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. This week we're joined by Lel from Tasmania.

Having suffered a fourth degree tear that required surgery immediately following her unmedicated hospital birth,

she was surprised to find no care providers would support her in a second vaginal birth.

Facing a completely unnecessary and unwanted

C-section, she randomly discovered Free Birth Society's

Instagram page and then this very podcast.

Lel tells us her story of birthing her second child

with just her husband and son by the fire in her home. All right, so with the first birth I was really excited about the actual process of giving birth, but I was really scared about being a mother.

I had a lot of fear around that and so in the lead after the birth I was really nervous about what was going to come after it, but I was excited about the physical aspects of getting birth.

I did a lot of research and really looked into it and I had a lot of sort of bad dreams around the time but nothing to do with a bit but I do think it was my mind just processing what was coming in the future.

And then, so basically I reached the 40 week mark according to the due day that they had given me and then I

was very lucky in that I had a client who was coming to me for massage who was a midwife at the local hospital.

So I was able to ask her to deliver the baby for me and I knew her so well and so she was really involved in the

lead up up to the breath. She did all of our checks, all of our tests, she knew

exactly what I wanted so we could discuss it in depth in the lead up and so when it

actually came to giving birth she didn't have any question for me because we had

spoken about it so often so I felt very safe going into labor with her there with us.

And then she had another assistant midwife who she had chosen so she, which really helped as well obviously because then they were on a similar

level the two of them together so we went into labor and then I labored at home for 10 hours and I was I don't ever

...