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. Episode Roundup: First, the line I think a lot of you felt in your chest: "I had too much information and not enough heart." Emily had listened to every episode of this show. She'd read every book. She had a master's degree and a nursing license and she'd been the one at the foot of the bed for other women's births. And she still walked into that first labor with all of it sitting outside of her. Being informed is not the same as being formed, my friends. It never has been. Information is wonderful and I will hand you all of it that I have– but it does not become yours until it goes through your heart and your body and your practice. Emily is living proof that you can be the most educated woman in the room and still be waiting for someone else to do it for you. And I want to flag something for you here, because I don't normally do this. On Wednesday I'm dropping a bonus solo episode– just me, about ten minutes– called Why More Research Isn't Making You Feel Ready. And it is on this exact thing. I'd actually recorded it the day before Emily and I sat down, which is why you heard me interrupt her mid-story to tell her she'd just handed my own episode back to me. So if what she said about her first birth landed anywhere near home for you, come back Wednesday the twenty-sixth. It's the teaching version of what you just heard her live. Next, let's talk about what happened with the cervical checks, because I want to be careful here. For nine months Emily told her midwife she did not want to be checked. Then her midwife arrived, offered a check, and Emily said sure. And notice how Emily holds that. She says she wishes her midwife hadn't asked– and she also says she takes ninety-nine point nine percent of the responsibility for that birth. She doesn't hand it off. She doesn't villainize a woman who was, by her own account, nice. She just tells the truth about where her own authority went. And I think there's something enormous in that for us. The decision you make on a Tuesday afternoon in a prenatal appointment is not the same decision you'll be asked to make at three in the morning with a house full of people watching you. Practice saying it out loud when nothing is on the line. That's not being difficult. That's rehearsal. Third, drama versus transformation. Emily used the word drama over and over about that first birth– the calling of people, the playing it up, the performing of labor to try to make labor happen. And I offered the word production, and she took it further and said something I've been chewing on ever since: it's supposed to be a big experience, but it's not supposed to be a production. Internally enormous. Externally, quiet. When she had Arthur, her dad ate Thanksgiving dinner in her house and left, and her husband was upstairs putting the kids to bed, and she was in a dark bathroom having a baby. There was nothing to watch. That doesn't mean your birth has to look like that. Some of you want your mother there and your sister there and your best friend taking pictures, and that is beautiful and it is yours. But it's worth asking honestly: is that person in the room because I want her, or because I want the birth to be a thing that people saw? And fourth, this one is for the mamas deep in it right now. Emily's whole body of work came out of the hardest parts of her story– the breastfeeding that nearly broke her, the baby she thought was broken. And what she found was that the magnifying glass was pointed the wrong direction. She said no one is talking about moms because babies can't feel shame yet and mothers can. So we fix the baby. We chase the tongue tie, the chiropractor, the next appointment on the crunchy mom's list. And sometimes– not always, but sometimes– when the mother is tended to, the baby resolves without anyone doing a single thing to him. Witness before you fix. That goes for your baby, and it goes for your labor, and I'd argue it goes 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: Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth Bonus solo episode (releases 8/26): Emily's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveofbreastfeeding For the Love of Breastfeeding: https://www.theloveofbreastfeeding.com/
