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 bump 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. Today, we have a very special guest.
We've got Travis Stroud in the house, a.k.a. Dula Dude over on Instagram, and he is just on fire helping men reclaim their role in childbirth. And I am so excited to be having this conversation. It is so, so needed.
I'm so grateful for what he's doing on the internet. He's calling men out, calling men up into their God-given role, and I just needed you guys to hear it too. So buckle up.
It's going to be a little longer of an episode, but it's a good one. So grab your man and get excited because here we go. Yeah, I think for guys, especially when they find out that their partner's pregnant, it's like you only have nine months to catch up and find out what is even going on.
Well, before my wife and I even got pregnant, she was at her niece's birth effectively like a doula, but she didn't even know what a doula was. And her sister-in-law told her like, you should take a doula training. And she put it to the side for like seven, eight years.
And then we heard Ayla Cuenca talking about her doula training program on a podcast. And my wife was like, I really want to do that. So we had gotten married two years later.
She wants to make this investment in a doula training program. And I was just being supportive. You know, and I was like, I've recognized that the investment in that would also be helpful when we choose to get pregnant and have our own family, just like to have the knowledge.
It's a good investment. So I, when I paid for half of the course for my wife, I wanted to learn all the stuff too. So while she was doing all the, you know, she's the one that got certified, but I was right there doing all the homework and watching the documentaries and reading the books and, and listening to the cohorts and the different doctors that would sit in on the, you know, Dr. Stu would teach us about breach and all these different trainings that we were doing.
I just became fascinated about it because it's a huge rabbit hole. And then right after we got, she had gotten her first client and got her certification, then we conceived. So it was like the universe being like, now you've learned all this stuff.
Did you learn it all for no reason? Are you going to apply it? And you know, when, when the time comes, you're going to outsource to, you know, the industry that's responsible for the third leading cause of death is medical error and all these different statistics that once you look into it and with childbirth and maternity care right now, the statistics are, are terrible. And like no other industry would be able to even be still operating with such a terrible outcomes. You know, something would have been forced to change, but because there's so money motivated.
So from our doula training that equipped us with the knowledge that when we conceived, we had all, we had a leg up on most people's perspective, but I think nine months to catch up with the knowledge, especially for men, it's kind of, it's kind of hard, but that's, that's how our story started was with, was with a doula training. And then when she got pregnant, we just knew we didn't want to do any tests. We didn't do any scans.
We didn't do one OB visit. We didn't do an ultrasound. We didn't do a blood test.
We didn't do a, you know, a GB swab. We didn't do anything. And then she went into spontaneous labor at home and everything went like how it's supposed to go because we didn't disturb the process at all.
So that's kind of like the baseline. You need to understand what is supposed to even go on without any sort of disturbance in the process. Like, you know, a woman can give birth if she's in a coma.
It's like, so even if you have no conscious part in it, you can still give birth. Yeah. It's, it's, and it changed my life completely seeing that.
And, and that's why I want people to know that the, the hospital system and the way the hospital births go, it, it makes a disconnect in the creation of the family. And it has a ripple effect in the family and then in society and then in the way that we parent. And then, so like, there's so much depth to how we come into the world.
And I want people to realize what's possible when you actually step outside of the system and, and regain, you know, sovereignty over your own creation of your family. It makes it so much stronger. Like we see now after births, couples break up and we got like over 50% divorce rates and so many single parent households.
And, and I feel like we can draw it all back to the birth space because from the birth that we had, it made our relationship stronger and it made our, you know, connection like more sacred and we became more of a team. And so, and I feel like everything that happens in hospital births, it brought, it pries between the, the sacred union. And then we bring it in strangers into the most sacred time of our lives when we're becoming parents.
And, you know, and it's in a woman's most vulnerable time of her life where she's pregnant with a, with your child. And then you outsource to the industry that's having terrible results. And then traumatic births are happening at what, 40% or something.
And that's just the women willing to admit that they had a traumatic experience where you think it's actually higher than that because some women are just too prideful to admit that they didn't enjoy their experience. And so it, it's adding layers of, of a unnecessary trauma to something that's supposed to be so sacred. I feel like that's why it's so important.
Might be getting a little off topic. No, I absolutely agree with you. But yeah, the separation and everything, the system is designed for separation, in my opinion.
Yeah. And it starts right at birth. And I just want people to know, because I have only been to one birth, you know, but it was a birth that like, you don't have to see a bad birth and a traumatic birth to know that when you see a positive birth, that it was a good, it was a good thing.
Like the people that are, you know, project birth as being a scary and a bad thing. They validate it with their own experience because what they had experience with, whether it be like a labor and delivery nurse or an obstetrician or people that think that birth is dangerous and, and unpredictable and everything like that, their, their perspective is littered with their experiences of traumatic hospital births. You know what I mean? So then they project that onto birth itself.
And it's like, it's actually not birth that's inherently dangerous. It's how they're doing it in the hospital system. So they don't even realize that they're validating what I'm saying when they're sharing with her.
Oh, it's actually very dangerous. It's like, no, that's your perspective. Cause that's what you see.
And you're, you're telling me exactly why I don't want to go to the hospital. You know what I mean? Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.
And the unfortunate statistic is the fact that like my husband's seen more physiological births than my old obese did, you know? So it's like, that's just insane to think about, like, how skewed our, our view of birth is and how the media paints it and how we experience it. And then like, it literally creates like walking advertisements, like, oh my gosh, I would have died if I wasn't in the hospital, the amount of time I've heard that and stuff. And it's like, or was your experience literally manufactured some, I'm not going to discount the fact that there are emergencies and I'm so grateful that there are interventions when, and if we need them, right.
But when, and if is rare. Yeah. The fact that we always have to make that caveat when we're talking about birth, like we always have to say, well, actually there is a very small fraction of the time when it's a medical emergency, when you have an undisturbed physiological birth, sometimes there are very that, and now we are very grateful for the hospital system in those very rare cases that it wasn't something that they caused.
You know what I mean? It's like, what about all the stuff that they're constantly doing day in and day out that is causing so much trauma and the outcomes are getting worse and worse and worse. And then when you're so cavalier as to say, you know what, I think it's actually safer to just not disturb the process and have a birth at home without these medical professionals. Then they're like, Oh my God.
Like, isn't it crazy? Like I have to make, I have to make the caveat to validate why the system exists and why we're so grateful for it. Because some people would then be like, well, if there's an emergency that don't even go to the hospital, like it's like, no, if first of all, you have to know what necessitates a medical emergency to know when you would have to transfer. And once you know that it's actually not that many things that would take place, you know, if you're about to faint, lose consciousness, maybe that's an emergency.
If you're bleeding too much, maybe that's a medical emergency. If you having fluids that are colors that you're not, you know, that they shouldn't be, maybe that shouldn't necessitate a medical emergency, but there are so few times when a natural undisturbed physiological birth will just go off the rails and all of a sudden start to have, you know, deteriorating neonatal care. Like their, their status would just all of a sudden decline without some symptoms beforehand is very rare because it's undisturbed that only like that, that spike of babies, all of a sudden not doing well as a lot of the times because of the interventions they're doing.
Yeah. There's almost always a reason. Yeah.
So you really don't have to know a whole lot to have a, a good experience with birth. You have to know what would necessitate going to the hospital for a medical emergency, but your chances of that happening are actually slimmer. If you just stay at home, that's when you really start to become familiar with the statistics and you want to protect your, your, your baby and your wife.
The, what we did wasn't out of ignorance. It was out of a lot of study and preparing for it. And, you know, some people think like, oh, you did a unassisted birth by yourself at home.
Like it sounds so irresponsible and that, you know, it's, it's something that some hippies that are uneducated and, and are just so rebellious against the system. It was like, no, we actually made that choice consciously because we're so familiar with, you know what I mean? No, I know exactly what you mean. Cause I experienced the exact same thing.
It's like, I already got a lot of like weird comments and like, are you serious? Why don't we switch to home birth? But then when we shared that we were having a free birth this time, I was like, there was a lot, there was a lot of concern and like, I'm fine with concern, but I've, I've already had all those concerns and I researched through them and I know exactly what I need for the experience and you haven't done the same. So I'm just going to let you have your concerns. I'm just going to do what I need to do.
Yeah. It's insane. The projection and just the views that people have in general of birth and like how doing things so against the system is so weird and strange.
And yeah, like you said, hippies and like, like you didn't even think anything through, like you're putting your children in danger and all the things. And it's like, that's actually not what it is. That's not what it is.
We're actually trying to protect them. Exactly. That's, that's the, that's the, that's the catch 22.
It's actually the exact opposite. It's actually because we're super educated and we're very familiar with the outcomes and we're very familiar with what necessitates an emergency. And we, we know our chances are better at home of having undisturbed, you know, we know our chances of complications increases by going to the hospital.
We know these things deep within ourselves. So that's why we're able to, that's why my wife was able to relax and surrender to the experience and have a successful birth because she was, she knew that in her heart, not just like, you know in your brain, you know, just like, Oh yeah, we know that home birth can be safe. It's like, no, you have to know that it's actually your highest chance of having a positive experience.
I agree with that. It's, and I had to do so much on learning to get, yes, that's the main part. It's not like we had to learn a whole bunch of new stuff.
It's the unlearning of everything that we thought we knew. That's the main work is unlearning. It really is.
It's the unlearning that's been my husband's main work. Especially for women. Yeah.
Yes, for sure. And I think that my husband had a struggle with it too. Having to unlearn like the man's role in all of that.
Like it's so, it's so detached, like the entire pregnancy of men don't like think about the decisions that need to be made or think about the physical changes that are going on or like, just just like, Oh, that's her thing. She's pregnant. I'll be there to support her.
I always hear this. Well, my husband wants this for me, but he doesn't know how I'm like, yeah, no one's ever taught him how they, they barely let us in. They barely let them into the delivery room over the last several decades.
It's like literally, literally, we were pushed out. So systematically pushed out of birth space. Yeah.
And I think that there is this like desire to do better and do differently now, but like, there's just a lack of education on how to actually do that. Yeah. So I got to create an offering as some sort of class or something for guys that want to be more involved in the decision-making process, but don't know how, or aren't equipped with the knowledge.
Cause one of the things that you were touching on is like, while you're pregnant, I felt like my, one of my biggest roles after having the knowledge and after we were choosing the birth that we were choosing and having to have these conversations during the course of pregnancy, it's actually not good to be having these conversations or trying to defend your choices during pregnancy, especially if you're not equipped with the knowledge. Cause then you, you kind of don't really know where you're standing and the man's a man's role. What I've learned through our experience is because I had the knowledge, my wife didn't have to engage in those different conversations and defend our choices and this and that, because if it started to get to a point where it wasn't positive exchange, that all that's going to do is actually bring more stress onto her.
And my job is to protect her from any stress or from anything during the course of the pregnancy. So, you know, because people's questions are coming from a genuine place, but sometimes they don't realize that they're projecting their own fear. I was able to step in and answer the questions in a knowledgeable way that then took the stress off.
You know what I mean? Of my wife defending our decisions where it's just like, you know, you can relax, like we're going to do it this way because you know what I mean? And actually defend not only, you know, her piece, but like realizing that that has consequences on the pregnancy and on the outcomes if we let that even into our energy. So because we had the knowledge, we were, we were able to answer the questions that people had in, in a, in a way that was informative and then change the energy that was then, you know, then people left with like some seeds planted from the conversation or, you know what I mean? Huh? Yeah. Maybe when they go through the experience, they'll remember that conversation or, you know, because it's not, it's not good to then your wife's trying to defend your guys' choices and you don't even know what's going on.
And now she's all stressed out. Now she's going to have to go to her OB because now she's got all these different questions because of a conversation that they were having at the park with some other mom that had a traumatic experience. But you, you know what I mean? You're not familiar with the conversations going on.
You don't really, you don't know what's going on. You don't know what birth is. So I think if you're choosing to have kids, if you know you want kids, or even if you do have kids now, but you don't really think you were offered the right of passage into parenthood in the right way.
I think it's the best investment is to learn about it and take a dual training and to take steps into having the knowledge of childbirth because it was one of the best investments that we ever made. I love that. You know, it's not just about the money.
People were like, well, I got to go have a hospital birth because, oh, the insurance covers it. And it's like, well, your insurance is not going to cover your, you know, the trauma that you have to process. You pay for it one way or another.
You're going to invest in having a positive experience or, you know, you're going to pay for it in other ways when you have, you know, your chances of having a traumatic experience are pretty freaking high if you go to the hospital. And I just, we just didn't want, you know, there are, you know, there are chances of having less than positive outcomes with rebirthing at home. But we were just, you know, accepting and at peace with the risk that comes with that and knowing that if loss were to have happened, the likelihood that they would have been able to change anything in the hospital setting, you know, it's actually very slim.
Yeah. Because when people do transfer from home births or free births in genuine medical emergencies, when they were looking back at those cases, they were saying, you know, a lot of these, we wouldn't have been able to change the outcome had you been at the hospital anyway. Yeah.
So what experience of loss do you want? One in the hospital where it's just like, you know, a doctor coming in and maybe it had happened because of something that they had done. Like we were more at peace with, if it was going to be something, you know, less than positive happening, it was going to be at home where we're safe, where we're comfortable with, you know, and we were more accepting of that loss than not knowing if we experienced loss at the hospital, if it was actually something that they did or not. No, I love that.
We, we had that conversation because with the free birth, we hit out, we had two previous home births with midwives, but then we decided to do this one entirely ourselves. And then we had to have the conversation of like, okay, what worst, worst case scenario, what does that look like? And it was a difficult conversation. And it was such a necessary one because truly like when you, when you do play worst case scenario, it really gives your brain some serious perspective because your brain will go like insane with all the things.
And it's like, when you actually get to the facts of the matter and like actually discuss things through actually talk about a plan of action, what that would maybe look like, it gets so much less scary. Yeah. You got to do those deep fear inventories and think about it.
And then like, imagine if that were to happen at the hospital and how that experience would be juxtapose it to if it were to happen at home and how the, how the two perspectives would go about it. You realize that you're actually having a higher chance of success at home than at the hospital, because then you're going to be on that like snowball cascade, you know, cascade of interventions. Well, there's a bunch of different myths that are then yes.
In the birth space that then even if you're contemplating a home birth, then you're like, Oh, well, what if this happened? What if this happens? And then you realize you peel back the layers of all those. And you realize, no, a lot of those things are fine at a home birth. You know what I mean? It's actually okay to go beyond a certain time after your water breaks.
It's actually okay. So all these different things that would then get most people to then transfer to the hospital and get on the cascade of interventions, which is what a lot of people don't realize about home birth transfers. They're not emergent.
But then a lot of the times when something does happen, it's because of what they then proceed to do at the hospital that they then say, see, you shouldn't have had a home birth. It's like, no, it was then. This happened here, friends.
It was then again, something that happened at the hospital. So I'm not trying to be like, you know, so poo poo on the hospital, but that is actually the reality of it. It is the reality.
And it's so important to understand, like, cause obviously we have a plan in case we had to transfer for whatever reason. It's important to understand how to navigate the hospital. It's like, I speak to women who are doing birth in the hospital, but teaching them how to have a more natural experience in the hospital by, by saying no to a lot of the things that they say are so necessary for birth or not.
We are, we we've proven that there's not anything that's really necessary for birth. Literally. I really can't, maybe some towels for some cleanup afterwards, but other than that, there's, there's really, truly nothing that's necessary.
And when you learn that and like, then you can better navigate things. I think, especially knowing your rights and knowing what you're allowed, allowed to do, like you can pretty much do whatever you want. And it's important to have that knowledge going in and like, okay, it doesn't have to be that scary.
They're doing all these, the hospital does all the things because what if, what if, what if like, if you actually are informed on the, what if, then you can easily and very happily decline things almost, I would say nearly everything. Yeah. And you can leave.
Yes. Thank you. People don't realize is that if you're really not getting the kind of care and you're already, you know, you already got there and you're in your labor kind of stalled.
So now, you know, you came in at six, you know, seven centimeters dilated, and then you get to the hospital and now you're only four. So now you're, now you're regressing anyway. And a lot of times, yeah, you can, you can go back to where you were having successful dilation and contractions and your labor was progressing and, and you could go back home.
Like you don't have to keep staying at the hospital. And that's what, you know, they'll try to tell you, I know it's so high risk and this and that, but you it's policy is not law. And that was one of the things that, and once you actually learn a whole lot, you know, you get past a certain point in the knowledge of physiological birth and you realize that you don't even want to have to fight and deny things.
And one of the, one of the best birth stories, you know, that was one of the things that was the most helpful in learning about childbirth is birth stories is hearing other people's birth stories. I, I still listen to them today. Yes.
They're so fascinating. You listen to birth stories and there's, you start to realize that there's reoccurring themes in the ways and the approaches of, of, you know, so we learned a lot. And one of these birth stories, this couple had like five kids.
And I think on their first, you know, their first three, it was progressively less and less medicalized. The first one, it was the whole, you know, all the bells and whistles of the hospital birth, a lot of trauma. Then the second one, they start to learn, you know, and then they start to deny things.
And then the third one, it was, you know, a natural birth in the hospital, but then there were still something that wasn't right. And then, you know, with their fourth, they were at the hospital and they were just denying everything. And they, you know, then one of the nurses told them, they were like, why are you even here? And then, you know, the, the, the husband kind of looked at the wife and was like, why are we even here? So then on their fifth birth, they had a free birth at home, like with, with no help.
So it took, you know, they had a lot of experience in and a lot of different, you know, hospital births, but, but they were describing sequentially each birth being less and less medicalized. And on that fourth one, when the, when the labor and delivery nurse asked them, well, why are you even here? That like made a, like a switch in my head. I was like, okay, so we don't even have to, you know, cause a lot of people in their first birth, they're like, I'm just going to do it with, you know, with a midwife or at a birth center, or maybe at a hospital or just because it's our first.
Yes. And, and that actually, I didn't make sense to us. I was like, why would you want a traumatic experience on your first? Why wouldn't you just do it, do it absolutely undisturbed, no tests.
Then you actually have a baseline of what to go off of, you know what I mean? Don't start with having it disturbed in one way or another, because then you don't actually know if it then leads to a negative experience. If it was because of something that you did, like you don't have a, a control group to, when you start to mess with the different, you know, elements of the, of the experiment, you know, you don't know what denominator, what it will, it was that made your outcomes. Yeah.
So now we know that a complete undisturbed physiological birth is this is like the standard, like undisturbed is the standard, not like home birth or free birth or hospital undisturbed. And where is it more likely to take place? Not at the hospital. It's almost impossible to have an undisturbed hospital.
You really can't have really undisturbed birth. There's always something in some way, shape or form. It's like, how can you navigate things to get as close to that as possible? That's the male's role that right there from conception through pregnancy, through birth and postpartum, the male's role is to protect that piece in that space of having the entire thing be undisturbed so that she doesn't have to be stressed.
She doesn't have to be, you know, taking phone calls from the OB. She doesn't have to be set in appointments. She doesn't have to be cooking meals.
She doesn't have to be preparing for postpartum. She doesn't have to be, you are supposed to have it so that she can have the most peaceful time and just focus on growing her baby, nourish her, cook her good, healthy food, you know, and that's what increases your chances of having a positive outcome. Because a lot of the things that are, you know, can be attributed in early pregnancy to nutrient deficiencies, you know, the preeclampsia and all these different things that then manifest in, you know, high risk pregnancy.
If you're just less stressed and you're nurtured and you're, you know what I mean? And your space is safe. That is one of the biggest things that will contribute to a positive outcome. If your whole pregnancy is stressful, like if the appointments and, and, and every, all the information that you're getting from, you know, it's almost more a increase of your chances of positive outcomes is higher.
If you just don't engage in all that stressful stuff, even if you didn't have any knowledge, if you just followed your heart and your intuition and where you feel more heard and supported and safe, if you just do that, it's, it plays such a big role in how the pregnancy and birth go, but that's the male's role is to protect her peace during the process. And especially during the birth so that she can go inward and, and surrender and focus on what she has to do. She's got a task at hand.
Like you wouldn't treat any other birthing mammal the way we would leave birthing mammals alone. If it's our dog, if it's our cat, if it's our horse on the farm, like you don't go to them and start to like put an IV in their arm or you don't disturb birth. Like if I was a woman and I'm focused, like you have your life on the line, you know, and your, your baby's life on the line.
The last thing I would want is to be answering questions or validating, you know, anything, you know what I mean? And I feel like that was, that's the male's role is to know about what's going on.
Your partner's body and know about the stages of labor and, and, and learn about the stuff ahead of time about what she's going to be going through so that you can then know how to help, because once you know what she's going through, how to help should be self-evident. So once your knowledge about physiological birth, I can't express it enough. The knowledge of birth, it's, it's so like not known, especially with men, men don't really know about the process and the more that you learn, just take an interest in it, because just think about if you were a woman, it's like, it's interesting how the, how the body creates a baby and births a baby.
So you just learn about it. And then you'll, you'll kind of, you know, if you're any in tune with your primal instincts, you'll know that your job is to protect her, especially her piece and to give her, give her a safe space that she can birth in. That's, I don't know.
That's kind of my, that's my, that was my whole thing. That was my, I absolutely agree with that. That is, that is the biggest job.
And like, I encourage my students and stuff, like do it with your partner, like learn all the things together because you don't want to have to out, you don't want to have to sit there as the woman, you don't want to have to sit there and answer these questions. And like you said, validate like the reasoning for things and like, continue to say, no fight, fight some people in some situations, you literally have to fight for what you want inside the system. Well, now your blood pressure's raised.
Now your blood pressure's raised. Now you're stressed out. Now you might, now you might have a couple of those conversations, you know, a day, and now you might have persistent high blood pressure because of your piece, not being, you know, protected.
And then you go to the, your next appointment and then you have, you know, higher blood pressure and then they're going to diagnose you with preeclampsia. And then, so it's like the protecting your piece throughout the pregnancy is so, so much more important than you realize, because then could result in a diagnosis from the system that actually is just because you were stressed out and you didn't know about what was going on. So that's why knowledge of the process also makes it more likely that you have a positive outcome because now your nervous system actually feels safer because you know what's going on.
So then, you know, when you're told something that is a projection of somebody else's fear around childbirth, or if it's actually a true statement and it's, and it has a reason for making you feel uncomfortable. A lot of the times we're just taking in information and, and we're getting stressed out from people that aren't actually coming from a, from a place of real understanding about the process. Oh yeah.
So then you're actually, yeah. And then you're manifesting a diagnosis. That's what's crazy about it.
It's like a lot of these things can then become self-fulfilling prophecies. And then it's like, then you get a diagnosis and then you're like, see, I knew there was something. And now you're like, oh, thank God we were at the doctor.
Cause then we caught it. And it's like, you didn't realize that it was because of, you know, it could have been something so minute and small that you could have addressed early in the process that you then allowed to manifest. I don't know.
No, it's just going on. No, it's so, it's an important conversation to have because it is, it is just a compounding of the simple little things. The sharing and the decision-making, the talking through the different options together, talking through all the things, making sure that she does feel safe and that she feels supported in what she's trying to choose and do.
It's like, it's so hard to not have that. And it does absolutely impact the situation. Like we had our first three in the hospital and then our last three were at home.
And it's like, we had comparing my first experience to my recent experience. It's like, it's the amount of neglect that there was for me in that first experience, throughout the entire pregnancy, throughout the birth, throughout postpartum, everything. It's like, I w I didn't, and then I didn't know it.
I had no clue when I'm like, okay, everyone's like, oh my gosh, you did it. No epidural. So amazing.
Like accomplish the plan. And like, I'm sitting there feeling completely defeated, traumatized, like violated all the things. And like, everyone's telling me that I'm, I did such a great job.
I felt wrong for feeling that way. And now it makes so much sense because I didn't have what I needed throughout the entire process. It's like, and then it all just shows up in the birth room, unfortunately.
And then you just carry that with you until you choose to deal with it or until you create the exact same situation again. And that's what breaks my heart hearing birth stories like that, because it's, it's such a sad thing of what's going on and how they've bastardized birth and separated families from something that could be the most, is the most magical experience in your life. It's the, it's the greatest thing.
And then when, when I hear when unnecessary things are happening and then women expressing trauma after birth, or God forbid, something happens to the baby. And then you realize that it was actually because of something that happened at the hospital and women sharing their traumatic experiences. It breaks my heart and it doesn't have to be that way.
That's that's what makes me want to just, I can't find myself thinking of anything more important than, than how babies are born. It's the next generation of people. And, and I think that a lot of the traumas that are, you know, littering in the world are, we can track them back to the birth space, to how babies are being born, how we were born.
A lot of our traumas are, can be tracked back to that. Absolutely. I agree with that.
And just like the foundation of our literal life has been so disrupted and it, it absolutely has an entire ripple effect into, into everything, into literally everything it impacts the mother and how she mothers her children and how she can show up and for years to come. It's like, if you don't deal with that stuff and heal it and fix it, if you did have that traumatic experience, it absolutely affects everything you do, whether you know it or not. And I think it's important to highlight, cause there's so much highlight on the trauma of childbirth, but we don't hear enough about how a lot of times conception and, and going through pregnancy, a lot of women express how, how, how much they actually enjoyed pregnancy, you know, dare them say that they love being pregnant or, you know, they, they, they loved their birth, their birth was transformative and transcendental and, and it, and it changes them forever.
And it's like a rite of passage that, you know, they never could have even imagined the amount of joy that they now feel being a mother. And so there's so much talk about the trauma because of the way hospital births. You know, but I think that you need to realize that the there's a goal and there's also a positive side of it that comes with doing the work to learn the things and to make the decisions as a, as a couple and choose the, you know, a transformative birth has the power to completely change your life in the most positive way.
And I think that's like the gold standard or that's what you should realize is possible and juxtapose it to what you, some women don't even know it's possible. That's what's I didn't know it was either. I didn't even knowing that it is possible.
So they make it seem like it's such a bad thing and, and just, you know, be a boss woman and you have a job and you know, don't have kids put that off till later. And it's like, once you actually have something that you're willing to die for, then it changes the game altogether. Yep.
They don't want that. They don't want a bunch of people that have conscious, you know, births and, and have strong families and now have a whole reason to protect that nuclear family and to now, so there's a, it's a rabbit hole and that's what really attracted me to it. Cause you know, I could, I'm from like a conspiratorial, yeah, I'm from like a conspiratorial mindset that when we started to learn about birth in the first place, then you start to realize that there's, you know, fentanyl in the epidurals and you're like, what, whoa, what else is going on? So it's, it can be fun learning about it because the ripple effect of it has so much implication in the world today.
And it's going to, in your family, if you're planning on having kids, I don't think there's anything more important or a better investment than taking the time to learn about childbirth, read a couple of books, watch some documentaries. Like it doesn't have to be like this. Stressful thing.
It could, it's a fun thing to learn. Absolutely. And I think it's generational learning.
It's like the way my children view birth is so different from how I viewed birth as a child and they get to have that going into their experience. It's like, yeah, I think that could be, that could be the best thing you ever do for them because that's going to ripple effect in their life and that's going to affect, you know, if, if they didn't learn that from mom, they might have traumatic experiences that then carry with them for the rest of their life. And, and that, so that could be one of the most important things you could do as a mother is show your kids what that is.
And I feel like it's not going to come from the public school system. We're not going to learn that from the system changing there. We're not all of a sudden going to get the knowledge from outside.
You know, it's going to take each family at a time, waking up to it and getting back in the home and births taking place and siblings, seeing other siblings being born. And that's what demystifies it because it used to be such a common thing that you just called the midwife. The midwife came to the house and dad was at the house and siblings were around.
That's how there was like 15, 16 kids and families back in the day before modern medicine. It's like, how in the world did they have so much success with childbirth? You know what I mean? Back in the day, it's like midwives had all the knowledge and the dads were involved. They were at the house.
They saw the kids be born and then they start having hospital births and propagandizing midwifery. They're just witches. They're not sanitary.
So now some men in lab coats convinced society that women don't know about birth. They don't know about women. For sure.
Men in white coats know more than generations of knowledge passed down from woman to woman. Yeah. So then you have traumatic hospital births at the same time, demonizing the people that are actually having better outcomes.
Yep. It's yeah. They really came in and twisted things so quickly.
It's insane. Took the men right out of the birth, right out of the birth room. The twilight era of medicine, knock them out, drag them out.
When we learned about that, I was like, oh, you start to learn about the roots of everything and the roots of obstetrics and gynecology and how it's like really just rooted in the torture of experimental stuff done on pregnant women. That though, literally demonic by, it's insane. That's what we're supporting.
And now that it's just like dressed up in, in modern jargon and now it's like we're in hospitals and now we got medical degrees and it's all just dressed up, but the modern it's just the modern form of this stuff that's rooted in barbaric experimental stuff. Once you actually peel back the, you know, the, the polish on, you know, obstetrics and how they're doing modern maternity care. It's actually, it's just crazy and counterintuitive and not natural and completely, you know, backwards from what it used to be when we were having giant strong families.
Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. It's like, let's create all these problems and then we'll come in and fix them.
And then you can praise us and we're the right option because we fixed all these problems. It's like, you don't even have a chance to pick something else because we're going to defund all the other options that you're going to have. And so now you're like, oh yeah, come to us.
But also you don't have any other options. I know it's, it's insane how the way that we chose to birth this time was like so radical and so outlandish. And so like, are you serious? You're going to actually do that.
Yeah. I'm going to actually do it. I'm going to do it happily.
It's like, I, it's just, it's just insane. I, it, it still continues to blow my mind. I've been doing this for years now and it's still continues to blow my mind when I have conversations with real life people every day, like, and their view on things.
It's like, holy cow, how did we get here so quickly from how things used to be? And now like doing things the way that they've always been done is now insanely radical and like dangerous and crazy. And I just, yeah. We're the radical ones.
I know it's crazy. A better question would be, why would a woman that has gone through pregnancy and birth as many times as you have, why would she then be choosing the things that she's choosing in her subsequent fifth and sixth births? Yeah, it's almost, that would be a better question to ask. A better question would be.
No, that doesn't even occur to people. Yeah. That would be, wait, you've had so many births.
Why would you then be choosing this? It's like you've come to. I've learned the hard way. That's the whole, that's the whole reason.
I learned the hard way. I think that's why your voice matters. It has more validation to it because it is coming from an experiential place.
But the, even then people don't even realize, they don't listen to that either. I know it's like, I have the hardest time convincing people that this birth education stuff is like literally life-changing can literally change everything for you. And it's, it's insane to me, which I get, like, I don't, I don't know.
As soon as I knew the work was available, I was like, sign me up. I will learn all the things. If I can have a nice experience just by doing stuff, like sign me up.
So what kind of learning have you done? What kind of trainings have you taken? I just became obsessed with it. I haven't actually taken any trainings. I just educated myself and just, I haven't stopped.
I will never stop educating myself because it's so important to, and I, yeah, that's it. I just keep asking. What are your, some of your go-to resources, like what are your favorite podcasts or your favorite people or your favorite people in the birth space? It has changed over my journey because the more that I learn, the more, the more I understand and the more that, that some things just don't fit my belief system anymore.
So, um, for this most recent baby, honestly, truly, I sought the Lord on everything. And that was my number one resource, like by far. And cause it was hard for me to make this decision.
It wasn't like an easy decision. The Lord said, Hey, this is how we're doing it this time. I said, are you sure? And I just had to keep trusting the Lord.
And then what is her username? A joyful birth. Yes. Audrey Aubrey.
I don't know her name. She's awesome. I love her.
She's so great. I know. I see her.
Yeah. I see you guys sharing all the things. I love all the free birth content.
Um, but she, she was really, I started following her a couple of years ago and she was really like my introduction to the idea of free birth and years ago, I was like, Oh, that's really great for her. I love that for her. Like, that's amazing.
But that could never, that can never be me. And I, the more I kept like educating myself and like really wrapping my head around things, um, the more I like started, but like really paying attention to her stuff and like, gosh, it just made so much sense to me. And when I did make that decision to have the free birth this time, I know you want to be on the podcast all the time.
Um, I made that decision and then. I had had water births with the last two or fourth and fifth at home. And she really opened my eyes to like, maybe that's not the wisest decision and how it impacts the physiological process.
That's like, it's a great pain management tool. Fantastic. And I truly believe that.
And I do think that it has a time and space in certain birth experiences, but for my free birth, I was like, there's no way I'm not going to do anything to disrupt the process and that's going to disrupt the process. Like pain is important for me. If like, if there's pain present, then I need to be with it because it's an important indicator of like, what's happening, what's going on.
Like, I need to be so in tune with what's going on in my body. If we're going to be doing this by ourselves. Yeah.
So we chose to have baby in the bathroom this time. So on the floor and great, but yeah, she's my go-to resource right now, um, other than the Lord. So that's a big thing is just surrendering to the whole process and knowing that if you conceive it's because you're.
It's because you're supposed to be pregnant and your body knows that it's healthy enough to carry baby to full term. And that, you know, you have to just trust that if you're pregnant, it's because you're supposed to be pregnant. And if it's not, if your body's, you know, no longer finds that the environment is sufficient to sustain, then your body's going to take the right course of action.
And if you continue to be pregnant and you carried a full term, it's because your body knows that it can birth the baby. Like it's, you just have to trust the whole process and know that there is a divine design to the creation. And so the process, and you know that you just have to just, just know that it's supposed to be.
Like you said, consult with God in your, in your, in your inner intuition and know that you're going to be guided at the right time, you're going to be, you're going to know how to birth your baby. When the time comes, you and the baby are going to have a connection and you develop that from the time you conceive. Like my wife was always talking to the baby, asking questions to the baby, like and, and receiving that information and connecting the, that trust from the beginning, like don't outsource for, for any sort of information, like you will know if there's something going on.
Absolutely. You know what I mean? Like a woman's body knows you guys are in tune with yourself more than anybody else. So why are you going to go to a male gynecologist to tell you anything about yourself? It's kind of silly.
It is. And honestly, like looking back at my experiences, having that traditional OB care and births and everything, it's like a, they basically like, they challenge your intuition the entire time, where at the end of it, you feel like a crazy person where it's like, okay, well, I have to trust them because they know what they're talking about. Well, they have the degree.
Well, this is just how would they do it? Everything that was like happened to me during my birth experience with my first baby was like, they made me feel like it was required and all of it felt wrong in the moment, but they made it sound like, oh, it's required of you. Like, we have to do this. Like, we need to get this done.
We need to come and break your waters. We need to do a cervical check. We need, we're just gonna X, Y, Z. It's like the, it detached me so much that at the end, like, I didn't even feel like I could trust myself.
It's like, okay, this is obviously how it had to go. This is how it was supposed to go. So I, it literally like breaks you down, like the whole, from the moment you call and make an appointment, it's like, I, it's like that starts the decline and like, it's so hard to regain that control over the experience.
And like, that's what I teach. It's like at the core of everything, it's like taking ownership for your experience and making it exactly how you want it to look like, I'm like, I'm not going to judge your choices. And also like, if you're not making the choices, I'm a judge a little bit.
It's like, I'm here for different things than what I did. I'm not going to sit here and say free birth is for everybody. Absolutely not.
But yeah, absolutely not. Like not, no, but I do really, truly desire everyone to be making their own informed decisions. Like that is the core value of mine.
And I think it's important to note that with every pregnancy and every birth, there is the possibility, regardless of the birth that you're choosing, that you go into spontaneous labor and you end up laboring very fast and you dilate quickly. And there's a potential that you free birth, whether you're planning a home birth and your midwife doesn't get there in time, or you weren't able to get to the hospital in time. So I think that knowing how to take full responsibility for your birth, even if you're not choosing to free birth, knowing about how you would go about it is part of preparing for whatever birth it is that you're, that you're preparing for.
So then knowing that it might happen and knowing that birth is unpredictable, that's not a reason to completely outsource the entire process. That's actually a reason knowing that childbirth is unpredictable is a reason to learn about it so that if you have to do it, because there is a chance, you know, if we're going to talk about, you know, there's a chance that something might go wrong, there's a chance that everything might go right and it happens very fast and you're not able to get to the hospital or your midwife isn't there. So you're going to have to free birth.
So knowing about what that would entail, what stage of labor you're in, how you're breathing, you know, what, if you're in transition for real or not, knowing about how a natural physiological birth takes place, regardless of what birth you're choosing, that's the foundation. You have to know about that. So when you do go to the hospital, you know where you're going off of normal.
So, you know, what risks come with those things and you're choosing the things that you're going to choose in a conscious way, not just, just saying, okay, because they say this is procedure. This is just the routine standard of care. If it's not coming from an informed place, you might end up in a place where you didn't want to be because you just weren't knowledgeable.
Absolutely. And I tell my ladies all the time, like, if you don't care about it, don't expect anyone else to like, if you don't care about your rights, if you don't care about your body, if you don't care about your experience, if you don't care about your birth, if you don't care about your baby and what they're getting afterwards, if you don't care about any of that, don't expect anyone else to expect, get what you get and don't throw a fit then at that point. But it's like, that's not how it's supposed to be.
You need to, you are the, the most, the most qualified person to do the work more than the person who went to school for eight plus years, more than the person who's been at 2,500 different births, like way more than those people, because you have something that they don't. You have your values and your, like your experience in mind. Like you have, you have to carry the weight of the experience after you walk out of a hospital or walk out of that birth space, you have to live with those decisions for the rest of your life.
So no, it's not like, if you're expecting other people to care more, I was like, that's why I get so like heated when people are like, oh, just hire a doula. That's all you need. It's like doulas are so amazing and such a practical tool in the birth space.
And I love that they're available. And I love that they're being pushed more and all that. I love that.
And do not outsource things to your doula. That's not their job. Their job is to support you in so many different ways, but it's not to do the work that you have to do.
You have to be the one understanding enough in order to make decisions, even in the moment. It's like, cause I can't even tell you how many times people come back to me and tell me their birth story. And they ended up having an unplanned home birth or a baby in the car or baby in the parking lot at the hospital.
It's like, it happens all the time, especially the more prepared you are. I think the easier birth actually gets. Yeah, wholeheartedly.
And like, so maybe, maybe you're comparing it to your last experience that was traumatic and rushed and all the things, and you're like, oh, I have more time. And you ran out of time real quick. And now there's a baby in your lap.
And it's like, if you don't prepare for that stuff, it's, and have the ability to change the course of action. Like if you do get to transition way before you think you're going to, and you live an hour away from the hospital, it's probably not the wisest thing to get in the car and go to the hospital. It's probably not.
So like being informed and enough to be able to make decisions without having to be like, Hey doctor, is this okay that I do this or midwife who's might not be there in time, you know? So it's important to, yeah, that was a whole rant, but it's so it's a great point because I feel like we're just conditioned men and women from public school and just the way that society is structured, that truth and correct knowledge, or, you know, we outsource our decisions to experts. And it's like, we constantly are taught that truth and information comes from authority. Whether it was all through school, you know, the teacher knows best, or the professor knows best, the coach knows best, the doctor knows best, that everybody else knows best our whole life.
So then when we, you know, get to a point where we're very vulnerable, especially because we don't have the knowledge that we then outsource everything, so then it's like, like you're saying, the woman can't even feel comfortable or confident in her decisions, just even if it doesn't something that they said doesn't sit right with them, maybe they don't feel like, you know, they don't want to do an induction. Maybe they feel like their baby's just fine. And they feel like they can labor until they go into, you know, they can go into spontaneous labor.
But they really can't trust themselves because as soon as they hear something counter, what their intuition's telling them from an authority, they've been taught and conditioned so much throughout life that truth comes from authority that they then believe just because on the grounds that it's coming from authority more than they trust and believe in their own intuition, because we've been trained that way. Yes. Especially girls, little girls, you sit down, you shut up, you're not heard.
You do what you're told and like that, especially when it comes to, you know, feminine health and your cycle and with birth control and society and with just, you know, everything that's taught around sex ed and public school and just women are especially disconnected from birth, you know, because you're the ones that have to carry the baby and actually make the final decision. So if you're taught and so programmed that truth comes from authority, you're going to, you know, when you're in that vulnerable state, you're going to do whatever it is that protects what you think is going to be protecting of your baby. You go into this like primal protect baby phase.
So if the expert is telling you something that a decision that you're making might increase your chances of something happening to your baby. You're going to immediately just trust what they're saying, because not only have you been taught that way, but you're also in a vulnerable state. You know, if it wasn't about pregnancy or childbirth or your baby's life or, you know, anything else, you might be able to be like, oh, I don't even believe that expert, but when you're actually in that, you know, primal, vulnerable state, it's even more important to be listening to your intuition.
It's even more important to push authority. It's even more important that people get that switch. They get, they think that it's more important when you're vulnerable to listen to the people that have the more information, but there's nothing that's going to give you more information than your own intuition with what's going on inside your body.
Agreed. I feel like it's, everything is like a catch 22 when it comes to birth. Like everything that they say is backwards.
Everything they say that, you know, is going to be, you know, it's risky to go beyond this. Like a lot of the stuff that they're actually suggesting in place of what you would do in an undisturbed birth, whether it be inducing after 40 weeks or 35 means you're geriatric and you've got to get this many tests and scans and this and that. A lot of the things that they suggest as an alternative.
To just not disturbing the process actually increases your chances of complication more than if you were to not do anything. But that doesn't make money. Oh, absolutely.
That's what it gets down to, you know, I don't even be conspiracy theorists or anything like that, but it is real. You can do the digging and find it all out. It's a for profit driven.
Yeah. Model of care, if that's even what you want to call it, because they don't care when it comes down to it, it's like live baby in the bathroom. Yeah, they monetized birth.
That's all they did. They monetized it. They made it efficient, monetize it and told you that you had to do it that way.
That's all that happened. Absolutely. And it's a damn shame.
It is. It is. Agreed.
Back to the point that you made about when you tell your women that you teach that nobody else is going to care about it more than you. And that's what my message to dads is like, when it comes to your your child. With your wife.
Nobody is going to protect them more than you. Nobody's going to have that more of a primal drive to. Protect than you.
That's like, so that's why it's important to learn all the things together and to be a part of the process, because the more that you're informed about what's going on, the more equipped you'll be able to to be to defend her decisions and to hold the space so that there's a less chance that, you know, even if there is a decision that's made that then leads to trauma, you at least made these decisions together and you guys can work on it together. You know what I mean? But if you were just outsourcing the process and you just held her hands throughout the whole thing and just, you know, we're just supportive, like that's always there. We're just telling men, I'll just be supportive.
It's like, I don't want you to just be supportive. You need to be informed and you need to be a part of the process. That's how you can be supportive is by learning about it.
Like she's going through it in a vulnerable state. She's pregnant with your baby. You can at least be involved in the decisions.
You're not ultimately going to, you know, you're not carrying the baby. You're not going to have to birth the baby. The least you can do is go through it with her.
Think about like how scared and how vulnerable she feels. If you feel like, yeah, that's not that big of a deal. You're not even pregnant.
So the least you can do is learn about the stuff with her so that when it does come time to it, it increases your chances of having a, having at least a secure relationship with your partner postpartum. However, the birth goes, hopefully it's positive and ideal and brings you closer together. But, but chances are, if you don't involve yourself in the, in the education and in the advocating for her, there's going to be some sort of subconscious resentment or some sort of something in the relationship after childbirth.
If it, if you outsource any part of the process and it doesn't go well, and you weren't able to protect her or defend her, or she was coerced in any sort of way, and you weren't able to advocate, you were her protector. So there, even if we're not conscious of it, even if we're not conscious of it, there is a subconscious thing that gets in between the partnership, the sacred union of man and woman. When something comes in between that, especially the most vulnerable point of the birth of your child, the creation of your family.
So I feel like that's what men really need to realize is that it's not just about, you know, ensuring that your baby's healthy and, and your, and your, and your wife has a positive birth experience, but it's also about preserving the relationship postpartum. It's not just the birth that you're preparing for. You're preparing for parenthood.
You're preparing for a life of marriage. And now you're having a family. It has more implications than just preparing for the birth because how you prepare for that is also saying a lot about how you're preparing for your early parenthood and how you view the sacredness of your relationship and your marriage.
It says a lot about everything else. So if you just outsource the whole entire process, chances are, you're going to outsource a lot of the stuff throughout the course of your parenting and in early parenthood. And then it's like, why did we even do this to begin with? Yeah.
You know what I mean? Absolutely. Oh, we could both probably go on rants about this stuff. No, all day.
That's just, it's so fascinating to me. And that's why I just can't shut up about it because the implications of it, I feel like people don't really realize it. And until they hear it, from people that have experienced it and are passionate about it and can have these long, drawn out sharing of their perspectives of how they've even come to the point where they're at, people don't really realize why they need to learn about it or why, you know, maybe they might be getting a little interested, maybe read a book about it, but they don't actually get obsessed about it to the point where they feel like they're comfortable enough taking responsibility for the whole process.
That's where you really want to get to if, you know, you want to ensure positive outcomes. Yeah. I agree.
So keep going down the rabbit hole. Yeah. I love that.
We've been chatting for over an hour. I know. Okay.
Well, before you go, let's chat about how we can still connect with you. I want to hear about your Instagram and stuff. And then the things that you would recommend for the men and stuff, maybe.
Yeah. I'm still working on some sort of offering or mentorship or, you know, I'm still trying to figure it out because this is two months into the creation of the doula dude. And I got, you know, in the, in those two months that I made it, I almost had 13,000 followers and I got almost 5 million total views.
And I'm just a guy ranting on my phone of my perspective of childbirth. I've been to one birth. Yeah.
This is the rebirth of my daughter. And it's when I go from juxtaposing where I was at in 2022, I would have just done what every everybody else does. If I had found out my wife was pregnant, we would have made an OB appointment.
We would have just done everything else that goes along with the modern narrative of birth. But because my wife took the time to sign up for the doula training program, and I took the time to learn the stuff with her, it was the best investment we ever made. And so now see where I'm at now and realize that I'm not anybody special.
You know, I never even saw myself, you know, in my early twenties as a married man with, with a baby, this wasn't really my path. This wasn't, you know, so, so knowing that I could, I could do this, literally anybody could do it. I'm nobody special.
I learned about this stuff. And I went from somebody that would have outsourced the entire process to somebody that delivered his own daughter at home, unassisted, just my wife and I, so to juxtapose those two things. And to know that I'm nobody special.
I'm not, you know, I'm a college dropout. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nurse.
I'm not a midwife. I like you, like you, I'm somebody that just got passionate about it and learned about it. And my wife is too, you know, all props to her.
I didn't do anything really other than support her the whole process. So we didn't have any sort of, I was the prenatal care. I was the postpartum care.
I was the, the birth attendant. I was her support throughout the whole process. And I feel like that's how it should be.
And that's how it was. We didn't outsource any part of the process. And that's what creates that strong foundation where now you set the precedent that, that your partner knows that she's, you're the person that she can trust to continue to build and grow as a family.
If you're not able to show up and be supportive throughout the pregnancy, just in taking over some of the things that she would do, but now she just wants to sit down because she's carrying your baby. How you show up during the course of pregnancy and birth says a lot to her about how you, who you are and how she can trust you to, to be the person she wants to grow a family with. So I feel like it should, it should make you want to learn about birth because I'm not anybody special.
So I just want to inspire guys to learn about it because it's a little, you know, weird to be, you know, obsessed about something that a woman goes through, but it's, but it's your child. So I feel like if you just get a little bit over that, like, yeah, ha vagina. Yeah.
That's where the baby comes out of. But once we get out of that, you know, high school mindset, this, it's fascinating how it, how it takes place and, and how, if you just don't disturb the process, it could be the most beautiful experience that then transforms your life. That's what it did to me.
I seen what my wife did and free birth, our daughter, and I was the only one there and it completely changed my life. And that's what birth has the power to do because I'm not anybody special. I'm not qualified to be, you know what I mean? Yeah.
I still struggle every day of thinking if I'm doing the right thing as a dad, like I'm just another guy, you know? But I see how much if every birth happened, like ours, the life, life in the world would be different. Oh, it was like a free birth and every family had these like values and these ideas, you know, the system would change. So I just, I just want my, I just sharing my perspective as a guy.
I love that. It's so needed. And I think that men are truly honestly searching for it and wanting to hear like, Hey, it's, it's possible for this guy to do it and show up for his wife.
It's possible for me too. And that's really all it takes sometimes. That's all it took for me to get started.
And like the obsession and all that, it was like, I saw someone else changed their whole experience. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I can do that too. And I say it all the time.
I'm not special. You can do it too. And it's that honestly, truly is like such a good thing to leave with is like, like you it's available for you.
It's available for everybody. And that's just, yeah, the main point for sure. If a guy's looking for anything, the best investment, a small investment, 20 bucks by Dr. Robert Bradley's book, husband coach childbirth.
That's written from a male's perspective and it would teach you what you need to know to coach your wife's childbirth. Like that book, it's a $20 investment that probably saved us $20,000. Yeah.
Well, that's like, that's the reality of it. Like knowing that that was the one that pushed me over the edge to realize like, Nope, I'm going to show up with all the information that we've already learned. And I'm going to be the doula and we're going to do it.
Cause once she made the decision that she wanted to, to potentially free birth, it's like, well, it won't really truly be a free birth. Cause I'm going to be there for sure. So it was like, well, we already did all the learning.
We did all the training. It's like, are you going to outsource it when the time comes? Or are you going to step up and, you know, but that book husband coach childbirth is what really made me realize that I could do it. And it's possible.
And that, and that he was an obstetrician with over 20,000 births. And so if you want to resource the best places, Dr. Bradley's book, husband coach childbirth for 20 bucks, start there and see where it takes you. I love that.
Yeah. That's yeah. That's all it takes.
I'm like, this doesn't have to be expensive or this like years long thing that you embark on. It's like, just start educating yourself and go from there. Like it kind of just all starts to compound on, on itself.
And like, yeah, but getting, getting people in your life that are like, Hey, you can do it. That I think is the first step. Like truly a lot of people don't even realize, or because they don't even have any people in their lives that have had experiences like us, because everybody's just has like a hospital experience.
98% of people have births in the hospital. So I've gotten comments that like, man, not only do I, you know, that I like what you're saying, but I wish we just had friends that thought like you during our pregnancy, like, like you're saying, people are searching for this information. And I feel like a lot of times, you know, we get into these like echo chambers.
We both obviously probably align on 95% of things. Yeah. We have to get this out there for the people that, that are seeking it.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm glad you're doing it on the internet. It's so needed.
So very needed. Is there anything else two months into it? I'd love that. I know that's awesome.
I've messed up, found you then when you were pretty new. So that's pretty awesome. I love that.
It's absolutely needed. Is there anything else you want to plug before we go? Ayla Cuenca, uncovering birth doula training. She does them I think twice a year.
She just started doing a postpartum doula training because, you know, it's so needed because of the birth trauma that's taken place and women feeling like they don't even have support after the birth because there's so much focus on the birth itself and the pregnancy itself. And but then postpartum, even if you do everything perfect, if you don't have support or have things lined up. So she's, I feel like definitely in terms of training people and equipping them with the knowledge and the skills and bringing in the right people to her cohorts that are teaching her students.
It was a very comprehensive doula training. It's like, borderline midwife training without the medication side of things. So she realized there was gaps in all the different doula trainings that are just like week long courses or maybe a weekend course.
So she did all these trainings and then realized that there's a gap in a lot of them. And a lot of them just teach people how to hold their client's hand while the hospital just does whatever they're doing. So she created a very comprehensive doula training that was like, you know, I think it was two or three months or something and homework and cohorts and lectures and books.
And so uncovering birth doula training by Ayla, Ayla Cuenca. She's located in Miami. I think you can use the link in my link tree.
I'll put all your links inside the show notes for everybody there. Yeah. People can get a discount on her courses, her birth class.
Ayla is, if we didn't find her, we wouldn't have been able to do anything that we were able to do. So a lot of the knowledge, you know, I'd say probably 80% of the things that I know about birth came from that doula training that my wife did. And then the other part is just listening to podcasts and reading books and the occasional journal article, you know, things come out and obstetrics.
But yeah, Ayla Cuenca, uncovering birth. That's the biggest plug. Okay.
Awesome. I love it. Anything else you want to leave the dads with today? Yeah, I'm nobody special.
So if I can, if I can support my wife and we can have a free birth, anybody, the knowledge is out there. If you're seeking it, like you can do that too, no matter what birth you're choosing, it's important that you learn about the process so that you can be there to support her every step of the way. I love that.
That's awesome. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being on today.
Thank you, Taylor. Thank you so much. We'll chat again soon.
All right. See ya.
