Birth Matters Podcast, Ep 107 - 3 Transformative Births, Pt 2: Empowering VBAC & Express Homebirth

In this 2nd episode of a 2-parter, Kaitlin shares her 2nd and 3rd babies’ birth stories. After having a traumatic first birth, Kaitlin finds her voice and makes every effort to help things go differently . This includes finding a VBAC-supportive provider since she was aiming to have a vaginal birth after cesarean, seeking out lots of education and hiring a doula for support. She contrasts the ways in which her 2nd baby’s birth was redemptive and empowering, and then shares her very efficient homebirth with her 3rd. Kaitlin explains how her experiences were what not only drew her to becoming a birth doula but also motivated her to start Be Her Village as a way to help birthing families access the support they need whether they can afford it or not through a gift registry for support and education. 

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Episode Topics:

  • 2nd pregnancy - babies were ~23 months apart

  • Had to decide if she wanted to schedule a cesarean or try for a VBAC

  • Starting to read some library books to help her decide

  • She was scared of bleeding too much and then read a vaginal birth 500 cc’s blood loss is normal vs cesarean normal blood loss 1000 cc’s is normal, sells her on VBAC

  • She tells OB if she goes to 42 wks

  • Father’s Day 2014 during Honduras world cup she goes into labor

  • Part of her prep was acupuncture and doula support

  • From the Queens acupuncturist, she was given ear seeds to squeeze pressure points. She goes into labor 2 days later

  • Noticing contractions 15 min frequency, decided she couldn’t go to brunch

  • The buildup was gentle and slow and tolerable

  • She and her husband labored all day, watching world cup soccer, resting, listening to music

  • Eventually doesn’t want to be in the bed, needs to be more vertical but resting

  • In touch with doula throughout the day

  • 10pm doula listens to her over phone and tells her to call doctor, who tells her to keep laboring at home until contractions were closer together

  • Around midnight she asked for doula to come

  • She thinks they made a mistake with contraction timer and the frequency wasn’t accurate

  • They decide to go to hospital, driving fast and follow doula, who tells her husband to pull over if she starts pushing

  • Arrives at hospital in transition

  • She walks to L&D

  • She’s blissfully laboring, skips triage because she arrives that late

  • In bathroom she had the urge to push

  • BP was a bit elevated; they asked her to stay in bed on her left side

  • She squeezes siderails during contractions and accidentally pushes the button that causes the bed to start adjusting all over the place

  • Doctor coming in and is great, very present

  • During one contraction, she felt her son’s head move down

  • Pushed for around 40 minutes, didn’t want to push on her back but 

  • Ring of fire no big deal, actually encouraging because she’s about to meet her baby

  • She didn’t perceive giving birth 2nd time as painful because she reframed it as pressure

  • This birth was so redeeming and blissful

  • Found her doula through her OB

  • Clarifying her OB being ok with her pushing when 6cm

  • Her transitioning mentally from thinking homebirth was bad to thinking it was the best choice for her 3rd baby’s birth

  • She wanted a homebirth midwife who had privileges at a hospital 

  • Prenatal visits so wonderrful, nurturing, casual, her kids were included

  • BP went up a bit toward end of pregnancy, did extra prenatal monitoring

  • Had a nightmare one night toward the end of pregnancy about a birth that went sideways; she has to remind herself she’s in the driver’s seat

  • She thought her 2nd vaginal birth would be like her 1st, but it wasn’t at all

  • Labor starts the same, but rapidly increases in frequency and intensity

  • Under 6 hour labor, hard to get adjusted because of the rapid progress

  • She had no idea how quickly it was progressing

  • Her husband can tell it’s progressing more quickly

  • She texts her midwife (but should have called)

  • After a few very powerful contractions, she asks the midwife to come to check her out and she was already on the way

  • She comes and 2 hours later, baby is born

  • She was laughing in the breaks, telling stories until about 20 min before baby’s birth

  • Asks husband to close the curtains/blinds for privacy before she gets in the pool

  • Breather of contractions before pushing, feeling super peaceful

  • Next moment she is screaming at the top of lungs because she feels the fetal ejection reflex

  • She barrels out and gives a big scream

  • She feels like baby looks just like her husband

  • Talking about why she resisted pushing her baby out quickly (to minimize or avoid tearing)

  • We’ll be forever processing our birth experiences

  • Sharing about BeHerVillage - gift registry for support in birth or postpartum

Interview Transcript

Kaitlin: So, so here I am. I am gonna have another baby, and I had them pretty close together-ish. they came about 23 months apart and I was not a doula yet. I had been a stay-at-home mom for two years, or almost two years, I guess a year and some change at that point. And I found myself pregnant again, and I wanted to be pregnant again. I was so excited. And I had this like major question that I had to answer, which was, am I going to schedule a C-section and move forward with that? Or am I going to try and have a VBAC or a vaginal birth after a cesarean?

And it was an interesting question to have answer because it was okay, it was actually in some ways, Feeling like that was the major question I had to answer was already me taking my power back because I didn't go into my doctor or the midwives I had seen for the first one and said, can I do this?

I thought to myself, I have to make a decision about this and then I'll find a care provider to support my choice. That was my mindset. So already the shift really happened inside of me. It was like, okay, I've been burned, hanging up my brain and trusting every single person too much has burned me.

And now we have to like pendulum swing over to the other side, but trying not to go too far. Right. Where it's like we trust no one, cuz that's not a place I wanna exist in either. And I turned to the library, believe it or not, I went to the library and I took books out. And I read Yeah.

Which is so like, what is it like 1991? Like where's the internet? I dunno. I think part of it for me is like, The internet is filled with so many things, right? It's like, yes. That's part of why people listen to you, Lisa. You want someone to curate the information for you. And I think there was probably some subconscious part of me that's like, if they could get an editor to approve, if they could get a book company to publish and our library bought it.

Like there's some that sort of like, that makes sense. Filters here. Yes. There's also some value to me in like holding a book and being able to touch the words and like I don't know. There was something that was where I turned, I also had a toddler and we probably spent a lot of time at library, so. 

Lisa: Oh, right. Yeah.

Kaitlin: Probably had something to do with it. Every day we are there.

Lisa: Yeah.

Researching VBACs

Kaitlin: So yeah, so I looked it up and I remember, going into this exploration thinking that repeat cesarean is the same as a vaginal birth. If not the vaginal birth is more dangerous, that a VBAC is more dangerous. That was how I went into the research.

And then I did really like, not a lot of research. I like read a few chapters here and there, and I found out this one fact that sort of blew my mind open and the mindset shift changed into I'm gonna pursue a VBAC. And that was that I was worried about blood loss for me again, you're moms, for anyone who's like in that happy, sunny, positive thinking space, that's probably not why you're listening here.

I was worried about this, like uncontrollable, right? It felt like hemorrhaging and blood loss is this big, uncontrollable, scary thing, which. As a doula. Now I've seen it's, it is and it isn't. It is uncontrollable, but it's something that people on teams are well prepared for handling.

There's so many different tools they can use. It's not the big scary thing. I used to think it was, but at the time I still wasn't in birth work and I was looking into blood loss for vaginal birth and I found out that a vaginal birth hemorrhage is 500 ccs of blood being lost by the mom, and I had no idea what that means.

Okay, so 500 ccs and then I looked up what average blood loss is for, or what a hemorrhage is or something for C-section. And it turns out that a normal blood loss, the standard typical, totally fine. "That surgery went great" blood loss for a C-section is 1000 ccs and a vaginal hemorrhage is half that.

And I just, I still don't know why that is. I don't know why we're calling it a hemorrhage of 500 and we're saying that's totally fine in a thousand, that's not even, like, I don't, that's not my fight. I just sort of instantly saw the truth, which is that c-sections are more dangerous for the mother, and VBAC and vaginal birth is inherently safer.

And that even their own standards of judging the two of them are completely, we're not even talking, we're not even in the same universe of risk when we're talking about that. And that for me really shifted my thinking about pursuing a VBAC. And that was where I became deeply curious and what we spoke about before.

 I'm not ever and wasn't ever closed down to a repeat c-section, but I wanted to try and accomplish a VBAC first. And that's, that felt for me, like a really healthy way to approach it. It's not I'm gonna have a VBAC or else it's, I'm gonna try to have a vaginal birth. I'm gonna try and figure out how to do this cuz it seems like it's safer for me.

And if I end up having a c-section, then that's fine too. So I asked around and I don't know where I got this, this instinct to find a provider that was VBAC friendly, but I was lucky enough to get a referral to the VBAC doctor on Long Island. There are wonderful other VBAC options also. Go get a midwife. Just midwives are great. But I was lucky enough to find myself in her office for a consult and I said to her, I'm not sold on vbac. I want your opinion. You do a lot of them. This is my history.

What do you think? Is this safe, a safe option for me? And she asked me some questions and she said, there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't try to go for a vbac. And I said, okay. And then I was her patient from there on out. And it was a really interesting, like, you might even notice in the storytelling is that a lot of my VBAC story happens in my prenatal visits.

It happens in the conversations I had with her. And then the labor is yeah. And then I had this really cool labor and I dealt with the contractions and then the baby came out. But like, but the buildup of the C-section was like, I didn't really put that much thought in. I thought midwives would protect me.

I didn't have conversations with them. And then I was caught off guard. So with my vbac I was really having lots of conversations, reading so many things. I was online, I was on mothering.com. I was like reading everything I could to prepare for this vbac and we had this really interesting dynamic and that I was still sort of not sold on VBAC necessarily. And I remember going into Dr. Jacob's office and saying to her, cuz we would have conversations at every appointment and I would say, I really don't want to be induced cuz I didn't, I was so traumatized by that induction. And I said, I don't wanna be induced. And she said, oh well.

Well, I'll support you until 42 weeks. And I said, okay, but at 42 weeks I wanna have a C-section. And she's like, no. but maybe just a little drip of Pitocin if we need it, And I was like, absolutely not. I'm gonna have a C-section. And it's funny in retrospect because to try to find a VBAC friendly provider that will induce you, that will support your pregnancy until 42 weeks, that's like a unicorn— 

Lisa: It is. 

Kaitlin: Of a provider.

Acupuncture and Start of Labor

Kaitlin: Yeah. And I was there like asking, and I was there essentially saying, my hard line is I will never go through that again. I would never opt into that again. Luckily for me, that didn't happen. I ended up going into labor the day before my No, I woke up on my due date in labor. It was Father's Day of 2014 and Honduras was playing in the World Cup.

And my husband's family is from Honduras. So I remember we watched a World Cup game and I should mention that part of my preparation was acupuncture and it was doula support. I had this hunch that if I could get into labor, I could do it. I just knew I needed to get into labor. So my doula, doulas know all the best things, by the way.

So my doula recommended I go to acupuncture. I had never done this before, and she gave me, like, the guy, doulas have a guy for everything. She gave me the guy, he was on Metropolitan Avenue in some part of Queens. 

You could just tell he was the real deal. And he, whatever. Oh, my doula said, Tell him that you're due and give you the good treatment, tell him like my name. It was just really funny, it felt like a secret society or something, So I went in, I mentioned my doula's name. I told him I wanted the good stuff, right? And I went in and he did whatever he did. Oh my goodness it worked. So he did like the stim. He did all these different acupuncture points. And then what he did was he gave me, and I can still feel the spots on my ear, he gave me three seeds on each ear and he taped them to these pressure points.

And actually my earbuds like, touch one of the pressure points and it drives me crazy. But he told me to press on them, just periodically press on them and it will help the labor come. That was Friday night and my baby. I went into labor Sunday. So Friday night I get them and I am, I'm pushing these points so hard and so often cuz I just to get into labor to the point where the next morning I ripped the seeds off.

 I just couldn't be touched anymore on those pressure points. and I remember being starving the day before. It was like I could eat an entire house and I would've still been hungry. And it, in retrospect, that was my body absolutely gearing up for what was to come. And I woke up Sunday morning Father's Day, and my Braxton Hicks that I had been feeling for, I don't know, for weeks before, they were the exact same as Braxton Hicks, except at the peak there was a little twinge, like a twinge of pain, a twinge of something a little bit more than a Braxton Hicks. So I was laying in my bed.

Contractions Getting Closer Together

It was 5:00 AM and I started timing them. I started just, every time I felt them, I would write it in a little notepad, what the time was. I didn't even have a contraction timer up yet. And I noticed that there was a pattern, it was every 15 minutes that they would come. And then I noticed them getting closer together, and they started building and we alerted everybody, right?

And it was like, okay, so what do we do with our older child? Do we still go to Father's Day brunch? Right? Like there were decisions to be made. And labor's such a funny thing because in between my, every, at that point, maybe seven minute contractions, When the question was, will we go to brunch? I was like, of course we'll go to brunch because I'm sitting here just like this talking to you.

And then I would have a wave and I would have to like rock through it and I'd have to focus and breathe. And I was like, oh, there's no way I'm going to brunch. There was just like this moment of like, when I'm in the wave, it was clear that I was in labor, but it was really easy to feel like I wasn't in labor in between.

Cuz it's such a funny thing, you're like totally engrossed in it and then not at all. You're just like a normal person. So my VBAC labor was my absolute favorite. It was long and slow and gentle and it gave me this like practice. It gave me time to learn how to work with my body.

It was so different from my induction where I had every three minute immediate, really hard contractions from the Cytotec. It was just like this really gentle, like moving into the labor and adjusting to it. I had the emotional space to adjust. I had the physical space to learn how to work with my body.

Laboring at Home

It's hands down my favorite labor of the three, and I'm pretty vocal about that. It was just lovely and my husband and I labored all day. My mom took my older child and my husband and I just labored. We watched Honduras World Cup soccer. We rested, we listened to music. There was a certain point where I could no longer rest in the bed.

That was not a comfortable place to be horizontal, because I sort of, this is like, this is a thing for most birthing women, but definitely for me, when I was horizontal, there was something about the sensation. It was worse even if I was on my side. And then what I found is that the contraction would start.

And I would want to go up, like to get myself up. But the muscles I would use to get myself up would then like worsen the contraction and I would find myself flailing in the bed in the middle of the contraction. So that was it for the bed. I was so under bed. Cause 

Lisa: You have to use your abs to get up. Yeah.

Kaitlin: Exactly. So I started sort of finding creative ways to be vertical and resting. So it's like leaning on a dresser, kneeling on a pillow, sitting on a recliner, sitting on a birth ball. It was just all as how do we get vertical and also rested. Very interesting problem to have. And my labor just sort of unfolded into the evening.

I was in touch with my doula throughout the day, which was such an incredible resource to have. I didn't want her to come, but it was Father's Day. I'm sure she didn't wanna come in retrospect, right? But it was beautiful. She would check in with me, I would say, oh, this just happened. Is that normal? Yes, that's normal.

Oh, this happened. Is that normal? Like, I just vomited. Is that normal? Yes. I'm seeing this, or I would say things like, Hey, the contractions are between four and six minutes apart cuz I didn't know, people started to tell you it's four minute contractions, but mine would vary.

Like, I would have like three really, consistent and then a longer break and then a monster contraction, And she's like, it's all very normal. And so I remember at 10 o'clock at night, she touched base with me over the phone and she listened to me and she told me I should call my doctor, which I think was a really good idea.

So I called my doctor, and this doctor works in a hospital that's known for C-sections, right? North Shore is not necessarily like the natural birth capital of Long Island, but she is the VBAC queen. She knows how to handle the system that she works within, which is all you can really ever ask of someone.

And so she listened to me and she told me that I should stay home and that I should, I should keep laboring and that I should be in touch when I think I need to come in and when the contractions are closer together. And so I did, I just labored at home as long as I could. And then there was a point where I, where I just knew things had shifted.

And I remember it was around 12 o'clock at night. I asked for my doula to come and I had my husband call the doctor and she told him, all right, come in. But if she's not far enough along, we're gonna send her home. Cuz again, that's VBAC supportive when you're in the hospital system in certain ones.

Doula Arrival and Leaving for the Hospital

Right. So the doula came and I think we had made a mistake with our contraction timer because I remember her saying that we needed to be like, call her something when we're five minutes apart or four minutes apart. But remember I said we were having really close ones and then like one monster, one with a huge break.

So my contractions weren't all that regular. So what we were doing is we would have these like eight minute breaks, but then the rest of the contractions were really close together. But the average time in the Contraction app was pretty high because of those breaks. So it wasn't all this to say, it wasn't really reflecting how far along I was, which is a great reason to not rely on contraction apps because they're, but a tool to measure the entire picture of your labor.

So my doula gets to me at around 1:00 AM and she takes one look at me and I look at her and I said, I wish I could teleport myself to the hospital right now. And she's like, okay, it's go time. So we stood up and between my bedroom and my car, which was in my driveway in a small suburban house, I had probably five contractions on the walk to the car.

And I get to the car and the doula pulls my husband aside and says, if anything happens, pull over. And he's like, what do you mean what, what could happen? And she goes, if she starts pushing the baby, just pull over. I was like, oh, ok. So I don't, I didn't have any context for how far along I was. It's really hard to tell when you're in it.

So we drive to the hospital very fast. We follow the doula, we get into triage. We didn't even get into triage the way the hospital works. We had to go into this like billing place first. You have to go into this billing office and I'm in full-blown, in retrospect transition. I am sweating, I am rocking and rolling.

 Like things were moving in a really big way. And they finally figured out how to get me up there and they offered me a wheelchair and I said, there's no way I could sit down right now. I'm just gonna walk.

Going Straight to a Room

So we walked very slowly. It's a very windy hospital. The L&D unit is like in, you have to go down several different hallways and twists and turns. We finally get there. And the unit is waiting for me and they go, Nope, you're not going into triage. Go right into your room. My room was there. They start immediately setting up the baby table and all the tools and everything.

But I don't know that any of this is happening. I'm just, I am in bliss land. I was just working with my body and working with my contractions. Didn't feel any need for an epidural, didn't feel any need for anything. I was just beautifully working with my baby and my labor and it was all on my own and there was no external anything.

Right. It was so beautiful. And then I went similar to my first, where I was like, went to the bathroom before I got in the bed. I went to the bathroom in this little room. And I had, I didn't know it at the time, but I had my first spontaneous push, and it is the coolest feeling and the weirdest feeling because it's like vomiting except downward.

And it's uncontrollable. Yes. It's just like, it's like doing the, I, at this point, I'm moaning, eyes closed, rocking, moving, and instead of moaning it's like, oh, it's like strange, involuntary thing that happens and I'm sure my doula recognized it and we went into the bed. The doctor checked me.

She said I was six centimeters plus two station. I don't know. I, part of me is like, I don't know, I don't know. Maybe she was trying to buy me time. I don't know what it was. but I was pushing. She left me alone. She let me just do my thing and my blood pressure was a little bit elevated, so they asked me to stay in the bed and stay on my left side.

And I remember this really funny moment where I was. I had rolled towards the left side of the bed and I was in the middle of a monster wave, and I am mashing myself into the side of the bed. And Lisa, this, the inside of that rail is all the buttons that control the bed. So in the middle of the contraction, the bed starts going up and down and it's so distracting to me and I like, open my eyes and I yell at my husband cuz I think he is for some reason like messing with me.

And he's like, you're doing it. It's like, oh, okay. Try not 

Lisa: That's hilarious. 

Kaitlin: myself into bed. Yeah. So it was part of what's interesting about this birth and this hospital experience is that the hospital staff wasn't spectacular. They weren't awful the way the first one was, but I remember this hospital, this nurse, they were all looking a little like, oh my God, this woman just walked in and she's about to have a baby.

We know nothing about her. We haven't done all of our checklists, right? So this nurse comes in and I had just had this enormous wave. It was taking every cell and a bit of my energy and attention to get through these huge waves right now. We were nearing the end. I didn't know that. And she walks in and she goes, how did that feel?

And I just, there's this thing that happens to you in labor where your brain, it's, this is not meant to be scary, but your brain sort of shuts down the verbal part of you. So like I had the ability to think all my thoughts. My thoughts are still very much there. I just didn't have any energy to give her.

It's, instead of being scared about the fact of being non-verbal, let's put it like this. It's like you just suddenly develop really strong boundaries about who gets your verbal energy. And I just remember looking at her and just, she's like, how did that feel? And in my head I'm like, how do you think it felt?

I'm in the middle of labor and you could hear me moaning. And it was hard, But instead I just looked at her. With the, like almost a dirty look of just, what kind of question are you asking me? And I didn't say a word. And then I just closed my eyes and rested cuz I just, I didn't have any energy to explain to her what a stupid question that was.

Time to Push

But of course she's just doing her job. I was just in labor. And so the doctor was great. She was very present. She was coming in, checking on me, telling me I was doing great. Keep pushing, keep doing, like, she could tell I was pushing, keep pushing on your own. you're fine. And then it came time to push.

My doula was wonderful too. She got cold rags and ice and she was like doing all these, I don't even know what she was doing, but she made everything just feel a little bit better. There were happy scents happening. She maybe had some oils. She had like cold ice rags and she just, she knew what was coming.

And there was also a comfort, even if she did nothing. And just knowing that the person who I'd been relying on for information the whole day was now here helping me navigate this part too. It felt like a, it felt like what I wanted the midwives to be my first time. It felt like I had that in a doula, this like protective person around me.

And then I was, the one thing I didn't love about my VBAC is that they did have me roll onto my back and do that like traditional purple pushing, but, it is what it is. It's, we can only do what we can do in that moment. So I was laboring him down in one contraction. It was the coolest thing. I actually felt him move down, like in the middle of contraction, I felt where the baby's head was moving further down, which is a really wild thing to feel, but it was very cool to be able to feel it also.

And then, yeah, I pushed not that long, maybe 40 minutes, but like, that sounds long except it was like 16 pushes total. Cause it's like four pushes at a time, four minutes apart. I don't know, it just, I don't know if that Math squares up, but it just, it wasn't that much pushing when you hear 40 minutes.

It sounds long, but it wasn't. What did happen for me is that there was only one other person on the floor, and she was in a couple rooms over and she had her baby like 10 minutes before I did, which is. Not fair because you're like in this moment, like doing the hardest work I've ever done. And she like had her baby.

And I remember feeling happy for her at first. Like I was like, oh, she had her baby great. And then the baby was crying and then there was something, the baby crying just annoyed me so much cuz I was like, ah, somebody be, make that baby be quiet. I'm trying to have a baby. But it was just sort of a funny aside.

Baby is Born

So then the baby finally was born, shot out of me, ring of fire for a few seconds. It really wasn't, I think a lot of people put a lot of energy into the ring of fire. And it was not even honestly a consideration for me. It was like, it was an indication my baby was about to be born.

And it was very welcome at that point. And it was also followed by immediate relief. Immediate relief of the enormous pressure that was felt. And what's interesting too is I gave birth to this VBAC baby with no epidural. But it was not painful in that it was just so much pressure. It was just so much pressure going on.

There's incredibly intense sensations, but not necessarily pain. And I think a lot of that had to do with just how internal I was. And I was really not in a space of fear and tension. I was very loose and very relaxed and very much using my mind to help me handle what was to come. And I was reframing the pain in my mind as pressure, and it was a really wild and wonderful experience.

And as soon as I had the baby, I shouted and my doula shared the video with me. I shouted, I just had a baby outta my vagina. I was like, so excited. 

Lisa: Oh, love it. 

Kaitlin: And was sort of comical, but it was very joyful. And yeah, he came onto my chest and he was so alert and he was so aware. He was not drugged. I wasn't drugged. It was like this instant. And it was so redeeming. It was what I wanted and missed out on with my first, it was like this. Oh. And he looked just like his brother when he was born. He just looked exactly like him. And he, I shimmied him on down. I was an experienced breastfeeder at that point, and we got him latched on before the nurses even asked me if that was a thing that I wanted to do.

He was already on, and it was just so blissful. It was so calm. It was the opposite of the first birth. It was joyful and calm and there was so much oxytocin and there was so much happiness. And yeah, that was my VBAC and my vbac, the impact of my VBAC happened before he came out of me.

And I'm always so careful to say the C-section was traumatic, not cuz of how that happened. And it was not the vaginal birth that made that birth empowering. It was empowering in that I stepped into my power. I started asking questions. I researched, I interviewed, I made shifts according to how I was feeling, and I felt successful in my VBAC when I walked into the hospital, not when I walked out.

Transformed and Inspired

And it was a really powerful experience that shifted every single thing about me. I was a person who used to talk myself out of things. I was a person who used to not do things cuz I was afraid of not being perfect, or I was afraid I wasn't enough, or I was afraid other people were doing it better.

And all these sort of like negative thought trains I would have in my, I would create obstacles. And after my VBAC there was just sort of a, like a switch that went off in my head of, well, why not me? If essentially it was like, if I could push a baby out of my body with no epidural after having a C-section.

Then why can't I do, and you can fill in X, Y, Z for anything. And it's what has guided me from this point. 

And that's why I became a doula four months after that birth. It's why I've launched Be Her Village. It's like, why not me? If I could have that VBAC in the way that I did and feel that powerful in that moment, then why not me?

And it has been my joy since then to try and help people and women and moms tap into that same feeling of power that I have. And it looks different from all of us. Like some of us feel powerful when they schedule their C-section and tick their boxes and have the birth, their birth, their way.

It's not about the medical things, it's not about the uncontrollables, it's about like, how are you feeling when you walk in? And I got totally disempowered in my first birth and I got. I got it back in my second birth and I got it back times a billion. And it's, I'm like, still in some ways on my VBAC high that is like a term that people really experience.

Like the VBAC High is real. You just sort of can't believe that your body and your birth went that way. And it's hard to go back to how things were before. 

Lisa: Oh, more chills. More chills. It is powerful. Yes. When you feel heard, when you feel supported, makes all the difference in the world. And I am right there with you, that feeling of like, what amazing personal growth from these experiences gone through and feeling like you can do anything? Like I love fill in the blank thing. Like basically anything

Kaitlin: Pretty much. 

Lisa: It's not just like bring it on parenting wise, that's part of it. But it's also just so empowering for anything in life. That's really cool. I love that. 

Kaitlin: Thank you.

Follow Up Questions

Lisa: I have a couple of questions before we continue. So one of them was how did you find your doula?

Kaitlin: My doula was handed to me by my doctor actually. Yeah. My doctor told me you need doula. If you wanna have a vbac, you need a doula. Which makes perfect sense cuz she knew she was gonna keep me at home as long as I possibly could. It's part of, and this was not lost on me and it actually leads perfectly into the homebirth. It's part of what I learned in the VBAC that the way she got me, my VBAC was by telling me to get a doula and telling me to stay home as long as I possibly could.

And that message of when your doctor is telling you to avoid the hospital and avoid care because it could disrupt your plans for a vaginal birth. I heard that loud & clear. I thought that was really interesting. 

Lisa: That's not only true, right, for a vbac, but also anyone who's hoping to have any kind of unmedicated birth and or really hoping to avoid as many unnecessary interventions as possible, having a doula laboring at home as long possible, and it me sad they have to say stay away. Like that's really a sad thing and an unfortunate aspect of the current state of our maternal healthcare system, it is just a reality. Absolutely. And that was part of it. people say home birth. How could you have a home birth? And it's like, it's not safe..

And it's like, well, how safe was it for me to labor 20 of my 21 hours without medical care? How safe was that? Right? Like, I don't know, but I'm an actively laboring VBAC person. I don't know how safe that was. It was safe for me. It worked out. But like when I thought about having a home birth, I thought about, huh.

So I can hire a midwife who knows what they're doing and has tools to care for me, and I can get one-on-one care in my home. That sounded like a higher level of care than my VBAC experience.

Just one other question. If I heard you right, I thought that they said you were six centimeters, but the baby was really low. And you were feeling the urge to bear down. Usually if they say we're not even close to 10, they'll be like, don't push, because it might cause the cervical lip to swell and then the baby won't be able to come through. It didn't sound like that was what happened at all.

Kaitlin: That was not what happened and that, that feels like a point of confusion for me also. There's, I don't know. I feel like this doctor is really good at what she does and she knows how to play whatever game she needs to play.

I'm not saying she falsified anything. I'm just saying Yeah, I was six centimeters. I might have been minus two, not plus two. I think I was minus two. But still, same thing. It's like most doctors wouldn't have you pushing, I think. I think it's a sign of how supportive she actually was.

Because midwives. Would say, do whatever feels good. It wasn't like she was having me push intentionally. It was that I was pushing at the peak of the contractions on my own. I was moving the baby down. And I think it was really cool and really supportive for her to say, Hey, your check was six, but you seem to be doing that.

Lisa: Just go at it. Cool. Yeah.

Kaitlin: I'll see you in a little bit. Let me know if the baby comes out. Like, it was just beautiful. It was part of, I think what made her a great doctor was that hands off approach and that trusting my body, even if what she felt was different from what, like textbook clinical 10 centimeters, then we push, like you can push at six, you can push whenever you want. Especially when it's the baby triggering you to push. It's something you should follow. So I found that to be. One of the best parts of working with her, for sure.

Deciding on Home Birth for Baby #3

Lisa: Great. Thank you. All right, so you were just bringing up a midwife and home birth. Any other thoughts you wanna share on your decision to switch to home birth with your third and what did that look like?

Kaitlin: Yeah, so I didn't like, quote unquote believe in home birth. I didn't think it was, I didn't think it was prudent or responsible to opt to totally disregard all of what I thought at the time were like the medical advancements of the 21st century. How could somebody who is trying to be, and this is all aimed at me, by the way, anyone who's planning this, please, this is like, this was my thought how could you give up access to care that save you or your baby in order to be at home, it felt like moving backwards. And it wasn't until I became a doula after my VBAC and saw a lot of things and saw a lot of emergencies that happened in hospitals because of hospitals. It wasn't until my best friend was in midwifery school at the time and she was getting that entire education herself.

And we spent hours with our kids walking and talking and debriefing after births. And she would share with me what she was learning. And it was like, wait a second. I think we might have this all wrong. I think the hospital birth is the new thing. I think that's the experimental thing.

Right. And like, and maybe home birth is normal and fine. And I think for me, what it came down to was two things. Number one, if I was to go to a hospital, because of the way hospitals are set up to serve themselves and their for-profit corporations that run them there's no low risk way to be in a hospital for a VBAC person.

Even with a successful vbac, like they treat you as if you're about to explode at any given point. Even though the risk is actually the same as a first time birthing mom, there's no additional risk to vbac. like clinically, statistically, it's so low risk, but you're not treated like that. And so I didn't feel like I could have found the birthing experience I wanted in a hospital.

That was a big part of it. I was not like gungho, I wasn't like home birth all the way. I was well, this is what I want my birth to look like. I know from my doula work, every local hospital near me is not going to give me that. Not without a huge fight. And I didn't wanna go into my birth fighting.

I wanted to go into my birth supported. The other thing for me was actually like a really big mindset shift because I was thinking that if you choose home birth, you are not choosing medical care. And what I realized is that if I choose home birth, Medical care is still a 15 minute drive away. An OR and a c-section or an epidural or a doctor is 15 minutes away.

At any given point, I am not choosing that. I am just adding on this additional option of having a midwife come to my home of maybe giving birth in my living room. Right? Like it's, it, instead of being the zero sum game, it was like, oh, it's a yes and. It's a yes, hospitals and all the things they offer good and bad and maybe a home birth.

And I really went into my home birth planning for that. It was really interesting. I wouldn't tell anybody in my family about it. I wouldn't talk about it because I wasn't like, I'm gonna have a home birth cause I'm going rogue. I was just I don't know guys, I'm getting a fishy pool.

Don't look at that. Like, it's fine. We're just, we're gonna see where this ends up. And I was, I also like in my brain, I know that our previous births don't statistically change anything about how our next birth will be, but it's really hard to have two experiences and not use them to color how you prep, right?

Lisa: Sure.

Kaitlin: So I have this idea of like, well, one birth ended in a C-section and one ended in a vbac, so this next one could really go 50-50. And so I went into my home birth thinking I could end up having a baby in my living room. I could end up having a vaginal birth, or I could end up having a C-section.

And any of those endings are going to be fine because it just is. So that ending is out of my control. But when I choose home birth and make my preparations and pour my energy into that, then that's where the energy goes and that's what I'm going to create for myself. But I was sort of, I had gotten to a place where I was okay with it ending in any which way.

So that was the transition into home birth. It was born out of seeing a bunch of hospital births, if I'm being honest. It was born out of seeing like what actually happens and how decisions are made and how midwives function within a larger hospital system and how their hands are tied and it was really a full education that I got in that time as a doula and it helped me to choose an out of hospital birth, which funnily enough, I don't know that I realized I was choosing an out of hospital birth.

My first one, like it was, I was always leaning towards a non-hospital birth, right? My first birth was an attempt to give birth out of hospital, but in my mind that birth was a facility birth. I was still trying to like, sort of engage with the system in one way or another, and with my third.

I just thought, man, I would, the hardest part of this second birth was going to the hospital. Wouldn't it be cool if we could just skip that? and that was, once it was decided there was freedom in it. It was hard to make the decision. It's hard to make the leap cuz there's also this, it's not just about where you're giving birth.

There is this, I'm gonna take this into my own hands. I'm not gonna do what everyone else does. I'm gonna do this my way. And there's so much power in that and it's also really scary. It's really scary to say that. And so I just didn't, I just didn't tell anybody. So I got the best of both worlds. I didn't tell anybody about it.

I didn't wanna hear their opinions. I didn't wanna explain myself. Especially I'm not gonna have a whole fight about home birth. Not that anybody was fighting me on it and then end up with a c-section. Like, I just sort of felt like it wasn't anybody's business. So, I shared with my mother because she was, I wanted her to come cuz she hadn't been in the room for any of the other babies.

And then my father had an accident and he moved in with me in the middle of my pregnancy. So I let him know, essentially so that he wouldn't walk downstairs and have me giving birth in the living room. But that was it. We kept it private and we prepared for it in our own way.

Hiring a Midwife

We hired a midwife that I loved. It was really important to me because again, sort of my idea of like, this could end in any which way. It was important to me to hire a midwife who also had privileges in a hospital because I didn't want, I didn't want my care and not, this is not that midwives do this. Like this is not a not good midwives.

This is just my own thinking. I didn't want a midwife to think. Like I, should I transfer or not? Based on like, will I get paid or not? Or will I have to give up this client or not? I didn't want that to even be a consideration. I wanted the transfer to be as smooth as possible and I wanted them to opt towards transferring me earlier than later, and that felt like the best way to do it.

Luckily, the only midwife that was taking Vbac home births, was at the time was also, at least on Long Island, was also a, had privileges at the nearest hospital to me. So it all sort of worked out. It wasn't like a big decision. It just, I just remember that being sort of my thought process and. Yeah, it was all very easy.

We had wonderful, really wonderful long respectful hangout appointments. like, my kids were invited in to listen, like it was just this care, it was family care. It was so low, low pressure. It just felt really good. And I remember at the end of my pregnancy, my blood pressure went up a little bit, like to the higher range of normal.

And so I went and had extra monitoring. It wasn't a big deal. Everything was great. I remember having this one nightmare, a pregnancy nightmare where I had to go into the hospital and I had to fight and fight.

I had to be induced. And it was all my anxieties about what this could be. And I had a nightmare about it enough that I'm talking about it like 11 years later. It was so jarring to me. It was the first real, like, oof, that didn't feel good. And I remember waking up the next day and thinking, well, I could, I have the choice to go or not.

I'm still in charge. like I had to like remind myself and connect back into that, that I don't have to worry about fighting. I don't have to worry about induction and all those things that have happened to me in the past because I was very much in the driver's seat making every decision and I would remain there.

Third Labor

And that felt really good. So getting into the actual labor, I had a very naive view of what my second vaginal birth would look like. It's not logical, but I thought it would be like my first vaginal birth. I thought I would wake up and I thought it would be really long and slow and wonderful and then I would give birth 20 hours later.

And I was very surprised when the labor started off exactly the same. except that whereas the first time I wrote down the contractions every 15 minutes, I wrote down a 15 minute gap. And then the next gap was seven and a half minutes. And then the next gap was four minutes. And they, over the course of five contractions, went from is this labor to I am in labor.

And it was fast. The whole thing was fast and I was having a hard time like having that emotional catch up with the physical speed of the labor. And for that reason, my VBAC remains my favorite laboring time because it was slow enough for me to like get on board with it. This was like a runaway train.

It was an under six hour labor from, oh, was that Braxton Hicks contraction to I'm holding a baby in a baby birthing pool. It was under six hours and I was just sort of stunned by how quickly it all moved.

But it was a textbook labor. And one of the things I find interesting about it is that from the outside perspective, it was this textbook labor. It was, you know? It was contraction, starting going quicker. Second vaginal birth, of course it's gonna be faster. It was,my heels started rising six centimeters.

Started feeling pressure, like I need to poop eight centimeters. Like we were just ticking along and it was all very normal. But my internal experience was so different from that. I was just not understanding how far along I was. I was not understanding. how. why I was moaning. I remember being so excited.

I could not wait after that VBAC birth. I could not wait to be in labor again. I was so excited to labor. I was like gonna have a party to be in labor. I was so excited and it was all moving along so quickly. I just remember being like, am I forgetting how to cope with contractions because when they would come, whereas the earlier ones in my VBAC labor, I'd learned how to breathe and I'd learn, oh, maybe rocking my hips.

These, I'm like flung over the nearest furniture. Moaning really loudly, totally involuntarily. And my husband started sort of going really fast around the house and I looked at him and I was like, why are you running around like a chicken with your head cut off? And he looked at me and he goes, because you sound like you did four hours before you gave birth to Julian.

And I was like, oh, okay. And he said that four hours before my baby was born that day. So it was just, it was incredible. He could sense how I was shifting.

Lisa: Oh my goodness.

Kaitlin: And I remember I did what you're definitely not supposed to do. I texted my midwife. I didn't call her. I texted her, Hey, I'm in labor.

I'm having three to five minute contractions. Just wanted to let you know, And it was like, what are you doing? Do you not want her to come? So luckily, she saw it and she called and I said, I really don't want you to like, have to stay here all day hanging out with me. Like, I don't think you should come.

And she was like, okay. And. And then I think I had a monster contraction and I was like, maybe she should just check on me, so I texted, Hey, maybe just come check on me. And she was like, I'm already in the car. It's fine. Like, she was just, she was so good at what she does. She knew she needed to be here.

Baby #3 is Born

She came and two hours later the baby was born. And it was an incredible two hours. I was smiling, laughing, just totally relaxed up until about 20 minutes before the baby was born, I was just full of laughs, doing really hard work in between the laughing, but telling stories. It was my mom and my husband and my midwife and we were just vibing and it was calm and wonderful.

And then, I had this, again, a textbook sort of milestone. I wanted to be in the birth pool and I asked my husband to close every window in the house, like every blind in the house because I felt this deep need for privacy as I made my way to the birth pool. And I went into the birth pool and I experienced fetal ejection reflex for the first time and actually for the second time, because I think you could argue that my VBAC had a little bit of fetal ejection reflex, but I essentially was having back to back, which is one on top of each other, contractions and wanted to get in the pool.

And when I got in the pool, I got that really cool rest stage that they don't necessarily talk about. I know you talk about it Lisa, but like not everybody's teaching about this like middle secret stage of labor where in between getting fully dilated and your body's starting to push, you just get a breather.

Like your body just gives you that. It's such a gift. So I got in the pool and there's this picture of me just looking up, eyes closed in the pool. That's like four inches full. I don't know how we managed to have this baby underwater, but there was like not enough water pressure. There was just rapid labor. It was like, there's not enough water in the pool. 

Lisa: I was wondering, I was like, if it was so fast how did you get the pool full? 

Kaitlin: So yeah, we didn't, I really had to like keep my bottom low to make sure she was underwater. and I remember just being in that super peaceful moment. And the next thing I know, I am over the edge of the birth pool screaming at the top of my lungs.

And I don't remember the in between. I just know that my body switched into this new gear where I was pushing her out, but not me. Like my body pushing her out and I could have given birth in that one push. I could have given birth. She was barreling through and I could feel everything, and I wanted so badly to hold her back.

And so my pushing with her was so interesting because it looked like I was pushing and they were supporting me as if I was pushing right, and I'm like, internally, I'm like, oh, I'm just bracing myself for the next wave so I can use whatever muscles I have. I don't even know to hold her back to ease her out because she was.

Just ready to be born. And my body was ready to birth her. It was a really wild reverse pushing experience where I was holding her back and my body was pushing and she just, in one swoop, came out. you can watch like, and I've watched many births of like, the baby like, sort of gently emerges and like, oh, there's an ear.

No, it's like there's nothing. And then my baby is born in three seconds. It's just absolutely wild. It's the coolest thing. I have the video of it. It's the coolest thing to watch. I love watching her be born cuz she just wasn't here. And then she was here and she broke through the water and she gave a big scream it was like, sort of just one big scream to let us know, I'm here, I've arrived, I'm well, And then she came to me and I remember the first thing I said was, you look exactly like your dad because my husband is Hispanic. He's got dark features and dark hair. And my second baby is like this light, light eyed, light hair, light skinned baby. And I sort of was expecting that. And she came out with this beautiful jet black hair, and this dark olive skin, these dark eyes.

And I was like, oh, you're just like your papa. And I just took her and I checked and made sure she was a girl. And it was the coolest thing. And before I could figure out if I was in labor, I was holding the baby in my arms. And it was really fast.

And my favorite part of the entire home birth experience and like I would consider home, well if I was ever to have another baby, which I'm not, I would just have all of them at home. But the postpartum care in my bed with my family coming in and the brothers meeting their sister and no IVs are beeping or people interrupting you and real food, and there was just something so cozy and comfortable about the postpartum care at home.

And when the midwife left the house was, my husband said it was cleaner than it's ever been. she was born at 11:40 AM And I remember later on that night, just the baby was sleeping in the bed, my husband was sleeping and I just like got up and made myself some food and like snuck back into the bed and it just, it all just felt so easy and comfortable and the postpartum was a really lovely experience.

Lisa: I wanna ask a quick question cuz I have a feeling listeners might wonder when you said you were trying to not bear down why.

Kaitlin: Oh, that's a great question because I could feel her stretching me. And I had torn with my second, I had a second degree tear and it's normal. It wasn't really traumatizing.

It was way easier than the C-section, it was like a couple of stitches and a little bit of pain, Tylenol or whatever it was. So the tearing wasn't awful, but I wanted to avoid it if I could. And when she was bearing down, I could feel her stretching me. I could feel her barreling down, where if I gave the tiniest of a push, I think she would've come out in that first push.

And so I was really trying to hold her back so that she could stretch me and so that we could work together to come at a normal pace, which really defines, continues to define our relationship. It's like, alright honey, settle down. So yeah, so it was really just a matter of working with her and with my body.

And it was one of the coolest parts of the home birth because even though I was unmedicated, For my vbac, I was in the hospital and I was, they were directing pushing. I was flat on my back. It was all like a lot of pressure. I just couldn't really feel anything that was happening. I couldn't tell where he was.

I couldn't feel how close I was. And with her, it was all directed by me, and I could feel the wave coming and I could feel myself instead of bearing down so hard and being told to do that. I was able to just feel where she was and allow her to be released when it felt good for me. It was, it's kind of wild to say that, right?

It's, but that's what it was. It was, and I didn't tear. And it was a really wonderful and wild experience to be holding back the baby. I don't know what muscles you used to do that, but I figured it out really quick. because when you hold her back, she takes the pressure off the tissues, right?

And then when you release her, they stretch you out so much. And that's, you know this, but I'm gonna say it for the people listening. When you are birthing a baby, it's totally normal for the baby to come. and Stretch your tissues out. You see a lot of the head and then revert back in between the waves and come and push you.

There is a very natural rocking motion that happens. It's good for the baby and it's good for you and it's good for your tissues. And it's part of what's beautiful about self-directed pushing is you can have this little dance with your baby, and you guys can figure it out together and everybody comes out and the mom can be intact or more intact than they would be if it's not directed pushing.

And so for me it was just sort of the opposite. I needed, rather than rocking her out, I needed to like let her know she needs to just stay in there for a little bit and give me a little time to adjust. 

Lisa: I love that you were really in tune and listening to how your body was leading you. And in birth class, I definitely highlight the rebounding and try to reframe it for people that back and forth motion about, you know, I say careful what you wish for. Cuz usually when I ask people what they want for their birth, a lot of people say Quick and easy. Quick and easy. And I'm like, wait, careful what you wish for. Because quick in the pushing stage can lead to breathing problems, challenges for the baby, cuz they need to have that fluid squeezed out of them. We need to gradually open the vagina and the vaginal opening and the perineum and so, yeah. I love that you're highlighting that because it is so protective for it to take a little while for it. Not that, Maybe not to just barrel out

Kaitlin: Yes. 

Lisa: Like some of our sassy baby girls want to do. My little one wanted to barrel out without the midwife being there so. 

Kaitlin: Oh my goodness. Yeah. And I would even say too, like the same way you say, careful what you wish for. I say that when I say like, oh, I wish I had a short labor.

Like, you are gonna have the same amount of intensity. It's just going to be put into a shorter, like you're, you have a certain amount of intensity coming your way. There is something to be said for that longer, slower adjustment. Yes. versus the really short labor. I just supported one of my clients a week ago for her birth and beforehand at our prenatal, she asked me to tie a string around a candle and make a wish for her labor.

And I said, please don't hate me, but I'm wishing that you have a little bit of a longer labor. Because her first labor was seven hours. And I just, I mostly what I wanted for her was to be able to have that time to adjust and not have like a 15 minute labor. Then it worked. She had like a two hour labor, but it was, time doesn't sort of exist at all in, in, in birth.

It felt a lot longer than two hours. But yeah, fast is not always better when it comes to birth or pushing for sure. Yeah. Yep.

Lisa: Yeah. Thank you for highlighting. Both of those things, the pushing piece of it, but also the difference between your second and your third labors of like, it so nice to have this slow buildup and getting used to it and acclimated.

Kaitlin: Yes. It's really hard to understand that your next birth will be different. I think a lot of people struggle with that. Like this idea that Right. I've done it once. It'll just be like that. And sometimes it is, but most of the time is really different. Yeah. Yes.

Lisa: Absolutely. Great. Well, anything else you wanted to share about those birth experiences before we chat a little bit about Be Her Village? 

Kaitlin: Yeah. I don't think so. I think I'm really grateful to be able to talk about them. Every time I talk about them, they feel different to me and I, like, it changes my relationship to them.

And I guess I would just encourage anybody who either has their own birth story that matches any of those or is gearing up for yours, that your birth story is not this stagnant thing. It is something that evolves along with you, your relationship to your birth will change as much as you do as you grow.

And that's okay. So if your birth wasn't what you want it to be, That's okay. My first birth, as you guys know, was not what I wanted it to be at all, but it is very much the driver of the work I'm doing now. The work that I do as a doula, the work I'm doing with Be Her Village and it's really what we do afterwards that can be what makes it meaningful or traumatic or or wasteful. I didn't want to take that experience and not do anything with it and not use it to improve our system or improve care to help the next person. So yeah, that would be my, that would be my closing thoughts on the birth stories is that they're ever evolving as we are.

Lisa: Yeah, we will always be processing those births the rest of our lives.

So my son just turned 18 two weeks ago, and right around, just in the, like weeks leading up to his turning 18, I read a blog post, by Sarah Wickham, wonderful midwife who does a lot of writing, and she talked about the Rhombus of Michaelis, this shift in your back and your pelvis and how a lot of people need to hang from something, as they're approaching the pushing stage. And I had this epiphany. I was like, that's what was happening. Anatomically, I never had understood why I had this instinct like compulsion really. I had to hang from something toward the end of my first of my 18 year olds being born. And I was like, I cannot believe that 18 years later I am learning something that is helping me understand that compulsion that I had. It was just amazing, right? 

Kaitlin: It really is, there's always more learning to be done and people are sort of continuing to push that science and learning forward.

There is so much that is not known about women, about our anatomy, about our breast milk and breastfeeding. There's so much, there's sort of like innate knowledge that we have, but it's very cool to, to learn the facts that support that experience. So cool. 

Be Her Village

Lisa: So you told us sort of the short explanation of Be Her Village, but would you like to go take us into a little more detail?

Kaitlin: Absolutely, yes. So Be Her Village is essentially a gift registry where parents can, instead of getting overloaded with things for their babies and then finding themselves as I did, sort of unsupported and not sure which way is up and not having the care that they need as they take care of their little ones.

You can line up support for yourself and connect with local birth workers and have your friends and family gift you, your doula or your lactation visit, or your postpartum doula or pelvic floor visit, or Lisa's childbirth education class or any of the things that we need for us as we're having our baby.

And it really, it was born out of, again, like having this incredibly wonderful experience with doulas and becoming a doula and seeing how impactful that care is and then realizing, oh, a lot of people can't access, like most people can't access this care. And then you have this two-tiered system where some people are able to have a good experience and are centered and advocating for themselves.

And then you have, and have that layer of protection that doulas provide. And it's not just about experiences, right? Like we know that doulas increase satisfaction, they increase Apgar scores of our babies, they decrease C-sections. They decrease pushing time, they decrease laboring time. There's just, there's so many actual benefits that have been observed, and it should be something that's accessible to everyone.

And at the exact same time, we have 12 billion dollars a year spent on baby gifts. 12 billion dollars a year are spent on gifts for the baby. Not baby products, but gifts for the baby bought by somebody that's not the baby's parents. And I just thought, what if we created a tool that empowers communities to fund their mothers and fund them through their baby shower?

What if we use that baby shower as an existing container and a familiar container to fund support? What if we reimagine what that looks like? And it's been really wonderful. We have over 1500 birth workers signed up on our platform and they're getting found by all the parents that come and shop for their care.

So, if you're a birth worker and you're listening to this, please go to Be Her Village. Add your services. It's totally free. We also, for parents, you can come and you can find in your local area classes and doulas and people to connect with for support or. You can add your existing support team and have your friends and family gift you money to pay for it.

We've had over $160,000 gifted on our platform. much of that in the past six months or so. We've really, we've been working on this for a while, but there's some really beautiful momentum happening where people are finding out about us. People are wanting something different. the Gen Z moms, the ones who are giving birth now, are registering for less products.

And when they are registering for products, they're registering for self-care, right? Like tools, postpartum recovery products for themselves. There's an absolute shift that's happening, and the traditional baby registries aren't keeping up. They keep trying to sell us things for our babies.

And so with Be Her Village, it's a totally grassroots movement. I'm a doula and we have doulas and moms on our team who are just working to make this shift happen. So I'd love to invite anybody who's listening to go to our website, behervillage.com. Follow us on Instagram. I'm in the stories often, I'm answering messages.

But we're here to change that conversation about access to care and we're here to change that conversation about how we celebrate moms and how we spend money on the moms in our lives. 

Lisa: And is Be Her Village currently just in the New York City area?

Kaitlin: Yeah, so Be Her Village is national. Actually, we had planned to do a real focus and there's absolutely tons of providers on Long Island and New York City because this is where I am. Right. But what happened, it was really organic. We don't pay for marketing. We don't, we're just, we're getting on podcasts. Thank you Lisa. We're talking to doulas.

Doulas are talking to their clients. Clients are talking to their friends. It's just been something people are excited about. And so we suddenly started to see people all across the country. We have people in all 50 states, signed up, both practitioners, birth workers, and registrants. And we also, we were on NPR a couple years ago and we have people in Australia and Europe and all these Canada.

It's kind of interesting to see. It's so cool and it's like, wow, this really is a universal problem that we're solving that mothers are not being cared for and they're getting the wrong thing as their baby shower gift. and it's something that is so wild to see how like the heart of New York City is excited about and like rural places in the middle of the country are also really excited about it.

People from all walks of life are coming to our platform and seeing that there's something for them there because there's so many of us that see new moms and know that they deserve better and we don't know how to help them. And I think Be Her Village is such a cool way to be like, oh, here's how we can do it cuz we're already gonna buy you a $50, a hundred dollar baby shower gift.

How cool would it be to actually give you something that will be impactful? So yeah, it's been incredible to grow it and to learn and to talk to people all over the place who are excited about making this shift. 

Lisa: Yeah. And one thing that popped into my head as you were sharing that, I think maybe you said the word rural. I was thinking about birth deserts and just wondering,

 Have there been any discussions yet about how can we reach people in the birth deserts to help them understand they could have a virtual doula if they don't have a real live doula to be there for in-person support? Has that been a conversation? That might be down the road? I don't know.

Kaitlin: It's such a good question. So this is something we, tried to figure out for a long time, and pretty recently we've come up with a solution, so on Be Her Village we have a shopping guide, so we're essentially trying to like, create the Amazon for birth and postpartum care so that you can for your doula and your lactation care, just like you would shop for your stroller and your car seat.

So it's something that we're in the process of building, but you can go to our shopping guide and if you don't have any practitioners in your local area, we have all kinds of virtual services. So you can take classes, you can have virtual doulas. There's more support virtually than there ever has been.

And that's one of the positive sides of Covid. And I think that might be a big reason why we grew so quickly and so widely in our geographic reach because it was easy for people to access care, regardless of whether we had somebody in their local area. So thank you for bringing that up cuz that is an important point, that you don't need to live in a metropolitan area with all these doulas and all these care providers. You can get care no matter where you are. 

Lisa: Yeah. It's something I've been pondering a little bit more because whenever I talk about different reasons that we're ranking at the bottom of the developed nations and our outcomes for birthing people, I, I tend to focus on what I know and what I live and the urban area that I work in and I don't acknowledge enough that we do have birth deserts, they call them. In our country where there's just not enough medical care accessible, there's not enough support accessible. And so I'm really just trying to brainstorm and like you were just saying that thankful that a silver lining of covid has been that there are so many more virtual, we've all figured out we, because we had to, how do we do this virtually, at least some of, as many of the services as we can?

How can we do some of that virtually? And, it's never gonna be, in terms of doula support, that's never gonna be fully the same as someone who's there to like, massage you and do counter pressure techniques and all that. But there's still huge value in virtual support and everyone deserves support.

So year, I'm yes. So happy to hear that there's a whole virtual area.

Kaitlin: Yeah. Yeah. You can shop by type of support. You can shop by virtual or in person, or both. We're making it easier every day to try and find that care, because that's a big part of it, like, Finding your doula and finding your lactation care and finding a pelvic floor therapist is hard.

And it's, I think for me, it's like, all right, well I've been in this maternal healthcare industry for 10 years. Like I know where to go. But you have to put yourself in the position of a brand new mom. And if you try to put together a support team for yourself for birth and postpartum, without knowing a doula and knowing who to ask, it's actually really difficult.

And that's the problem Be Her Village eventually wants to solve. We want moms across the country and across the world to be able to login and see everybody that exists. And that's why we made it free for birth workers to add their support. Because the most important thing is that we get people connected to care and have the funds to pay for them, which is one of those elephant in the room things.

It's like everyone talks about. You need care. You need care. You doulas, you need this, you need that. And it's like, okay, cool. So how do I pay for it? It's like crickets. Nobody's really talking about how to pay for it. There's plenty of wonderful groups doing work in getting insurance coverage and Medicaid coverage, but That's not helping people right now. That's not helping people in the immediate 

Lisa: And who knows how long that could take. Yeah. 

Kaitlin: Exactly. And how spotty the coverage can be like from state to state and this, that's just the state of our country right now. It's You cross an invisible border and you're healthcare access, your reproductive rights.

It's really different depending on what locale you're in. And so we really envision Be Her Village as this lever, this tool that you can just say, Hey, communities care about moms. And that in our hyper divided country and world right now, it is actually incredibly surprising to me and refreshing to see how we've been embraced by all different people that are just, would never be in the same room or on the same side politically otherwise.

Lisa: They're all excited about us. And it's because we're saying, we're kind of getting into this like basic thing of just, we all deserve support and we can disagree on everything else, but we can all agree on that . Yeah. Thank you so much Kaitlin. So everybody go give Be Her Village a follow on social and or go over to behervillage.com and explore that wonderful way to the support that need and you deserve. And Kaitlin, thanks so much for taking the time to share. You are such a great storyteller, so thank you for sharing your gift of storytelling and just really so many compelling points. It's just really beautiful to the arc of journey through those three birth experiences and the different choices that you made and coming into your own power and your own voice and making those informed choices just, ah, all, so beautiful and exciting.

Kaitlin: Thank you so much, Lisa. I'm really grateful to you. I'm just, I'm so happy we're connected and I'm so happy that I had this chance to tell my story. It's healing each and every time that I get to tell it, so really for you and thank you for your support, for Be Her village and what we're building and for being such a cheerleader. It really, it's how we've built it and gotten it to this point, so I'm really grateful for you.