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BIRTHFIT Podcast featuring Elizabeth Bachner

BIRTHFIT Podcast featuring Elizabeth Bachner

BIRTHFIT Podcast Episode73 featuring Elizabeth Bachner

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What’s up, BIRTHFIT? This is Dr. Lindsey Mathews, your BIRTHFIT founder. And today we have an awesome podcast for you. It is a kind of sprinkle or a little dose of what you might have gotten at the BIRTHFIT Summit, if you were sitting in the front row listening to the one and only Elizabeth Bachner who is owner, clinical director and midwife at GraceFull Birthing Center.


There are also other midwives at GraceFull Birthing Center which you have actually heard from, Jocelyn, a few episodes back, but today we get Elizabeth Bachner. And this is a sample of her talk that she gave to the BIRTHFIT tribe at the BIRTHFIT Summit that happened in the beginning of July.


So originally, Elizabeth is from the east coast where she attended Tufts University. She entered the corporate world — she was working in San Francisco — and became frustrated with big business and kind of started discovering different ways to live, different lifestyles, and basically listening to the universe. She left the States for five years to live, work and travel all over the globe. She visited places such as Africa, Europe, England, and the Middle East and Australia.


When she came back, she decided to become a national California licensed acupuncturist so she went on to acupuncturist school and became a licensed herbalist. Since then she did midwife training, midwifery training and gained additional therapeutic skills to support trauma and anxieties as a graduate of Ray Castellino’s Pre and Perinatal Psychology Foundation Training which is stuff I love and many of us on the BIRTHFIT team love as well.


So she’s been doing this 17 years. She’s been in Los Angeles 17 years. She’s worked all over the globe. She had many jobs. But I know working with moms in the motherhood transition has to be just as fulfilling to her as it is me or else she would not be here, she would not be at the summit speaking, she would not be this freaking breath of radiant fresh light whenever she enters the birth room.


So, this is Elizabeth Bachner, clinical director, owner of GraceFull Birthing Center in Silverlake and home birth and birth center midwife. I hope you enjoy. If you have any questions at all, do not hesitate to email us, info@birthfit.com or check out gracefull.com and reach out to Elizabeth and her clinic directly there. So, enjoy and we’ll reconvene at the end.


Elizabeth: Okay. What were you feeling in your body? Start with you. What were you feeling?

Female1: I was feeling back labor.

Elizabeth: And who were you identifying in with? What part of yourself? Birthing mom?

Female1: Yes, yes.

Elizabeth: Anybody else? You’re identifying in with the birthing mom? Anybody else? Okay. And were you identifying in with the doula? Awesome.

Female2: The baby?

Elizabeth: You were identifying in with the baby? What were you feeling?

Lindsey: What is baby feeling right now? What are they experiencing?

Elizabeth: All right. So, what’s happening is I just did a contraction and you felt a piece in yourself. You felt something. And then identified in with a part of that.


[0:10:01]


I want you to know that and understand that because you’re all here because you’re going to be supporting moms in labor and you need to understand yourself in order to be good support. All right? And you need to be able to differentiate if you’re not having the hat on of — I’m going to use the word doula for birth support right now. Okay? Is that making sense so far? You’re getting it? All right.


So, let’s go through the roles that are in the room. So, okay, first of all, I’m going to go back to the hats. We all wear different hats. This is the work of Ray Castellino. I have a background in pre and perinatal psychology. When he taught me this, I was like light bulbs went off. Everything started to make sense. We all have different hats that we wear. For example, when I am in the birth room I have the hat — Oh, sounds different now. Okay.


I have the hat of the midwife on when I am the midwife. If there’s another midwife in the room and I’m assisting her I’m not the midwife in charge. I’m now the assistant. I will take off my midwife hat and I’ll put on the hat of the assistant. If they happen to be birthing at my birthing center in town that I own I am going to be taking off the hat of business owner and I’m going to be putting on the hat as midwife.


And when I see a mom going through labor, I am taking off my baby hat and I am taking off my pregnant mom hat of what that’s like for me. I got to take all those hats off so I can be present for her in the role that I’ve been hired to do or that I want to do. How this works with moms and how you can help your moms that you’re supporting go through labor, and this is how I explain it to them all the time. We simplify it and we go, okay, on a simple level, I got a pregnant mom in front of me. I got three people in front of me.


I have the mama of the child. I got the mama bear hat on, the mother of that child. I want that hat to be there. And what I want her to do is I want her to take off, say, the daughter of her mother hat. For example, if I was pregnant and giving birth and I had Lois in the room with me, my mother, I’d probably turn into a 13-year old teenage brat. I’d start stomping my feet like going, “I want it my way.” I’d probably start rebelling.


If I’m doing all of this, a baby is not going to come out of my vagina, if I’m 13 years old and the daughter of my mother, right? No, it’s not going to. So you want your moms to take off the daughter of their mother hats. And in most circumstances, I’m going to generalize here, most circumstances moms actually have a partner of some kind.


And with that partner they’re having a relationship and they might have a different hat that they wear in the sense that say they are married and they’re married to man, if they have a hat on that is the wife hat, they might decide in the middle of labor that they need to make him a chicken sandwich to make sure that he’s not hungry. Because that’s kind of the role that she might play in the house. So if she’s worried about him being hungry while she’s going into labor, do you think she’s going to relax and go into labor? No, it’s not going to — The baby’s not going to come out of the vagina, right?


Do you know about primal brain, thinking brain and primal brain yet? Yeah. So she’s not going to get into her primal brain because she’s constantly going to be thinking, “Okay, has he eaten? My mother’s here. That thing happened when we were 13. Oh, geez, I still have some stuff around that.” She’s in that thinking brain, having those conversations. She’s not going to drop into that primal brain where she’s able to really let go and just be mama bear. Okay?


So what hat is your client wearing? And also what hat are you wearing? Really important to know. So let’s go through some of the roles in that room. We have mom. What is mom’s job? What was that? Yes, correct. It is my mom’s turn. It is all about mom in that room. It is about what she wants. It is about her intuition. It is what works for her. I want her to connect to that place inside and I want it to be about her. So mom has a really important job birthing that baby.


All right. We got baby in the room. What’s baby’s job? To be born, exactly. Baby’s working really hard. This is not a baby is just like lying there and comes out. It’s a dynamic. It’s a dance. It’s relationship. That baby is moving and turning and trying to figure out how to fit and come into the world. It’s a really important job and they know how to do it.


[0:15:06]


What is the role of, let’s see, a midwife? What’s the midwife’s role? Guard the birth. Who said that? Part of that, yes. Anyone else? Facilitation of the birth, yes. There’s something really important in the midwife’s job in that room. Thank you, yes. Midwife is in charge of the safety of mom and baby. Her number one job is to make sure that on a medical-physical level, everybody is safe.


Now, within that, there’s a lot of different kinds of midwives. There are midwives who can be supportive, there are midwives who have grandmotherly instinct or a sisterly or a little bit of a doula going on in them. But the number one job of a midwife is to make sure mom and baby are medically safe. And a midwife’s job, I’m going to speak from my perspective as a midwife because I’m an out-of-hospital midwife, my area of expertise is low risk childbirth. My job is also to determine whether mom and/or baby is going from low risk to high risk. That’s a really important job that I have. All right? I do not do high risk childbirth. I do not want to do high risk childbirth. I’m not interested in high risk childbirth. But I love working with OBs who specialize on high risk childbirth.


What is the job of the OB? Yeah, they’re medical mom and baby. The one thing about OBs though that I want all of you to take away today is they’ve only been trained in high risk childbirth. If you can find an OB who understands low risk childbirth, they’re a keeper. They’re few and far between. We’ve got some good people here in LA but the OB’s medical training is specifically high risk childbirth. So, they will view anybody coming in as high risk.


As a home birth midwife, I want that. I really want the OB to be a specialist in high risk because if it goes high risk we want to be at the hospital, we want to have a surgical room nearby, we want a neonatal intensive care unit upstairs and I want an expert in high risk childbirth. Okay? Do not expect your OB to understand low risk childbirth. Do not expect them to support low risk childbirth as in eat well, exercise well, how are you feeling, what’s going on for you emotionally? Don’t expect them to understand the anatomy and physiology of the body and how it works when it’s un-medicated. That is not their area of expertise.


Who else is in that room? How about the partner? What’s the partner’s job? Support, yeah. The partner is able to do something that no one else in that room can do which is to look at that mom and say, “I love you. I love you.” And if you can make space for the partner to do that, you’ve done your job. And then it’s really important — Oh, the doula. What’s the doula’s role? I almost forgot. Healer? Anyone? Yes, support the partner.


What else? Advocate for birth. Great. Understand the anatomy and the physiology of the body and how it works so that you can support the mom to have a low risk birth, if she is wanting that, to help make space for the mom to find her voice because if she wants an epidural you’re going to hold space for that. Let it be her choice. Help her find her path. I want to let you know that the doula is not a medical professional. And even if there’s a doula who is trained, been training as a midwife, it’s really important that she put on her doula hat and take off her midwife hat.


Is anyone here being hired as a chiropractor to go to a birth? Yeah, awesome. So, what is your role when you go to the birth? Yeah. To adjust. Adjust the body. Yeah, really important. Okay. Questions about the role at birth? Wait until it passes. So, where some of the challenges can come in the birth room when it comes to holding space is what I call role confusion.


[0:19:59]


Say I’ve got a mom who’s birthing and her wife is an OB-Gyn at a hospital. I am wanting to make sure that her wife is the partner role and takes off her OB-Gyn hat. It’s really important. Say we’ve got a mom and she is giving birth and she has a tumultuous relationship with her mother. You might want to hold space and explain this to her so she doesn’t invite her mother to the birth and she keeps a boundary so she can wear the mother of her child hat.


And let’s talk about if Lindsey ever gives birth one day. If Lindsey was ever to give birth one day the way that I would be working with you is I want you to birth like the mother of your child. I don’t want you to birth as a chiropractor, as a doula or as the owner of BIRTHFIT who’s got a shit ton of information in her head. It’s really important that the mother is given the chance to be the mom and have that experience and feel safe in doing that.


Questions? I’m making sense so far? Okay, good. All right. So, have we talked about the physiology of the body, the hormones yet? No? I’m going to do a really, really, really quick overview so this can make sense and you’re going to hear some more of this. So, really simply put, there’s three hormones in the body, oxytocin, endorphins and adrenaline. Anyone know what oxytocin is? Yeah, the love drug, love hormone. It creates contractions in the body and it comes when you make brief and frequent eye contact.


A little trick here. If you are the doula in the room or the support person in the room and things are going crazy and you say to yourself, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on here. I don’t know how that baby is going to come out of the vagina. I can’t believe that her mother-in-law is insisting on sitting in front of her while she’s trying to birth. I don’t know what’s going on here.” Here’s a little trick. Brief and frequent eye contact. Just a couple of seconds.


And so what I’m doing is I’m making connection. Because we’re going to have a disconnected field when there’s chaos going on and I’m trying to just make simple connection. It can be that simple. And in that brief and frequent eye contact, you’re connecting with someone, you’re touching in with them, it starts to release some of that oxytocin. Oxytocin has been scientifically stated to create trust and trust creates oxytocin. And then all of a sudden the mom’s nervous system will start to settle, everything feels more connected, she’s starting to trust her body a little more and now the contractions are starting to happen. And then you will magically watch the mother-in-law like disappear out of the room. It’s happened.


Okay. So, trust creates oxytocin. Oxytocin creates trust. Some simple things that we can do to create that oxytocin, to create the contraction, to create the trust: “Oh my god, my body knows how to do this. Yes, your body knows how to do this. My baby knows how to do this. Yes, my baby knows how to do this.” And when you look at that mom in labor and maybe you don’t know where it’s going but you know anatomy, you know physiology, her body knows how to do this, and you can just look at her and go, “Yeah, your body knows how to do this,” and you bring that trust into the room and you will watch things start to shift.


Endorphins, anyone know what that is? Everybody know what that is here? Right? Nature’s opiate. It’s great stuff. Here’s the thing. The body does not slam you with pain because you are a bad girl and you deserve to be punished. That’s not what’s going on here. That is a very linear dysfunctional patriarchal view of childbirth. That’s not what’s going on here. The body is fucking amazing. The vagina is. There’s a rhythm to it. There’s something bigger behind it.


When you get a contraction, it starts, it’s starting out low and then all of a sudden you’ll start to feel it. It comes up. It gets more intense. There’s a peak. And then it comes down. And the beauty of this is the endorphins will meet the mom in that peak. They will be there in that room. And the endorphins as nature’s opiate help her with what she might be feeling, and a lot of moms will feel pain. So it’ll be there to meet the moms if she’s feeling pain.


We also have adrenaline. Adrenaline has been known to stop contractions. So, if a mom is at home and she is in early labor and she’s starting to get a contraction and she’s like, “Oh my god, I’ve got one. Hey, hey, honey, honey, wake up. We got to time it. We got to time it. What’s going on? Okay, they’re coming every 15 minutes but my sister had them every five. What’s wrong with my body? Why isn’t it working? It’s 3 o’clock in the morning. The doctor said the baby should be here already. Tomorrow, I’m going to be induced.”


[0:25:27]


Can you see my body? See what it’s doing? My body is even going in and up like this. Oh, five? Okay. All right. So, my body is even doing this. No baby that’s going to come out of the vagina like this. And then the adrenaline starts. What’s wrong with me? Why isn’t it working? The cortisol. That’s going to stop the oxytocin. That’s going to stop the contractions. All right?


So, a way to work with this, this is what I teach all my moms, is 3 o’clock in the morning you start to feel something in your body, it’s like, “Oh my god, my body’s working.” Having curiosity. “Wow, isn’t this interesting? Wow. This is kind of cool and I can sleep while I’m feeling this. Awesome.” Right? Now, she’s in a relaxed and open state. She’s got that curiosity, opens up the heart. She’s got that trust. Oxytocin’s flowing. And either she’ll get them and they’ll start to pick up and then they’ll grab her attention from the inside and she won’t be able to sleep anymore and start rocking and rolling and we’re probably heading towards and active labor pattern.


Or, I don’t know, she might get them every 15 minutes for three hours, they disappear, she’s sleeping in between and then you get a phone call at 10:00 in the morning going, “Oh my god, last night, I was up for three hours. My body works.” And now she’s getting sleep and resting. There’s a beauty to that. Both ways are the trust of the body.


Okay. My favorite birth movie of all time, March of the Penguins. Has anyone seen it? Okay. I’m always amazed when I watch it. It’s like how did the penguins know to take a left at the iceberg that probably wasn’t there before and there’s no tracks and they know how to go into the center to leave their eggs with their partners and then they’re going back to the water and there’s been like snow storms and ice storms and all kinds of stuff but they know how to go and where to go to get the food.


And then they got the food and they regurgitated and they’re holding their mouth for the little chick babes and they still know how to get back to them, right? That’s an instinct. That’s not, “I read a book, I took a class, I saw the video, and it told me how to get back to my babes to make sure they’re safe.” That’s not what that is. This is an instinct on the inside. And my feeling is that our job is to hold space for mom to feel that instinct whatever that message is for her.


How are we doing? Good, so far? All right, more information. Really, really, really quick. If you haven’t had this yet, Lindsey will go over it more. Thinking brain, primal brain. Okay? Thinking brain, what you’re all engaged in right now. When you are giving birth, do you think you’re in your thinking brain or primal brain? Primal, right? How do we get into the primal brain? We need the safety. The primal brain is where all those fabulous hormones are.


In order to let that come out, mom has to feel safe. So, when mama bear is giving birth in the woods, do you think that she is going to find a nice open field with the puppies, and the sun is shining down and like, “Oh, look at the trees over there. It’s just such a beautiful view.” She’s not going to birth her cubs there. Where does she go? Yes, she goes into a den. And when you go into that there is one door in and one door out. So, she’s sitting there and she’s like watching that door and then she’s starting to let it rip and then all of a sudden the Tyrannosaurus-rex pokes its nose in.


What’s going to happen to her? Yeah, she’s going to have adrenaline because she’s going to stop those contractions because she’s supposed to stop those contractions because it’s not safe. How does this translate into modern labor? It translates into a mom having a care provider that she doesn’t know. It’s going to stop her contraction. Who’s at the other end of my vagina? I don’t know that person. Not only do I not know that person but that person has red hair and when I was six I was bullied by a girl with red hair. She’s not having that conversation. Her somatic body is saying that. And so now all of a sudden everything is stopping because she is not feeling safe.


[0:30:00]


It’s not that she’s a bad girl. It’s not that something’s wrong. In fact, her body is working beautifully in keeping everybody safe. But it’s stopping those contractions because she’s not feeling safe. So one of the things that’s our job when we hold space is how do we help mom feel safe? Thank you. And that’s different for everybody. That’s a discovery. Because there are some moms that the idea of birthing at home is so scary to them they would never relax and never open up. They know that they need to be at a hospital, they need a surgical room across the hall, a NICU upstairs, and that will allow them to relax enough to open up and have their baby.


And then there are other women who are just like, “A hospital for me is everything wrong. I spent all of my childhood in the hospital. I want to be at a birthing center because that’s where I’m comfortable.” And some women are just like, “You know what, it’s fine. I can be in a practice with ten different midwives. I’m fine with that. It’s not a big deal. I’m going to go do my thing.” And other people are just like, “Nope. Can’t have more than two midwives. I want to know who’s going to be at the other end of my vagina.”


It’s different for every mom. And now I’m going to come back to what did you identify in with? Your job as a doula is to hold space to help her discover it. If you’re identified in as the mom, maybe for yourself you’d be like, “There’s no fucking way I’m going to a hospital. I’m going to birth my baby at home.” But your client in front of you, that’s not who she is as a mom. You got to remember. You got to take off your mommy hat and you got to put on your doula hat and hold space for her for her to discover what is it that helps her face safe. Okay? It’s starting to make sense? Kind of come to full circle? All right.


I’ll bring in another piece. This is the work of [0:31:56] [Indiscernible]. She’s another one of my teachers. When she said this, everything started to make sense for me. This is where I might need you. All right. This is how she explained kind of the world to me and the moment she explained this my whole entire life started to make sense. All right. You have an imprint. Here I am at, I don’t know, six years old and my dad’s yelling at me, right? And every time I see a guy I’m like, “Oh my god, they’re going to yell at me. They’re going to yell at me.” Because I haven’t healed this little imprint.


And let’s say, over here, I’ve got my rebellious 13-year old self. So, every time my mom is around even though I am like 45 years old, every time around my mom I turn 13 and I start to rebel because I haven’t done any work around that and I’m still acting like a 13-year old. Not only that. When I’m in these imprints, my brain will start collecting data. If I hang out with my parents, my 13-year old is going to go, “See? See? Yeah. See what mom’s doing?” And I’m proving my point for my 13-year old because I’m not my current age and I’m just stuck in that imprint that’s going on.


When I’m in the imprint, here’s the interesting thing, when I’m in the imprint, I actually think that the blueprint, put your own name on there if you want, a higher power, a god, a universe, truth, whatever word it is, the blue print, I think I have to do something to get to the blue print. Okay. So, I get to do therapy, I got to do somatic work, I got to go see a healer, I got to do some acupuncture, I got to do rebirthing, I got to do something to get here. So, I’m spending all my time trying to get there. It’s a lot of work. And that’s how the imprint sees things because the imprint sees things as black and white. It sees things as polarity. It sees things as good and bad. And that’s not what I believe is true. I’m going to flip this.


Here’s how [0:34:17] [Indiscernible] taught it to me and when she taught to me it all started making sense. We are all in the blueprint. Blueprint is all around us 24/7. And within that blueprint are all these little imprints. There’s my six-year old, there’s my 13-year old, there’s the trauma that happened to me, I don’t know, when I was 21. I was having a good time at 2 o’clock in the morning. Wasn’t the smartest thing to do. In this blueprint that is holding us all the time are all these little imprints. And the truth is that I actually don’t really need to do anything to change it.


[0:35:05]


My job becomes trusting in the blueprint, trusting in the mystery, trusting that I am being held in the magic. Because the blueprint holds — is everything. And it’s got the imprints inside of it. And what starts to happen is when that imprint gets healed it explodes and all of a sudden the blueprint can hold more space. So, if I go to a birth — This is how it happened when I first started.


I had an imprint around birth and I didn’t know it because when I was born my mother took twilight sleep and was completely asleep. The doctor was in panic mode. My shoulders got stuck and then there was a really bad hemorrhage and not everybody was around. It’s a somatic memory. My body knows this. But I used to ask my mom, “How was my birth?” She’s like, “Oh, honey, it was fine. It was fine.” She was knocked out the whole time. They cleaned me up and then gave her to me. This is back in the late ’60s.


But my body has this imprint and it just knows. So, when I started going to birth and that baby was coming out, I would start to panic on the inside because I am stuck in that imprint and I haven’t healed it and I haven’t known. My adrenaline is starting to go, I’m identified in with mom and the baby and like is there going to be a hemorrhage, oh my god, I hope there’s no — There’s no hemorrhage happening. But I’m like, “Oh my god, oh my god, is it going to be okay? Is it going to be safe?” Because I’ve got that imprint that I’m coming from.


And what’s happened over time is I’ve done self reflective work to look at my own story and to look at myself and I get support, different kinds of support to help me. And then I’ve come into a place where I kind of trust in the magic of the universe that something bigger is always holding us and guiding us towards the health. It’s guiding us towards the goodness.


And as I sit back in that trust, I’ve got the oxytocin flowing, and then all of a sudden maybe I’ll get a little idea, “Maybe I should go see this person to help me with that imprint.” As opposed to like fix it, fix it, fix it. “Oh. Oh good, look at that.” All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the thought comes in, it heals, and now I’ve got a mom in front of me at labor and she’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m not really worried about it.” About a mom hemorrhaging. I don’t know. Maybe she will hemorrhage but it’s going to be okay because I can trust in the magic in something bigger. Is that making sense?


In the birth room, if you’re coming — Back to the other one for me. If you’re coming from the place of the imprint and you think, “I got to do something to fix it. I got to make it better. I’m going to come up with a position that’s going to help it,” you’re distancing yourself from the magic that’s available in the blueprint.


But when you’re sitting in that blueprint and you’re going, “All right , so what’s in front of me right now? Jeez, she’s in a lot of pain. Yeah, and she’s really pushing her back right now.” I’m in this place of sitting back and I’m listening to what’s going on. “Oh, all right. I think I know what I need to do. I got to go in there and I got to adjust the psoas because that baby isn’t really able to move and now she’s got back labor. Yeah.” “Hey, can you get on all fours? You go in there and do that. “


Can you hear the difference of how you can approach the same challenge if you’re coming from the blueprint as opposed to coming from the imprint? Does that make sense? And it’s a different way of holding space because if you’re in the blueprint holding that space all of a sudden, it doesn’t matter whether mom’s birthing at home in water or she says to me, “I need an epidural in order to birth my baby and be present.” Both of them are choices in that blueprint and they’re both valid choices. And both of them are coming from the inside out and they come from this place of sitting in that magic and trusting that mom will know how to do this. Okay? Yeah? Did I get it all in?


All right. I got lots more to say but I know that we don’t have a lot of time. Thank you for listening. I want to let you know that I’ve got a podcast coming up right now called Big Birth Junkie where we’re going to be talking about a lot of this and it’s a really fun perspective because it’s not just mom talking about birth stories. It’s getting everyone else in the room to talk about their perspectives. And we start to come into the blueprint place by saying, what is it that my child is here to teach me and what lesson did I learn?


[0:40:05]


Because every birth that I go, that child will teach me something and it teaches everybody in that room. All right? And the magical place — By the way, notice my tee shirt? This has come about because I have sat at births plenty of times and I’m going, “I have no fucking idea how this baby is going to come out.” Like literally.


And I’ve come at it like I’ve tried to fix and solve it. I just sit there and go I have absolutely no idea. And you settle into the magic and we midwives have a saying the vagina is magical. It will do, all of a sudden, it’s like, “Oh my god, there’s the baby. How did that happen?” And I won’t know and I may never have an answer but I’m sitting in the magic that the body knows how to do it.


And also through this I’ve started to teach high schoolers and I started to teach them how amazing the female body is because we all know it and how magical the vagina is and what’s happening is it’s not just the girls who come up and go, “Oh my god, my body is amazing.” It’s the boys who are coming up and saying, “I had no idea it was that amazing.” This T-shirt is to represent consent. I’m trying to teach consent through the magical vagina. Thank you for your time. Thanks for listening.


Lindsey: I love re-listening to that. I am reminded of exactly how it’s feeling, what came up during that talk at the BIRTHFIT Summit. I’m always intrigued, curious, any time Elizabeth opens her mouth to speak. I think she’s got great experience, great knowledge and education. But more importantly, I think she has that deep down intuition and she’s going to follow what the universe tells her to do.


Elizabeth in action at birth is phenomenal. If you ever witness her, if you can be a doula with her or work with her as a chiropractor, anything, I’d strongly encourage you to do so. If there’s one thing which, I mean, Elizabeth said a ton of stuff, but if there’s one thing that I want you to get out of this podcast and it’s that we all have our different roles and I think that’s very important how she started talking about that.


For many of us, in the birth world, maybe you’re listening to this and you’re a birth doula or you’re a midwife or you’re an OB-Gyne or a birth educator or you work as a coach for pre-natal and postpartum mamas, whenever you’re pregnant or in that labor and delivery scenario, you have to take away that role, that hat you wear as a professional or whatever you do in your career. Because at that moment you are assuming the role of a mother and with that comes different responsibilities, different feelings, different desires than what might come with your role in a professional setting or your role as somebody’s wife or somebody’s sister or somebody’s daughter.


So, just be mindful of that. As you progress throughout your pregnancy, you can start to practice them, become more aware of what role am I in today or in this situation? Definitely check out GraceFull Birthing Center. That is gracefull.com. Check out their classes. Check out what they have to offer. Follow GraceFull on Instagram and you can follow Elizabeth directly at Big Birth Junkie. Thanks all for listening.


[0:44:24] End of Audio

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