65. [WISE WOMAN] WITH BILLIE HARRIGAN - RESTORING SAFETY AND SANITY TO MODERN BIRTH PRACTICES
Billie Harrigan is a fierce advocate for restoring safety and sanity to modern birth practices. She has served birthing families for about 40 years and has taught midwives and other birth practitioners in 125 countries. The technocratic birth services industry is out of control and needs a new approach with a different understanding of how humans arrive.
To that end, Billie offers training in the knowledge and skills of traditional birth companionship. This is a role once held by the Canadian neighbour who had both common birth knowledge and developed birth skills but has been appropriated by the medical cartel and bastardised into what we know as medical midwifery.
Billie is also the founder of Birth Trauma Ontario, an agency dedicated to the education and healing of both perpetrators and their victims from the global scourge of obstetric violence. She has authored the world’s first and most comprehensive online course in becoming equipped in the skills of trauma informed care specific to the childbearing experience.
She is the founder and director of the private member association, The Hive Collective, which brings together a community that is creating holistic alternatives for reclaiming our sovereignty over our bodies, births, babies, families, finances, and future.
Find me on instagram @birth.advocate and all of my offerings on my website www.birthadvocate.me
JOIN MY LIVE 11 WEEK HOME BIRTH MENTORSHIP
EARLY, EARLY BIRD PRICING UNTIL MAY 12TH
EARLY BIRD ENDS JUNE 1ST
WE BEGIN JULY 1ST!
11 Week Live Home Birth Mentorship
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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.
EMILY: I have decided to run an 11 week live home birth mentorship beginning July 1st.
This is for the woman who is willing and eager to do the deep work within herself to prepare body, mind and soul for the birth of not just a baby, but the mother and a family.
This is for the woman who knows she is here to break the pattern of fear, disembodiment and disempowerment within her lineage line.
This is for the woman who acknowledges that life is a sacred ceremony and that she is the one who gets to make choices that will shape her along her soul evolution.
This is for the conscious woman who has not yet conceived or is pregnant and is seeking to be witnessed and held in community.
This is for the woman who can feel the enormity of her responsibility to gestate and bring forth life and to embrace the metamorphosis that she is destined for.
She is ready to become the mother of this child.
This is for the woman who values mentorship, sisterhood and sacred space holding. This is for she who is ready to claim her pregnancy and birth as a sacred and sovereign rite of passage and already feels that mama bear energy that will do anything in her power to gift her baby a birth imprint of complete love and safety.
EMILY: This is also for all the nerds out there.
EMILY: We dive into the soul, but boy.
EMILY: Do we hit up the science too.
EMILY: In my own pregnancy, I spent my time discerning what information would serve the highest vision for my birth. Of course I plan to birth in complete sovereignty. And sovereignty means self governing.
It does not mean totally alone or without a wise woman or community for counsel. Although if that's your vibe, this course is still for you.
As a former nurse of nearly 15 years, I was quite clear on my legal rights and how to advocate for myself and I chose a midwife that I had an alignment with and I surrounded myself with other women planning a home birth.
I waded through that vast ocean of research and opinions and I found what.
EMILY: I was looking for.
EMILY: I walk you through, step by step, the journey from uncertainty to to confidence, from fear to self trust,
from isolation to being fully supported by a community.
The journey from uncertainty to confidence begins with her story. I believe women and men need to understand how birth became medicalized and fear mongered. We do a lot of myth busting in this course.
I believe the journey from fear to self trust lies in the deep, deeply embedded internal belief system that we have about what it means to be a woman.
We take a look at your own personal red thread, maternal lineage and your relationship to your menstrual cycle. It's all relative to birth, believe me.
We explore the intricacies of birth imprints and what a rite of passage really means. We unearth all of this prior to diving into the physiology and tangible preparation for birth and postpartum.
I did the legwork for you. Let me show you the map. All of my embodied knowledge is jam packed inside this 11 week program.
Head to the link in the show notes for a peek inside the course content.
This is everything that I cover with my in person clients packaged into 11 weeks. I will basically be your virtual doula.
EMILY: And private birth mentor.
EMILY: This is a soul journey.
This is about the birth of the mother.
Are you ready?
You will receive 11 weeks of intensive course material and you will have lifetime access.
There will be journal prompts, multimedia resources and plenty of home play.
Every single week for 11 weeks. We will have a live zoom where I will teach, live and also have a Q and A. And then after that I'm granting everyone six months access to my monthly virtual village Q and A.
So leading up to the birth and even in those early postpartum days, you can pop into the virtual village monthly Q and A session and ask me anything you want.
There will also be an intimate community of deeply conscious women.
Snag my ridiculously low early early bird price before May 13th or the early bird price before June 1st.
The journey begins July 1st. I'll see you on the inside.
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 rights 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 hope 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 birthday? 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, 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.
BILLIE: And stay tuned after the show to.
EMILY: Learn all about my Beyond Adola offerings, both in person and virtually worldwide. You can find me on Instagram, Earth Advocate, and my website, BirthAdvocate me.
Everything will be linked in the show notes.
Now let's drop in to today's episode.
EMILY: Welcome, Billie, to the podcast. I was telling you right before I hit record, you've been on my dream guest wish list since the beginning, since the origins of Soul Evolution. And as we're recording, I've released 59 episodes now.
And when I first reached out to you, you were super busy doing that amazing work that you do. And I was like, don't worry, I will reach out later. And then I did, and you graciously accepted.
Speaker E: I'm so grateful you did. I'm honored to be here. And congratulations. 59 already.
EMILY: Yeah, it has been. I have been. You're exactly right. We are both busy doing some really big, important work.
So the women that listen to my podcast and the clients that I call in, these are women seeking a more sovereign life. These are absolutely women wanting a home birth, physiological birth,
quite a few free births,
actually. You've already been on the podcast, but you don't know it because Kristen Nagel, my darling, came on and told her birth story. So you've been mentioned on the podcast.
Yeah, actually.
Speaker E: Wonderful. Yes. She is so happy to know her.
EMILY: Oh, my gosh. Well, her and I, we were arm in arm. I mean, I led a coalition for healthcare workers against the mandates here in the state of Maine. It was.
It was a big deal. I had about 4,000 people on the email list. I was hosting rallies across the state. I let my job go, you know, held the line.
It was a big deal. And that was really the beginning of the shift and the trajectory for you.
Speaker E: And thank you for doing it. Wow. Because you took a toll. Anybody who held the line, boy, oh, boy. Thank you for doing it.
EMILY: Yeah. Yeah.
EMILY: And right back at you. Thank you for using your voice and all of the things that you have done and, you know, something that you've said and that I've said, and that is just apparent to anyone with eyes to see, is that birth really is one of the last things to go when we are reclaiming our sovereignty for some reason,
which I think you and I have an idea about that reason. But I want to dive into the reason for Some reason, Birth is one of those last pieces that women hold onto.
And this goes way back. It's deep, deeply rooted in her story, which I love talking about and I love. I did not realize that you were part of the editing process for Rachel Reed's book, reclaiming childbirth as a rite of passage.
Speaker E: Isn't it a great book? It's the best.
EMILY: It's like a Bible.
Speaker E: I was, oh, my gosh. When she said, invited me to be a part of that, I was like, oh, my gosh. I've been fangirling over you. Her research and her wisdom.
I use, you know, her research and things in the courses that I write. And then I had the opportunity to partner in that process. Oh, my gosh, it was delightful.
EMILY: Yes.
EMILY: She's amazing. I'm in her online collective. It's wonderful. Every month I get a little update from Rachel. It's so, so wonderful. She's such a great resource, as are you.
So, yeah, I'd like to sort of touch on this piece first about this. You know, why birth is one of the last things to go when a woman is wanting a more sovereign life.
So kind of diving a little bit into the her story. You speak so eloquently about the origins of this and really, truly,
even like just the statistics on the current day, customer statistics, as you call them. Just take it away, please, Billi.
Speaker E: Oh, why is it the last to go? Because we are so heavily indoctrinated and Indoctrinated. Another word for that, of course, is brainwashed. We're so indoctrinated into the story of his story of birth and how his story came to save us, to save us from our biology, to save us from the horrors of bringing in new life.
His story has warped us and warped our collective understanding of what this is.
And when the male medical individual got involved, they were using a paradigm that made sense to them at the time of the, you know, 17th, 18th centuries that the entire realm is just one big clock with all of these parts that work together.
And it's best understood by taking the parts apart and separating them. So that's why, as medicine developed, we have neurology, nephrology, hematology, cardiology, and everything divided into various body parts.
Obstetrics, which means to, you know, get in the way,
is from her knockers to her knees, and it takes out the woman. And within the practice of obstetrics, the woman herself is necessary for extracting the baby, but she is minimized down to her body parts.
And that's where we get this nonsense of the three Ps. Power, passenger passage.
Well, they got it wrong. They got it wrong. That's not what birth is.
It is a hormonal process with a physical outcome rather than a mechanical process that potentially involved. That they now know involves hormones. But getting it wrong in the first place and mechanizing it according to an ancient understanding of our realm and our bodies has created untold havoc.
But that's what has happened. And we are in a. You know,
the model is that our bodies, rather than being so profoundly created with wisdom and regenerative possibilities,
we're this faulty, decaying thing that is so prone to deficiencies and things that the external world that we can't fight off, we're always in a fight mode, fighting invisible things and fighting contagions and fighting our own bodies until they collapse.
Well, that becomes a mindset. And in that mindset, we start to separate from. Well, maybe we don't actually need injections to ward off these various invisible things.
Maybe we don't need indoctrination camps called schools. Maybe we don't need to eat processed food. Maybe we don't birth. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. We can't go back to the old days where everybody died.
Well, everybody didn't die. That's why there's 8 billion of us didn't die.
The greatest cause of maternal mortality was the physician who went from cadaver to woman with unwashed hands. And why was he sticking his unwashed hands up her vagina?
How bloody creepy is that? What is wrong with you? She's having a baby. But, no, she's on her back with her feet in the air, and some creepy guy comes along, sticks his fingers up her vagina.
And that's still happening. It's not necessary.
So the last to go is that we are still this faulty.
So frail. We're so frail, and we'll never be closer to death than when that baby is in the birth canal. And what's to become of us? What's to become of us?
This is so heavily indoctrinated into us.
And when women start to wake up and say, what the. What is that?
But then our men are indoctrinated,
and our men are saying, well, I have to be responsible. I can't let you die. You have to go into that place that will traumatize you, penetrate you. You may come out saying you've been raped.
You may come out with physical brain injury we call ptsd. But I did my part, and you didn't die.
So we've got a Lot of work to do ahead of us.
EMILY: Yes.
EMILY: Yes, we do. Yes, absolutely. And there are so many people waking up, and I just want to, you know, like, I'm an optimist. I really, truly am. There really is a rebellion.
Reclamation. There's a lot happening,
but it's not quite enough. And I love how you and many other people also say, you know, like, the system is not broken. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do.
And it really is our job to create something new. It really is. If it's not working, figure something else out.
Speaker E: Absolutely.
EMILY: We're gonna dive.
Speaker E: Yeah. I feel like I don't know if this is true or not. I just feel like I came from a generation before the Internet and before this epic level of disempowerment that is, of course, coordinated and targeted.
If it wasn't working, you do it yourself. You know, my parents couldn't afford a mechanic. Well, then you gotta do it yourself. Gotta fix your car.
Your appliances broke down. Well, you can't afford it. You can't do it yourself. If things weren't working, you just do it yourself. So I kind of came from that. That paradigm, but that may have come from parents raised through the Depression where there just weren't the resources.
So. But that's what I feel now. It's like, well, this isn't broken. Just we'll do better ourselves.
EMILY: Right, Right.
Speaker E: The industry offers as a service is a garbage service.
EMILY: It is. Tell us. Tell us some stats about the customers that come out. And I know you're in Canada, but this is. It's pretty universal.
Speaker E: It is global. Absolutely global.
The stats I've got are pre covidiac. And because the industry lies so terribly through the COVID years, the COVID EC years, they lied so terribly. I don't know if they tell the truth right now.
I don't know. The stillbirth rate through those years after the injection was rolled out was through the roof. And they lied and they said, oh, no. Oh, no, there's no difference.
A whistleblower was doing a locum here. He was an obstetrician at a local hospital. And he said, do you know how many stillbirths we saw in 72 hours?
And he blew the whistle on that, on how many babies had died.
So the CEO of a hospital in an adjacent town was recruited to say, oh, no, no, no. There's absolutely no change. There's nothing happening.
It was gobsmacking. So I don't know what the. You know, who knows what it is right now? And I don't know that I would trust it. But prior to Covid esc,
who gets away with a 30 to 80% C section rate?
What the heck? They're out of control.
30 to 80% of women do not need their babies rescued and it is not maternal choice in most cases we don't need. Half of all pregnancies ended early through induction.
That's nonsense.
One in three women and this is a pretty consistent stat. One in three women struggle with postpartum depression and or anxiety after their experience.
One in 10 women here in Canada as that was the study that I looked at in the first year of their baby's life. One in ten were struggling with thoughts of self harm.
PTSD is a physical brain injury that affects the limbic system and it can be seen on an mri. And of course the rates vary, but a pretty Conservative rate is 1 in 8.
1 in 8 other customers is sent home with a physical brain injury because of how she was treated.
These are not good stats. This is not saving lives. Postpartum suicide is a leading cause of death.
Is the leading cause of indirect direct is blood clots, highly correlated to too much surgery, but it's the leading cause of indirect which is suicide.
These women are suffering so terribly from what happened to them and what was done to them that they feel that ending their own life is an answer. And of course here in Canada, I think the sixth leading cause of death is government assisted suicide.
So I mean they're happy to off you here. Wow. It's disgusting.
I did write Becoming Trauma Informed. It took me three years to write it. It's a science backed, heavily resourced referenced course,
Trauma Informed knowledge and skills and healing specific to the perinatal experience.
When it was first released, it was with an organization where it was accredited with distinction through the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
But then I moved on from that agency and the course went with me and I sure don't have the money for that kind of credentialing. But the course is the same so it does qualify for that, but it's not credentialed.
And then I created Becoming Trauma Informed. And again, it is heavily referenced, science backed, coupled with wisdom, traditional wisdom and a heck of a lot of experience.
People who enroll in that will have extensive knowledge in partnering with families from preconception to parenting.
EMILY: Yeah.
Speaker E: And the skills to be a more useful human.
EMILY: Yeah, I'm interested in taking that for sure. Do you want to speak just a little bit more to it?
Speaker E: Yeah, it's, it's A three year course. I have to call it a traditional birth companion because I live in Ontario and midwifery is a regulated, protected practice, so we cannot use that word.
You must be registered with the college of Midwives to be called a midwife, which is fair because I can't say I'm a doctor because I'm not.
So that would be fraudulent. So I don't, can't say I'm a midwife because as it's been defined here, I'm not. But what we do teach are the knowledge and the skills that are consistent with the practice of traditional midwifery.
Holistic, but we just can't say we are. But that's what it is. But we're not practicing medical midwifery because first of all it's bullshit.
And secondly, that's a restricted practice.
This is, I say, it's mostly akin to the Canadian neighborhood.
So before we became a country, we call it confederation, the all male brand new Canadian Medical association went to the all male parliamentarians of Upper Canada that became Ontario and said, we're not making any money because the women of the family know how to do things.
The community midwife was the source of medical knowledge, as in herbalism, stitching, things like that.
So they said, we want you to make midwifery illegal so we can go to the births and then we'll have customers for life. The midwives are in our way. And the all male parliamentarians thought it was a smushing good idea.
And midwifery became illegal across Canada.
Now I take a lot of heat for saying that because somebody invariably says, oh, I had a midwife at my birth. And they said, yes, it was decriminalized in 1993 in Ontario and then decriminalized in other provinces afterwards.
And another will say, well, my great auntie Harriet was a midwife. Yes,
because there have always been midwives, just like there have always been sex workers. But it just doesn't mean they were government sanctioned or paid for by insurance.
So primarily, the person that was written in the family bible as the midwife was the neighborhood the neighbor who was called. So when they. That's how early records of births were recorded.
It was the family bible. The neighbor who had had four or five babies, she would be called to attend a few births on her own, and then she'd retire in another neighborhood, the neighbor.
And it was in 1987 there was a task force to understanding why Canadians, we stroppy cows, wanted to be having babies at home with other women that would historically have Been called midwives, and they wanted to know why we wanted to do that.
So a task force was set up to determine how things should unfold. What they discovered from the historical records was that when the Canadian mothers called the neighbor,
the outcomes were so profoundly better than anything seen in a hospital with a physician.
Having a baby at home with a neighbor, the mother was four times less likely to die, meaning if she went to a hospital with a physician, she was four times more likely to be killed by their incompetence.
And staying home with the neighbor, she had a 10 times better outcome in terms of morbidity. If she went to the hospital with a physician, she was 10 times more likely to be harmed.
So these neighbors had common birth knowledge, common birth skills, and that's what we should all have. And so this training of a traditional birth companion. I said, call the neighbor.
We'll be the neighbor with good common birth knowledge, common skills that everybody should have. It shouldn't be locked behind the doors of L and D and mismanaged and mishandled. We should all know and we should all have knowledge, all have skills.
EMILY: Yes. And not have a fear of being persecuted for being with women in the nurse.
Speaker E: That would be lovely, wouldn't it?
EMILY: It would be so lovely. Like myself, I'm not. My license as a nurse is not active anymore. But, you know, because I have 15 years of experience as a nurse, I.
I certainly have fear that I would be held to a certain standard should something go. A wire in a free birth that I'm attending, I very much. I'm like, I'm not here in a medical capacity.
I don't bring any medical anything. But, you know, still, it's. It's a witch hunt, as you know.
But.
Speaker E: But what do we call medical things to coming to a birth? I mean, I don't.
Right. We don't bring restricted medications because those should be administered by medical people in medical facility. We don't bring oxygen. We. It's too dangerous to carry in our cars anyway.
We don't do that. But what do we call medical stuff? Is it something to help a baby breathe when they're born if somebody needs help? Well, why is that restricted?
I can buy that off Amazon. That's not restricted.
Can you take a. You know, help a woman figure out what her blood pressure is? Well, why not? Why? That's not a restricted practice. Anybody can do that. My mother lived in a senior's home, and every Saturday morning the ladies came over for tea and they all took each other's blood pressure and they were not persecuted.
The only reason one of us might be persecuted is like, oh, oh, oh, there's bun in the oven. That's our territory. It's not, it's not a restricted practice. Anybody could do it, right.
Go to Walmart and get your blood pressure done.
EMILY: I, I, this is why I love what you're offering so much. Because you're just bringing it back to common sense. Like, you're normalizing what used to be normal. You're bringing it back.
It's a remembering. Really, truly, it's a remembering. And it's also,
you know, like using herbs, using heat, temperature, like, just like the common things to help support a woman in her physiological process. And not to say, and, you know, you're not naive and like, of course there are the times when we need our medical system, and we're grateful for those times.
They happen not very often,
but, you know, our medical system is great when it comes to emergencies, crisis care.
EMILY: Right?
Speaker E: Yeah. They're needed for crisis care. They're on the cusp of collapse because of rampant corruption.
So are making themselves irrelevant. And I say obstetrics, the maternity industry is making themselves irrelevant because they've become.
Well, there's a lot of corruption in what is done to women. The outcomes are absolutely horrific. And they've become deskilled. It's like, why are you going there? They, yes, they can do surgery, but surgery, because they don't know how to facilitate or help a breech baby.
Right. Is wrong with you? This is not rocket science. Anybody can learn this. Anybody. And they're like, oh, why don't you watch a YouTube video, for goodness sakes?
That's supposed to be surgery. Because they become deskilled. Well, stop it. Oh, think the baby's big. We better do surgery. Well, why don't you find out if the baby's big after it comes out?
It's utter nonsense. They're making themselves so irrelevant because they don't have. They're becoming deskilled. And the skills they do have are outrageous.
EMILY: It's so true. When a woman goes into the hospital, literally everything that happens is preparing her for surgery.
Every single thing, from the vitals to the IV to the not letting her eat every little thing is actually just a preparation for the possibility of surgery, which is like 50% or more in some places.
Speaker E: And their thinking is heading into it. Well,
one of the potential outcomes could be surgery. So why don't we do surgery?
No, because it potentially could be,
oh, my goodness.
EMILY: I want to talk about vaginas. I read your blog on your website about vaginal exams and I was just like, wow, this could be an entire podcast on its own. Just there's so many avenues to go down just from this one thing of fingers in vaginas.
And I just, I just want to hear you rift on it, Billy, please.
Speaker E: Well, I say the thing that most pregnant women don't understand is that when she becomes pregnant, the vagina becomes the domain of the medical industry because they have put it into a restricted practice that nobody but their own can stick anything up a woman's vagina.
Now, they're pretty tolerant about partners and husbands putting things in her vagina because they're profoundly misogynistic. So they let men go and do sexual things with her.
Otherwise, what is the point of the vaginal exam in pregnancy?
One, it's to gather information to plan an induction, you know, the bishop score. Two, it's to start an induction with a stretch and sweep. And yes, it is an induction.
Good gracious. I've been challenged on that so many times.
EMILY: We'll talk about that next. We'll dive deeper into that next.
Speaker E: Yes, and it would be lovely if every induction was done with knowledge and consent. But stretch and sweeps are often not. They just go up there and do it. And third, the third reason why practitioners putting their fingers in a pregnant woman's vagina is to groom her into sexual submission so that she gets used to being sexually penetrated by a non sexual partner,
so that when she's in labor, anybody can come in and just stick a glove finger up there.
I have had consultations with many, many women who were beside themselves to find out they were pregnant because they were rape and sexual assault survivors. And everything about having a baby is having a stranger's fingers up their vagina.
I had one consultation and she wanted to discuss her options on termination because that was the one thing she couldn't do.
EMILY: Wow.
Speaker E: I said, you can still have a baby and not do that. There are options. But she didn't know there was an option to decline or just not use those services. The services are garbage anyway, so don't use them.
EMILY: Yeah.
EMILY: Please demystify the vaginal exam and why it is non essential.
Speaker E: It is for the purpose of charting and managing the time and resources of the facility. Or if it's at a home birth, it's again for the purpose of charting.
She must be, whatever the number du jour is, anywhere between 4 and 6 cm to be allowed to use their facilities because now she's in supposed act of labor again.
Made up by some man who got it wrong. Or she, you know, or the midwife will agree to stay in her home because she's at this. So that's to manage their resources.
And then she is supposedly meant to dilate again, which is getting it wrong at a certain speed, because we have to manage the resources of the facility.
That's to determine do we have enough nursing staff, depending on the country, maybe enough midwives on staff to move her through, who needs to go home. When is the OR open?
And the bit of tissue at the end of the vagina we call the cervix is somehow some mystical crystal ball that it tells all of where the labor is and how long it's going to take and when surgeries should be suggested.
And this little bit of tissue inside a woman's vagina just has tremendous power over a birthing facility. It's stunning how much power it has. And it's also entirely non predictive.
It just happens to be the thing they can reach.
Now, there is to say, in certain situations where labor is not unfolding the way you would anticipate, sometimes information can be gathered.
So a skilled midwife can use a vaginal exam, rarely to gather information to determine what potential next steps could be.
EMILY: Right.
EMILY: So potentially feeling the fontanelles on the baby's head to see what position they're in or.
Yeah, I mean, there are some rare potential circumstances when it may be useful.
But as I preach to all of my listeners and clients,
really,
you don't need your vaginal exam unless you feel that you do need it. Unless the mother is the one in charge, the one leading the experience, and she's fully informed as to what that may or may not entail.
Yeah, really, the fundus is the thing we would want to be figuring out, isn't it?
Speaker E: Yeah. Provides more information.
EMILY: Yeah.
Speaker E: You know, where the labor might be progressing. But I find just looking at a woman's face gives far more information.
EMILY: Right, right.
EMILY: So let's, let's talk a little bit about this stretch and sweep, because again, people listening here, they. They are seeking a home birth, natural birth. But this is still something that is offered with or without consent at times from midwives.
So, you know, induction is an absolute epidemic happening. And I agree with you that stretch and sweep is an induction technique. Castor oil is an induction technique. These natural inductions, there's no such thing as a natural induction.
It is all just an induction.
And we, yeah, we are forcing babies out prematurely. Babies are being born prematurely all over the place. We have no long term studies on the effects of this and it is just.
It is problematic. So this one little thing, this membrane sweep.
Please share some wisdom.
Speaker E: Personally, I would like to see it band off the face of the earth and suggesting that has it's one of the holy grails in the cult of maternity services that riles people up so much.
You know, it's like a challenging communion in a. In a Christian service.
It's the people have such devotion to is an ineffective method of induction.
The premise is going up there and mucking about stretching the cervix open, separating the amniotic sac from the cervical os. But I'm told it feels like separating Velcro. I think it's just very disturbing is to release a bolus prostaglandins.
Now, if you are ready to go into labor and you do have all of the prostaglandin receptors so that even just having intercourse where human semen has fairly high amount of prostaglandins,
it can put you into labor. But as I say, if, if something like that can put you into labor the same as maybe having sex because prostaglandin receptors are so rich and ripe as well as the oxytocin receptors as well as beta endorphin receptors, as well as relaxin levels,
as well as peak levels of estrogen, as well as dropping progesterone. If all of that is in play and a stretch and sweep can put you into labor, you'd have been in labor in about half an hour anyway.
So what the heck is the point? Otherwise, if all these things are not in play and this horrific thing comes along,
it can trigger non progressing. It may do nothing.
In fact, more often what it does is traumatize the cervix and lengthens the cervix. That's in my blog post, which is indicative of not going into labor. So what it can do is actually slow the process and regress the progress of you heading into labor and regress and set you back.
It traumatizes the cervix. It may release enough prostaglandins to trigger non progressing cramping and painful cramping. And many women then feel, oh my gosh, how grateful am I, I'm starting my process, I'm having contractions.
How exciting is this? And they go on and on, on and on, and no labor commences. But depending on your practitioner, they might think, oh my goodness, you have been having contractions for, you know, 24, 36 hours and you're still barely 2 centimeters.
We'll do another one. And she labors, labors, contracts for another 24 hours. Maybe she gets to two and a half, in which case she's beside herself from pain, lack of sleep,
no progress. And there she is in a hospital with an epidural and an induction.
I've heard, probably talk to. Oh, I've talked to so many hundreds of women whose experience was that what they had hoped was going to be a very simple home birth is hijacked by that damnable ritual, and then they end up with all the bells and whistles.
In a hospital birth.
EMILY: Yeah. Yeah.
EMILY: Essentially,
when that happens, when a finger is jammed up the cervix between the amniotic sac and that internal tissue, the body, like, believes that it's being attacked. And it's. There can be this, okay, it's time to get this baby out because we have been invaded.
We have been attacked. It's. When you think of it like that, it really. It can help shift the perspective on. This isn't some natural. Oh, let me just help things along.
This is your body saying, hey, something is wrong. Like, we need to get this baby out because the baby's gonna be safer than inside.
Speaker E: It can happen that way. Yes. It can also break. Break the water prematurely.
EMILY: Right.
Speaker E: And the potential for infection is. Is introduced.
EMILY: Right, right.
EMILY: So I'd like to hear then about, you know, the. The happy side of things.
EMILY: Right.
EMILY: Like, what you do are. You're not. Are you sitting with women any longer? Are you more teaching?
Speaker E: No, unfortunately, I'm. But I do have the gift of being able to teach women more students now.
EMILY: Well, that's something I actually wanted to honor at the beginning of this episode, and I will do so now. Just the fact that you are one of the elders that is actually using her harvest, you know, in that harvest phase of her life,
giving out her wisdom to the others, to the. To the Youngers, like having a map. Laying out the map. It is so crucial, you know? You know, we don't really have many Elders showing us the way, using their wisdom and imbuing it upon us about something so important as birth,
this reclamation of birth. So I just. I'm very grateful that you are stepping into this, Elder. You even have a thing, a service where you can call an Elder and get some guidance.
Do you. Are you still doing that as well?
Speaker E: I am doing that, yes. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you very much for your kind words. I think what happened to our elders, they burned out. They were persecuted, maybe they got put in jail.
By this idiot cartel.
EMILY: Do you feel in fear or do you feel pretty secure?
Speaker E: I walk with God,
so this is in service to God, and my protection is in his hands.
And I think if. If I'm going down, I'm taking them with me.
EMILY: Beautiful.
EMILY: Yeah.
Speaker E: That they like. Why I, number one, I don't intrude in their turf. I don't do any of the. I mean, to. To think as they define midwifery, as that I'm practicing midwifery without a license is utter nonsense.
That's saying, like, I know how. How to brush my teeth, therefore I'm practicing dentistry without a license.
It's not the same thing. I don't do what they do. And frankly, they don't do what I do. They can't. They don't have the knowledge and they don't have the skills,
so to say, you know, I'm intruding in their turf. I'm not. Because, one, they don't do this. They don't know how to appropriately support a physiological pregnancy and birth. They don't know how to holistically improve wellness from preconception to parenting.
They don't attend breech births. Okay, we will. We'll get the training. You won't. We will.
They don't know how to do most of what we know how to do. So it's not in their turf to say you cease and desist. Cease and desist what? We're not doing what you do.
We don't induce, we don't poke up in people's places that. Where you don't belong. We're not administering, we're not diagnosing. We're not doing any of the things that they do.
So it's two entirely separate things. What would be ideal is if we could get past this narcissistic nonsense and collaborate,
because they can't.
I would say that people that come to. Well, not me at the moment because I'm not attending births, but the women who came to me where they're not talking about the lowest of the low risk.
That's what the regulated midwives get. You know, the regulated midwives, as they practice here, is they have a parameter of what is to be low risk. So the woman's weight must be.
Her BMI must be between here and here. Her gestation must be between here and here. The baby's size must be between here and here, and her blood glucose must be between here and here, and her blood pressure must be between here and here.
And we must have the baby between here and Here and it has to be in the right position and everything has to happen until finally we've got this tin, tiny little artificial bubble of perfection.
I think, well then why show up? You're not needed.
There's no reason for you. And at the potential that they might have to use their skills, well then they're in the hospital being tended to by hospital people.
Why are you there? That is so de skilled that then they can't take the women who want to have a holistic home birth. They can't take them because they're not low risk or they get risked out.
So those are the women that come to us. These are the women who've had two C sections, three.
The women who have had a history of preeclampsia and have never had any information on how to minimize the potential.
The women who've had hypertension, the women who've had. The women who are struggling with glucose, insulin resistance,
the ones that they can't take.
So they come to us and we work together on holistic wellness.
And I would say for this supposed high risk group, our outcomes are absolutely astounding.
Astounding. Nothing seen in the industry.
Now we have to make a caveat because once the injection rolled out, everything went to hell in a handbasket. But things are improving.
EMILY: Yeah, yeah.
EMILY: I've heard you speak about since the COVID experimental injection rolled out, that, you know, the stillbirth rate going up, the miscarriage rates and the placenta issues with the placenta. You've seen all that?
Speaker E: Yeah. And the hemorrhages.
EMILY: And the hemorrhages. Yeah, yeah.
EMILY: So let's talk solutions. Let's talk, you know, physiological birth and how to prepare and support and just solutions.
Speaker E: Solutions. Start with. I'm going to just food. Let's start with food. Real food doesn't come in a pill that comes in, you know, the sunshine touched it, it walked across the earth, came out of the soil.
Real food prior to conception to replenish and nourish both partners so that their reproductive contributions are in better shape and are more well and food through and a proper food,
stuff that really nourishes a growing baby. Proper food throughout pregnancy changes everything so much. And when they're eating well, well now maybe we can talk about stress management, relationships separating from the incessant fear talk and fear porn.
The non stop talk of a dead baby, dead mother, dead baby, dead baby, dead mama.
When that's being programmed into a couple, they're not able to make wise, informed decisions because it kind of, you know, Short circuits the prefrontal cortex.
So we have to get rid of that talk and now start sharing real information, good information, accurate information.
And then let's connect families to each other. Let's connect expecting couples with other families who are further along in the path of reclaiming their wellness and reclaiming their sovereignty and who were able to use any of these services if they chose judiciously and wisely.
EMILY: Yes.
EMILY: Is that part of what you do with. With your hive? The hive.
Speaker E: Yes.
So there are two parts to the hive. One is just a free Harrigan hive. Harriganhive.com Come on, join. It's free and lots of information gets posted there. Then we have a private member association, a hive collective, and that's pretty minimal subscription.
It's just 15 bucks a month. And in the private member association, that's where the courses are. Well, the traditional birth companion course is offered. Becoming Trauma informed is open to everybody.
But if someone is accepted into the Becoming traditional birth companion, the becoming trauma informed is also part of it, so they get that with it too. And in the private member association, they can list their services and their offerings to engage in commerce with one another in the private realm.
And in the private realm, we can do things that we can't do in the public realm, such as create a new call the neighbor equipping of companions to support families.
Who would like this option. We're not going to change the system and we're not going to. I'm not going to be able to create a public kind of midwifery school because that will come under heavy regulation, and that's what we don't want.
That already exists and it's not working very well right now.
Anyone can join the private member association.
EMILY: So this was really all birthed after the 2020 nonsense. Is that when it happened?
Speaker E: Yeah, it was very interesting. When the first lockdowns came, I thought I was going to be absolutely swamped because people did not want to go into the hospital where their women had to go alone.
They had birth masked and swabbed and their babies swabbed and potentially separated from them for two weeks, I thought I'd be swamped. And nobody called. Really? Yeah, they were too frightened.
Wow, that was really interesting. But once we'd sat with it for a little bit and the cracks started to appear and more people were realizing this isn't utter bullshit. And then the injection rolled out and they saw what was happening with little girls bleeding from their vagina, grandmothers well past menopause bleeding,
uterine casts falling out Miscarriages. So then they understood.
And I said at the time that I would not accept an injected client because the potential for it to cause problems at home that I couldn't solve was too high.
So I wanted to work with people who were not going to be injected because the likelihood is then it would just be the normal problems.
And then when they found out that I was somebody who was attending births who was not injected,
then I was swamped because they didn't want anybody who had been injected into their homes and births. And then I was absolutely, utterly swamped. I couldn't take everybody as best I could.
And this is, this is silly. Why am I the only one?
I need to train an army because before I retire, this is silly. It shouldn't just be me. So I just got a brain fart.
Create an entire course,
science backed, and that will take candidates through to be able to do what I've been doing. And so I got a brain fart. I had the course half written and three quarters written and then took the first cohort in.
And then eight weeks into the course, my husband dies. Suddenly I think, oh my gosh. This was not the year I was expecting.
EMILY: Wow.
Speaker E: I had a full, a full cohort, absolutely swamped with clients,
a course to complete,
and now I'm suddenly widowed.
So, yeah, it was a year and a half. I'm down,
what a season.
So I couldn't attend birth. So I was so shocked I couldn't even drive. But oh my goodness. Finished writing the course and we went on to a second cohort and a third and a fourth.
And we've got the fifth one coming up this September.
EMILY: Wow. Wow.
EMILY: And are they pretty full, your cohorts? Like how many people come through?
Speaker E: It's up and down because the economy,
the worry of where the world is going is how far is the WEF going to get its claws into the rest of society. So it's up and down.
It would be nice if it was a consistent response, but we just have to accept that we're living in very challenging times. Yeah, we are. I think I'm looking forward to this September because I think more people feel ready to take this on.
They feel ready to step into being the neighbor. Yeah, the neighbor. So I'm really. Applications are open now and we are equipped for a big cohort and praying that's what God sends.
EMILY: Yeah, yeah.
EMILY: So like some basic skills that you might teach.
EMILY: You know, I love how again, how.
EMILY: You just make it sound so sweet and simple because oftentimes it really is when the woman is left alone, birth happens.
But maybe you just want to touch on with our last few minutes here together.
Something like a postpartum hemorrhage or baby not breathing. You know, these things that women fear a lot.
Speaker E: For the most part, everything unfolds simply. I would say the most common reason for a woman in our. In our companionship to transfer from home to hospital is a very long back labor.
And bless her, she needs relief. I would say that is absolutely the most common reason.
EMILY: It's the most common reason. I'd say across the board, just exhaustion.
Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, exhaustion and a difficult back labor. And it's just time, time to go, go get relief. And that's a really good reason to use those services. I would say that's the most common reason.
I tend to think there's about three situations that,
you know, we tend to call them emergencies only because you must be.
It requires a response. It's not something you can look at and go, hmm, let's just ponder this for a while. It requires a response. The kind of three basics. I mean, there could be others, too, but let's talk about the three.
One is a baby gets stuck.
And it happens not that often, but it does happen. A baby either coming head down with a shoulder dystocia could be the shape of the baby, the shape of the mother, whatever.
And it happens from time to time. Or the baby's coming butt first, feet first, whatever, and the baby's arms are up and trapped, and the baby needs some help. So a stuck baby, head down or bum down requires some response.
And I think anybody who is around pregnant women, which is all of us, should have those skills to help a stuck baby. I mean, I've said this over and over and over, and I'm going to say it again.
The kid who makes your sandwiches, Subway, should know how to help a breech baby be born. I love that a mother goes into the bathroom, her water breaks precipitous. She comes out of the bathroom, a little foot's dangling out.
The kid should be able to say, that's okay, ma'am, I can help. Jump over the counter and be a more useful human.
It's just an ordinary skill. So I think everybody should know how to do this. The second one is the baby arrives after a challenging experience and needs help breathing. There's a difference between a baby who needs help and a baby who needs time.
So we. And it's important to learn the difference. A baby who is perhaps born in water. They take longer born in water Comes up, eyes open,
staring at mummy, taking it in,
not breathing it, but alert and engaged. That baby needs time. And then they'll come around and take their breath. A baby who comes out after a challenging stuck experience. And perhaps baby was the shoulder dystocia.
CO2 was rising and the baby started to gasp on the perineum to try and get some air in. Comes out and is knocked out. The head is stark and congested.
The body is, you know, white and floppy, pale and floppy.
Keep the baby attached to its source of oxygen and blood.
If the baby is not coming around very quickly, because they've already asked for help on the perineum, but gasping, they've already asked for help. I think just be a useful human and give the little one some help.
And so helping a baby breathe at birth, ordinary skill that everybody should have. And I say, and I teach parents that too because it's a parenting skill. Your kid falls down, you know, scrapes her knee, has a boo boo.
You gotta know how to clean the cut and you gotta know how to put a bandage on it. Baby comes out, knocked out, needs some help breathing. Help them breathe.
It's just a parenting skill. It's nothing to be locked behind hidden doors. And only their version of priests are allowed to do it. Stop it. It's just a parenting skill.
And the third is if she's bleeding heavily again,
knowing the difference between physiological blood loss where the mother is absolutely not compromised and she's perky as all get out and it stops because we don't inject them with synthetic oxytocin.
That's not a hemorrhage. A woman who is bleeding and she's. And it's not stopping, you should know what to do.
And that's something you're not just going to wait around while, you know, blood's pouring everywhere and think, do you think we should transfer, get it stopped? And then if she's compromised, perhaps transport after that.
EMILY: And with.
EMILY: And then you also teach about herbs,
using different herbs. Do you actually teach like internal maneuver for if the woman was breathing, like using both hands? Or how far do you go with teaching about stopping a hemorrhage?
Speaker E: You can use uterine compression or it depends on the. Is it from uterine atomy, which responds to compression, or is it from internal tearing which responds to something else? And uterine acne also responds to many of the herbs we use.
But. But external compression works.
EMILY: Yeah.
EMILY: Wow. Well, I hope that people, a bunch of people sign up for your course. I love that there are. There Are several different courses out there, people teaching traditional midwifery. And I think everyone has a little bit of concern of, you know, the witch hunt that's going on.
But these are basic parenting skills for the most part, skills your neighbors should have. And I am all about the reclamation of these common sense skills.
Speaker E: Yes. Let's restore some sanity back to the family as common knowledge for common people belongs back in the family. We should not be running to an over pharmaceuticalized cartel that has proven itself to be quite corrupt for common things that used to be handled by our grandmothers and great grandmothers.
EMILY: Yeah.
EMILY: And you know, bringing it full circle to where we started this conversation with birth being one of the last things to be reclaimed in, you know, a sovereign life.
It is crucial, it is absolutely crucial that we reclaim. And again, as you said with, it all starts with conception, preconception, the way we're nourishing ourselves. I mean, it doesn't start with the birth, the birth process.
It starts with the way we lead our lives, the way we choose to, you know, who our friends are, who our circle is, who our influence is, what we're putting into our body, whether it be food or information before we even get pregnant, what partner we choose, which I love.
How Cammy Birthdroy Johnson, she will just lay it down. Like, who you fucking. Like,
who are you sleeping with? Who are these men you're calling in? Like, what quality of sperm is coming in? And it's so true though.
Speaker E: She's the best.
EMILY: She's literally the best. I'm probably going to release her episode in a week or two.
Speaker E: Great.
EMILY: She's lovely. Well, I want to just give you time to say anything else that you would like, anything on your heart, any thing of your message that you would like to share,
and then also just once again, kind of touch on your offerings and where people can find you.
Speaker E: We have been so inundated with fear porn to be afraid of everything,
to be afraid of invisible particles that nobody can see jumping from person to person. And we've been so inundated with things that don't make sense and inundated with the idea that our bodies are so frail, and yet some people with intention are able to get their bodies to regenerate tissue that has been excised through surgery.
So we are far more powerful than we know. And one of the more powerful elements to our existence is our mind. What do we think?
So what we think the body often cooperates with. You know, if we're terrified and we think we're frail, the Body can often say, oh, I got it. I'm on it.
But if we choose what goes into our minds and how we use our minds, I think we're going to see very different outcomes. So we are emerging from, you know, pretty major global psyop, and we're emerging from it.
And not everybody is ready to embrace the idea that we were duped. Not everybody. But those that are, let's get together and let's get together and create something new and better.
And, you know, maternity services, it's just a service. That's all it is. It's a crappy one. It's a crappy service. If you don't want to use it, don't use it.
If you want to use it, use it. You know, just like some fast food places serve garbage. And if you like it, when you're going to go get it, if you don't do it.
EMILY: But don't go there thinking that you're going to be saved and rescued from, I mean, death. It really also. It also just boils down to our.
EMILY: Fear of death and the taboo, how.
EMILY: We don't talk about death and birth and death. They're both hidden away in a hospital, medicated and numbed. We don't give reverence to either.
But this idea that if we go to the hospital, we will be safe, that is an illusion.
Speaker E: Their primary product is the illusion of safety. Yeah, it's not necessarily safe. Most times it isn't.
They're better. Maybe not now, but for a while they were better than they used to be. I wouldn't say they are now, but it's the illusion of safety. That's their primary product that they sell you.
And where you see that everywhere, everything that reinforces that message, every movie, every TV show is, oh, thank goodness you're at the hospital because of the safety.
And I really oppose the idea that let's just tell women they can just go decline or just say no. Well, it doesn't work that way most of the time. Or that you can go there and get what you want.
Well, it depends on what you want. If you want, you know, this gorgeous rib steak with caramelized onions. Well, you don't go to McDonald's because it's not on the menu.
And you just say, well, go back in the kitchen and get it for me. Well, they can't. It's not in the kitchen. You don't go to the cesarean store and say, I want this spiritual physiological birth where I'm upright and the twinkle lights are on.
It's not on the menu. They don't have it and they wouldn't know how to cook it if they did.
EMILY: So true.
EMILY: And you know, I don't feel bad about this, but I like, I have an insane skill set when it comes to what patients rights are and knowing how the system works and like being able to be an advocate just because I worked on the other side of the curtain for so long.
But I don't want to do it.
I don't want to work in the hospital. I do not call in clients that want to birth in the hospital. I will go with them if we have to go, but it's.
I'm not interested in what's on their menu. I'm not interested in having to be this like, guardian. Like, I'm just not interested in that. I know there's such a better way.
Speaker E: There is a better way. And then if a medical situation develops, well, that's why they exist, right? Medical facility offering medical services for medical situations.
And wouldn't it be wonderful if they could do it with respect and dignity every time?
EMILY: Yeah. Yes, it would.
EMILY: Well, Billy, I really appreciate your time. Lovely chatting with you.
Speaker E: I'm so happy to meet you and have this time with you. It's been wonderful. Thank you.
EMILY: Yeah,
I've been. It's on my to do list. Is that Reclaiming Birth Conference up in Canada?
I heard your presentation was just like a mic drop moment. Everybody talks about it.
Not surprised.
Speaker E: Well, I'm grateful they keep inviting me back. So it'll be wonderful this year. And if your listeners are interested, they can go to BillyHarrigan.com and look at the application process.
Come join us for the next cohort. Yeah, the neighbor. Come be a more useful human. Yes.
EMILY: And I will link everything in the show notes. Thank you, Billy, so much for your time today.
Speaker E: Thank you. Was wonderful. Thank you.
BILLIE: Thank you for listening through to the end. I do hope you found good medicine in today's episode and that it encourages.
EMILY: Your own soul evolution.
BILLIE: 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 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 website.
As always, I host Women's Circles once a month at my home in southern 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 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 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 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 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.
I am also interested in sharing your.
EMILY: Contribution to our soul evolution.
BILLIE: 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.
