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The Radiant Mission
The Radiant Mission
132. Your Body Knows How to Birth, Trust It w/Dr. Stu (Part 2)
What if everything you thought you knew about childbirth was shaped by a system designed to doubt women's bodies rather than trust them? In this eye-opening conversation with Dr. Stu, a community birth physician supporting home births, we dive deep into how modern birthing practices often undermine what our bodies naturally know how to do.
The statistics alone should give us pause. Since 1970, C-section rates have skyrocketed from 5% to 32% in the United States—a staggering 500% increase—without corresponding improvements in maternal or infant outcomes. The World Health Organization suggests rates should be 10-15%, meaning hundreds of thousands of unnecessary surgical births happen annually. Yet remarkably, no physician admits to performing these unnecessary procedures. This cognitive dissonance permeates our entire approach to childbirth.
Dr. Stu beautifully contrasts the midwifery model, which "trusts birth and accepts uncertainty," with the medical model, which "fears birth and tries to control everything." This difference manifests in everything from the length and quality of prenatal visits to postpartum care. While hospital protocols typically schedule a single six-week postpartum check, midwives visit multiple times in the first week alone, providing crucial support during the most vulnerable period for mother and baby.
For expectant parents navigating this complex landscape, Dr. Stu offers practical wisdom: pay attention to how you feel after prenatal appointments. Do you leave feeling more confident and empowered, or more anxious and diminished? This emotional barometer can guide you toward providers who genuinely support your innate capacity to birth. Consider incorporating midwifery care into your pregnancy journey regardless of where you plan to deliver, as midwives are the true experts in normal physiological birth.
Whether you're planning your first birth, processing a previous birth experience, or supporting someone on their journey, this conversation will transform how you view the miraculous process of bringing new life into the world. Trust your body—it knows what to do.
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Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Toomey and I am here with my amazing co-host and sister, rachel Smith. We are on a mission to encourage and inspire others as they navigate through this life and with their relationship with Christ. Now we have a very special guest with us today. Today's episode is a continuation of last week with part one on understanding birth with Dr Stu. He is a community birth physician and if you tuned in last week, I'm sure you learned a lot. I know I did, and we had great feedback from you guys. I actually had quite a few folks say this was my favorite episode ever. So I'm really looking forward to part two going live and I you know I'm not going to keep you waiting. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Your body is designed to that to deliver a baby, baby to grow a baby and deliver a baby, and most of the time it works. And in the midwifery model, even though, again, they cherry-pick their clients, you know they have a c-section rates from between two and seven percent. Yeah, in 1970, united states, the c-section rate was 5%.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:And now it's 31% 32% in the United States. In countries like Brazil and South Africa it's over 70% in private hospitals.
Speaker 1:It's crazy. Yeah, In Miami it's 50%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are we doing to this? But again, there's no thought given as to what we're doing to our species and the future generations. Every time you mess with Mother nature, there's a ripple effect. You may not see it initially, but it's happening and over time everything that you do.
Speaker 2:If you give penicillin, great, you can save somebody. But then you create methicillin-resistant staph aureus and then you have to keep chasing your tail. It's like with viruses you give a vaccine, the virus mutates. Nature always figures a way. Your tail, it's like. It's like with viruses, you get a vaccine, the virus mutates nature.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a cascading effect because, like just thinking of my own experience with two c-sections, I had a terrible time breastfeeding like I could, my supply, the quality of my milk, my babies were failure to thrive, like it was just a cascade through their life that then tied them to a system that we then were giving formula and and I don't, I never labored, I went through this medical model, so it's, you know, for a C-section rate of 50% and how many women are then affected that way, and then that affects that child for life and how they develop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the medical model doesn't necessarily want you to get well. The individual doctors and nurses probably do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the medical model, you know, and the pharmaceutical companies don't really want you to get well. And the thing about the breastfeeding thing afterwards is again the medical model. Generally you deliver your baby, whether it's by C-section or vaginal delivery. You may see a lactation consultant once or twice while you're in the hospital. Then you go home and the doctor says I'll see you in six weeks. That's classically the obstetrical model. That is ridiculous.
Speaker 2:I thought it was normal until I started work with midwives and I learned that no, we'll come back on day one, we'll come back on day five, we'll come back on day seven. We'll have a lactation consultant come on day three and if you're having any problems we'll come over and we go to their houses. And England has a system that's better than ours because they have the National Health Service where they have midwives that can follow you prenatally in labor or if you transfer to the hospital, they can still come with you and then they make home visits afterwards. The medical model doesn't? It doesn't, uh, accommodate that? Yeah, probably partly because insurance doesn't pay for it, sure, yeah, doctors do, did you?
Speaker 1:oh go ahead did you have a heart attack the first time you saw someone eat a placenta?
Speaker 2:No, I didn't have a heart attack. But again, yeah, I think it was woo. Yeah, I don't think it was out there. I'm sure that A lot of the things you know the people that want to burn the cord.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how do you feel about that?
Speaker 1:And you don't even get started on lotus births or something like that.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, how do you feel about all that? You know what? It doesn't really. It doesn't affect me at all anymore, because it's a reasonable, it's a choice that they're making.
Speaker 2:I don't know of any downside to doing it yeah it doesn't take any extra time on our part, okay, because if we're going to be there for three, four hours after the birth anyway, so to take some placenta and put it in a smoothie is not a big deal. I've never seen someone take a piece of placenta and eat it. You haven't. No, I'm sure that they do.
Speaker 1:I have actually heard that it's a natural way to prevent hemorrhage, that if you have heavy bleeding and you take a little piece of the placenta and you put it in your cheek, it will prevent hemorrhaging.
Speaker 2:I've heard of that, but that's not the same as eating it.
Speaker 1:No, no, I mean, some people will eat it, but I guess you have to eat it right away, huh.
Speaker 2:There's so many natural ways to deal with things that we in the medical profession don't know, and when I go to a birth, I always go with a midwife and and the midwives know things that I don't and I know things that they don't and it makes a great collaborative.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that must be awesome. I'm sure you had a lot of fun the first time you learned about like shepherd's purse and Angelica and all the herbs.
Speaker 2:Even something as simple as Arnica. I'd never heard of Arnica before. Yeah Well, pulsatilla. Uh-huh, some crazy roots. There's all kinds of roots, I don't know Some barbacoa roots.
Speaker 3:The Pulsatilla, isn't that one used to help flip a breech baby oh you're asking me.
Speaker 2:I have no idea.
Speaker 1:He doesn't use the herbs to flip the babies, he just delivers them.
Speaker 2:Okay. No, there's antimonium which I think you give to a baby who's got like wet lungs when they're born. It's a little early, a little. That's homeopathy. You put it under their tongue.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, the baby, you can't put it under their tongue. You just hope you put it in their mouth and hope it works.
Speaker 1:I have some pulsatilla, Rachel. If you want to try it, let me know.
Speaker 3:It might be something else.
Speaker 1:I mean it's you know, I think I have it for mucus. I don't think your listeners should pay attention to this segment because none of us know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:We are not providing medical advice right now. We are just. We're not homeopathy experts, we're just chit-chatting. Well, you know, one of the questions that someone had asked and it, honestly, is the way you would answer it, I think is probably the same way that you would answer the question about what happens in an emergency is that a lot of women. They're like, okay, I'm sold on this, I want to do a home birth, but then their husband's like I'm sold on this, I want to do a homework, but then their husband's like I don't, I don't like this, you know, I'm scared. Or maybe it's another family member or a bunch of family members. Do you run into that at all? Or your midwives?
Speaker 2:Sure, it's not. It's not my job to twist arms or get into family dynamics, but I'm always available for if a client wants me to like. There's a great testimonial on my website from a couple that were breached. They came for a consult and they got really, really happy about it. But they're both their parents. The two pretend, you know. The four potential grandparents were all skeptical about her having a home breach birth. So I offered to come and do a Skype in those days, to do a Skype meeting with them, and I spent an hour and 20 minutes on the phone I mean on the Skype down at their house in their living room talking to their family members back east, and after the time it made it very smooth.
Speaker 2:But see, my model allows for me to have the time to do that Because I can charge what I want to charge. I have no master, I'm not employed and I'm not taking insurance, so I can charge what I want. And again, I understand that a lot of people can't have access to that because, but I can only do so many. I could. You know, I can only do so many births a month. I'm just one person. I could only do so many births a month.
Speaker 2:I'm just one person, but when I'm in the office and the husband or the partner, usually it's a male partner. Sometimes it could be a female partner, but usually it's the male partner, because male dynamic is such that we as men are supposed to be concerned about safety and cost. That's sort of in, you know, in a traditional male role. We can say, well, that's not good anymore, and we got to get rid of that masculinity, it's toxic and blah, blah, blah. But I'm not going to comment. That's traditionally what men tend to want to do. So they have concerns about cost and about safety.
Speaker 2:So we have these conversations and we talk about safety and we talk about safety. And we talk about safety from the aspect of you know well, what's the default safety? And they'll say, well, isn't the hospital safer? And then we'll go through and we'll talk about the numbers and we'll talk about you know what happens to you when you go to the hospital and for certain things it is safer, but your chance of having a successful birth that your partner feels really satisfied with is so much greater at home than in the hospital, and that's part of being safe too and part of being successful Not just the baby in the bassinet, but how it got into the bassinet and that's what matters. And you know I, because I'm a male, I have a very, pretty easy way of talking to other men in the room. They sort of will pay attention when I talk. So I have that advantage. It's about the only advantage I have in my profession, because everything else is female-dominated.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and you're not going to convince everybody and I will tell a lot of clients that listen. First of all, when you find out you're pregnant, don't tell anybody your due date. All right, you can tell them if you're due on September 4th. Just tell them you're due the end of September so that they don't have a date to write down and start bugging you and telling you what their doctor would do because you've gone a day overdue and blah, blah, blah, yeah, telling you what their doctor would do because you've gone a day overdue and blah, blah, blah, yeah, yeah. Secondly, if you, if your birth plan is your birth plan, it's your private birth plan, All right. If you have girlfriends that you talk about your menstrual periods with, that's fine. But most people aren't going to. That's not going to be a conversation You're going to come up with your parents, so don't necessarily have to tell everybody everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It can really disturb your peace.
Speaker 2:It's your own and that's why you should never get in the middle of that as a practitioner, because every family has a different dynamic. Yeah, and every family has a different history, and to try to put to use an algorithm like the medical model would do the one size fits all. You have to sign this consent form, you have to do this, you have to do that. It just doesn't work. Some people have. You know a lot of women have trauma. You know a lot of women have been assaulted, a lot of women have been abused. So you know, a lot of times bullying a woman in labor is just a flashback to that abuse, absolutely. And then you're taking that mammal and you're having them secrete all the wrong hormones at a time when they're supposed to be trying to go into labor. And then the labor gets screwed up because you haven't honored their history. And how can you expect a doctor who's never met you before, who's working a shift, to honor your history? He doesn't have time for that. He's got 16 other people on the ward in labor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 2:The system is completely busted.
Speaker 2:If people can find a midwife, that's where they should start. And even if you have a pregnancy that would be considered higher risk, like type one diabetes or twins from the very beginning, get prenatal care with a midwife, even if you have to go with an OB as well, because you're far more likely to have better nutrition and better stress reduction and better sleep and all that stuff, because a midwife will take an hour every time talking with you, whereas your OB, who might love to take an hour of talking with you, doesn't have that kind of time Because an OB has an overhead that's extremely high and they have to do volume and in order to make their overhead they have to do volume. Or if they work for something like Kaiser, they're told that they have 12 minutes for this visit or eight minutes for this visit and they don't even have any control over their own schedule. I feel for these people. They didn't go to medical school to sign up for that, but then that's partly their own fault because they're allowing it to be done to them.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because they've gotten themselves in a hamster wheel of you know, I've got a mortgage payment and I've got three kids going to college and blah, blah, blah and I, I can't, I can't quit, and if I speak up I'll get fired or I'll lose my Christmas bonus. So I I'm just going to keep my head down, I'm just going to keep doing the same thing that everybody's doing, even when I know it's wrong. Yeah, and again we get back to that thing of of I mean, how do you deal with that? Every day, there's, it's, it's classic cognitive dissonance. Sure, you know I have a great cognitive dissonance example which I love to use if you want me to do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we talked about the C-section rate in the United States being 5% in 1970. And now it's like 32%. So that's about a 500% increase in the C-section rate. The rate of cerebral palsy hasn't changed. The rate of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy hasn't changed. Neonatal morbidity and mortality probably about the same. Maternal mortality might be even a little worse now because of all the C-sections. So we haven't done anything, but we've increased the C-section rate 500%. The main reason, of course, is again, this is not part of the example is the Friedman Curve of Labor and Continuous Fetal Monitoring. Another podcast, another time. The World Health Organization, which is not an organization that I'm very fond of.
Speaker 3:Same.
Speaker 2:But they think the C-section rate in Western countries should be around 10 to 15%. Now we probably know it should be lower than that, but let's take them at their word and let's just say it should be 15%. So let's say that it's 30% in the United States, but the World Health Organization says it should be 15%. So there's about 4 million babies born in the United States every year. 30% of that is about 1.2, 1.3 million cesarean sections done in the United States every year. It's by far the most common operation performed in the United States. Nothing else is even close. But if you take the World Health Organization's thing that half of those are unnecessary, that means there's a 600,000 to 700,000 unnecessary cesarean sections being done every year.
Speaker 2:If there were 600,000 unnecessary mastectomies or knee surgeries or gallbladders being done every year, not only would people be outraged by that and even the oblivious mainstream media would be covering it, but insurance companies would be outraged because they're paying for unnecessary surgeries. They don't want to do that. But not a peep about 700,000 unnecessary cesarean sections. But here's the real question who's doing the unnecessary cesarean sections? Because no doctor goes home at night and says to their spouse hey, honey, guess what? I did? Two unnecessary C-sections. Today, every C-section a doctor does they believe is necessary, yet half are unnecessary. So how does a doctor? Well, first of all, they ignore that data, which is one of the coping mechanisms for cognitive dissonance, is. They won't believe that that 15% is right. But also then they'll also say things like well, it's not me that's doing the unnecessary ones, it's the other guy. But what's the other guy saying?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's saying it's. It's not me, it's that guy and that's. This is a classic example. Half of all the C-sections being done are unnecessary, yet no one's doing them. Okay, that's you guys you should see that people listening at home. You should see the look on their faces.
Speaker 3:We're both like this is just wild. You know it's like. It's like you're talking to the two perfect people for this who had unnecessary c-sections. I mean, yeah, I had breached babies but there it was an unnecessary C-section that I had those but I never. And it's also it's funny because Rebecca and I have on our list of questions for you which, after everything we've talked about now for all this time, is kind of funny. Do you feel birthing at home is a better choice?
Speaker 2:I mean from where I stand right now. I would say for most women the answer is yes, but ultimately that choice has to belong to them. They have to look at their own family history, their own life history. They have to look at what they value, what's important to them. For some women, having a hospital birth, even having a scheduled elective C-section, is a godsend because labor is a bridge they don't want to cross and that's fine, as long as they've been given informed consent and they're told the risks of the cesarean. And they're told that, by the way, they asked the question that's never asked of a primate who's breech, the question that they never ask you and I would be shocked if they asked you this. When they're telling you you need a C-section, did anyone ask you if you wanted more children?
Speaker 1:No, no, no, definitely not.
Speaker 2:Right. So all they've done by doing a C-section for your breach is they've taken the risk they might've saved on that breach and now pushed it on all your future children.
Speaker 1:But they don't say that I definitely had a 100% unnecessary C-section, dr Stu, in that my daughter was in my pelvis you could see her head. They knew that she was sunny side up and this doctor literally just was tired of how long it was taking and said well, you should push it for four hours that you couldn't get an infection so you need to move to a C-section. And I said I don't want to. And she said well, you have to. And she had cleared the room of all the.
Speaker 3:That were in there. What was that?
Speaker 2:Of all the witnesses.
Speaker 1:Of all the witnesses, of all the witnesses. Yeah, I was crying about it. And then here's the worst part. I don't think I've even told you this. When she brought me in to do the C-section, she cut my bladder, so that was just a whole other situation. She didn't have the confidence to repair it, because I know some OBs do repair. The urologist on staff didn't feel qualified to repair it, so I had to wait for three hours on the table for this guy to show up to come, sew my bladder.
Speaker 2:This is hilarious in a pathetic sort of way. She's telling you you need a C-section because you might get an infection. And then they cut my bladder, and then she was just sitting open on the table for three hours.
Speaker 1:Yes, isn't that hysterical.
Speaker 2:It's hysterical now. It's tragic.
Speaker 1:It's hysterical now it was really traumatic then. I mean to go home from the hospital with a baby in a catheter and then to have to go to this urology office and, like I'm a new mom with a little baby, there's nobody else in that office that was like me.
Speaker 1:Under 60., it was a. It was an awful experience, you know, and I I was the definition of that word unnecessarian. I was an unnecessarian, never should have gone back for that C-section in the first place. And it's why I'm so passionate about physiological birth now, because, after having gone through it and having another opportunity to have another baby, thank God that I was able to get pregnant and have more children and to go through it again. But this isn't actually on our list of questions.
Speaker 2:But now I'm curious your thoughts on this because- Let me, oh, did you want to answer another question, or are you going to-. Yeah, I have another question for you, unless you want to react to this, the idea that hospital or home is better. It really depends on your local hospital. It depends on your trust in your local physician.
Speaker 1:If it's my local hospital, don't go. It's also important to realize that you don't necessarily have to go to your local hospital.
Speaker 2:It depends on your trust in your local physician. If it's my local hospital, it's also important to realize that you don't necessarily have to go to your local hospital. You can travel to another town. You can cross state lines if you have to. This is a life event. You've heard the analogy about weddings. Imagine if you were going to get married but they were telling you who you could invite and what color the invitations were, and you couldn't have the chocolate cake. You had to have the vanilla cake and all that stuff. You would never go for that sort of thing. And they told you you had to have it at this venue. And you said, no, no, I want it at this church and you know you can't have it at this church. You have to have it. You'd never go for that sort of thing, yeah, and you spend lots of money on your wedding day, yeah. So think of this as an event, um, because it's something that a woman will remember for the very much of the rest of her life.
Speaker 1:When she can't even remember the name of her kids, she'll still remember the birth of her birth that's a really great point, dr Stu, because I think that a lot of times first time moms especially don't. It's something that we just can't grasp, that we can fire somebody, because I do remember feeling uncomfortable with the OB, that I had being like I don't know if I really like this lady, but then being like I can't move. I can't move practices this late. I'm stuck here. This is what I'm stuck with you know it again.
Speaker 2:you're like I'm going to interview everybody and I'm going to find somebody that fits and that's the right fit. That's an important point you brought up is there are a lot of practices that won't take somebody in the third trimester. So that's not right, that's completely unethical, but that's their right to do that.
Speaker 1:There's midwives that won't take people too, Dr Stu.
Speaker 2:No, I know.
Speaker 1:That's the situation that I ran into.
Speaker 2:I know, but the midwifery model is such that a relationship really matters.
Speaker 2:Yes that's true when the medical model doesn't matter as much, but the idea that you can't transfer late in the pregnancy leads you back to the beginning of your pregnancy. And one of the things I learned when we did an interview with the Down to Birth podcast team and they talked about some red flags, and one of the big red flags that I think is brilliant is when a woman goes to her OB doctor for a visit. They're always a little anxious, a little apprehensive. So the question you ask yourself is how did you feel when you walked out of the office? Did you feel better or did you feel worse? And if you consistently don't feel better or you feel actually worse after your appointment, then that's a sign to get out of there, find something new, change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely you have to, and not everybody can please everybody, every practitioner, including myself. We've had people who come to our office who end up leaving because they don't like the way we said something or the way we did something. That's possible and that's fine, but that's at least. I admire those people that left me or left some of the midwives I've worked with, because they knew that that wasn't a good fit for them. They didn't just put up with it, and I don't want to be taking care of somebody who doesn't think I'm a good fit for them either.
Speaker 1:Sure, there has to be a mutual trust there.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, in our model there is, but in the medical model there isn't, because a lot of times, like I said earlier, you're going to be cared for by somebody who you've never met. And, by the way, when you come in and labor, the primary caregiver you have is the nurse that's on labor and delivery and you've never met her before. And then you finally get to like her, and then what happens?
Speaker 1:And then her shift changes, you get somebody else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, seven o'clock rolls around, you get changed the shift.
Speaker 1:she's gone right yep, exactly when I had my second and the home birth situation and all that good stuff, and I was working with a midwife because I was going to have, you know, home birth and I don't know this. This was going to probably make you mad too. So that same lady that checked my scar, that was all worried about uterine rupture, she asked on my way out is there anything else I can do for you as I'm leaving this appointment? And I said you know what? My midwife has been having a hard time getting the full operations record from my C-section. She had all the summaries. She knew I had a bladder, that my bladder was cut during my C-section, she knew I had hysterotomy extensions, but she hadn't actually gotten the report to read. So I said you know, can you help me get this? She said, oh, you just have to call. It's a call phone number. And I'm like, okay, I'm at the hospital, I'm going to go to records and just get it. Well, apparently this set off a red flag in her mind because she decided to go look up my records herself and read them and at the same time I had gone down to the records department, I pulled them. I took a picture of that page, texted it to my midwife.
Speaker 1:Well, I get a phone call not too long later, right after I got home, from my midwife who said this doctor looked up my records, read the operations report and saw that it said on the last line not a candidate for Tolec due to extensions, and scared my midwife out of continuing to be my midwife. She told her if you continue to be with her and she has a uterine rupture, you're going to lose your whole career. This is it for you. And my midwife backed out. I was 35, right at 36 weeks.
Speaker 1:It was too late at that point Cause, like you said, you have to have a relationship with midwives to get another midwife, and so my options were cause I called the other two midwife midwife free services in my area were because I called the other two midwife free services in my area, had detailed conversations with them both wonderful people but it just wasn't enough time for them and I was left with what Either go to the hospital or stay home and see what happens, and I had studied like a midwife myself up to this point, and so I ended up having an unassisted birth with no midwife, and this is a scenario that I've seen a lot of other women get placed into and it's just kind of sad. You know that-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the fear I think you've talked about this in some of your other podcasts. It's the fear that runs through the system, um, that you know if I step over the line I can lose my livelihood. This is the fear that runs through the medical system, and midwives have the same fear. I mean, in california, you know, midwives are doing things to women that are 41 weeks and five days that they would never do if there wasn't a 42 week rule in California. Yeah, they're doing vaginal, they're doing cervical sweeps and they're putting them on castor oil and they're doing, you know, foley balloons and stuff to get women into labor because in two days, by law they have to abandon their patient. By law, they have to abandon their patient.
Speaker 2:The brilliant people of Sacramento thought this was a good idea because they're advised by the brilliant people of the California Medical Association and the American College of OBGYN, who are nothing more than a trade lobby. They are not vested with your medical well-being. That is not their concern. Their concern is to keep a monopoly on their trade and they don't like to be called out. By the way, they'll never be listening to your podcast anyway, so it won't matter, yeah, you never know.
Speaker 2:People who watch Fox News only watch Fox News. People who watch MSNBC only watch MSNBC, and they're uncomfortable watching the other thing it's very uncomfortable. I have to read all the literature that ACOG puts out. I get aggravated every single day because I'm seeing all this stuff. They don't have to read midwifery literature. They don't have to.
Speaker 1:Maybe it would break them down if they did. I'm working on it.
Speaker 2:I'm working on it. It's an imbalance. At some point it has to collapse because it's not sustainable.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. This kind of brings us to one of the big themes of our podcast. Speaking of our podcast is we're faith-based.
Speaker 1:Rachel and I both have a lot of faith in God and in His creation and that he created our bodies to give birth. And that was the big thing that really, at the end of the day, I had to say do I trust these studies, do I trust these doctors at the hospital, or do I trust that the Lord made my body to heal, that it did heal, that I did receive evidence that it was healed and that I know my body can give birth, because it almost did before it was interrupted. And that was really what it came down to. And I think so many women just need that encouragement that their bodies were built to birth, that they were made to give birth and, like you said, the baby has to come out. And perhaps some people there will be certain scenarios or situations where they may not be able to birth naturally for whatever reason. Be able to birth naturally for whatever reason, but to scare the majority of the population for a minority of situations to me personally doesn't seem fair.
Speaker 2:I couldn't have said that any better. That's right. I mean, does anybody listening actually think that one third of all women can't give birth vaginally? I mean, that is considered the norm in the medical community and no one bats an eyelash at it. But if you actually step out of your box and look back at that, you'd say that's absurd and you'd say that's absurd, that's absurd, and even if we wanted to use science against itself here.
Speaker 1:If only 5% of people were getting C-sections a couple decades ago and now 32% of women are, women's bodies are still women's bodies.
Speaker 3:They haven't changed, unless we've morphed into some sort of birthlessless bodies, but that's not the case. Well, how would we, how would we be making it as a species if this was like really necessary? Yeah, like remove c-sections from even like existing, like they didn't exist in the past, several hundred years ago or so? And yeah, birth could, you know, end very badly and there was, you know, some situations, but it wasn't the, it wasn't 30 percent of them, like it just doesn't logic.
Speaker 2:No, I mean maternal mortality, what you know, you're talking back in the 16 1700s yeah, you know before germ theory and before semmelweis figured out, you just have to wash your hands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was the puerperal sepsis and puerperal fever. It was a traumatic thing for a lot of women and a lot of women would tear and there would be no repair and they'd end up with fistulas and it was not a good time. We've actually come a long way from that, but we haven't. Since 1970, as I said before, we haven't changed the outcomes that you're looking for, which is internal and neonatal morbidity and mortality, any and yet the C-section rate has gone up 500%. So, yeah, I mean, there's no question that there's something wrong.
Speaker 2:But the people running the system, you know all they can do is find new ways to meddle. All the research that's coming out is not about doing less, it's always about something doing more. It's like well, let's induce everyone at 39 weeks, Then we'll get better outcomes. Well, that's called stage one thinking. We didn't even get into stage one thinking today, but stage one thinking is doing something because it feels good, Never asking yourself in the long run does it actually do good? And if we can lower the C-section rate by a couple percent by inducing every 39 weeks, look what we did. But what did you do to all those babies and all those mothers and all those babies who weren't exposed to their mother's own hormones?
Speaker 2:yeah you know, we have rises in autism, we have rises in autoimmune disorders in children. Right now, of what I understand from a good friend of mine, we have about a 54 percent of children have some autoimmune disorder. You know, for 30 years ago, um, you know, before 1986, vaccine law it was about eight or it was single digits, and now it's. But it isn't just the vaccines, it isn't just GMOs, it isn't just 5G, it is. You know, there's lots of things we can't, you'll never be able to pin it down.
Speaker 2:But to say that eons of evolution have brought us to a system that only modern medicine can fix is a bit of hubris. That goes a little bit too far. For even you know, for even me as a physician who's supposed to be like a cocky son of a bitch, you know I'm not very humble. I'm very humbled by the process, the fact that women allow me to be a part of this sacred event. And you know, I think about it sometimes. I, you know, I still watch a birth on Instagram or on a movie document. I'm still sobbing. I give I've seen the same birth in the heads up documentary that I was involved with to breach birth at home, probably 75 times and I'm still sobbing at the end of the documentary every time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What makes you so passionate about birth? How did you even you know get into that? How was that something that you were like? You know what I want to do Help women birth these babies.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be a forest ranger oh wow. I wanted to be a forest ranger, oh wow. But you know, I mean, as circumstance would have it, I grew up in a lower middle class family, a Jewish family, and what did mothers want their sons? To be Doctors. So you know, even though my mother and I were at batted heads our entire life, I probably went to medical school because I didn't know what else to do with my life and I was good at science. I was a good student, I got good grades, it was easy for me. It's a different period of time. I don't know that I'd get into medical school in 2023. You know, as a white Jewish male, I probably wouldn't get in. So that's a whole other topic.
Speaker 1:There, too, that's another podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, there's some sacred cows here we're just scratching the surface of. But so I went in and then I just happened to enjoy that rotation in my third year of medical school. I had no idea that that's what I wanted to do. I liked internal medicine, I liked fixing things and I liked being a sort of an investigator and I think internists they're trying to diagnose diseases and it's kind of a cool thing. But I really liked the fact that I could do surgery. I could do longitudinal care, which is taking care of people over time as an OB. I could deliver babies, I could do a little endocrinology, a little psychiatry. There was just there was so much to it. And then it was fun catching a baby at three in the morning instead of like pushing chemotherapy on a 12-year-old which was the rotation I had before that which was hemoc, and actually having a couple of kids die on my service during that eight-week period I think it was eight weeks, might have been six. Might eight-week period. I think it was eight weeks. It might have been six, yeah, I think it was six or eight weeks, yeah. And then the next thing, I'm catching a new life. So I was sold on that. And again.
Speaker 2:When you're young, you're naive and you're energetic and you don't think about the hours, the liability, being on call and medicine was a whole different thing. Even then. Back then, medicine in the 70s and 80s when I was training, was a thing where doctors had some status and they could make a lot of money and they could make their own decisions and they ran their own practices and doctors, even in days, actually ran the hospitals and slowly, when managed care came in in the 80s, it slowly all changed over and doctors became an obstacle for the business majors and the people running taking over the business, because we were the ones that had the power to provide the service and they needed us. But then they found a way around that by ending up making us employees instead of just. You know, hospitals used to just have be there and then doctors would apply for private doctors would apply for privileges. Now most hospitals have full-time staff and in labor and delivery they have what's called a laborist, somebody that just comes in for 12 hours and catches all the babies in that period of time and then goes home.
Speaker 2:And the private doctor is obsolete in many, many places. They're still struggling to do some, but it used to be that 70% of the doctors were private. Now it's about 20% and it will eventually become extinct unless it makes a comeback outside of that system. And I think there's enough people in the world right now that have fed up with corporate and government collaboration becoming so impersonal that they're looking for alternatives and they're forming communities of like-minded people and they're looking at alternative medicine, which again is a terrible term. It's another one of those language terms. It isn't alternative medicine, it's another form of medicine.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure Like functional medicine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like functional medicine, like Ayurvedic medicine or naturopathic medicine or you know acupuncture or herbology or you know that sort of thing. So I think people are finding that a lot of what we've been taught was wrong. I mean what people are finding out now that's how I evolved in the nineties and two thousands was I began to have to unlearn everything that I was taught. People are finding out now, because of the stuff that's coming out about the whole COVID vaccine scandal with the hiding of information and the clinical trials not being real and all that stuff, they're finding out that maybe I should question if my doctor is so pro this vaccine and this vaccine sucks, then maybe I got to take a look at my doctor's other things that he's recommending.
Speaker 1:I hope people think that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good. It's good. They should challenge it because it's making them really uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I said I hope they question it. It's good they should challenge it because I hope they question it. Yeah, I said I hope they question it. It's it's time, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know I wanted to ask you because you mentioned before about talking to males, that it's something you know. You get to kind of kind of your thing? You're like I get to talk to the men. Do you kind of your thing You're like I get to talk to the men? Do you think? I'd like to hear if you think that there's a difference between husbands or partners male partners in the hospital versus at home, because at home they kind of seem to fall more in that doula role almost where in the hospital, I mean, I just hear all kinds of stuff about men that pass out or the husband is getting treated by the nurses because he can't handle the blood, or whatever the situation might be. How has your experience with partners been?
Speaker 2:Well, the problem with the hospital model and again, this is not all hospitals. Well, the problem with the hospital model and again this is not all hospitals Nothing is always or never, or always whatever, but the father is treated as a third wheel or fourth wheel or fifth wheel in the hospital. You know the father. They don't incorporate the father into the role of importance. So I hear many, many fathers talk about how they didn't even know where to stand or what to do or what to say or or whatever else. And they, they wanted to stand up for their, their partner, because that's what males do, and you know they were put in a place where you know they don't know anything and these experts are.
Speaker 2:So so-called experts are coming in and telling and so they get disempowered and it's very demasculating for a lot of them. In the home setting it's a whole lot of different things. But then also you have to realize that the kind of families that choose home birth you're already starting with, you know, on different levels, because if they're choosing home birth, then the husband's usually part of that decision process and it has been coming to some of the prenatal visits and again, you know our visits are worth coming to, because we spend an hour talking to them and you know if to take your wife to the obstetrician, you spend 40 minutes in the waiting room and then you're in the doctor's office for like nine minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you pee in a cup and then they ask you if you have any questions and then you leave.
Speaker 2:Right. So yeah, I know that we've been sort of, you know, mocking that system. It deserves mocking and you could talk about it in a nice way, but sometimes you need to be forceful to make people listen.
Speaker 3:I don't want to turn people off.
Speaker 1:You're being real, though, and that's what I appreciate about this is so many people don't know that this stuff going into their first birth. And then they're like why didn't anybody tell me? Going into their first birth. And then they're like why didn't anybody tell me? And at least if they hear something like this, they're hearing the truth behind it. Whether the truth sounds pretty or it sounds real, I think that's what's important to take away from this conversation is what's been sharing? Is the truth what's been shared?
Speaker 2:I would say that people will say, well, it's my truth and your truth and stuff. There are facts that can't be disputed.
Speaker 1:I guess you're right. Some people's truth is that their experience was fine. They didn't have a problem with any of this stuff.
Speaker 2:I want every woman to have that feeling when she leaves, whether she had a C-section or an induction or a vaginal delivery or a home birth or whatever. It would be ideal because ultimately it shapes like you were talking earlier, rachel. It shapes how you bond with your baby, how you breastfeed, how you feel about yourself, how your own self-esteem. You know there are so many women that have had one or two C-sections that when they have that successful VBAC at home or VBAC in the hospital for that matter it's a revelation for them. Their whole life changes, their whole self-image changes and it's great.
Speaker 2:And you know that's one of the beauties of what we get to do when we support choice, we support informed decision-making and we don't always have to agree with our client and we don't have to skew our counseling to get them to do what we want them to do, because we're not necessarily worried about what the hospital administrator is going to say to us on Monday morning. And we're not necessarily worried about what the hospital administrator is going to say to us on Monday morning and we're not worried about the lawyer, because people who are doing home birthing are well-informed, they sign consent forms and we have long conversations and everybody's aware of the uncertainty. See, the midwifery model trusts birth and they accept uncertainty. The medical model doesn't trust birth, they fear it and they don't accept any uncertainty. And they try uncertainty. The medical model doesn't trust birth, they fear it and they don't accept any uncertainty. And they try to control everything. And when you try to control everything, as I said earlier, it creates chaos.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely, because you can't.
Speaker 2:And then you freak out, and then you don't know how to go around the leaf.
Speaker 1:I love that analogy. Then you don't know how to go around the leaf. Where do we?
Speaker 3:do I remember that?
Speaker 2:Walk around the leaf.
Speaker 1:Is there anything that you wanted to leave us with, or any last words.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would tell everyone that's listening, that's thinking about getting pregnant, to do your homework, that is, pregnant, to remember what I said about how do you feel when you leave your doctor's office, and to seek out midwifery care, even if you don't plan to use a midwife for the birth. But midwives are experts in normal birthing and in prenatal care and in nurturing and in nutrition and in breastfeeding and in sleep and stress reduction and sleep improvement and all those things. And you're not going to get that in the modern obstetrician's office. You might get some pamphlets, you might be handed some pamphlets to tell you how to eat or whatever to do, but it's not the same thing as having conversations and doing diet recall and stuff. So normal birthing, which is about 85% of pregnant women, should be cared for by midwives and yet about 98% of women in this country are cared for by obstetricians, and maybe a little less.
Speaker 2:But but that's it's wrong because you've got people taking care of you who aren't experts in your problem, which isn't really a problem we have. That's another thing too. We have a thing called the problem list and first thing on the problem list is pregnancy. On every doctor's problem list and it's like you're already setting yourself up. It's like putting a woman in a hospital gown when she comes in. You're setting themselves up for for being that hierarchical thing and I so I I I made a booboo there when I said that so most women don't have an issue and therefore should be taking care of people, but are experts in normal birthing and that would be the midwifery profession.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Thank you so so much.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you Dr Stu.
Speaker 1:Dr Stu online. You can find him at birthinginstinctscom or follow on Instagram.
Speaker 2:Instagram at birthinginstinctscom, or follow on.
Speaker 1:Instagram at birthinginstincts as well, and thank you all so much for tuning in and for being on this journey with us, as always. If you'd like to follow along outside the podcast, you can join the mission on Instagram or Facebook, at the Radiant Mission or on YouTube. And today we are closing with a Bible verse that Dr Stu actually provided. He said that this Bible verse that Dr Stu actually provided. He said that this Bible verse brought up some great memories for him, and I've actually said it on here before because it's one of my favorites. It's from Numbers. It is chapter 6, verses 24 through 26. And it says May the Lord bless you and keep you. May he make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he lift up his countenance upon you and grant you. May he make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace. We are wishing you a radiant week.
Speaker 2:Amen.
