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 the wise and wonderful Dominique. She chose a home birth with a

midwife and Dula for her first in the Bronx in New York.

But upon reflection after the birth, she realized she would have preferred to have just been alone with her husband.

So when she became pregnant with her second son and moved to Texas, it was an easy and

intuitive decision for her to have a mostly unassisted pregnancy and then free birth.

We talk about breastfeeding while in labor and what it was like for Dominique to tandem nurse her two young children for two years.

So my decision to have a home birth with my first son kind of came about a few

years prior to me getting pregnant. I'm not really sure what the initial

event that sparked it was. I just remember being on YouTube and I ran into some videos

about home birth and natural childbirth. I learned all about midwifery and what

a dula is and I was so fascinated I just kept reading books and watching more videos I ran into

some documentaries and so when I did get pregnant with my first son I knew beyond

a shadow of a doubt that that's what I

wanted to do. My partner however at the time we weren't married. He was not at all

in support of home birth. He was like that that's crazy, like, no, I don't think it's safe. So I said, okay, let's watch some documentaries together. We also read the birth partner by Penny Simpkin and I'm trying to remember I think we watched

the business of being born a few other documentaries and after that he was more on board and we had some conversations.

We took a six week holistic childbirth preparation course.

So that was really intense.

It was three hours every week and they went over

...