Welcome to the Free Birth Podcast, a supportive space for people who are learning,

exploring and celebrating their autonomous choices in childbirth.

Together, we'll unpack truths, share personal stories,

and claim our ability to birth freely and intuitively. Here's your host, Emily Sal day. Today on the show we have Sarah from Georgia who shares the story of birthing her first child.

She tells the journey that led her to choose free birth and the shock of having an unexpectedly

quick labor.

Four years before I was pregnant with my daughter, her name's Maya, I had a dream that I would give birth to a child in a large Victorian house in a bright open bathroom with beautiful tile floors and in the ceramic bathtub alone and I picked this baby up and held this baby in my hands and we made eye

contact and we both fell in love with each other and everything was perfect.

Like the cord was attached, this baby was breathing, and in my dream the baby came as a boy and my daughter, you know, girl. But it just, there's

something really powerful about that dream. So when she came into my world and into my

pregnancy I just knew that it would be different than the way that most people go about

a pregnancy and a birth and you know it took so many different it took a lot of different stages for me

because in the beginning it was like well I'm gonna you know focus on me for a little while

first trimester gonna be. I don't need an

ultrasound. I feel I feel like I'm just going to get through this this time, you know, I

got through the the nausea and all the different discomforts of growing a baby and creating, you know, creating a space for them inside of me and myself spiritually and emotionally.

So I didn't bring anyone into my world at that point and I decided kind of

I knew the hospital realm wasn't going to be for me at all because I've had really terrible

experiences using the alopathic system in the past where I felt like used or

unserved you know I'd go in and I'd think like well this is the way and then I leave feeling kind of taken advantage of so I knew that in birth and in this period of time I wasn't going to use that system to get my care because I didn't think

I don't think of it as care and I didn't think of it as care at that time.

So I was living in Asheville at that time and I went to a place called New Dawn Midwifery.

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