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The Radiant Mission
The Radiant Mission
128. Breaking Free from the Medical Model: Dr. Nathan Riley on the Sacredness of Birth
A transformative conversation unfolds about the intersection of childbirth, spirituality, and the medical model. Dr. Nathan Riley shares his experiences transitioning from traditional OBGYN practice to advocating for midwifery and home births. His reflections challenge listeners to explore their own perceptions of birth and healing.
• Exploring Dr. Nathan Riley's journey to midwifery
• Examining the shortcomings of the medical industrial complex
• Importance of empowering women in their childbirth decisions
• Discussing the emotional and spiritual aspects of birth
• Navigating societal misconceptions surrounding childbirth
• Importance of community and education in pregnancy
• Understanding the sacred connection in the birthing process
• Addressing fears and misconceptions about home births
• Spiritual dimensions of health and healing
This episode is a must-listen for parents, birth workers, and anyone passionate about reclaiming the natural power of childbirth.
📌 Connect with Dr. Nathan Riley:
🔗 Instagram: @nathanrileyobgyn
🔗 Website: BornFreeMethod.com
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Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Toomey and we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through your life and with your relationship with Christ. We have been in a series on being countercultural and, as listeners of this show will know, we love talking about birth and, of course, god's design for birth. And our guest today has a really unique story and has broken free from the medical model when it comes to birth.
Speaker 1:Dr Nathan Riley is a board certified OBGYN who's left the medical industrial complex and really due to his disillusionment with the standard of care that was provided there within that conventional maternity care model. And this was hard because going with the flow of the hospital-based practices was providing him financial security but, on the other hand, standing in his truth and from having sat with over a thousand births and connecting with women and their families, this provided him a lifestyle with more alignment with his own journey as a father and deepening his connection with his wife, caring for people in the way that he had anticipated long before stepping into practice. So Dr Riley now focuses his time on upholding the traditional practice of midwifery. He supports midwives as a collaborative physician for midwives of all varieties in over 20 states, and he is an advocate for home birth and still attends births for those in need. He boasts a C-section rate of less than 5%, which is one of the best in the US, and his mission is to uphold midwifery as the art that it is and to honor birth as a sacred process and the transition into parenthood as a spiritual transformation.
Speaker 1:So Dr Riley is focused on empowering women to have their babies on their own terms, using nature as our guide, and he also helps fathers embrace the opportunity to connect with birth and their partners through pregnancy and birth, encouraging them to go deeper versus distancing themselves from the stigmatized but magical rite of passage. Dr Riley is a father of two, the second of whom was born at home, and he is proudly married to his high school sweetheart. In his spare time, he walks in the woods, makes dad jokes, paints and drinks coffee with amazing people. You can find Nathan on Instagram at NathanRileyOBGYN, or there are some other resources I'm going to post in the show notes for this for his other Instagram accounts, like Born Free Method.
Speaker 2:But Nathan slash, dr Riley, whatever you want me to call you Nathan's good yeah.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. That was a great, great introduction. I could have written it myself, I think.
Speaker 1:I think you might have had a little hand in it. Now I'm going to give our audience the caveat that today's episode is a little bit different than usual. Usually we jump into things and just kind of start talking, but it sounds to me, from what I've seen on Instagram, that you have been on a lot of podcasts for interviews with a lot of folks that agree with a lot of what you're saying, or all of it, and something that you specifically requested for the first six months of 2025 is that you would only agree to come on a podcast if the person or people didn't agree with everything that you had to say, and it was more of kind of a healthy debate type of format. Is that accurate? An accurate summary?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're actually the first person to take me up on it. I had a number of people in sort of a um, a very um, what's the word? Kind of an uncanny sort of, uh, suspicious way. Uh, want to bump our my next interviews up about five months. So, uh, you know, I I appreciate the opportunity always to come on and to really and to really be objective, I guess, and and humble when we speak about some of these topics, because I certainly don't have all the answers and and, frankly, the reason I posed that challenge to people which I thought would be like the people with real conventional OBGYN podcasts would bring me out and just want to like, harangue me. I would be OK with it, but the reason is that there is a real lack of curiosity and and I really don't know, like I really don't have any answers, and the more I'm doing this, the less answers are really coming to me. More questions I'm generating, less answers are really coming to me, more questions I'm generating. So I would love for people to appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Somebody who says that they're speaking the truth I don't mean the capital t truth like something that you experience deep in prayer or in your sleep and you're like whoa, that was a weird thing. I can't prove it, but it happened. Um, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, like the data shows and the science shows, it's like you've lost your way, because we really can't ever know the ultimate truth of this stuff, this stuff, especially when we're talking about childbirth. So so, let's let it rock, let's just like, let's just riff for a while and have some fun with this, and I will be happy to say I don't know if you can push me into a corner that that forces my hand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I told you before we started that there is a lot that I do agree with you on. There are a lot of things that I see your posts and I'm like, yes, yes, that resonates, I get it. I also really appreciate what you're trying to do, what your mission is now that you've left the system. So it's interesting because you, five or 10 years ago, I'm sure we would have had a lot more to disagree on, and it sounds like you want to have those conversations. But I bet you all the OBGYNs are scared because they know that they don't know.
Speaker 2:Obgyns are scared because they know that they don't know. No, that's actually a really great place to start, which is if somebody is going to challenge me. It's hard. This is the reason that these conversations don't happen. I'm not advertising something that is completely goofy, that is not in direct experience right for many women who've had babies. I'm saying that there's probably a way of going about this that does not beg for more intervention, more pharmaceuticals and more interruption. That's all that I'm.
Speaker 2:My whole jam comes down to this and, frankly, whenever people do go into a sort of debate forum, we don't really have those anymore. I kind of wish we did, but they would say well, you know, it's on me or you or whoever to prove I'm using air quotes for those listening to prove to me that Pitocin is bad or that circumcision is bad, whatever, induction of labor is bad and, by the way, none of these things are categorically bad or good. It's for this individual who's here. This is not the thing that they want, nor do I think it's actually the thing that's beneficial. But the point is that if you're going to say, if you're going to put that pressure on me to demonstrate that Pitocin is patently bad for all women going through childbirth, that's the wrong question.
Speaker 2:The burden of evidence is on the person who wants to deviate from the natural order of things. And this gets into the spirituality piece, or even the religious piece, which I think we in the medical community have become so far removed from that. We have stopped even listening to our own internal voice. Or you know, like again, what I was saying is like something that came to you, that like moment, that epiphany that happened to you, like it's okay to listen to that voice, even if the doctors and the nurses and whatever don't agree with it or the data doesn't support it. That's you, like I want to know that, and that ultimately becomes the most real thing in the world. So the burden of evidence is on the person who wishes to deviate from nature. And we've deviated so far from nature that I don't even think we understand properly how basic biology works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I would like to let's dig into the spiritual aspect a little bit. You know that this is a Christian podcast. I get the sense from what I see and again, this is me making an assumption right based on not knowing that you and I are both talking about spirituality, but in a different way. Perhaps you know when I refer to and this is where I need you to correct me if I'm wrong but when I refer to having a spiritual experience, I'm having an experience with Yahweh God, the God of the Bible. When you're talking about having a spiritual experience, who is your spiritual experience with?
Speaker 2:That's a really great question and I really appreciate the question. And you notice my eyes are deviating left and right because I don't know if I have a really good answer for that. I guess it's probably important. You know, if I'm going to slam the medical doctors and whatnot, I have to relate to them as well. You know, you get into this motif of understanding the human experience and you cut it up into its constituent parts and you decide what you like and what you don't like, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for the mystery.
Speaker 2:And when I was growing up as a young child, I was never brought to church. I was never really. It wasn't never a part of our holiday experience, like around Christmas. It was something that my mother and father had was a Lutheran. My mother specifically had a real hard time remaining in her faith, you know, staying with her faith that she was brought up with. After spending so much time in the pediatric ICU and seeing so many children die, that sometimes draws people closer to God. For her it pushed her away from her religion and she became what I guess you would call agnostic although I don't think that people use that term appropriately and as a consequence of that when she and my father had children. We weren't brought in, but there was a lot of questions circulating and most of our family is very religious, so we had the opportunity to ask them lots of questions and I um, at an early age, started having some very, very unusual experiences that brought me back to what you might call God and what I might call God, but I haven't put a. I never put a label on it. It was this sort of connection to something greater than myself which was a bit of a surrender.
Speaker 2:And when I was in churches, there was one in particular in Pittsburgh, where I grew up, where we went to a. Which holiday was it? It must have been around, you know what? It was probably around Three Kings, which is an Orthodox, you know, celebrating the exact same thing, but it was, it's like, based on the lunar calendar, I think something like that.
Speaker 2:Anyways, we were in a church and it was in this like old cathedral, where there was a pipe organ and there was was humming, the same tone, and I was like, whoa, this is, this is a lot, this is great. Like you can feel, like you, can you get it? You're like oh, I understand why people go into these beautiful cathedrals and my wife is Mexican and going into those cathedrals there it was the same thing, like there's so much power there, um, and, and so these like little, these little bits of information, of experience, I suppose, kind of stuck with me. And then I had the joy of sitting in childbirth and I was like God, you know God, god comes into my mouth more than I guess. I would even guess there's something that will happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah right, right, right. There's something here that is so much more important than what I learned about the human experience in this basic biology of anatomy and physiology. And even if we were to go way, way back in time, there was this tension between the people who wanted to cut open bodies and there was a church in the state which didn't want us to do that because you know we would be disrupting this person's. You know posthumous experience after they die. But then you know people like Descartes and some others. They convinced the church that hey, you know, the soul is separate from the body, so we can operate on the body and cut it up and understand its parts without ever disrupting the soul or the spirit.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective the pendulum hasn't really swung back to the center, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, the pendulum hasn't really swung back to the center. And so the practice of medicine has been a confrontation to a lot of spirituality, and so much so that if something isn't fixed by a pharmaceutical or a surgical steel, like a scalpel, it's considered woo-woo or it's considered religious quacks or whatever. You know, it's considered woo-woo or it's considered, oh, you're religious quacks or whatever. And that was actually a big part of what drew me away from the conventional model. It's like, guys, there is far more here to Rebecca's birth experience than the scalpels and the pharmaceuticals and the vital signs Like that was, for all intents and purposes, a spiritual experience as much as that was what they would believe is a medical procedure.
Speaker 2:So I found this strange tension, not being a religious person, but witnessing this, the magic, I mean truly the awe of childbirth and realizing I don't know if I can do it that way, because I'm here with these women in the midwives and whatnot who actually are treating this more as a spiritual rite of passage, a conversation with God, one foot in the grave I mean, I've heard all of these terms and I've adopted them myself which compels you to in the very least, reconfigure yourself around the religiosity of life itself. So I know that's not the answer that you were maybe expecting, but perhaps in 30 years I will be able to put a label to it. What's interesting is, even though I was not raised as most Christians were, when I got into the end-of-life care which is my fellowship, training in hospice and palliative medicine the Christians loved me because I somehow get it, but I came about it in a very, very long, roundabout way, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you are right there, that you understand that God exists and that there's something more, but maybe there is something blocking you from just, maybe it's an experience that you have yet to have with Jesus himself to say I am the way and the truth. Like you're, it sounds like you have a very good understanding of christianity and what it, what it is for the most part, um, given that you weren't completely, you know, raised in it, like you said. But yeah, that's, that's very interesting, because you get that this, this, there's a spiritual side of things, and now there's like another step deeper. I don't know, man, I think the Lord's calling you to something and maybe through this he'll pull it out a little bit.
Speaker 2:I'm open. I'm open, I like that, oh, that's great.
Speaker 1:So is it Jesus that holds you back, or what is it?
Speaker 2:Do you mean like, what? Like, what is it? Do you mean like like what, what like what. What is stopping you from?
Speaker 1:being like I understand that there is a god. This experience is bringing women birth.
Speaker 1:We'll use birth as the example, you could use end of life care too, but birth is bringing women to this point of where they are breaking into themselves and becoming a new version of themselves when they go from that maiden to mother, and they have many times, like you said, women have spiritual experiences with God during that. And I guess my question is more of I don't know. I feel like you're saying there's something there and there is a higher power, but you're just not sure of exactly who he is. But I don't know. Is that an assumption? Yeah, yeah, Because I want to add one more thing. You are my only guest that did not share a Bible verse. My only guest that has not that did not share a Bible verse. Even Dr Stu, who is not a. He is technically Jewish, but not a not practicing, even he gave me a Bible verse.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious. I'm curious why.
Speaker 2:And I'm on, why, well, there was something very scary that happened to me, um, why, well, there was something very scary that happened to me, um, and it's not like a near death experience, nothing like that. It was, um, when I was about eight. Uh, let's see, how old was I, what? How old are we when we're in like first grade, like seven or something?
Speaker 1:Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2:Um, I was, uh, seven or eight years old, probably in first. It had to be later than that. It seems that seems too young. Anyways, I was seven or eight years old, probably in first. It had to be later than that. It seems that seems too young.
Speaker 1:Anyways, I was very probably under 10.
Speaker 2:And I was in a minivan probably my best friend at the time and his mom had asked me at some point about religion and I was a little kid I had no real connection to I don't even know if I had the language. I said, oh no, we don't go to church. I went back to like playing with my things and she said, oh well, so you haven't been baptized? And I said I don't know what that is. She was like oh well, you're probably going to. She said something along I don't want to misquote her, but it was something like you're me. It actually made me afraid to speak about religion for at least a decade, wow, probably until college, and I had some like really cool liberal arts teachers that like made it fun to talk about again, so that could have been an impediment. I don't think that that's like something that is an active impediment for me. Um, what I will say is that, having been out in California, I took care of so many different people of so many different faiths that I was like God. This is like I actually started envying people for having such a close connection to some organization around this conversation of spirituality, you know, and there were Buddhists, there was Jewish, of spirituality, you know, and there were Buddhists. There was Jewish, buddhist, hindu, I mean, you name it. We had such a colorful diaspora represented in California and they all seem to say the same thing but they use different language to say it and I thought there was some beauty in that, so much so that it actually maybe felt like gosh, there isn't actually a right one here, and maybe I'm wrong. I'm okay that, perhaps I'm wrong, but it seemed like the most religious people were totally cool with all of the other religions and they all were like we're all talking about the same thing and I was like man, that's kind of cool. I hadn't really had a reasonable conversation like a heart-to-heart conversation in that way, like I hadn't really had a like a reasonable conversation, you know, like a like a heart to heart conversation in that way. And I was having that with my, my clients, in fact, one of my good friends. They're they're still in San Diego, they're super religious. We actually went to to their church after the birth of their daughter.
Speaker 2:I was their birth their doctor, that was on call, and there was something about him describing like surfing, that was not in San Diego, that that he was like like oh, this is something you do or you're going to burn in hell. And I was like whoa, there's not a lot of love there. But, like in this new iteration of my sort of adult life, definitely there's so much more love there. So maybe it's just a gradual pull, but there's not like an intentional barrier or anything I can identify as an obstacle. It's just, I've got a lot of friends with different religious um upbringings and the people I love the most are those that are like um, like they really believe it, and they also I don't know if this is the right way to put it, but it's like they don't take it too seriously Cause like they have such a close connection themselves and they're like, yeah, like you'll, you'll, you'll get there, or something like that. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I do think you'll get there. That's interesting what you had to say about the kind of all religions. We kind of refer to that as having almost even a one world religion, which is what the Catholic Pope is kind of trying to usher in a bit which is there's a prophetic aspect to that from a biblical context, that there will be that push at a point in time from a prophetic standpoint of a one-world church or one-world religion. So it's kind of interesting when you look at it from the history of Christianity and the history of faith. But I want to speak to what that person said to you about baptism, which first of all, is false. Baptism doesn't make you anything. Baptism isn't going to make you go to heaven.
Speaker 1:From a biblical standpoint, baptism is an outward reflection of an inward choice. So it's kind of like a marriage ceremony. When you get married you're married on paper, right, but when you have a marriage ceremony you are showing it's a public confession to others that you're choosing to love that person for the rest of your and their lives. Baptism, like I said, from a New Testament biblical perspective, is supposed to be the same way you have chosen to follow Jesus Christ or Yeshua, however you want to pronounce his name, because that's a whole other conversation of how Jesus' name has progressed linguistically. But you're a follower of Jesus and you're showing others that you're a follower of Jesus and that you have accepted him into your life. Then you get baptized. But because a lot of these Orthodox, or Roman Catholic, greek Orthodox, like you said, I'm just, you know, in general kind of Polish, romanian Orthodox churches, they still have a lot of traditions of child baptism and it's kind of honestly, it's just a little superstitious. It's like let's sprinkle a little water, protect them, just in case you never know. So I get what you're saying.
Speaker 1:From the perspective of there's so many religions, you know how would I or how could I choose just one? And I think that what I would use as my argument if we were having a debate which we kind of are, is that the Bible teaches us that Yeshua Jesus is the only way to God, and that's in John chapter 14. And that's in John chapter 14. Now Islam denies that Jesus is the son of God, but they also acknowledge that he walked the earth and other historical texts. Jesus is actually one of the most cited in historical texts that he existed. So it wasn't like people just made this up and say he existed.
Speaker 1:There's all this corroborating text to say Jesus was a real person and for me, from a faith perspective, I think the strongest argument is that his disciples followed him and spread the word of who he was and the miracles that he performed, to the point of being brutally murdered themselves. Like all of them died horrific deaths. Like would you follow? Would you say that someone did or was something? They weren't? If it meant that you were going to get literally physically crucified for it? If it meant that you were going to get literally physically crucified for it, I feel like that's pretty compelling.
Speaker 1:Now, I believed in Jesus long before. That was an argument that I could understand as a child, but it was more because I felt the presence of God, similar to the way that you feel the presence of God when you are attending births or you're going through this experience. You are attending births or you're going through this experience. Now I'm putting aside a lot of these other religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism are not about a personal relationship with God. There's a lot of. It's a, you know, a mono God where there's lots of different gods, so I think that they're a little bit different in the conversation. When it comes to the conversation and here, like my thing is, it's not about who is right at the end of the day, right, like it's not about who has all the answers, cause I think that that's one of the ways we can get into hot water is to be like, oh well, I'm right, and I'm right because of this, like God will reveal himself, he reveals himself to us and who he is, and, at the end of the day, like that's for me personally, having had those experience with him, the first experience I ever had with God.
Speaker 1:I was young, four or five years old, and I was in my front yard and I just felt the presence of God and I saw this almost I don't know if you've ever seen different artwork of you know, faith artwork. Like you know, they have the pictures of Jesus and of Mary and sometimes you'll see the hand of God. It was something similar to that where I just had this overwhelming like vision, almost like you would imagine, a cloud in the shape of the hand of God. It was kind of like that and in that moment it was like he revealed Himself to me and I'd obviously been hearing about stories of God and so that was kind of where it started.
Speaker 1:Now, it's not to say that my life has always been seeking God. I've had moments where I've just lived my life and not worried about that, and he's brought me back. And the reason I feel like he's brought me back and to have these conversations is to spread the good news and to say like I gave you guys life and I gave you guys the answers and you're created in my image. Dna is one of the most incredible creations that there ever could be and I want you to talk about that and bring light to that, because we've gotten so far away from it, especially with the medical industrial complex. That's all about suppressing and controlling bodies. Instead of understanding bodies and why they were created, what their functions are, how they work, what we can do to help heal them, we're so focused on pathologizing them. And it's like I think about so many older people right now, so many older people right now. My mother-in-law is one of them.
Speaker 1:Other friends, parents, where they're going to hospitals because there's a problem, and with my mother-in-law it was that she was having strokes and they missed it twice. She went to the hospital and they're like well, we don't know, she looks like she has a UTI and my cousin is a medical doctor and we downloaded the app to get the paperwork and everything. And she took a look and she's like she's had, she's had a stroke. She needs to go back to another hospital. These hospitals were the ones that were screening for this stuff, right, like they're the ones who took the tests. All she did was read the results.
Speaker 1:We ended up taking her to a stroke hospital, you know hospital that specializes in strokes and nowhere in this process was it about like, let's figure out why you're having strokes, what could be be the cause of this? How can we prevent this from happening? It was take this medicine, take this medicine, take this medicine.
Speaker 1:And my sister kind of made this joke the other day because it was her father-in-law was going through the same thing that they literally same thing brain bleed, figured out. Oh, it was a stroke. Oh, he also had a seizure in the hospital. Take these medicines, goodbye, you'll live for a little while, goodbye. And I think that that's why I want to kind of shout from the rooftops about God, because when you take God out of this, it becomes transactional and it becomes about like, how do I just live longer and what's the point of living anyway, right, like what are we living for If we're just going to take the medicine and live and live and live to stay alive but not live a healthy or happy or satisfied like fully living life? I feel like I just talked in a huge circle but feel free to jump in.
Speaker 2:Well, that's good. So where does God come in in the relationship that the lay person has to, let's just say, the healing arts? Like, where does God come in there?
Speaker 1:In all of it, in my opinion, because he created us and he gave us the tools that we need. He gave us every plant and animal and fruit and vegetable and everything that we have in front of us to heal. And in many senses this is going to be me starting to talk about corruption and, you know, become a conspiracy theorist and all that stuff. But you know, you probably know from studying medicine that 120, 150 plus years ago, people were still using natural remedies to heal illnesses and sickness and they were using things that came out of the ground and creating concoctions and all that good stuff to help heal, until people realized that they could make money off of pharma. And so my opinion is that I pharmakia the word pharmakia is used in the bible in a biblical context and it actually means sorcery and trickery, and so I kind of see that there's two sides to health. There's the side that's like I want to understand god's creation, I want to understand the human body that he created and how he created it and use these healing modalities that he gave us to heal. And then there's the other side of it, the sorcery side of it, that is all about greed and corruption and money and the love of money that says, yeah, I'm going to help too, but to the extent that no one is going to get healed, they're going to be in a constant cycle, and so it's almost like there are two views on health, in my opinion. There's the folks that truly want to help other people, and then there's this demonic side, this evil side. There is a biblical context to this.
Speaker 1:You'd have to go back and listen to some of those episodes, though, nathan, because it would take a long time to have that conversation, but there is an explanation in the Bible, in Genesis 6, about angels that were cast out of heaven. So think about from where I sit. I believe that we live in a spiritual realm. You know, it's not just like this 2D kind of humans, like there's us, but there's more. There are other entities aside from just us, and so that's why, when I ask the question, you know you believe in God. What does that mean? Because there are other entities, in my opinion. What does that mean? Because there are other entities, in my opinion, that walk amongst us, or their spirits roam amongst us, and Genesis 6 kind of gives us the what's the word, the story behind that, because it talks about Lucifer who? Lucifer and Satan are different people, by the way, but Lucifer was an angel.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask, I was going to challenge you on that, but you said that, yeah, yeah, they're different.
Speaker 1:He was cast from heaven because he wanted to be like God and he took a percentage of the angels a third of the angels with him and they quickly became corrupt. They lusted after human women. They took them for their wives, so they fornicated with human women and created these hybrid humans. And so if we want to look at history and this whole idea of Greek mythology and all these half-human, half-animal gods, it was probably true. They were probably these youilim is what they call it and the angels were called the Watchers. So there is a biblical context to a lot of stuff that we can't explain today or in school we're taught like oh, this is Greek mythology, Mythology meaning not real, but very well could have been real. Now that brings us to the flood, and god literally says in the bible that he was so disgusted by what he had created that he wanted to start over. He saved, kept one family, and that was noah, and noah's wife and his children and his children's wives. That was it that's he kept. He cleared everybody else out because it had become so corrupt. These Nephilim were cannibals. They were eating each other. It was just this terrible earth had become this terrible place, but the knowledge that came from if you think about someone or something, a being, being, an angel, angelic or having more knowledge than the average human being coming from heaven coming to earth. That was when pharmakia was first introduced and these potions and this kind of magic started. It's interesting to me because it kind of has it's permeated, it's grown, it's developed. But again, I kind of see that there's two sides to this. There's a side that wants to really help educate people on their bodies and healing them, and then there's this other side that is looking at it from a human or humanistic perspective and almost wanting to be God instead of learning. All right, how does the liver and the kidneys, how do they work together? What does the gut have to do with all of this? You know people are finally starting to ask these questions publicly, which is great, but for a long time this is never something that was talked about. You know, when I was in my 20s, I never heard conversations like this.
Speaker 1:It was you go to the doctor, the doctor gives you a medication. You go to the doctor because your period is heavy and you're bleeding a lot, and they give you a drug birth control and say this is going to fix you, and it doesn't fix you. It's toxic poison that gives you cancer and other problems, leads to more problems. In the long run it can lead to infertility and cancer. So now, instead of being helped, you've been poisoned. And I don't. The press that I always get from people is like well, I think that they think that they're doing a good thing, Like doctors. They don't think that they're doing people a disservice, and that's why I think that there is a demonic aspect to this, and when I say demonic, I enemy. There's an, there's another side, there's a non-god side to this, because who would want to destroy god's creation? Not god. So it has to be from the other side. You know what I'm saying? Like there has to be another force, another spiritual force at war. If there are two sides, in my opinion, yeah.
Speaker 1:And maybe this is deeper than you wanted to go today, but here we are.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, we haven't gone deep enough, actually, good, okay, so as we're talking, I'm noticing there's little things, little resistance points coming up, and maybe this goes back to me not having somebody like you early on in my life who could talk to me about these things in a way that fostered more curiosity as opposed to fostering fear. And the word you brought up, lucifer, this fallen angel, is actually a very sad story. You know, as far as stories go Like, this is a really like wow, what a pitiful creature. And like you'd imagine, this beautiful angel whose wings are clipped like falling. I don't know, this is the imagery that comes to mind, but many people hear Lucifer and they think Satan. I don't know, this is the imagery that comes to mind, but many people hear Lucifer and they think Satan, they think the devil, they think that is the demonic Antichrist.
Speaker 2:However, there's some other, and this actually has to. We have to lean into the Eastern philosophies a little bit here. There's another figure named Ahriman, which is actually from the Persian sort of mythologies, so to speak, not to say, I'm not using mythology the way that you used it, where it's like. That isn't true. A myth, for you know, a myth in general is a story that helps us explain the experience of life, right, or the world, these mythologies and the rituals that word, I know, has a nasty connotation in some circles, but the things that we do on a regular basis, including the rituals, so to speak, of childbirth, actually give. They give strength to the mythologies and the mythology that I've really grappled with throughout the medical training part of my life was this notion that if we can take apart everything that is Rebecca, we should be able to put her back together and she's good as new, and of course, we know that doesn't work any more than it works. Then you could take the vitamins and minerals that are in a carrot and put it together and call it a carrot, because there's some other essence that is a carrot, or an essence that is rebecca, or a tree. You, you, you have this, living, something there, and so, um.
Speaker 2:So this, this tendency for us to deconstruct things in order to look at each part individually as opposed to looking at it holistically, which would say that, hey, the sum of your parts is far greater than I'm sorry. Rebecca is far greater than the sum of her parts. That materialistic way of looking at things is very aromantic, it's actually not luciferic. Looking at things is very aromantic it's actually not luciferic. But this tension between aromantic, which would be the opposite of materialism I'm sorry luciferic, the opposite of materialism, we can call it angelic. And then we have the aromantic, which is grounded in rigid and materialistic.
Speaker 2:It's that tension between the two that makes human beings, in my sort of way, of my worldview, it makes human beings so unique. We actually have this like cosmic antenna pulling the heavens and the earth together, and it's sort of like this channel that forms between us that allows us to have this sort of Christ-like experience, like it's almost like that's the purpose of human beings in some regard. And the reason that this is relevant to the materialistic medical construct that so many people are trying to leave is we actually need a little bit more of this lighter, luciferic quality in our way of thinking in order to break free from this notion that you are just a diseased person with a baby inside of you, like an Elon Musk incubator or something that can be deconstructed through surgery and pharmaceuticals and put back together. That is a very profitable way of looking at human beings, but it's deeply, deeply materialistic and reductive in the sense that they don't even want you to remember that there is this angelic essence to you.
Speaker 2:And that's where I think I hit a dead end, because people you know I'll talk about Lucifer and Armand People are like you're talking about the devil and I'm like, no, I'm not, like this goes back to that fear that was set in me. Like, no, I'm not, I'm not even afraid of that. What I actually want is more of that. I actually want us to have more of this. The spirituality being taken out of the birth experience is was the original corruption, that was the original sin, so to speak. That has led us down a path where it's very, very hard to now get out of that hole. But anyways, go on.
Speaker 1:I'm going to pass the ball back to you. That's kind of like kicking your kid out to the street right, I created you but you're not doing good right now and for him to kind of go down and lead this path to corruption. I actually recently had a conversation with my dad about this, because my dad loves to talk theological things, and he said every time I come to your house we always got to talk about this deep stuff and I go well, I have one for you.
Speaker 1:Do you ever feel like Lucifer feels bad? Do you ever feel like maybe he has repented or said I'm tired of being the bad guy, I don't want to be this person anymore? We talk for two hours, three hours about that hours, three hours about that. But I do want to add one more kind of layer to this, because it says in Genesis that when the flood happened and everyone was killed so including these hybrid creatures, these Nephilim their spirits left their bodies to roam the earth. So the spirit of the Nephilim didn't die in the flood, their physical bodies did.
Speaker 1:And this is the argument behind demons when I use the word demons, that it's a spirit of originally watchers came to earth, became hybrids, nephilim. You know, if you're following this trail and this is kind of where the conversation can turn to talking about like generational curses and things of that nature, because if you think about it from that perspective, these spirits were originally in heaven and now you know well their origin started in heaven and then they became something else, and so that is the idea behind there being spiritual people that are not communing or communicating with spirits that are angelic, directly with God. Let's just say it that way. So, for example and this is what maybe I might refer to someone being in like new age I don't know if you want to refer to it as that like a psychic medium who is communicating with their, saying that they're communicating with the dead, but we are told in our Bibles that when someone is dead, they are asleep. Technically, this is a whole other conversation that the church doesn't have and we can kind of sidestep some of this stuff too, but I think that the church does a very poor job, that the church does a very poor job.
Speaker 1:All denominations, both Catholic, orthodox and Protestant churches, do a very poor job in talking about these things and having these conversations, and it's why people say things like that child said to you oh, you're not baptized, you're going to hell. That's not how this works. We don't have these big conversations, and because we don't have these big conversations and because we don't have these big conversations, it can leave people very confused and and wondering well, wait, this doesn't make sense, or why doesn't this make sense? There? There's more to it. Um, shoot, now. I forgot where I was going with that before.
Speaker 2:I just rewind my brain. The? Uh, it was an N word I can't remember.
Speaker 1:Oh, new age and mediums. Okay, so there are quite a number of people that you could follow on Instagram. One of them that I think does a really good job communicating about this is Jen Niza. Her handle is xpsychicsaved, and she was a psychic medium for decades, for a long time. She was a psychic medium for decades, for a long time, and she thought she was communicating with light, that she was communicating with the dead loved ones of relatives or whatnot, but she learned over time, because she kept having these crazy bad experiences, that she was communicating with demonic spirits, ie Nephilim spirits, and the reason they knew so much about the families wasn't because it was a dead grandparent, but it was because it was a generational demon that had been hanging around.
Speaker 1:And I'm using the word demon I know it sounds kind of scary, but I don't know what other word to use.
Speaker 1:It's kind of it that has been hanging around for a long time, right, like hanging around for years and years, and so it knows things about you, and I've had a lot of people on this podcast that have shared their testimonies, and one in particular.
Speaker 1:I think her episode actually just went live the first half of it last week where she had this experience with her son and she said something to me like this demon knew me, he knew what I would do, he knew what my response would be, and I've heard things like that before from people who have had these spiritual experiences. It's like they are being watched for a period of time and they're being spiritually attacked. Now, the other thing that I've noticed about folks that have these kinds of experiences is it's mostly people that are seeking to know God or learn more about God or who he is, that end up having these attacks. People that are just living in the world, like drinking and carrying on and doing whatever they're going to do. Those type of folks don't usually have these kinds of experiences, or at least don't attribute it to that until something serious happens.
Speaker 2:And that was kind of the example, like a near-death experience or something.
Speaker 1:Well, just like hitting rock bottom, I guess you could say. Our guest last week. Her name was Jessica or I don't know what order the episodes will be in, but the episode with Jessica. She said I was just living my life, she was involved with psychic mediums and Ouija boards and all this stuff. And she said, you know, it took having literal spiritual experiences, like where she was hearing roaring things in her house were being moved, and then everybody thought she was crazy. Everybody's like are you on drugs? You need to get drug tested, what is wrong with you? And she's like I'm not on anything. She even got tested just to prove that she wasn't on any drugs and she was just having these spiritual experiences with the supernatural.
Speaker 1:So anyway, that's a lot to just put out here at this, but I can corroborate some of this because I had a very spiritual what I consider to be a spiritual attack when I was having my first home birth and it was to me what felt like an enemy attack. And this is why it kind of comes back to talking about God, because if we're going to think about God as being the father of humanity, we are created in his image. He created women for men, for marriage, go forth and multiply to have children, to have a relationship together to build families, and then so on and so forth relationship together to build families, and then so on and so forth, right, repeat this process. Then what's the opposite of that? Divorce Ruin the family. And if you put this tension and this pain and this hardship between husband and wife, mother and father, then now the child has experienced trauma that now influences the future of the child. The child goes into adulthood, all messed up and then the cycle of dysfunction repeats. So it's kind of like, if we want to look at it from that perspective and I'll just give you the shortest version ever but I was going into my second birth, which I had, my first in the hospital.
Speaker 1:It was horrible, the worst experience ever. Birth which I had my first in the hospital, it was horrible, the worst experience ever. And after that I felt the Lord say don't go. I'm like what do I do? What do I do? I'm pregnant again, but I don't want to go through this. He's like don't go, stay home.
Speaker 1:And it was hard because I was conditioned or programmed for so many years that this is how you do things right. I wasn't raised in this environment. My mom did have me in a birthing center, but I didn't grow up with his conditioning that home birth was the way, and so I at first was going to a male OBGYN, because he was the one guy in town that was the VBAC guy, and I had had a C-section an unnecessary one with my first. And every time I walked in there it was like I heard the Lord's voice going get out of here, what are you doing here? You don't belong here. This is not the place for you. And I kept going until one visit I met with a new midwife and the first thing she says to me is so what are you going to do about your vaccines? What are you going to do about whatever it was, I don't know DTAP and COVID or something? And I was like I'm never coming back here, lady. You're going to even ask me about vaccines. We are not aligned. I'm done, I'm out.
Speaker 2:And why are? Why are Christians in particular in our country? Why are they very much in some circles like leading the charge against the vaccine movement? You know where I stand on vaccines, I presume.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good question. I wouldn't say that it is a Christian. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a Christian doctrine that has been adopted, because I don't really know very many people at my own church that I attend that agree with me on this. Most still think that vaccines are safe and effective and do stuff and are positive. So I wouldn't say that culturally it is something that is pervasive amongst the church. But I will say that there are groups and pockets of people that have had experiences or are close enough to other people inside the medical system that I didn't.
Speaker 1:I never intended to go down this path, right, like I never was. Like I'm going to be an anti-vaxxer. I'm going to be against the medical model. I'm never going to OBGYN appointment again in my life. That was not what I set out to do but because of some experiences that I had in the system, it's opened my eyes and changed my heart in a lot of ways. I would almost say that I don't even know anything about Jehovah's Witness. I really don't. The only thing that I know is they don't believe in secular medical care. You know like they'll be like no, just let me die. And I'm basically right there with the Jehovah's witness.
Speaker 2:You mean secular. What do you mean by secular medical care?
Speaker 1:Like you know, the industrial medical complex that doesn't. It's not built on a foundation of God.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean? Well, I mean, they still come in, but they don't let.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't want, like blood transfusions and whatnot for sure, but we've had a lot of them in our C-sections and whatnot. So that's interesting, yeah, how do you answer this then? Like, so I'm also, as I mentioned, also hospice and palliative care and, depending on the denomination of Christianity, some people would say, you know, this is God's like. Well, let's say, in the birth space, you know we're playing God by overly intervening in an otherwise natural process. But on the other end of the spectrum, so to speak, at the end of life, a lot of people would say who are we to play God by not doing all of these interventions? God gave us those skills to keep people alive. So like which one is? Are they in conflict with one another, those two approaches, or am I just missing something?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. I've thought about this a lot, because people ask me this stuff all the time, because I'm kind of becoming more drastic in my own personal views now everybody's going to do whatever they're going to do right and I would never, you know, say my way is right.
Speaker 1:But if I were to look at, I'm going to take my. I'm using my own grandma, for example, who has passed away. She was on 30 medications a day before she died for two decades. There is no doubt that those medications kept her alive, but for what? She lived in an assisted living facility. She was by herself. You know we would visit her when we could, but it was very sad to see that that was the life that she was being kept alive to live, to watch her TV, watch the news, watch cops every day for 15 years. Is that the way that God intended us to live our lives? Is to just stay alive, to just bare minimum watch TV for 15 more years? Now, on the other hand, you could say, well, if she didn't have those medications, she could have lived as long but been in a lot of pain because, let's say, she had arthritis or whatever the case might be.
Speaker 1:And I think this is where the conversation comes back to why it's so important for us to learn about our bodies when we're young and how to keep them healthy before we get to that point Now. Every body is going to break down. And this is a big problem that I have with society as a whole, and especially in women's circles, is this I never want to get a wrinkle, I never want to sag, I don't want my body to change. And we're in this huge culture of cosmetic surgery now where everybody's just like, oh, I'll just laser it away. You know, nip, tuck it away.
Speaker 1:If we were meant to stay the same, we would. You know, like our bodies are supposed to age, that is part of life. And now I'm saying this before I'm going through a lot of that stuff, right? So it's easy for me to say and one day I'm going to be humbled when I'm getting all wrinkly to say, you know, all these anti-aging serums and all this stuff that's out there, but the point is, like we are meant to degenerate, we are meant to break down. Like we are meant to degenerate, we are meant to break down. There are some things that I think that we can do to nourish and provide for our bodies, and that kind of goes back to this whole idea of I'm going to use my mother-in-law again. What does she need? She needs someone to come in and help her learn about what to eat so that she's not eating all of these inflammatory foods that are causing her.
Speaker 1:I mean, she's borderline diabetic, like you know. That's what is needed here is to, as a community and as a people, to come together and say, well, what can we do differently or what can we do better. And this is kind of a beef that I think that most of us that are outside of the system now, especially with home birth, have about birth. When it comes to preeclampsia specifically, they'll say, well, we don't know why people get preeclampsia. We don't know why this happens. Yes, you do, it's because people don't take care of themselves, it's because people don't eat enough protein, they don't have healthy diets, and then by the time it's too late, oh, she has preeclampsia. And then all of a sudden, it's a reason to deliver a baby early, when she's been in the same state of malnutrition for the whole pregnancy. It doesn't make any sense. But that's not a conversation that's being had in the hospital system. Enough, you know, they might give you a piece of paper that was like a photocopy that says, like you know, eat the eat, eat healthy, sure.
Speaker 1:But, that's not a real conversation. It's not like go get real food for pregnancy or go read up on the brewer's diet or go, you know, check out these things there's there's not a priority and a focus to that, and so I don't know that this answers your question. But my, my personal stance is, if I had to take 30 medications to stay alive, I would rather just 30 medications to stay alive? I would rather just go yeah, and there was a part of that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, there was a I got somebody to meet anyway, right, yeah, I'm a believer, like what do I want to be here for?
Speaker 2:That's true, yeah, so so if you so, most of my, my family, on both sides, were Christian. And when you know every year we would lose, you know another family member would pass away and after they die we have the wake, we go to the, you know we all drive in a line all the way to the cemetery and then, ubiquitously, every single person that has died in my life has been embalmed, put into some nice clothes and then they're put into a lead-lined casket and then that's put into a concrete tomb. So you had said that it's natural for our bodies to degrade and to fall apart, and it seems like all of that, like pump and circumstance. When we pass away, it seems like that's actually the opposite. Like heaven forbid, we get reabsorbed back into the soil from whence we came, and I'm curious.
Speaker 1:From dust we begin and dust we go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why do all that other stuff? Why that's ritualistic.
Speaker 1:That's ritualistic, that's ritualistic, that's ritualistic, that's ritual stuff. I um never experienced honestly any funerals like I did until my husband was raised catholic and until I met him and started going to catholic wakes and I was like whoa, this is crazy. I've never. It's just a very ritualistic.
Speaker 1:There are certain denominations and this is why I don't like to make faith and being a believer in Jesus Christ and of God of the Bible. That's the focus, not the religiosity side, because people are humans and we perverse everything and we have to make everything into this extra, this extra, and that's what I think. That I think that it's sweet that people like to have respect when someone dies, but there is a lot of ritual around it that does it's not biblical and that's what I always go back to. You'll hear me say that a lot Is that biblical. Does it say in the Bible that you need to do these things Because we're told that we don't have to do anything, that there are no rules when it comes to being free in Christ, that we, as believers in him yes, if you truly believe he is who he is and that you're following him, you're going to make better choices in life.
Speaker 1:It's not to say that you can go, do anything you want, as in you know, kill people and all that it's to say you don't want to do those things. But then all the other stuff, it's just fluff and that's what I think takes away from. I think that that takes away from God and it takes away from his story. When there is all this fluff on the sides to say, like you know, we got to have the fancy casket and the this and the like, none of that stuff matters, none of it.
Speaker 2:Then I used to hear that too, like oh they're going to say a mass Great.
Speaker 1:What is that? That's not going to do anything. Ultimately, at the end of the day, each one of us is going to stand before the Lord for judgment and he's the one that's going to have the final call. And there's also you'll hear a lot of people say like, oh, I'm just you know. Let's say, someone had a lot of pain at the end of their life. They'll say I'm so glad that they aren't in pain anymore and that they're in heaven sitting next to Jesus, aren't in pain anymore and that they're in heaven sitting next to Jesus. And technically that is not true, because technically, heaven isn't open, hell isn't open. Technically, we are waiting, if we believe in the Bible, and what's going to happen next in the book of Revelation? Judgment day hasn't come. Jesus is going to come back. He's going to live on the earth for a thousand years, and so everyone that is dead is asleep.
Speaker 1:If we were to look at it from a technical perspective, from a biblical perspective, now it makes us feel good to say, oh, that person is with Jesus.
Speaker 1:But I mean I hate to say it it like this, it's kind of like the matrix. If you think about it, you know how, uh, neil like wakes up and he's like in a, he's in that water bath too. That's kind of all of us, everyone that's passed away, they're, they're wherever they died, in a sense, until they are going to be waking up, and it's not as pretty as we like to think of it. But we also have a totally messed up view of what angels look like. We think that angels are like these cute little babies with little butts and little cherubs. That's not what angels look like If you look at it from a biblical perspective. They're pretty scary looking. And this whole conversation right now in the world of like drones and is it aliens and aliens are angels are pretty alien looking. If you I don't know if you've ever seen there's an account called the ai bible and it takes?
Speaker 1:it takes scripture, biblical scripture, and descriptions of angels, or I mean think about these experiences that people have had with angels. What do they say every time? They were frightened, they were afraid because it was scary, yeah. And so they take the descriptions, like in Isaiah, and they plug the description and from Revelation into this AI builder and it shows what an angel really would look like and it's crazy.
Speaker 2:Anyway, all right, let me do you. This is actually very fun for me because you're so well-spoken and you've thought so much about this and sometimes I don't have the courage to bring some of these questions up, so I appreciate you playing with me here. Do you see any? We're going to go back to that. What you just said about you know, we know that angels look like this, but when you think about the medical system and what you don't like about the medical system, so let me say, when people describe the medical system, as you know, we're playing God and we're trying to hijack the system and not allow things to happen naturally the way God had created us. You know you brought up like the elegance of DNA. Here's one of the problems I have with this whole construct is how do we know that DNA operates the way that we were taught? The DNA works?
Speaker 1:And that's not that's yeah go ahead.
Speaker 2:It's not a question for you to answer, but it's something for for those for you and others to to think about, cause I'm not sure how we can ever say for sure how that works and that's a big problem why I've become so married to these basic biological principles. Like I don't've become so married to these basic biological principles, I don't want to be married to that because I'm not sure that it's true.
Speaker 1:That's actually a really great question because I ask the same thing all the time. Of everything, my husband is super duper into space and I love to just poke the bear and be like, well, how do you even know that space is what you think it is? Just because someone's told you You've never been there. So how do you know? How do you know that this planet is X size and is next to this and that you don't? And that's the thing with all of these complexities to our body, like you said, dna. How do we know that DNA is exactly? I mean, how do we know that germs are what they say that germs are? You know, there's this whole conversation now about you know there's germ theory and then now it's well, something happened to you and you're having an experience as a result of your trauma to that experience, and germs are just you know, don't mean anything there's. We don't know. I think that you're right in that.
Speaker 1:There are some pretty cool scientific facts in the bible, and the one that I turn to the most is in leviticus. It says that the life of the body is in the blood, and it's this idea that the most important thing about us as humans and being in these humanly bodies is our blood and the health of our blood. And there's this really great naturopath doctor, an iridologist. His practice is called Spirit of Health. His name is Dr Vaughn. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He's really, really good in this area and talking about God's design for our bodies and our health and stuff like that. And one thing that he says is a lot of times, you know, we use blood panels to try to figure out what's going on with someone, but sometimes someone's blood can be healthy, because our blood was meant to stay healthy and keep us alive, and it can be something else and we have to dive a little bit deeper, into a deeper layer and into a deeper level, past the blood. Let's say, you know, an organ is struggling because it's blocked up, that the filter is blocked, and so there are constructs that are biblical or scientific things that are biblical.
Speaker 1:We're not given all the answers, and I don't think that we were meant to. Honestly, I don't think that we were meant to. Honestly, I don't think that we were meant to fully understand this stuff. There's a mystery to it that I don't need to have all of the answers, and I think that that's why I've been able to step outside of the medical system for birth is because a lot of it is unlearning, and learning to not fear and be afraid.
Speaker 1:I did a survey for this episode Thank you for sharing it in your stories, by the way where I asked people that home birth and people that don't home birth. You know what questions would you want me to ask, nathan, and I'm sure you get this one a lot, but one of them was what about let me find it on my list here what about if there's an emergency? And that's the biggest, the number one thing that people say to me. When I tell them, like I just birthed that home, I just go upstairs and have this baby in my bathroom, they're like I would be so scared, I would be so afraid that something bad would happen. And I think that that's the difference with where faith comes in and where God comes into it for me, because, regardless of whether something happens or it doesn't happen, it's in his plan. He told me that already.
Speaker 1:I know the plans that I have for you, and none of us are told that we're going to live forever. None of us are told we're going to live a happy life, there's this pursuit of happiness. There's nowhere in the Bible that it's like. My goal for you guys down here on earth is to be happy. It's not so. That is an easy one. And we're not told we're going to have health. We're not told anything, we're not promised any of these positive, affirmative things that all of us want, and I think that's why women are so scared to step outside of it, because you're taking the gamble essentially on what does God have planned for my life? I'm either going to live or I'm not. Plan for my life. I'm either going to live or I'm not, and I think that you have to be at that point honestly in order to fully release and do something like have a free birth, because you have to be okay with the alternative.
Speaker 1:Either way and I think specifically she said here it is what is the plan if there's a true emergency? For example, I'm 45 minutes away from our hospital, our ER and L&D, and this isn't to say that free birthers should be stupid and not learn about birth. That's actually the opposite of. What I say here is do your study, talk to midwives, talk to doulas, talk to other free birthers, home birthers, join communities. We're not going to just know this stuff because we were never taught it. It comes from community and some of it comes from intuition, but some of it you know, there's a bunch of books that I got just because I wanted to learn. What did this person say about this? Like Heather Baker, you know, she wrote Home Birth on your Own Terms and I wanted to know what does she say about emergency scenarios? And I may or may not do or agree with everything that she says, but I'm going to educate myself on those potential situations, especially since so I didn't finish the rest of my story about home birth, but I was with an OBGYN and then I went to a home birth midwife and then she dropped me when I was 35 weeks pregnant because I finally got the operations report from my original C-section, which it was like two and a half years prior, after getting cleared by the way, she sent me to the hospital that I had this baby at to get my scars checked, which I went through with her first requests because I had to or else she would drop me then, and they cleared me to VBAC, got the report and then it was basically in detail what happened.
Speaker 1:So she knew that I had a C-section. She knew that I had hysterotomy extensions and that the doctor cut my bladder during the C-section, but for her to read it and that they put on the last line of the operations report not a candidate for TOLAC due to hysterotomy extensions. And now what's interesting is the VBAC OBGYN guy that I had originally gone to. She went back to his office to ask him for advice because she was trying to see what other people would do. What would you do in this situation? Because the lady at the hospital that I originally went to that I'm really skipping over a lot of facts here.
Speaker 1:I had a scar check. It was done by an OBGYN that hates home birth but is semi supposedly supportive of VBAC. Right when I was leaving the room she said is there anything else that I can do to help you? And I was like oh, actually I haven't gotten my full medical history. We've requested it from you guys for months. What's the best way for me to get this? And she said oh, you got to call, which is what we already did.
Speaker 1:I was at the hospital, so I just went down to records, requested the records, waited and got them. I also pulled the records for my daughter because I wanted to see. I was very scared because I was very much like don't vaccinate her, don't give her vitamin K or any of that stuff. And I was scared because I've heard that some people will do it anyway and then write it down. They didn't, fortunately. So anyway, I get the report, I take a picture of it, a screenshot, I text it to my midwife.
Speaker 1:She calls me maybe an hour later and she said that that doctor that I had seen for the scar check said that that doctor that I had seen for the scar check. She said I was good to be back. But she told my midwife you should care her out because she had hit stratum extensions and so that's a risk factor. A higher risk puts her at higher risk for uterine rupture. And even though I was willing to take the risk, my midwife I think I was maybe her sixth or seventh VBAC at that point she wasn't willing to take the risk and so she said sorry and she was upset about it. She wasn't cold about it or anything like that, but I always kind of had this feeling that she was going to carry me out. I don't know why I just did, and so when I went to my appointments with her man. I talked for those full hour that she would give me for those appointments.
Speaker 1:I was asking questions because I knew I needed to know what was in her brain and there was a reason behind it, because I ended up having to make the choice Either I was going to go to a hospital or I was going to have a free birth, because I no longer had a midwife. And I had a free birth and it was awesome and it was this totally God-filled experience. But it was, I feel, like spiritual attack on attack. The fact that I mean, I'm almost to the end 35, going on 36 weeks my home birth midwife drops me Suddenly. That means I also don't have a birth pool now, which was one of the things that I really had wanted to do. I ordered a birth pool. I just bought straight up, bought a midwife birth pool from in his hands or whatever website it was.
Speaker 1:And as we were going into that last week, things felt really weird between my husband and I and, mind you, this is the person that I'm planning on doing birth with now. I got no more midwife she's gone. I did have a doula that was supportive of what I was doing, but she also was very tied to the medical system in many ways. She was used to. Most of her births were at hospitals. Some of them were home births, so she wasn't entirely comfortable with my situation and, yeah, so I'm depending on my husband for a lot of this right. And then some things come out. In that last week we're all sitting on the couch. My mom had come in because she was going to help with my oldest daughter. She was two at the time when I went into labor and I just felt like things were off with my husband and my mom had handed his phone to me and I was going to hand it to him and like it swiped when I was, you know, got handed it and there was this app on there that was new, like what's this about? And it was, you know, one of those streaming music apps where people like sit behind their computers and do music or whatever. But every person he was following was just like totally inappropriate and I'm like what is up with this? So we end up, you know, talking about that over the course of a couple of days. But there was just this nudging that like something. There's something more here, there's something something else going on and I just had a deep intuition about it but I couldn't explain it.
Speaker 1:The night I, the day I went into labor, I was awoken at three o'clock in the morning and a voice says to me you need to go look at his phone and look at files, specifically Click on files and you know, you get that like heart racing feeling. I felt like I was gonna throw up. I'm like I don't want to do it, I'm too scared of what I might find kind of thing. And then I got up and I walk around the bed and I open his phone and I click on files and it was like his phone had screenshotted a couple of instances where he had been looking at porn and that was something that's not. We don't do that in our relationship and that had been something early on that we I had thought we worked through, and so of course I'm just like what? And it was sad, scary and kind of like creepy at the same time that this voice told me to do this. And then it was right. And so I kept saying I don't know if this is from God or the devil, that this is getting exposed, but it was very upsetting, right. And so I'm like all bent out of shape about this.
Speaker 1:And then I go into labor, my water breaks like I start trickling and I end up Iling. I was sitting on the toilet just like because I couldn't even I would have had to keep changing my diapers at this point. Sitting on the toilet, I call my sister. It's like how do you have a baby at home? Just you and the person that has been essentially lying to you and not telling you the truth for however long you know that's what's going on through my head is like this is crazy. This is the most important, pivotal moment.
Speaker 1:And now this just blew up and my sister is she's usually the co-host on this podcast, but she doesn't always come for everything because she's got little kids too and she's kind of hard to get these days, but she is a very strong woman of God. And she said this is an attack, this is a spiritual attack on your family in this moment, right now, to tear you and your husband apart, because what does the enemy want? He wants to destroy this birth experience that you're about to have by separating you from your husband. And you know, obviously she went on for a long time with more detail and examples and things like that, but she said something like you just need to pre-forgive him. Pre-forgive him for this situation, put it on the back shelf and you guys address this later, you know, pray over him and all that good stuff. And so that's what I did. That was the only choice, right? Like what? Am I going to fight with him about this while I'm having a baby?
Speaker 1:I needed to get my head in the game, and it just was never more clear to me that there is a spiritual side to birth than in that moment when I was being literally attacked to pull me and him apart at the most important time that could ever be for having this baby. It's not like this happened. I mean, it could have happened a week before and then we've just been fighting for a week leading up to this, but it happened the day I went into labor, which is it was just these constant little things to try to pull me away from birthing at home is how I felt in looking at these experiences and instead of succumbing to them and saying like you know what, I give up, I'm just going to go to the hospital, they're going to take care of me over there, I was like no, we're going to do this, we know what we're doing, we're ready, we're going to do this. And I'll tell you, he was great. I jokingly call him midwife Mike because he really helped me through that whole experience and we birthed this baby. Well, I birthed the baby. He got his screamed in his ear, you know solid three times, but we had the baby at home and it it was a re reawakening for me.
Speaker 1:It was an awakening moment in my spiritual journey and I think why I feel so strongly about God being in the conversation, because there is a dark and a light. There is a battle that we are fighting against and it is not something that we necessarily can see. I'm going to pull up a verse, because I can never remember exactly what it is. Ephesians 6.12 says For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places and that one really resonates with me, because it was something that I couldn't see at all, that was communicating to me. That was like stirring the pot, you know, like let's tear this up, let's tear this apart, and I think that you could.
Speaker 1:So I would argue that there are dark forces that sit across different communities and across different things, like I think that the pornography institution, whatever you want to call it, the whole industry is dark, is darkness. Most people that go into that line of work experience some sort of sexual trauma as a child or some sort of emotional trauma between them and their a parent, or both parents, or a sibling or a partner, and a lot of that stuff stems from hurt in the first place, and then hurt people go through and over-sexualize and then it draws people and draws them away from their marriages and their happy relationships. And it's, in my opinion, just so much deeper than that. And the amount of women I'm in this biblical group for women there's maybe 100,000 women in it and the amount of women's stories that I see come through that are pornography related with their spouse, it's crazy, it's an, it's a battle, man Like, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a real attack and a real battle on our relationships right now, you know, and that yeah, yeah, you know I gotta say there's a couple of things that have come up in the conversation. The first is that there's this uniquely monotheistic religious percept about how things are and that is tied to this notion that women are here for men to procreate and everything else. So there's that part of the Christian theology that I think I actually think plays a big part in how we manipulate, you know, childbirth and whatnot. But also most of my friends all of them were Christian. They all had issues with pornography. There was a lot of shame around these. What were thought to be unnatural feelings come up and you know, as a mother, how do you raise children and tell them, hey, those feelings, that you actually have these unnatural feelings and it feels good to touch parts of your body. How do you reconcile that without them feeling the shame and the guilt and wanting to go and do it anyways? And then they turn their back on religion because the religious leaders tell them it's not right to have those feelings. They become shameful, then they hide it from their spouse in the future and then we say, no, that was the devil, or was it just that we didn't have a healthy expression of sexuality?
Speaker 2:Um, like, even childbirth is a pretty sexual experience and and I I want to, I want to. You know, I let me provide some clarification there. There's very few instances in which we as adults are like awe inspired, and childbirth is one of them. But it's awe-inspiring in part because it's such an intimate environment. I am sitting between open legs with naked genitalia and there's a baby coming out of it. In some ways, in order for me to not be a creepy male OBGYN, I can't speak about this as a sexual experience because it's not for me, it's not for the woman giving birth and it's not for the man necessarily, but the act of conception required a sexual, a very, very deep sexual intimacy and for me as a stranger, I have to now sit in the place where this baby was conceived and have to receive the baby, or the dad can receive the baby, but I'm like kind of there and I'm not supposed to see.
Speaker 2:I'm supposed to objectify this in the same way that it sounds to me like women are sort of objectified in this dichotomy of the male and female relationship in a marriage under God, of the male and female relationship in a marriage under God. So you know, it's rife with issues. Little boys and little girls probably are growing up feeling very ashamed around their sexuality. And I don't mean heterosexuality, I mean like wanting to have sex and enjoy sex Like isn't that like not cool within the church? So, unless you're doing it for the sake of having babies, so of course there's that temptation there. But I guess what you're saying is that that temptation is coming not from God, that temptation is coming from the devil, and it is our job, or your husband's job, to push back on that temptation. Is that? Am I hearing that right?
Speaker 1:Yes and no. God created his body right, right, and he created his body to have sexual sensation. And that's pretty cool actually, like thanks, god. Yeah, that's nice that we can enjoy and appreciate each other, but we are actually told in the bible that our bodies and it says it both directions. It says that a woman's body is for her husband and her husband's body is for his wife, and so we are directed at what to do with that.
Speaker 1:And I think that that is where this whole purity culture thing comes from, and a lot of millennials have been damaged by the whole purity culture rhetoric that you know, wait until you're married, do the promise, ring your promise to God until you're married. And yes, it can and has created a lot of shame for a lot of people. And listen, I didn't do things the right way, my husband and I sorry, mom and dad, if you're listening, I'm just kidding. You know we are not perfect people we didn't wait until we were married. This is where everybody stops listening. No, I'm just kidding. That is how many in the Christian culture and society it's like oh, we'll judge you. And so when it comes to this idea of pornography and temptation and all that, yes, men were built with their own sex drives, as were women, but we are told what to do with those sex drives, and that is to use it on each other, and anything outside of that is outside of our design and what we're supposed to do. And now I have my own qualms with that whole industry just because of the objectification of women and what it's done to women and all that. You know there's many, many layers to the pornography conversation, but it damages the relationship between a man and a woman, because how, how is a woman supposed to be her most vulnerable if she feels like she can't be? And this is something that I hear a lot from women that have been on a similar side of that their husband was looking at porn, or whatever the case might be is they now have a hard time connecting. So now, what has pornography done? It has disconnected a couple from the most important sacred act that they could do with each other, which is give their body to the other person.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm very fortunate in that my perspective on this is that it's not about me and that's how I'm able to not continue to make this an ongoing thing. You know my husband, I went through that incident right, but it doesn't matter what I look like or who I am. I could be kim kardashian and I've actually used this example before, because when kim was married to kanye, he had a porn problem and he was married to kim kardashian, who everyone is trying to look like Kim Kardashian because she's, you know, this person that everybody wants to look like, or whatever. It's just an example that this is not about me and my husband, him looking at porn. He was looking at porn long before he knew me, you know, since he was 12, whatever age, he was exposed to it in the first place.
Speaker 1:And this becomes a question about what do you do with that feeling? When you have those feelings, what do you do next and what are you pursuing? And so we're told that even lusting after another woman is considered adultery in the Bible. So if we're going to look to the Bible, technically, then that's adultery. But you know, am I going to strangle him around the neck and be like you? Committed adultery. This is over. Because you looked at pornography? No, no, because you looked at pornography, no, my relationship with him has value and I believe in grace and I believe in forgiveness, and I believe that we all make mistakes and all of us, you know, have the ability to look at all the stuff that we do against God.
Speaker 1:And how many times has he forgiven us? Look at all. I mean it's very much. I liken it to a parental relationship, like you know, now that I'm a mom thinking about, do I stop loving my kids because they don't listen to me? No, they just don't listen. Now imagine what it must be like for God. Not only do we not listen to him, we don't read his book, we don't read what he's trying to teach us, and then, when we do, we're like eh, I don't know.
Speaker 1:All right, friends, as you are hearing, nathan and I are really getting into the nitty gritty of a lot of topics today, but we're not done just yet and I am very grateful for Nathan's willingness to listen to my rants and tangents. I am recording this segment right now, after having re-listened to our conversation and listen. I've got to apologize to everyone, nathan, especially for said tangents. With that said, if you're into that and into this, there's more to come, so stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Next week we are going to discuss male practitioners in the birth space, as well as why Nathan left hospital birth and more. So, again, stay tuned if you'd like to continue on the journey and, as always, thank you for tuning in and for being on this journey with us. If you would like to find Nathan outside of the podcast, you can do so on Instagram at NathanRiley O-B-G-Y-N or at BornFreeMethodcom and, of course, if you'd like to join the mission, the radiant mission, you can do so on instagram, facebook or on youtube. And today we are going to close with john 16 33. I have told you these things so that, in me, you may have peace in this world. You will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world. We're wishing you a radiant week and we'll see you next time. Bye everyone.
