#405: "Call The Neighbour" Birthing Wisdom From Traditional Birth Companion, Billie Harrigan
Birthing Instincts
Dr. Stuart Fischbein + Midwife Blyss Young
4.5 • 631 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2025
⏱️ 91 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Blyss and Stu delve into a rich conversation with Billie Harrigan, who discusses her role as a traditional birth companion and the importance of home birth. Billie offers insights into the origins and flaws of regulated midwifery, the rise of obstetric violence, and the increasing stillbirth rates. She emphasizes the need for resilience and trauma-informed care, and shares her approach to prenatal and postpartum care. Billie shares about her training program for aspiring traditional birth companions and underscores the critical role of community support and autonomy in childbirth.
About Billie Harrigan:
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.
Website: www.billieharrigan.com / www.birthtraumaontario.ca / www.harriganhive.com / www.thehivecollective.life
Instagram: @billieharrigan / @birthtraumaontario
Resources
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor
In This Episode
Understanding Trauma-Informed Care
Empathy in Medical Training
Midwifery vs. Obstetrics
The Role of the Birth Companion
The Importance of a Calm Birth Environment
Challenges in Modern Midwifery
Obstetric Violence and Resilience
Rising Stillbirth Rates and Systemic Issues
This show is supported by
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- Website: birthinginstincts.com/birthingblyss.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Call-in line: 805-399-0439
- Podcast webpage: birthinginstinctspodcast.com
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Burling Instincts Podcast. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Dr. Stewart Fishbein, community-based practicing obstetrician and longtime advocate for birth choices. |
| 0:10.0 | And I'm Bliss Young, a licensed midwife. |
| 0:13.0 | Join us in our conversational style podcast where we talk about everything birth. |
| 0:17.0 | Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry, but we're happy that you're here. So, |
| 0:20.9 | here we go. Good morning, Bliss. Good morning, Stu. Good afternoon, good evening and good |
| 0:28.5 | middle of the night to everyone else. I'm always happy. I'm always happy about Wednesdays, |
| 0:33.4 | and I hope that people listening are happier than I am because that we're here. |
| 0:38.8 | Because I do look forward to it. |
| 0:40.7 | Sometimes it's a little like rush to get it in or because you're moving or I'm on traveling or we're doing stuff. |
| 0:47.2 | But, you know, it's something that brings us together every week. |
| 0:51.9 | And for that I'm grateful. |
| 0:53.7 | Do you notice anything? |
| 0:57.0 | You're in hope. That's right. Yeah. There's a bit different background for you, those of you who are on Patreon. Yeah. It's still very artistically done, though, with the towel hanging there and the white bowl. That's the sink, I guess. |
| 1:11.2 | But it's artistically done. |
| 1:13.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:14.1 | It's very cute in here. |
| 1:16.6 | It's very cute on the outside too. |
| 1:18.2 | Once you got the mud off of it. |
| 1:21.3 | You know, so I came up to Baker's Field after my move, which actually went really, really |
| 1:27.3 | well. I was so supported, |
| 1:29.4 | Stu. I barely, I mean, I packed obviously, and I packed Hope, which was a lot of work. |
... |
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