#207 | My Baby is Not Going Anywhere: Yoga Teacher Erika Halweil's Birth Story

And they said, well, we need to do the heel prick. And I said, Nothing is going to happen to this child. Tonight. I said, she's staying with me. And they literally had one hand on her, pulling her away from me. And I had one hand on her, holding her toward me. And I said, anywhere she goes, I go. So if you're, if you're literally going to force her out of this bed, you're forcing me out of the bed. And they said, You're gonna, you're gonna hemorrhage you're gonna bleed to death. And I said, and that will be on your hands. And that's when the paperwork came that I was on that they had to put me, they had to let me know that they put me on a government watch list, and on a list with Child Protective Services, because I had refused the life saving interventions have the vitamin K shot, the erythromycin, the heel prick, and that I was leaving before she had urinated.

I'm Cynthia Overgard, owner of HypnoBirthing of Connecticut, childbirth advocate and postpartum support specialist. And I'm Trisha Ludwig, certified nurse midwife and international board certified lactation consultant. And this is the Down To Birth Podcast. Childbirth is something we're made to do. But how do we have our safest and most satisfying experience in today's medical culture? Let's dispel the myths and get down to birth.

Hi, ladies, my name is Erica Halweil. While I was born and raised in Manhattan, I began exploring the practices of yoga when I was a teenager. This has been my only vocation, sharing this ancient wisdom to reconnect us to our true essential nature. It has been a guiding force in my life through my higher education, through one marriage and one child through another marriage and another child, I'm still in that second marriage, and through this ever changing, complicated landscape in which we all find ourselves living daily. So I am inspired by the work that you do and the information you try to share and the community you try to foster. And I love talking about my birds. So I thought I could come on and share a little bit about them. And about my perspective. You know, humans were written out of the definition of nature very recently, they rewrote the definition of nature and nature's now everything that exists in the natural world, aside from humans. So if we're not with something, then you have to choose Are you for? Or are you against? Do you control or do you harmonize. So that's a side note and like another, definitely another podcast. But if we could remember that we are part of the natural world. And that living in alignment with the natural laws would help us feel less vulnerable, less isolated, less fearful, that I think would radically change the way that we approach birth, that we approach getting pregnant that we approach labor that we approach, delivery, and also motherhood. But the problem is that in these daily choices that separate us from nature, the main separation has been from a tribal type of living. I mean, now we have culture, we have community, we have friendship, but we crave on a cellular level, that sharing of the wisdom of the ages that was passed down in daily life, in ritual, in ceremony, in every ancient wisdom, tradition, every indigenous people has this in their daily life. And more often than not, there was some sort of hardship or discomfort that was elevated, and celebrated and observed, like everyone would come around and observe this rite of passage seasonally or at a moment of time in someone's life. And so discomfort was was recognized as not even essential or not essential but ever present. It's it's there, and we and we welcome it, it doesn't last nothing lasts. Right? So how can I jump in with oh, so is your is the message there that it's the very resisting of discomfort or what we perceive to be discomfort or what we fear to be discomfort that causes so much suffering.

I mean, one 100% And by the way, suffering is not like I'm not Things suffering a woman in labor, I mean, suffering is anything that where you don't feel at home, in your body, anything where you don't feel the, the freedom, to feel the freedom to be in a state of feeling. And then even dare I say, express it, express it without fear of judgment or condemnation.

In Spanish, the word for suffer is sufrir, and they use the word much more frequently than we do. They use it very, they use it very readily, like, Oh, I'm outside without my jacket, I'm suffering and they it's not sarcastic. It's not to be funny. It's it, they use the word as it's just another state that we can frequently experience and just get through. And I feel like because English is the richest language with words, we have, by far more words than any other language, German is of like a very distant second, we have so many other ways to express like, suffering and discomfort and ill at ease. And I think because we have this array of words, we've we've left suffering to be the most extreme. So in English, we discuss suffering, it sounds like this intense, terrifying term. But sometimes I hear it with with a Spanish ear, and it's just, you know, it's just another word for just like uncomfortable. And we just get through it, just where my mind went with that. And it's so interesting, because you know, English is a language of commerce, and conversation. It has no route in any one of these ancient wisdom traditions, or any one of these tribal peoples. And with that commerce, in conversation, comes an overwhelm what you were describing an overwhelming number of ways to describe a seemingly similar thing, but put it like spin it in slightly different ways. And that's that illusion of choice, as a way to kind of choose your way out of what you're feeling or think your way out of what is being experienced. By like stamping a label on it, stamping a word on it keeps it in, in the head, and out of the body. And I never really thought about because I love words. And I love always like using descriptive words and changing. Even though I'm saying the same thing. I'll never say it the same way. And in a weird way that keeps you in the in the mind about it. And that's another aspect I think of what, what keeps people like at arm's length with the whole experience of embodying pregnancy and labor and birth, breastfeeding, child rearing?

Well, let's start talking about your own personal experience.

Okay, um, so I just on the tail end of what I was saying, I think it's just really important to note that there is very, very little that is modeled in modern society, about this being a natural process and part of life. Same with death, right? No surprise, birth and death, you don't talk about them. We don't want to see them. We don't like like, let's just keep it in that room. And like there's can be commodified people can take care of that for you don't even need to think about that, you know, both sides, right? So the things that basically make it possible for us to be alive, are not meant to be integrated into life.

Not only are they not integrated, but they are feared exactly fear.

Wildly feared, right. And, and you're a freak, right? You're an outlier. If you are comfortable with either one of them, like you are somehow super bizarre to believe like, I remember people from my first pregnancy, so I got pregnant unexpectedly. But I got pregnant at 28. And I just, I don't know, my whole life, I just knew that I was going to be a mother, I knew I was gonna get pregnant. I knew I was gonna breastfeed. These things just felt very intrinsic to me. And I got pregnant and immediately wanted to do a home birth and that wasn't modeled around here and there were very few midwives who would even come out to where I live, they're about an hour away and at the time, my husband was from Argentina, and he had just had never heard of this, you know, burns happen in the hospital and that made him very uncomfortable. It made his family very uncomfortable. So I said, Well, maybe we can just like labor at home for a very long time. And this was like literally the day I found out I was pregnant we were having this conversation and and then go to the hospital. I had the added good fortunate that time that my sister in law was a labor delivery nurse at the local hospital. So I felt like I had someone who knew me and knew that I didn't really want to be in the hospital. And I thought it was the best case scenario. And now the only reason I didn't want to be in the hospital is actually because of my mother's first birth experience with my brothers. My mother was a very young, healthy woman, she got pregnant with my brother, she had a beautiful pregnancy, went in to labor, and had an intervention of bizarre intervention early on in her labor that stopped her in her tracks and forced a emergency cesarean. And because of that, I two years later was automatically a scheduled cesarean. And I thought how interesting young, vital, healthy mother labor progressing naturally, was a bizarre intervention of a Novocaine injection into her labia. Like very, I'd never even heard of it. She had an allergic reaction to it. Anyway, so I, everyone is gonna have questions around that. I don't have we have I don't about that for Wait a minute. Was it? Was it related to pain? Trisha, have you ever heard of? What does it mean? Why would anyone have done that? We have to know.

Pushing. Was it during the pushing? They were trying? It was upon arrival.

Was this the late 70s? Yeah, was 75 did some pretty crazy stuff around that period.

Jimmy, she must have been complaining of pain in that area. And they were like, well, we can fix that.

Well, that's horrible. She does not she does not tell the story of pain. But I do feel like it was a prophylaxis for eventual, like, let's numb the area. So you don't feel like like if I didn't have the Ring of Fire preventing that feeling or something? I don't know. It's crazy.

Yeah. So so very, very bizarre. But so I've kind of had it in my mind, even though my entire upbringing, right, we see the trauma, the absurdity, the anger of birth, like modeled in movies, and it's almost comical and television shows. So why would you ever and you hate your husband, you're screaming that you hate your I mean, it's so it's just really bizarre. But even so I was like, I had this feeling that I'm my body was designed to do this. So fortunately, I had a beautiful pregnancy. And I had a wonderful doula. And I was two weeks after my due date, and having I think tea or something, and felt maybe my first menstrual cramp of my entire life. I never had PMS growing up. So I didn't really know when everyone said it's going to feel like menstrual cramps. I didn't really know what that was going to feel like and I said, Oh, I kind of feel something feels a little bit like the first flutters of movement that I had when the baby was growing. And the labor the labor was very slow to progress. It wasn't very long, even though I thought it must have been happening really quickly. But I'm talking to my doula on the phone. And she said, Yeah, you know, just like go for a walk, maybe take a nap. It does seem like you're in labor, but nothing really. There's nothing really interesting about your voice or anything. So um, I Oh, and I think I found out because I went the conventional route that way. I saw local gynecological obstetrics group, and then my cervix, there was nothing going on with my cervix even two weeks after like it was a nice and tight. So we knew we had some time. And I think it wasn't until so that was around 2pm. And it wasn't until three in the morning. I woke up at three in the morning and felt significantly different. I was a little bit disturbed by some of the pains I was feeling and super excited. So I called my doula and I and she said, I don't really think you're anywhere close, but I bet you'd like some company. So I'll come over. And so we made a fire. And that was, you know what I would have imagined labour to be. There was some rocking, there were some, like I called them whale songs, some kind of low whale songs. And I was so grateful for the comfort and the hands of my doula really her elbows, she did this miraculous thing with her elbows on my outer hips. And it just took all of the pressure out of my legs and out of my back and allowed me to feel the clarity of what a contraction was trying to do to my belly. And that was something that was reminiscent of maybe something I would experience in a yoga posture where there was sort of a focused activation of a body part. And then you use the breath to invite The rest of your body to join into and support and transmute that sense that sensation into the to the flow of the breath. The sun eventually came up. And my sister in law was heading to her shift at the hospital. And so she said, I'll come over and check your dilation if you'd like. And I was like, Cool, that'd be great. And then my doula said to me, I don't want you to be discouraged. I said, why? And she said, Because I have a feeling, you're probably just about a centimeter dilated. And that's great. You know, you that's work, that's great. So don't be discouraged. And so my sister in law came over. And sure enough, it was about a centimeter or a centimeter and a half. And what I imagined was this, like night of labor, and it was gonna, you know, come to an end or whatever, have my baby in front of the fireplace. And so then we spent the day laboring in to the bathtub out of the bathtub, going for walks, taking a nap. I had no appetite. And then at the end of my sister in law shifts, so she worked her full 12 hour shift. She came to the house, and she said, You want me to check you again? And I said, Sure. And she said, Are you planning on having the baby here? And I said, No. And she said, Well, it's time to go to the hospital, because I was basically eight centimeters. And so we all caravan back to the hospital, she went back, because she said it was so busy, it was overwhelming. There were people like in every room and on different floors. And on the car ride back to about a 15 minute car ride to the hospital. That's when I think I had transitional labor. And my doula will tell it that the claw marks are still on the roof of her car from me, like swirling around in the sea trying to like, read because I didn't have her doing her magic elbows. And it was remarkable. When I got to the hospital, I was trying to explain to them that I felt a lot of pressure, and I didn't really have time to do whatever they wanted me to do. And could I fill out, you know, whatever, after the fact. So we just kind of knew where we were going and disregarded everyone's requests, and I got to a room. And immediately it was about fastening things on to me and monitoring me Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot to mention, my water never broke, my water stayed intact. And when I got there, the very first thing they wanted to do was break my water. And I said I'm a little bit confused, because my labor is progressing. And the contraction seemed to be doing their job. And I would liked to not have any intervention. And I had a very clear birth plan. They they, you know, they, they called me a weirdo. Like I was stamped a weirdo, they knew I was going to be difficult. They knew I was going to be trouble. My sister in law was embarrassed to be, you know, related to me and have to deal with this. I kept turning the lights off in my room, I kept ripping the blood pressure thing off. I said, I'm breathing freely, like, my blood pressure is fine. I see you straight like I feel my heart. But you know, they just they want to measure and they want to do things. And they wanted to do another cervical check. And I said, but I was just checked. And then I had a five minute contraction in the car. And I'm sure it's time to push. And they were like, well, let us just break your water. And I said, you know, animals are born in their sacks. Like, I'm having an animal, like I'm an animal, having an animal and I really feel blessed that in all of the overwhelm of what my body was experiencing, that I could still kind of be obnoxious enough to get people listen to me to listen to me and to. And my ex husband was also very loud and vocal for me, which I am still very, very grateful for. And he because English was his second language, he was kind of slowing things down. You'll see later in the story to give me the time that I wanted but the hospital wouldn't give to me. So my sister in law was actually the one there for me no, none of the doctors because they were too busy with other birthing mothers. And after she described to me it was very helpful. She put a finger right inside and said push right to this point. And as soon as she did that, I think it was five just five pushes. Because the first push i did i i arched away from what I needed to do so as soon as she gave me that focal point, and I was able to wrap my whole body around that. And I think really then in there is when all All of the breath work. And I mean, at this point, I've been practicing yoga, for, what, 1515 years. So all of that time wasn't like little prenatal yoga, but a real sense of the breath is a tool. And the breath is something that can manipulate the way energy flows in my body, I think really helps with the pushing was soon as the baby came out, they wanted to cut the cord. I did not want the cord cut until the placenta was delivered. They told me this was an impossibility. And I said, but I'm making great time, and I'm making great time here in the hospital. It doesn't matter. That's not how we do it. And so this is when my ex husband was so valuable, because he kept saying like, Oh, I don't understand. Could you explain to me again, my English is not so good. He was kind of like playing a show for every second that we could allow the cord to stay attached to the baby. And I kept saying, well, maybe we can just wait till the cord stops pulsing, maybe we can wait till the cord turns gray. And we kept giving all of these alternatives. But the arguing the nonstop arguing gave us some time and some of that precious cord blood got to me like you guys want to say so like, there's the things that we have to fight for. It's just crazy.

Yeah. And in Episode 200, with Barbara Harper, we talked about all about the vast benefit of exactly what your intuition told you to do. Keep the cord intact as long as possible. And it's just such an added bonus if it's intact while the placenta is coming out. So you're you were in touch?

Well, it's the amazing thing is is it just comes back to that alignment with the natural world. You know why nature is so spendthrift? This was an organ designed to support the growing child, why would there be something in there that was not able to be received by the person who was literally attached to it, and they Oh, that's the other thing that kept telling me, I'm gonna make my baby jaundice. If I give too much cord blood, I'm going to make my baby jaundice. And I'm going to overwhelm the circulatory system. And I was like, I'm gonna take my chances, take my chances. And none of that is true. And your intuition of just trusting nature. I mean, if that were true, then nature has just completely goofed. And thank God, we brilliant humans came along to say, oh, you know, like, they'll say, Well, no, 30 seconds is optimal, or while we only do it for about 45 seconds is what you want. I mean, just your own common sense to say, well, first of all there, there are, quote, recommendations are changing by the decade, dramatically. And just second, it's like if that were true, then nature wouldn't be doing it that way. I mean, the other mammals don't have any way of timing it of knowing how to clamp it and stop it. It just does come down to your personal paradigm. And when you trust in nature, you can very clearly see the absurdity in these policies like Well, other mammals don't have scissors, so they can't cut the cord. They don't chew the cord off if they were supposed to their instinct would have them to it off immediately. Yeah, so it pulls you through, I guess. So that's just because of your belief system.

It's amazing. Because they do value that cord blood, right, you can bank it. And then if your child needs it later, because they're suffering, and I always said, maybe if they got it on the on the entry, we actually wouldn't need anything. Later on. Maybe there's something so valuable. Like I always say that science hasn't even figured out the question that they need to ask to understand how unbelievably magical these bodies are, like we don't even know the question to ask to to study what's in that cord blood, what's inside that placenta at the very end? You know, what would it be like if you walked around, or were carried around with the placenta attached? Until it just fell off on its own? What what would that be like? I mean, I don't know so. So after we fought for about three or four minutes, eventually the cord was clamped and cut, the placenta was delivered. And then then became the fight of keeping Mila with me. They immediately wanted to take Nila away from me and she was on my chest. And I said she's great like she's great. I'm great. Anything that you need to do to her can wait till the morning like we're good. And they said no, we have to wait her I said then bring a fisherman scale in with a cloth and a hook. I said come on. Like I I'm gonna have an answer for anything that you tell me so the baby is not leaving me. No, we need to clean her eyes and I said no, we're not taking the erythromycin in the eyes. We are not at risk. She's not at risk. She needs a vitamin K. I said No, we gave her that extra cord blood. Remember, like, we're cool, like, we don't need the vitamin K. And they said, well, we need to do the heel prick. And I said, Nothing is going to happen to this child. Tonight. I said, she's staying with me. And they literally had one hand on her, pulling her away from me. And I had one hand on her, holding her toward me. And I said, anywhere she goes, I go. So if you're, if you're literally going to force her out of this bed, you're forcing me out of the bed. And they said, You're gonna, you're gonna hemorrhage you're gonna bleed to death. And I said, and that will be on your hands. And so I took a gauze pad because they were not, they were not yielding. And I held a gauze pad between my legs. And I like hobbled down the hallway, holding this child, I put her down on the scale, I picked her back up, and I walked back. And they literally, like with a trail of blood or whatever. And they couldn't believe the absurdity on my end, to get a weight to get a weight of a child. So then I wanted Neil to sleep with me all night. They woke us up every 45 minutes or so to take her temperature. And were unwilling to even fathom that her temperature was my temperature skin to skin with a blanket around sleeping soundly nursing nonstop. So a few hours later, I said, I said, When can I get out of here, and they said when she pees, and I said, but my, it's just colostrum. There's no liquid, like, I don't understand why you're waiting for her to pee. And I said, I'd like to assign myself out against all recommendations. And that's when the paperwork came that I was on, that they had to put me, they had to let me know that they put me on a government watch list. And on a list with Child Protective Services, because I had refused the life saving interventions have the vitamin K shot the urethra, myosin, the essential genetic testing through the heel prick. And there was oh, and that I was leaving before she had urinated. So we left the hospital. And

so you refuse for life saving procedures, and or criteria they wanted to impose. Yes, and your baby survived anyway.

And my 16 year old daughter is at the top of her class, a star athlete, a kind and loving person, and feels very attached to me in a very positive way.

And you're at peace with your birth story, which is what this is all about.

And, you know, it's funny that it could have been really, it could have been really traumatic, it was instead disturbing. It was just disturbing to me, that if I hadn't been educated in the way that I was, and if I hadn't had faith, because that's the main thing is that people lack the faith that they were designed to do this. And if they have it, it's it's not out of them, you know, and that actually goes right into my second birth story because I got pregnant again, by mistake. We want to talk Trisha guy just want to say, it's knocked out of them through the fear mongering that goes on in modern medical birth, we are just inundated with all the things that could go wrong and wouldn't that's all we hear over and over and over. Again, nobody's talking about what can go right and supporting the innate physiology, it becomes a battle.

And beyond the medical profession, or the medical practitioners, I think the the faith killers are actually other moms Believe it or not, because when I got pregnant again, so four and a half years later, or I guess three and a half years later, I got pregnant again. And I said like it's a home birth or nothing like I was like I'm not I was like actually don't care this time around, because it was a different guy. I said, if you're not into it, you just won't be around. I said because I'm not going back to the hospital. And he said no, like I follow your lead, whatever. So, again, a great a great pregnancy with the help of floradix to bolster my iron, and a beautiful hour and a half, long birth. That's it second baby flew out. Born two weeks again after the due date on a full moon as the moon was coming up as the sun was setting. The midwife arrived just in time told me after she heard a wild sort of whale song that she wanted me to conserve my energies. That's what I call my labor groaning like that, and it was the 23 hours hours of labor I'd had previously crammed into one hour. And I felt, I got it. Why a contraction was called a contraction. I literally felt with every contraction, the baby being pushed down, like here. And then now here, and then now here, literally contraction by contraction. So when the midwife came out to say, to conserve my energy, she took one look at me, and she said, Oh, it's time. It's time to push. So it was really fast. My husband delivered the baby. And then wouldn't you know it? You don't need it. You don't need anything. Oh, I'm so sorry to tell you. i This both first time and this time, both times my girls were born in their sacks.

Oh, nice. Wow. Yeah. Same doula, both times. I can't speak enough to the essential nature of having a doula that you love. And if you if you're fortunate enough to find it, I found the physical, the actual physical manipulation, to be essential to take the edge off anything that felt overwhelming, and then to have to have someone say, that they could feel with you from how you looked or from the tone of the voice of your voice or the way you were holding your body. Like my doula could anticipate the dilation of my cervix. By my being. You know, when when my sister in law checked me that first pregnancy, my doula whispered the number before she said it. And so there was something and it's that wisdom of the ages that like tribal wisdom, she'd been through so many birds, she'd seen so many things. And she was able to share that and apply it to each individual body.

We were just we were just discussing that yesterday, the attentive the attentive attentiveness to a laboring woman by a skilled doula or a midwife is far better than a cervical exam.

And those cervical checks always gave me the worst contraction after it was like such an unnecessary it felt like such an unnecessary invasion.

It's such an it's so invasive. It's so invasive, and people are just used to it. They're used to the concept, so they endure it. But when you just stand back and think about nature, if you're with a laboring mammal, I mean, why would anyone think to stick their hand inside and feel around just you just be present with her until her baby comes out? So tell us how your births changed you.

I think that the most amazing thing about the birth, each time, similar feeling was that time is illusory. I don't know how else to explain it. It gave me a real sense of how everything that we perceive in form. So time and space is not real. There is a wholeness, and a vastness in that moment that the baby emerges. And this thing that you had inside of you, this being that you had inside of you is now on top of you, or in your arms or whatever it is, right to take it back to what I was saying at the start this desperate desire to talk our way out of discomfort through different labels or to strong arm anything. That's not what we consider love and light, you know, bliss and joy. Everything is love and light. Everything is in that vastness of that moment in that breath. And it was the moment of birth was a moment of enlightenment. For me, it was a moment of the end of all separation, a state of nothing missing the dissolution of anything that made me feel other than in any way. And then these beautiful girls that I'm raising are a constant reminder of that. And a remembrance of that. Really, it's it's really remarkable. It's remarkable to me that not everyone is at least given the opportunity and encouraged to luxuriate in the opportunity to experience a natural birth. Not to say that people shouldn't have the power of choice, but that the idea that it's not presented on a like a on a silver or the on a golden platter, at this is actually available to you And it's the only opportunity you might have in your life to experience this. And I don't know how it's gonna go but it's a one of a kind opportunity.

Thank you for joining us at the Down To Birth Show. You can reach us @downtobirthshow on Instagram or email us at Contact@DownToBirthShow.com. All of Cynthia’s classes and Trisha’s breastfeeding services are offered live online, serving women and couples everywhere. Please remember this information is made available to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is in no way a substitute for medical advice. For our full disclaimer visit downtobirthshow.com/disclaimer. Thanks for tuning in, and as always, hear everyone and listen to yourself.