Podcast: The Revelation Project Podcast

Episode Title: Oxytocin, Hormonal Gaps & Better Birth Outcomes with Dr. Sarah Buckley
Host(s): Monica
Guest(s): Sarah

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Monica (Host) | 00:00:03 to 00:00:33
Welcome to the Revelation Project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project, and what gets revealed gets healed. You. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Revelation Project podcast.

Monica (Host) | 00:00:34 to 00:01:37
So, I don't know about you, but I have always been so passionate about my own birth experience. I have two grown children and being in this line of work and loving this conversation all about the feminine, the feminine returning, awakening the feminine in men and women, disrupting the trance and really everything that has to do with what I feel we're in right now, which is a time of great revelation. How could that conversation be complete without talking about birth? So today I have brought a very special guest, Dr. Sarah Buckley, who's trained as a GP, a general family physician with qualifications in GP Obstetrics.

Monica (Host) | 00:01:37 to 00:02:20
She's been writing and lecturing to childbirth professionals and parents since 1997. And she's the author of the internationally bestselling book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland researching oxytocin in labor and birth and the impacts of maternity care interventions. She has co authored several papers on oxytocin in labor, birth and breastfeeding. And she is also the mother of four grown children who were all born at home and are now in their, what?

Monica (Host) | 00:02:20 to 00:02:46
Twenty s and thirty s, I think, and beyond. So she lives in a semi rural outskirt of Brisbane, and she has so much to say about our female bodies and their superb design for pregnancy, birth, mothering and beyond. So please join me in welcoming Sarah Buckley. Hi, Sarah. Thanks so much, Monica.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:02:46 to 00:03:48
It's a pleasure to be here. Pleasure to have this opportunity to talk to you about birth. Because as I was saying in the beginning in the intro, I've really been really circling all of these conversations that are about remembering and women remembering our innate cycles, our innate power, our innate abilities. We have been so domesticated that we have forgotten that our bodies know the way. And I think that we're all starting to realize that progress has been this carrot, let's call it, that we've been chasing.

Monica (Host) | 00:03:49 to 00:04:49
And I think we're all starting to recognize that we might have overdone it and forgotten that we can have progress, and I call it the sacred. And we can also remember that we are both human and divine and that we are actually part of nature, not separate from it, and contain that very nature within us. And I wanted to really bring you on to help women kind of remember this conversation as it relates to birth, but also about remembering how to be in community for women birthing women birthing bodies, and just really kind of come back in sisterhood around this subject as well. Yeah, that's a beautiful place to start. I mean, I think one of the things to remember is that we are mammals.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:04:49 to 00:05:12
We have mammary glands, we suckle our young. If we look at the evolution of mammals, as far as we know, mammals or placental, mammals like us have been around for 163,000,000 years. So that's how long human birth has been evolving for. So we're the peak of success of birth over that 163,000,000 years and we are superbly designed. It's hardwired into our bodies.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:05:12 to 00:05:48
Every all of our mothers, mothers, mothers, way back to the first little tree shrew mammal gave birth successfully and our bodies know how to do it. And yeah, as you say, there have been a lot of successes in medicine. Some babies survived that wouldn't have survived certainly when medical care is really needed. But we've also, as you say, kind of overstepped things, really and started to interfere with the natural processes because birth is such a tender, such a specific, such a critical, such an essential part of life for all mammals. And there's certain conditions that we need to give birth.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:05:48 to 00:06:28
And I think if we take it back to those very kind of basic conditions that would really help us to relearn and to understand how birth can be for ourselves as women giving birth and in our culture as well because every mammal seeks a safe place to give birth. If you've had a dog or a cat or seen on YouTube an elephant give birth or something, you'll know that they seek a private, safe place. They're usually surrounded by members of their social groups, individuals that they know. And for example, elephants, when they give birth, they have a circle of elephant helpers who sway in time with the laboring female and soothe her with their trunks and obviously form a formidable barrier. And that's the conditions that we need to give birth.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:06:28 to 00:06:57
We need to feel private and safe because for most of that 63 million years we've given birth out there in the wilderness. Right? It's not a very safe place to give birth, especially for a birthing mama. If you've given birth yourself, you know that there can be strange noises, strange smells that would attract any predator. So the safety of the laboring woman in an evolutionary sense and in a sense that's hardwired into our bodies depends on her being in a situation where she feels private, safe and unobserved.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:06:57 to 00:07:56
So that's our mammalian heritage and when we're in that situation, the whole thing is going to unfold most optimally. I love this reminder about private and safe. And when I think of how other mammals give birth and even what you just said about the elephants swaying in time and surrounding that's such a beautiful imagery. And I think that I want to make sure that I'm really sensitive to this conversation because, as you said, there have been so many advances and so many sweet babes who've survived that may not have otherwise done so. But I also know that medical intervention has really, really created the opposite, almost like an unsafe space for women to really birth.

Monica (Host) | 00:07:57 to 00:08:36
And I wondered if you had thoughts on that to share or where you thought we've kind of overdone it and where we kind of need to start thinking ourselves and feeling ourselves kind of back in harmony with nature. Yes, well, as I said, those core conditions of feeling private, safe, and when I say unobserved, I don't mean we've all got to go and give birth in a cave or by ourselves, because, as I said, with elephants, some animals do want to have lots of individuals there. And I think women are like this. So thinking about how do I feel safe is a good place to start. For some women, they want to be by themselves in labor.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:08:36 to 00:09:16
For some women, especially in some cultural groups, you only feel safe with lots of people around you. So that's a good kind of thought to have before you go into labor. And then when you're planning your birth situation and this is a big hint, really, the whole hormonal orchestration of birth that we'll talk about, of having a baby, is really almost identical to the hormone orchestration of making a baby. So actually, if you think about the conditions you need to make a baby private, safe and unobserved, that's really the kind of conditions you need to have a baby. And if you're going to hospital, it's not bad news because you can actually look after your primitive brain, because that's what we're talking about.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:09:16 to 00:09:53
That's the limbic system, the middle layer of the brain that's kind of scanning around all the time in normal life, but particularly in labor, is this a safe place to give birth? So, for your primitive brain, it's sensory information, like the smells, the sights. So just some things that help women is to wear a blindfold, have headphones, bury your head in a pillow, all that sensory stuff that helps you to shut out, that not private, safe and unobserved kind of information. Of course, the best thing you can do if you're going to hospital is have your own midwife or your own duel. Because all the science says that your chances of having interventions is much lower, your chance of having a normal birth is much higher.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:09:53 to 00:10:27
And it really is the same thing. When you have someone else there that you have a trusting relationship with, you're going to feel more private, you're going to feel more safe, you're going to feel more unobserved. And they can be that circle of elephants for you. So yeah, that's one of my hints, is pay attention to your senses if you are going into a hospital and take your own duel, your own supportive birth companion, someone that you start a relationship with in pregnancy and you know them and they know you and partners and whoever else you want. But I would say a duel is a really important part of your birth support team if you're giving birth in hospital.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:10:27 to 00:10:46
And of course, the other option, like I did with my four babies, is to give birth at home because almost by definition, you're going to feel more private, safe and unobserved in your own home. And you also have more intrinsic power over who gets to be there. Right. It's your space. I noticed that when I was a GP, actually, I used to go and visit people at home, sometimes do home visits.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:10:46 to 00:11:06
And I'd notice that the things I do when people come into my clinic, like I just presume I could put my stethoscope on them or take their temperature when I was in their home. I was actually more attentive about those things. Like I was aware it was their space. So that's one of the advantages of home birth is you have automatically the kind of mammalian conditions that you need to give birth. And of course, it's why home birth?

Sarah (Guest) | 00:11:06 to 00:11:44
That women who plan a home birth have much lower rates of intervention and very good outcomes as well. Yeah, I love that you kind of pointed to that change in dynamic when you were at somebody else's space. It's like you're taking her lead almost. And that is kind of, I think, where there's a lot of I'll call it like, upside down behavior where I think so many of us, at least in the US. Have I feel like so many women have kind of forgotten that we get to have a voice in our experience.

Monica (Host) | 00:11:44 to 00:12:58
And I think that's coming back, that overswing of the pendulum where I know in my mother's generation, it just was not that way, or at least in my understanding of how it went kind of in the 70s. But I do feel like more and more mothers are planning their birth possibly through doulas and midwives and considering having home births where even when I was pregnant with my babies, that was very still frowned upon. And I feel like it's becoming more normal now, which I'm really happy about because I do feel that I've met so many women who have had actually traumatic birth experiences because of the interventions, I think that have been either because they've been declared high risk I know I was declared high risk at age 35. Geriatric, I think is what they called me. But anyway, there's a variety of reasons why, but I also wanted to find out and get curious about your own passion.

Monica (Host) | 00:12:58 to 00:13:24
Was it because you had your kids at home that you became passionate about it or tell me more. Yes. Well, I was always a bit interested in birth. My father was actually an obstetrician and my grandfather in a small town in New Zealand where I grew up, was actually we used to go out on horseback and attend women giving birth in the bush. And he was actually famous for his skills with a particular kind of forceps which saved people's lives in the priest's Arian days.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:13:24 to 00:13:43
So you could say it's in my blood. And then also actually on my mother's side, my mother's grandmother was actually a granny midwife in the area and she attended the births of my mother and her siblings. So it's on both sides of my family. I couldn't avoid it. But, yeah, I was also kind of influenced by my sister in law, my husband'sister, who is a home birth midwife in New Zealand.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:13:43 to 00:14:11
I was lucky enough I did my GP obstetric training in hospitals, but I also had the opportunity to support some friends giving birth at home. And I could see the qualitative differences. And I also knew and this was something for me as a doctor was that when you go into hospital as a health care provider, you often get treated differently. You can either get, like, kind of people don't know what to do with you, so they kind of undertreat you or they overtreat you. And that's been the case in my family.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:14:11 to 00:14:38
I've had family members have serious illnesses from being both undertreated and overtreated. So, yeah, having a home birth was a choice for a whole lot of reasons. And then once I had my babies at home, whoa, a whole world opened up to me. And I guess what it really triggered in me monica it raised a whole lot of questions. Like, I'd been taught this about birth and then I had this particular experience and I was like, how do those things even fit together in the same room?

Sarah (Guest) | 00:14:38 to 00:15:05
And then the other curious thing was that when I gave birth to my first baby, we lived in a small house in central Melbourne and my neighbor had three children. She was a great source of information and wisdom for me. And she lent me, like, a bassinet, like a cradle to put my baby in. So I had this room set up with the baby and the cradle and everything. But once I'd given birth, like, at home with my baby and who had never been separated from me, I just couldn't put my baby in another room.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:15:06 to 00:15:32
I couldn't have her more than an arm's length away like this incredible protective. The hormones I know now kicked in and was really curious, like, what happened to me. I was kind of going in one direction and suddenly, through those few hours of labor, I was in a completely different place. Like, what happened in my brain, because I could feel something happened in my brain and I became passionate, I guess, about what is it that happened? What is it that happens during the processes of labor and birth that changes a woman?

Sarah (Guest) | 00:15:33 to 00:15:50
And it's basically the same thing that happens in all mammals. It basically switches on that instinctive. Mothering that means that we survive. Our babies survive, all our other mammalian cousins survive because of this incredible protection protectiveness that we get. And it's not just protectiveness, actually.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:15:50 to 00:16:20
It's like you'd bite anyone that tried to take your baby away. That's part of it. But there's also, and this is what I discovered through the research that I've done, is that the hormones of labor and birth, and particularly the peaks of oxytocin and those last section of labor and birth actually turn on the pleasure and reward centers in the brain, the dopamine centers in the brain. And that's what has every mammalian mother give the dedicated care that every mammalian newborn needs. We're rewarded and motivated inside our brain at that moment that we meet our babies.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:16:20 to 00:16:54
So we've got this powerful rewarded pleasure center activation and then we get the sensory I'm talking about all mammals here. We get the sensory information from our babies, like the sight, the smell, the taste, because most mammals lick their babies and then that gets kind of, we say fired and wide connected up in our brain with our baby. And our baby starts off being like there's a source of immense pleasure and reward. I say it's like the best first date ever when you meet your baby because you're just so turned on to fall in love with your baby. And for me, with my children, it kind of got more and more the more babies I had.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:16:54 to 00:17:13
And I think this is something that happens in the brain as well. It's kind of hard to stop because it gets to be so pleasurable. And the last birth, it was like I really felt like I'd won a lottery twice. Like I had this incredible experience of giving birth and then I had the baby as well. And it was almost like incomprehensible to me that these two things could coexist that was so powerfully rewarding.

Monica (Host) | 00:17:13 to 00:17:26
Yeah. And what you're pointing to is something that has been termed like ecstatic birth, correct? Yes. I wrote the book about that or the article about that in 2002, I think, in Mothering magazine. Yeah.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:17:26 to 00:17:42
From my own experience. Really? And it is. It's designed to be a pleasurable experience, or at least when the contractions start. It's designed to fully overtake us with that onslaught, that effusion, that euphoria when we met our baby for the first time.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:17:42 to 00:18:01
And it's not just humans. It's actually part of the mammalian blueprint for labor because as I said, every mammalian mother needs that most mammals, some of them wouldn't have given birth before. And it's like what's happening to me in my body? And obviously they don't want to have an aversive reaction to their babies, otherwise nothing's going to survive. Right.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:18:01 to 00:18:17
So it's so important that these reward and pleasure centers get turned on through the processes of labor and birth. And then the new mothers meet their babies and then this activation happens. That's going to motivate because mothering is a big job, right, for any species. Right. Mice, rats, they've got to go on forage.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:18:17 to 00:18:47
I mean, you're using a lot of energy through the suckling. So we need this input. We need to be rewarded and motivated to give that dedicated care. Yeah. I want to go back to something that I think you were pointing to and make sure that I really kind of underline what I heard you say, which was I make up that when you were pregnant with your first, you were kind of going down one track.

Monica (Host) | 00:18:47 to 00:19:18
And so was that kind of track more, the baby's going to sleep in this room, I'm going to sleep in this room. Like, this is the way it's going to be kind of thing. And that's the way you saw other mothers kind of behave with their babies, the ones that had had their babies in a hospital, or do I have that wrong? Yeah, well, that was conventional parenting at the time, and it still is. Like, you have your baby in one room in a nursery, which, by the way, she isn't even a safe thing to have a baby sleep in a separate room.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:19:19 to 00:19:38
The safer thing in terms of SIDS is to have the baby at least in the same room as you. But the convention has been you have a nursery, you have the cradle or the crib. You put your baby in the crib, you sleep in another room. You get up at night when your baby cries, you feed your baby, put the baby back down and go back to your bed. So that was kind of like my own cultural expectation, because that's what everybody did.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:19:38 to 00:20:09
And when I decided to sleep with my babies, which I slept with all of them, it wasn't all that easy, really. Certain people gave me a hard time. The maternal and child health nurse, it wasn't a normal it wasn't a culturally sanctioned choice, you could say, but it was really and it was my instincts that kicked in. And, I mean, there's a whole conversation about co sleeping, but basically, if you think about those 163,000,000 years of mammalian evolution, if you put your baby just down to sleep somewhere else, the baby wouldn't be there in the morning. Right.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:20:09 to 00:20:36
So we're hardwired to hold our babies close night and day, and it's an instinct that we have to hold our babies, to pick our babies up when they cry. And then, as you say, that's what happened for me when I gave birth to my first born, Emma. I had all that cultural conditioning and expectations, and I even had the crib. And then I couldn't do that. I couldn't actually put my baby that far away from me.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:20:36 to 00:21:23
It didn't feel safe to me. Right. And the difference and again, it's so interesting, right, because all of my friends I know that had their babies at home also ended up co sleeping. And I think that what so much of your research and so much of your expertise is around is this cascade of hormones and this feedback loop that actually is naturally created through the birth process. But when that gets interrupted, it actually interrupts almost like our instinctual process that would then dictate our attachment to our baby.

Monica (Host) | 00:21:23 to 00:21:39
Is that right? Well, that's what I observe. That's what I observed in myself. Certainly the processes that I went through in labor and birth changed my brain so that I actually couldn't parent in that culturally sanctioned way. Like I couldn't have my baby that far away from me.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:21:39 to 00:22:12
And as you say, I do see other people do it like that. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong or intrinsically unsafe, whatever about normal parenting or having your baby in another room, but what I'm saying is that that's not our mammalian blueprint. Our mammalian blueprint is actually to have our babies close to us because that's what's kept our babies safe for all these millions of years. Of course, we didn't live in houses and all those kind of things and predators could take our babies at night, but it's still hard wide into us and it's also hardwired into our babies. Our babies know that if they're not in touch with an adult that they're not safe.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:22:12 to 00:22:26
And they'll usually cry when you put them down. Right? We're trying to go against all these millions of years of blueprint. And as you say, that starts in labor and birth. And it starts in labor and birth because well, of course that's how motherhood happens in all species, right?

Sarah (Guest) | 00:22:27 to 00:22:48
It only happens through these millions of years, through the processes of labor and birth. And that we could call it bonding. That bonding that happens is not just a kind of feel good add on, it's actually an intrinsic part of species survival. So that's why it's so strongly hardwired into the brain of all mammals, including women. And what happens in labor and birth.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:22:48 to 00:23:07
I mean, that other thing I talk about is we've got birth, we've got the switching on of bonding. But of course, lactation or breastfeeding for all mammals, mammary glands, like all mammals by definition, cycle, they're young. That all has to get switched on at that moment to birth as well. So birth isn't just about birth. Birth is about survival of the species.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:23:07 to 00:23:34
And mother and baby have to survive the birth and thrive and go on to have more offspring who survive and thrive. And that includes successful lactation. That includes this dedicated maternal care that's optimized through bonding, through reward and pleasure center activation in the brain. And as I said, all this happens in the processes of labor and birth, including a whole lot of preparations that happen before labor and birth. My analogy, I say labor and birth is like the royal wedding.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:23:34 to 00:24:03
This is the English wedding of William and Kate. And it's not just that event, it's all the preparation that happens beforehand. And if William and Kaden turned up at Westminster Cathedral like a week beforehand, it wouldn't have been the same ride, although all the preparations wouldn't have been complete or a day before, even an hour before. Right. Because Mother Nature, the superb design that we have, has this timeline, and there's a magical moment, and actually, I've got to tell you this.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:24:03 to 00:24:25
We don't actually know what causes that magical moment. That's the onset of labor. If I could tell you what causes onset of labor in humans, I'd get a Nobel Prize, because we don't actually know. And you can imagine how much research goes into that. But on the other hand, we're kind of stepping over that in lots of ways with induction, with pre labor Caesareans, without really understanding what it is that makes the baby fully ready and makes the mother fully ready.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:24:25 to 00:25:11
And those preparations include preparations for a safe birth, for protection of the baby through those strong contractions, and then for preparation for breastfeeding and bonding as well. So it's not just birth. It's actually a whole package of species survival that we're talking about. Yeah. I mean, it really I can't help but sit here in my questions and think of all of the questions that are coming up for me around just how different the world might be if we were to allow women to have babies in the most natural way.

Monica (Host) | 00:25:11 to 00:26:13
It's like you think about all of the I'll call them unintended consequences, because I think there's part of me that cannot get my head around why that process would be by design, that we would interrupt that process in women over and over and over again. But I do know the history is his story, not her story, and that if women had been kind of in charge of modern medicine and the way it's kind of all unfolded, that things might be very different. Yes, I think there's a whole lot of ways of looking at birth that are happening now that are kind of a bit in opposition to our female biology, like trying to make birth efficient, like trying to put a clock on birth. I mean, birth the space of labor, and birth is a totally timeless space. We could even say multidimensional space.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:26:13 to 00:26:21
Women report a liminal. Yeah, liminal. Exactly. And how do you put a time on that? And some of these things might have made sense at one point.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:26:21 to 00:26:59
Like, some of those were actually formulated to detect women who were having problems in labor and birth, like an obstructed labor. There were times when we didn't get enough vitamin D, and we had some pelvic limitations, and then those things were life threatening. Certainly that's been true in the past, but applying those things now to every woman with starting the clock for labor and birth really doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of the processes of labor and birth and saying every woman should give birth at this particular 40 weeks or everyone should have a labor. That's this length is kind of like saying every baby should walk on their first birthday. I mean, natural processes aren't generally like that.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:26:59 to 00:27:33
There's a lot of leeway and especially when we're talking about labor and birth because of that critical importance of women feeling private and safe. And so it's such a common story that women are labouring at home and everything's going well and labour's getting going and then they move into hospital which has all these unevolutionary environment. We could say people she doesn't never met before, a hospital smell, you know, clanging sounds. I mean, it's just not kind to the limbic system. It's just not what supports what reassures our evolutionary brain, you could say.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:27:33 to 00:28:01
And then often labor stops and then because the clock starts ticking, women get given something to make labor go faster or to start it up again and then all kinds of things happen because of the clock. In fact, there's a beautiful I don't know if you're old enough to know, Sheila Kitsinger, who is a birth advocate, a childbirth educator, actually an anthropologist in the UK. And she called the clock an unevaluated piece of obstetric technology. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Monica (Host) | 00:28:02 to 00:29:52
I mean, it's ludicrous when you really think about the implications of, again, standardizing birth standardizing and generalizing it and making it efficient and that again, there's a way that the very kind of linear, masculine way of kind of looking at it without really considering the rhythms of the feminine, the needs of the feminine, the values of the feminine, the feminine body. I mean, one of my earliest podcasts was actually with a doctor who was doing all of the research and recognizing that it had all been done based on an average male body, that there was actually very little research or development around medicine having to do with actual women. And so when you start kind of adding up all of these pieces, you start realizing that this kind of creates a cascade of consequences that then leads to a host of other issues when we interrupt this process. So I wondered if you could tell just our listeners more about the actual role of oxytocin in labor and about birth and this feedback loop and what you've discovered because I feel like we've laid the foundation now for kind of the gem, I'll call it, of this conversation and why this conversation is so powerful. Yeah.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:29:52 to 00:30:22
So there's an increasing knowledge about oxytocin. It was actually first discovered it's a hormone, so it's actually made in our brain and the hypothalamus stored in the pituitary. And it was first discovered as oxyfastin births are the hormone that makes birth go fast. But then a whole explosion of research about oxytocin has happened in the last 20 years or so and all of its roles outside of childbirth. It's the feel good hormone, it's the cuddle hormone, it's the hormone of monogamy, it's a hormone of trust.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:30:22 to 00:30:37
Yeah. A whole lot of physical. Benefits. It has involved in a whole lot of cancers. There's research in pretty much any psychological or psychiatric condition you could think of there they're looking at in relation to oxytocin and oxytocin treatment.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:30:37 to 00:30:57
So there's all of that. But what we know inside of childbirth is that causes the rhythmic contractions of labor through its release from the brain. It goes down into the body, it goes to the uterus and it actually finds what we call the oxytocin receptors. And every hormone works like this. It has a specific receptor and it's like putting a key into a lock.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:30:57 to 00:31:33
So when oxytocin is released from the brain and finds these oxytocin receptors which are actually on the outside of the uterine muscle cell, the key goes into the lock, turns the lock, and that sends a chemical message into the cell saying contract. What's really interesting about oxytocin and this is one of the findings we had from some of the research we did was that oxytocin levels are actually not that high when women go into birth. You'd think it's a hormone that makes birth go fast. It causes contractions. You'd have a lot of it, but in fact you actually don't because what's happening in the woman's body and this is research done on women, humans, some of it the research I'm quoting is done on animals.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:31:33 to 00:32:10
But in women you can actually document the increase in oxytocin receptors as they go through pregnancy. And it starts off something like receptor density outside of pregnancy. Say one gets to about 1000 in late pregnancy and goes up to about 3000 by the time you get to early labor. So this massive increase in uterine sensitivity to oxytocin so at that physiological onset of labor, when labor starts naturally is what I mean we get this little bit of oxytocin released from the brain that starts to cause these rhythmic contractions of labor and they build up and get stronger and stronger. I call it the snowball of labor.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:32:10 to 00:32:26
Labor starts small, becomes bigger and bigger and in the end becomes virtually unstoppable. If you've had a baby, you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes you'd like to stop it, but you can't. Or sometimes it takes a while to gather momentum. But once it gathers momentum, it really kind of keeps rolling.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:32:26 to 00:32:48
And the reason that it happens like this is because oxytocin has positive feedback loops. So in most of biology we have negative feedback loops which contribute to what we call homeostasis. So we're all sitting here like our blood pressure is even, our heart rate is even. If we get a fright, our heart rate might go up. And then we've got these mechanisms that detect that and bring it down.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:32:48 to 00:33:15
So that's a negative feedback loop. But in labor, this positive feedback loop that fuels the snowball of labor, what happens is that the oxytocin released from the brain into the uterus causing strong contractions. The sensations of those contractions are fed back by a specific nerve pathway to the brain. And when that message gets back to the brain, it actually says, release more oxytocin, not less. Release more oxytocin.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:33:15 to 00:33:44
So then you get more oxytocin, go to the uterus, stronger contractions, more sensations, and this positive feedback loop that keeps labor going. And obviously, the more sensitive the uterus is to oxytocin, the more this feedback loop is going to work. And what happens is labor gets bigger and bigger, becomes unstoppable. And then the pushing stage, you might have noticed this yourself, you get very strong sensations, right? And that is making this feedback loop called the Ferguson reflex very strong.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:33:44 to 00:34:10
So a lot of oxytocin release, very strong contractions, more oxytocin release. And it's really designed to have an efficient labor and birth and then especially have an efficient pushing stage. Because if we go back to our evolutionary model, any animal giving birth in the wild, the pushing stage is the most vulnerable stage. Like, you can't really run away, you can't really defend yourself. So it's all designed to have an effective and efficient labor and birth, and especially an effective and efficient pushing stage.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:34:10 to 00:34:43
And what's brilliant about this model is that it's not just the oxytocin fueling the contractions of labor, because at the same time it's released from the brain, it's actually released into the brain. So that's how it turns on these reward and pleasure centers that we're talking about. But it also has a calming, soothing effect in the brain. And imagine, as I said, any mammal that's never given birth before, it's like, what the hell is going on here? There's this calming, soothing oxytocin release in the brain that actually switches on the pleasure and reward centers, but actually reduces pain as well.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:34:43 to 00:35:14
So lots of benefits to oxytocin in the brain. There's some way we figured out from the research that we've done that those peaks of oxytocin also activate the mother's skin, make it more sensitive to the touches of her newborn baby. Because what happens at that moment of birth? We've got these peak snowball, peak levels of oxytocin and push the baby out, but actually the oxytocin levels go up even higher in that first hour after birth, even up to ten times higher in some women. And that happens because of the interactions between the mother and the baby.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:35:14 to 00:35:39
If you haven't seen Breast Crawl, I recommend that you Google Breast Crawl, because human babies, like every other mammalian species, can actually crawl up the mother's body and find the nipple and self attach. It took us a while to learn that we were a bit slow with humans. We thought we were kind of different to other mammals. But human babies can do that, and they find the nipple because it smells like amniotic fluid. They've got all these reflexes that actually help them crawl up the body.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:35:39 to 00:36:20
And then once they find the mother's nipple, they actually massage it with their hand and eventually suckle. And all of those things cause even more oxytocin release in the mother. But one of the things is they only cause that extra oxytocin release if she's had those full peaks of oxytocin through physiological birth. So that's kind of Mother Nature's superb design and these peaks of oxytocin after the birth are also critical because not only does the oxytocin switch on the mother's reward and pleasure centers, reduce pain, et cetera, but also it actually makes the mother's body warm up. It actually vasodilates, opens up the blood vessels on the new mother's chest wall and pulses heat to her baby.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:36:20 to 00:37:10
And at the same time, oxytocin causes uterine contractions that seal up the mother's uterus after the placenta is peeled off and stop bleeding. So all of those things happen through those peaks of oxytocin after the birth, which also depend on the peaks of oxytocin during labor and birth. Wow. I'm just like, wow. And so I am sitting with just the realization that at any stage here, that any part of this cascade of events is interrupted or is interfered with, that that actually creates a gap in the feedback loop, is that correct?

Sarah (Guest) | 00:37:10 to 00:37:23
Yes, it does. It can create a gap. And obviously, if a woman has sometimes interventions are needed. I'm not at all against interventions in this model I'm producing. I'm saying is not against interventions.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:37:23 to 00:37:37
Sometimes they're life saving for mother, life saving for the baby. Right. Like a pre labor Caesarean can be critical. But obviously, when there's a Caesarean done before labor even starts, there's a big hormonal gap for the mother. She hasn't had all this preparation.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:37:37 to 00:37:56
She hasn't had labor and birth. She hasn't had those peaks of oxytocin. And in fact, after a pre labor Caesarean, she doesn't even release oxytocin and skin disc in contact with her baby. So a whole lot of hormonal gaps happening there. So I think when interventions are needed, we need to know, yes, there is a gap and then how can we fill that in?

Sarah (Guest) | 00:37:56 to 00:38:19
And basically how to fill a hormonal gap is skin to skin releases oxytocin and breastfeeding. And if you think about our evolutionary past or any other mammal, there's nowhere else for the baby to be except on the mother's body. That's the safest place. And as I said, the mother literally pulses heat to keep her newborn baby warm. And the baby will be warmer than anything we can wrap the baby in, anything we can put the baby under.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:38:19 to 00:38:43
The mother's body is superbly designed for that. We say mutual regulation to keep her baby warm after birth. And so, yeah, there's those kind of hormonal gaps. The other intervention that causes a significant hormonal gap is the epidural. And this is going to be bad news for some people, but the reason the epidural causes such a significant hormonal gap is because it's so effective.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:38:43 to 00:39:08
And if you remember I talked about that feedback loop where the sensations from the uterus feedback to the brain to release oxytocin. When an epidural is in place, because it's so effective at reducing pain, that feedback loop doesn't work. The feedback loop gets turned off. So there's not that impetus in the brain to release oxytocin into the body. And actually oxytocin levels go down.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:39:08 to 00:39:39
Labor can slow down or even stop. And then we've caused this hormonal gap, and we give synthetic oxytocin to fill in that hormonal gap. But the hormonal gap actually can't be the synthetic oxytocin actually can't fill in the hormonal gap in the mother's brain because the synthetic oxytocin we give into the body doesn't go into the brain. So, yeah, epidurals cause a significant hormonal gap. And we know that because we can measure that oxytocin levels don't go up or they even go down when a woman has an epidural, and then there's a synthetic oxytocin.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:39:39 to 00:40:08
We also know from some studies that, for example, the other thing that happens I haven't mentioned this through these hormonal peaks of labor and birth, and this is from studies of women giving birth is women actually change their personalities. And this is kind of a little bit what I was talking about with myself. Women report being more social, being less anxious, less tense. These are all kind of oxytocin effects. And when women have had an epidural or pre labor cesarean, obviously they don't get those personality changes either.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:40:08 to 00:40:41
So something should have happened in the brain that didn't happen. So there's a hormonal gap there as well. And what are the consequences of that gap? And I understand what you're saying is that there are ways that that then doesn't play out by, for example, releasing or injecting the oxytocin into the brain. So, like, what are some of the additional consequences that may happen as a result of that gap?

Sarah (Guest) | 00:40:41 to 00:41:05
Yes, well, this hasn't really been studied very well. As I said, there's that personality study that showed that when women had had an epidural, they didn't get the personality changes you wouldn't expect. And this is also from animal studies, the same level of pleasure and reward center activation that would happen through a physiological labor and birth. And that actually has been researched in relation to pre labor Caesareans. So they've got two groups of women.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:41:05 to 00:41:32
One who'd been through a physiological birth with these peaks of oxytocin that we're talking about, and one group of women who'd had a pre labor Caesarean. So not only no labor and birth, but also none. They didn't have the full preparation for labor and birth by definition, because they didn't go into labor. So they wheeled these women into an MRI machine two to four weeks after giving birth and played them the sound of their baby crying. And inside this MRI machine, they could see what happened inside the woman's brain, what parts of the brain lit up.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:41:32 to 00:41:48
So after a physiological birth, the reward and pleasure centers lit up, the alertness centers lit up. This is my baby, I need to do something. And the empathy centers lit up. And that didn't happen to the same extent in the women that had had a pre labor Caesarean. And it really kind of illustrates everything we're talking about.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:41:48 to 00:42:10
There's not just a hormonal gap in the body, but there's also a hormonal gap in the brain. So I can't say what that experience would be for women, but some women have described after a Caesarean, they kind of didn't know the baby was theirs. They didn't fall in love with their baby as much as they did with a baby that was born naturally. I'm not saying this is a universal experience at all or this is inevitable. I'm not saying any of those things.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:42:10 to 00:42:57
But there's some kind of head start that Mother Nature provides us to reward and motivate us that's missing in that circumstance. So it's a hormonal gap. And what I'm hearing is that there's like a detachment. And again, I understand that we're generalizing and I also understand that these gaps can be filled, that the body is amazing, and that there's also other things, physiological opportunities, I think, that present, such as breastfeeding, et cetera, that allow the mother and the baby to bond. But I think so much the big buzzword is around secure attachment.

Monica (Host) | 00:42:57 to 00:43:43
And so I immediately kind of think about how many of us may not have had that opportunity to have that secure attachment with our own mothers, because our own mothers, right. Like, I know that my mother had an epidural for each child and I know that my mother didn't breastfeed, for example. So it's interesting because I don't think it's like when we know better, we can do better. And so I think that part of this is my curiosity around what you are really wanting women to know. And I'm making up that part of what you've researched.

Monica (Host) | 00:43:43 to 00:44:41
And the education that you're sharing with us is so that women can make choices that understand kind of that, yes, there's pain relief and there's kind of these unintended consequences to interrupting the process. And I think my reason for really wanting to create this conversation with you, Sarah, is around helping women understand the alternatives, because I think so many women don't understand that there are choices, but also that there is this research available that actually might have them choose differently if they could. Yes, and I think you do. In our current maternity care system, generally, you have to think a little bit outside the box. You have to have some awareness, ask some questions, otherwise you're going to go down the mainstream.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:44:41 to 00:45:15
And the mainstream is a high intervention model of care where increasing numbers of women have epidurals, there's increasing Caesarean rates, and all of those things cause hormonal gaps. So it's really having that awareness. And as I mentioned before, you can choose a model of care that has lower rates of all of those things we've talked about, which is midwifery care, which is having a doula, which is home birth. And generally, I'd say to women, start off with a low technology model of care because you can always move up if need be. But once you're up there, once you've got your private OB in a private hospital, you can't suddenly choose to have a home birth, right?

Sarah (Guest) | 00:45:16 to 00:45:59
And it's kind of respect for our biology, really, that I'm also talking about that we've got this whole idea that we can kind of do this new improve kind of birth, but actually, when we do that, we're losing something as well, and we're causing these hormonal gaps. But I want to say something else about hormonal gaps because I'm aware that probably listeners are thinking, oh, my goodness me, what happened? So hormonal gaps can be filled. And if we go back to what I was saying before about the magical moment of the onset of labor and birth, the baby's fully ready, the mother's fully ready. These hormonal signals that get passed backwards and forwards through the placenta, that coordinates the onset of labor at that maximum point of readiness, even if labor and birth are very short.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:46:00 to 00:46:26
My last labor was an hour and a half, right? Still, all of the things that we're talking about will come into play because we've made the most it's like a window of opportunity or biologically, we call it an early sensitive period where all of these things can happen because all the groundwork's been laid. Now, if we have a hormonal gap, we've missed something important. We've missed that window of opportunity. Those peaks of oxytocin didn't happen before you met your baby, didn't happen at the end of labor and birth.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:46:26 to 00:46:59
And you can fill in that hormonal gap. As I said, skin to skin and breastfeeding is the formula with no kind of limit to how much of them you do, the more the better. But you do have to be patient, because if you miss that window of opportunity, filling in that hormonal gap is going to be a much less efficient and effective process. So, for example, that study I mentioned about the epidural women, the women who had an epidural, not getting that shift in personality. So in that study, they followed those women up at four to six months, and the women who'd been exclusively breastfeeding did get those personality changes.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:46:59 to 00:47:17
Just another anecdote is a mama who had two normal births and then had a pre labor caesarean. And she said, when I got my baby after the caesarean, the baby felt different, which is a whole nother conversation about the baby. But she was right. She was in a different hormonal state. The baby was in a different hormonal state.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:47:17 to 00:47:44
And she said, my instinct was to be skin to skin with my baby, and after three days of skin to skin, my baby felt the same. So that's kind of like just a warning, really, that if you, you know, filling in hormonal gaps is really important, and skin to skin and breastfeeding will do it, but you're going to have to do more of it than you would have had to do or than you would have naturally done following a physiological labor and birth. So all these things can be healed. And I just want to add one more thing about that. Because as you say, when we know better, we do better.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:47:44 to 00:48:09
We're all in this system. It's very hard to avoid that number of women who have it totally natural labor and birth is, I don't know, usually 10%, 20% in the system that we're in at the moment. So it's very difficult. And if we don't know to fight for it, if we don't know about hormonal gaps, we're just going to go down that pathway. And sometimes we end up in a situation that we didn't want to be in, and we end up with a birth we didn't want or even birth trauma, as you say.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:48:09 to 00:48:38
There's an increasing acknowledgment and understanding that birth can be a traumatic experience for some women, and then that is to take that into your mothering is kind of the opposite of Mother Nature's. Superb design, right? Mother Nature wants us to be rewarded and happy and relaxed as we go into mothering and breastfeeding and all of those things. And if we come up with trauma, that's like a total inverse of what's supposed to happen. So I just want to say that be kind to ourselves, understand the situation we're in, have someone you can talk to.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:48:38 to 00:49:07
There certainly are more counselors that can help people through birth trauma. I really recommend a book called how to Heal a Bad Birth written by my friends here in Brisbane. And also the other thing I want to say is that and this is a whole nother conversation as well, but the baby does have their own experience of birth. Somewhere in our mind body that is encoded, people can remember birth experiences. Children, especially between age about in my observation, two and age or ten, can actually come out with spontaneous birth memories.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:49:07 to 00:49:37
And so you can actually have a conversation with your child about birth, like what happened? What was your experience, what you wanted, what happened? And it can be an incredibly affirming and powerful conversation to have with the child of any age. So it's never too late to have a good birth, I guess I could say, but it's never too late to heal those relationships. And just one final comment is we were talking about the kind of new, improved, kind of efficient model of birth, that's kind of masculine thinking, and then we have the feminine model of birth.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:49:37 to 00:50:00
And one of the reasons birth is such a feminine process, not just because of our female bodies, but it's also about relationship. We're forming that first and most critical relationship in the world, the relationship between a mother and a child. That's what keeps every species alive, right? And oxytocin is not accidentally a hormone of relationships. So it seems like the more relationship we add, the better birth goes.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:50:00 to 00:50:40
So a duel is a relationship, a midwives, a relationship, models of care. There's a brilliant model of care here in Brisbane where indigenous women have culturally safe relationships, and their outcomes are incredible. Their preterm birth rate is 50% less than it usually is. So birth is relationship, oxytocin is relationship, and fostering relationship is so critical in pregnancy, labor, and birth. I love everything that we've brought up, and I really, really appreciate your sensitivity because I'm noticing myself just really struggling to ask the questions.

Monica (Host) | 00:50:41 to 00:51:34
And of course, I'm somebody who is always encouraging my listeners to say yes to the mess. And I'm noticing how sensitive I am around this conversation. And I think it's because our birth stories are so precious and our children are so precious. And the last thing we want to do, or that I want to do as the host of this conversation, is to create trauma awareness or trauma through awareness. And yet one of the things I'm also needing to acknowledge is that that has been what this unbecoming process has been for me.

Monica (Host) | 00:51:34 to 00:52:48
And I'll let you in on kind of this idea of unbecoming Sarah, but it's like, I feel like part of what I had been missing as a woman. It's like I was so acutely aware of my own suffering, and I felt so isolated, so alone, exhausted, overwhelmed, all of these really isolated. And I got to this point in my life where I had become what I thought everybody wanted me to be. I had followed all of the things, I had done all the things. And it wasn't until I actually saw and started to understand this overarching system that that we'll call patriarchy or the dominator or control culture, which is kind of all in this realm of efficiency, production, industrialization, the emphasis and the glorification of the modern world, but at the expense of what is feminine, what is balance, what is harmony, what is natural, what is cyclical.

Monica (Host) | 00:52:49 to 00:53:24
And so I think that what I'm getting at is that this conversation even brings up grief in me and that that grief, in so many cases, is an unavoidable byproduct of awakening to some of these choices or alternatives that I did the best I could when I was there. And I think that's why I'm also so passionate about having these conversations is because I wish I had known. Do you know what I mean? Like, I wish I had known. Yeah.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:53:24 to 00:53:56
And I think it's one of the hallmarks of parenting, really. Like, if we knew then what we know now, and I think we've just got to be really generous and sensitive and kind to ourselves around that because there's all kinds of decisions that we make that to some extent, it's very difficult to make different decisions. Like, about parenting. I just described, like, trying to sleep with my baby against all the advice and all the things that people said to me about it. Like, it's really hard to go against the grain and kudos to people who do that.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:53:57 to 00:54:14
And I don't have any judgment at all about anyone that doesn't because it's so hard. It's like taking the red pill, isn't it? It's like actually realizing that all of these things that we've been told, that all these interventions have made birth safer. And if you make if you choose a home birth, it'll be dangerous. If you sleep with your baby, it'll be dangerous.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:54:14 to 00:54:51
You could breastfeed your baby too much and you'll spoil them. I mean, all of these messages that we're given that are, so we say, unevolutionary and they're difficult to avoid, and put that in the mixture of we don't have a big sisterhood, we don't have a lot of support for parenting, a lot of us have never held a baby before. We actually have our own baby. So there's a whole cultural missing in there that helps us to understand in this very embodied way about labor and birth. Like when it goes back to menstruation and trusting our bodies and taking time out and honoring the feminine.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:54:51 to 00:55:35
I love the work that you do, Monica, because it's all about reclaiming our honor and respect for ourselves as the keepers of life. That's right. And I couldn't help but think, for example and I want to give my listeners an example of kind of what was going on in my head. Because if there are listeners out there and I'm just imagining that there isn't one woman that isn't reliving if she's had a birth, right, had a child that she's not reliving, that listening to you in this moment. But for me, what I was thinking of was my first birth, which was my daughter.

Monica (Host) | 00:55:35 to 00:56:19
My labor was so fast and so furious that I literally, from start to finish, gave birth, my first birth, start to finish in 3 hours. And it happened so fast that I wasn't able to get an epidural. And I thought, oh, my gosh, that was so primal, right? I was trying to find all these words to describe it, but I also really bonded, like you said. I felt that change in my brain because I had a midwife, although it was in a hospital, it was for the most part so fast they couldn't even intervene.

Monica (Host) | 00:56:19 to 00:56:37
Do you know what I mean? And then with my son, it was a whole different story. And so I can differentiate between those two births. And with my son, I was induced. I had not only the pitocin, I had my water broken.

Monica (Host) | 00:56:37 to 00:57:24
And then I was given an epidural and it was a very different experience. And now I'm realizing it was because of the hormonal gaps right now. It was my second birth and I knew what to do. But I remember even I think had my midwife had some of this information that you've highlighted here that she might have then encouraged me to go naturally because it kind of has different implications when you know the hormonal story. And I feel like this is important for a number of different reasons.

Monica (Host) | 00:57:24 to 00:58:18
And if a woman still wants to have a birth and have those interventions and have the support of an epidural, that is completely her choice. So I want to make sure too, that I am honoring every woman's decision because I think that that is at the core of my message is that we've each got to trust our own way, our own bodies. And so it's really more for me about creating conversations that offer alternative perspectives and offer different information so that women can make an informed consensual choice. Because that's what I come back to over and over again. Is this informed consent?

Monica (Host) | 00:58:18 to 00:58:39
Because if we don't know that there is another way, then we're just going to go the one way. Yes, I totally agree. And we need to know all the choices that there are. And I totally honor whatever choices women make. Sometimes women will choose a pre labor Caesarean and honor that choice.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:58:39 to 00:59:12
Sometimes women will choose a home birth and I honor that choice as well. And an epidural can be a good choice in some situations as well, and for some women, and I totally honor that. I think the message is really when these interventions happen or you choose these interventions, pay attention to the Hormonal Gap. Like, for example, there's been a bit of a controversy about epidurals and breastfeeding. Does it cause difficulties with breastfeeding and with the hormonal disruptions that we've talked about, you could imagine that that might be the case even though there's not particularly good research in the area.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:59:13 to 00:59:48
But generally, if you look at all the research, it kind of suggests that it probably does, except in circumstances where the mother and baby is skinned, is skin straight after birth, and the mother has support for breastfeeding lactation consultant, et cetera. So that's an example where you might expect Hormonal gap to have these consequences and we can give that extra support that women might need. And as you say as well, I think first births are a little more disruptible and it's true in every species, right? The first birth is the hardest. You haven't been down those pathways in your brain and your hormones before.

Sarah (Guest) | 00:59:49 to 01:00:08
So if you've done it before and you've breastfed successfully before, then the chances are that that'll go much more easily in your second birth. And I think that's probably true of the reward and pleasure centers as well. If you've activated them before, they'll probably come online a bit more easily. The second time is my own personal opinion or what I observe from my own. Experience too.

Monica (Host) | 01:00:10 to 01:00:31
Well, this has been such a rich and enlightening conversation, Sarah. I'm so appreciative. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to just invite our listeners to find out more about you. Where would you like them to go, what would you like them to know, and anything else you're up to. If you want to take a moment to share that, I would love to have you do it.

Sarah (Guest) | 01:00:31 to 01:00:48
Yeah. Thanks, Monica. So my website, Sarahbuckleycerawithanh.com, I've got lots of blogs and information. There's a two part blog about epidurals that mentions this feedback loop that we talked about. I've got a great blog on how to have the best Caesarean blogs about induction and the arrived trial.

Sarah (Guest) | 01:00:48 to 01:01:18
And I'm busy with my PhD, so I haven't been so busy writing blogs, but there will be another one coming up. I've actually written a blog about the first paper we published, which some of what I've shared is from, which is about the oxytocin levels and physiological I e. Natural labor and birth. And we're just writing one about oxytocin levels and birth with interventions with synthetic oxytocin, with epidurals, and we've also got one with breastfeeding. But if you go to my website and click the button that says all the science, you'll get a link to lots of those papers, which are free downloads as well.

Sarah (Guest) | 01:01:18 to 01:01:49
So if you're a bit of a birth nerd and want to know all the science behind what I'm saying, then I recommend you do that as well. And you can also sign up to my email list and get a copy of my ecstatic birth ebook at the same time. Yeah, and I just want to add too, for my listeners, if you know someone that might appreciate this episode. I also really invite us to share with grandmothers. I feel like there are many people that influence grandmothers and grandfathers even, right?

Monica (Host) | 01:01:49 to 01:02:34
That influence. I don't know about you, Sarah, but were those some of those advice is given by those generations that might not be in the know. And so I think sometimes it can be helpful for us to share information, maybe in different ways that give them an opportunity to consume a conversation or listen into a conversation where they might actually be a bit more supportive. And I know that no matter what, ultimately we have to make our own choices. But I do believe that the way conversations and things change in the world is by the more we can kind of share what we're learning with others.

Monica (Host) | 01:02:34 to 01:03:22
And certainly all of us have people in our lives who are birthing. And so it's just so important to me that more and more women are really educated and able to reveal for themselves the path that feels the best for them and for their family and their bodies. And so I just want to put that out there and just again circle back and underline all of the valuable data and examples that you gave us here. Sarah, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you and I wish you so much luck with your PhD and all of your future endeavors. Thank you for your work in the world.

Sarah (Guest) | 01:03:23 to 01:03:36
Thank you so much. Monica, what a pleasure. And, yeah, sending lots of good vibes and love to everybody out there, whether you're a birthing mama, whether you've given birth before. And, yeah, do share this information. Knowledge is power, right?

Monica (Host) | 01:03:36 to 01:03:46
Knowledge is power. And for our listeners, I'll be sure to put all of Sarah's links in the show notes. And until next time, more to be revealed.

Monica (Host) | 01:03:49 to 01:04:07
We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointhevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on itunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always, more to be revealed.

Sarah (Guest) | 01:04:09 to 01:04:10
You.