45. Birth Stories: Rewriting the Narrative

Commune with Jeff Krasno

Commune Media

Health & Fitness, Society & Culture

4.6 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Think for a moment about the stories you tell yourself about childbirth… None of us remember our own births, and many of us don’t even know our mother’s (or father’s) story of how we were born. And the births we hear about are usually the dramatic or traumatic, because a smooth, easy birth doesn’t make much of a story. What’s more, the way babies are born in movies and on TV certainly doesn’t help paint a picture of diversity and nuance in labor… you don’t see many women in a birth tub or crawling around on all fours on Grey’s Anatomy. In fact the power of the imagery most of us have – a woman on her back, screaming bloody murder – is more than pernicious… it is a recipe for stalled labor. In today’s episode, guest host Schuyler Grant attempts to change that imagery, starting with the story of her birth day. If you are pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant, check out Schuyler's new Commune course, Empowered Birth! onecommune.com/birth" Learn more about Commune courses and events at onecommune.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Commune, where each week we explore the ideas and practices that bring us together
0:12.5	and help us lead healthy and purpose-filled lives. I'm Skylar Grant filling in for your
0:18.2	regular host and my beloved baby daddy, Jeff Krasno.
0:22.8	I can't think of anything that brings us together more and inspires deep self-inquiry
0:29.1	about purpose and the true meaning of health than pregnancy and childbirth.
0:35.1	There's also not a time when fully formed adults can feel more confused and
0:40.1	totally unprepared. This is what inspired me to host a totally new type of commune course called
0:46.8	Empowered Birth, a 21-day guide to pregnancy, childbirth, and early postpartum. This course
0:53.9	taps the knowledge of some of the world's
0:56.0	most respected pre and postnatal experts, covering everything from nutrition and movement practices
1:01.8	to managing pain and navigating postpartum depression. If you're pregnant or thinking about getting
1:08.2	pregnant, I highly recommend you head on over to Onecommun.com to sign up,
1:13.0	and the course is completely free from August 12th to September 1st.
1:17.5	As we were recording the more than 80 video segments, yes, 80 video segments for the course,
1:24.4	we asked the experts and the yogis and honestly anyone we could stick in front of
1:29.7	the camera for the story of their birth because I think birth stories are super powerful. When I was
1:37.5	pregnant with our first daughter, I dragged Jeff, not quite kicking in screaming, but not entirely enthusiastically, to a childbirth
1:46.8	workshop with the matriarch of the homebirth movement, Ina Mae Gaskin.
1:51.5	Ina Mae is one of my heroes, but her first book, Spiritual Midwifery, was a little too hippie-dippy,
1:58.2	even for me. But her second book, Ina Mae's Guide to Childbirth,
2:02.6	became my Bible. There's some really great practical advice in this book, but mostly it's a book
2:08.6	of women's birth stories. And reading those stories had a profound effect on me. I consider myself
	...

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