This is The Guardian.

Hi, I'm Shiuing Kala, and I'm Lucy Osborne.

You're listening to The Birth Pupers, a new six-part series from The Guardian Investigates.

Just before we start, this series contains references to baby loss and maternal harm.

It's 2013. Lauren is an actor and Chris is a session musician in a band.

For some reason, today, he's dressed as a pirate.

I was cast in his best friend's music video.

We met at a video shoot, very typical LA thing.

And I look over and he walks in and I thought, oh my gosh, that sexy pirate right there is

my guy. And I was dressed as a cat. They had dressed me as like kind of a sexy kitty. And so he

said later that he saw me and he was like, that sexy kitty is mine. So we were both kind of

thinking the same thing. Something with her and I just, I don't know, it just worked. It clicked.

And it went from a little coffee date to spending every single day together,

to starting businesses together, and 12 years later, here we are.

Not long after they met, they realized they were both tired of L.A.

That they wanted something very different from life.

So they bought a trailer and moved to Joshua Tree National Park.

Picture, cactuses, a vast, rocky desert under a dramatic blue sky.

My goal for my life was to be basically wild and free.

Rome the land, barefooted, you know, in the sand and the cactus.

Just being a part of nature was huge for me.

That was relaxing to us, you know, to just be able to like read a book, chill, walk around

...