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: 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
