Dr Rixa Freeze - A PhD in Freebirth; A living study

Today on the show I speak with Dr Rixa Freeze. Rixa's PhD is all about Freebirth in America and she herself has also had a combination of free births and midwife attended births at home. We chat through her 4 births - including one birth where she preformed resuscitation on her baby girl. We also chat about Rixa’s non for profit organisation - Breech with out Borders and how vaginal breech birth in todays world is nearly extinct. Rixa is a lively academic who has studied birth extensively but also has lived it herself. I really like our conversation.

Please visit the below links to find more about Rixa and support her important work.

Reteach Breech fundraiser:  https://chuffed.org/project/reteachbreech

Breech Without Borders: breechwithoutborders.org

Stand and Deliver: http://rixarixa.blogspot.com/

Inga’s birth story and video with neonatal resuscitation: http://rixarixa.blogspot.com/2011/03/ingas-birth-story-part-1.html

Bio:

Dr. Rixa Freeze has a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. Her doctoral studies focused on the history of healthcare and medicine with specialization in pregnancy, childbirth, and maternity care. Her dissertation examined why women in North America choose unassisted home births. She has published two articles about home birth: “Staying Home to Give Birth: Why Women in the United States Choose Home Birth” (JMWH 2009) and “Attitudes Towards Home Birth in the USA” (Expert Review of Obstetrics & Gynecology 2010). In 2018 she published the article “Breech birth at home: Outcomes of 60 breech and 109 cephalic planned home and birth center births” with BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth. She published another article about breech in Midwifery Today ("The Bottom Line on Breech") and a book chapter “Freebirth in the United States” in the book Birthing Outside the System: The Canary in the Coal Mine.

Rixa's current research interests include human rights in childbirth, autonomy and informed consent, and vaginal breech birth. She worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wabash College from 2011-2019. In 2018 she founded Breech Without Borders, a nonprofit organization dedicated to translating existing material about breech into multiple languages and to making information about breech more accessible to both parents and health care professionals. In addition to running Breech Without Borders, she teaches vaginal breech training workshops with Dr. David Hayes.