do I get that how do I get all these people coming to my rescue you know I only ever received love as a child when I was sick so if I put myself in a

(33:21) situation where I’m you know hooked up and tied down and you know everybody will will be there and they’ll say what do you need Sally you know and so it’s like there’s that to explore and so no I would say it’s kind of like your amazing phrase you know eggs at the hardware store why are we looking for eggs at the hardware store that’s what’s happening here we go in with this plan and we say Well they’re going to change they’re going to listen to me and it’s like why bother just go somewhere where everyone

(33:49) actually does support you why do you need to go into a space where you have to prove to yourself that everyone disappoints you that’s another dimension of this right is like the woman who is self-sufficient who has to do everything herself because everyone else disappoints and they can’t hack it right the Survivor she goes into the hospital setting where she will be proven right that everyone else is incompetent and insufficient right and that just you know corroborates her story and she ends up in a traumatic birth and says see no

(34:16) one could do it no one could support me I was right here I go again on my own what’s that classic rock song you know it’s like here I go again on my own and so there are so many dimensions of why a woman would choose to get her eggs at the hardware store have her natural birth at the hospital right it’s because there’s a corroboration of a story that she needs and she’s not even aware of that story so sometimes we can access it and we can reorient and that kind of takes me into this other this other

(34:43) thing where okay I don’t I’m rejecting Hospital birth so I’m doing a free birth where no one is around like no one from the system you know no Midwife is going to be here no Doula is going to be here it’s just me and my husband this is how it’s always been done and for me that’s the same flavor of being in this High highly medicalized High intervention setting because there’s a belief that you can’t be supported fully and that you’re actually not worthy of support and that energy of rejecting support is

(35:13) just the same other side of the same coin in a hospital setting and that’s why I see so many women transfer from rebirth settings into hospitals last minute they feel totally disappointed and they feel traumatized like I did everything I could I was at home my husband we labored naturally and then like I still ended up transferring because of XYZ you know and I’m like well why didn’t you have a midwife well because she’s part of the system like she’s captured she’s going to do this she’s gonna you know do and I’m like

(35:41) would she really or did you just not do sufficient research to find someone who is just there to support you because those people exist right and historically women were not birthing alone and they probably weren’t birthing with their man either right like when when in human history would that happen occurred versus like women with other women women were never birthing with their men men were let’s just put a really simple picture in front of us right now women were in a hut let’s say with five other women and there was

(36:10) always one woman who had the knowledge and the wisdom passed down generationally who could be known as The Medicine Woman or the Midwife let’s say and she was just there holding space to direct and then there were the other women who in the village were or in the tribe were supporting her and the men were outside making sure that provisions were sufficient and protecting the perimeter of the village men were never there catching babies you know doing like the hip squeezes and all that stuff we went into that I would say like 1950s

(36:40) 1960s really Dr Bradley was the one who brought the husband into the delivery room because he saw that women were being systematically abused by Hospital staff and this was the only way to find a gatekeeper that was going to advocate for the woman so that’s really where we got into this this new idea that you know that we see on Instagram right it’s like the men on the side of the birthing pool with the twinkly lights and this is the sign of like a really good man you know the man who shows up as the birth

(37:12) partner and in this context it is you know if there are no other options but this is not the way that it was so if we’re talking about the way that it was and going back to the way birthing should be or used to be he wouldn’t be there you would be supported by other women in your Community your mother your sister the Midwife you know so there is no middle ground you know and there is no breathing at home with a bunch of the autant that women want right like they’ll say I want a midwife but what does she bring with her does she have

(37:42) nitrous oxide could she give me a little something for the pain so there’s also that like women wanting to birth at home but still not really letting go you know and not surrendering to this process and having kind of like one foot in the system like women who will kind of like cheat I call it they’ll they’ll hire a midwife and then they’ll have an OB kind of on call who they go to see from time to time just so that they can feel that security that like okay the Midwife is like the cool you know natural thing

(38:10) that I’m doing but I still need the test results I still need the ultrasound I still need the man in the coat to tell me that like this is okay and that kind of Duality creates so much conflict so much turmoil within the woman’s system and in her process you know and I’ve seen labor stall because a woman is like I don’t know should we go to the hospital like hi should we call the OB and the Midwife is like wait a minute like we’re here at home like what’s going on like what do you mean you hired

(38:36) an OB and then there’s like this secret life that comes out you know so yeah there is no there is no middle ground there’s a decision to be made and to commit to wherever it is that you want to be with full honesty you know with yourself and with the process because the goal is to surrender and we’re when we’re in this Duality we’re not surrendering to either thing we’re holding on tightly you know with so much control and that presents its own slew issues when it comes to the actual birthing process it’s amazing you

(39:08) know to listen to this and recognize what an opportunity for integrity you know this represents right because when you are in that inner tension that inner split yeah all of that is a part of what you bring to the table and then manifests in these complex you know birth experiences where there’s actually you know these traumas that are induced that seem to have come from the outside so how can you get clear how can you decide you know do I believe that body has innate wisdom that this is a part of my you know initiatory process to myself

(39:41) as a woman that there is nothing that I need apart from you know the allowing of this energy to move through me and the support for me to offer that you know to my child to my own body you know is just my own permission field right and the permission field that’s offered or do I believe that like scary bad things happen through this thing I call a body and that I need in the victim triangle right like I need a rescuer I need somebody who knows better than me I need somebody who can tell me what’s going on in my vagina by putting his

(40:11) hands in there right like and I also need someone to blame in that triangle right yes yeah no I mean you and I you know we talk a lot about and have explored BDSM and The Kinks You know because the psychological dimensions of BDSM and the way that we have these habits of acting out in our lives things that we don’t yet know we can bring into the bedroom are like you know think about like the woman who says like I don’t want any testing right like I I don’t believe in testing I don’t want GBS testing I don’t want nothing and

(40:39) then she’s working with somebody who’s in the system enough where that’s actually like a systematized requirement right and yet she’s gonna in this defiant way like educate that provider about like why she doesn’t wanted right and when you’re in that culture when you’re choosing to subscribe to a culture that fundamentally does not share your belief system but you insist that they change in order for you to feel comfortable you’re in a kink right like you’re you’re in this thing where

(41:07) you feel these like little hits of power in defiance right and yeah it’s fascinating to see how these must play out when we are not yet ready to fully align with what it is that we want and I think you know like how often do you see this it’s like archetypal right it’s like moving beyond the pit this fear that if I do this Fringe thing because if it’s like 1% of the population is doing this it’s a fringe thing okay if I do this Fringe thing and it goes wrong and I’m exposed in the eyes of those around me for having done

(41:44) a wrong thing that not only involves me but now also this baby and impacts you know my partner then I will be what exiled cast aside burned at the stake you know like these are deep archetypal fears that are brought up by you know aligning with the less trotten path and risking that it might not look good right but isn’t this the nature of the hero or heroine’s Journey it’s like you take that risk for yourself right yeah I mean this is an opportunity for a woman’s initiation and for the man’s

(42:20) initiation as well and I have had multiple clients over the years who will tell their entire family and Community their birthing at a you know Hospital a with Dr B and they’re actually doing a home birth and nobody knows and they’re only going to tell everyone they did the home birth if it goes well but if they transfer it everyone will just think they were at the hospital all along like people do that a couple will collude with one another and do this plan because there is such a deep fear of being ostracized not only from their

(42:50) family but like the community they’re in whether it’s a religious community or what have you you know they do not want to lose the love again and don’t want to be the outcasts and maybe they have a doctor in the family like an MD of whatever kind be it a podiatrist it doesn’t matter they just don’t want that specific person to look down on them and say look I told you see I told you you know you should have listened all along so there’s something there to unpack there’s that that Kink you’re talking

(43:15) about where it’s even like I’m gonna do this thing behind the scenes and then there’s this desire to prove everybody wrong if it works out and then there’s this desire to keep the love if it doesn’t work out you know it’s it’s like it’s so dimensional and you know you have nine 10 months to to figure out if you want to you know some people don’t start thinking about this until they become pregnant and there’s a lot to explore there yeah amazing to think about the dimensions of this I want to

(43:42) talk about another myth which is for whatever reason which we can unpack at this therapy session I’m calling an interview which is very triggering for me which is that like survival is all that matters right this is just just about the material outcomes as you said and even though you know the hospital maybe itself invested in those outcomes part of the inversion right part of the gas light is that exactly what allopathy you know purports to resolve it actually perpetuates right like that’s the big reveal about like pretty much every

(44:16) pharmaceutical intervention so like you think you’re going to the hospital for a safer birth and guess what it’s not right like you think you’re taking the antibiotics just in case you got a kidney infection and guess what like now you know you have renal failure from your the bus mod is is brilliant the bus it is amazing it’s it’s amazing but the material outcomes right can be easy to focus on so when we’re talking about what’s safer we can get into this place of like well the mom’s survival and the

(44:44) baby’s survival are what matters and so you could have all manner of strangers hands in your vagina you know you can have all manner of like literally like from medical rape to interventions that in any other context would be considered the most barbarous you know like episiotomy or all the I mean look at a C-section I mean just look at the nature of these interventions so you can have all this happen to you you could be bullied you could be coerced you know you could be I don’t know spoken to in all sorts of heinous ways and if you

(45:20) came out with a baby that has 10 fingers and 10 toes and is breathing on his own then you should be happy because you have a healthy baby right and I guess it’s because I you know I spent all these years working with women who were gaset in that way specific way and then were diagnosed with so-called postpartum depression because you know they they went through this traumatic experience were disconnected from the opportunity therein and then we’re told something’s wrong with them right so they put on

(45:46) medications and you know the rest is history what does this represent in your opinion I mean you you’ve mentioned the word initiation it’s of course the word I love to use also but like what do you actually feel is at stake here right like if a woman comes home and she’s like you know had a surgical birth let’s say and let’s say she wanted a natural birth and went to the hospital and tried to avoid the interventions but the Clock Was ticking and they ended up inducing her and she you know went into that

(46:15) Domino Cascade and ended up on the operating table but she came home four days later you know with her nice clean baby and she’s like you know he’s healthy and he’s he’s so sweet and so you know it wasn’t exactly best laid plans like it wasn’t exactly what I wanted and hoped for but I guess it’s I guess it’s okay and I mean what do you feel is lost in that story right like what did she miss out on because sometimes I get so hysterical about this that I really undermine my ability to

(46:47) convey anything of any import because I just it’s like how do you even communicate like what was lost there without triggering in people this sense that you’re focusing too much on like an experience the mom could have had like it’s like going to [ __ ] great adventure and like riding on a roller coaster and the line happened to be too long so she didn’t go right like as if it’s just that or something like yeah how do you articulate it well I will say that these women this experience you just Illustrated those

(47:17) women call me like a year later two years later five years later and they’re like I’m ready to talk and there is really I’ve learned over the years that there actually is no way for me there is no entry point there because the gas light is it’s so severe that I’ve actually attempted even in a death right there was a fatality on Mother’s Day a few years ago where the doctor for lack of a better way to put it actually killed the baby so everything was perfect perfect perfect throughout the pregnancy whatever that

(47:51) means you know healthwise and labor naturally received nothing in the process you know meaning no IV even it was just totally clean let’s say and the babies’s shoulder got hooked on the pubic bone right which happens it’s called shoulder dsoa and midwives are typically trained you know do live trainings to do this and they’re doing it at home births all the time so they have a lot of experience in resolving this whereas you know an MD in the hospital really doesn’t have these experiences because their solution is to

(48:26) break the baby’s clap their solution is to put the mother into a C-section you know just put her under immediately and get the baby out so they don’t actually resolve this mechanically with their hands they don’t know how and so this doctor got the great idea to suction the baby’s head right when typically with shoulder assoa we would put the mother on all fours and the practitioner would put their hand in over the baby’s shoulder and start to be basically Quirk screw the baby in One Direction and have the mother turning in

(48:53) the other direction so I’ve seen women go across a bed and the baby is being turned the other way like we’re opening a bottle and so that’s typically what we want to do and that was not done and so the baby’s head was detached from its body in this process and the baby passed away and so after the fact the female doctor which by the way I have a little Riff on like the insanity that is a female obstetrician but afterwards she told my client that it was because she’s so small her body is so petite she

(49:26) should have planned to C-section from the beginning because these things happen right these things just happen so if you know you’re a small woman which you are you know you’re 52 and you’re 110 pounds like you should have planned this from the beginning we did what we could and next time I would really recommend just planning a C-section so this doesn’t happen to you again and so you know what could I do with that I I went to her house for the postpartum visit and I was like I was ready to file

(49:54) a suit I had already talked to attorneys like not on their behalf like on my own volition I was like I had spent 48 Hours researching everything that I could and they had a case and there were Witnesses and I think there were actually images so I was ready to help her build a case and she was so not ready to do that and she was upset and do home syndrome right almost asked yeah she almost asked me to leave her home and you know and she said you mean it’s not my fault you mean this could have been prevented and it’s like

(50:25) yeah you know and the entire pregnancy she was talking about wanting to do this at home because she inherently she felt something inside of her not wanting to go to the hospital but her family was really good friends with this Medical Practice they had had worked with a few doctors in that practice of I think it was eight doctors and so she just really was going to do it the way everybody else had done it and then for the second one she was going to do it her own way and there was no way I could I could infiltrate that there was no way we

(50:51) could have a conversation you know and so it’s not until you know months or years later that I do have these conversations with them when they’re ready to see that it was not their fault and they’re ready to see that there was some sort of Duality at play that they have power over you know that they could resolve if they wanted to but the thing here is yes the woman has the power to resolve this she gives her power to somebody else and then you know they [ __ ] up or whatever it is they mess up and then they tell her it’s her fault

(51:21) and then she lives with shame and guilt and she’s in this what you know the avoidance symptoms of PTSD where you start to avoid the objects you start to avoid the situations and the people associated with that event and you know thereafter women can’t become pregnant again because they are literally avoiding the scene of the crime and the field they participated in and now they’re entering a new dimension of IVF because they don’t want to get pregnant they haven’t resolved the trauma but

(51:48) they believe that they should be getting pregnant and they they wanted as a couple and so now she’s entering a new field where like my body is broken you know I don’t know it’s happening I had such a traumatic birth before now I just want to have another baby and like kind of redeem myself but I can’t get pregnant I don’t know why it’s because I’m old it’s because of I’m not eating well and so now I need to pay you know upwards of 200 Grand to get someone’s help to get pregnant and do this you

(52:13) know and so there’s a whole capturing that happens and I think the opportunity that’s lost when we get into these situations of handing over the power is we lose the opportunity to heal what is like coming from I don’t know the first seven years of life where we’ve slayed that inner girl we’ve completely destroyed her for whatever reason whether it was an inner family Dynamic whether it was cultural social we have to slay that inner girl who has needs and who has expressions in order to survive and participate right

(52:47) and so when we have this opportunity to birth we have the opportunity to reclaim her you know and to revisit what that part of her that said oh I’m going to go offline and protect myself here but also be be the one behind the wheel right it’s funny how that happens right like she recedes into the Shadows to protect herself but she’s also the one driving and saying we’re going to go into all of these situations now to avoid the pain but we’re actually just creating more pain and we’re compounding the event and

(53:15) the drama so there’s a missed opportunity to reclaim that that girl and that part of ourselves that has needs that are worthy of being met you know completely and I would say the same goes for the counterpart for the male in the situation where he has an initiation opportunity to be a gatekeeper and to witness his woman as the Oracle you know and to help guide her and hold the space for her and take action however she needs him to take action but he doesn’t often he will just do whatever the doctor says also and you know become

(53:52) further compounded into this emasculated State you know I see see this time and time again they both had an opportunity and it was missed you know but it doesn’t mean that it can’t happen it just means that you know now they’re living with this aftermath and let’s sorry I’m I’m going into oh it’s perfect it’s perfect that’s exactly where I want to go yeah which is into this sort of other big myth that I find myself encountering just hearing people talk about birth which is that like it’s only

(54:21) about the mom and baby so we have this like interesting history right so we had right like you and I just talked about how probably this historically ancestrally has been a women’s event right and men are holding it down and making sure that the women in the alchemical space of the childbirth you know process are not concerning themselves with whether or not somebody’s coming to like you know assault them or whatever right like they’re not on in survival Duty right that the men are sort of like guarding

(54:50) the palace so to speak and now interestingly the system and the establishment of the system has created this new opportunity for men and women to join together because we don’t live in these kinds of you know sort of more tribal configurations we don’t have the kind of Sisterhood you know woven quilt you know that we need and what we do have often is the diad right so we have the diad and interestingly the system is offering an opportunity because there’s nothing that’s all bad for men and women to come

(55:22) back into proper polarity right to come back into the kind of d Dynamic we were designed for where our power actually thrives and even though I totally agree that men are not designed to catch babies like somehow we find ourselves in this place where men have a very specific role so if if the final myth I want to explore is like this isn’t just about mom and baby then like what is the role of a man in this Dynamic whether it is in the decision making around childbirth or whether it’s in the actual childbirth experience and you know we’re

(55:57) in a bit of a mess because like you said men don’t understand their role women don’t understand men’s role and the system certainly doesn’t make it easy for either of them to step into their role and nor should it because it’s not designed for that right it’s like that saying it’s like it’s not broken like it was built this way right it’s like made this way yeah yeah it’s the it was totally designed this way and what I see is that the system itself is actually occupying both role of the man and the

(56:27) woman in this birth field so how can either one know what to do or where to go even within their own relationship when they you know offer themselves to the system who’s saying like I’m not only making decisions for you but I’m also taking the action around the decisions and all you have to do is just give us your bodies and your money right surrender to the system I mean you and I talk about how the the again through the BDSM lens like the system is like a bad Dom I mean it is really holding that

(56:55) authoritative role without the heart connection without the investment without the Attunement and so what happens is like you have these women who are not properly contained right and they are in this Vigilant state of mentation so when we’re thinking and Vigilant around like what is the next intervention what’s going to happen because we are not contained we can’t go into Subspace we can’t Channel God we can’t go inward we can’t really attune to our own process of you know this initiation and where the man is just

(57:27) like excised right it’s like almost the woman in Dynamic with this really really unhealthy power struggle yeah he is excised he kind of goes off to the side throughout the process and the woman is now in a hypervigilant state which is another reason that women’s births unfold into this really traumatic final result is because they’ve been in a hypervigilant state so the body is like are we birthing or are we not birthing what are we doing here I’m so confused you know and this is where we get things

(57:57) we we didn’t ask for we didn’t want or we get the transfers from the home birth because this can happen at a home birth when there isn’t proper polarity as well it’s not like every Midwife is Angelic in the sense that she’s holding the right type of space and there is proper polarity between the couple I would say it’s more often than not simply because to get to the place of having an outof Hospital birth there has to be some type of healthy communication between the woman and the man and there has to be

(58:21) some sense of polarity where he says you know she knows best for her body and I’m here to support her you know on a basic level that’s kind of what we get you know very rarely is the woman proceeding forward with a home birth and the husband is like digging his heels and saying no I didn’t want this like he’s usually on board so there is a balance that is restored there and so yeah these relationship Dynamics like I would say and I’ve been you know telling my clients to explore this this dominant

(58:46) and submissive Dynamic and just to see what comes up for them as a couple when they look at tapping into those roles you know what comes up when you let him you know when you ask for a certain type of massage and you give him the conditions for massaging your hand what does he do with that information and how does he hold that space for you so I give them very basic exercises where the woman has an opportunity to be very clear about what doesn’t feel good and what does feel good and then he has the opportunity to deliver and to create

(59:18) that beautiful containment sandwich right where he will look at her ground her and practice that penetrate her by giving her just this touch that she’s been specific about and then closing that out and giving her the containment letting her know the space is closed right so we do very basic exercises like that and they get a taste of the possibility that exists in their pregnancy in their birth and even in their parenting journey and even like in the erotic dimension of their relationship and some women have broken

(59:50) down in tears when doing this hand massage that comes from Betty Martin’s work because they say no one’s ever actually asked me how I want my hand touched he’s never asked me he didn’t even know that he could ask me that we’ve never slowed down this much and just having that awareness is like you know for them and so when we get into this field of birth and how we can restore this polarity the man is there to I would say experience what she is expressing and ask her you know tell me more tell me more tell me more tell me

(1:00:23) more and as she starts to tell him more about what she wants what she what her you know speaking from the heart her fears about this process and her desires about this process he can figure out how to take action to find a solution okay she’s having a lot of trepidation about this let’s find her a birth class you know oh she’s wanting this let’s go meet with three midwives you know all right babe find the three midwives that you want to talk to and I’ll go with you you know like that’s what it is but I do see

(1:00:51) that a lot of men are like there’s no way we’re going to the hospital like that’s it like we’re not putting our baby in danger and so the first step there would be for them to get some hard facts about where they’re being duped and then they can start to say oh I’m I’m open to the possibility that she might know more about her body because I’m seeing that the system is really here to just pull one over on us so there’s a there’s a lot that has to get uncovered as we’re trying to restore

(1:01:17) this polarity between the two of them and I see a lot of couples go through this Arc where he sees that he’s not interested in being dominated by by the medical system he’s interested in leading and he has the opportunity to do that she’s interested in being led and she has the opportunity to do that here and then they start to walk step by step and they find practitioners or they go into a free birth setting or you know whatever it is they start to find what feels good to them as a couple and where

(1:01:47) he can shine and she can shine and ultimately the goal is getting into that Dom Subspace and I would say that he can hold that Dom Space by creating a container but really the woman is getting into a Dom Subspace with the act of birth with with the unfolding of the birth process that’s her D you know it’s like Hall of fractal yeah yes yeah and so he needs to be aware of that too that it’s almost like she is surrendering to a hierarchy where he’s participating as the da but she’s also surrendering to

(1:02:18) something greater than both of them and that’s what makes a good Dom right is that he knows he is not at the top there is only a greater omnipresence above everyone else but that’s exactly where the system steps in I mean that’s exactly it what you just articulated that’s why this is such the coup you know is because the system becomes almost that right because higher in the hierarchy than a man than a Dom is God right and and like you’re saying it’s so true right so the woman is in submission

(1:02:51) not to her man in that moment that yes he’s holding space and providing containment but the ACT is not between her and the man and that’s why historically he probably wasn’t even involved and do you see how he actually just goes back to spolding Manning the perimeter so to speak not that she’s actually submitting to him and looking into his eyes receiving his gaze the woman is receiving the Gaze of the omnipresence that is the unfolding of this natural process and she has to be okay with whatever it is she said her

(1:03:22) peace this is what I want these are the conditions I’ve said my prayer you know if you want to put it that way and I trust you to do the rest right and that’s the unfolding of the birth process but as we know the system has stepped in as God right like this is what we have the Church of science you know we have that religion there because they know that okay like this is where I can step in in the hierarchy and I can remove God from the process and I can be God here you know they’ll all follow they’ll all come in because they’re all

(1:03:52) looking for the hierarchy I mean we all are right so like when a man is interested right he’s a good man right and he wants to support his woman and she says we’re going to have a baby in the hospital here’s what I want and don’t want like help me maintain vigilance and maybe she even has a doula you know like you to support her and they end up in the hospital I just wonder how many men are looking through this lens of guarding their own masculinity their own role to see what it actually means for them to

(1:04:24) participate in this trying Le with the system itself that it’s imperative that they be emasculated that they be stripped of any particular role that they be ex sized right and that’s what happens when a woman’s body is given over to this system let’s say her son is born and he’s circumcised right and vaccinated or whatever then the baby’s body is given over to the system and the man is there helpless right or maybe he tries to pipe up a little bit and he’s like steamrolled because that’s not

(1:04:57) protocol the emasculation is like the enduring imprint of that for not only that man but that couple is something I just don’t hear many people talking about who are talking about what it means to have a medical birth and have your child indoctrinated into a system that is predicated on the belief that you don’t know best about your own body and you don’t own your own body okay fine but like what happens to that couple when a man has not fulfilled his role didn’t even have a chance to do so didn’t there

(1:05:29) was no prayer you know that he could possibly Play The Man role in Dynamic with a woman in the face of you know this higher power what actually happens to that couple like what else is that stake and why would that be something other than or something Beyond just like a shitty experience right like why is it potentially a bigger deal than than many people are thinking about well let’s just look at the two possibilities of why a man would get to this point of being in such an emasculated state right when it comes to the birth the giving up

(1:06:01) of his wife to another man’s hands the giving up of his baby to other people there’s two archetypes and we’ll just talk about these two one is the boy that comes from the dark Mother where he messes up until he’s punished and then he’s redirected right and so he this man now he’s grown up and he’s at his wife’s birth he’s waiting for someone to tell him what to do you know and most likely he’s with a woman who does that I’ve been in session with couples where she’s

(1:06:34) like oh he doesn’t know I’m a birthing goddess and I’ve done so much work and research and I’ve been doing this breath work and I hear and there and you know he’s just kind of like skittish about it and so already she’s emasculating him day to day and that’s you know a greater Dynamic at play and so I see that come through in the birth space and so he doesn’t stand a chance in the hospital setting and then I see the other type of man who already was worshiping the system and was already worshiping

(1:07:02) science as his God and so it doesn’t matter what his wife wants or what the baby should be getting like what is more Humane right it’s about what is safest and what does the church want you know the Church of science want us to do because there’s a Dogma there and we have to follow it right we have to follow the routine vaccinations we have to follow the circumcision because if we don’t then he’s going to be you know he’s going to be rif with chronic infection for the rest of his life and

(1:07:29) whatever the you know we’re doing everything that the system is telling us to do so honey you need to submit to this you need to submit to my God because he doesn’t really believe that they are creating their own Aros that what they create together becomes their God he doesn’t understand that so those are the two types that I most often see and what happens postpartum once the baby is born and the woman is in this like you know glossed over state where she’s like I have a healthy baby and I’m

(1:07:58) alive and like we’re good you know like everyone’s telling me I should get over it you know even NIH says that within one to six months a person should be done with their trauma and so she’s like everyone’s telling me I need to get over it it’s been a year it’s been a you know 10 months whatever it is and I should be grateful why don’t I feel grateful why don’t I feel connected why don’t I want to have sex with my husband why don’t I want to see anybody you know what’s

(1:08:24) wrong with me and and all shame comes through and what I start to see is women don’t recognize it consciously but what is screaming just underneath the surface is he didn’t show up for me he didn’t protect me he let these other people you know men included violate and defile my body really you know they cut me open whether it was my abdomen or whether it was my panum whatever you know they injected me with this they took our baby there like he didn’t show up what was he doing I mean I’ve seen men watching

(1:08:56) Netflix on the couch in the hospital while their woman is laboring you know it’s like what was he doing and the resentment builds and he doesn’t know what’s going on he showed up he was just he was at the birth he stayed he slept on the couch he was so uncomfortable he slept on that little chair overnight he suffered too so you know what’s the problem honey you know oh I know what the problem is it’s this baby you’re breastfeeding all the time you’re exhausted you know you need to go back

(1:09:25) to work and get out you should start going to Pilates again it’s because you’re doing all this baby stuff you’re overwhelmed no could it be that you didn’t show up in the way that you were supposed to or you could have it could have shown up differently and that’s why she feels completely uncontained she feels scared and now we’re blaming the baby and the the shackles that are motherhood and Parenthood you know and so we redirect the focus we find someone to blame we make them we make the baby

(1:09:53) wrong we make early parenting wrong order for us to feel right where we were deficient you know I think of that phrase that you know our teacher om raani says that women are flailing and men are failing right and that is why OS is in its death throws for us as a species right and because you’re you’re implying that all of these Dynamic conflicts and misattributions could emerge but also that the erotic Dynamic is at stake in that moment like most people imagine would not connect those dots right like what does my future

(1:10:30) erotic potential with my partner have to do with how I show up to child birth that I thought the only thing that matters is a healthy baby like what do those have to do with each other and you’re describing that right that when he is not aware which is obviously why we’re having this conversation to do our part you know to bring awareness when he’s not aware that that’s actually even part of the opportunity is for him to show up in a certain way for his woman then and when she has this experience

(1:10:58) that they didn’t even know they were consenting to on this level the rupture that endorses could be on the Deep erotic level she may even seek out other sexual partners because she can no longer find that kind of fulfillment in him with him through him and meanwhile he has like no idea what he even participated in he thought like you said he was just doing his best right he was yeah he was and most men say in the pregnancy just tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it you know and most women don’t even know what needs to be done

(1:11:27) because they haven’t even asked themselves what they want you know so it’s like we haven’t even we have to start there right and what I see happen is that women end up fantasizing about another type of life after the birth right another type of partner and the other dimension of that is that when a woman experiences sexual violation which is what the body registers the birth as because there were multiple hands inside of her there were you know even if she didn’t feel the otomy because she was

(1:11:55) numbed with lidocaine the body felt the otomy the body was violated so she’s in a post sexual trauma State and that in of itself creates conditions for her to not even want penetration energetically or physically from anyone again you know and she’s not even aware of that because she has a healthy baby and she’s alive what more could she want right is what people lead her to believe you got everything you wanted yes it didn’t go that way but look you’re fine what do you mean sexual trauma you weren’t raped

(1:12:26) you know that’s what people say to these women I’ve heard I mean I’ve even heard certain duelist talk this way where it’s just like what do you mean she wasn’t violated like they did everything they could to get the baby out they had to do that to her and I’m like they only had to do that because she was there in the first place it’s all designed this way right and if we can dismantle the dynamic between the Aros between the man and the woman you know they’re not United right they lose their Unity which

(1:12:52) means they lose their power which means they’re more susceptible to the greater manipulation that is this you know this system that we’re playing in every day exactly you know I feel for men because I haven’t often thought of their perspective obviously as a practitioner who’s only ever worked with women I’ve just like not really considered how it is that they really shouldn’t know much like you said like oh tell me what to do of course that’s kind of makes sense it’s not really their role to guide and

(1:13:21) direct and lead in the birth process yet somehow we’ve created these conditions where their role is specifically to guard that space and so I want to ask one final question which actually I’m just like Curious how you’re thinking about this because we’ve talked about so much of this that I just love this conversation so rich and deep and like if it is a woman’s responsibility to align with her own feminine power and to do whatever you know sort of resolving of cognitive dissonance is necessary for

(1:13:50) her to understand that having a natural birth is her initiation to her own wildness to herself then she tells her man that and it’s his job to make sure that [ __ ] goes down no matter what right but what happens if she is not fully awakened to that and he is like I didn’t normally see that Dynamic right so what happens if if he knows how his son should come into the world and she is scared and wants to have a hospital birth do you think that’s symptomatic of the dynamic where mentally she doesn’t already feel safe

(1:14:27) with him and trust him and that’s why you know she’s not going to take his lead to say you know it’s probably best that we have this baby at home or is there something that can be alchemized in that space where when the man knows better so to speak he can guide and lead in this Arena which normally I think historically has probably never been a man’s role it’s like wow we’ve created some very interesting scenarios as humans we’ve created some very interesting scenarios we’ have like I

(1:14:55) mean we’ve created a lot of scenarios that set people up for like severe failure yeah and so in this situation we have to Define safety right because I do believe that this is symptomatic of the relationship prior to the pregnancy however if we’re looking at safety and he says you’re safer and the baby is safer we’re safer as a family outside of the hospital like I need you to see this or I would like you to see this she doesn’t trust him inherently like it’s revealed that she doesn’t trust him you

(1:15:26) know when he’s saying this is about safety she doesn’t trust that he might know something and you know just to even humor him and go to the class or do the research if she’s resistant to that she just doesn’t trust the guy and that’s a whole other thing if she knows in her body right like okay because she’s choosing the hospital because there is fear around surrendering there is fear around this process she doesn’t trust this process and then there’s a woman who wants to birth at home because she

(1:15:53) trusts this process and she knows that she is safer there and the husband is the one with the resistance and he’s having fear and he’s worshiping this church of science right like he’s not trusting that she knows what is safest in that direction either and it’s not about submitting to her it’s about creating the conditions for her to surrender and be in safety so everyone has to get on the same page about safety and people who believe the hospital is safer I’m sorry but they are actually

(1:16:21) functioning from a place of deep fear and ignorance because they don’t actually know what’s going on they don’t actually know that it’s the lon in yeah yeah you know it’s like so if we can really get on the same page about what safety is there will be that man who always who knows I’ve gotten clients like that you know where he’ll say like I’ve tried to show her but she doesn’t even want to look like she doesn’t even want to turn her head in that direction for just a few moments to see that like

(1:16:46) there’s side effects from the epidural like she could have nerve damage like I just want her to know that like she could just try this without the drugs like sending her numbers and stats on fentanyl like she’s just not seeing it and you know there’s something there where oh gosh it’s so convoluted but I really do think that there’s an opportunity here for the woman and the man to explore their Dom sub Dynamic and sometimes the woman can assume this dominant role it’s not always about the

(1:17:14) man being the Dom there are scenarios where the woman is actually more wise and inclined to lead the way as someone who’s intuitive and who is is the Oracle you know and who can see a little bit beyond what he can see in his more myopic really Clear Vision you know she has this more radial view of possibilities sometimes and so if he can say I trust you in this scenario I trust that you know what’s best for our family how can I help you get there like that’s where the dance is because we’re on the

(1:17:47) sliding scale of polarity it’s not about being fixed in the two poles all the time although I do believe that the man is more inclined to be in one of the poles more often because of his biology there are opportunities for him to for them to slide and to go like this and for him to say I see that you know what’s best for us and I’m just going to help you get there you know and some men can take the call and answer the call and and and some don’t you know right so you are in the trenches of feminine

(1:18:19) initiation it’s like literally what you do for a living is you know guide women through this lional space and into contact you know with their own power and it’s probably no small part in why you are on my speed dial as a girlfriend because you have such a powerful energy that you bring to bear when it comes to just like embracing raw Human Experience you know and I wonder what you think it’s going to take for us to reclaim this initiatory right for women I think it’s really the only one we were ever given that was built in

(1:19:02) and you know of course I’ve seen it and you have through other you know through divorce and through coming off of anti-depressants and of course there are many other crises that can catapult you into contact with your soul and call you to your path as you know a birthkeeper like what do you think in the last minute that we have together what do you think it’s gonna take you know to to reclaim this what’s it g to take it’s going to take that woman going back to the little girl who is fit for the

(1:19:33) initiation until she’s reclaimed and brought forth she will go through the motions of the initiation but it won’t actually happen until that little girl is reclaimed does that make sense like yeah we need to bring her back online and she needs to be part of the process and I have seen women go through a birth completely disembodied going through the motion ready to initiate for the next one ready to bring that little girl back online reclaim her you know grab her by the hand and say we’re doing this together

(1:20:03) what do you need and it’s when that little girl can express that that she can go through this process and have her needs met right so it’s bringing the vulnerability bringing the fear bringing the needs into the space not powering over and imagining that this is just like some sort of you know Triathlon you know that is going to be achieved exactly and and this little girl has to know that it’s safe to trust other people she has to know that it’s safe to trust the world right and that her intuition is going to guide her to where

(1:20:38) that is but that’s completely suppressed and so once she can be told that you know and that that comes with this woman saying I got you right like you’re safe and you can trust because I’m here and I’m only going to make decisions that benefit your needs once that is online then she can go through this initiation and she actually won’t fear birth and I’ve seen it happen you know because she’s surrendering to the unknown and that’s all the fear that comes with this initiation is what’s on the other side

(1:21:09) always every no one’s ever caught me when I’ve gone to the other side so who’s going to catch me then you know that’s what this is and that’s why we we suppress with all of the interventions and with this web of you know reported support is because just trying to soften the blow of the Fall that we think is coming but really there is no fall at the other side because it’s a benevolent universe and I just think this is one of the most important topics because it connects all I mean look at where we’ve

(1:21:40) spanned right from you know Eros and sexual Dynamics to in child work to Shadow work you know to the basics of Health Reclamation and you know sovereignty this is at the Crux and I feel safer in the world because you are speaking to this like you personally and I really enjoyed this convers I like got so much out of this conversation and I literally have been talking to you all morning and we’ll probably talk to you in 10 minutes I was like wow we should have just like gone to lunch and had this conversation it’s important right

(1:22:10) like even for us to focus our energy on it and try to as you say like unraid so many of the elements here because there’s beautiful complexity represented in this crisis that we are all in the midst of men women children and you know our population this is a big alchemical opportunity for us and so I’m so grateful to you I love you woman Ando I will talk to you soon sounds good