Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee Alla Best and I'm here with Ashley Brickter of Birth Smarter.

I'm so excited for this conversation. Ashley, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm also so excited.

This is a topic that has been really, really important to me since I had my first child, which was, as of this recording,

23 and a half years ago, but I remember doing so much preparation ahead of time for her birth.

I have four children. Each of their births was such a hugely different experience from the

others, but I've done a lot of reading. And there is an

overlap between, you know, birth philosophy, birth methods, and patriarchy that I've always

wanted to explore. So Ashley and I met at Alt Summit in 2023, immediately clicked and hit

it off and kind of maybe in our second conversation knew that this

was an episode that needed to happen. So really excited. Could we start off by you just introducing

yourself? Tell us a little bit about where you're from, maybe your education and background

and what brought you to birth smarter and, you know, how you came to do the work that

you do today. Absolutely. So I like leading in my bio with knowing that I've always wanted to be

in the education space. I feel like I show up as an educator first in the world and not starting as

young as three years old when I, like,

told everybody I was going to be a teacher and loved playing with school supplies. And I learned

how to read a book, like, face out. Like, you know, I was like, I can read this way. And it was like,

that's it. That's what you're going to do. And so I pursued that for my entire young adult life. I was the kid

that volunteered at the principal's office in middle school and high school and was very interested

in school policy and administration. And at the same time, I was very interested in babies and

families. And I started babysitting or being a mother's helper when I was, I think,

...