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. On this episode we have an interview with author and free-birther Laura Shanley.

After birthing all five of her children in her home with no

medical assistance, she went on to write the book on unassisted childbirth.

We get into her personal story from having child protective services take away her firstborn for five days

to an unexpected footling breach delivery to birthing completely alone as a personal challenge

Laura really has done it all. We talk about loss, birth

politics and painless birth. Her book has inspired many to claim their birthing power

and say no to routine care.

I want to hear from you.

If you have a question, comment, story to share or an

episode idea find me on freebirth society.com and send me a message. Also

reviews on iTunes are awesome. It helps spread the

podcast to more listeners. Let's build and connect this community. So in the first half of your book that's really focused on the information heavy parts. It was

really interesting for me as a birthkeeper to read because I noticed more than any

birth book I've ever read, it triggered so much secondary trauma that I have of every experience that you were bringing up every intervention and really illuminating the truth

behind the intentions of these interventions.

I mean, I was pretty blown away. I was crying and really being called to

reprocess a lot of stuff that I have seen and I was I was grateful for that because as a birth worker I'm only

recently starting to come to terms with how much abuse I have really

witnessed. abuse I have really witnessed, you know, which is something that I don't think

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