Welcome to the My Essential Birth podcast. I'm Courtney and I'm Stephanie and we're professional

doulas, childbirth educators and the creators of My Essential Birth, the holistic, empowering,

online childbirth education course helping mothers everywhere confidently achieve their best birth.

So join us each week as we share tips and advice for all things pregnancy birth and beyond.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you can be the first to get new content.

And head over to www.mysentialbirth.com for more information about our birth course and to join a community of Mamas just like you.

I love this review from our reviewer of the week, Alicia X9127. She said, finally had my best birth. I can't thank my essential birth enough

for giving me the confidence and guidance and helping me achieve my birth goals. I started listening

to the podcast as soon as I found out I was

pregnant with my third child. I had an emergency C-section with my first and a successful feedback with an

epidural with my second. I'm like deja vu. Yeah, this sounds like you so far. Did you see what

right this? Did you secretly write this? So she said, I knew for my third and last baby, I wanted an unmedicated birth. I wanted to be in

control of my labor and delivery. I considered it to be a truly personal challenge. And I was

determined to be as educated as possible to give myself the best chances of making it happen.

At 37 weeks on the dot, I woke up with cramps

and started contracting. I labored at home as long as I felt comfortable walking and squatting

and constantly moving. When I got to the hospital, I was checked into my surprise. I was only

two centimeters dilated. Instead of letting that get me down or scare me, I walked and squatted and worked even harder

to get to five centimeters.

I listened to my body and knew my contractions were strong enough to make labor progress

if I did the work.

I was able to have my birth plan followed to a T and wasn't afraid to say no to

...