151. MyMaine Birth: How we Birth Matters, Angela's story

In this episode we discuss: 

• Trigger warning for discussion of traumatic birth and maternal death
• childhood medical experiences that train compliance and silence intuition
• prenatal care without real informed consent
• fear based hospital child birth education classes
• a first hospital birth shaped by interventions, coercion, and postpartum separation
• postpartum struggles, sleep training pressure, and a threat from a pediatrician that changed everything
• home birth in Maine during reports of maternal deaths at a local hospital
• why undisturbed labor and birth matters and how coached pushing can derail the process
• My positive experience inside the Birthworker.com community and The Beauty in Birth, birth photography online community and courses.
• My experience in the freebirth society's MMI program
• what I learned from Whapio about understanding everything

Additional Resources:

MyMaineBirth.com 

Closing song by Kate Sutherland.  Kate's community songs and deep nature connection work can be found here at KateSutherland.ca

Matt Nichols shares his wife's Heather's story from August 2013

Remembering Heather Ann Nichols ❤️

The Guardian Article #1 regarding Free Birth Society titled "Influencers made millions pushing 'wild' births - now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world

The Guardian  Podcast - The BirthKeepers 

Addelaide Meadow - YouTube Video, Woman's Care: How good care paves the way for bad care 

Transcript

Welcome, Warnings, And Freebirth Framing

Angela 0:00

I'm Angela, and I'm a certified birth photographer, experienced doula, childbirth educator, and your host here on the My Main Birth podcast. This is a space where we share the real life stories of families and their unique birth experiences in the beautiful state of Maine. From our state's biggest hospitals to birth center births and home births, every birth story deserves to be heard and celebrated. Whether you're a soon-to-be mom, a seasoned mother, or simply interested in the world of birth, these episodes are for you. Hey everyone, welcome to episode 151 of My Main Birth. In these next several episodes, we're going to be talking more about the difference between the beautiful idea of free birth that can be a perfectly fine choice for many healthy women, and the ideology that was promoted by the company, the Free Birth Society. We're also going to be talking about the very real hospital trauma that happens every day across our country and across the world that can push so many women towards something like free birth. These first two episodes are personal. I'll share my own births, my journey into birth work, what happened with my niece, my time inside the Free Birth Society's Matri Birth Midwifery Institute, and why I left and enrolled in other programs like WAPIO's to find the real answers I was looking for. But first, I just want to say in this episode, I talk about my birth experience that was traumatic for me, and I also talk about maternal death. So if you're not ready for conversations like that, you might want to skip this episode. So diving in, for me, naturally, it all started with my own births. And really, you could say it started so much before that, even with my birth and my mother's birth

Childhood Conditioning Around Medical Authority

Angela 2:02

or her mother's birth. So, really, going back a little more, I was trouble from the beginning. I was a breech baby, and my mom, who was quick to listen to her OB, consented to a cesarean, and that's how I was born. My brother was born two years after me, also via cesarean by the same OB. And then my mom had an ectopic pregnancy at some point after that, and she has this story that her doctor saved her life. I mean, he probably did. He got her right in when he heard what was going on, operated immediately, and saved her life. In her story, that man is a hero. This is relevant as I get into my first birth story. So those were the stories I heard about birth growing up. It wasn't talked about very much, but I knew the story. Other than that, I didn't have any thoughts about birth. It wasn't something I thought about, and definitely wasn't something I cared to experience based on that description. Now, when I was younger, maybe five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven around those years, I would fight at the doctor's office when it was time for them to vaccinate me. I would scream and kick and physically fight when it was time for vaccines. So they would have multiple nurses come in and they would hold me down on the table while the doctor injected me. Anyway, by the time I was 14 or 15, I was submitting to the whole mindset of just do what they tell you to do, a lot more than when I was younger. I mean, they had just been injecting me with who knows what for like my whole life during what felt like basically torture sessions. So I just want to say, if you're doing everything the pediatrician or any doctor says without thinking about it, and you're standing by in the corner of the room while a pediatric staff manhandles your child while they're screaming for them to stop so that you can remain compliant and continue to be a good little girl, you're the only one in the room who has the power to prevent some serious childhood trauma. I mean, I know now, all these years later, that I am not the only one who had trauma from these types of situations. There are many others. I actually suppressed these memories and they didn't come back to me until I was in my 30s. And they came back as vivid memories. Like I can still see the room, I can see the nurses' faces, I can see the doctor's face, I can see the face of my mom standing in the corner while all this happened to me. And I checked with my mom to make sure that this did, in fact, actually happen and wasn't just some weird hallucinations, and she did confirm that it did happen. Anyway, when I was around 16, my mom found out some things which prompted her to immediately send me to a doctor in her OB's office to be immediately put on birth control. I'd only been to the pediatricians before that, and by this point, I'd been thoroughly conditioned through torture session after torture session to submit to doctors and people of authority. And by this point, I had already suppressed all of the earlier fights I had at the pediatricians. I'd completely forgotten it. The whole thing had been reframed by this point. I'd been talked to about my behavior and how it was wrong and how I just needed to behave, and the things that happen at the doctor are just things you need to deal with. Because, of course, what my intuition had been telling me from the beginning was wrong. So I get on birth control and start going to regular visits at the OB now. A perfect shift from the pediatrician straight to the OB.

First Birth Through Hospital Intervention Pipeline

Angela 6:12

I stayed in the system. When I was 18, I started dating my husband, who was 20 at the time. And then by the time I was 21, we found out we were pregnant with our first son. I didn't even think about where I'd go. Of course, I'd go to my OB, the same doctor that I'd been seeing since I was put on birth control, constantly switching birth controls, actually, because I never felt very good on any of them. So I started prenatal appointments at the OB office with a female OB at the same practice where my mother's six-foot-tall male OB worked. Now, mind you, I never knew anything about how my cycles worked. I'd gone to public school, I learned about the body as they taught it there, and that's about it. I definitely didn't know anything about what happens to you when you go to an OB for prenatal care and birth. Still knowing that I hated my experience with needles when I was younger, I was very nervous to have my blood drawn. And that was one of the first things they wanted to do. They didn't say what they were testing for, and I didn't ask. I got a call about a week later, and they told me that they'd found cannabis in my blood work and that they were dropping me as a client. And instead of even considering finding another provider, I decided to fight them on their policy to drop all pregnant women that have only cannabis in their system. I presented them with all of this evidence and they actually changed their office policy and decided to keep me as a patient. I should have switched. I went through the rest of the pregnancy doing exactly what they told me to do. I remember drinking the awful glucola drink and just the whole feeling of having to go through all those appointments, not being presented with any of these things as choices. It's just like, come in next week, we're gonna do this test where you drink this disgusting thing. They literally even said, like, it's this disgusting thing, but you know, we have to do it. Like, no explanation, no informed consent, no options presented, no autonomy. Just this is what we're gonna do next. I'd never been pregnant. This is my first pregnancy, and I never had the influence of anyone who had a normal physiological birth at this point. So I just did what they told me to do. I didn't know any better. I did a bunch of ultrasounds for no reason at all, and I took a childbirth education class that was taught by the hospital. And that class is why I created my childbirth education course called My Autonomous Birth, because this hospital birthing class that I took was a blueprint for interventions, preparing me to accept the cascade that was inevitably awaiting me when my labor began. That hospital course focused primarily on interventions without fostering a shred of confidence. It bombarded me with fear, consistently highlighted how painful birth could be, and repeatedly suggested that drugs were the only solution. You just go in, you get the epidural, it's fine. Okay. I didn't question any of it. It was just like, this is what you do. And the result was a traumatic experience that left me feeling lost for many years. So I went into labor late one night in early July. I decided around 2 a.m. to go to the hospital and they checked me and sent us home. I was only four centimeters or something like that. So we went home and then ended up going back around 6 a.m. My water broke, walking into the hospital in the doorway. Like most hospitals have double doors at the entrance. My water broke in between the front doors, made a mess everywhere as all the shift change nurses were coming in. Not humiliating at all. They got me upstairs, and I find out my mom's doctor is on call. The six-foot-tall male OB, not my female doctor that I was hoping for. So he comes in, tells me they need to break my water some more because it wasn't fully broken. So, whatever. He stuck the hook in me, broke my water. I got the IV, got some pitoacin, and I got the epidural, and I took a nap. Then, all of a sudden, someone must have came in, checked me again. 10 centimeters, time to push. A nurse and my husband each grab a leg, and my mother's six-foot-tall male OB, the same one that pulled me out of her belly 21 years earlier, assumes the position in a chair directly between my legs, and I start coached pushing. Then, about an hour or two later, the doctor decided it was time for an epesiotomy. In my memory, he had the scalpel in his hand, but I started screaming, no, no, no, no, no apesiotomy. And he was like, I'm gonna do it. And I'm like, no, and he's like, I'm gonna do it, and I'm like, no, like screaming, screaming, because I do remember them telling us what an apesiotomy was. Probably because so many women routinely get it in the childbirth education class. And I knew that I did not want that. So he's standing there in between my legs, not sitting anymore. And he's like, I'm gonna cut one, I'm gonna cut one, and we have to, and I'm like, no, like screaming. Ultimately, he actually did not cut an epesiotomy. Through all of that screaming and terror, my baby somehow came out without an epesiotomy. Go figure. He put the baby onto my chest.

Speaker 2 12:07

I never really even held a baby before that. And my first words were, I don't know what to do with him. And let me tell you, they love hearing stuff like that in the hospital. Instead of supporting me in what to do, they whisked that baby away from me so fast. They knew what to do with him. They discovered that I had a low-grade fever of like 100, probably because I was freaking out.

Angela 12:55

That was the only reason. My temperature was slightly increased, but I didn't question it. I sent my husband to be with him, and I was alone in a hospital room, not even sure what just happened. My at that point, my parents, my brother, and my mom's friend came in to the room immediately after and took some pictures of me with no baby, and then I think they left, and I watched all of the movie Air America on TV. This is 2005, so there's like weekend TV marathons. Air America was on like three or four times that weekend. I watched it from beginning to end with commercials before they brought him back to me. I remember my sister-in-law the next day, who was eight months pregnant with my niece Caitlin, came in, coming in to visit us at the hospital the day after. And I was just like, that was so awful.

Speaker 2 14:05

I scared her, which I feel bad about. She probably shouldn't have come to visit me that day. Wasn't ready to talk to a very pregnant woman.

Angela 14:16

But she smiled and was just like, oh, good things babies are so lovable. And I was just like, no, I don't think it was supposed to be like that.

Postpartum, Pediatrics, And Coercion

Angela 14:26

Postpartum was super hard. I had no idea what I was doing. I did everything the pediatrician told me to do to the T. One of the biggest things I remember is the doctor telling me to sleep train him at a very young age and to under no circumstance ever let him nap on me. So I remember just crying in the hallway like so many days, or he would be crying in his crib thinking it was what I had to do. I nursed until about four months old and then just couldn't anymore. I vaccinated him according to schedule. So, so, so, so, so, so many vaccines per visit. I didn't even question it. He started to develop chronic ear infections. They were starting to talk about wanting to put tubes in his ears, and then at his four-year-old, quote-unquote, well child visit, I suggested waiting on the vaccines because I thought they could be related to the chronic ear infections and just overall poor immune system. I was just like, I don't know if these are connected. Like, I didn't, I didn't really know at the time. I was just like, you know, he's getting so many. Like maybe we could just wait on some of these. And the woman snapped on me. Like, I naively brought it up in a more of a could this be related type of manner? And she was like, if you don't vaccinate him at this visit, I'm calling the state and reporting you to CPS as soon as you leave. And I wasn't even like saying I didn't want to. I was just asking if it's possible that his chronic ear infections were related to the amount of vaccines that he was getting. That visit was so scary for me, I was terrified and let that lady vaccinate him. She completely turned back to nice mode, which I feel like happens to so many, so many people who like are experiencing bullying in a medical setting where they're like bully you into something and then like they turn around and they're like, oh, like it was such a pleasure serving you or whatever. Like this lady, like, after she got what she wanted, turned around, she gave us this book when we were leaving, commented about how it was her kids' favorite book, like we were like, you know, chatting like we were friends or something. I'm like, yeah. Things changed after that. I discovered you don't need to take your kids to a pediatrician if you don't want to. And it's perfectly fine to see a family practice doctor in the event that you actually do want to talk with a doctor for something. This was long before the term anti-vaxxers was a popular thing on social media. So I've been an anti-vaxxer since before that was even a thing. And I also just want to say if you vaccinate your kids, like I feel like we can be friends still, you know? Like, I believe in autonomy. I believe that I should be allowed to do what I want to do with my family and make my own choices, and that you should be able to do what you want to do with your own family and make your own choices. And like, we can still be friends, you know, this whole anti-vaxxer, pro-vaxxer. Like, I don't feel at all any sort of way when I'm working with a family at their birth and they choose to vaccinate their kids. Like, as long as they have all of the information, do whatever you want to do. Like, I don't, I don't feel any sort of way. So, anyway, we moved to Maine right around the time my oldest son turned seven. We got a Catahula puppy named Lily for his seventh birthday, and also

Finding Healing Through Home Birth

Angela 18:05

started our homeschool journey around this time. When my son was eight, I discovered I was pregnant again and was very scared because during the years that followed my oldest son's birth, I swore I would never get pregnant again. Terrified of birth. The thought of it was so scary to me. And the other moms in my homeschool group gave me the name of a midwife who lived out in the woods, and as soon as I started seeing her, I felt better. Like I wouldn't have to go through what I went through the first time. I'd found another way. The prenatal appointments were super helpful for me during that pregnancy. I felt so prepared as we got close to the birth. One of the big things that came up during that pregnancy was moms kept dying who had been on the labor and delivery floor at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, the summer that I was planning to birth at home. That's the closest hospital to my house, so my midwife said the plan was to go to Dover Foxcroft if there was an emergency. Word on the street was there was some sort of really bad staph infection going around the hospital. And by the beginning of August 2013, we had heard of at least four moms that died because of this. One case that was publicly talked about was Heather Nichols, who gave birth to her daughter, Ruby Ann, at EMMC on or around August 1st and died on August 8th from necrotizing fasciitis, a rare and aggressive bacteria infection. Her husband, Matt Nichols, publicly shared the story to raise awareness. I have the article linked in the show notes. I think of Ruby Ann and the others every year when my son celebrates his birthday, knowing that these other kids are celebrating their birthdays without a mother. And it's really, really sad. So that was a really heavy thing that was going on as my due date approached and just solidified like I'm not going to the hospital. I really didn't think much about it. I was just like, I'm not going there. The day I went into labor was the one day that my midwife was not able to come to my birth. She was having a family party that day and had told me months ahead of time about this one day that she'd have a backup for. And it was the day that I ended up going into labor, which turned out to be totally fine because she had an amazing student at the time. Her name was Katie, and she showed up for me so beautifully. It was exactly what I needed. She didn't manage me at all. I remember her sitting in the corner and just letting me do whatever I needed to do. She was there for support when I had questions, but she mostly just left me alone. When I got close to pushing, that's when my midwife's backup got there. I'd never met her before, and in hindsight, really wish she never came. Having someone you've never met in your home for the first time when you're birthing is kind of weird. And I had preferences she had no clue about. Like, I really wanted skin to skin, and she showed up for the pushing, and very soon after birth, she swaddled my baby up so tight and commented, I love swaddling babies, cutest little baby burritos, and like whatever. I didn't even want to disappoint her by unwrapping him, even though I'd never even met her before. Obviously, in hindsight, I wish I'd unwrapped him right after she did that. Who even cares? But that's the autonomy piece that I didn't fully understand yet at that point. Fortunately, the other midwife got there not long before my baby arrived, so it was too late for her to mess with me enough to screw anything up. But I didn't really like her energy. Overall, though, it was a super happy home birth. Postpartum was completely. Different from the first time. We rested and co-slept, and it was really, really great. After his birth, I was shocked that my experience was the complete opposite of what it was the first time. Not long after, I took a weekend-long doula course and started going to some of my friends' births. When I started to get a little more serious about it around 2018, I decided I wanted to do doula support and birth photography. So I upgraded my camera gear, bought a bunch of new lenses and everything I needed to do it right. And exactly one week after that purchase, I found out I was pregnant again. This time I decided to hire a birth photographer. I also went with the same midwife. I share more about this pregnancy back in episode 44 of the podcast. So I'm not going to go into all of the details of her pregnancy. Basically, I wasn't doing any tests or ultrasounds. My midwife did talk me into an ultrasound by 36, 37 weeks to check on the location of the placenta. I didn't want to know if it was a girl or a boy, but my husband kind of did. So this ultrasound was an excuse for him to find out, even though we were so, so close. We did find out at that appointment we were having a girl, which we pretty much already knew. But over the next few weeks, I had a lot of trouble relaxing. And I thought that was keeping me from going into labor. But no matter what I was doing to try and relax, I wasn't able to relax. I had a lot of predromal labor starting around 37 weeks. The day I went into labor, I was 42 weeks and had an appointment that day with my midwife to talk about what our options were. I remember thinking that I was definitely going to be pregnant forever. I did not think I was ever not going to be pregnant. My husband and I left for the appointment at

When Support Disrupts Labor Flow

Angela 23:58

the midwife's house mid-morning. She was on the other side of Newport and we're in Old Town, so kind of a far ride. We hardly made it to Bangor when my husband made the call to turn around. I'm so thankful he turned around and didn't just keep going because things were starting to actually become regular. And as he turned around, I finally started to relax. It was a beautiful fall day. It was warm. All the colors were so pretty. I was starting to go into the altered states. My husband started making food when we got back home, and I went upstairs and started listening to music and hanging out with my dog. And I remember that time period of my labor to be so amazing and incredible. I was having contractions, but they were not painful, and it was just such a good day, and everything was great. In hindsight, I was experiencing the altered states of labor that are such a special thing to experience. My space was completely undisturbed. My mindset was already fragile. And for me, I really needed an undisturbed birth. I didn't know that ahead of time, though, and I didn't communicate that to my birth team. We didn't talk much about birth preferences during those appointments. I just assumed it would be mostly undisturbed, like with my son's birth, when the student sat in the corner for most of the labor and didn't disturb me. My birth photographer came in first. She waved me and stepped back into the other room. Perfect, not disturbing. I based my fly-on-the-wall birth package off of the way that she showed up for me, because she really understood her role there. And if she were to talk to me too much, I really feel like she would have messed with me. So she waved, stepped back, and then my midwife survived, maybe 10 or 15 minutes later. And the first thing I remember her saying to me, which I didn't say back in episode 44 because I don't want anyone to think anything bad of her. And still at this point, I I understand which I'm going to get to at the end. I understand why she did what she did, and it's okay. And I'm not mad or upset about this. But I remember her walking in, and the first thing she said to me that I remember was, let me check ya. Out of either love or desire to help or just how she did things, I don't know, but that wasn't really a question. Do you want to be checked? It was just like, let's do this. Okay, so we did. And she discovered I was 10 centimeters and said, Why don't you give a little push? Okay. At some point in this time, her assistant also arrived, and out of no fault of hers, I started talking to her about just random things, just like as a host would, who's having someone over their house who they aren't super comfortable with. And that pulled me even more out of whatever altered state that I had been in not long before. And this is where contractions became painful. Like very painful. And with each contraction, the midwives were encouraging me to push. And then my husband came up. He'd finished making food and he heard them telling me to push when he walked in. So he started telling me to push too. And that was not good for me. I was instantly mad at him for telling me to push. I didn't realize I didn't need to push, but I I didn't like that he was telling me to. Which is exactly what happened to my cervix. After about two hours of on and off coached pushing, I laid on the ground, covered my face with my hair, and was like, everybody leave me alone. I'm gonna lay here and cry. Fine, but leave me alone while I lay here and cry. Like that's just all I want to do right now. And that's when my midwife said, No, no, I think I should check you again. So she checked me again and discovered I had a swollen cervical lip. She held it through a contraction, and my water broke at this time during that check. My water had not been broken before that. I'm not sure if she did that on purpose or not. There wasn't much discussion about it. And then she encouraged me to get out of the bed and birth in a vertical position, which was one thing that I originally did want to do. And then my baby came out and I got to hold her right away, and it was awesome. The placenta came out about 45 minutes later, whole and perfect. I had so many questions after her birth, though. Again, like, what is the truth about all of this? Like, what just happens? Is kind of what I felt like again, where I didn't really feel like that after my my second son's birth, my first home birth. But again, I was kind of like, what just happened? Looking back on it afterwards. It was hard, really, really hard. But I was happy. Like, postpartum was so, so good for me. I was so happy to have my baby. She napped on me for every single nap. We co-slept. She never went to the doctor until she was like five months old or six months old. And at that visit, I just ended up telling the doctor the birth story and showing her like the slideshow of photos of birth photos. And like she hardly checked the baby. She's like, Yeah, baby's fine. You can do what feels right to you, you know. So initially, my story about my birth was my midwife saved me, but it kind of felt like a cowboy move. But I said things like, I'm so glad you did that maneuver. Like, I was really struggling. Like, I'm so glad you you did that. And like, and then I had my baby right after that. Like, I didn't really look at the bigger picture until a few years later. And I was just sort of sitting with those thoughts for about a year or two. About two years after my daughter's birth, I photographed my good friend's home birth. And witnessing her birth was so beautiful. Her husband caught her baby in the tub with her, a total dream for a first home birth to photograph. But when he brought the baby

Birth Work, Freebirth, And Photo Rights

Angela 31:10

up, her midwife kind of grabbed the baby and quickly put the baby on the mom's chest. And I can see where she's coming from, but a few months after that, the dad, I heard him say that he felt like something was taken from him in that moment when she did that. And it made me wonder why couldn't he have held the baby a little longer and given the mom a second to come back into her body, if that's how their labor and birth naturally flowed. I went on to witness some absolutely horrible hospital births, terrible, terrible things that I will never ever forget. Far, far worse than my first birth experience. Epesiotomies that were actually cut, even though the mom was screaming no, and so many other things that I'm not gonna get into today. I witnessed some more home births that left me with questions. And about a year after photographing that first birth is when I decided to start this podcast. I wanted to hear other women's stories, all different types of birth stories. I wanted to learn more. One of the early episodes was with a woman many of you know, Naya, and later I photographed her free birth. Watching her undisturbed birth was so incredibly powerful. Over the time that I started to learn more about the way that she was doing things, I was like, oh, if I ever give birth again, I would definitely free birth. Now at this point, I had still like I had heard Naya mention the Free Birth Society, but I never like really looked into them. But shortly after photographing her birth, this woman who I'd never heard of before, Emily Saldea from the Free Birth Society, emailed me asking about purchasing the copyright to Naya's birth photos. So I sent her a very reasonable price and never heard back. About six months after photographing Naya's birth, my then 18-year-old niece got pregnant, and she decided that she wanted a home birth. Now, this is late winter, early spring of 2024 now, and I recommended a woman to my niece who was presenting herself as a traditional midwife. But as my niece's pregnancy progressed, I began to notice red flags. This woman was unsure, seemed to be leaning more on the medical side of things, and kept rescheduling because she was supposedly always, quote unquote, at another birth.

My Niece’s Story... when you're midwife fakes it til she makes it

Angela 36:18

In the next episode, my niece Katelyn shares her story. So check it out. See her perspective on all that. Moving on. The day my niece gave birth was actually the first day of classes for MMI. I had signed up in late August just before it started. At this point, I wasn't really a big listener of the Free Birth Society podcast. I'd listened to some, but I was never like an FBS fangirl. No offense if you were. But after Emily emailed me about the photos after Naya's birth, I started thinking about it all and I was like, maybe I should check out this Free Birth Society thing Naya keeps talking about. I'd heard her talk of them throughout her pregnancy without really looking into it or following them on Instagram. I was kind of busy with other things and I didn't really pay any attention to them until a month or so after Naya's birth when I got that email. And even then, I didn't go that deep. I was never part of their private community. I was still finishing up my childbirth educator training with Kylie over at birthworker.com, and I loved my experience and her program and all of the support that I got from everyone in that community. Her community, still to this day, is one I really enjoy being a part of. Later that year, I also became a certified birth photographer through Tavia Redburn, a birth photography coach who is also amazing. And I had been following her since 2018 and was so excited to join her community network, also. So in 2023, I had some very positive experiences with online coaches and programs. I remember New Year's Eve 2023, I did listen to a Free Birth Society podcast. Emily shared her interview on the terrain theory, where she unpacked Free Birth with two fathers. And I really enjoyed that episode. I thought she did a good job and was kind of like, ah, that's interesting. And a lot of the things she talked about resonated a lot. Shortly after that, I discovered that they were using the photos from Naya's birth on the front headline for their website and in different marketing materials without purchasing the rights to use them. I actually might have signed up for the RBK that year if I didn't find that when I found it. I was definitely a little rubbed the wrong way since they had reached out to inquire about the rights to use them. They knew they needed them for copyrighted photos. But overall, I kind of just chalked it up to, oh, this is a good cause. And I actually looked into Marin's program with Indie Birth and was really torn between MMI and the Indie Birth program. And I assumed the MMI was priced the way it was because of their clear and documented drama with Indie Birth. More on this in another episode coming this week. So for some reason, I don't even know why, I chose MMI. I remember Naya called me or left me a voice message, something just after I signed up, and she was like, hey, you joined MMI? And I was like, Yeah. She was just like, it's so much money. And I remember thinking that that was kind of weird, and like she didn't seem super excited for me. Now I know it's because she knew the program was a complete scam. My husband actually reported the first payment as a fraudulent payment because he was like, no, I don't think this is a good idea. And I made him call and cancel the dispute. But he knew, just like the partners of most of the other women knew that I've talked to about. This topic. The first quarter was shockingly thin, just a few short

Inside MMI, FBS Fallout, And Closure

Angela 44:06

videos per week, many of them simply reading chapters from a cheap book you could buy on Amazon. But still, I was excited for the birth portion. I did monthly payments until December, and then I switched to a pay in full option, and they said it would be a thousand dollars in credit card fees. And knowing that credit card fees aren't that much because I use them for my business, I still paid it. So I paid $13,000 in total for MMI, even after seeing how thin the first quarter was. Unfortunately, the deeper we got, the more you could see how lacking the content was. By the time the Reddit threads and deeper conversations started, I had already mentally checked out of the MMI community. I had signed up for Adelaide Meadows' Born Through Movement course in November of 2024, and also signed up for Wapio's year-long birthkeeper cohort that started in February of 2025. Seeing the depth and integrity of those other programs made the gaps in MMI even more obvious. I withdrew voluntarily in April of 2025. In the fall of 2025, The Guardian published their finding after a year-long investigation into the Free Birth Society, followed by a powerful podcast series released in late November and early December. Both of those are linked in the show notes. Those pieces laid out so much of what had been happening behind the scenes, the harm, the patterns, the outcomes. They were incredibly important to make public. When I had considered joining MMI and was doing research on Free Birth Society, I found some accounts of what had happened with their earlier Facebook group, but it was very unclear what exactly it was all about. And the Guardian investigation did a great job really exploring the whole story of FBS. Now back to my story for a minute. With my story of my youngest's birth going the way that it did, it was very easy for me to fall into the free birth society dogma of my midwife sabotaged my birth. I want to make it very clear that I do not currently believe that. It was actually Adelaide Meadow that put out a YouTube video called Woman's Service: How Bad Care Paves the Way for Good Care. And I think she put that out in like April of 2025. So, right as all this was just unfolding. And I'm going to link it in the show notes because it was an incredible resource for me. And in that video, she broke down the myth of a midwifery sabotage. And I'm very thankful for her perspective on that because it changed my perspective after getting wrapped up in FPS for a hot minute. And now, especially after going through Wapio's year-long cohort, I feel so much more healed in regards to all of the things that I've talked about here today. One of the things that keeps coming back to me is Wappio asks her students to make a commitment to understand everything on the planet, not just birth, but everything. Because when we truly seek to understand why people do what they do, the wounds underneath, the choices, the fear driving the dogma, the pain shaping the systems, we begin to see the larger picture of life itself. You don't have to agree with it, you don't have to participate in it, but understanding it, that changes everything. It softens the reactivity, it clarifies your own choices. It turns judgment into compassion and confusion into wisdom. But that idea has stayed with me through every conversation in this series, and it's why I'm doing this work. Not to tear things down, but to understand them more deeply. In the next episode, I'll be sharing my niece Caitlin's birth story, and the rest of this week I'm going to be sharing a series of episodes exploring the difference between the beautiful idea of free birth, which can be a perfectly fine option for many healthy women, from the ideology that was promoted by the company, the Free Birth Society, the discourage preparation, skilled support when truly needed, and nuance. There is no nuance. So stay tuned.

Closing Poem And Music

Speaker 48:40

Follow the walk of the wild ones into the woods and the darkness. Rebirth the ways of the ancient ones whose tracks were washed away in blood. It falls to us now to open up and taste beyond what we've been fed. Take up the Phoenix, fire cleansing, change to light the path and said, Follow the walk of the wild ones into the woods and the darkness. Rebirth the ways of the ancient ones whose tracks were washed away. It falls to us now to open up and taste beyond what we've been fed. Take up the phoenix, our cleansing, change you like the patent. Step by step through the unknown, I'll be overlighting y'all be mine. In darkness, let love like the way to feed the soil of changing times. Step by step through the unknown, I'll be overlighting y'all be mine. In darkness, let love light the way to feed the soil of changing times. Follow the walk of the wild ones. Into the woods and the darkness, rebirth the ways of the ancient ones, whose tracks were washed away in blood. It falls to us now to open up and taste beyond believing. Take up the Phoenix, fire cleansing, change to light the unset. Step by step through the unknown, I'll be online, you'll be mine. In darkness, let love light the way to feed the soil of changing times. Step by step through the unknown, I'll be online and you'll be mine. In darkness, let love light the way to feed the soil of changing times.