(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
Welcome to the birth prep podcast. I'm Taylor, your birth bestie, who's here to support you as you plan and prepare for the unmedicated birth of your dreams. If you're ready to ditch the fear, conquer the hospital hustle, support that bum and bod, and walk into the delivery room like the HGIC you were born to be, then buckle up, babe.
This is where it all goes down. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the birth prep podcast. I'm so glad you're here.
I'm so glad you doing this work. Like, I'm so proud of you for showing up and getting the information that you need in order to ditch your fear and take the reins of your birth and just prep for the kind of experience that you want and, quite frankly, that you deserve. If you're new here, hi, I'm Taylor.
I'm the birth prep coach. I'm also a mama of five, so if you hear some craziness going on in the background, that's them, okay? I had five kids in six years, and I learned a lot of things the hard way and had some very redemptive experiences after I actually put in the prep work, the same exact work that I teach you guys how to do. I've had awful, terrible, traumatic births, and I have had wonderful, beautiful, cannot-wait-to-do-this-again births, and I'm so glad to help you in creating an intentional experience for yourself, for your birth, for your baby, for your partner, the whole nine yards.
I'm going to say something that might be a little hard to hear, but it's something that I wish somebody would have said to me before I ever gave birth for the first time, and it's the whole message of today's episode. It's that nobody is coming to save you. But, and hear me on this, that's not a bad thing.
If you've been walking around feeling overwhelmed, underprepared, confused about what to do or who to trust or where to even start, this is for you today. If you've been hoping your provider or your hospital or the system itself is going to automatically protect the birth experience that you want, I want to love you enough to tell you the truth. It doesn't work like that, but this doesn't mean that you're doomed.
It means that you're about to wake up, and it's going to change everything. For this message to truly click with you and for you to truly take ownership of the experience, you have to take responsibility, okay? It was very difficult for me to do that because I had already had several difficult, awful, terrible experiences under my belt, and I had to come to terms with the fact that it was my job to know better and to do better. Let me tell you, it's a lot easier to just sit there and be like, well, I'm the victim, and they lied to me, and they coerced me, and they did things to my body that I didn't consent to, and they did things to my babies that ruined things for them and my experience with them.
And I could sit there and talk about those things all day long because those things are absolutely true. That's what happened. But taking responsibility over the fact that I allowed all of that to happen was the first step in my healing, the first step in creating a much better experience for myself and for my babies, the first step in me sitting here right now recording this podcast for you.
It's why I tell you guys to ask all the questions and to have the conversations and to really make informed decisions for yourself and for your babies because you are the best person for the job, and you are the only person who is capable and equipped enough to do this work for yourself. So today, I really wanted to talk to you guys about taking radical responsibility over your experience. So let's get real for a minute about the myth of the rescue.
Most of us grew up thinking that birth was just something that happens to us, right? You get pregnant, you go to your prenatal appointments, you show up at the hospital when it's time for you to have your baby, and they take care of the rest, right? You follow rules, you be a good patient, you trust that the experts will do what's best for you because that's what we've been told, explicitly told, implicitly told our entire lives. Trust the doctor, trust the hospital, trust the system. And let me say this gently but clearly, the system isn't set up to protect your empowerment.
It's set up to protect itself. It's not malicious, but it is impersonal. And birth, birth is deeply personal.
Now here's where it gets tricky because at first that mindset feels safe, right? Oh, I don't have to worry. I'll just let them handle it. They went to school for this.
They're the experts. They know how birth goes, blah, blah, blah, whatever the thoughts are, right? But when labor starts and things get intense, and you realize that nobody's asking you what you want, when decisions are being made around you and not with you, when you're being offered interventions without real consent or pressured because it's more convenient for somebody else, that's when that bubble pops. That's when I've had clients look at me and whisper, I didn't know I could even say no.
Or why didn't anybody tell me that I had options? Or worse, I didn't know I had to fight for the kind of birth that I wanted. And it breaks my heart because these women weren't lazy or careless. They were misled.
They were conditioned to believe that they'd be saved when what they really needed was to be equipped. We're taught that we can walk in with our birth plan and hand it to our doctor, and they'll take care of the rest for us. That's not how this system works.
But it's not a bad thing that nobody is coming to save you. So we're that nobody is coming to save you, that no one else is going to magically ensure that your birth goes the way you hope. That might feel scary at first, and that's fair.
Feel the feelings, all the things. But it's actually the most freeing truth in the world because guess what? It means you're not powerless. You're not stuck.
You're not at the mercy of whoever's on call. It means you get to decide. You get to prepare.
You get to step into that birth room already wearing the crown like the HGIC you are. You don't need saving. You need a strategy.
You need a voice. You need clarity and support, a rock-solid understanding of how this all works so you can walk in there knowing exactly what you want, what you'll say yes to, and what you're prepared to push back on. This isn't about being confrontational.
It's about being confident. It's about trading fear for preparation. It's about making your birth plan from a place of strength, not hopeful obedience.
And let me say this loud for the mamas in the back, you were never meant to be a passive passenger in your own birth story. I absolutely experienced it. I was like an extra.
I'm like, I'm supposed to be the main character today, and I'm like an extra, and nobody even knows that I'm there. Zero out of 10. Do not recommend.
And if you've been feeling unsure, like, oh, I don't know if I can actually pull this off. Like I have big goals for this birth, and I don't know if it's going to go the way I wanted to. Maybe you have previous experiences that didn't go anything like what you were planning, and you're like, well, is this going to go the same way as last time? Like, if you're feeling those feelings, first and foremost, that makes total sense to me.
You make sense to feel that way. And two, let me remind you today, you already are the woman who can do this. Okay? It doesn't take a special person.
It doesn't take a special pain tolerance. It doesn't take anything but stepping into that power. So you already are her.
You just need to connect to that version of yourself, and not like in a woo-woo way, but like in a, what thoughts do I need to think in order to be that powerful version of myself? What tools do I need to walk into that birth space, owning it like the head girly in charge? What education do I need in order to make informed and strong, confident decisions for myself and for my baby? It's time to move the fear out of the way. We need to build a foundation so strong that no one, not a nurse, not a policy, not a provider with a God complex, no one can rattle your peace that day. Okay.
Let's take a deep breath. That was a lot. Let's talk about what actually happens when you decide to take ownership of your birth.
And let me name something here that no one really talks about enough. This is going to feel uncomfortable, not because you're doing it wrong, but because you were trained not to. As little girls, we were taught to be polite, to say yes, to be good, to not make waves, to not speak too loudly, not ask too many questions, not be difficult.
Like your girl is still recovering from making myself so small my entire life just to be what I was expected to be. Right. And I know so many of us have gone through that same experience and it makes sense, right? We were taught to trust authority.
We were taught to stay in line, to smile, to say thank you, even if something felt off. And when you carry that conditioning into your birth experience, it looks like saying yes to things you don't fully understand. It looks like ignoring your instincts because you don't want to be labeled as dramatic or combative.
It looks like letting things happen to your body because you don't want to be the mom who's too much. But here's the thing, babe. This is not the time to be a good girl.
This is not the time to play small, to stay quiet or to go with the flow. If the flow is dragging you somewhere that you don't want to go, your birth is not a test of obedience. It's an initiation into motherhood.
I don't know if you're the kind of mama that I am, but there wasn't no one making decisions for my babies from the very get go from 22 year old me. I knew what I wanted for my babies. I knew what I absolutely did not want touching my babies.
And I stood up for that and I advocated for it. And I made sure that I got the experience in terms of my children that I wanted. But I did not do the same for myself.
But here's the thing, I didn't even know how much my birth experience would impact my baby, or how much my birth experience would impact my postpartum experience, my first days, weeks, months with my baby. So for those of you that can't quite get behind doing it for yourself yet, because I get that, I've been there, I've done that, I understand that mindset and how hard it is to break that conditioning. Do it for your baby.
You deserve to walk into it with your voice and your power and your presence fully activated. Because if you wait until you're in labor to start using your voice, if you wait until someone's pressuring you to make a call, if you wait until the weight of it is staring you in the face and your baby is on the line, it's so much harder to rise up in that moment if you've spent your whole pregnancy shrinking. I learned this the hard way with my third baby, which is the moment where I decided that birth would never be that way for me again.
I spent my entire pregnancy being the good patient, listening to the doctor's orders, or lying to them, making them believe that I was doing everything they said that I was doing, or that I needed to do rather. And then it got to the moment that it was time for me to give birth. And then I tried to use my voice.
And what happened? What do you think happened? They just listened to me? No, absolutely not. They physically put their hands on me and made me do what they wanted me to do. Because I didn't know how to do it.
I had no practice doing it. I didn't set the stage and say, hey, this is who you're messing with. So you need to start changing the way that you walk into those appointments.
Your prenatal appointments are practice, okay? Break those good girl chains in pregnancy so that when the time labor comes, you're already standing in your power. And no, stepping into your head girly in charge era doesn't mean becoming bossy or confrontational or rude or whatever other label that you like coincide standing up for yourself with. It means becoming clear and rooted and prepared and standing up for yourself if and when it's needed.
It means doing the work now so you're not scrambling later. It means unlearning what you were taught and choosing what serves you and your baby. Let me tell you something.
There are a lot of things in my life that I do things very differently than the way that I was taught to do them. The way that I was taught was the right way to do them. And that's not a fun process.
Unlearning what you've been taught your entire life is freaking hard. I promise. I understand.
I'm not asking you to do something that I haven't done myself. It's tough work. And I applaud those that are actually going after it and getting what they want and what is going to serve them and the experience that they're trying to pull off.
Because not many people do that. Most women do not do this work in any way, shape or form in any area of their life for their entire life. I know lots of women in their 50s, 60s, 70s who are still doing things the way that they were taught to do them and have never thought, hmm, maybe I should do this a different way.
Maybe I should do this in a way that serves me now. Maybe I should do this in a way that actually fuels my life with joy and happiness and, you know, positivity. I remember when I just something so simple.
I put all my kids clothes in one of my closets so that I had a family closet because it was so much easier for me to put away laundry. We were literally living out of laundry baskets because I would never go upstairs and put all the clothes away because we go through clothes so freaking fast in this house, if you can imagine. But the amount of comments that I got from different people saying that, like, I was so excited about it.
I was so excited to share my new way of doing things. And I was so pumped because I can put a load of laundry away in three minutes and my family is so much better now because I have all this time back and all this space back and people can find their clothes and, like, the clean clothes when we were living in the baskets were getting mixed with the dirty clothes. And then I was doing extra laundry that I didn't need to do.
So it was wasting more of my time, time that I could have been spending with my kids. You know, like, I thought that this was like this fun, awesome thing. So I was telling people about it.
And then I quickly learned, OK, people don't like that I'm doing this. Why? Because they were taught that that it's supposed to be a specific way, right? You hang your clothes up in the closet or you have your dresser in your room or you have both, whatever. And those things are in your bedroom.
And that's where you put all the clothes away. And this is how you do it. And you have to fold all the clothes and blah, blah, blah.
It's like we don't have to do that. Like, nobody said we had to do it. It's just how we were taught to do it.
At least that's how I was taught to do it. And let me tell you, it was hard. Even recently, a couple of months back, I was talking to my friend about it.
And I was folding all these tiny little rags. We have like a bunch of different rags. I've got like cloth wipes.
I've got cloth paper towels. I've got just washcloth rags and all these things. And I have bins for them.
And I was folding them all in these like specific folds, depending on the towel. And then I was putting them in the bins. And then the kids would go in there and they would mess them up.
And I'd go back in there and I'd fold them back up. And it's like it was taking so much of my time when I could just throw them in the bins. We go through them so fast.
Like literally two days later, they're empty again. And I have a lot of them. But we use them for everything.
We go through them so quickly. And it was so hard for me to stop folding those because I was taught that I was supposed to fold my clothes and fold my towels and fold my bed sheets and fold my pillowcases. And I know that sounds so silly, but that's how deep rooted this some of this stuff is.
And if I'm doing that, if it's that hard for me to do that about little towels, are you joking? How hard is it for some of us to do that about our birth experiences, about the way we're raising our kids, about the way we're teaching our kids, about the way we're running our households, the way we're running our finances. This work that you're doing, I know we're preparing for birth, right? This is why we're doing the work. But this work, you can take right into motherhood, right into your parenting experiences, right into your household, right into your job.
You can take this work in so many areas of your life and drastically change things. Because a lot of this stuff at the core of it all is a mindset shift. And I know it sounds like I just went galloping down the rabbit trail because I kind of did a bit there.
But it all ties into each other. And I need you to understand how important the work is that you're doing, and how hard it can be, and how it makes sense that there's resistance there. Like, oh, man, I listened to the podcast, but I don't actually do anything about it.
Or I really want to buy the course, but I haven't gone to the sales page and done it yet. Or worse, you bought it already and haven't logged into your course portal yet. Essentially, you're telling your brain, hey, brain, remember the way that we've always done things literally in the history of forever? Yeah, we're going to change that now.
And your brain's job every single day of your life is to keep you safe and alive. And your brain does that by keeping you in your comfort zone. Because your comfort zone is where you've always stayed safe and alive.
And your brain knows if it can keep you there, it has a much higher chance of keeping you alive. Because whatever is on the outside of that comfort zone is new territory. How's that going to go? Are you going to be able to handle it? Are you going to literally on a live out there? So I guess the whole point of that tangent, sorry for yelling at you, was that don't let your brain keep you from doing this work.
Okay, don't let your mother in law or your doctor or whoever is in your way. Don't let them stop you from doing this work. At the core of all this, we're learning how to trust ourselves again.
And that can be really yucky work. So I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're doing it.
But let's finally talk about what this can actually look like in preparation for your birth experience. It looks like learning how your body was designed to birth. So you stop fearing what it's doing.
It looks like understanding what the hospital is likely to offer you, their hospital policies and their standard of care, the way they typically do things, and knowing which parts of that align with your goals, and which don't. Creating a birth plan that isn't just, I prefer this, please, but is actually a strategy for how you want your birth to unfold, even if things go sideways. It looks like preparing your mind for the pressure because yes, birth is intense, but it's especially intense when someone's pushing fear or doubt or deadlines on you.
Choosing your provider like you're hiring for the most important job of your life, because you are. And teaching your partner or birth support how to actually support you, not just stand in the room and say you're doing great while chaos swirls around you. It doesn't mean doing everything.
It means doing the right things and doing them before it's too late to speak up. Because here's the truth. You do not become head girly in charge the day labor starts.
You become her in the prep. You become her every time you choose to lead your birth instead of outsourcing it. You become her when you say no more playing small, not for this, not for me, not for my baby.
And I'll be real. Once you taste that kind of power, you don't go back. But just because no one's coming to save you and you're stepping into your power, that doesn't mean you have to do it all by yourself.
You can, and should, in my personal opinion, I don't like using the word should very often, but I think it applies in this case. You can and should have support, but support is not the same as rescue. Okay.
I want you guys to hear that from me today. Support looks like a doula who respects your values and keeps the energy calm and grounded, or a partner who knows how to advocate, how to speak up, how to protect your space, a care team you choose because they align with your birth vision, a coach, hey girl, who equips you with the knowledge and mindset to walk in ready, a course that breaks it down week by week. So you're not just winging it.
You're not a damsel in distress, girl. You're not a patient waiting for the doctor to allow your birth to unfold. You're the head girly in charge of this experience and your team.
They're like your backup singers. They're not the lead vocalists. Right.
I know I said it earlier. I'm like, you're the main character. You're not an extra.
Everyone else are the extras, right? They're the supporting, they're supporting the lead. Right. Okay.
You're the lead. It's time to act like it. The best part when you prep from this place, this place of grounded ownership over your experience, you don't need someone to rescue you.
You're already steady. You're already clear. You're already in the seat of power.
And I'm not saying it like you're not going to need interventions and the birth's not going to go sideways or anything like that. Like that stuff can absolutely still happen, but who's in charge when those things are unfolding. Right.
Like, yes, you can have the support of your provider for their medical knowledge and things like that. But at the end of the day, you're the one calling the shots. But before we wrap this up today, I want to just ground this in some action.
If this episode is hitting you right in the chest and you're ready to stop waiting and start leading, here are five simple ways that you can move forward today. One, rewrite one belief about birth that's been keeping you small. Something like they'll tell me what to do becomes I'll ask questions and make informed choices to take a hard look at your birth plan.
OK, is it just a list of preferences or is it an actual strategy for navigating the system you're about to walk into and really take a look at like the language that you've written your birth plan in? I see a lot of women like I prefer this, but if it doesn't happen, like that's OK. Like it's just a preference. Like it's not a big deal.
It's like, no, there's absolutely no this, that and the other. And it's like, yeah, if emergencies arise, great, wonderful. You can cross that bridge when you get there.
But it's like so many of us go in with like a, well, if you can make this happen, that'd be great. But if not, you know, I'll take what I can get kind of vibe to it. And that's not that's not the vibe, you know, that's not the vibe we're trying to walk in with.
Number three, ask your provider a real question this week or at your next appointment whenever you see them next or give them a call if you need to. That's also a power move like, hey, I have a question and I cannot wait till our appointment. I need to I need to ask, you know, I need to know if I'm firing you or not.
No, I'm just kidding. Don't say that. OK, but for real, don't just ask like a standard question like do you support unmedicated birth? I would almost bet money on the fact that ten out of ten, they're going to say yes.
They're all going to say yes to that. Of course they're going to say yes. Why wouldn't they say yes? No, we don't support that here.
No, you want to get real specific and it doesn't even take that much work. It's just a matter of twisting it about a little bit. Ask what does support look like for an unmedicated birth experience in your practice? How do your nurses pitch in to that experience? What's the standard of care when I walk into the hospital room that day? Walk me through the experience.
Questions like that. They're a lot harder to bullcrap if I'm going to be real. They can't just be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we definitely do that for sure.
We definitely do delayed cord clamping. No. What does delayed cord clamping look like in your practice? Oh, well, we clamp after two minutes and then we cut the cord or offer, you know, husband, partner, whoever to cut the cord.
Like blah, blah, blah. Okay, great. That's not what I want.
Here's my definition of delayed cord clamping. We're going to wait until the cord stops pulsing. We're going to wait until it's white.
We're going to wait till all the blood that is in the placenta returns to my baby's body where it belongs and then we're going to clamp and then we're going to cut. And that could take upwards of 30 minutes. Are you prepared to support me in that? Because if you just walk in and say, hey, do you support delayed cord clamping? Can I have that in your practice? And they're like, oh yeah, for sure.
We'll definitely do that for you. And then you get there that day and realize after two minutes when everything's cut already and it's too late, oh man, we had totally different definitions of what that looks like. Number four, journal on this prompt.
What would it look like for me to be the leader of my birth or the head girlie in charge, if you will. Let your heart speak in this, like really, truly just get really honest with yourself. Let the truth come spilling out.
What would it look like? And furthermore, are you prepared to step into that? Are you prepared to show up that day? Like what you want, like what's on that paper right now? This is what it would look like, but are you ready and willing to do that? And number five, get inside a support system that actually equips you for this experience. You can join the birth prep course. That's the step-by-step, everything you need is in there, literally.
You can come into my free Facebook group. I do live streams in there every single Friday at one o'clock Eastern standard time. If you can't catch it live, you can catch the replay.
You can post questions in there. I try to get to them as soon as possible. Get inside a container that's going to support you.
It doesn't have to be one of mine. I'm just going to throw it out there. If I'm not the girl for you, that is totally fine.
No hard feelings at all. I want you to have somebody who is going to be the perfect match for you. And that might not be me.
And that's cool. Okay. That felt like a rollercoaster of an episode, but I'm here for it.
I loved it. I hope you got something from it. We've got action steps.
We've got five things we can do this week to start moving forward, which I love, right? That's fantastic. We love action steps. Action-based birth prep is the way to go.
Here's what I want you to know as we close. You're not broken. You're not behind.
You're not asking for too much. You're not wrong for wanting more from this experience. You are the perfect person for this birth, right? Chosen for this baby for such a time as this.
You are already equipped. It's just time to uncover it. And if you've been waiting for someone to show up and fix it or do it for you, my dear, please head to your closest mirror and take a look.
She's already here. If you're ready to prep with strategy, confidence, and peace. If you want someone in your corner who's walked this path before, fumbled through the trauma, and figured out how to actually own a birth in a system that makes it so difficult, I'm here for you guys.
Okay. The birth prep course is open and waiting for you. Inside, we build your foundation, create your plan, equip your team, train your mindset, help you walk into that birth space with clarity and fire, prepared to handle anything that that day throws at you.
Because your birth, it's not a performance. It's a rite of passage. Let's make it one you never forget for the best reasons.
I love you long time. I'll see you next week. As always, happy prepping.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
