#261 | Emma the Naked Doula on Pleasurable, Orgasmic Birth and Her New Book

All women deserve to have a pleasurable birth experience. All women deserve to feel safe, to feel powerful, and absolutely enjoy it. Like why wouldn't you want to enjoy birth? Why wouldn't you? if, if anyone out there listening has ever listened, not watched, but listened just to the sound of a woman about to give birth. If you close your eyes and you listen and not seeing anything, you would honest to god have no idea if she's about to have the best orgasm of her life, or put your baby out. It is literally the exact same sound, because they're the same hormones we experienced in sex. But I think women should understand the goal isn't orgasm. It's like that may or may not happen, and no one really is interested in whether it does. But we want you to be on that pleasure track.

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, I'm Emma. I'm also known as the naked doula. And I am now a very proud author and actually actually an accidental illustrator of the fearless birth books. So my book that's coming out on the second of May, or the 28th of May in America. And yeah, just so stoked to be here and having this chat with you ladies again, and I'm so excited for this episode. Well,

we lucky ladies got a little sneak peek at your book this week. And it is going to be fabulous. It's so much fun to read through. It's almost like a children's book but for adults.

Right? And in no other ways like a children's book. No.

It is like the most children's book not troubling book. So yeah, so fun. But one of the things that you talk about in the book that we are very excited to dive into is pleasurable, orgasmic ecstatic birth. I mean, what even is that? Everybody would like to have that. And most of us don't know how to achieve that. And some of us think that means that we have to have a birth gasm or orgasm and birth. And that's not really it. So what is it?

Oh, so literally, let's let's break it down and think about this in like two different sections. So as you said, Yes, you can sort of think about and you can, of course, you know, bring orgasm into the birth room. So when we're talking about pleasurable birth in the birth room, which doesn't have to include orgasm, or you know, bringing any of that sort of, you know, or toys or things that people talk about, or that connection with your partner touching each other, that doesn't necessarily have to be the case, because you can have a pleasurable birth, just through leaning in surrendering, and actually creating a mindset where you're so you're so connected with pain in the most, and who sounds crazy, but in the most, you know, sort of interwoven way, because you understand exactly what that means. And you know that it's not an inherently dangerous pain in labor, but actually this beautiful signaling, and this beautiful signaling that's going on between the brain, the uterus and the baby. And when we can really lean into that I honestly, I really do believe and I've seen it happen, and I hear the stories. And it's just so wonderful. You can really create a really beautiful euphoric orgasmic experience just getting literally high off the feeling of it all.

If if anyone out there listening has ever listened, not watched, but listened just to the sound of a woman about to give birth you would you close your eyes and you listen and not seeing anything you would honest to god have no idea if she's about to have the best orgasm of her life, or push your baby out. It is literally the exact same sound. That is the fine line between pain and pleasure. Right? Right.

I mean, it just, it just says it for itself because birth is driven by the same hormone as the intimacy that we're having in the sex and the, you know, those connections and orgasms. So oxytocin, for those who don't know is that hormone it's exactly the same and it's that goes for that. saying, what gets baby in, gets baby out? And when you understand the connections between oxytocin you start to go, Oh my God, this makes so much sense. How can I really ramp up my oxytocin? Because that's going to just that's going to make you start flying high, you know, I was really enjoying the experience.

Why are women a little uncomfortable? Not everyone wants an orgasmic birth, there is a little resistance. And I would love to talk about that resistance. And when you started using the word pain, I thought, Oh, right. Most women think of birth in terms of pain. And do you think it's that they? Do you think it's that it's under the context of pain that they can't understand it? Or is it because there's a baby involved? And it's too sexual for them to imagine involving debate? What do you think is the resistance to orgasmic birth psychologically? For women? Not everyone hearing this is gonna be like, Sign me up. There are there are women but there are many who just tighten a little bit and cringe a little bit at it? Do you know? Can you figure out why? But don't you think also that this happens in sex? We also have, what do you what do you mean? What do you mean?

I mean, like, depending on how we're feeling is how our body is reacting. So how are we going to feel when we're having that sexual intimacy with someone, it might be a really fucking amazing experience. Or it might be a really terrible experience. It could be painful, it could be horrible. You we could not enjoy it at all. And it's exactly the same thing.

So same resistance. Well, yeah, because if you're, let's say, for example, someone thinks about sex, and they may have always you know, or not, if they're not comfortable, if they're not quite happy, they're going to their bodies going to react like that. And then they're going to be thinking, Oh, this is gonna hurt, it's gonna hurt. You know, it's the same kind of it's the same kind of thought process. It's just two different things. And people aren't finding the connection. Yeah.

Most importantly, if people aren't feeling safe in the moment, exactly. You're not going to, they're not going to reach that orgasm. And they can, they can, they can be excited, they can be into it, they can, they can have all the desire around it. But if that when that fear impedes the cycle, or the the sense of pain or discomfort or fear or distraction, even, but I think I was saying something a little different. And I want to I really, I am legitimately curious to get your take on it. What Why is it that some women don't want an orgasmic birth and who doesn't? The word orgasm is positive, even if sex can conjure up all sorts of different emotions for women who aren't necessarily satisfied orgasm, is by virtue of what it is. It's a pleasurable concept. Why do you think there's, I've never really given this thought, and I want your take, why do some women have an opposition to an orgasmic birth? When some women raise their hand and say, Sign me up? Why doesn't everyone say that? What's your, your shame? We feel shame. Women feel shame around their bodies, they feel shame around orgasms, because it's, it's shown as something dirty, like when, if you think back to when we are, you know, in our teens, or you know, as children, you know, we've got these like, men, it's very, like, yes, we can do this. And we can have sex with everyone. We can be sexual men, you know, we can be this, this masculine energy, but then you've got the feminine. And as women who actually, you know, if you was if someone had heard, or someone you know, you had that conversation, that's embarrassing, you don't touch yourself, like, I know plenty of women that have never touched themselves. And it is absolutely bizarre to me. But this is actually the case because they feel so much guilt around that and it comes from programming is the same same situation as birth, isn't it except it's actually deep rooted. As females as women, it's deep rooted, because as we are moving through our childhood or adolescence, you know, what we're hearing from our parents what's being passed down through the generations, and then what conversations we're having with other people within our circle within our energy is, is literally what's being programmed into our mind all the way through. So if you've grown up, especially in that instance, where you know, you don't do that, like it's dirty, it's dirty, like sex is dirty, like touching yourself is dirty, like vaginas are dirty, which is a narrative for for a lot of women believe it or not, then that's why they're going to be looking at this and thinking or hearing this and going. That is the worst nightmare. Like I've had people comment when I've spoken about before, like that is disgusting, like, literally calling me all kinds of disgusting names because they can't fathom it. They cannot fathom it at all.

Not to mention that we're asking them to go into that place within themselves in front of a man in a white coat. I mean, that's a really hard place to go but I'm gonna I'm going to let myself be that free and you know, lose all my inhibitions in front of strangers and in front of a medical provider. Have you witnessed that either? Have you a woman having an orgasm during birth?

So I have at a home birth, not in a hospital environment. The only time that I have had from a hostile environment I haven't actually witnessed it myself. I've it's just stories that have come through Instagram. From my work.

Trisha, you have, I feel like I don't think that the woman has actually come out and said, Oh my god, I just had an orgasm and my birth but in watching her I would consider an orgasmic high. Yeah, the way that the body the peak, the pinnacle moments that the ecstatic it's for me, it's more like ecstatic. I mean, I don't think I've actually witnessed like, what I would picture a sexual orgasm look like in in birth, but they absolutely reach that ecstatic high and then have that the release on the other side like that. relief of tension. Yeah, that satisfaction

100%. And, you know, it's just, you literally just take me back to my labor with George. And when I was feeling the contractions at the strongest time, I literally, there was so strong, and the pressure was so intense, but I was literally, so like, Oh, my God, like, it just makes me go funny now, because I was just like, yes, yes. You know, I was literally like, yes. And I think this is it. I think that when you are so like, whoa, like this is incredible. And you're feeling this and you know exactly what's going on, you can tap into it, and literally alchemize it there and then into something that's so odd. And it just is making me goosebumps, because it's just the best feeling in the world like I would, I would love to experience contractions and labor. Like I would love to do that again. And again, because that is just something so incredibly powerful. And I think this is, you know, what we're talking about when we're talking about that euphoric experience, you know, just love it.

And we know from the work of Sarah Buckley, who's written an incredible book about birth, and she's done a lot of work on the cascade of hormones that happen in the brain that actually get us to this ecstatic birth place. And we know that birth needs to be basically undisturbed, left sort of untouched, a woman needs to feel very safe, very private, to allow this whole cascade of hormones to take place. And then she can achieve that level of ecstasy in birth. And I think that is, that's the main thing that we're talking about when we're talking about pleasurable birth. But there's this whole other category of, you know, women actually using touch to stimulate orgasm and birth to elicit that using their partners using toys, using whatever to help move labor along. Yeah, I

wish there's one thing I want women to know, when they're listening to this conversation. The goal isn't the orgasm. Right? The orgasm is the byproduct of complete surrender, trust, and relaxation. And as Emma was saying, earlier, you were saying I'm a, the hormones have no choice, but to move you toward pleasure. Because they're the same hormones we experience in sex, but I think women should understand the goal isn't orgasm. It's like that may or may not happen, and no one really is interested in whether it does. But we want you to be on that pleasure track. Right? Which makes your birth easier. And that the and also that the actual orgasm, should you choose to want to do that can be a tool to help accelerate your labor. Yeah, exactly.

It's so adaptable. If he was to purely just look at oxytocin. This is why I say literally, for those who, you know, haven't done all the work and haven't done or they're literally just about to go into labor, they're like shit, like, you know, what, what do I need to do, or you need to be thinking about is oxytocin, because you can influence it in so many different ways. And like you say, this is all leading to this pleasurable experience. And I actually also think that this whole you know, we have these stories, don't we from, you know, the Bible and like other places, and you know, you know, how birth happens, and it's, you know, this experience and it's traumatic, and, you know, you're meant to feel this. It's meant to be hard, you know, this labor. Labor is meant to be hard, and it's meant to be painful, you know, it's meant to be like traumatic, and, you know, obviously, now we see this everywhere, don't we? The narrative around birth is just it's just crazy. But I don't believe that this is the case. I think that I think the story in this narrative like we've been told, like, all through history, A is to dump in women doubt, I think it's to dump in our power and for us to or not understand or realize how incredible our bodies are and how actually pleasurable birth can be. I do believe that birth, we was made to have pleasurable experiences through birth, because it literally makes perfect sense. It's all interconnected, it's all the same. And yeah, I just think that we've been lied to, what another way for the male species to dominate women, right? If they can, if they can dominate them in sex, then they can dominate them in birth and take that power away from them. Yeah, yeah. Because prior to some king in the 1700s, deciding that he was going to step in and take charge of a woman's body, and birth, birth was always with women, for women, amongst women, right.

And if you if used to go and look at, like, you know, like, the indigenous people and, and tribes, and just like the way that, you know, they look at birth, and the whole, like, that, just the whole picture is just like, we need to be going back in time, we need to be going like way back in time and rewriting the narrative. And that's why women who are really in tune with their bodies, and they have this self trust, and they have this, you know, real connection with themselves and their body and their sexuality, and they're not afraid to, you know, express that within themselves. These are the women that are having these experiences, because they feel true safety and true trust in their in themselves in their body. And literally that is that is the key. It's all ourselves, it's all what's inside of us, you know that that comes out, basically -

I agree. I've always said the same thing. It's almost like if someone drinks too much, we all bring a piece of ourselves to our birth. And when it just takes every boundary down, we see that piece of ourselves. And I couldn't agree more. So these movies of women hating their husbands and swearing, and it's like, a lot of women don't have that in them. So there's no way birth is going to bring that out of them. But we're conditioned to think that I was just thinking back to the comment you made earlier about shame. And really the key to pleasurable birth is in learning to release that shame within yourself prior to giving birth learning to release all of whatever it is that you're carrying from childhood teenagehood young adulthood, wherever it is in your life that you have held on to shame around your sexuality around your body around trust in your body. Around pleasure. Yeah, working on that. And then that is your key.

One 100%. And this is, and I know, you know, you mentioned about the book, Trisha and you know, is fun, and it is illustrative. And it is, you know, very, very easy to digest. But there is a real story in your journey throughout the book. And I really dive into that, because I really, really do believe that exactly what you've said, is the absolute truth. And I know that from experience, and you know, I'm sure I'm sure you guys have and other women will not understand. But when we are, you know, feeling that way when we do have guilt. I mean, I had a lot of that when I was younger, I had so much anxiety and depression and I just wanted alcohol and, you know, medication like to just make me feel better. Because we're always seem to be looking outwards. And we've been told that we need to look outwards all the time for things. And it's literally like the the it's almost like a secret, like the secret for women. All that we need to do is just look inward. And it is literally that simple.

Isn't it interesting, too, that a lot of women who haven't done that work prior to having birth may experience a traumatic birth and then that is the impetus to work on it like that is the trigger that sets them free. Right? Because they realize now oh, this is what happens. If I if I don't find that within myself. This is what happens if I don't honor myself. This is what happens if I don't speak up and now I'm mad. Yeah, I've even had some people that said, you know, I I looked at your thing, your stuff, and I didn't, but I didn't actually do the work, you know, and I went in and I actually you know, it was fine, but I didn't really advocate for myself as much as I or as well as I wanted to. So you know, I'm doing things differently this time. But it's it's it's hard because it shouldn't we shouldn't have to go through you know, this experience of you know, losing autonomy over ourselves to get to that point but so Luckily, and I was actually talking about this the other day. Sadly, we do have to look out for red flags. And we are in situations where we do have to really advocate for ourselves and really push for ourselves. Otherwise, we wouldn't need to be having these conversations, I wouldn't need to be, you know, there wouldn't be a book and we wouldn't all be sharing things about birth all the time. Because the other thing is the tendency to intellectualize our experience in preparation. So it's more comfortable for we tend to attract a an intelligent population. And that intelligent mind is where they're really comfortable. They want to sit in like read, it's the couple who wants to sit, do my class taking notes, I took notes, by the way, I'll do my HypnoBirthing class, most people don't. But it's the tendency to want to take notes, rather than put the pen down. Close your eyes. When we do these course people all practice that part in the class, but like, you have to let go and prepare in your body. Because it's so comfortable to sit back and be entertained by your book and intellectually intellectually stimulated by the education. But are you really ready to now close it and practice getting inside your body? And that's where it's really uncomfortable. Because we get restless, we get bored, the doubts rise up. So we have to hear the noise in the head. But that's where the magic happens. Yeah, it's that consistency, isn't it? Because it's so hard. Like, even for me, like, you know, even for everyone in day to day life, when we think right, I'm going to do that, you know, and I'm going to do it every day, just that one thing, I'm going to do it every day, and then you know, you lose track, and then you don't end up doing it. And actually your that is not honoring yourself, that is not honoring yourself, like, you know, if I'm making a promise to myself, and then I'm breaking the promise to myself, like that is not honoring me, not only is it not honoring you, but it's breaking down your trust within your within yourself. I mean, how can we build trust in ourselves, if we tell ourselves, we're going to do something, and then we degrade it in little ways. And the way that trust is built, and the way that trust erodes, is generally not in one massive fell swoop of something, right? It's it's little daily, over time, 10 times a day, 20 times a day, week after week, month after month. And that's how we build trust. And that's also how trust is degraded over time. It's such a good point. So I, I sort of imagined today that we were going to talk about like, Oh, give me like five tips on how you can have like a pleasurable birth, like dim the lights, you know, get the right people in your space, have informed consent, all that stuff that we kind of talked about, but we just tapped into the key ingredient, which is working on our internal shame, can you give us some specific things that women can do in pregnancy, to start to bring that up, recognize it heal it?

So first of all, like there is no better time than during pregnancy to be doing this work, because we are so much more susceptible. And we are tapping into you know, that really intuitive brain. So actually, when we are doing or join our pregnancy, during this experience, we are really able to rewire a lot easier than we would be if it wasn't wasn't pregnant. So first of all, and this is really, really uncomfortable is you really just need to sit and just be with yourself quietly. Not with anyone around not with noise, not with music, not with anything, just absolute silence. And it's really actually really uncomfortable for a lot of people to do that. Strangely. I mean, I'm okay with silence. But some people really struggle to sit in silence. But it's sitting with yourself, taking some deep breaths, and just writing some things down writing some things down, like what is coming up for you, you know what is coming up for you in the first instance. The next thing would be to actually take this sort of practice into your just day to day is becoming aware using your awareness. How are you feeling in those moments doing that like shadow work, I find that really is helpful for me to understand what's coming up and what's going on. For me, for example. I'm not going to give an example of the pregnancy, but I'm gonna give an example of like last week, so I'm there, I'm with my kids, and I'm getting so triggered and so angry, I can feel it just bubbling up and I literally just just lose it. And in that moment I am so I've become so good at being aware that I'm aware through the process and I'm trying to you know, sort of mitigate. And then it happens and I'm like, Okay, what's going on? How can I come back from this? How can I prepare this situation? Why am I feeling angry? And in these moments, I'm having an internal conversation with myself. So I really feel I know it sounds quite hard, but actually when you start To practice just becoming aware, and in the present moment of how you're feeling in your emotions, I really think it's then easier to just start to understand a bit more about, okay, why is this coming up for me? And why is this making me feel this way? Or even maybe coming on to Instagram, you know, looking at posts and thinking, oh, you know, it's triggering. It's it's something's triggered you Why is it triggered you like, look at yourself trying to understand like, what is it in that moment that's triggered you? Is it jealousy? Is it shame? Is it worry? Is it fear is it you know, what is coming up for you with our anything that triggers us is a sign of where we're unhealed, right? Anything that triggers us is a sign of where we actually have work to do if we are reacting, it means that we're not at peace with some part of us that has been stimulated by that event, or that feeling or that site or that emotion.

Exactly. In fact, when I, when I had George, I was 100%, about to just throw the towel in completely. Because I literally was so triggered by vaginal birth. I was literally like, I cannot watch but I know better could not hear anyone talking about and everyone's sending me stories. I've literally just had George and I've got all these stories and videos and pictures. And I'm just like, I can't, I can't see it. I can't see it at all. And that is a perfect example of when we are triggered by something, we literally just want to hide away from it. We don't even want to face it. You know that that means we've got some work to do on that. And it takes time. I had incredible labor, it was really euphoric experience absolutely loved my contractions. But it ended up being a situation where just nothing was happening. And intuitively, and I'm so glad I'm so glad I tapped. I'm so glad I did the work. And I was prepared. And I was tapped into my intuition. Because if it carried on, I literally would have ruptured. I, but I knew at that moment, I had to go in for a C section. And I made the decision, I had conversations and I pulled them out of my belly. It was amazing. It was great. All that I had some crazy like flashbacks with my mom. And it was amazing. But at the same time. And this is important because you can have you know, you can have complete autonomy and complete, like control over everything that's going on, but you can still feel traumatized in some ways from it. So I ended up having a C section and I was desperate, absolutely desperate to birth this baby out of my vagina, you know, like, I just wanted this vaginal birth because how is it that I'm here in this space? Helping 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of women all over the world have incredible vaginal birth, and I can't have it myself. And that was just I just was like, what? Like how? That doesn't make sense. That's not fair. That's that was it was anger. I was angry. I was angry. And I was didn't understand. And that made it worse. And after that I literally felt like, I couldn't watch anything. I couldn't have anything to do with it. I thought how am I? I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy of being who I am. I'm not worthy teaching about vaginal birth. How can I teach about vaginal birth? And yeah, that was a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of grief, you know, and it was just horrible. It was horrible. But I understood. I was aware, I was picking up on these triggers. And I was understanding and I was taking myself through it. And now here I am watching vaginal birth talking about vaginal birth. And I'm back in this space, and I feel good talking about it. But it takes time.

One of our most beloved Connecticut homebirth midwives of of a couple decades now has only known surgical birth. And it's really incredible because her clients love her. And she's attended countless beautiful vaginal births. And she's an incredible midwife. And she's an incredible midwife. And somehow her clients understood from her that she knew vaginal birth that she could be the person. We don't earn our place in this industry by having just had picture perfect births. That's not that's there's always the component out of everyone's control. And sometimes we have to face the very real humility of the piece that's out of our control. My My daughter was breech in my second pregnancy and they were talking C section to me before my husband manually turned her later. Anyway. I remember thinking because I had taught hundreds of women by them. And I remember thinking, oh my god, is this my journey? Do I need to know both? Yeah. And it turned out it was my journey turned out to be to overcome that. And to find that voice to say, wait a minute, I don't think this is my path. My intuition said no, because my own mother was born breech. And it was just it felt personal to me. Maybe that's my journey. But I remember thinking maybe this is my journey. But I didn't think I'll be of less value. I almost wondered if I would be of more value. If I would have had to experience that. Do you feel that that's, I want to we want to get back to the conversation. But the DM just yeah, just in your journey, do you feel I'm actually going to, I know now, every time something happens in my life, which doesn't feel good is actually just such a beautiful gift. Now, I really believe that that happened as it happened. And it gave me so much. Like, it just filled me with this wisdom, of actually tuning into my body because I was completely high risk all over the shop. And yet, I still was there in a nice, like midwife led room doing what the hell I wanted to do. I literally navigated the whole experience. I navigated everything. And there was no drama, there was no, you know, because I'd literally done the work right from the beginning, I'd had the conversations and it's leading back into this whole, like trust in self is that trust in self and being able to ultimately like regardless of whatever's happening, be able to navigate with that trust and that intuition and complete confidence in yourself, you know? So we're talking about like, the practices, aren't we about how to really create a good relationship with ourselves a really good trusting relationship with ourselves, for when it comes to birth. And it's not just, you know, I think we mentioned about doing the deep work of understanding our triggers, and then looking at how we can heal that. And sometimes we do need to, you know, maybe do some womb work, or maybe have the conversations or look at doing some other healing practice throughout our pregnancy, to overcome that, but also, we do need to prepare our minds because what a lot of people don't even realize this, but I don't know if you're aware of RAS, the reticular. And what reticular activating system, I talked about this in the book, basically, this is what like creates this confirmation bias. So when we are feeling a certain way about something or I don't know, maybe we're in a cycle of going, I'm going to make it about birth, when the cycle of birth is scary. Birth is fearful birth is, you know, horrific, it's traumatic. What's happening is we are actually our brain is trying to process 11 million pieces of information per second, but it can only let through 40 pieces per second. Yeah, that's insane, isn't it? So imagine, imagine this, this like security guard in your brain, and he's going, hang on, like, I need to like filter through these 11 million pieces of information, and give, give my brain give my person the 40 best pieces of information I can in that second. So if our, if our brain is pre programmed, or we've got this life cycle going on in our mind, then it's just going to feed us exactly what that is. This is why people miss out on so many opportunities. And that's why when people start having a shift in mindset, they're like, Oh, my God, like this happened today, or I bumped into this person or this happened, because actually, what's happening is we're changing what information is coming into our mind. And if we don't understand this, if we don't understand that, by doing, you know, understanding our bodies, do it having the knowledge around, you know, our options, our choices, knowing how to influence like oxytocin, like, the more that we delve into these things, the more that we start to really absorb information. When it comes to our bodies, our birth, then we're just going to be fed the same narrative again, and again, and again. And the same comes with healing. If we're gonna if we're just going to continuously be triggered, it's like cycles, isn't it? You know, breaking cycles, it's going to carry on and carry on until we decide that we are going to change the narrative or decide that we are going to face that particular trigger or that particular thing.

What advice do you have for those women? What do they do with that? They, they look at that feeling? They go deeper within that feeling? They recognize it? I guess that's the first step right, as you said, just becoming aware.

Yeah, absolutely. Like recognizing, like, why you feel that way? If we're talking about you know, orgasms or orgasmic birth or pleasure was pleasurable birth or whatever. If that's making you feel like oh, like, that doesn't feel like nice. Like, why would you be touching yourself? Like, ask yourself why, why why do you feel that way? What could it be like go back? And we all have the absolute capability of time traveling like through our memories, just by taking some time to sit with ourselves and to just take some breaths and to just really to up in to those places those memories and those feelings and the more that you dig into that, the more that it will come up to the surface. And intuitively, you will know you'll go, that's what it is. And you can start to work on that and start to understand the reasons behind it.

Why should a woman want an orgasmic or pleasurable birth?

All women deserve to have a pleasurable birth experience. All women deserve to feel safe, to feel powerful to go through this transformative, you know, spiritual experience. And absolutely enjoy it. Like why wouldn't you want to enjoy birth? Like I just, why wouldn't you? You know, we all want to be able to enjoy such an experience and know that when we meet our baby, like just the absolute euphoria, knowing that we've just had the most like the best possible experience. If we were not designed to enjoy this experience, then you know, as a species, human species like we would be extinct, you know, we would not be continuing to have babies. So it's innately within us that power that passion and the absolute ability to have an enjoyable birth experience.

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.

So what purpose did George's birth serve for you? Now that you can look back and you know you've overcome to what you face like you wouldn't look at vaginal birth now a year later, you've kind of arrived. What was it all for?

I think it's all it's brought me back to this self trust and intuition. And it's really actually, I don't know, triggered some other things in me that I didn't realize that I needed to face and actually bought up bought feelings in me, which actually weren't related to birth. It's so interesting. But I've been through a whole like healing journey this last year. And some of the things that came up were a lot of like abandonment, and things like that as a child and responsibility. And you know, things around that. So it's been like, it's just been sour lessness Yeah, I'm gonna experience tons of that.

Exactly. And I think I think that's what it brought up. Because at that point, I probably did feel like I was like, I am here again, like, it's another lot. It's another grief. It's another abandonment, you know, like, is this how, like, the mom left me, you know, and before that when I was a child, like dad left, and you know, it's this, it's this leaving, isn't it? This this loss. And so his birth actually bought other, like deep, like loss and abandonment inside of me, which I needed to face. And I did some work around that. And I did oh my god, I did the most amazing, like trauma like release, and I was screaming and I was getting like shaking my body. It was it's so intense. And I had a really bad headache afterwards. But it was fascinating. I went back to my inner child and I held her and I said it's okay now and then I stood there, and I told both my parents, you know, my dad's still here. My mom's not but I said to them both. I fucking told them. How I said it's not my fault and it's not me. It's you. And it was incredible. You know? Just amazing.