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 we have first-time mom Rachel whose minimalist approach to life I've found quite inspiring.

She tells the beautiful story of her off-the-grid free birth, and we have an important discussion

on vaginal tearing and the cultural implications behind it.

I remember like as a teenager and just a young person my only thoughts around birth really were fearful and

Remember my mom's birth story. She birt's in the hospital naturally but with some

interventions but just the part about her hemorrhaging and having all the

blood it just was a part that stood out to me so much. So I always had this sort of fear around it and I think I did want to have kids someday, but mostly that fear is what stood out to me.

And I didn't think about it a whole lot more than that.

But fast forward to, I think it was about two and a half years ago. I was invited to attend my first birth and

that's actually the only birth I've attended besides my own. My friend's son I was having

her third baby, and they called me up at 5 in the morning, and I came over and she was just laying on the couch, and it was just her and Melissa and I was rubbing her feet and it was really casual and just such a casual thing you know and then all the sudden she got up on her knees and kneeled on the couch and birthed her baby and she did have a

midwife come over but it was like honestly the most easy birth I've ever witnessed well the only birth

but it's a great starter yeah birth I'm

like a great starter. Yeah totally I'm like wow what an awesome easy birth that's what it can be like okay so that was in my mind and then really just like having animals, having

goats and watching them birth every year and that kind of gave me a flavor of like, okay, birth is a pretty easy thing. That's something that happens in nature like all the time without complications. It's just how it goes and

I had lived with this T. P. Community, this T. P. Village, before actually meeting my

partner and had lived with a couple really dear friends there who are mothers

and they birth their children and tipps out in the forest

and just did it naturally, raise their kids up that way, you know, do like elimination and

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