I have been volunteering with ICAN, since they are the only organization that helped me with my VBAC that wasn't trying to sell me something. And of course they are not sophisticated compared to all those sick little OB influencers or FBS, and much diminished in power post COVID (picketing hospitals that ban vaginal birth seems like a beautiful dream now), but we get on zoom and we talk about our bodies and there's nothing like it. Nothing. I wish more women knew about ICAN.
You mention learning from a grandma. The grandmas I know had twilight sleep and their breasts forcibly dried up. My mom and my female relatives had episiotomies and cesareans. There are no female elders on either side of my family with birth wisdom to share. None. I've had to piece things together while squatting in what felt like a pile of ruins.
I have a daughter and believe I may have another one day. I want to do doula training for them, so that someday I will have something intelligible to say to them, or their friends. If I can do nothing else in this world, I can do that.
I have heard of ICAN but haven’t looked into their work in any sort of meaningful way so thank you for mentioning this. So they do meetings for free? If you think of it and have the time I would love if you linked it here and maybe some women will see it or I can share it in notes! It sounds like a really vital resource.
I very much appreciate and agree with what you said about elders. In my mention of this I admit I was being somewhat idealistic but as I said, I do think that those connections and stories are available to us if we look in the right places. They may be hard to find but they do exist, there are women who did push back against the system in the past who exist today and I think their stories are worth searching for. That said-I think perhaps I should have worded it in a way where it was more focused on the upcoming generations like you mentioned here with your daughter. There are so many women today who are remembering the significance of birth and will have such meaningful and helpful things to share with our daughters and their peers. I am a mother to three girls now and that is certainly my hope!
I actually had my first baby in the hospital and had a really awful episiotomy cut, that was part of my reason for giving birth at home with my subsequent babies. I’m hoping the contrast in my own story will help highlight how obstetrics really has missed the mark in many ways time and time again (this was 13 years ago, and in the time since episiotomy has been significantly reduced). I also think that the twilight sleep period holds the same lesson and is a good reminder to women to not give away our experiences (being that so many women actually heavily advocated for it). If interested, I wrote another post awhile back about it!-
Sure, so ICAN focuses on education, support, and advocacy in the areas of cesarean prevention and healing and VBAC access, generally. As far as support, there's local chapters (I’m in NJ) that hold their own meetings, monthly national meetings, and a moderated FB group which is extremely supportive and kind (for both cesareans and VBACs) https://www.facebook.com/groups/ICANOnline a good place to start.
I really don’t love having a primarily online “community” around something so embodied and physiological. But, the women in my family as I mentioned were shocked I had a VBAC; the women in my church, including grandmas, were similarly shocked (“your doctor let you??”) and unfortunately, the local “crunchy mom” community (at least the ones I’ve met in person) seems to be mostly structured around selling something - essential oils, coaching, doula services, etc. I suspect there’s material reasons for this. My own mother, a homeschooler mom of 5, has noticed how many younger homeschool/SAHMs she knows now who have to have side hustles; monetized newsletters, influencer Instagrams, part-time work, and so on. We are far from the days when SAHMs founded ICAN and La Leche League, sent out newsletters, picketed hospitals, testified in front of the NIH, and so on.
I’ve also noticed in the recent wave of, I guess, SAHMs/tradwives, whatever that means, a kind of bizarre retreat from the political; the soft life women say they to, a focus on aesthetics, romantic images of gardens and babies, a retreat to online echo chambers, essays about doing the dishes. My parents were quite politically engaged; they worked with HSLDA when CPS was called on us (I forget why, I assume it was the sheer audacity of my Puerto Rican mother to say “no” to a doctor or an education bureaucrat lol), our church protested at abortion clinics and people got arrested. I’m a Democrat today, but I learned from them that there is always a fight, and sometimes it’s a dirty fight. The people who fight dirty are the people who win.
Increasingly, I believe that how we birth is a political problem. Like, the Black woman who freebirths gets the cops called on her when she visits the pediatrician. The CPM serving Amish women gets arrested for practicing without a license. Right now in NJ, I cannot have a home birth with a licensed midwife; it’s not legal for her to support me, due to my uterine scar, regardless of my own estimation of the risks and benefits. Perhaps more than anything, this is why FBS seems like the ultimate white feminist’s indulgence. Enclosing knowledge that is our birthright, and selling it back to us. Decontextualized, depoliticized, totally atomized. The triumph and selling of the individualist birth story. No solidarity, no past and no future. We have an opportunity here for solidarity and organization. I am trying to figure out how to seize it; how to jailbreak the furious energy trapped in mom’s groups and get it out on the streets.
If you have any ideas, I am here for them. I do not feel aligned with freebirth myself, but I very much admire the integrity and self-knowledge of the women who choose this for themselves, and wish and hope that it does not become synonymous with a weird fake online midwife school.
Thank you for all of this! Of course for the resources (had no idea they had local chapters like LLL) but also for all you added here. It’s a lot to think on.
I know exactly what you mean about the more “crunchy” communities often having a lot of selling going on. I think it makes sense, being that we have economic incentive to do something for extra money while also wanting the life of a SAHM, but so much of that feels very disingenuous. I of course have my little newsletter here, but I couldn’t imagine trying to sell it to people I interact with at say, the local library story time or whatever. I think there needs to be a boundary there. Those in-person, truly communal relationships need to have some grounding in what is real and right in front of us, and women trying to sell essential oils or supplements gets in the way of those true in person connections.
Further, I appreciate babies and gardens as much as the next person, and have written a small handful of things about more everyday life type topics (not doing the dishes, but planning holidays and the like) but the main fuel to my fire for writing is the more political/social/cultural and I would like to find a way to transfer that energy to those in-person relationships referenced above.
I am going to think about your call for ideas. I agree that birth itself and the modes by which we experience it, and also the “who/what/where” of it all is very much a politicized thing and I think it has been for a long time. I honestly think with as powerful and vital as it is, it’s bound to be politicized. Unassisted childbirth has the power to take away the “asking permission” part of things that often can get very political, but I understand that it isn’t something every woman wants and it isn’t something every woman should do for medical reasons. I also know it is chosen sometimes under duress due to political/social/cultural reasons—and that isn’t good. The middle ground really feels like wider access to midwifery care that is not tied to the state, and that certainly would require some fighting.
I can relate so well - “piece things together while squatting in a pile of ruins.” Exactly. I am pregnant with my second and ever since my first birth I’ve been on a deep dive into remembering the lost wisdom and bringing it back into my own family line. Hopefully to pass it to my daughter as well, and to be there for women in my community.
Thanks for mentioning ICAN - I’m interested to learn more about it.
Thank you for writing such a thoughtful and personal piece, Emily. The story aspect has been a major part of my reflections on all that is happening in the freebirth world. It's always bothered me that the women who shared their birth stories with Emilee were not compensated for what they gave her, nor were they truly respected by her. I'm sorry to hear that she disrespected you as well during your interview. You deserved better than that. Far better.
I worked for Emilee S. as the Free Birth Society social media manager in 2023. This was before the "midwifery" school was started but right around the time everything began to take a turn for the worse. All but one woman that I worked alongside at that time has since left the brand. I remember Emilee complaining during a team Zoom meeting about how "boring" all of the birth stories were, and how tired she was of doing the podcast. She continued on, saying that she had to keep doing it because it's obviously what draws people in to the FBS brand, but she was not pleased about it.
There are many more examples I have of how little she values the women in her community and the disgusting terminology she uses to describe them. I'm working on writing a piece about it but have had to pause multiple times to recenter myself and make sure I'm staying aligned with my own storytelling values. The piece I recently published about FBS speaks to the storytelling process in these circumstances where trauma and vulnerability are involved. There are many women staying silent about their experiences with Emilee and Yolande because it's scary to make yourself vulnerable, especially if you worked for the women being discussed and have seen the way they behave when their audience isn't watching.
My personal writing experience has been a lot of back and forth about whether or not I'd spend the time diving into the topic. I was embarrassed about working for the brand and my ego did NOT want anyone to know about my proximity to FBS. I eventually felt that I had a personal responsibility to share what I know because a lot of my marketing copy resulted in people registering for the RBK school and attending the Matriarch Rising Festival. In order to undo that, I feel that I must write the truth about FBS. This doesn't mean I think everyone involved has the same obligation, but I know this to be what's required for my own journey through this unraveling.
Like you, I've written a variety of pieces over the years about my thoughts on the commodification of birth and motherhood, as well as the questionable practices of Emilee and Yolande. I never felt ready to publish them publicly because I didn't want to experience any more negativity than I already had while connected to FBS. The more inspiring pieces to write have been those that concern themselves with the solutions I've come up with regarding accessible and thorough childbirth education and our responsibility as mothers to be the ones to teach our children about birth. I'm still inspired by these pieces and look forward to making use of them in the coming months. This particular piece you wrote and published today has made me feel even more confident in my choice to write about the FBS situation and what the future holds for those of us who choose to write about birth and motherhood. I thank you very much for this.
At the root of this reckoning is the simple truth that women's wisdom and knowledge were stolen from them a long time ago (twilight birth is a great example of just how far women were misled), and it's a complete shame that women are now selling that stolen, sacred wisdom back to one another for ridiculous amounts of money. The internet isn't meant to be a pawn shop for stolen wisdom! Luckily for all of us, we have the power to reclaim this narrative by telling our stories fearlessly and on our own terms, whether they are about birth or the regrets we have regarding where we've spent our time on the internet ;). Stories really are so very powerful. Thank you again for sharing yours (and congratulations on your new baby!).
Wow, Kaitlin! I must have missed your latest (I have missed a lot of things I sincerely want to read here lately 😆), I will be reading it later today once I catch up here. Thank you for mentioning it here and I hope more people find your work through these comments here. What a relevant, unique and interesting perspective you have on the matter.
I appreciate your focus on the storytelling part of it all as well. I feel like a lot of what is on the Reddit forum and what has been touched on in other places is much more specific than this part of it but I wanted to touch on more of the bigger picture. I wasn’t heavily involved with FBS beyond being on the podcast and also briefly being invited to be a part of the online community for free by Emilee but I found it a bit lacking and never really participated, so my vantage point is really more of that of an outsider, so your insider perspective on similar points to what I am discussing here will be fascinating to read about, I’m sure!
I’m so glad this made you feel more confident in your own sharing, as that really is sort of the most important thing of all!
Also-I’m so NOT surprised that Emilee mentioned being bored with listening to birth stories. She was visibly bored with mine and I have noticed the same when watching her interview other women as well. I also feel like maybe this lends to the sort of spiraling into more and more “extreme” versions of birth that the show has taken on over time. I get that they want to show the variations of what can happen-but I feel like in order to suck in more listeners they have intentionally gone more and more off the rails with what they choose to pedestal.
Thank you so much for commenting here and I look forward to reading your upcoming work!
Thank you Emily :). What a great insight re: the boredom leading to a sort of desensitization that lends itself to more extreme storytelling. There is so much validity to that. I see it happen with many of the people on social media who have pretty large followings too. Everything gets twisted to feed the machine and the machine only gets hungrier; it's never satisfied. These people have often linked their livelihood to the ups and downs of the algorithm and I think it's a very unhealthy practice that can lead to a lot of distortion and interference of what may have originally been an authentic message and mission. I also think this "internet guru" reckoning we are seeing will branch out into a reckoning for social media overall. It isn't aging well, and I for one am not willing to watch any more vulnerable people seeking connection, inspiration, etc. be taken advantage of in virtual spaces. They are a social experiment gone wrong at this point and I strongly believe that a redirect is in order. Substack feels better for me as a writer, but it's not perfect. I do wonder how much of an influence the FBS platform of choice (Instagram) had on the brand's downfall. IG is reliant upon images and videos as opposed to longform writing (a much better medium for the topic of birth education), and the platform certainly doesn't encourage respectful discourse. As well, the culture on IG is very much one of selling. It's 24/7 advertising on there and it can be extremely disorienting for followers and influencers alike. This is terrible for something as sacred as birth which was never meant to be monetized.
Instagram truly is a platform that is built on the capitalizing of certain cultural deficiencies-the algorithm seeks to take full advantage of insecurities and the places within ourselves which are lacking-whether that be community or knowledge or friendship or whatever else. So yes, I think it absolutely impacts not just FBS but a lot of businesses and influencers in the way they relate to their “followers”. All such apt points here, thank you again Kaitlin!
You said in your piece that you wanted to provide steady footing to the discussion and I feel that you have done just that with your analysis. A great piece of writing as always.
I never really like FBS although I did follow them because they showed so many videos of truly undisturbed birth and I really enjoyed that. I had to unfollow them because they are far too dogmatic for me. I want women/mothers to understand that when it comes to birth they are fully in charge. Whether they opt for an elective c-section or a free birth. I had to be the woman’s choice first and foremost. Making choices based on dogma instead of intuition is the antithesis of that.
Also unrelated, but thank you for using actual artwork in your writing and not just using AI generated images.
I have similar feelings about the dogma versus intuition piece. I think they preach intuition a lot but then their more rigid, dogmatic rhetoric gets in the way of truly intuitive reasoning-so it is a real irony that I think they have a serious blind spot about.
Thank you for reading and also thank you about the art! I will never, ever utilize AI. I hate AI and am completely unapologetic about it-so thank you for recognizing that!
Thank you for writing this and providing some balance.
Sadly, in my opinion, both FBS and the "Exposing FBS" substack seem rife with all of the worst, most stereotypical negative traits of womanhood--gossip, cattiness, judgment, etc. I have sympathy for women who took the FBS bait and regretted their decision, but I also am perplexed as to why someone would start an entire anonymous smear campaign following a bad experience...
So much for sticking it to the medical establishment--this whole fiasco is a distraction from the point (to empower each woman to make the best choice for herself) and detracts from prior efforts to (re)assert women as the experts of our own bodies/births.
Thank you for reading! If I’m totally honest I have only read one piece over on that substack, I should have done my due diligence and read them all, so thank you for adding this needed perspective.
Two things stand out to me when I think of FBS. First, a Live I watched with Emilee and Yolande where the energy between them was super off... really bitchy. Very weird, especially since they like to proclaim that they're "best friends." Maybe more like "business partners in a business that sells female friendship and so needs to have a female friendship at the helm"? The second thing is a video I saw of someone who went to the festival (Matriarch Rising I think it's called) and talked about the ways in which it was totally child un-friendly, which was insane to hear but also kind of tracks given everything that's coming out now.
Fascinating to watch this all go down. Don't wish anything bad on them, but do wish for people to be discerning when putting anything or any person on a pedestal!
Discernment really is something I find to be of utmost importance and it tends to be lacking in a lot of group settings where more extreme ideas are circled around. That’s why I wrote this, because as someone who encourages discernment as I have often done in my writing in the past, I really saw my own blind spot!
I agree that the energy is weird there and I think it ultimately is just because as human beings we are meant to pick up on that sort of insincerity in order to protect ourselves.
I’ve just loved my midwives. I loved the prenatals. I loved their skill from educated experience. I loved their fearlessness at my crazier births, even 1 terrible awful labor.
I had no family to be there, we didn’t call either side till after the babies had been born and all was perfect. They had no idea I was even laboring. I had only unbroken derision and lack of support for using a midwife at all, let alone homebirths.
I was young at my first baby’s birth, not quite 19. My husband just went along with whatever I wanted. I was older with my second’s but new husband and his first. He was ALL IN tho as we were very like-minded and had dated as teens.
Anyway, maybe lack of support in spite of my natural cynicism and distrust of authority led me to embrace the midwife figure so much. I think tho it’s more a universal, ancient figure to women. Women have been midwifing for women forEVER. As soon as Eve had a daughter old enough, she had her there with her, I’m very sure.
I had one homebirth with a midwife, a doula (no husband there, long story), and 5 women there. I had a birth with a man there, his wife too — our church had a FIT about that but they had had 2 homebirths and he and she were very close friends of ours. He was so close to that baby he witnessed being born and so thankful for being there— he would even stop by on way home from wk to hold the baby while we all talked. Prob several dozen times. I had another baby with the midwife, her student/assistant and 3 ladies who had never gotten near a homebirth even tho all had been “delivered of” at least 1 baby. I went to one friends homebirth with easily 10 of us women there besides the midwife.
My point is, I find it very strange to just want my husband there. Even when it’s just he & the midwife and 1 friend. I’ve never not had 1 friend there. I was never an extrovert either lol but birth alone, or just he & I, holds no attraction for me. And I rly wonder at it being a forced construct.
I have a friend who’s birthed 1-2 completely alone, she asked the dad not to come in at a certain point. Others he’s been there for but no midwife. Her last birth something scared her. She just could not get the baby out I think. She was exhausted I think. They went to the ER. *NIGHTMARE* she’s still livid about it. I’ve talked at length with her about unassisted birth. I still don’t get it lol 🤷🏼♀️
I have heard it said that women can either be “cats or elephants” in this birthing time. I consider myself a cat, you must be an elephant! I do think the idea of having some fellow women at a birth to be appealing, and if my closest friends and sister lived nearby (they are spread across the world unfortunately), I would invite them, but that is not the way my life is set up. I also doubt I would actually want them in the room while I actually gave birth, as I very much get an impulse to “retreat” and get into a dark, small space by myself during transition. I do not want voices, touch or eyes on me. That is the “cat” part. My husband comes in for the actual birth to help me catch those slippery babies and bring warm towels and I have had my older children witness the births as well, as I think it is important for them to see it and they have been naturally curious about it.
Your births sound lovely, and I especially loved that story about your male friend who would come to visit your child! I think that is really beautiful. I also agree that historically, birth being attended by fellow women is the standard, that is just a fact! In the same way female elephants will circle around a birthing mother and her baby and celebrate at the birth, I see women doing the same for one another as a real blessing and a magical sort of moment. It just hasn’t been what I have been called to, and I don’t think that that is a result of any sort of construct, it really is a very animal thing I feel inside of myself.
I read about Leboyer’s (he wrote Birth Without Violence) research into birthing and how primitive ppl groups do it and how women left to their own choices do. Often they went to caves or cave like environs. I thought, wowsers.
This was prenatally for my first. So I’ve been an elephant from the getgo lol it’s just so strange becuz I’m actually pretty introverted & reserved!
It's funny cause finding them also opened my eyes to the "I could just do this" idea in a country where it is obstetric system or basically nothing and I have had two uncomplicated unassited births since. But I also apply the knowledge I aquired in different doula trainings and classes.
For my first freebirth in 2020 I bought their freebirth guide and, honestly, I didn't ge anything from it that I didn't already knew or that wasn't like wth id this person talking about.
The whole talk about "energy" and weird "spiritual" jargon was very off putting to me, also the idea of conscious concepcion and "spirit babies" of being able to "release a pregnancy", yeah, I evetually just stopped following and didn't waste any more money on their offerings.
I continued studying and taking courses on childbirth physiology whicha have helped me inmensely and made me even more confident on the body and I'm always coming back to myself to see wether I intuit the need for assistance or not.
I never paid for any of their resources but this is exactly why. There are really helpful books one can buy used for 10-15 dollars and get all of the relevant information, and I can’t help but compelled to tell everyone about it! What you said here just really affirms that I think.
I feel similarly about the way they word things as well. I absolutely consider birth to be a very sacred, hallowed place and experience but I am turned off by the borderline-occult way they speak about it too.
I’m not familiar with the “Free Birth Society”, but “variations of normal” is a peculiar expression. If something is a variation, isn’t it by definition not the norm?
They would seem to be using “normal” as a synonym for “OK”, as in: “It’s different, but ok” (“Ok” meaning something in between “it feels fine” and “nothing bad will happen.”
I am intrigued by your discussion of how birth stories prepare us for the experience. During my first pregnancy in particular, I had paid attention mainly to stories of abnormality, since I was interacting with other people who struggled with fertility. I did grasp toward the end of the pregnancy that this was not very helpful and tried to balance it out (I also read Ina May Gaskin, and worked with a doula.). I still very much wanted the reassurance that others were looking out for me and my baby, though. I think this is completely normal too: responsibility can be a team effort.
Yes the phrase is very bizarre really, it is the sort of subverting of language that we see in larger culture that I really oppose, it’s like an effort to dilute meaning in service of ideology.
I agree that responsibility can be a team effort, that will of course look so different for every mother, but having some partnership there-true partnership-is very important.
Thank you for this. I am a home birth midwife and have gone through various phases of grappling with FBS. I support the choices women make, however, the commodification of a mindset that is built on a bunch of other complicated narratives that are at work right now has never sat right with me. Making a choice because other women have made it and then spoke about it isn’t a fully informed choice (oversimplification, absolutely). There is so much nuance and I appreciate the container here for exploring more of my own feelings while witnessing your personal experiences.
Thank you so much Amber! I love hearing your perspective as a midwife especially. I agree that making choices based solely on the choices of others is not a fully formed choice, and that is a lot of the premise upon which their million-dollar business lies upon, which is the true issue here. I also really appreciate midwives who also support women who choose to birth unassisted as I do think it is a valid choice for some of us, but being able to consult with midwives who do not condemn our choices occasionally is such a vital service. I recently gave birth unassisted but went and checked in with a CPM shortly after and also have spoken with another one during my pregnancy when worries came up. I am a RN and have been a L&D nurse and currently work mother-baby in high risk OB so I have a baseline of knowledge that I feel confident about but the specialized knowledge of an experienced home birth midwife is so valuable. All this to say, I am very appreciative of your voice being here!
I have to say I'm a bit embarrassed by how much I allowed myself to be influenced by FBS during my pregnancy. It was the only podcast I listened to during that time, even though I knew I wanted a midwife at my own birth. It was so inspiring, *and* I do think doing so created a rigidity in my own thinking and expectations that ended up contributing to a lot of (possibly avoidable, possibly not?) confusion, anger, suffering and self-flagellation in my postpartum experience. It has taken a couple years of processing, learning/unlearning, witnessing birth, and now reading the stories of women who were directly involved with FBS to unravel that grippy, dogmatic thinking. I appreciate your willingness to reflect and your ability to hold the paradox of all of your combined experiences, that is a rare thing.
I appreciate your own ability to reflect honestly on this as well, Berlin! I feel like this is a definite pattern among those of us who were influenced by their work, and speaks to the misleading nature of the way they do business. I don’t see women who follow and take in the work of other big names in birthwork feeling this way somehow, and I think there is a reason for this. Their lack of factual information around those variations of normal and emergencies and even death and their ability to word-salad/pseudo-spirituality speak their way out of giving good information around those tricky topics in the name of sticking to the narrative is a big reason for this. They encourage an all-or-nothing attitude while simultaneously being guarded about true issues that can come up (because they aren’t truly qualified) and that is a bad combination. We as women of course have to hold responsibility for our own allowing of this influence within ourselves too of course, but their total lack of recognition of how they have impacted many women in a negative way (and only recognizing the good they have done) really betrays a lack of integrity to me, as well as an ego problem.
It's a very straightforward and non sensational take on the whole thing, and helped me define my feelings about it all more clearly.
I've appreciated the stories, and the encouragement to take responsibility for your own decisions, the "permission slips" to disregard posturing authority figures, the highlighting of the reality that death can happen in any circumstance - the right to an undisturbed death.
But then I've also often wondered about the point at which you could become proactive, not just letting death just happen just because it can if you don't "intervene".
And the reasons behind certain undesirable outcomes, where we can actually take responsibility for, like your maternal health - mineral status, circadian health, adequate calorie intake, postural alignment, etc.
The idea that you can be proactive just seems to be skipped. Like we should just blob about, let nature have it's way with us, and come what may, be sure to reframe it as blissful.
Forgetting, we ARE nature, we participate with it and we can be intentional about moving towards desirable outcomes, while living with the peace of knowing we can not control it.
Ahh I love what you had to say about this! We are, in fact, nature, and it is natural to take measures to protect ourselves and our babies—we are not just passive recipients of whatever nature throws at us, we do have some amount of input which can truly impact order. Nature can be perceived as chaos but there is always some order within it and we do have influence upon it. I also think as women, we are meant to help one another in making those choices sometimes, and absolutely not just “blob about”! This is a really vital perspective, thank you!
Wrote Duden, “The thick circle the counselor penciled far down on the bell-shaped curve did not touch her . . . what I am trying to understand is the difference the encounter with a professional makes for Maria and the degree to which it removes her from the way her mother experienced the body.” (p. 27)
Maria wasn’t someone who’d had serial miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies. She wasn’t addicted to crack. Maria wasn’t, figuratively speaking, walking in the woods near yellow jackets’ nests. She was healthy, experienced, gravid woman. And yet, these experts wanted to create a dependency upon themselves, to chain her psychologically to a grid of technocratic monopolies by altering her perception, her way of living in her own skin, by transforming her body into a menu of risks.
That last sentence! I started reading your work you linked here, Stan, but I of course am finding myself consistently interrupted. I saved it to come back to later when I can focus because it is very interesting. I especially appreciated the Illich quote in the beginning. I don’t know Duden’s work either, but am curious about it now.
I too have been following the controversies, I have actually followed them since 1989 when I read Pat Carters book and learned of her league of empowered women giving birth at home alone.
For many years the Skeptical OB Dr. Amy attempted to take out Freebirthers with every possible argument known to man.
I invited my husband to be my birth attendant because I knew he would go the distance with me.
Vested.
He was completely vested in the outcomes of our Free Birthed sons.
I think anyone educating the public about family birth should charge as much money as they can for whatever is being offered.
If families are not being served, move along, and find something cheaper, that is the free market in action.
I love the ongoing controversy because that debate gets people talking and young couples noticing and asking questions and that is the best thing of all to result from the heat of the moment.
That’s a very valid point I didn’t think of, the part about the attention being directed at alternative options. I still think that FBS has been particularly predatory in their marketing practices—it’s not just about selling information, it’s about selling a “sisterhood” and all manner of mothering-related community and heritage, and then charging insane amounts for it. I’m grateful, like I said, for being exposed to some of the concepts they introduced me to (although truth be told I do think I was well on my way through reading various texts anyway).
Also, gosh, I haven’t thought about The Skeptical OB in so long 😆 she’s crazy. I will have to read that NBC article! Thanks for sharing.
I also agree with what you said about your husband as a vested participant in the process. My husband has been so helpful to me now in the three births we have experienced just he and I ♥️
I feel like we likely had a very similar experience, Angelique! My first birth was in the hospital as well and very much is part of the reason I chose to stay home with my next 3, all of which were freebirthed and yes, some of the influence upon those choices was a result of the stories of other women, which I am very appreciative of.
As for the coaching/online commodification of anything and everything, yes! Skepticism is extremely necessary. I know there are people who have true integrity and good things to offer (for example, I took the Innate Traditions training from midwife Rachelle Garcia Seliga in 2020 and I feel very good about that choice), but I do think they are few and far between personally.
I also fully agree about replacing one authority with another. As for the Reddit-I spent some time reading the stories on there when it first appeared but haven’t kept up with it. As far as some of the stories surrounding death, I think it ultimately rests on the parents of the babies, as the truth of the matter is that we are charged with the responsibility of protecting our children when they come to us, and it is similarly our responsibility to listen to our intuition over the guidance of others. It doesn’t mean that that is easy for a lot of women, or that that is even always what happens (as it seems to not have in some of those cases), but it also doesn’t take away that sacred and true responsibility. At the same time, I think anyone encouraging women to stay home when they are actively reaching out for support and advice because they are clearly worried and their intuition is telling them that there is something wrong is—and all signs point to potential issues—is negligent and not operating from a place of goodwill. So it is certainly a tricky thing.
I thoroughly enjoyed this read, thank you! I personally have always been really skeptical about the astronomical price of all of the FBS “offerings” and am 100% in agreement on your feelings about the benefits of women’s stories. Stories became confirmation for what I already knew deep down. I really trusted that I was capable of giving birth on my own after my own experiences of survival in a system that I had to fight against tooth and nail, and still managed to give birth vaginally, fortunately, which I think contributed to my confidence.
I’ve had two freebirths since being exposed to that content, for which I’ll forever be grateful. I have no regrets about my decisions. I did end up seeking out alternatives to their “guide to free birth” (exact name?) and ended up purchasing a much, much more affordable but similar type of education on the HERBAL website (who have also received tons of scrutiny, being exposed for deception and depravity, not unlike FBS, since then).
The issue really is with commodifying literally everything and, not to be overly judgmental because I’m sure there are some outliers, but the whole online “coaching“ business concept is just so dirty and untrustworthy to me. There’s no accountability, no security for those investing in that content. Skepticism is necessary.
Also the “illusion of sisterhood” part - you absolutely nailed it. Pregnancy is such an incredibly vulnerable time, too. I’m sure it’s fairly easy to prey on the women longing for like-mindedness and kinship, because for many of us it’s honestly few and far between in our real day-to-day lives. It would be amazing if we could change that.
There’s so much power in how we’re guided to handle our individual births in that specific point in time, deciding which risks we are and aren’t willing to take, and it changes birth to birth. Which brings us back to the importance in women’s stories that can help broaden our beliefs of what is possible. Still, we’re constantly battling social conditioning and indoctrination from both extremes. It’s tough.
One of the biggest issues imo is that most of society has been conditioned to rely so heavily on authority to guide them. In this case they’ve simply swapped out one authority for another. So many women struggle with discernment when it comes to birth, not entirely at a fault of their own. I do feel that the angry mob on Reddit mostly wants to put the responsibility of their bad outcomes onto an outside authority to avoid either contending with their own decisions, or accepting that things can go wrong with no one to blame. I have so much compassion for those who’ve been hurt. I also haven’t spent much time on there at all. What’s your opinion on the claims about fbs fetal death outcomes and such?
I have been volunteering with ICAN, since they are the only organization that helped me with my VBAC that wasn't trying to sell me something. And of course they are not sophisticated compared to all those sick little OB influencers or FBS, and much diminished in power post COVID (picketing hospitals that ban vaginal birth seems like a beautiful dream now), but we get on zoom and we talk about our bodies and there's nothing like it. Nothing. I wish more women knew about ICAN.
You mention learning from a grandma. The grandmas I know had twilight sleep and their breasts forcibly dried up. My mom and my female relatives had episiotomies and cesareans. There are no female elders on either side of my family with birth wisdom to share. None. I've had to piece things together while squatting in what felt like a pile of ruins.
I have a daughter and believe I may have another one day. I want to do doula training for them, so that someday I will have something intelligible to say to them, or their friends. If I can do nothing else in this world, I can do that.
I have heard of ICAN but haven’t looked into their work in any sort of meaningful way so thank you for mentioning this. So they do meetings for free? If you think of it and have the time I would love if you linked it here and maybe some women will see it or I can share it in notes! It sounds like a really vital resource.
I very much appreciate and agree with what you said about elders. In my mention of this I admit I was being somewhat idealistic but as I said, I do think that those connections and stories are available to us if we look in the right places. They may be hard to find but they do exist, there are women who did push back against the system in the past who exist today and I think their stories are worth searching for. That said-I think perhaps I should have worded it in a way where it was more focused on the upcoming generations like you mentioned here with your daughter. There are so many women today who are remembering the significance of birth and will have such meaningful and helpful things to share with our daughters and their peers. I am a mother to three girls now and that is certainly my hope!
I actually had my first baby in the hospital and had a really awful episiotomy cut, that was part of my reason for giving birth at home with my subsequent babies. I’m hoping the contrast in my own story will help highlight how obstetrics really has missed the mark in many ways time and time again (this was 13 years ago, and in the time since episiotomy has been significantly reduced). I also think that the twilight sleep period holds the same lesson and is a good reminder to women to not give away our experiences (being that so many women actually heavily advocated for it). If interested, I wrote another post awhile back about it!-
https://open.substack.com/pub/theworkofwomen/p/an-ungovernable-pain?r=1ljam1&utm_medium=ios
Sure, so ICAN focuses on education, support, and advocacy in the areas of cesarean prevention and healing and VBAC access, generally. As far as support, there's local chapters (I’m in NJ) that hold their own meetings, monthly national meetings, and a moderated FB group which is extremely supportive and kind (for both cesareans and VBACs) https://www.facebook.com/groups/ICANOnline a good place to start.
I really don’t love having a primarily online “community” around something so embodied and physiological. But, the women in my family as I mentioned were shocked I had a VBAC; the women in my church, including grandmas, were similarly shocked (“your doctor let you??”) and unfortunately, the local “crunchy mom” community (at least the ones I’ve met in person) seems to be mostly structured around selling something - essential oils, coaching, doula services, etc. I suspect there’s material reasons for this. My own mother, a homeschooler mom of 5, has noticed how many younger homeschool/SAHMs she knows now who have to have side hustles; monetized newsletters, influencer Instagrams, part-time work, and so on. We are far from the days when SAHMs founded ICAN and La Leche League, sent out newsletters, picketed hospitals, testified in front of the NIH, and so on.
I’ve also noticed in the recent wave of, I guess, SAHMs/tradwives, whatever that means, a kind of bizarre retreat from the political; the soft life women say they to, a focus on aesthetics, romantic images of gardens and babies, a retreat to online echo chambers, essays about doing the dishes. My parents were quite politically engaged; they worked with HSLDA when CPS was called on us (I forget why, I assume it was the sheer audacity of my Puerto Rican mother to say “no” to a doctor or an education bureaucrat lol), our church protested at abortion clinics and people got arrested. I’m a Democrat today, but I learned from them that there is always a fight, and sometimes it’s a dirty fight. The people who fight dirty are the people who win.
Increasingly, I believe that how we birth is a political problem. Like, the Black woman who freebirths gets the cops called on her when she visits the pediatrician. The CPM serving Amish women gets arrested for practicing without a license. Right now in NJ, I cannot have a home birth with a licensed midwife; it’s not legal for her to support me, due to my uterine scar, regardless of my own estimation of the risks and benefits. Perhaps more than anything, this is why FBS seems like the ultimate white feminist’s indulgence. Enclosing knowledge that is our birthright, and selling it back to us. Decontextualized, depoliticized, totally atomized. The triumph and selling of the individualist birth story. No solidarity, no past and no future. We have an opportunity here for solidarity and organization. I am trying to figure out how to seize it; how to jailbreak the furious energy trapped in mom’s groups and get it out on the streets.
If you have any ideas, I am here for them. I do not feel aligned with freebirth myself, but I very much admire the integrity and self-knowledge of the women who choose this for themselves, and wish and hope that it does not become synonymous with a weird fake online midwife school.
Thank you for all of this! Of course for the resources (had no idea they had local chapters like LLL) but also for all you added here. It’s a lot to think on.
I know exactly what you mean about the more “crunchy” communities often having a lot of selling going on. I think it makes sense, being that we have economic incentive to do something for extra money while also wanting the life of a SAHM, but so much of that feels very disingenuous. I of course have my little newsletter here, but I couldn’t imagine trying to sell it to people I interact with at say, the local library story time or whatever. I think there needs to be a boundary there. Those in-person, truly communal relationships need to have some grounding in what is real and right in front of us, and women trying to sell essential oils or supplements gets in the way of those true in person connections.
Further, I appreciate babies and gardens as much as the next person, and have written a small handful of things about more everyday life type topics (not doing the dishes, but planning holidays and the like) but the main fuel to my fire for writing is the more political/social/cultural and I would like to find a way to transfer that energy to those in-person relationships referenced above.
I am going to think about your call for ideas. I agree that birth itself and the modes by which we experience it, and also the “who/what/where” of it all is very much a politicized thing and I think it has been for a long time. I honestly think with as powerful and vital as it is, it’s bound to be politicized. Unassisted childbirth has the power to take away the “asking permission” part of things that often can get very political, but I understand that it isn’t something every woman wants and it isn’t something every woman should do for medical reasons. I also know it is chosen sometimes under duress due to political/social/cultural reasons—and that isn’t good. The middle ground really feels like wider access to midwifery care that is not tied to the state, and that certainly would require some fighting.
Thank you for giving me so much to think about.
ICAN is really similar to LLL, but obviously with a different focus.
I can relate so well - “piece things together while squatting in a pile of ruins.” Exactly. I am pregnant with my second and ever since my first birth I’ve been on a deep dive into remembering the lost wisdom and bringing it back into my own family line. Hopefully to pass it to my daughter as well, and to be there for women in my community.
Thanks for mentioning ICAN - I’m interested to learn more about it.
Thank you for writing such a thoughtful and personal piece, Emily. The story aspect has been a major part of my reflections on all that is happening in the freebirth world. It's always bothered me that the women who shared their birth stories with Emilee were not compensated for what they gave her, nor were they truly respected by her. I'm sorry to hear that she disrespected you as well during your interview. You deserved better than that. Far better.
I worked for Emilee S. as the Free Birth Society social media manager in 2023. This was before the "midwifery" school was started but right around the time everything began to take a turn for the worse. All but one woman that I worked alongside at that time has since left the brand. I remember Emilee complaining during a team Zoom meeting about how "boring" all of the birth stories were, and how tired she was of doing the podcast. She continued on, saying that she had to keep doing it because it's obviously what draws people in to the FBS brand, but she was not pleased about it.
There are many more examples I have of how little she values the women in her community and the disgusting terminology she uses to describe them. I'm working on writing a piece about it but have had to pause multiple times to recenter myself and make sure I'm staying aligned with my own storytelling values. The piece I recently published about FBS speaks to the storytelling process in these circumstances where trauma and vulnerability are involved. There are many women staying silent about their experiences with Emilee and Yolande because it's scary to make yourself vulnerable, especially if you worked for the women being discussed and have seen the way they behave when their audience isn't watching.
My personal writing experience has been a lot of back and forth about whether or not I'd spend the time diving into the topic. I was embarrassed about working for the brand and my ego did NOT want anyone to know about my proximity to FBS. I eventually felt that I had a personal responsibility to share what I know because a lot of my marketing copy resulted in people registering for the RBK school and attending the Matriarch Rising Festival. In order to undo that, I feel that I must write the truth about FBS. This doesn't mean I think everyone involved has the same obligation, but I know this to be what's required for my own journey through this unraveling.
Like you, I've written a variety of pieces over the years about my thoughts on the commodification of birth and motherhood, as well as the questionable practices of Emilee and Yolande. I never felt ready to publish them publicly because I didn't want to experience any more negativity than I already had while connected to FBS. The more inspiring pieces to write have been those that concern themselves with the solutions I've come up with regarding accessible and thorough childbirth education and our responsibility as mothers to be the ones to teach our children about birth. I'm still inspired by these pieces and look forward to making use of them in the coming months. This particular piece you wrote and published today has made me feel even more confident in my choice to write about the FBS situation and what the future holds for those of us who choose to write about birth and motherhood. I thank you very much for this.
At the root of this reckoning is the simple truth that women's wisdom and knowledge were stolen from them a long time ago (twilight birth is a great example of just how far women were misled), and it's a complete shame that women are now selling that stolen, sacred wisdom back to one another for ridiculous amounts of money. The internet isn't meant to be a pawn shop for stolen wisdom! Luckily for all of us, we have the power to reclaim this narrative by telling our stories fearlessly and on our own terms, whether they are about birth or the regrets we have regarding where we've spent our time on the internet ;). Stories really are so very powerful. Thank you again for sharing yours (and congratulations on your new baby!).
With love,
Kaitlin
Wow, Kaitlin! I must have missed your latest (I have missed a lot of things I sincerely want to read here lately 😆), I will be reading it later today once I catch up here. Thank you for mentioning it here and I hope more people find your work through these comments here. What a relevant, unique and interesting perspective you have on the matter.
I appreciate your focus on the storytelling part of it all as well. I feel like a lot of what is on the Reddit forum and what has been touched on in other places is much more specific than this part of it but I wanted to touch on more of the bigger picture. I wasn’t heavily involved with FBS beyond being on the podcast and also briefly being invited to be a part of the online community for free by Emilee but I found it a bit lacking and never really participated, so my vantage point is really more of that of an outsider, so your insider perspective on similar points to what I am discussing here will be fascinating to read about, I’m sure!
I’m so glad this made you feel more confident in your own sharing, as that really is sort of the most important thing of all!
Also-I’m so NOT surprised that Emilee mentioned being bored with listening to birth stories. She was visibly bored with mine and I have noticed the same when watching her interview other women as well. I also feel like maybe this lends to the sort of spiraling into more and more “extreme” versions of birth that the show has taken on over time. I get that they want to show the variations of what can happen-but I feel like in order to suck in more listeners they have intentionally gone more and more off the rails with what they choose to pedestal.
Thank you so much for commenting here and I look forward to reading your upcoming work!
Thank you Emily :). What a great insight re: the boredom leading to a sort of desensitization that lends itself to more extreme storytelling. There is so much validity to that. I see it happen with many of the people on social media who have pretty large followings too. Everything gets twisted to feed the machine and the machine only gets hungrier; it's never satisfied. These people have often linked their livelihood to the ups and downs of the algorithm and I think it's a very unhealthy practice that can lead to a lot of distortion and interference of what may have originally been an authentic message and mission. I also think this "internet guru" reckoning we are seeing will branch out into a reckoning for social media overall. It isn't aging well, and I for one am not willing to watch any more vulnerable people seeking connection, inspiration, etc. be taken advantage of in virtual spaces. They are a social experiment gone wrong at this point and I strongly believe that a redirect is in order. Substack feels better for me as a writer, but it's not perfect. I do wonder how much of an influence the FBS platform of choice (Instagram) had on the brand's downfall. IG is reliant upon images and videos as opposed to longform writing (a much better medium for the topic of birth education), and the platform certainly doesn't encourage respectful discourse. As well, the culture on IG is very much one of selling. It's 24/7 advertising on there and it can be extremely disorienting for followers and influencers alike. This is terrible for something as sacred as birth which was never meant to be monetized.
Instagram truly is a platform that is built on the capitalizing of certain cultural deficiencies-the algorithm seeks to take full advantage of insecurities and the places within ourselves which are lacking-whether that be community or knowledge or friendship or whatever else. So yes, I think it absolutely impacts not just FBS but a lot of businesses and influencers in the way they relate to their “followers”. All such apt points here, thank you again Kaitlin!
I finally completed my more complete story the other day, here's the link: https://open.substack.com/pub/kaitlinpearl/p/the-poisoned-well?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2gh2cl
Here is a relatable poem I wrote on the matter:
Birth work has shaken me.
I am currently being stirred.
There is a vibration happening that is setting us free.
Free from deadly ideology.
Free from veiled misogyny.
Free from “leaders” who were not meant to be.
I have stories to tell, but there are people who wouldn’t want me to tell them.
Do I care?
I care as much as they did about me, and about you, when they wronged our sisters
in God's name.
Hear me now as I say: the time has come for us to reclaim birth,
from the ego-driven people who know nothing of its worth.
Join me in a storytelling experience for the ages,
for our stories will surely fill thousands of pages.
What once brought sorrow now brings power.
Make haste; we mustn’t waste yet another hour.
Pick up your pen, open your mouth, God will guide you —
just let it out.
You said in your piece that you wanted to provide steady footing to the discussion and I feel that you have done just that with your analysis. A great piece of writing as always.
I never really like FBS although I did follow them because they showed so many videos of truly undisturbed birth and I really enjoyed that. I had to unfollow them because they are far too dogmatic for me. I want women/mothers to understand that when it comes to birth they are fully in charge. Whether they opt for an elective c-section or a free birth. I had to be the woman’s choice first and foremost. Making choices based on dogma instead of intuition is the antithesis of that.
Also unrelated, but thank you for using actual artwork in your writing and not just using AI generated images.
I have similar feelings about the dogma versus intuition piece. I think they preach intuition a lot but then their more rigid, dogmatic rhetoric gets in the way of truly intuitive reasoning-so it is a real irony that I think they have a serious blind spot about.
Thank you for reading and also thank you about the art! I will never, ever utilize AI. I hate AI and am completely unapologetic about it-so thank you for recognizing that!
Thank you for writing this and providing some balance.
Sadly, in my opinion, both FBS and the "Exposing FBS" substack seem rife with all of the worst, most stereotypical negative traits of womanhood--gossip, cattiness, judgment, etc. I have sympathy for women who took the FBS bait and regretted their decision, but I also am perplexed as to why someone would start an entire anonymous smear campaign following a bad experience...
So much for sticking it to the medical establishment--this whole fiasco is a distraction from the point (to empower each woman to make the best choice for herself) and detracts from prior efforts to (re)assert women as the experts of our own bodies/births.
Thank you for reading! If I’m totally honest I have only read one piece over on that substack, I should have done my due diligence and read them all, so thank you for adding this needed perspective.
Two things stand out to me when I think of FBS. First, a Live I watched with Emilee and Yolande where the energy between them was super off... really bitchy. Very weird, especially since they like to proclaim that they're "best friends." Maybe more like "business partners in a business that sells female friendship and so needs to have a female friendship at the helm"? The second thing is a video I saw of someone who went to the festival (Matriarch Rising I think it's called) and talked about the ways in which it was totally child un-friendly, which was insane to hear but also kind of tracks given everything that's coming out now.
Fascinating to watch this all go down. Don't wish anything bad on them, but do wish for people to be discerning when putting anything or any person on a pedestal!
Discernment really is something I find to be of utmost importance and it tends to be lacking in a lot of group settings where more extreme ideas are circled around. That’s why I wrote this, because as someone who encourages discernment as I have often done in my writing in the past, I really saw my own blind spot!
I agree that the energy is weird there and I think it ultimately is just because as human beings we are meant to pick up on that sort of insincerity in order to protect ourselves.
Loved this reflection and love you!💕
thank you friend (and love you too!!)
I’ve just loved my midwives. I loved the prenatals. I loved their skill from educated experience. I loved their fearlessness at my crazier births, even 1 terrible awful labor.
I had no family to be there, we didn’t call either side till after the babies had been born and all was perfect. They had no idea I was even laboring. I had only unbroken derision and lack of support for using a midwife at all, let alone homebirths.
I was young at my first baby’s birth, not quite 19. My husband just went along with whatever I wanted. I was older with my second’s but new husband and his first. He was ALL IN tho as we were very like-minded and had dated as teens.
Anyway, maybe lack of support in spite of my natural cynicism and distrust of authority led me to embrace the midwife figure so much. I think tho it’s more a universal, ancient figure to women. Women have been midwifing for women forEVER. As soon as Eve had a daughter old enough, she had her there with her, I’m very sure.
I had one homebirth with a midwife, a doula (no husband there, long story), and 5 women there. I had a birth with a man there, his wife too — our church had a FIT about that but they had had 2 homebirths and he and she were very close friends of ours. He was so close to that baby he witnessed being born and so thankful for being there— he would even stop by on way home from wk to hold the baby while we all talked. Prob several dozen times. I had another baby with the midwife, her student/assistant and 3 ladies who had never gotten near a homebirth even tho all had been “delivered of” at least 1 baby. I went to one friends homebirth with easily 10 of us women there besides the midwife.
My point is, I find it very strange to just want my husband there. Even when it’s just he & the midwife and 1 friend. I’ve never not had 1 friend there. I was never an extrovert either lol but birth alone, or just he & I, holds no attraction for me. And I rly wonder at it being a forced construct.
I have a friend who’s birthed 1-2 completely alone, she asked the dad not to come in at a certain point. Others he’s been there for but no midwife. Her last birth something scared her. She just could not get the baby out I think. She was exhausted I think. They went to the ER. *NIGHTMARE* she’s still livid about it. I’ve talked at length with her about unassisted birth. I still don’t get it lol 🤷🏼♀️
Thank you for this, Hélène!
I have heard it said that women can either be “cats or elephants” in this birthing time. I consider myself a cat, you must be an elephant! I do think the idea of having some fellow women at a birth to be appealing, and if my closest friends and sister lived nearby (they are spread across the world unfortunately), I would invite them, but that is not the way my life is set up. I also doubt I would actually want them in the room while I actually gave birth, as I very much get an impulse to “retreat” and get into a dark, small space by myself during transition. I do not want voices, touch or eyes on me. That is the “cat” part. My husband comes in for the actual birth to help me catch those slippery babies and bring warm towels and I have had my older children witness the births as well, as I think it is important for them to see it and they have been naturally curious about it.
Your births sound lovely, and I especially loved that story about your male friend who would come to visit your child! I think that is really beautiful. I also agree that historically, birth being attended by fellow women is the standard, that is just a fact! In the same way female elephants will circle around a birthing mother and her baby and celebrate at the birth, I see women doing the same for one another as a real blessing and a magical sort of moment. It just hasn’t been what I have been called to, and I don’t think that that is a result of any sort of construct, it really is a very animal thing I feel inside of myself.
I read about Leboyer’s (he wrote Birth Without Violence) research into birthing and how primitive ppl groups do it and how women left to their own choices do. Often they went to caves or cave like environs. I thought, wowsers.
This was prenatally for my first. So I’ve been an elephant from the getgo lol it’s just so strange becuz I’m actually pretty introverted & reserved!
It's funny cause finding them also opened my eyes to the "I could just do this" idea in a country where it is obstetric system or basically nothing and I have had two uncomplicated unassited births since. But I also apply the knowledge I aquired in different doula trainings and classes.
For my first freebirth in 2020 I bought their freebirth guide and, honestly, I didn't ge anything from it that I didn't already knew or that wasn't like wth id this person talking about.
The whole talk about "energy" and weird "spiritual" jargon was very off putting to me, also the idea of conscious concepcion and "spirit babies" of being able to "release a pregnancy", yeah, I evetually just stopped following and didn't waste any more money on their offerings.
I continued studying and taking courses on childbirth physiology whicha have helped me inmensely and made me even more confident on the body and I'm always coming back to myself to see wether I intuit the need for assistance or not.
I never paid for any of their resources but this is exactly why. There are really helpful books one can buy used for 10-15 dollars and get all of the relevant information, and I can’t help but compelled to tell everyone about it! What you said here just really affirms that I think.
I feel similarly about the way they word things as well. I absolutely consider birth to be a very sacred, hallowed place and experience but I am turned off by the borderline-occult way they speak about it too.
Thank you for reading and for sharing here!
I’m not familiar with the “Free Birth Society”, but “variations of normal” is a peculiar expression. If something is a variation, isn’t it by definition not the norm?
They would seem to be using “normal” as a synonym for “OK”, as in: “It’s different, but ok” (“Ok” meaning something in between “it feels fine” and “nothing bad will happen.”
I am intrigued by your discussion of how birth stories prepare us for the experience. During my first pregnancy in particular, I had paid attention mainly to stories of abnormality, since I was interacting with other people who struggled with fertility. I did grasp toward the end of the pregnancy that this was not very helpful and tried to balance it out (I also read Ina May Gaskin, and worked with a doula.). I still very much wanted the reassurance that others were looking out for me and my baby, though. I think this is completely normal too: responsibility can be a team effort.
Yes the phrase is very bizarre really, it is the sort of subverting of language that we see in larger culture that I really oppose, it’s like an effort to dilute meaning in service of ideology.
I agree that responsibility can be a team effort, that will of course look so different for every mother, but having some partnership there-true partnership-is very important.
Thank you for this. I am a home birth midwife and have gone through various phases of grappling with FBS. I support the choices women make, however, the commodification of a mindset that is built on a bunch of other complicated narratives that are at work right now has never sat right with me. Making a choice because other women have made it and then spoke about it isn’t a fully informed choice (oversimplification, absolutely). There is so much nuance and I appreciate the container here for exploring more of my own feelings while witnessing your personal experiences.
Thank you so much Amber! I love hearing your perspective as a midwife especially. I agree that making choices based solely on the choices of others is not a fully formed choice, and that is a lot of the premise upon which their million-dollar business lies upon, which is the true issue here. I also really appreciate midwives who also support women who choose to birth unassisted as I do think it is a valid choice for some of us, but being able to consult with midwives who do not condemn our choices occasionally is such a vital service. I recently gave birth unassisted but went and checked in with a CPM shortly after and also have spoken with another one during my pregnancy when worries came up. I am a RN and have been a L&D nurse and currently work mother-baby in high risk OB so I have a baseline of knowledge that I feel confident about but the specialized knowledge of an experienced home birth midwife is so valuable. All this to say, I am very appreciative of your voice being here!
Congratulations on the birth of your baby, Emily!
I have to say I'm a bit embarrassed by how much I allowed myself to be influenced by FBS during my pregnancy. It was the only podcast I listened to during that time, even though I knew I wanted a midwife at my own birth. It was so inspiring, *and* I do think doing so created a rigidity in my own thinking and expectations that ended up contributing to a lot of (possibly avoidable, possibly not?) confusion, anger, suffering and self-flagellation in my postpartum experience. It has taken a couple years of processing, learning/unlearning, witnessing birth, and now reading the stories of women who were directly involved with FBS to unravel that grippy, dogmatic thinking. I appreciate your willingness to reflect and your ability to hold the paradox of all of your combined experiences, that is a rare thing.
I appreciate your own ability to reflect honestly on this as well, Berlin! I feel like this is a definite pattern among those of us who were influenced by their work, and speaks to the misleading nature of the way they do business. I don’t see women who follow and take in the work of other big names in birthwork feeling this way somehow, and I think there is a reason for this. Their lack of factual information around those variations of normal and emergencies and even death and their ability to word-salad/pseudo-spirituality speak their way out of giving good information around those tricky topics in the name of sticking to the narrative is a big reason for this. They encourage an all-or-nothing attitude while simultaneously being guarded about true issues that can come up (because they aren’t truly qualified) and that is a bad combination. We as women of course have to hold responsibility for our own allowing of this influence within ourselves too of course, but their total lack of recognition of how they have impacted many women in a negative way (and only recognizing the good they have done) really betrays a lack of integrity to me, as well as an ego problem.
Thank you for reading!
Thank you for writing this.
It's a very straightforward and non sensational take on the whole thing, and helped me define my feelings about it all more clearly.
I've appreciated the stories, and the encouragement to take responsibility for your own decisions, the "permission slips" to disregard posturing authority figures, the highlighting of the reality that death can happen in any circumstance - the right to an undisturbed death.
But then I've also often wondered about the point at which you could become proactive, not just letting death just happen just because it can if you don't "intervene".
And the reasons behind certain undesirable outcomes, where we can actually take responsibility for, like your maternal health - mineral status, circadian health, adequate calorie intake, postural alignment, etc.
The idea that you can be proactive just seems to be skipped. Like we should just blob about, let nature have it's way with us, and come what may, be sure to reframe it as blissful.
Forgetting, we ARE nature, we participate with it and we can be intentional about moving towards desirable outcomes, while living with the peace of knowing we can not control it.
Ahh I love what you had to say about this! We are, in fact, nature, and it is natural to take measures to protect ourselves and our babies—we are not just passive recipients of whatever nature throws at us, we do have some amount of input which can truly impact order. Nature can be perceived as chaos but there is always some order within it and we do have influence upon it. I also think as women, we are meant to help one another in making those choices sometimes, and absolutely not just “blob about”! This is a really vital perspective, thank you!
Wrote Duden, “The thick circle the counselor penciled far down on the bell-shaped curve did not touch her . . . what I am trying to understand is the difference the encounter with a professional makes for Maria and the degree to which it removes her from the way her mother experienced the body.” (p. 27)
Maria wasn’t someone who’d had serial miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies. She wasn’t addicted to crack. Maria wasn’t, figuratively speaking, walking in the woods near yellow jackets’ nests. She was healthy, experienced, gravid woman. And yet, these experts wanted to create a dependency upon themselves, to chain her psychologically to a grid of technocratic monopolies by altering her perception, her way of living in her own skin, by transforming her body into a menu of risks.
https://stanleyabner1951gmailcom.substack.com/p/the-fallacy-of-technological-neutrality
That last sentence! I started reading your work you linked here, Stan, but I of course am finding myself consistently interrupted. I saved it to come back to later when I can focus because it is very interesting. I especially appreciated the Illich quote in the beginning. I don’t know Duden’s work either, but am curious about it now.
I pray you enjoy it as much as I appreciated yours. Very timely.
I am so glad you had a good birth Emily!
I too have been following the controversies, I have actually followed them since 1989 when I read Pat Carters book and learned of her league of empowered women giving birth at home alone.
For many years the Skeptical OB Dr. Amy attempted to take out Freebirthers with every possible argument known to man.
https://www.skepticalob.com
So I have watched the narratives shift and contort and then shift again.
Every talking point the establishment had showed up in NBC News reporter Brandy Zadroznys article. She won awards for journalism for this swill.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/she-wanted-freebirth-no-doctors-online-groups-convinced-her-it-n1140096
I invited my husband to be my birth attendant because I knew he would go the distance with me.
Vested.
He was completely vested in the outcomes of our Free Birthed sons.
I think anyone educating the public about family birth should charge as much money as they can for whatever is being offered.
If families are not being served, move along, and find something cheaper, that is the free market in action.
I love the ongoing controversy because that debate gets people talking and young couples noticing and asking questions and that is the best thing of all to result from the heat of the moment.
Cheers!
Jenny
That’s a very valid point I didn’t think of, the part about the attention being directed at alternative options. I still think that FBS has been particularly predatory in their marketing practices—it’s not just about selling information, it’s about selling a “sisterhood” and all manner of mothering-related community and heritage, and then charging insane amounts for it. I’m grateful, like I said, for being exposed to some of the concepts they introduced me to (although truth be told I do think I was well on my way through reading various texts anyway).
Also, gosh, I haven’t thought about The Skeptical OB in so long 😆 she’s crazy. I will have to read that NBC article! Thanks for sharing.
I also agree with what you said about your husband as a vested participant in the process. My husband has been so helpful to me now in the three births we have experienced just he and I ♥️
I love introducing Paul to new friends by saying, “He is my midwife!”
He went the distance with all five of our births, even my c section for a breech presentation, he was my rock of support.
I feel like we likely had a very similar experience, Angelique! My first birth was in the hospital as well and very much is part of the reason I chose to stay home with my next 3, all of which were freebirthed and yes, some of the influence upon those choices was a result of the stories of other women, which I am very appreciative of.
As for the coaching/online commodification of anything and everything, yes! Skepticism is extremely necessary. I know there are people who have true integrity and good things to offer (for example, I took the Innate Traditions training from midwife Rachelle Garcia Seliga in 2020 and I feel very good about that choice), but I do think they are few and far between personally.
I also fully agree about replacing one authority with another. As for the Reddit-I spent some time reading the stories on there when it first appeared but haven’t kept up with it. As far as some of the stories surrounding death, I think it ultimately rests on the parents of the babies, as the truth of the matter is that we are charged with the responsibility of protecting our children when they come to us, and it is similarly our responsibility to listen to our intuition over the guidance of others. It doesn’t mean that that is easy for a lot of women, or that that is even always what happens (as it seems to not have in some of those cases), but it also doesn’t take away that sacred and true responsibility. At the same time, I think anyone encouraging women to stay home when they are actively reaching out for support and advice because they are clearly worried and their intuition is telling them that there is something wrong is—and all signs point to potential issues—is negligent and not operating from a place of goodwill. So it is certainly a tricky thing.
Also, thank you!
I thoroughly enjoyed this read, thank you! I personally have always been really skeptical about the astronomical price of all of the FBS “offerings” and am 100% in agreement on your feelings about the benefits of women’s stories. Stories became confirmation for what I already knew deep down. I really trusted that I was capable of giving birth on my own after my own experiences of survival in a system that I had to fight against tooth and nail, and still managed to give birth vaginally, fortunately, which I think contributed to my confidence.
I’ve had two freebirths since being exposed to that content, for which I’ll forever be grateful. I have no regrets about my decisions. I did end up seeking out alternatives to their “guide to free birth” (exact name?) and ended up purchasing a much, much more affordable but similar type of education on the HERBAL website (who have also received tons of scrutiny, being exposed for deception and depravity, not unlike FBS, since then).
The issue really is with commodifying literally everything and, not to be overly judgmental because I’m sure there are some outliers, but the whole online “coaching“ business concept is just so dirty and untrustworthy to me. There’s no accountability, no security for those investing in that content. Skepticism is necessary.
Also the “illusion of sisterhood” part - you absolutely nailed it. Pregnancy is such an incredibly vulnerable time, too. I’m sure it’s fairly easy to prey on the women longing for like-mindedness and kinship, because for many of us it’s honestly few and far between in our real day-to-day lives. It would be amazing if we could change that.
There’s so much power in how we’re guided to handle our individual births in that specific point in time, deciding which risks we are and aren’t willing to take, and it changes birth to birth. Which brings us back to the importance in women’s stories that can help broaden our beliefs of what is possible. Still, we’re constantly battling social conditioning and indoctrination from both extremes. It’s tough.
One of the biggest issues imo is that most of society has been conditioned to rely so heavily on authority to guide them. In this case they’ve simply swapped out one authority for another. So many women struggle with discernment when it comes to birth, not entirely at a fault of their own. I do feel that the angry mob on Reddit mostly wants to put the responsibility of their bad outcomes onto an outside authority to avoid either contending with their own decisions, or accepting that things can go wrong with no one to blame. I have so much compassion for those who’ve been hurt. I also haven’t spent much time on there at all. What’s your opinion on the claims about fbs fetal death outcomes and such?
Congratulations on a new baby girl!!