Midwife of 44 years here. This is hands down THE most powerful and THE most insightful thing I have read or seen since the advent of Instagram sharing about birth. I have been bemoaning everything you speak of for the last 10 years but have felt like a lonely voice in the forest. You captured it all so eloquently. You have created so much clarity with your words. With your permission I would so love to be able to give this Ode to Women to my clients in * printed * form. The old fashioned way lol.
I felt the same way. 45 hr long freebirth attempt with a self transfer to a hospital to find a massive infection and a very stressed baby that ended in the c-section that I knew would likely happen should I make the choice to
Go in. Yet! My girl is vibrant and intelligent-just precocious in the best ways. I’ve been conscious about her gut and with her body needing some extra unwinding. We breastfeed for 2 full years... AND I know of some very NOT vibrant free birth babies who struggle massively at 2,3,4 years old. Is that because of their birth? Of course not! But the notion that birth alone sets the path for a child is just not true
I deeply appreciated this post. I did not achieve my desired homebirths but what I did gain, asides from my beautiful children was my biggest life lesson in humility 💕
your words soothed my heart today, as another mother who planned for two private homebirths and ended up with surgical births. the freebirth community is lost on me - I left a prenatal meetup that filled me with horror to hear a mother say it would be an honor to die in childbirth rather than to seek any form of medical care. I’ve also had an ayahuasca ceremony where the medicine specifically told me that c sections were beautiful LOL. There is room for so many multitudes of beautiful birth stories in this world. And I choose gratitude for the options I had, as both my surgeons were so deeply loving and kind to me and my babies.
There is so much wisdom in this. It takes a lot of subtlety to define the often hazy middle ground between the stories we get sold and the reality of life in its truth, of the experience raw and real. Without tailoring the experience so it can be reflected to others. Life is something to live and breathe, not to own and exhibit. Thank you.
Thank you, Freya! It takes courage to share that and I totally relate. I was absolutely blindsided by my homebirth turned c-section but it truly was one of the best gifts of my life. I'd be sooo preachy if my birth went how I envisioned! I no longer judge other women for how they birth as if I know better and have all the answers. I let go of all those freebirth beliefs and it's quite "freeing" actually. Whatever your story is I'm proud of you ☺️ welcome to mom life!! It is constantly humbling me! 😅
Wow! So many of my own feelings about birth so well articulated.
Birth is important but not the be all end all in your mothering journey.
It is just a day or a few days that we can recover, repair and rebound with resilience from. As I tell women who are looking for counsel as they enter the childbearing continuum- there will be a journey to the underworld at some point. We can’t know when that will be, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, all three. We all have challenges and please try not to compare your journey to other women’s. We’re all fighting unseen battles and facing obstacles within our mothering and lives. Radicalism gets the views and attention, yes. I’m finding more and more that the truth is often somewhere in the middle, not announcing itself, without dogma, ego or gold stars.
I appreciate your honesty and willingness to change your mind, and admit when you were engaging in harmful ideologies.
Thank you for sharing this. I didn't end up being able to have my desired homebirth and spent way too much time wondering what was wrong with me or what work or hidden shadows I hadnt dealt with. That obviously wasn't a healthy or helpful path to walk down and I wish there was more messaging like what's in this beautiful post out there. 🙏
I wish I’d read this before my failed homebirth. I did everything right. The shame and weight of what comes with a failed homebirth plunged me into a self loathing spiral in a time when I should have been proud and soaking up my new motherhood. Everything in those first few weeks was tinged with failure.
Online birth culture is dangerous, In hindsight I don’t know what I was even thinking trying. I’m mad at myself for being sucked into the instagram glamour of it all. I didn’t nearly have enough support or knowledge around me. Naive. While I do think western birth is too medicalised there needs to be space for mothers to birth how they feel safest without judgement.
Thank you for sharing your words, and kudos to you for being steadfast in your integrity. And from someone who had their birth forcibly dissected in a court of law, enjoy the gift of privacy bestowed upon you and good for you not caving to share your birth story.
I lovingly suggest that instead of ‘failed homebirth’, you challenge yourself and use different language. Unplanned hospital birth? It takes the morality and shame (which shouldn’t even be there) out of it. Much love.
Why? To deny my reality? To make it more comfortable for you to read? Whether or not I ended up delivering in a hospital the home birth still failed. The pool still burst flooding my living room.
My baby still had shoulder dystocia and I still failed to deliver at home - none of that isn’t true. I don’t carry the shame anymore it was 3 years ago. We are allowed to fail, we are allowed to do hard things and we are allowed to be in discomfort. I lovingly challenge you to not ask a woman to reword her reality so it’s more comfortable to read. I don’t need to change my narrative - thanks though ❤️
Freya, your wisdom and humility is refreshing in a world where Freebirth™ ideology and aesthetic birth photos monopolize our screens. This essay sounds so much like the conversations I have had with my friends over the past couple of years. I don't ever save newsletters but I'm keeping this one!
Oh I love this article so very much. My easiest breastfeeding journey was with my son (c section). The euphoric bonding i felt for my first daughter (ventouse delivery) was indescribable. My 2nd daughter (unassisted homebirth) was such a difficult breastfeeding journey and I was crippled with post natal depression for over a year following her (painfree) homebirth. Although, the fact I discovered that her father, my then partner, was cheating on me 12 hours before I went in labour was (in my opinion) the cause of the depression.
Also, the sentence "A situation has been created where the death of an identity feels more scary than the death of a child" needs to be printed out and put on bumperstickers.....in my humble opinion. All the love to you and your beautiful family Freya xxxx
Oh my god, how healing it is to read this. Also a homebirth transfer turned c section at 42 weeks. I know I did everything I had to do to bring my baby into the world safely and yet I felt so burdened with the feeling that I had failed, that I wasn’t strong/crunchy enough or some dumb narrative like this. I know deep in my bones none of that was true, but I felt serious jealously and sadness about it, truly because of the online culture of birth. I’m so grateful to have been in the hospital because I had a lot of trouble feeding my baby and the nurses helped us so much. It was a blessing. My bond with her is wildly strong, we are so interconnected and our birth ending didn’t take away from the beauty of our story in the least. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I needed to read this.
Thank you Freya for so eloquently sharing your journey with birth & the social media glamorization of home/free birth. I am someone who was swept up in that prior to actually birthing in the 2 years before I had a long, challenging home birth turned c-section birth. For years I worked through the PTSD and so much shame about how it went. It was only in the care of well seasoned midwives, former nurses turned EMDR therapists and grandmother doulas that I was able to heal, accept and forgive the way the birth went. I have a gorgeous, thriving healthy spit fire 14 year old who’s more than equipped for this wild time we’re living in. She is well, I healed. I definitely think the underpinnings for my difficulty was from biomechanics of the pelvic bowl/previous scar tissue and nervous system disregulation that affected those tissues. I did everything “right” to prepare.
I went on to have another home birth to c-section birth which was a complete reclamation from my first experience because I was able to stay present, feel supported by a loving birth team and trust that both my son & I were in the best hands to bring him safely earthside. He’s also thriving at age 11.
Just wanted to share these bits of my story and say thank you for your words.
Wow!! Freya! I almost never comment on anything online, because I find it to be obsolete to do so. But this... you've shined the light on a very, very, very dark corner of female trauma and competition and delusions! Thank you for this.
As someone who had the most lovely homebirth after a lifetime of being not just scared but TERRIFIED of birth, I soooo relate to everything you wrote here.
This is so spot on! It couldn't hit harder for me even if it tried. And your post is not trying anything and at the same time is the most accurate and the most unpretentious piece on birth I have ever read.
Freya. I will be reading this again and again. I am awaiting the birth of my 2nd baby. My first was born via C-section after a hoped-for, ideologically-charged homebirth attempt. You are SO RIGHT that birth for all its importance is just one moment. I was actually a bit confused by how much I liked and bonded with my baby because all the crunchy birth folks on IG had me thinking the whole thing was a wash. I’m very appalled and ashamed to admit that but very happy to have come a lonngggg way since then.
Also love your discretion in not splashing your birth story all over the place just yet, or possibly never at all.
Midwife of 44 years here. This is hands down THE most powerful and THE most insightful thing I have read or seen since the advent of Instagram sharing about birth. I have been bemoaning everything you speak of for the last 10 years but have felt like a lonely voice in the forest. You captured it all so eloquently. You have created so much clarity with your words. With your permission I would so love to be able to give this Ode to Women to my clients in * printed * form. The old fashioned way lol.
as a woman who’s baby was born via c section after a home birth transfer, this healed a part of me that’s been hurting for a long time ❤️ thank you
I felt the same way. 45 hr long freebirth attempt with a self transfer to a hospital to find a massive infection and a very stressed baby that ended in the c-section that I knew would likely happen should I make the choice to
Go in. Yet! My girl is vibrant and intelligent-just precocious in the best ways. I’ve been conscious about her gut and with her body needing some extra unwinding. We breastfeed for 2 full years... AND I know of some very NOT vibrant free birth babies who struggle massively at 2,3,4 years old. Is that because of their birth? Of course not! But the notion that birth alone sets the path for a child is just not true
YES ME TOO ❤️🩹
me three
Same
I deeply appreciated this post. I did not achieve my desired homebirths but what I did gain, asides from my beautiful children was my biggest life lesson in humility 💕
your words soothed my heart today, as another mother who planned for two private homebirths and ended up with surgical births. the freebirth community is lost on me - I left a prenatal meetup that filled me with horror to hear a mother say it would be an honor to die in childbirth rather than to seek any form of medical care. I’ve also had an ayahuasca ceremony where the medicine specifically told me that c sections were beautiful LOL. There is room for so many multitudes of beautiful birth stories in this world. And I choose gratitude for the options I had, as both my surgeons were so deeply loving and kind to me and my babies.
There is so much wisdom in this. It takes a lot of subtlety to define the often hazy middle ground between the stories we get sold and the reality of life in its truth, of the experience raw and real. Without tailoring the experience so it can be reflected to others. Life is something to live and breathe, not to own and exhibit. Thank you.
Thank you, Freya! It takes courage to share that and I totally relate. I was absolutely blindsided by my homebirth turned c-section but it truly was one of the best gifts of my life. I'd be sooo preachy if my birth went how I envisioned! I no longer judge other women for how they birth as if I know better and have all the answers. I let go of all those freebirth beliefs and it's quite "freeing" actually. Whatever your story is I'm proud of you ☺️ welcome to mom life!! It is constantly humbling me! 😅
Wow! So many of my own feelings about birth so well articulated.
Birth is important but not the be all end all in your mothering journey.
It is just a day or a few days that we can recover, repair and rebound with resilience from. As I tell women who are looking for counsel as they enter the childbearing continuum- there will be a journey to the underworld at some point. We can’t know when that will be, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, all three. We all have challenges and please try not to compare your journey to other women’s. We’re all fighting unseen battles and facing obstacles within our mothering and lives. Radicalism gets the views and attention, yes. I’m finding more and more that the truth is often somewhere in the middle, not announcing itself, without dogma, ego or gold stars.
I appreciate your honesty and willingness to change your mind, and admit when you were engaging in harmful ideologies.
Peace to you and your family.💕
Thank you for sharing this. I didn't end up being able to have my desired homebirth and spent way too much time wondering what was wrong with me or what work or hidden shadows I hadnt dealt with. That obviously wasn't a healthy or helpful path to walk down and I wish there was more messaging like what's in this beautiful post out there. 🙏
I wish I’d read this before my failed homebirth. I did everything right. The shame and weight of what comes with a failed homebirth plunged me into a self loathing spiral in a time when I should have been proud and soaking up my new motherhood. Everything in those first few weeks was tinged with failure.
Online birth culture is dangerous, In hindsight I don’t know what I was even thinking trying. I’m mad at myself for being sucked into the instagram glamour of it all. I didn’t nearly have enough support or knowledge around me. Naive. While I do think western birth is too medicalised there needs to be space for mothers to birth how they feel safest without judgement.
Thank you for sharing your words, and kudos to you for being steadfast in your integrity. And from someone who had their birth forcibly dissected in a court of law, enjoy the gift of privacy bestowed upon you and good for you not caving to share your birth story.
I lovingly suggest that instead of ‘failed homebirth’, you challenge yourself and use different language. Unplanned hospital birth? It takes the morality and shame (which shouldn’t even be there) out of it. Much love.
Why? To deny my reality? To make it more comfortable for you to read? Whether or not I ended up delivering in a hospital the home birth still failed. The pool still burst flooding my living room.
My baby still had shoulder dystocia and I still failed to deliver at home - none of that isn’t true. I don’t carry the shame anymore it was 3 years ago. We are allowed to fail, we are allowed to do hard things and we are allowed to be in discomfort. I lovingly challenge you to not ask a woman to reword her reality so it’s more comfortable to read. I don’t need to change my narrative - thanks though ❤️
I’m so sorry, that wasn’t my intent.
Freya, your wisdom and humility is refreshing in a world where Freebirth™ ideology and aesthetic birth photos monopolize our screens. This essay sounds so much like the conversations I have had with my friends over the past couple of years. I don't ever save newsletters but I'm keeping this one!
Oh I love this article so very much. My easiest breastfeeding journey was with my son (c section). The euphoric bonding i felt for my first daughter (ventouse delivery) was indescribable. My 2nd daughter (unassisted homebirth) was such a difficult breastfeeding journey and I was crippled with post natal depression for over a year following her (painfree) homebirth. Although, the fact I discovered that her father, my then partner, was cheating on me 12 hours before I went in labour was (in my opinion) the cause of the depression.
Also, the sentence "A situation has been created where the death of an identity feels more scary than the death of a child" needs to be printed out and put on bumperstickers.....in my humble opinion. All the love to you and your beautiful family Freya xxxx
Oh my god, how healing it is to read this. Also a homebirth transfer turned c section at 42 weeks. I know I did everything I had to do to bring my baby into the world safely and yet I felt so burdened with the feeling that I had failed, that I wasn’t strong/crunchy enough or some dumb narrative like this. I know deep in my bones none of that was true, but I felt serious jealously and sadness about it, truly because of the online culture of birth. I’m so grateful to have been in the hospital because I had a lot of trouble feeding my baby and the nurses helped us so much. It was a blessing. My bond with her is wildly strong, we are so interconnected and our birth ending didn’t take away from the beauty of our story in the least. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I needed to read this.
Thank you Freya for so eloquently sharing your journey with birth & the social media glamorization of home/free birth. I am someone who was swept up in that prior to actually birthing in the 2 years before I had a long, challenging home birth turned c-section birth. For years I worked through the PTSD and so much shame about how it went. It was only in the care of well seasoned midwives, former nurses turned EMDR therapists and grandmother doulas that I was able to heal, accept and forgive the way the birth went. I have a gorgeous, thriving healthy spit fire 14 year old who’s more than equipped for this wild time we’re living in. She is well, I healed. I definitely think the underpinnings for my difficulty was from biomechanics of the pelvic bowl/previous scar tissue and nervous system disregulation that affected those tissues. I did everything “right” to prepare.
I went on to have another home birth to c-section birth which was a complete reclamation from my first experience because I was able to stay present, feel supported by a loving birth team and trust that both my son & I were in the best hands to bring him safely earthside. He’s also thriving at age 11.
Just wanted to share these bits of my story and say thank you for your words.
Wow!! Freya! I almost never comment on anything online, because I find it to be obsolete to do so. But this... you've shined the light on a very, very, very dark corner of female trauma and competition and delusions! Thank you for this.
As someone who had the most lovely homebirth after a lifetime of being not just scared but TERRIFIED of birth, I soooo relate to everything you wrote here.
This is so spot on! It couldn't hit harder for me even if it tried. And your post is not trying anything and at the same time is the most accurate and the most unpretentious piece on birth I have ever read.
Freya, this feels like one of the most important things you’ve written.
Thank you for sharing your perspective and bringing us to the grey areas and messy middles.
What you speak to is what women need. Keep it up x
Freya. I will be reading this again and again. I am awaiting the birth of my 2nd baby. My first was born via C-section after a hoped-for, ideologically-charged homebirth attempt. You are SO RIGHT that birth for all its importance is just one moment. I was actually a bit confused by how much I liked and bonded with my baby because all the crunchy birth folks on IG had me thinking the whole thing was a wash. I’m very appalled and ashamed to admit that but very happy to have come a lonngggg way since then.
Also love your discretion in not splashing your birth story all over the place just yet, or possibly never at all.
I feel like we’d be friends if we met 💛