Happy Homebirth

Katelyn Fusco

The Happy Homebirth podcast is your source for positive natural childbirth stories, and your community of support, education and encouragement in all things homebirth and motherhood.

  1. Oct 19

    Ep 353: A Cervical Lip, a Cesarean, and the HBAC That Followed

    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

  2. Oct 5

    Ep 351: Twin Home Birth After Being Told She Had "No Pain Tolerance"

    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

  3. Sep 28

    Ep 350: A Homebirth After Hyperemesis Gravidarum

    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

  4. Sep 21

    Ep 348: Homebirth After Cesarean Story: From a 29-Week Preemie to a Birth at Home

    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

4.9
out of 5
583 Ratings

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The Happy Homebirth podcast is your source for positive natural childbirth stories, and your community of support, education and encouragement in all things homebirth and motherhood.

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