Happy Homebirth

What's the difference between a worry and a knowing?

Megan Wilson first joined the Happy Homebirth Podcast in 2020. Six years later, she's back. She's a wife, homesteading mama of four from deep East Texas, and was expecting baby number five when we recorded. In this episode, she shares the long-pushing water birth of her tiny daughter Vivian, the health struggles that followed, and the loss of her baby Kai. Then she tells the story of her rainbow baby, Elodie: a pregnancy full of recurring dreams and strong knowings, weeks of early labor that few people took seriously, and a birth so fast that Elodie arrived in the car, minutes from the hospital, at almost 34 weeks. This is a tender, faith-filled conversation about grief, healing, and learning to trust your intuition.

Links:

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset
• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• Youtube Episode Link:
• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth
• Megan's first episode (2021): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/happy-homebirth/id1446934537?i=1000510201363

Have you ever been handed the exact thing you were most afraid of… and found, when it actually arrived, that the fear just wasn't there anymore?

Two births, same mother, worlds apart. In this episode, Kaitlyn Vogelmeier shares a hospital first birth shaped by pressure she didn't want– a membrane sweep, Pitocin, three hours of pushing, and a hemorrhage with a manual placenta extraction– and then the redemptive homebirth she prepared harder for the second time around. Partway through labor, her midwife felt something that wasn't a head, and Kaitlyn, calm and sure, chose to stay home for the birth of her Frank breech baby boy. It's a story about how the right provider, and two years of quiet preparation, can change everything about how a birth unfolds.

Links:

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset
• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• Youtube Episode Link:
• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Have you ever lost something so specific that the people around you didn't even know to name it?

Marley Collins is a wife to her husband Clayton, mama to Maren and Lenora, and an engineer in Temecula, California who's currently doing part-time consulting and teaching herself to sew. Her family is from the Netherlands, where several of her aunts gave birth at home, so she knew she wanted a homebirth before she was ever pregnant.

In this episode, Marley shares two births. Her first, in Texas: her water broke at 39 and a half weeks, and what followed was the better part of two days of labor and pushing against a cervical lip that would not move, an unhurried transfer, and a cesarean. Her second, in California: an HBAC at home in the water, with her mother's hand in one of hers and her husband's in the other, and Marley reaching down to catch her own baby herself.

She's honest about the very specific grief that sat between those two births — not the surgery, not the transfer, but the fact that she missed Clayton becoming a father — and honest about the exact moment it lifted. She's also wonderfully clear-eyed about choosing her birth team, switching midwives mid-pregnancy, and knowing precisely where she stood.

In this episode:

• Why finding a homebirth midwife felt like a dating app
• Switching from a midwife trio to a solo midwife at 20 weeks
• What a cervical lip is, and everything her midwife tried
• What an unhurried, well-handled hospital transfer actually looks like
• The hardest part of her cesarean, which wasn't the surgery
• Finding her HBAC midwife through a raw milk co-op
• Why she hired a doula for her VBAC and then let her go at 35 weeks
• Learning to catch her own baby at a 37-week birth class in her own kitchen
• The dime-sized reality check she found funny instead of discouraging
• Her midwife's husband charting every word she said while pushing

Links:

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset
• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/da8D7DISicc?si=PDWpBjoP_AKWKy2h
• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

What happens when the birth story that scares you most is your own sister's?

Shey Munoz has given birth to both of her boys at home in South Florida, and both times her baby came faster than anyone planned — under five hours the first time, under two the second. Both times her husband set up the birth pool, and both times she never got in it.

In this episode Shey shares the midwife who made the decision simple, a first labor that was over by 8:18 in the morning, the fear she carried into her second birth after her twin sister gave birth in under two hours with no midwife in the room, and the one question her midwife asked that shrank that fear down to something she could actually answer. She also tells us about her mother's twin cesarean in India in the nineties, what she counted on to get through her contractions when she had nothing else in reach, and the work she does now helping mothers understand what's actually normal in the first year after birth.

Links:

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset
• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/Vv5VV8gH2Rc?si=qitcTwWXQ0mGsYV_
• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth
• Guest Instagram: instagram.com/thepeacefulpostpartum

Has someone who loves you ever told you what your body would and wouldn't be able to handle? And did some part of you file it away as true?

Emily Lewenczuk had already done the research — for a client — and found that nobody in St. Louis would take twins at home. A few weeks later she was looking at two positive pregnancy tests of her own.

Emily is a wife to Josh, a mama of three, and a birth and postpartum doula and childbirth educator who was working in birth long before she had babies of her own. In this episode she shares her first homebirth — gestational diabetes managed through diet, a Christmas Eve baby ten days after her due date, and a postpartum transfer for a tear — and then her twin pregnancy: MoDi twins, a velamentous cord insertion, biweekly scans from sixteen weeks, and an MFM ready to induce her at thirty-eight weeks.

She also shares what she said back to him. The top goal of healthy mom, healthy baby, Emily told him, is the floor. It isn't the ceiling.

Her boys were born at home on the one day her midwife had said she couldn't come, with three midwives, a student midwife, a doula, her mom, her husband, and her almost-three-year-old in the house. Baby A arrived in the caul in about four pushes. Baby B came an hour later. Emily is honest about the bleeding that followed, about the fear she carried into that morning, and about what it meant to have her daughter in the room singing Jesus Loves Me while the midwives joined in.

If you've just found out you're carrying two, or you've been told there's only one way this can go, this conversation is for you.

Links:

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset
• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/mc3l9weex6Q
• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth
• Guest Instagram: instagram.com/emily.lewenczuk

Have you ever come through something so hard that when it was finally over, the smallest ordinary thing felt like a miracle?

This week, we're speaking with Chelann Watt. Chelann is wife to her husband Sam– who she met in Glasgow, Scotland and married ten months later, because when you know, you know– and she's mama to a little boy named Clyde. They live in Yakima, Washington in a 1918 house with English gardens that she is absolutely obsessed with, and she and Sam run their advertising company together, side by side, all day long.

In this episode, Chelann shares the diagnosis nobody gave her for ten weeks and the ER doctor who finally did. She shares the birth she got anyway– hands off, at home, with a sunny side up baby and a midwife who never once lost her calm. And she shares her husband, who I'm telling you is one of the best characters we have ever had on this show, and he barely says a word.

Resources Mentioned:

• Connect with me personally on IG
• Reach out to my company for Paid Advertising - Watt Advertising
• HG Prevention FB Group (Metformin Trials)
• HG Support FB Group

Links:

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset
• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/w8ZTCUh3Qj0?si=cPmKQmCqKDtbMtKz
• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Student Interview episode: Abby Johnson/Carley Overbey

"I would have definitely panicked if I hadn't known."

Links

• Replay — Why You've Read Everything and Still Don't Feel Ready: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/next
• Whole Mother Homebirth: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• YouTube:
• Sponsor — Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

If your first birth went nothing like you'd planned, does that tell you anything about how your next one will go? Or is it possible that your first story doesn't get to write your second?

Julia Moore is a wife to her husband John and a mama of two, living in Northwest Arkansas. She's a birth videographer and a new doula, which means she had spent a couple of years in other women's birth spaces with a camera in her hands, long before she ever had a labor of her own.

In this episode, Julia shares two experiences that could not look less alike. Her first: bleeding at seventeen weeks, her water going at twenty four, a month of hospital bed rest while she finished her last semester of college from the bed, spontaneous labor at twenty nine weeks, a cesarean for her frank breech daughter, and then a diagnosis nobody saw coming and months in the NICU. Her second: a homebirth she prepared for in a state where she couldn't hire a licensed midwife to attend it, a misdiagnosis that cost her a month of fear, and an all day labor at home with her husband and a doula she had turned into a real friend on purpose.

We talk about building a birth team from scratch, about deciding whose call your care actually is, and about the postpartum she finally got to have. You're going to love her steadiness, and how honestly she holds both stories at once.

Links

• Free workshop, September 21st — Why You've Read Everything and Still Don't Feel Ready: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/next
• Whole Mother Homebirth: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• YouTube:
• Sponsor — Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth
• Guest: instagram.com/juliamoorebirthfilms

I want to tell you about two births.

Same woman. Same husband. Same house, more or less. And afterward, two completely different marriages.

Not because one birth was easy and one was hard. That isn't what made the difference. I've thought about this for years and I want to tell you what I think it actually was.

Links

• Free workshop, September 21st — Why You've Read Everything and Still Don't Feel Ready: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/next
• Whole Mother Homebirth: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/y3OxNeiA1D0?si=ZWV-Y8BBXboZembc
• Sponsor — Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Have you ever tried to relax on purpose– and realized you had no idea how? That you could feel the tension sitting in your body, but you couldn't figure out which part of you to let go of first?

In this episode, we're speaking with Sabrina Brooks. Sabrina is a wife to Sam, a youth pastor, and mama to Freeman and Whitley, who are four and one and a half and who were both born at home. She grew up in California and now lives in a small town in southeastern Illinois. And some of you will recognize her already– Sabrina is Cynthia's daughter, from episode 338. Cynthia went first in her family more than thirty years ago, and today we get to hear from one of the babies she birthed.

Sabrina shares a year and a half with almost no cycles, the friend at a pickleball game who changed everything, and conceiving without ever having a period that month. She takes us through a first birth at forty-two weeks where she hit the wall and lay there certain she was about to be labeled failure to progress– in her own home. And then a second birth where she finally understood what everyone meant by embracing a contraction.

Links

• Free workshop, September 21st — Why You've Read Everything and Still Don't Feel Ready: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/next
• Whole Mother Homebirth: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• YouTube:
• Sponsor — Samaritan Ministries:
• https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth
• Cynthia's Episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-338-a-midwife-the-yellow-pages-and-two-babies-born-at-home/id1446934537?i=1000781369332

Here's something I've watched happen more times than I can count.

A woman prepares beautifully for her birth. Really well. And she's still blindsided.

This doesn’t happen because she was lazy about it. It happens because she unknowingly prepared one part of herself extremely thoroughly and left the other four areas almost untouched, and she didn't know there were five.

That's what today is about. What actually needs preparing, and what happens when you only do some of it.

Links

• Free workshop, September 21st — Why You've Read Everything and Still Don't Feel Ready: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/next
• Whole Mother Homebirth: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/ugzTFzBLYek
• Sponsor — Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Have you ever felt like the Lord told you something about your birth… and then watched every circumstance line up to tell you it wasn't going to happen?

Gracie Gould is a wife to Jesse and a mama of four in Greenville, South Carolina, where they work with a local Christian theater and homeschool their crew. She came to homebirth by watching her own mother do it — and one of her midwives turned out to be the daughter of her mom's midwife.

In this episode Gracie shares four births: a planned homebirth that became a transfer and a short NICU stay, a homebirth in a fifth wheel camper trailer with a double shoulder dystocia, a hospital birth with midwives that surprised her, and a water birth at 42 weeks and 3 days after a pregnancy that tested her at every turn — breech at 32 weeks, GBS positive, two snowstorms, and castor oil that failed her twice. All four of her babies are here and healthy, and her youngest is on the recording with us.

Links

• Free workshop, September 21st — Why You've Read Everything and Still Don't Feel Ready: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/next
• Whole Mother Homebirth: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• YouTube:https://youtu.be/O9mfkLNmTSg?si=xO2ftUXthv4Z5ngQ
• Sponsor — Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

The moment in labor nobody warns you about

The one idea: the moment arrives for almost everyone, and everything depends on whether she was told it was coming.

The one action: take the Homebirth Readiness Check. And a free workshop is coming.

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Have you ever looked at something in front of you and thought, "there's just no way"– no way that's going to fit, no way that's coming out, no way I can do this… and then watched it happen anyway?

In this episode, Rebecca walks us through six births, and not one of them looks the same. A 38-hour first labor that ended in a hospital transfer. An eight-hour second birth she almost didn't believe was real. A three-and-a-half-hour third birth that woke her out of a dead sleep. A dreamy fourth birth with three answered prayers. A fifth where she had to do something she'd never tried to bring her baby down. And a sixth– a peaceful water birth where she found herself smiling through the contractions, whispering "birth is easy." We talk about surrender, about God's provision, about the difference between shallow positive thinking and real honesty, and about what it means to stand at the edge of life and death and choose trust.

Episode Roundup:

• Let's start with the variation, because goodness– six births and not one of them matched. Thirty-eight hours and then three and a half. Ten pounds and then eight. Forty-two weeks and then thirty-nine. If you came into this episode hoping Rebecca would hand you a pattern– this is just how my body does birth– she gently took that out of your hands and gave you something better. She gave you a wide, wide field of normal. Your body does not owe you a formula. It's allowed to surprise you every single time, and that's not a problem to solve, it's just the truth of how individual each of these experiences really is.

• Next, I can't stop thinking about the surrender. Because underneath all that variation, there was one thing that never changed. Every birth, Rebecca came back to the same place– open hands. And with her sixth, she said out loud the thing that all her positive thinking had never let her say. Walking laps around her driveway with a toddler on her hip, she told the Lord that if He wanted to take her life, or her baby's, that day, she trusted Him with it. And what came on the other side of that honesty wasn't fear. It was peace. She said it herself– surrender and peace, they go together. I don't think that's a coincidence, my friends. I think those two always travel side by side.

• And finally, I want to sit with what she said about fear, because it's so important. There's no moral failing in being afraid. Everything we know about fear and tension in labor is still true– and also, you are allowed to come to your Father and say, "I'm scared." That's not weak faith. That's confession. That's honesty. And He can carry you right there in it. Now, does that mean if you just surrender hard enough your birth will be easy and pain-free like Rebecca's sixth? No, of course not– she'd be the first to tell you a peaceful birth isn't a reward for doing it right. But whatever your birth looks like, fast or slow, at home or transferred, it can still be one of the most sacred places you're ever called into. Rebecca called it a privilege. To be called into those places over and over again. I just love that.

Bonus episode this week: Katelyn's solo episode, WThe Moment in Labor Nobody Warns You About, releases Wednesday 9/2.

Links:

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset
• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/O9FZWWODUqk?si=6nY-6Bvwa1myBBzg
• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth
• Rebecca's Instagram: @wellspringfamilywellness Facebook: Wellspring Family Wellness Website: http://www.wellspringfertility.com/

Why more research isn't making you feel ready

The one idea: you don't have a knowledge gap. You have an integration gap, and you've been treating one as the other. The one action: take the Homebirth Readiness Check.

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

• Emily's Episisode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-340-freebirth-story-what-changed-between-her-first/id1446934537?i=1000785405631

• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

What if you could do all of it right– read every book, listen to every episode, interview the midwife, make the plan… and still walk into your birth completely unprepared?

Emily Swann is a wife to John, a mama of three, and the woman behind For the Love of Breastfeeding, where she teaches a bodywork course for babies and toddlers and runs a six-month program for mothers called Guided and Grounded. She's a nurse, an IBCLC, and holds a master's degree in public health and nutrition. She also binge listened to every episode of this podcast before her first baby was born.

In this episode, Emily shares three births that look nothing alike. Her first: a planned homebirth that became four days of labor, a house full of onlookers, and a transfer to the hospital. Her second: a baby born at 35 weeks after eleven days of an unexplained 105 degree fever, followed by the NICU and a readmission– and a mother who protected breastfeeding through all of it. Her third: a baby born at home, unassisted and en caul, on the evening she cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner in labor.

We talk about the difference between being informed and being formed, about drama versus transformation, about where a woman's authority goes when she hands it off, and about why the magnifying glass in the lactation world is pointed at babies instead of mothers.

Bonus episode this week: Katelyn's solo episode, Why More Research Isn't Making You Feel Ready, releases Wednesday 8/26 and picks up exactly where Emily's first birth leaves off.

Links:

• FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset
• Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)
• Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/9QcQb_Sg7Qc?si=bp9JQG4yJPGeqey0
• Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth
• Bonus solo episode (releases 8/26): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-341-why-more-research-isnt-making-you-feel-ready/id1446934537?i=1000785946382
• Emily's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveofbreastfeeding
• For the Love of Breastfeeding: https://www.theloveofbreastfeeding.com/

Have you ever decided — fully, completely, no-turning-back decided — that you were done doing something a certain way? And then done everything in your power to make the changes necessary?

In this episode, Angelica walks us through the full arc — from a surprise first pregnancy that ended in an emergency C-section and a baby born blue, to a rogue homebirth with her third child that she knew, in that very moment, she would never be able to go back from. And then to her fifth pregnancy, which became the most intentional season of her life — researching her liver health, rebuilding her iron through raw organ meats, and navigating cholestasis, low ferritin, and a medical system that didn't always have answers — all so she could bring her sweet baby earthside in her own home, with her husband by her side.

We also talk about what happened when her baby came down asynclitic and her body instinctively moved into a position her midwife had never seen before. That moment alone is worth the listen.

This podcast is sponsored by Samaritan Ministries. As a paid Samaritan member content creator, I receive compensation for sharing about the ministry.

Samaritan Ministries International is not an insurance company and does not guarantee that medical bills will be paid by SMI or other individuals. Participation in health care sharing is voluntary. Members remain personally responsible for their own medical expenses.

Required legal notices for residents of certain states are available at: https://samaritanministries.org/about/transparency-legal.

Episode Roundup:

First, The image that keeps coming back to me is Angelica on that half lunge off the side of her bed — one leg up, one hanging, holding on to the headboard — her baby asynclitic, her body moving into something she had never planned, had never read about, had never been told to do. And her midwife standing there saying, "I've never seen that before."

That is body literacy in its most primal form. That is what it looks like when a woman has truly learned to lean into the intuitive urges.

Next, there’s something very meaningful about this storyline: it wasn't linear. Angelica had her third baby at home, had to go back to the hospital with her fourth because of cholestasis, and then….Angelica did everything in her power to prepare for that fifth birth — the diet, the supplements, the research, the sacrifices through Thanksgiving and Christmas and her sister's wedding. She stayed the course when it was hard, and it led to an absolutely amazing experience for her. That wasn’t the end, as we heard. 10 days postpartum she did have to go to the hospital due to retained placenta….

And yet — she didn't hemorrhage. Her body had the reserves. Her husband could look at her and say, "You were prepared for this. Even for the part you didn't plan."

That is what preparation actually does. It’s not a guarantee. Instead, it builds capacity in you. It gives your body what it needs to meet the unexpected with something left.

I also want to hold onto what Angelica said about women and body literacy — that we are probably the ones who should be most aware of our bodies, and yet we're going into everything blind because that knowledge isn't being passed down. That landed for me. It might have landed for you too. I’m so excited to change that for the next generation, aren’t you?

So let this episode be part of that reclamation. Share it with someone who needs it. Leave a review if it moved you. And come find me on Instagram — I'd love to keep this conversation going.

Links:

FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/HskwrYUDmLo?si=RBreBoM5_y9dC7_k

Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

What if the most powerful birth preparation isn't a course, a class, or a stack of books at all, but a mother who's simply willing to go first, so everyone behind her can follow?

Today I'm speaking with Cynthia Cruz, known to some of you online as Mama RAC. Cynthia is a wife to her husband Ron of 36 years, a mother, a grandmother, and a woman who chose homebirth in California more than 30 years ago, back when almost no one was talking about it. Her daughter Sabrina and her son Robert Anthony were both born at home. And if you have a baseball lover in your house, you may already know her son as Coach RAC of the Savannah Bananas.

In this episode, Cynthia takes us back to a time before social media, before the million courses and videos, when preparing for a homebirth meant finding a lay midwife in the Yellow Pages and filling your mind with Ina May Gaskin, Weston A. Price, and every birth story you could get your hands on. She shares the spiritual breakthrough that ended five years of infertility, a first birth surrounded by twelve onlookers, a second birth so fast and primal that it was over in about an hour and a half, and the family legacy of homebirth that her children are carrying now. You're going to love her heart for going first.

This podcast is sponsored by Samaritan Ministries. As a paid Samaritan member content creator, I receive compensation for sharing about the ministry.

Samaritan Ministries International is not an insurance company and does not guarantee that medical bills will be paid by SMI or other individuals. Participation in health care sharing is voluntary. Members remain personally responsible for their own medical expenses.

Required legal notices for residents of certain states are available at: https://samaritanministries.org/about/transparency-legal

Links:

FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/9lYbyLWaP7g?si=v5rrR9BtDzc9IIKj

Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Have you ever worked so hard for something — prepared for it, prayed over it, given it everything you had — only to watch it unfold nothing like you pictured? And then found, on the other side, that it shaped you anyway?

Carly Hartwig is a wife and a mama of two little girls up in upstate New York, a former special education teacher who followed her own journey with fertility awareness all the way into a new calling — she's now a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner, walking women home to their bodies from the comfort of her own. And here's what makes this one so special to me: Carly has been listening to this podcast for years. She got ready for both of her births with these stories in her ears. So it is a true honor to hand her the microphone now.

In this episode, Carly shares two homebirths that could not have been more different. Her first: a forty-nine-and-a-half-hour labor with a baby who flipped posterior and asynclitic, relentless back labor, a catheter, and a middle-of-the-night conversation about whether to transfer — and how she stayed. Her second: a birth she manifested and prayed over down to the smallest detail, a water birth so fast her midwife said the baby "fire-hosed" out, with her four-year-old in the room to announce her little sister. She takes us through the hard beauty of both, and the tender, honest reality of two very different postpartums. You are going to love her perseverance, and the way she holds it all with so much gratitude.

This podcast is sponsored by Samaritan Ministries. As a paid Samaritan member content creator, I receive compensation for sharing about the ministry.

Samaritan Ministries International is not an insurance company and does not guarantee that medical bills will be paid by SMI or other individuals. Participation in health care sharing is voluntary. Members remain personally responsible for their own medical expenses.

Required legal notices for residents of certain states are available at: https://samaritanministries.org/about/transparency-legal.

Episode Roundup:

The first is the contrast itself. Two births — same woman, same home, same midwife — and worlds apart. One asked her to endure: forty-nine and a half hours, a posterior baby, back labor that left a welt on her back for weeks. The other asked her to surrender: a water birth so fast her baby "fire-hosed" right out. It would be so easy to rank them, the hard one and the easy one. But Carly won't let us, and she's right. Neither was a reward for good behavior. Neither was luck. Both were the fruit of a woman who prepared the whole of herself and then met her birth as it actually came.

Next, let’s talk about where her confidence came from. When Carly walked into her second birth so grounded, so sure — that steadiness wasn't handed to her by the manifesting, as beautiful as that practice was. It was forged in the first birth. "If I can deliver a posterior and asynclitic baby," she told us, "I can take whatever this baby throws at me." The hard birth is what made her sure. That's redemption at work: it doesn’t erase the difficult story, but it transforms what it means.

And third: I deeply appreciate Carly’s honesty about after. Her dream birth was followed by her harder postpartum — a feeding journey she didn't expect. Carly doesn't smooth that over, and I love her for it. Because a beautiful birth was never a promise that everything after would be easy. It was, however, preparation and encouragement that this woman can carry it and move through it.

So wherever you are in your own preparing — whether you're doing the forward-leaning inversions and the daily birth stories, or you're lying awake wondering whether your body will know what to do — keep this in mind. You don't have to earn your birth. You get to meet it. You cannot script the length of your labor, or which way your baby will face, or how postpartum will unfold. But you can become the woman who meets any of it grounded, supported, and trusting. As Carly said it best: both hard, both beautiful, both empowered.

And that woman — the one who's prepared in mind, body, heart, home, and marriage — is exactly who I get to walk with inside Whole Mother Homebirth. It's not about scripting the perfect birth. It's about becoming a prepared woman, the way Carly was for both of hers. If your heart tugged a little listening today, that's worth paying attention to. You can find everything in the show notes whenever you're ready.

Links:

Carly's IG: http://instagram.com/cleanlivingwithcarly

FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/7mHvzla8Qyg

Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Have you ever sat in that strange, sacred in-between, when labor has whispered its beginning but hasn't fully arrived, and felt something rise up in you that you couldn't quite name? What if that feeling wasn't fear to push away, but power to say yes to?

Petronella is a mother, a wife, and a lover of nature, art, and creativity, joining us all the way from Sweden. She grew up with one of the rarest gifts a woman can carry into her own birth: a mother who *loved* to give birth, and who told those stories with such joy that they shaped how Petronella saw birth her whole life. Long before she was ever pregnant, she was steeping herself in birth. Assisting at her friends' homebirths. Witnessing her sister's birth. Listening to birth stories nearly every single day.

In this episode, Petronella shares what it looked like to birth at home in a country where homebirth is deeply uncommon. Finding private midwives outside the system, stepping back from routine checks, and trusting her own knowing. She tells us about her water breaking under the biggest full moon of the year, the moment of fear that turned into the words *you're going to meet your power*, and a birth she experienced not as pain, but as wave after wave of intensity and surrender. And she shares the tender, grounded peace of meeting her daughter, and discovering, as she put it, a brand new heart. You're going to love her presence and the way she tunes inward.

Episode Roundup:

First…

I keep coming back to the power of preparation.

Petronella didn't start getting ready for birth when she got pregnant. She started years before. She assisted at her friends' homebirths. She witnessed her sister's birth. She listened to birth stories nearly every single day, so many that her husband would laugh, another birth story?

By the time labor arrived, trust wasn't something she had to summon in the moment. It was already woven into her. What a picture of how preparation works. Not as control, but as a foundation you get to stand on when the day finally comes.

Next…

I was so moved by the moment Petronella described as meeting her power.

Early in labor, before things had fully begun, a fear rose up in her. Quiet. Deep. And instead of pushing it away, she got still and asked it what it was. What came back to her was an invitation: you're going to meet your power.

She said yes. And from that yes, the fear was gone. No doubt. No question.

How often do we treat fear as a stop sign? Petronella's story is such a reminder that sometimes the fear we feel in birth isn't a warning at all. It might be a doorway.

And finally…

The theme that stayed with me most was surrender.

Petronella prepared more intentionally than almost anyone I've spoken with. And still, she said it so simply: even when we know, we don't have any control over it. It's a miracle. And a miracle asks us to surrender.

This podcast is sponsored by Samaritan Ministries. As a paid Samaritan member content creator, I receive compensation for sharing about the ministry.

Samaritan Ministries International is not an insurance company and does not guarantee that medical bills will be paid by SMI or other individuals. Participation in health care sharing is voluntary. Members remain personally responsible for their own medical expenses.

Required legal notices for residents of certain states are available at: https://samaritanministries.org/about/transparency-legal.

Links:

FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/SvtI4BWYfMM

Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth