Welcome to the Free Birth Podcast, a supportive space for people who are learning, exploring,

and celebrating their autonomous choices in childbirth.

Together, while unpacked truths, share personal stories, and claim our ability to birth freely

and intuitively.

Here's your host, Emily Saldaya.

Today I speak with the incredible Lacey Haynes from London. After consciously conceiving her love

baby with her darling husband, she was thrilled to begin prenatal care with her OB.

After a deeply underwhelming prenatal where she was treated dismissively and told she was on a

conveyor belt, she switched to a midwifery program. The midwives also had very little to offer

in wave individualized care, and eventually towards the end of her pregnancy was led to the choice

to go alone with her husband and dear friend. Lacey had a weekend long champion of a labor

and was interviewed by the Guardian on her Free Birth, which went viral overnight and has

brought an onslaught of commentary and attention to her choices.

Flynn, my husband, was in Australia and he was finishing up his paperwork so that he could come

and live legally in the UK with me. And we'd been on the precipice of deciding whether or not we

wanted to create children. And I think we both knew that we wanted to, but simultaneously,

we're afraid of what it would do to our lives and how it would impact the lives that we had

that we already thoroughly enjoyed. And we knew though that we didn't want to live a life without

doing this sacred creative task, the most creative thing that you can do with another person create

life. So we decided that when he returned to London and his visa was all set, we would begin our

journey into making a love baby. So that's what we called it. We said, let's make a love baby.

And when he returned from Australia, well actually I'll go back a little bit while he was away,

...