58. [BIRTH STORY] WITH NIKKI - TWO FREE BIRTHS AND ONE EARLY BIRTH - EMBRACE YOUR POWER THROUGH CONFRONTING FEARS & TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR CHOICES

Nikki is an incredible woman and mother. Her story hits every single aspect of embodying your power as a woman. I am still reveling that she was able to tell her tale and share nugget after nugget of deep wisdom while holding her sweet baby girl the entire time.

You will hear her first born, Lachlann’s, free birth that happened in 2022. She labored for 12 hours during the day in a cabin home in the mountains of Montana. She beautifully describes the birth of The Mother as she moved through transition, the point where every mother feels she can not go on. But then she does. And a new version of her emerges from the ashes.

Nikki shares about a sovereign early birth that she chose to have at home. She felt isolated and like there were not enough of these stories shared to help her move through it. I am grateful for her story medicine as so many women (1 in 4) will experience early loss.

Her last pregnancy ended with the free birth of her daughter, Thalia. A night time, non-linear, 5.5 hour journey by the Ocean in the bedroom of their Maine rental just a few months ago. 

All birth will bring up fear. It is normal and an important part of the process. Free birth is an entirely different landscape. The Mother owns full responsibility for the outcome of her choices. Nikki flawlessly describes her grappling experience of moving through the fears only to emerge more deeply rooted in her power as a woman.

@heynikkijae

Check out her substack

https://open.substack.com/pub/nikkijae

Soul Evolution: Embodied Women’s Wisdom, Birth Stories & More streaming now on iTunes & Spotify 🎧 🎙️ 

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Music The Ancients (feat. Loga Ramin Torkian) by Azam Ali

Disclaimer:

The information and resources provided by me are not intended to constitute or replace medical or midwifery advice or a Mother’s intuition. Instead, all information provided is intended for education purposes only. My advice is not to be seen as medical diagnosis or to treat any medical illness or condition of Mother or baby/fetus.

The following is AI generated and will have errors

Nikki: So when the urge to push came,

we sort of went there for four hours and for a lot of the pushing, it just felt like there was no break anymore. It was just like contraction after contraction after contraction and, and I hit my point and I was like, I honestly don't think I can do this,

you know, And I was, had my eyes closed and this is sort of the one time that I was in thought and I was like, I don't know if I can do this.

And I understand why people get the epidural. It's the thought that went through my mind.

And my husband was just there so beautifully holding space for me. He didn't say anything. And,

and that moment, that was really when the maiden died and the mother was born because the mother came in and you know, God and my ancestors and my grandmother and, and everyone was there and it's like, I have to get myself through this.

Like, I can't look to my husband to save me. I can't. No one's going to save me. No one's going to help me have my baby. I have to do this.

And I switched my sort of helpless plea into I'm opening, I can do this, you know, and just praying to God, like, help me, God, give me strength.

Emily: Welcome to Soul Evolution. My name is Emily, also known as the birth advocate. I walk alongside women choosing a deeply spiritual, instinctual, physiological mother led conception, pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum experience.

I am a retired nurse, a health coach, a women's circle and ceremony facilitator, and the host of this podcast.

Here we dive deep to reclaim our rites of passage with a big dose of birth story medicine, intentionally curious conversations with embodied wisdom keepers and a sprinkle of polarity as we will hold space for our men from time to time too.

I hope you find nourishment through your soul. Here I alone schedule, record, edit and produce this beautiful labor of love. If you're enjoying the content, please let me know by rating and reviewing or consider a donation to help cover the cost of production.

Better yet, you can purchase my amazing comprehensive course. So you want a home Birth? Your complete guide to an empowering physiological birth. You will walk away feeling ready, body, mind and soul, knowing that everything you need to birth your baby already exists within you.

Your questions will be answered, guaranteed. I walk you through, step by step, exactly how to prepare yourself, your partner and your home for the most incredible experience you get to have in this lifetime.

Birth is a sacred rite of passage worthy of honoring. Do not leave it up to chance and Stay tuned after the show to learn all about my Beyond Adola offerings, both in person and virtually worldwide.

You can find me on Instagram at Birth Advocate and my website, Birth Advocate Me.

Everything will be linked in the show notes. Now let's drop in to today's episode.

Emily: Welcome, Nikki, to the podcast. Oh, thank you so much for saying yes to coming on and telling your pretty powerful birth stories. I haven't heard this last one in detail, or really the first one in detail.

You told me a little bit, but you recently moved to the main and we got connected because we are very aligned on a lot of our values.

And I met you when you were about to give birth to your second babe.

Nikki: I'm really.

Emily: I'm really pumped to hear it all. So welcome to the podcast and please, if you would, just introduce yourself in whatever way feels good.

Nikki: Thanks so much.

I'm so happy to be sharing this time with you. Emily,

introducing myself, I'm Nikki and,

you know, I am the mother of two babies. My son, Lachlan Bowie Sage, he is two and almost two and a half. And my daughter, Talia Rowan Prayer, and she is four months old.

And how do I introduce myself? Other than that, that's just the most pertinent way to sort of relate to the world right now is as a mother.

But I suppose.

Yeah. Other iterations of me include serving as a human design reader. In another lifetime, I was a journalist and a foreign correspondent.

I've traveled a lot. I've lived in many, many places.

I suppose I play life by my own rules and.

Yeah. Just in pursuit of being.

Continuing to settle into being and connect to spirit and life and simplicity and joy and.

Yeah. Finding miracles in the mundanities of being a human.

Emily: Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, it's. It's so much because it's so mundane and so, like, miraculous all at the same time. We live in this, like, complete paradox, don't we?

We do, yeah. Absolutely.

So where do you want to start the story?

You know, first time falling pregnant. I don't know, conscious conception? Meeting your husband? You can start wherever feels right and good to you.

Nikki: Gosh, yeah.

Well, my husband and I, we met in Mexico in January 2021,

and we were together for one year before I found out I was pregnant. And I was absolutely desiring children. And I suppose you could say calling in motherhood. And that was something that wasn't always sort of on the cards for me.

I think deep down in my soul it was. But having grown up in,

you know, like, so many people, a super Dysfunctional family. I just wrote off having children for a really long time. And yeah, I didn't have a period for, I think close to seven years.

So I wasn't even sure if I'd be able to have kids.

Yeah, before I met my husband, I was in a relationship for almost five years and I felt really clear that this person wasn't going to be the father of my babies and that it just felt really unaligned.

So the ending of that relationship coincided with Miss Saturn return and just a lot of things began to shift.

And yeah, you know, I'd gone on to big healing journeys and without realizing it, the year before I fell pregnant was doing just a lot of womb work.

And yeah, I didn't have, as I said, a period. And then when I met my husband,

within two days of meeting him, I got my first bleed.

Emily: Wow.

Nikki: At a regular bleed since. And then we fell pregnant with my son Lachlan.

But that was not,

you know, I wrote a piece on Substack a little while back, but I said, you know, we consciously conceived, but we didn't have a conscious conception.

And what I mean by that is my husband and I are,

to the best of our capacity, pretty conscious people. And we're pretty intentional with how we live our lives and treat our bodies. And we knew that if we were to fall pregnant that that would be the journey that we would go on.

And I'm not someone to make plans. I'm not someone to.

Yeah, that just isn't really my style and it doesn't work for me. It's so wonderful when it works for other people. And I sometimes envy that capacity to be really.

What do I want to say?

Emily: Well, remind me what your human design is.

Nikki: I'm a 24 emotional manifester. And in terms of specificity around manifestation, I'm non specific. So for me, I just have a feeling as to what's coming and I can sense it and.

And you know, then my job is to just really surrender to that. So,

yeah.

So anyway,

my son came in in January 2022.

You're just awake and smudging my little smoochie.

So, yeah, and I was in Mexico and he was. I was in Mexico because I was waiting to get a visa to be in the United States.

As you can probably tell from my accent, I'm Australian and I.

He was in Texas, Austin, Texas. And we had been.

The majority of our relationship has been driving around Mexico. This was sort of during the COVID era,

I don't know, living like outlaws essentially in Borders,

Yeah, just doing whatever we needed to do to get where we needed to go in in the hopes of finding community and people who,

you know, we definitely felt like outcasts during that time because the mainstream sort of viewpoint was to wear masks and inject yourself with God knows what. And that wasn't really something that God knows what we're not interested in.

And yeah, yeah. So I found out I was pregnant. And I knew it. I'd had this dream,

you know, I'm pretty like familiar with my body and I would feel my cervix and I knew that my bleed wasn't coming and I wrote a poem about it and describing my cervix being soft like a cloud,

you know. And I'd had a dream the night before I decided to take a pregnancy test of my womb. And it was sort of in these watercolors and this sort of release and I thought, oh, maybe my bleed is going to come.

But it was actually a goodbye for now message from my womb, you know, like my bleed is going away for a little while. And the next morning I was very calm and I had a sense that something big was going to happen to me in 2022.

And I could never have imagined that it would be this. But yeah, I was in Mexico on my own at the time and I just got up at the crack of dawn and found a 24 hour pharmacy and you know, my Spanish is terrible and I'm doing charades to sort of ask for a pregnancy test and eventually we figure that out and I go home and,

and pee on the stick and,

and then it says Esperanza. And I was like, I had to Google Translate what obviously means you're pregnant.

So that's how I found out I was pregnant.

And yeah, God, I just, and then I just broke into, I just broke down and cried.

It felt so huge. It just felt so, so huge. And for whatever reason, I found myself looking at birth videos within that sort of following hours of confirming this pregnancy and just bawling my eyes out and just like, oh my God, I'm going to do that.

You know, I'm this, what an initiation to give birth. And yeah, in that moment and I, I,

I haven't got a background in birth work. I hadn't really contemplated it, to be honest.

I knew that I would have a baby at home, but I just assumed, well, maybe I'd have a midwife and my friend's a photographer, maybe they would come and take some photos and you know, maybe I'd have some like Friends.

I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking, but I had this whole. Like, my mind was getting involved, right, and starting to create a picture of what birth might look like.

Emily: And.

Nikki: And then I was like, gosh, you know, and then what do you. Do you. Do I have to take supplements? Like, do I. What do I deal with all of this information?

And I just sort of sat with all the confusion. And then it occurred to me that I've used my human design for the last. I think at this point, it was seven years to navigate my life, honoring my strategy and authority.

And as a manifesto, you don't take action unless there's the urge to. I was like, why would this be any different? So I'll just trust the urge. If there's an urge to get prenatals or something, I'll do that.

If there's an urge to reach out to a midwife, I'll do that. If there's. Whatever the urge is, I'll honor that. But there was never an urge to take prenatals, and there was never an urge to get a midwife.

And,

you know, I think I was probably 20 weeks pregnant, and it just dawned on me. I had this vision of. Of I'll be doing this alone.

And there was no urge to see an OB or get an ultrasound, you know, so I hadn't actually heard of free birthing at that point.

But once I realized that the journey for me was to do this on my own, I've just began to look into it a little bit. And,

yeah, I started looking into some resources.

Emily: Can I ask a little bit more about that?

I. I love. I love this story so much already. And just, you know, you've been living for seven years. Like, we birth how we live. It makes perfect sense that you would make this decision.

And also,

we live in a world where that is, like,

super taboo. And, like, you know, 0.25% of women, they say birth unassisted. That's such a tiny little number. I'd like to hear a little bit more about this experience of just like, oh, I didn't feel like getting a midwife, so I didn't.

I've never given birth before, but I'm gonna do it by myself, and that feels fine. Like, I want to just hear a little more about what that process was like.

Nikki: Yeah. You know,

I.

One of the gifts of honoring my human design is that it guided me to really live from the wisdom of my body and to deeply, deeply inhabit this vehicle of mine and to trust it implicitly.

So I.

And I will say I haven't had a relationship to allopathic medicine for God, probably 10 years,

maybe more, before I had found out I was pregnant with my first. And so I knew that that wasn't going to be in the equation for me because it doesn't really align with my values.

And I'm not sweeping it out. You know, I'm not saying all doctors are bad. I think there are some people who are absolutely in integrity. I think the system is really corrupted, and I've felt that way for a really long time.

So, you know, when Covid came along,

like, it just. That whole thing felt really out of integrity for me. It just didn't make any sense to me. I'm also a former news journalist, so I'm also very acutely aware of the way media spins information to create, you know,

fear.

Emily: Yeah.

Nikki: Within the psyches of the population. So,

yeah, I just.

I. I feel a little silly saying this, so. I just. I really trust my body. I really trust my body. And it hasn't,

like, fear came up in both pregnancies, of course, because that's what happens when you're pregnant. It's such a porous time, and it's an opportunity to flush out anything that doesn't serve you or this child that's coming through you.

So it is the responsibility of all mothers to do that work while they're pregnant.

And I consider myself someone who's extremely responsible for my life and my choices.

And I think in a lot of ways, I've very much been that way for a lot of my life. So,

Yeah, I.

I'm not sure what else to say other than I just trusted my body. I would look at nature. Nature is such a teacher to me. I'm like, elephants, cats, dogs, lions, kangaroos.

Like, every single creature on the planet can give birth without any intervention, without a vet or a doctor or any sort of, you know, steward coming along and helping to, like, midwife the baby.

It just happens.

And why would I be any different? It doesn't make sense to me. I'm an expression of nature as much as the trees outside, as much as the ocean, as much as the lions having their.

Their babies, their cubs, like.

Emily: Yeah.

Nikki: So to me, it just didn't make sense. I also had a very strong relationship to my grandmother going up, growing up, and she.

She was a Polish woman who was basically taken by Nazi soldiers when she was about 14 years old. And she was in a.

Yeah. She ended up in a migrant camp in Germany. And I think she was 21 when she had her first child, and that was in a field somewhere on her own.

Emily: Oh, wow.

Nikki: And I think you told me this story.

Emily: I think you told me. But please say more because.

Nikki: Well, I don't know much more other than that's how she had her first child. And I can just.

Yeah, she said she passed out and she had her baby and someone found her, I believe,

with this newborn.

And she's had six kids and my mum was the youngest and my grandmother raised me, essentially. My mom was a single mom and worked all the time, and I just heard her voice,

hey, Nikki, it's really not a big deal. Like, women have been having babies forever, you know, you'll be fine. Just let it happen.

So I just really felt her camaraderie from the other side, and I can trust that.

Emily: That now also, like the fact that birth is like an altered state. Did you have experience with being in altered states or just. Oh, gosh, yeah.

Nikki: Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So I was, I guess, you know, I don't know how far along I was theoretically or technically, rather, but Theoretically, I was 40 weeks and three days according to the regular method of calculating your due date when I had my side.

Oh, God, it's exciting when you don't know what's happening.

I think. I think it's so exciting. But,

yeah, it was a very kind of, I guess you could say, textbook entry into labor for him.

It was about 7am in the morning and I heard this clicking sound, which I now realize was my waters releasing.

And it was very gentle. You know, I went to the toilet and I was also, like, I couldn't even hold my pee at this point. You know, I was just.

We were so low in the pelvis and just so ready to go that every cough or sneeze, I'd. I'd pee myself. So I had these cloth diapers of his, like, in my undies, just soaking it all up.

And I went to the loo and there was some fluid and I was like, am I just involuntarily peeing myself at this point? Like, what's happening? Because it was just a little bit.

And. And then I saw this tiny speck of blood on. On this cloth diaper that was the shape of a heart, actually.

And.

Yeah. And I still didn't know if what was happening. And I went back to bed and. And told my husband, and he knew. He knew that labor was imminent. And not long after that, I had the first contraction.

I was like, oh, that was a different sensation to What I've been having.

Yeah. And then the morning progressed and we at the time were doing these Joe Dispenza meditations that lasted about 45 minutes every morning. And, um,

yeah, these contractions were starting to,

I guess,

increase in their intensity and their closeness. And I would say,

I would say at that point I'd really like started to go into the portal or entered an altered state.

I couldn't make it through the meditation.

And I walked into the bathroom and started to run myself a bath. And my husband came in. He's like, let me do that for you. And that was really like, yeah, the entry point, I would say, into an altered state.

And for me, that labor, I just felt so present with the experience and with the sensation and so surrendered.

I want to say it was. It felt pretty easy mentally to, to ride the waves. You know, I felt the wave, the waves coming, and it felt like this serpentine energy wrapping around my pelvis and my belly and sort of like that contraction sensation of, of a pushing down or a cork screwing down.

And,

and it's incredible because I could feel, you know, before it hit my body, I felt the wave, like in the ethers. Like I was like, oh, it's coming, you know, it's coming.

Okay. And now it's like engulfing me and I'm just gonna ride it. And then it would pass and then I would just deeply love the rest and enjoy into that sort of rest in between.

And so my eyes were closed the whole time I was vocalizing. I had no idea how dilated I was. I wasn't looking at the clock and I just. Yeah, we had a bed in the living room because we had a two story home.

And we sort of set that up for my postpartum so I wouldn't have to walk up the stairs, but I would just move between the bed and the bath.

And this labor was 12 hours between the time I went into when I heard that click and when my son emerged.

And it just, it continued to increase in its intensity and you know, my.

Oh gosh,

like my legs would shake ferociously and.

Yeah, what a. What a thing. It's almost. How do you put words to something?

Emily: I know.

Nikki: Awe inspiring and, and shocking. But I just remember feeling.

I guess I hit transition. Not that I knew that that's what was happening at the time. And I'd been pushing for four hours. So when the urge to push came,

we sort of went there for four hours. And for a lot of the pushing, it just felt like there was no break. Anymore. It was just like contraction after contraction after contraction.

And I hit my point and I was like, I honestly don't think I can do this. And I was. Had my eyes closed and this is sort of the one time that I was in thought and I was like, I don't know if I can do this.

And I understand why people get the epidural is the thought that went through my mind.

And my husband was just there so beautifully holding space for me. He didn't say anything. And that moment, that was really when the maiden died and the mother was born because the mother came in and you know, God and my ancestors and my grandmother and everyone was there.

And it's like, I have to get myself through this. Like, I can't look to my husband to save me. I can't. No one's going to save me. No one's going to help me have my baby.

I have to do this.

And I switched my sort of helpless plea into I'm opening, I can do this, you know, and just praying to God, like, help me, God, give me strength, you know.

And so I was chanting and I'm in the bath at this point and I wanted to get out of the bath. I was ready to get out of the bath and I.

I couldn't get very far. I sort of buckled over in the living room over this lazy boy chair that we had and our Doberman was lying in it. I had a huge contraction, was sort of like roaring in her face.

And.

And then I just get my husband to bring the yoga ball over and I lean over that. So I'm on all fours leaning over the yoga ball and.

Yeah, and let's see,

I suppose he began to crown and my husband was like, I can see the head. And it was shocking. I almost couldn't believe it. I couldn't tell how long I had been in labor.

Emily: I know exactly what you mean.

Nikki: It felt like it hadn't been very long. And our friend who lived down the road from us, her labor was about 50 hours or something like this.

So I was going into this, you know, and so many people say be prepared for a three day labor. Like if you're going to do this to sort of mentally prepare yourself.

So I. Part of me saying I don't think I can do this was thinking that I hadn't been doing this for very long at all. And if I have to do this for three days, I don't think I can do this.

So I feel blessed that it wasn't such a long journey for me. But,

yeah, he saw the head. And I think what must have happened.

Not that we were tracking anything, but my husband was definitely taking a look when I was pushing to just see what was happening with my yoni. And I think I must have just gone from, like, 0 to 10 dilating in a really short space of time,

because he said that it was, like, what he saw was, say, the size of a quarter and then the size of, like, a tennis ball, and then the size of an orange,

and then the head began to come out. So it seemed to just happen really quickly over the course of a few pushes.

And I guess I share that because I think there's a lot of. For anybody listening,

concern that people aren't progressing or that you. You're supposed to be however far dilated before you start pushing, or there's all these rules for whatever those rules are. I just.

You can go from 0 to 10 in a very short period of time, and everything can be going beautifully and perfectly. It doesn't mean anything is wrong.

Emily: That's the difference with physiological birth versus a medicalized experience where, you know, there may be intervention and your physiology is not intact. But when you are free to move as you like, when you are sounding, when you are liberated and your baby is navigating that pelvis.

And I love how you said, like, you felt like the corkscrew, like the twisting. Babies are born in a spiral. It is the most gorgeous and beautiful thing ever. And,

yeah, when. When the body has an urge to push,

it's there for a reason. You don't need to know that you're fully dilated before you lean into that sensation.

You know that that was one thing that happened in my labor because I was feeling myself, and I felt this little lip of tissue, and I could tell it was like my cervix.

And I mentioned it to the midwife. She had just arrived, and she was like, you don't want to push on that. And I actually got in my head for the first time, like, trying to hold off on these crazy tsunami waves.

There is no way. You cannot push when your body is pushing. Like, lean in. Just let it go. Yeah. So,

yeah. Yeah. Beautiful words of wisdom. Thank you.

Nikki: Yeah, totally. And I'm sorry, if you can see my.

Emily: No, I can't. Up a little bit.

Nikki: Yeah. And then I feel like I just had this huge,

big double push. It just. That's how it felt. And his head emerged. And the sweet relief.

Oh, my God, it felt so good. In this instance, there was definitely that ring of fire sensation. And I feel like that was the most uncomfortable part for me was.

Was his head emerging.

And then I just collapsed on this yoga ball and was just so thrilled that his head had emerged. And again, in an altered state,

I felt my son moving in this corkscrew fashion while I was resting. And I wasn't going to push unless there was a contraction and urge to push. So I got to rest for a moment.

And again, my husband didn't say anything, but after the fact, shared with me that he was like,

babe, like, we haven't finished yet.

What are you doing? So I must have gotten. I don't know how long the rest was, but it was significant considering I'd just been having wave after wave after wave after wave without any relief.

And in my state, I thought my husband was, like, moving him and was somehow, like, moving his head or moving his body.

And then the contraction came and the push came and he just flung out. I think it's like the fetal ejection reflex. He just came straight out. And then my husband caught him, and then sort of like I'm on all fours and put him through my legs to me.

And.

Yeah. And it was just such a God. Extraordinary moment. I mean,

I think I saw you post this on Instagram. It was education around that women need time to sort of, like, integrate after giving birth, like,

to immediately hold your baby and maybe expect, like, some huge emotional reaction or. And perhaps that happens for some women, but sometimes it's just, I need a moment. Like, I've just been in this portal.

I'm sort of, like, coming back in and landing.

Emily: Yeah.

Nikki: And I need a moment. You know, I.

After having her, too, that was really pronounced again. So I'm grateful for you sharing that, because that was definitely true for my experience. Just that I needed some time. And my husband didn't know this at the time for both of my birds, if we have another.

If he's holding the baby, I think I'd just like him to sort of just gather myself before I take my baby.

Emily: Yes. Yeah.

Nikki: His cord was short, so I felt pretty uncomfortable,

actually. Like, I could really feel the sort of tugging on the placenta. And then I'd say, within about half an hour,

I birthed the placenta, and it was intact and fabulous. And we burned the cord. We had a ceremony and we burned the cord. And after that came to an end, he cut the umbilical cord just to check for the arteries and to make sure there were three and I think the arteries.

Emily: Three arteries, one vein. Yes.

Nikki: Yeah. And,

yeah, everything Looked. Looked healthy and great. So,

yeah, he was concerned that there was a lot of blood, but I felt fine. And that was how my son came into the world.

Emily: Wow.

Nikki: Yeah, it was incredible. Really incredible.

Emily: Sounds that way. It sounds also like you guys did quite a bit of education and preparation to be. Or maybe your husband did, feeling somewhat the responsible party since you would be the one in the birth portal and he would have to make sure that everyone was okay.

Nikki: We did.

We.

He actually is a trained amt,

which is handy in that, you know,

bodily happenings don't concern him at all.

And he fully trusted the process. We did. God, what's the name of it?

Rebirth Society has, like a free birthing complete guide to free birth.

Emily: Yeah.

Nikki: So we signed up to that and I would say engaged in most of it. I don't think we even finished the whole thing. But what was most important for me in that course offering was to know what to look out for in a genuine emergency.

And so that felt really helpful. And then, as I said, I think the education around checking for the health of the placenta.

And I'll be honest, I don't even know why we do that. I don't like.

I'm sure there's a really good reason,

and this is probably just revealing my naivete around these things. But just as I don't think any other creature on the planet would know why we do any of the things that we do, we just do them and things either work out or things go awry.

And if they go awry, I think instinctually we know what the next step is for us to meet that challenge.

And that was something that came up a lot. You know, I had to set a lot of boundaries in my pregnancy with my husband's family. They,

I think, wanted to know what our backup plan was and just wanting to know what we were doing. And I just wasn't really interested in engaging with anyone that couldn't hold a high and positive vision for the experience that I was desiring to have.

So I kept that really sacred. I was really, really boundaried with my. My son when I was pregnant. And,

yeah,

I think I just went off on a little bit of a tangent there, but just say that I. I know, you know, in human design, I'm a. As a 24 person,

I'm not here to necessarily know all the details. Like, I don't need to understand how everything works. I just operate in a deep sense of trust and naturalness. And either it feels good to me or it doesn't.

Emily: Yeah, and that's hard for people to accept and understand unless they are also of that higher caliber. I would say. I would say higher caliber.

Yeah. It's important to have extremely large boundaries when necessary. As you also mentioned, we're very porous when we're pregnant. We're very porous in the birth portal. We're very porous in the postpartum.

It's. Right. It's a very porous time. And so, you know, strong boundaries.

Yeah.

Nikki: I don't think it really goes away.

Emily: No.

Nikki: So. Yeah. And then.

Well, yeah, it's just really interesting. It's. I didn't even know that it was the, what, 0.25% you were saying of people that have unassisted birds. I met this woman last year when I was in Asheville over the winter,

and she illuminated that statistic to me.

I thought it was way more painful.

Emily: Well, I did hear that Emily Saldea with free birth society is doing an actual study,

like, with a research institute. Like, they're doing, like, a real scientific study on free birth. But that, and when they say unassisted sometimes, that's also just the people that were on the way to the hospital but didn't make it in time.

So, like, roadside births and stuff have a very good way of gathering that data because most women who free birth, they're not, like, it's not reported, you know what I mean, in the terms of, like, for actual good data collection.

So we don't have a lot of information statistically on free birth at all.

No.

Nikki: It's such an interesting thing. I think having experienced it myself,

I mean, a. Makes the most sense to me. I can't imagine doing it any other way.

The intelligence of the body is just incredible.

Emily: Yeah.

Nikki: And,

yeah, I just, I, I, When I hear about some of these hospital birth experiences, I just,

I cringe because I just think these.

There's no trust in the process. There's no trust in birth. There's no trust in the recognition that every single journey is different. Yeah,

it's the feminine. It's, it's a, it's a beautiful example in our culture where both men and women struggle to trust the divine feminine. And, and the biggest aspect of that is stepping into the unknown, not knowing what the outcome is, and confronting death.

Emily: Yes.

Nikki: Yeah.

Emily: I mean, that's the big one, right? Because we have this wild belief in our culture that you can avoid death, that you can. That that death is something to be avoided, that it's a taboo topic.

Like, we don't talk about it. And like, the truth about birth is that we absolutely have to contemplate and face death as we are confronting birth. And it's really sad.

Like the number of women that,

you know, succumb to, that agree to, that are coerced into these traumatic birth experiences that take them out of their power for the tiny number of babies that it may actually save their lives.

It's. It's really sad. And that's why I highlight stories like yours, because we need to bring more of them to. To the women out there that are seeking an alternative way, you know, that are willing to confront the big stuff.

Nikki: I think so too. You know, in both my pregnancies, I.

It was a necessity to confront this fear of death, either my own or of my child.

And it's not because free birth is dangerous. It's because death is an inevitable part of life. Whether you're driving to the market and have an accident, whether you have an aneurysm while you're swimming, like, you just.

None of us ever know when our time's up. And that's the truth. We live with that truth. The uncertainty of death.

Emily: Right?

Nikki: Every single moment of every single day.

So birth doesn't, it doesn't enhance your closeness to death. Only in so much as the. The fine line between living and dying becomes very, very apparent when you're in that altered state as a woman birthing your child uninhibited naturally.

The. The preciousness and precariousness of. Of life and how it can all just go away in an instant. It's very, very. You can touch it.

And that too is the very thing that I think reminds women of their power and what they're made of.

We are the stuff of earthquakes, of volcanoes, of tsunamis.

The feminine is that powerful.

What do you think a contraction is? It's the exact same force and energy that all of those natural phenomenon,

what they're made out of. So we rob ourselves as women of the opportunity to know who we really are. If we can't confront the fear of something going wrong, if we can't take responsibility for the choices that we make.

Because if you choose to have a hospital birth, that's fine,

but that's not going to protect you from death.

Death happens in the hospital often, I would imagine. I mean, it's not. Nothing protects you when it's your time.

And again, that's not to say that some intervention isn't meaningful and necessary, but our. We definitely have an over reliance on being saved by the institution that we call medicine in Our culture these days, we are always.

I don't want to speak in absolutes. A lot of us are guilty of wanting someone else to come in and save us, and that just does not happen.

Emily: And you're talking about robbing a mother of the fullness of this rite of passage into motherhood. You know, I just, I love the way you explained your transition and the death of your maiden and the influx of your new mother self.

Like, it, it can feel like you're going to die when you're in that birth portal and you're pushed to your edge and you just don't think you can go anymore.

And it is like the most intense experience of your life and you're can't go any further. And then you do,

and then you're born anew and. And it's freaking hard. And I totally understand again, also why women. You know, it was the feminist movement that advocated for pain relief in hospitals.

Oh, wow. It was.

That's a big part of the. I mean, it's partially propaganda, but it's part of the reason why birth was moved to the hospital. The feminist movement really advocated pain relief in hospitals, which ended up in twilight sleep and all kinds of craziness.

But I mean, I get it, I get it. But also,

I think the more stories that we hear of natural birth, the more that we normalize it, the more that we see it, the more that we can get it reestablished within our lineages.

You know, like, you did it. So now your beautiful daughter is going to have this story,

this example to live by, and she gets to make her own choices, but at least she has an example, you know, to go by. It's a big deal. We're doing really big work,

really big work by choosing to bring our babies in of our own volition, in complete self responsibility,

you know, and it's not to say that it's not okay to ask for help and to lean on a wise woman. That's, that's not at all. I don't think what you're saying or what I'm saying, but it, there's a, there's a clear differentiation when you are not willing to step into your wholeness and you're completely handing over this amazing opportunity that you have to see where,

you know, your flesh ends and your soul begins and like the true, true moment of like falling over the edge, but yet, like continuing on.

It can also happen in the postpartum too. Like, there are plenty of women whose crazy rite of passage into motherhood. Maybe it wasn't in the birth. Maybe the birth ended up being a cascade of medical interventions.

And, you know, it was. She was completely steamrolled or something happened. And then it's in that postpartum period when she's consumed by the fire and she decides to take an alternative path and, like, truly trust herself and, you know, go forward in that way.

It can happen in all kinds of different ways. It doesn't have to be just in the birth. It's all a rite of passage. No matter what happens is the rite of passage.

We just get to decide what we're going to do with it.

Emily: Yeah.

Emily: I could go on forever. This is, like, my favorite topic to talk about.

Yes. So I will stop my beautiful tangent and we can dive into your. Your second birth story with this beautiful little bubba that has joined us for this podcast episode.

Nikki: Sweet girl. She.

What an interesting.

Yeah, it's so different, you know, every pregnancy. My two pregnancies felt similar, but different. The labors and birds were totally different.

I conceived Thalia.

So just for some timeline Context, January of 2024,

I lost a pregnancy.

And at 12 weeks.

I can share more about that if you want to.

Emily: I would love.

Nikki: If you've.

Emily: If you felt called to, I would love it.

Nikki: You know, I guess why I want to share is just. I feel like.

I suppose I feel like my experiences may be a little different to the experiences I often hear about.

I released the pregnancy at home. I did it. There was no intervention with that also when it was happening.

You know, again, it's just another rite of passage, I think, as a woman and as a mother, to maybe have that experience.

But I had some cramps one morning, early in the morning, and then I went to the bathroom and there was some blood, as though I just started my period.

And of course,

bleeding can be perfectly normal at any stage of pregnancy. So there was part of me that.

Well, I guess I was just stepping into the unknown. I didn't know what was happening yet. I was just aware that there was some blood and it wasn't especially heavy.

And it paused after maybe a day,

and then there was a day's break, and then it sort of came on again.

And then in the early hours of. It was the 11th of January, so it felt like a portal moment.

Yeah, I felt the sort of contraction sensations happening, and I knew that I was releasing the pregnancy.

And,

you know, I've. I definitely wanted to understand what was happening. And I had a hard time finding information or stories about pregnancy loss.

I think it really is a very taboo thing Maybe I just wasn't looking in the right places. But even on a lot of say, the free birthing like communities and birth communities, I find that, that, yeah, pregnancy loss or miscarriage, which I don't particularly like that word, but these are things that just aren't talked about as to what it's like,

what happens, what you can expect, how does it feel. And of course it can happen,

you know, in any range of weeks, you know, so it's. Yeah, I just, I suppose I felt a little alone in that process and in that journey.

But I ended up that evening I was,

yeah, having these contraction experiences and you know, it was like very severe cramping. It didn't feel as intense as the peak of labor when I've had both of my kids, but there was certainly an intensity to it.

And I went to go see my dog and I sort of squatted down and there was this huge release and gush and lots of blood came out. And I went to the toilet and I'm pretty sure that I passed little fetus in the toilet.

And again I had gone into an altered state and part of me in that moment thought I should scoop it out.

And then I was also just like still writhing with these sensations. So I flushed the toilet and I hopped into the bath and just continued to release tissue and blood.

And yeah, after a couple of hours, I guess that journey was complete. And yeah, I went back to bed and I was grateful that I'd had an acupuncture session booked the the following day and I had a moxa treatment and there was just a real like, yes, there was grief and sadness because there was a loss.

And the moment the pregnancy loss happened, there was this real sense of barrenness. Like I felt empty and it was so stark. That contrast of like one moment there's life inside of me and the next I'm just empty.

And I felt energetically this being that was going to be, you know, because at that point too I was like preparing to welcome in another child to our family. Like, you can't not, I think,

imagine what is going to happen when you get pregnant. You're imagining what will they look like and who is this little person growing inside of me. And yeah, there's this kind of mental preparation and emotional preparation to expand your family and it's just like all of a sudden it's just gone.

So I understand, understand why there's so much grief wrapped around it. But when I first began to bleed, I had this very clear message that like this is okay and Even as the pregnancy loss progressed was like, this is actually really normal and this is really natural, and this isn't bad,

and I haven't done anything wrong. And I think that's why I don't like the word miscarriage, because it implies that I've done something to, like, miscarry my child. And of course, one of my very good friends,

she happens to be a doctor, and she was. You know, I do reach out to her when I'm hitting moments of like, I can't find information that I might need and I'm processing something, and I'd love your guidance.

And she's phenomenal in that she always guides me back to myself and reminds me that I know all the answers that I need to know for myself. But she was just educating me around.

Life is so.

It's like throwing spaghetti at a wall. Like,

for.

For life to perfectly come into being really is a miracle. Like, everything needs to go just perfectly, just right. And sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes a gene is off or something's off and it's just not blooming in the way that it's meant to.

Just isn't all things in nature, if it's not quite right, it's sort of shrivels away or dies. And so I was in this acupuncture session, and I felt the spirit of this child just say, it's okay, Mama, I'm coming back.

It's just not time yet.

And, you know, I was just crying and releasing,

but it was so beautiful. Like, it was such a beautiful experience all at the same time. I just. Just.

Yeah, I just feel honored that I.

I got to have that, you know, just another experience of being a woman. Another experience of navigating my body's intelligence, Another experience of, you know, welcoming a little being and then releasing them for a time.

And I don't know if Thalia is that child. I don't know if it's the same spirit. Maybe time will tell.

But I got.

I had my period a month after I released the pregnancy.

And one of the most helpful pieces of information I came across was if you get your period, you can trust that the pregnancy loss has completed itself. Like, there's nothing more that needs to be done.

So presumably my body was healthy and I began to bleed. And of course, I had no sense of what my cycle would be like because I'd already been pregnant for the last three months.

And so, yeah, I didn't know, like, whether I was quite ovulating in terms of counting days. And so anyway, it probably was about day nine or day eight when we conceived,

and then the following month, you know, and I. I felt implantation with Talia, like,

probably six days after we conceived or four days or something like that. And.

And again, my husband was away when he was in Scotland. When I found out I was pregnant and I was in Asheville in North Carolina, he was on retreat.

And so I just knew it. And different to my son, you know, my husband and I weren't expecting that we would have our son, so it was a very different initiation into parenthood.

While I was calling in a child,

you know, we sort of. I don't know if I ever completed the whole thing on conscious conception, but just that he just came in, you know, and it's so much of his personality.

Like, he's just like, boom, like, there I am, I'm coming in, you know, like, this is what he's like. And.

Yeah, so our entry into parenthood was, like, quite a surprise and quite intense and a huge, steep learning curve and adjustment, I would say.

Whereas for Talia, we knew we wanted to have another child, and while we weren't planning it, we were just very open to whenever that baby wanted to come in, we were ready to welcome them.

So this was a really different experience because we were both just so thrilled when I fell pregnant again and again. I knew it before I took a pregnancy test. I think as someone who's really in tune with their body,

it felt really easy to know that it was happening.

I could feel the sensations and. Yeah,

so that was in. I found out, yeah, I guess early March, maybe like almost a year ago.

But I was pregnant with her.

Emily: So your son was a year and a half old or so.

Nikki: Mm. Yeah. What would he have been like?

Emily: He was born. You said end of October or beginning of April.

Nikki: Would have been a year and a half, so. Yeah, just about. Just about, yeah. And it was a wild thing to be pregnant with a toddler speak to.

Emily: That, because there's so many women who are in that right now are about to be.

Nikki: Oh, man. I just.

And I will say, my sweet son has just never been. I don't like just saying great or good or bad, but he's never been a great sleeper.

He's only slept through the night sort of like a handful of times. He's getting more towards that now, I would say. But after I've had my daughter, of course, it didn't happen before she was born,

so.

Yeah, so just that. Chronic sleep deprivation and then growing a baby and chasing after a Very active toddler. He's a very active little boy.

Is just a whole new level of exhaustion. I, like, I just take my hats off to mums and then I think about mums who have more kids than that and what that must be like.

I can't,

you know, imagine at this stage, but so different, you know, being pregnant with my son. I didn't have any kids yet, so I was still just so, like, I got to have my rituals and my journaling and it was just such a beautiful time and I got to notice every sensation and I got to be so present with the pregnancy.

And then being pregnant with a toddler, it's like, I don't remember really anything about my pregnancy.

Like, yeah, she kicked and I felt. I didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl for either of them. But,

yeah, I just. There would just be moments at night before I'd go to sleep after I got my kid down where I just sort of, like, connect and just be like, hi, like,

and I'm here.

But I just,

you know.

Yeah, just like, just so. Not so. Not as present with it. It's just so different and just the monotony of, like, I've got a son, I gotta get him fed and, like, this and that, and the dogs need, like, all the responsibilities of life.

Emily: Did that pregnancy feel like it went by a lot faster, too?

Nikki: I think so, yeah. Yeah, it did.

Emily: I have. I have a lot of mama friends on their second right now and they're like, I just felt like this pregnancy was just over like that. Like, it was just over like that.

They didn't have time to really think about it.

Nikki: Yeah, it did. It did go very quickly. It's. And it's. Yeah. I just feel like time does that when you have kids too. It just feels like it's flying by at this extraordinary rate.

But I would say this time with her, I. I wasn't. I was certainly porous, but I wasn't as boundaried and I was letting in information into my sphere that really didn't serve me and my consciousness while I was progressing through this second pregnancy.

And, like, what.

Really wanting to be present for a number of my friends who'd had babies while I was also pregnant,

who had a lot of birth trauma and.

Yeah, just undesirable birth experiences.

Yeah. Transfers to hospitals, emergency C sections,

just every.

Every story under the sun.

That was absolutely not what I wanted. I was just engaging with this and wanting to hold space for it while at the same time not quite realizing that it was actually beginning to erode my own deep knowing and trust in my body and my own process.

And we were living in Montana at the time, so I had my son in Montana.

I felt that he wanted to be born there. My husband and I certainly modern day vagabonds, I would say we don't necessarily have roots yet down while I do long for that.

We haven't found our. The land in this world yet that's really ours to steward and that speaks to us where we want to bring our kids up. I feel like it's coming this year for us.

But we were, I had just moved from Mexico and I was, we were trialing Austin, Texas and then my husband had just bought some land in Montana and I was like, let's go there to have our son.

And then with my daughter Talia,

we didn't want to be in Montana to have her. And part of that was because postpartum with my son was so challenging.

I was not supported.

Certainly as a first time mom, I had no idea what was meant by get support in postpartum. I didn't know what that meant other than preparing some food for myself.

But that was really hard on me. I had a really hard time and I definitely wanted to have all the support this time with her. And I had the hit to move to Maine and I just felt that she wanted to be born near the ocean.

And so we ended up renting a place by the ocean.

And yes, she was born in this home that we're renting for the time being.

So yeah, I guess I've followed. I've been clued in enough to them to hear that they've wanted to be born somewhere and then have gone there to have these babies.

But I'm sorry, I feel like I've just gone off on a whole other tangent.

Emily: No, I'm just keeping the timeline. So how pregnant were you when you moved to Maine then how far along.

Nikki: Thank you. It was September and she. We left Montana on the 10th of September.

Emily: Okay. Yeah. Because you were, you were getting real close to the end when I met you.

Nikki: Yeah, we got to Maine, our rental began on the 1st of October and it was a hustle to. And that's how I connected with you. It was a hustle to find people in community and oh my God, I'm just so grateful that I got connected to you through a mutual friend and everyone that you connected me with and that they then connected me with like just this incredible.

Emily: It is a web.

Nikki: Yes, web, yes, absolutely. People to serve as postpartum doulas and massage and bodywork and chiropractors and just, yeah, all the love and all the support and yeah.

Emily: Shout out to Shay with Sovereign Women's Care. Shout out to Jenna with Cocoon Made Meal Delivery Services. Who else did you work with?

Nikki: I worked with Tree of Life chiropractors.

Emily: So Vic and Connor.

Nikki: Absolutely. This beautiful woman, Shira, who I got connected to through Shay.

She's an extraordinary birth worker. She served as a postpartum doula.

And yeah, I just.

Amazing, amazing people and community and what a blessing. You know, I think when we follow our intuition and land in a place and then we're just held and loved so,

like, robustly from the moment we get there, I think is such a good indication that we're in the right place for us. And that was not my experience in Montana.

It felt really hard to really make friends and meet people and land in a sense of community. So I just feel so blessed that in such a short space of time I was able to hook all of that up.

And.

Yeah, and thank you to you. You know, we. We met and had a beautiful walk and I was in it at the time. I was really struggling with some big fears that were coming up for me around the positioning of my daughter.

And as much as I wanted to embrace the story that positioning doesn't matter,

I just really felt terrified that my baby was lying transverse and I wasn't.

And this is why it got to me so much, because I was porous and I wasn't boundaried in this pregnancy and I let a lot of stuff get into my psyche that really fueled this fear and I just really needed to sit with it and it felt really hard to tune in.

And I would say that's the. The other big difference between this pregnancy and my first pregnancy is my first pregnancy, I just felt so connected to my body and so just in touch with every sensation.

But after having had such difficult postpartum and then falling pregnant, losing a pregnancy, getting pregnant again,

just constantly being sleep deprived and running after all day long,

I'm not like, I'm not sitting down journaling. I'm not sitting like the. The space to really create silence and go inward and like clear the difference between what's mine and what's the world's.

And it was hard to hear myself like I lost who, like my access to really tuning in. And yeah, it's, it's. It's such a thing. And I know that so many mums are having that experience.

Emily: Yeah.

Nikki: And it's okay. It's totally okay. And. And.

But it is really, really hard,

so.

But I still found my way. I was just really committed to move through that fear and just come back into alignment with my values.

And I just ultimately landed it. If something undesirable is going to happen, if it were to happen, I'd still rather be in the comfort of my home with my husband then.

And this is my choice and my preference. I recognize it's not everybody's, but that's what would feel best to me.

And actually, in an Ina Mae Gaskin book that I read, that was one of the best bits of advice that came from. I think it was like, I forget the title, but the child the Guide to Childbirth, I think, by Ina Mae Gaskin.

And it's like, a woman should give birth wherever she feels safest.

And to me, I was like, well, home. Like, of course home is where I feel safest. I'm such a homebody.

So that's.

That felt good to just remember that that would be my choice no matter what.

And again, confronting death, again, confronting my fear of having to go to the hospital and be poked and prodded and having to confront.

Yeah, just the. The things that I wish not to happen because they were getting really big in my head and really loud in my head. And.

And then somehow I moved through it. Just. I went in. I just went into all of the terror that could have possibly been,

and I would breathe through it and I would just find love for what was there. And I would just kind of wrap.

Wrap that fear in love and just be with it and be with the intense discomfort of it. Because until I did that, I was trying to figure out how I could prevent what I didn't want to happen to happen, if that makes sense.

And I just needed to sit with it. I just really needed to really, really look at it square in the eyes and wrap it in love and it dissolves.

And it just felt.

I just felt like I had. I was coming back into trust and coming back into alignment with my process.

And I was doing moxa and I was trying some, like, spinning babies techniques. And, you know, I was talking to my baby in my belly and, you know, and I.

Here's the other thing, too. It's just like my mind catastrophizing things. I actually have no idea what the positioning of my baby was like. I don't know the difference from a head to a butt or an elbow to an ankle or a foot.

Like, I just don't know. And I know Some people, it's really obvious, but for me it was really challenging to know the positioning of my baby.

And I started working with a chiropractor just to support my, my pelvis and my body and my back. And Dr. Victoria, she palpates and I was like, can, can you just, just do it and just let me know.

This was after I moved through my fear, just for the record. But she was like, yeah, that feels like the head's down and this feels like this. And I was like, okay, cool.

And it definitely felt nice to hear that. But you know, she's very humble and in that self deprecating way that we often do, it's like, oh, but I'm not an expert and like, I don't, you know, just like take what I say with a grain of salt.

She was sort of giving me that.

But either way, I was just reminded that babies move and babies flip and who knows what's going to happen.

So this time with her, it was a short labor, about five and a half hours of active labor. But it was Monday morning and I woke up and I went to the toilet again.

And yeah, I suppose it was like the bloody show or my mucus plug had begun to release. And it's funny, you hear these things and in my mind a mucus plug, that sounds like a really big thing to release.

But it was just,

I would say, like more discharge and it had a pinky sort of streak through it. And yeah, it's just funny. It's funny when you hear all of these terminologies and then you have an experience and it's just not at all what you think.

But all of that day I went to the chiropractor in the morning and had an adjustment and then I took my son out for lunch and then we went to the co op and I was having irregular mild contractions, I would say, all day.

And I didn't really think much of it because I had been having a lot of sensation for about a month up until this point. And yeah, I was just like, okay, well I know things are definitely progressing and maybe within the week I'll have my baby.

But I got home that afternoon and yeah, at around,

I want to say, 5:00 or thereabouts, there was, I just, I began to notice that these contractions were becoming more regular and I was like, okay,

that's definitely not going away.

They're sort of, you know, becoming more regular. And by maybe 6 or 7 o'clock they were starting to increase in intensity and I was like, all right. I think I'm still not certain that I'm going to go into labor tonight.

We'll see. You know, that's a good mindset to have.

Yeah, well, I don't know, like. Cause you just don't know. Like, you could have these things and then it stops and then it goes away. Like, I just. You hear all of the different stories.

I definitely thought I had more time, but I will.

Emily: Well, do you remember what gestation you were? I think it's just good for people to hear that people don't go on their due date.

Nikki: Oh, I would. I would have. According to the traditional calculations, I would have been 37 weeks.

Emily: So that's quote unquote early.

Nikki: Right.

Emily: Was that concerning to you at all?

Nikki: No, because I knew that. I knew she was going to come early. I could feel that she was going to come early. I didn't think she was going to come in October.

I thought I might have had until early November. She was due mid November.

So, yeah, I thought I had a little bit more time, but I was.

By 6:00 in the evening, I sat down with my husband. I was like, okay, we really need to just get a little bit more prepared. We're not fully ready. Like, I think we just need to prioritize getting ready this week.

And I just went into a frenzy of like last minute nesting. And I'm like cleaning my bedroom meticulously and I just was getting like all the labels and food. And one of my very dear friends who lives down in Boston was saying, look, when you go into labor, let me know and I'll come up and I'll help with Locky,

no matter what time of day or night it is. And I was like, okay, great. That would feel really supportive.

And I was making these videos for her just to like show her where things were because she was going to take a couple of days off work to be with us, sort of immediately postpartum to help.

And yeah, so I was just in this nesting frenzy and like, in hindsight I'm like, oh, my God, of course it was happening, you know, but it's just hilarious.

The instinctual,

you know, happen. Like the way your body and mind and everything reacts instinctually. So I get into the shower and that was when I recall really starting to go into the portal and like starting to move into that altered state.

And there was this awareness that this is probably going to be like the last shower I maybe take. For a little while,

maybe it wasn't. But, you know, just thinking in that sort of mindset and I was starting to like really feel the intensity of these contractions and it's a little blurry at this point.

But I did have a birthing pool in my room and I wasn't ready. But I think my husband was maybe starting to get it set up at this point. And I still nurse my 2 year old and so I was nursing him to go to sleep while I'm moving through my gosh,

8:30 at night or maybe 9:30. It was, it was at this point because at 8:30 is when I messaged my friend and I was like, I think this is happening.

Like come and yeah,

he got to sleep and we all co sleep and the birth pool's like right next to the bed and I like go into it and I think just my vocalizations, you know, were disturbing him and he woke up and.

And at that point he was really kind of, I think concerned and a little bit frightened and I was. He was like, mama, mama booby,

you know, and just crying and I think it was really hard for him to sort of see me and in discomfort.

Emily: What was that like for you to have that, I want to say, interference with your state?

Nikki: You know, I just would. I just went in, I wasn't really paying attention. So it was actually a very funny thing because for me I felt like I was very focused and just in my process and in my world.

And then my husband, for him, like we'd lit candles and set the room and it was like beautiful and I had a sweet little playlist going and the light was low with all the salt lamps and so it felt really serene and to me I was just like in that bubble and.

But my poor husband is like managing our son who's for the first time ever seeing his mum in a state. And you know, I would always go to him whenever he would cry and it's the first time that I'm not going to him and so I wasn't thinking about him,

to be perfectly honest. I was just in my process and trusting that my husband would take care of it. So yeah, he came in and out of the room a couple of times because he wanted to see me.

But then when he saw me, he didn't want to see me anymore and he left. And yeah, he.

Oh gosh.

I was just. There was an awareness that he was upset in the background, but I was like in my journey, I just got walloped with really big intense contractions really quickly, you know, with my son there was this crescendo there Was this real, like, moving into it slowly, steadily.

It felt really sort of like rhythmic and linear,

but with my daughter, it was anything but.

And I.

My waters hadn't released yet.

And there's this. There's a little bit of comparison because it's like, okay, I've done this before. And I also need to release that this could be totally different.

And the thing that came up for me in this labor,

I was so tired.

I'd hardly slept the few nights before I went into labor.

And the story came up of,

I think I'm too tired to have a baby. Like, I don't think I can actually do this. This is my bedtime, you know?

And not knowing how long it would go for,

I was exhausted. I was totally exhausted, Emily. Like, I really didn't know that I had it in me.

And then this fear that.

This fear that I would have to transfer to the hospital to have my baby came up again.

Yeah. So I just. I had to go in and really wrestle that demon and catch it and catch this deeply unsupportive thought and call it out. And I did. And I was like, you are not welcome here.

Get out of here. This is not what we're doing.

And I didn't.

I was exhausted. That was true. And it was a story that I'd been telling the entire time since I'd had my son. It was just how tired I am. I'm so tired.

I'm so tired. I'm so tired.

To the point that it was interfering with my experience of mothering, and it was interfering in my experience of reality and to enjoy life. I just felt so.

Such a victim of my tiredness.

And so, yeah, I battled that demon while I was in labor with Talia.

Emily: Good for you. Wow. That's a big.

Nikki: Yeah, it was. It's a huge one. It felt really big. And I, I. I didn't know how I was going to get through it. So I just prayed. I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed, and I guess there's a potency when you're in the portal.

But I would have said to God,

I need rest, and I'm not pushing until the baby's ready to come out, because knowing how the energy exertion required to push with my son, and that was my reference point.

I was like, I definitely don't have that in me. Like, I'm just being totally honest with myself right now.

So I continued to pray, and I continued to surrender. And while I was in the pool, she moved a lot. I felt a Lot of movement. So I don't know, whatever position she was in,

she was doing somersaults either way.

And then, I don't know, the water got cooler, and I didn't. It didn't feel good anymore. And I just got on the bed. I made a pile of pillows on my bed like a mountain.

And I just sort of laid myself over these pillows,

and I got my rest. The contraction slowed down, and I'm not sure that they stopped, but I could sleep through them. I'm not sure if I slept. I don't know where I went, but there was a deep rest.

And I don't know how long it went for,

but I left and I had a break.

And then I came back, and I felt the urge to get off my bed and start pushing.

And I got down onto my yoga ball on the other side of the bed,

and I pushed, and it was a huge gush. And my water's released,

and then my husband is here, and this is a bit funny, but the birth pool was a little too close to, like, a floorboard heater,

and I think it was starting to melt.

So I'm like, in my world. And he's.

My friend had arrived at this point and had. My son was still crying, but they were outside looking at the stars.

And my husband's, like, troubleshooting this pool and getting buckets of water and taking it to the bathroom. And then he. I'm like, did you hear that? And he's like, yeah,

while he's barking. Water from this birth pool.

And then the second push came, and I think I said something like, I just really feel like I need to poop, you know? He was like, that's okay.

And I pushed again, and her head emerged just like that. And it really didn't hurt. It was so,

so different to my son. It just. She just. I just pushed, and she just came out.

And then the third portion, her body came out, and it was just three pushes. It was so simple.

And she was here. And I think I was just completely incredulous that,

yeah, there was this intense beginning. And then I got this big rest that I prayed for, and I got minimal pushes, which I prayed for, and then she was here.

And,

yeah, again, there was that moment. I was just sort of,

I think, wanting that integration, Just wanting a few moments to land after she had emerged. And my husband was like, here, take her.

We still didn't know whether it was a boy or a girl at that point, but I was just. I was so ecstatic when she landed in My arms. And we finally took a look and we're just over the moon.

That we had a little daughter and we had one of each. And it just felt like a miracle. Felt like such a miracle. And she was perfect and healthy and pink and covered in Vernix and crying and just amazing.

Just so healthy and so perfect and so beautiful.

And I just. Yeah, my body felt so incredible. Like,

no tearing, no pain. You know, after my son, because I'd pushed for so long, I really was. I couldn't walk very well.

Emily: So you. I didn't. I didn't ask that question during that birth story. But you were, like, physically pushing. Not just your womb pushing. You were actively pushing.

Nikki: Yeah, yeah. Four outs from the edge to push.

Emily: Yeah, yeah. So for people listening,

sometimes you do have to physically push,

but a lot of the times your body does the pushing, your womb does the pushing. And I think we have this idea because of Hollywood and, you know, the hold your breath and push,

that there's this big effort that's needed now. Sometimes it is. Sometimes there is effort needed. So I'm not saying you don't ever. It's not necessary. But it does exert so much energy.

So much energy gets burnt up if you are pushing.

I. I always recommend that women just wait for their body to push because the body is going to push eventually when it's ready. So that'll save you some energy. But.

Okay, good to clarify that part. Got it.

Nikki: Yeah, yeah, it's.

And to be clear, I did wait for the urge to push. It took over my body when I had my son.

It wasn't something that I was doing.

Emily: It was happening to me for four hours. Your body was doing the pushing. You weren't bearing down and pushing with it. Yeah, got you.

Nikki: Gotcha. And I guess I was bearing down, but that's just what it felt like had to happen.

Emily: Vomiting from your vagina is how I like to say it.

Nikki: Yeah, actually, just all the fluids, everything is coming out.

Yeah, yeah. And. Yeah, that was. That was the experience with him. And for her, it was.

Oh, it was so gentle. This is so different.

Emily: Well, think of all the work your body did in that first experience of moving a baby through your pelvis. You know, like we. We expand and we come back together, but we don't actually come back together the same way that we did after that first baby.

It really does open the portal gates for pre. For consecutive babies after.

Nikki: Yeah, yeah.

Emily: I mean, every baby, every pregnancy is different. But the common story is, you know, half the time that you were in labor, the first birth is like what you might be able to expect with your second labor.

I'm not saying get your hopes up, still plan for a three day event,

but like, with you, you went from 12 to five and a half. That's. Yeah.

Nikki: Yeah.

Emily: Beautiful.

Nikki: Yeah, it was really amazing. And I'm just. I feel, honestly, I just would love to have more and more babies just to have different birth experiences because it's just such an astonishing thing, you know, it's.

And I guess what was so incredible with her is I feel like were I in a hospital setting, they probably would have said that there was failure to progress because I stopped having contractions and I had this deep rest.

I'm not sure.

Emily: Yeah, can I speak to that? Because that is an absolutely normal, natural physiological pause. It happens right before the emergence phase. So there's active labor, baby's moving down, the cervix is dilating, and then right as that cervix gets dilated, oftentimes when the mother is not pushed and coerced, like, oh,

let me check you. You're fully dilated now. You can start pushing instead. Physiologically, what wants to happen is a deep, deep rest.

And it can be five minutes, it can be literally hours. Yeah. That. That mother rests and contractions can completely stop, and then she will wake up. She's gathering her energy, she's gathering her life force to bring her baby down, out, and through the vaginal canal.

Like, that is. The next phase, is the emergence phase. And that is something that Wapio teaches a lot about too. It's called the quietude. It's a beautiful physiological pause moment in the.

And if. Yeah. And it's. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. I'm so glad you got to experience that undisturbed.

Nikki: Yeah. It was so magical. It felt like such a blessing. So I would. I just enjoy that. If for anyone that has that experience, it's. It's amazing.

Emily: So placenta came out. No troubles?

Nikki: Actually, it wasn't intact. My placenta. And it came out in pieces. And then the majority of it came out. Um,

and I'm not sure why that was. Sometimes I wonder if it's because my toddler would, like, kick my stomach,

like, in his face. Like, he's really. Yeah, he. He's a big boy and he's. He.

Emily: What do you. What do you mean it came out in pieces, though? Tell me more.

Nikki: Um,

and it took a while. I. It was probably like an hour and a half before it started to come out, but there was like One sort of sizable chunk that emerged and then maybe some clots and then the rest of the placenta.

But it didn't look pretty like my first placenta, where I could pop it and sort of put it back together.

Emily: Did you guys. Was there any, like, pulling on the cord, or. You guys, it just came out on its own, or what happened?

Nikki: Uh, I got into a squat, and I did do a little tug on the cord after a time, which didn't really seem to do anything, but then eventually it just, like, came out.

Emily: Hmm. Interesting.

Nikki: Yeah. Yeah.

Emily: And how was your bleeding? Okay, Fine.

Nikki: It was hard. There was hardly any bleeding, to be honest. It was, again, very different to the first time because there was a lot more blood the first time I had.

Emily: Yeah, very interesting.

Emily: Yeah.

Emily: I haven't yet been present at a birth where the placenta hasn't come out in one big,

you know, when it actually breaks up. But I would imagine that would be not a good scene in a medicalized experience, especially with her only being 37 weeks. I'm. I'm so glad that you were able to have this undisturbed birth experience at home.

Nikki: Oh, me too. I would have been considered a geriatric pregnancy because 36. And, yeah, she was 37 weeks in the traditional thing, but I feel like she. She was 7 pounds and 14 ounces on my kitchen scale.

So she was no means little.

Emily: She was real healthy.

Nikki: She was perfectly healthy coming out.

And,

yeah, I guess they would maybe consider that I had a retained placenta, but I didn't. Everything came out, and then over the following days, like, a little bit more clotting passed, and there was probably one other chunk of placenta that released,

and then the bleeding was pretty much wrapped up within 10 days. I would say, wow.

Emily: Yeah, beautiful.

Nikki: And I felt so great, honestly, like, it was such a rebirth. It was so challenging.

One of the wisdoms that came through for me in postpartum with her is we need to have supported postpartum experiences as women, because you need that time to integrate your birth experience,

whatever it is, but especially if you've had an empowered birth journey,

to know your strength and to know what you're made of and to touch God in that way.

And then to have no support postpartum, there's no integration of that truth when you then really land into the 3D realities, the human realities of having a newborn and an infant and what that demands of you physically, emotionally, spiritually.

So this time,

having such a. You know, I was in bed for six weeks. It was very.

It was so beautiful. I just had so much love and so much support and all the nourishment and I got to really integrate who I am as a woman this time and it got to stay.

And now it informs my mothering and now I feel like I can be a better mother because of it and a more embodied woman who lives in alignment with her values.

Because I had this incredible supportive postpartum, I just.

Yeah, it was astonishing to me with my son because I had this amazing birth and then I just felt riddled with anxiety and stress and it was just. Yeah, awful.

Emily: Yeah.

Nikki: I will also share that I didn't make enough milk for my son and that is on account of the anatomy of my breasts.

I think they say it's called insufficient glandular tissue. So I combo feed. I do produce milk, just not enough. And this is the case for both my babies.

Yeah, I combo feed with the Western A price raw milk formula.

And I just want to share that for other women who maybe have a hard time making enough milk or if their anatomy doesn't allow them to produce enough milk or for whatever reason.

And I use those nursing training systems where it's like a little milk pouch and there's a little tube.

I have one here that's like Ben.

Emily: And so what do you do with that?

Nikki: Oh, my mouth.

Emily: When they're nursing, you just put the.

Nikki: Little tube on your nipple and so they're actually getting milk from me and then they're getting like enough sustenance from this as well.

And that way I get to breastfeed. It feels really important for me to have that experience. And they're getting all of the benefits from nursing in terms of like their jaw development and the bonding that you get to experience with your baby when you nurse and.

Emily: And the immune factors.

Nikki: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Emily: Thank you for sharing that. That's. That's a super nugget of wisdom. Appreciate that. And where do you get those special bags? Because I've never had to tell anybody about those yet.

Nikki: There's a company that I get them from called Lact Aid. L A C T Aid.

It's a very old school looking website, but they sell the nursing training systems there and I'm so grateful for it because yeah, if you're a mum that wants to breastfeed and for whatever reason you're not making enough milk, you don't have to go to a bottle, you can still have that experience of breastfeeding and know that your babe is getting the nurturance and nourishment that they need.

Um, and that was really hard for me. It was a really, you know, with my son again, I didn't have any support postpartum. I didn't have anyone coming to check up on me.

And I just assumed that because I'd gone through everything physiologically naturally that the breastfeeding thing would just happen naturally as well.

And I, I later learned that just like, because of the shape of my breasts and some other symptoms, I will say I'm I self diagnosed as like recognizing that I had insufficient glandular tissue.

Like I tick all of the markers for that.

So.

Yeah. But my son lost a lot of weight in the first two weeks when I, after I had him and that was really stressful. And our friend down the road was still nursing her son, so she would nurse my son twice a day.

Once in the morning and once at night. We lived in rural Montana. I would walk for half an hour with him in the carrier to get to her house pump.

She would nurse my son and.

Emily: Wow.

Nikki: Yeah. And then she introduced me to the Western A Price formula because her sister in law had twins and wasn't producing milk for them. So just so grateful for that knowledge.

But there was a lot of grief and a lot of sadness and it took, you know, I was just so heartbroken. And that's also been a huge contributor to not necessarily getting sleep at night.

Because one thing I see in a lot of these communities is like, oh yeah, you just roll to the side and you just breastfeed and it's really easy and it's like, that's great if you A have the breast shape that allows for that to happen and B, have enough milk.

But I wake up multiple times a night and I have a thermos next to my bed of hot water and I have my little milks in a cooler bag and I sit up and I warm them up and then I position it and I need both my hands so I can hold the little tube on my nipple while my baby nurses.

And sometimes I doze off while I'm sort of sat upright. But yeah, my back aches and it's, it's really hard on the body for sure. But again, I'm just so grateful and I, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Yeah.

So I know that that's maybe not super common, but I just, I want to know that that's an option and that they're not alone if they have that experience.

Emily: Thank you so much for sharing that. Because whereas that particular like not having the adequate amount of glandular tissue I think that is pretty rare.

You and I had talked about that before,

but as far as having a rocky breastfeeding journey or just not prod. Producing enough milk, like, that is very common. Like, very, very, very common. And I think that a lot of times women like you and I who are like, you know, we're supernatural.

We trust our bodies. We're supernatural. Haha. We trust our bodies.

You know, we're just gonna figure it out. But like, breastfeeding is really hard. It's a whole journey. And, you know, we spend so much time preparing for that birth and we forget that postpartum is a whole thing.

And. And your story just speaks to it all. It really does, you know, and I'm really appreciative that you came on to share and that you also like the changes that you made from your first experience to your second.

Like being more supported in the postpartum.

It's crucial. Absolutely crucial. And also, I mean, you just moved here and yes, you like, asked for help and people were available and said yes, but like, you made it happen too.

Like it.

Nikki: You had.

Emily: You had to both like, listen to the, the intuitive hit to head to Maine, but then also do the work of asking for help.

Nikki: Yeah. And moving across the country, I mean, it was pretty absurd. I was like, I think I'm probably crazy at whatever. It was like 33, 34 weeks moving across the country.

Yeah. I didn't even make it to a month being here before I had her.

Emily: So that is kind of crazy.

Nikki: Yeah, I. Yeah. I don't know. I guess I'm a man, but that's. That's what we did.

Emily: Well, I'm really, I'm really grateful to know you. Yeah.

Nikki: Oh gosh.

Emily: We gotta get our little boys together too, because they're only a month apart.

Nikki: Yes. I would love that. And I'm feeling a lot more. Yeah. Capable at getting around now and moving around and.

Emily: Well, as we're recording this, it's the middle of March, so we are moving into the famous mud season and then the extended mud season and then a little glimpse of summer and then it's going to be really nice.

So that's Maine.

Yeah.

But do you want to share if someone wanted to reach out to you or social media or anything? Can you share how people can find you?

Nikki: For sure.

I. I will say I'm not very active on social media at the moment,

but every now and then I do check it. So my Instagram handle is. Hey nikkij N I K K I J A E I have A substack and it's called Matriarch in the making.

And yeah, I haven't been active on there for a while, but there's some really. I think if I can.

Emily: Too much.

Nikki: I think there's some really great stuff in there. I. That was really a diary for me, moving through postpartum with my son and just navigating a lot of.

A lot of the things that come up for women. And I think if. If you're a woman that is not satisfied with the way things are going in the world and you've had a child and you want to raise your kid in.

In a different reality and you recognize that there are things that you need to do differently as a mother. You know, I'm reckoning with that every single day of my life.

This is part of the reason I'm not on social media right now, because it doesn't feel like it's in alignment with my values as a mother and how I want to raise my children.

It's not a world I want to expose my kids to.

So, yeah, just if you're interested in exploring those concepts, then you'll probably get a kick out of my content on there. I share in depth about my pregnancy loss. I share in depth about,

you know, raising kids according to their human design. And I'm sure that would resonate with.

Emily: A lot of the people that tuned in here.

Nikki: Yeah. And. And if you're someone that really does resonate with me, then please reach out and we can get connected on an email or text basis because I'm definitely a big fan of cultivating community and relationships.

And if there's a genuine resonance, I will a hundred percent nurture that.

So,

yeah, that's. That's where I'm at. Otherwise, I'm in Maine right now.

Emily: Yeah. Right.

Anyway, Nikki, thank you so much. So, so, so, so, so much. Beautiful stories. Thank you for taking the time.

And with this beautiful babe in hand, like I said, I'm so impressed that you told this whole story with a babe in arms.

Nikki: I think I'm imagining you must be.

Emily: Taking really good care of your brain health because at four months postpartum, I. My brain wasn't working yet.

Emily: Thank you for listening through to the end. I do hope you found good medicine in today's episode and that it encourages your own soul evolution. I have a few new offers, both in person and virtual, that I'd like to tell you about.

Beginning in January, I will host a free in person perinatal Women's Circle for anyone trying to conceive, pregnant or postpartum, seeking community and support. There will be a focus on preparing for natural birth and healing from birth trauma.

Children are welcome. You can sign up via my website.

I also now offer a monthly online virtual village circle for families seeking an empowering physiological conception, pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum. It's just $10 a month or free when you purchase my online course.

So you want a home birth? You can gain access by signing up via my one website.

As always, I host Women's Circles once a month at my home in Southern Maine. All women are welcome. For details, go to my website.

I have 20 years of experience in the medicalized system. I let my nursing license expire in 2023 and now I walk with women seeking a physiological, instinctual and deeply split spiritual conception, pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum journey.

I help prepare and repair for the most expansive rite of passage that women get to experience in this lifetime. It is my greatest honor and sole mission to hold sacred space and witness women as they claim their own inner authority and power.

I am a fierce advocate and guardian of natural birth using the culmination of my life's experiences including my own embodied wisdom when it comes to being a home birthing mother, nearly two decades of experience in our healthcare system and a year long sacred birth worker mentorship with Anna the Spiritual Midwich.

I support births with or without a licensed provider present at home birth centers and the hospital.

I offer birth debriefing and integration sessions for women, their families and birth workers.

I offer therapeutic one to one sessions, individually tailored mother blessings, closing of the bones and fear and trauma release ceremonies.

If any, any or all of this resonates, I offer a free 30 minute discovery call if you have a birth story to share or if you're a embodied wise woman, witch healer, medicine woman.

Emily: I am also interested in sharing your.

Emily: Contribution to our soul evolution.

You can book in via the link in the show notes.

Thank you so much for your love and support everyone. Until next time, take really good care.