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Self-Advocacy in Childbirth

How do you stand for yourself during pregnancy and birth?

How do you navigate a system that may not align with your desires?

How do you engage with your providers and support team to ensure you are seen and honored?

These are BIG questions when you are preparing for birth and absolutely ESSENTIAL if you want an Ecstatic Birth.

In this Conversation to Transform Birth with Women and Newborn Health Specialist, Tamara Hawkins we dive deep into empowerment and self-advocacy in pregnancy and birth.

As Tamara so beautifully articulates, our greatest power does not come from standing strong and fighting for what we want no matter who gets in our way… (though I personally do love that level of ferocity!) but from connecting to the humanity within ourselves and others.

Every Woman Can Do This!

Wow.. there is so much inspiration here for our expectant mothers!!

Fierce mom Natalia Rising shares her experiences birthing her 4 children, questioning and navigating the health care system as an immigrant to understand the options that optimized positive outcomes.

Each step of the way, she stood for herself, building confidence in her own body and desires, and experienced transcendent ecstatic and orgasmic pleasure along the way.

Her overarching message for all mothers-to-be:

If I can do this, so can you!

YOU matter!

When it hurts SO bad…

Let’s get real:  More women experience pain than pleasure in birth.

So much of our medical system is built around rescuing women from the intensity of childbirth.

Unfortunately our most common interventions- epidurals, episiotomies, and elective c-sections- all contribute to the experience of MORE pain in the long run, not less. 

What is the antidote?

Against All Odds: An Ecstatic Birth

You may think everything needs to be perfect in order to have an Ecstatic Birth– a loving partner, the perfect birth environment, unwavering support. 

This Conversation to Transform Birth with new mom Anysa Olivera shows that you can transcend ANYTHING if you have prepared with consciousness and commitment.

She had the rug pulled out from her at 35 weeks, losing her partner of 10 years AND she birthed during the height of the pandemic.

Despite all this she was able to drop in deep for her daughter’s birth.

She shares–

“I made love to myself in the early hours of my birth, moved slowly and intentionally through my rushes and was surrounded by things that brought me pleasure.

I was in my body.

I was deeply human and animal tethered to this earth plane in no way I had ever been before.

I laughed and was joyful; I was empty and full.

I was lucid and when the time finally came to push my daughter, the ring of fire burned. I met the fire with pleasure as I pushed.

As I knew pushing her head was the climax of my birth journey, in the restful period I was in absolute pleasure.

I even recall looking up at all of the beautiful women around me and saying, “Ladies I feel soooo gooood!

“It was exactly what I had dreamed of.”  

Watch the full interview and discover how, “Against All Odds”, she was able to experience such Ecstasy in Birth.

“P” is for Pleasure and Power and P**?

This guest blog post is by Jenny Braxton, Mama, birth visionary, educator & community leader and ECSTATIC BIRTH PRACTITIONER!

I entered my feminine form through the pelvic bowl of my mother, journeying from her womb out into the world on the day I was born. It was a long and arduous journey, devoid of pleasure.

{Until she held me in her arms, of course. Then let’s hope there was bliss.}

We all start life in a pelvic bowl, in the wombs of our mothers. From there, we are born into the world.

My entrance into the world was imprinted onto my being at a deep level, in what’s known as the limbic brain, that ancient, reptilian part of myself. My imprint was that becoming a mother is difficult and full of pain.

Jenny Braxton

Locating your Fierce Feminine Power

Have you ever struggled to bring your dreams into reality, wondering over and over again… “What is wrong with me?” or “Why can’t I just….?”

(Artwork by Katariina Agnes Fagering)

I know this feeling SO well. And I’ve also known the opposite.. the feeling that NOTHING can stop me, NOTHING can stand in my way of bringing my dream to reality.

Birth has been my biggest teacher, the gateway through which I have come to understand the source of my feminine power.

Announcing Ecstatic Birth Practitioners!

Oooooooo I can’t wait to share what I am about to share!!!
Four years ago I had a vision of lighting up the globe.
One light, passed to several others, passed to many others, passed to all…..

I woke up with a deep knowing in my body that while I can only support a handful of pregnant women at any given time, the key to transforming the landscape of birth lay with practitioners, fierce, visionary women who could hold the vision alongside me.

For any one of us working in this field and going counterculture, bringing pleasure into a realm known for pain, that can feel like lifting an elephant with your pinkie.

But together, side by side, leaning on each other, committed and holding the vision together… wow, we can begin to breathe again.

I am so proud of this moment in time,
the moment in which I get to share with you the fruits of my newest baby–

A simple strategy to elevate your birth experience

Childbirth can be deeply empowering, pleasurable, ecstatic and even orgasmic.

Yet most women experience the opposite.

There is a HUGE  gap between the possibility and the reality.

The gap is not whether or not Ecstatic Births actually exist.

The gap is in how we are raised, our relationships to our bodies, the structures of training and support that exist (or not) for women, the healthcare system, the legal system and so much more.

I see so so many women judging themselves harshly or feeling down in the dumps for not “achieving” this ideal.

That is the heart of the matter right there–

Ecstatic Birth is an IDEAL and ideals are not a measure by which to judge ourselves, but a source of inspiration, elevation.

While bringing the image of the picture perfect birth you have in your mind into reality is incredibly difficult,  (when does life ever conform perfectly to our ideals?) elevating your experience of birth is astoundingly simple.

Let me show you what I mean via this fool-proof 3 step strategy:

How do you prepare for an Ecstatic Birth?

The day your baby is born is one of the most momentous days of your life. Childbirth can be one of the most transformative ecstatic experiences in a woman’s life.

Unfortunately, that is not the typical experience our society is serving up in labor and delivery. Most women emerge from childbirth in a haze, many of them unconscious victims of trauma (as I was). We accept this because that is what we are taught childbirth is meant to be, culturally, religiously, and societally. If we make the same choices as everyone around us, this is what we will usually get.

To have a different experience, a woman must be willing to make different choices, to prepare with her mind, body and soul in a different direction. Ecstatic Births are not the norm (yet) and so it requires a certain ferocity to forge a different path.

Top Ten Reasons Women Birth in Pain (rather than pleasure)

“Why do most people tend to birth in pain rather than in pleasure?”

This is the question I am asked most often when I share about Ecstatic Birth. There isn’t just one answer to this, but a whole host of answers.

I’ve compiled what I see as the top 10 major factors women birth in pain as opposed to pleasure.

Some of them may surprise you…

10. It is our religious inheritance. Remember when Eve took a bite of that apple in the Garden of Eden? Womankind’s punishment for her sin was to suffer through childbirth. To birth any other way would be blasphemous.adam and eve

9. It is our cultural inheritance. Look at all the messages around us- How does the media depict birth? How do the moms around you talk about birth? Overwhelmingly our cultural messages reinforce the idea that birth hurts. Women who have had alternate experiences are often ashamed to speak up and if they do, risked being ostracized or outcast, especially if they speak of experiencing pleasure during birth.

8. We are stuck in our heads. In modern society, our bodies are primarily a means to get our heads from place to place. Mental, rational intelligence is valued above all others and yet you can’t think your way through birth. Birth is a primal full body experience. We must be able to let go of rational thought and get fully into our bodies, feeling each sensation, and be guided by its wisdom.

7. We don’t trust our bodies. In this age of cancer there is an underlying current of fear that our bodies will betray us despite our best intentions. Our bodies seem do things we can’t control and don’t understand yet this is all a symptom of our grand disconnect from ourselves. Our bodies are so wise. They hold primal wisdom, generational wisdom, experiential wisdom, all in addition to our mental rational wisdom. If we can learn to listen and honor that it would change everything.