Some time in the last century or two maternal mortality dropped by 90% in the lying-in hospitals. That’s because physicians had to stop killing their patients with their filthy hands that had no business being up in her business. Indeed, hand washing, basic sanitation, and infrastructure changed the face of human mortality for the better wherever there were major improvements. But why was maternal mortality still higher in hospitals? We are urged to birth in hospitals because women used to die and still die in other parts of the world. What’s the actual role of institutional birth on maternal and neonatal mortality? It’s not what you’ve been told. This section sets the stage for all the rest of this workshop’s information. Prepare to have your beliefs challenged. 

There’s a special place for prenatal vitamins on your medical intake document. “Be a good girl and take your vitamins”. Being a good girl can lead to miscarriage. The research on supplements is surprising, especially because no one in the industry seems to know what it says or follows it for safer outcomes. In fact, one of the most commonly prescribed supplements may actually contribute to gestational diabetes, growth restriction, and preterm birth! Healthy mothers need healthy food to grow healthy babies. You’ll learn what the science has to say about “healthy food”.

It’s widely assumed that every mother needs prenatal care by a health care professional to ensure she and her baby are “safe”. Absolutely, pregnancy is an important time to take care of yourself. However, when does “prenatal care” become “prenatal scare”? We’re going to take a good look at routine technocratic prenatal care, its tests, their purposes, what’s done with the results, and what the science says. We’ll talk about science-based preventive and wellness strategies that are proven to improve health and wellness and lessen the potential for complications.

Mothers are often inundated with tips and tricks to “prepare” for birth, when in truth, all you really need to prepare is to be pregnant and give it some time. Birth is a hormonal process that results in a physical experience. It’s a finely tuned concert of hormones between mother and baby that has been refined over the millennia. Today’s interference in this process is way above most people’s pay grade. In this section, you’ll get a rock solid foundation in how pregnancy concludes and the birth process begins. You’ll learn about chemical signalling, progesterone, relaxin, oxytocin, surfactants, prolactin, epinephrine, endorphins, and catecholamines. Bring your genius cap - you’re walking out of here with more information than most practitioners. 

Oxytocin is called “the love hormone” because it helps us to fall in love, trust others, calm our minds and hearts, digest our food, enjoy sex, and … birth a baby! When it comes from your own brain, it has some amazing effects. You can actually do things to increase it or to squash it. The synthetic stuff that comes in an IV bag may look chemically identical under a microscope, but it’s no love hormone. It’s a bag of all kinds of badness. You’ll learn why the natural stuff can actually be orgasmic and why the synthetic stuff is sometimes likened to torture. You’ll also know how to optimise the good stuff. 

Your cervix seems to be a massive fixation for our technocratic birth services and their probing fingers. Why does this little bit of tissue at the top of your vagina get so much attention - and should it? We’re going to talk about all the stuff that the technocratic folks like to focus on - your cervix, dilation, the amniotic sac, the waters breaking, the baby pooping before birth, and other stuff that seems to alarm them. Don’t worry, we’ll cover every scary thing you’ve ever thought of regarding birth and we’ll lay a big ole science smack-down on them. 

Good golly. When men got involved in birth, dissected dead pregnant women, named our parts after themselves, and invented manoeuvres (they also named after themselves) based on dead women with a non-moving foetus, things have never been right since. We’ll cover their ridiculous mansplaining regarding birth that still reigns today in our technocratic model and why there’s no good current science to back much of it up. You’ll learn why labouring women get so many gloved fingers sent up their vaginas and why they’re all on a clock. After this, so much about how we birth will make sense … or not.

And here it is. The reason you followed through all the previous sections. The moment when an ordinary woman experiences an ordinary labour and releases her baby through her ordinary vagina driven by the most normal, ordinary, epic, unbelievable, miraculous, everyday process.

Take a woman out of medical captivity, stop scaring the crap out of her, feed and nourish her, and support her normal pregnancy, labour, and birth physiology - and you will encounter a miracle that will change your life. This will give you goosebumps and tears. Bring the tissues.

We’ll move through the true stages of a woman’s experience: preparation, separation, liminality, emergence, and integration and what happens at each stage. 

You’ll grasp how women transition into motherhood through a process that dates back to creation. The design is stunning, along with it’s many back-up safety mechanisms, that has resulted in a planet blessed with humans that each have the potential to make this world a better place.

You’ll learn how to not mess this up to create problems (I’m looking at you, midwives with your stretch and sweeps and Tylenol) and will also learn basic strategies for solving complexities if they arise.

In this all new bonus section, we’ll cover how to access medical services in a way that aligns your needs with what they offer. A medical emergency isn’t the time to bring your kumbaya birth plan. It’s the time to bring your clarity on why you’re there, what they offer, and how you can communicate in a way that keeps you in the decision-making seat.