Disclaimer:

All information provided is for general reference and is not to be substituted for actual medical advice. We assume no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions contained in the content of this article. We do not provide medical advice, only generalized information based on what evidence has shown and every case story referenced is an individual experience with several nuances and within the context of the client’s needs and values. Your experience is your own and you are welcome to consult with your chosen care team and cross-reference any information contained in this article and accompanying videos on our channel. Furthermore, we assume no liability for omissions or errors in any of the content from third-party information linked within this article. Third party websites and references could discontinue at any time at the discretion of the creator.

If you're planning a natural birth then you are going to want to know the 26 Essential Tips for True Natural Birth Planning, and in this blog series I will cover each one. You can also go deeper by checking out the entire playlist on my YouTube channel, where I have created a deep-dive masterclass on each of these 26 Tips.

This article I will be going DEEP into the 3 things you need to know when hiring your midwife for a True Natural Birth, but first, if you are NEW to the community and are not familiar with the Natural Birth Traps, the Empowered Birth Method, and don't know who I am, then I've included a brief introduction below. If you’ve already been following us on social media or this website for a while, then feel free to jump ahead.

Also, this blog is a choose your own adventure, just like everything else at Empowering Moms. You have 3 Paths to take, depending on your learning style or time constraints…

Path 1: The Surface Skimmer🩴— If you only have a few minutes to spare, or you just don’t have the energy to dive into a long article, this path will help you get the overall feel of it. Simply glance over the headlines in bold, dark blue text, and read any relevant sections you want to know more about.

Path 2: The Casual Swimmer🩱— If you have a bit more time, or you want the overall summary of the article, this path will help you learn what you need to while skipping the “fluff” in between. Read the bold text in each section and you’ll have everything you need to know.

Path 3: The Deep Diver🤿— If you like to know EVERYTHING then simply follow the traditional path and read the article as a whole.

Bonus Path: The Treasure Seeker👑— If you’re a serious student who likes to go beyond just ONE article and get all the deeper layers, including references and additional resources, then look over each section and click any links that speak to you. The deeper you go, the more you’ll uncover!

So now that you know your paths, let’s get into the basics! 

What is a Natural Birth Trap?

Throughout this article and the other content on this site and our social media channels, you will find references to the Natural Birth Traps, which is a term I coined back in 2022.

So what are Natural Birth Traps?

These are the things that undermine your confidence in planning a True Natural Birth.

You end up getting tricked. You end up getting pushed into interventions you weren't expecting. And because of the way that our birth culture and medical system has taught you, you fall into these without realizing it.

These traps are sneaky, because they follow a lot of the conventional, mainstream birth education and advice, which means you often won't realize you fell into a trap until it's too late. Now, I have talked a little bit about this inside of my book "Your Empowered Birth", however in addition to that I've also created multiple lists of these traps that you can grab off of my Freebies page. Each mini list contains an overview of the common traps, including Natural Birth Traps, Cesarean Traps, Pain Traps, things you DON'T want to put in your birth plan, and many more. You can get access here.

I will also be laying out the secrets of my signature Empowered Birth Method throughout this article, as well as share case stories, personal experiences both as a mom AND a birth coach, and I'll tell you how to go even DEEPER into your learning so that you can avoid falling into these traps and getting tricked out of your natural birth.

Why Empowered Birth Education Is Different

All right, so why do you want to pay attention and take your time with this article?

Well, first of all, a lot of birth education gets this wrong, and sometimes they get it right, but there's a piece missing. And I'm committed to you having a True Natural Birth and definitely an Empowered Birth.

If you've just stumbled upon this article and are not familiar with the Empowered Birth Method, I encourage you to check out our True Natural Birth Starter Guide, where I laid out the overview of True Natural Birth vs the Mainstream version of Natural Birth that often leads to trauma, pain, and unnecessary interventions. I also share the biggest mistakes you can make as a first-time mom, a seasoned mom, and even a VBAC mom, AND I give you the blueprint to understand and apply the Empowered Birth Method itself!

You'll also find powerful case stories, links to our social media and partnership sites, and you'll get to explore more targeted resources through our "choose your own adventure" format of the guide itself. It's fun, it's easy to follow, and it will help you plan and get your natural birth no matter your time or your budget!

About Me

So who am I first of all to tell you this?

Well, my name is Carly Bonderud and I'm a childbirth educator, coach, and author of "Your Empowered Birth".

I started off as a birth advocate for a number of years and was a rally coordinator for Improving Birth, supporting my dear friend, Dawn Thompson before I even realized that I would one day be creating my own Empowered Birth Movement!

You see, I had been a “star student” with my first pregnancy and I’d been determined to avoid the horrors that I’d seen on TV, in movies, and through my formal education. I’d been terrified of birth for many years because people kept saying how painful it was, how I’d be “begging” for the epidural, and that I needed to “leave my dignity at the door”.

I didn’t want ANY part of that, so when I found myself pregnant in 2012 I set out to learn all I could on how to have a relatively pain-free birth at home, where no one would touch me without my express permission. This led to me choosing a midwife and consuming birth education for all 9 months…unfortunately, while I had an encyclopedia’s-worth of natural birth education I didn’t recognize that I was about to fall into some deep psychological traps, which ultimately led to me being “risked out” of homebirth.

I managed to escape the scissors and the scalpel, but not without having to fight the whole time, and that entire experience had left me shaken and disillusioned. I wanted to know how it had happened that someone as skeptical, educated, and stubborn as I was had been so easily manipulated into the hospital, and that’s when I found Improving Birth, learned exactly what I was missing, and reclaimed my power with my second baby 2 years later.

Of course, it wasn’t enough for me to just reclaim my birth experience and get that do-over. I also wanted to warn other moms so they wouldn’t have to experience what I’d learned the hard way, and that was when I started planting the seeds that would one day grow into the Empowering Moms brand!

Empowered Birth Success Stories

Since 2014, I have helped moms who have been considered high risk go on to plan and get their own True Natural Birth experiences, completely hands-off if they want it, with them in the driver's seat.

These women are over 35.

These women have been told that they are “too fat”.

They've been told they are “too old”.

They've been told that they “don't go into labor on their own”.

And they've been told that their C-sections were absolutely 100% “necessary” later for them to realize that actually they weren't. (They just fell into those Natural Birth Traps that I mentioned.)

You can check out more of my story and the case stories of these amazing women inside “Your Empowered Birth”. It is on Amazon and it's also in the playlist on my YouTube channel.

I’ve also included 2 of my favorite case stories inside the Starter Guide. One is the story of the mom who beat the odds, Jenni. If you aren’t familiar with the story of the woman who kicked my butt and helped me co-found Your Empowered Birth Academy, then here’s the summary:

She had an unassisted hospital VBAC back in 2022, after emotionally healing from a traumatic birth that had her almost give up on ever having another child. Then she found me (or rather, I found her in a local mom group) and insisted on taking my classes and learning all she could from me.

We put together a series of free mini challenges over 10 days, called the Empowered Birth Workshop, and ran them live in my Facebook group in 2021. These workshops became the baseline foundation for moms in my community to finally get the context around the mainstream birth education and WHY it hadn’t prevented their traumatic inductions and c-sections.

Many women went on to plan homebirths, VBACs, and heal from their past traumatic births thanks to what I taught within those free workshops, and a few of those women even went on to work with me at a deeper level inside my group coaching program, as well as hire me as their virtual doula.

That leads to the second story of Rebekah, who arrived in our community during our second Empowered Birth live workshop in June. She was determined to have a VBA2C, after having had a traumatic first induction turned c-section at only 18 years old, and later manipulated out of her VBAC with her second child a few years later.

Rebekah found the workshop so helpful that a week later she emailed me with her birth plan, asking me to look it over. After seeing some things she could tweak in her plan I got on a call with her and we discussed what her DREAM birth would be. She confessed that she wanted to birth at home, but no midwife in her area attended homebirth, so she had assumed she had no options.

This is when I pointed out that babies are born in cars or unintentionally born at home all the time, and that if she wanted to labor at home as long as possible there WAS a possibility that she COULD get her wish and have a homebirth. I shared the story of my former rally co-coordinator Christine, and how she’d been told she was “not allowed” to birth at home too, and then when her baby was coming faster than she could get to the hospital the midwife had magically changed her mind about Christine being “not allowed” after all.

In Rebekah’s case, however, she chose unassisted birth for her own reasons, and I attended her as a virtual doula and coached her for 3 months so that she and her partner were confident enough to do it themselves AND know when to call in medical support if they needed it. Given she was only 5 minutes away from the hospital, this worked for them, and Rebekah reclaimed her power.

Go Deeper With the Empowered Birth Method

These are just some of the stories of the moms who chose Empowered Birth, and you can be one of them! The resources on our website and through social media are designed to help you just as they helped the moms in my community, and there are 3 main steps:

Step 1: Watch the Reset Your Mindset for Empowered Birth Mini Challenge

This deep dive set of masterclasses is the foundational piece that is often MISSING from typical birth education. You see, we live in a society that has been under the medical model of birth for multiple generations, and this has led to a lot of fear and misinformation being perpetuated.

(Where do you think your fears of “something going wrong” came from?)

But what if I told you that was only part of the story, and that there is some missing context that would help you release those fears? That’s what this challenge addresses, and once you go through it you won’t be as susceptible to falling into the Fear Traps.

Step 2: Read “Your Empowered Birth”

I wrote this book initially because I could see that the same social conditioning was often embedded in traditional education and within the birth community, where moms would often ask a question, get an answer, and then keep coming BACK with MORE questions. This creates reliance on “experts”, but as you’re going to discover in this article, relying on other people to tell you what to do and how to birth is exactly why so many births don’t go to plan. I’ve given you the mindset shifts AND the map to plan and get your Empowered Birth, and it’s almost as good as me coaching you directly!

Step 3: Go through Your Empowered Birth Workshop

As mentioned before, this workshop is what has helped moms in my community get past their fear and plan the birth they REALLY want. There will be additional references within this article where I tell you about what’s in this signature workshop. What you need to know for now though is that it’s FREE, it’s jam-packed with strategies and birth education, and every mom who has ever gone through it has become 10 times MORE likely to achieve a hands-off birth experience if they want it, and definitely don’t let others dictate their birth choices anymore.

If you're already familiar with these resources, then you will find even MORE value in what I share with you in this article, because each one is an additional piece that fits into the Empowered Birth System. Think of these as your supplementary education. We're almost to the end of the introductory content, but first, this article comes with a special gift!

Get Your BONUS Treasure!

Before we get started, I just want to let you know that this article started off as a quick list of birth planning tips. Be sure to grab it as your easy reference guide!

You don't even have to put in your e-mail.

All you have to do is click the picture and it will pop up as a PDF and you can download it directly to your own Google Drive which you can then keep forever. It's mobile friendly AND it contains the embedded links to EVERY Deep-Dive Masterclass in this series!

As I said, I am committed to you having a True Natural Birth, whether you work with me any further or not, or get any of my products.

I believe that information should be accessible to everyone regardless of their budget or time constraints, and so I have made it my mission to ensure that every piece of information I put out follows my Rule of 3 and Choose Your Own Adventure formula. This basically means I have 3 Paths for you to learn. You can skim the bold text in the article, read the whole thing, or take the Deeper Dive by also following the relevant links in each section.

The deeper you go, the more treasures you'll uncover!

All right, that pretty much covers the basics, now let's get started!

3 Essential Tips For Hiring a Midwife

If You're Planning a Natural Birth

If you've read the previous 3 articles where I went deep into the 26 Essential Tips for Planning a Natural Birth, then you know that #2 on my list is to Beware the Medwife in Disguise!

But before I get into the 3 things that you need to know when it comes to hiring your midwife , I'm just going to let you know that a lot of the mainstream information out there is going to derail your True Natural Birth.

This is because our birth culture and our medical system has been based on profit, convenience, liability, and also fear of natural birth.

In fact, a lot of things that are supposed to be natural are what I call the preservative-laden, frozen dessert version of natural birth.

If you want to know more about that, you can check out the True Natural Birth Starter Guide where I tell you the difference between True Natural Birth and “natural birth” perpetuated by our birth culture and medical system.

But basically it comes down to this…

True Natural Birth is your physiological process that your body is going to do anyway.

It is the process that you are actually looking for when you're planning a natural birth.

Because you want to avoid the induction.

You want to avoid the C-section.

You'd like to avoid all of those medical interventions that cause horror stories in the mom groups.

Maybe you even fell into that trap the last time.

If you did, I'm just going to say I'm sorry, and you're not alone.

In fact, a lot of moms don't recognize that what they fell into last time was a trap.

And it led to more pain, more unnecessary intervention, even C-sections and birth trauma.

So just so you know, Natural Birth Traps, they're really hard to spot unless you know

how, and hiring your midwife is one of those things that will make or break your birth.

Medwife vs Midwife: The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

In this article I'm going to share with you the 3 things that you need to be watching out for when you're hiring your midwife, either for a home birth or birth center, so that you don't get bait and switched…

Screwed over…

Tricked into a hospital birth…

Or getting otherwise talked into an induction, unnecessary exams, or even pushed into a c-section.

You see not all midwives are created equal and this is a lesson I learned the hard way with my first pregnancy.

You see, at the beginning I was just looking to have a home birth, and I thought logically you just hire a midwife.

I also thought that midwives were completely natural-minded and that I wouldn't get talked into any unnecessary interventions, tests, exams, or anything that would derail my home birth.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

This then led to me having a completely traumatic hospital birth.

I managed to have a natural birth, though I experienced a lot of trauma from that. If you want the full story it’s inside my book “Your Empowered Birth” inside Chapter 3: A Harsh Lesson, where I laid out the 7 biggest mistakes I had made as a first-time mom who had thought I’d done everything “right” to plan my homebirth and avoid the trauma of the hospital birth system.

I also share additional tips on how to plan a True Natural Birth in my weekly newsletter, as well as how to then apply the same lessons to having a more Empowered and Sovereign Motherhood, so if that interests you then sign up for our Empowered Birth Newsletter and Toolkit here.

Getting back to the story…

It wasn't until after this experience of being tricked out of my homebirth that I discovered a new term…Medwife.

And that's really what this article is all about.

It's about showing you the difference between a medwife and a midwife, and why it matters.

So what is a medwife and how do you know if you’ve accidentally hired one?

Well, typically what happens is that moms go in, they say, “I'm going to hire a midwife” only to later find out that this midwife is more medical-minded.

They're pushing induction; even natural induction methods.

Or otherwise saying, “If you don't go into labor by X days then you're going to risk out of our practice.”

“You won't be able to have a home birth.”

“You won't be able to birth at the birth center and we're going to have to switch your care to an OB.”

This can be incredibly stressful at the end of your pregnancy.

And that's exactly why I'm going to show you how to avoid that scenario, so you don't accidentally hire a medwife when you were looking to have a True Natural Birth.

Medwives do not support True Natural Birth. They are more comfortable maintaining the status-quo, which often leads to intervention-heavy births for their clients who thought they were going “natural”. This is why I have a distinction between “Natural Birth” as it has been taught in our birth culture, and TRUE Natural Birth, which the REAL midwives support and the “medwives” don’t.

Typically, these medwives are also nurses who got into midwifery, or they're otherwise more medical-minded, and therefore it can be really a form of betrayal when you encounter one.

Personally myself, I feel that midwife…because it means “with woman”, you deserve to get what you're paying for, and these midwives who are taking the title of “with woman” are doing everything against woman and upholding the medical system’s rules.

It's just not okay with me, and I'm calling it out!

This article is a culmination of what I learned when I was shopping for midwife the second time.

After that first birth experience, I poured over countless articles, blog posts, stories of other moms who had gotten tricked, and I listened to the doulas and the whistle-blowers in the birth community and paid close attention as I formulated my plan of action to ensure my homebirth happened the next time.

I was not going to be tricked again.

I knew I had to be more discerning in who I hired, because now I realized that I was tricked out of my birth by a medwife, and that too many midwives in the system weren’t truly supporting mothers, but instead supporting the system.

Now I don't really know if the midwife who had undermined my confidence had done it on purpose and I don't even know if maybe her hands were tied, but I had seen enough to recognize the way the system actually worked, and that it’s an OB’s playground. They made the rules, they built the institutions, and the midwives are only allowed to play as long as they follow those rules.

Midwives have been so phased out of maternity care, especially here in North America, where there was a whole campaign that vilified the midwives.

If you want to know more about the campaign and the witch hunts that midwives have undergone, and how we got into this mess in the first place, then I suggest you check out “Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage” by Rachel Reed.

In this book she really goes deep into how the maternity care system is basically structured and how it got to the point where it's no longer wise women who are attending mothers, but instead they're still following the same medical model that is derailing True Natural Birth.

You might also want to check the article that I did before this one, which is on how to hire your care provider because this article kind of builds off of that. 

And furthermore, if you really want to go deep you can also get my ebook, “How to Hire Your Care Provider” which goes into what you really need to understand about midwives and even doctors and how to choose the best person for you. I've included it as a free bonus inside Your Empowered Birth Workshop, my signature program that helps you plan and get your Empowered Birth and avoid the common traps in the system that derail your birth plans.

Because again, not all midwives are created equal, and you need to play the game differently to ensure you hire the right kind to support your True Natural Birth

And that leads to…

3 Essential Tips for Hiring a Midwife for a True Natural Birth

Okay, so now that we've got the basics under the way, I just want to let you know that there are red flags with midwives too.

(If you don't know what they are, then you're going to want to get the 17 red flags that tell you that your care provider is not supportive of True Natural Birth mini guide)

Before you get started on your search for a midwife, you need to be very clear on your birth plan, and have your vision ironed out. If you need help with that I highly suggest you also go through the Write Your Empowered Birth Plan Mini Challenge, as this will give you the steps for custom-crafting your solid birth vision.

Make sure you're also aware of the Natural Birth Traps, and once you have the idea of what physiological birth looks like, and all your backup plans, then you can start your search.

You need to be very clear on what you're looking for, not only in terms of your birth plan, but also the kind of environment you plan to birth in.

Are you looking to be in a birth center?

Are you looking to have a home birth? 

Those are two different things, and if you're not clear on where you're really going to go then you're not going to really have a good map on what to expect.

So do your due diligence!

If you're choosing a birth center, then you're going to want to interview past clients and you're also going to want to ask doulas in the area if that birth center is truly supportive of True Natural Birth.

Because some of them are really just glorified clinics that still push a lot of interventions.

You get risked out…

And then you get put in the hospital anyway, and it's a whole big mess!

So you want to be very clear that not all birth centers are created equal just like not all midwives are created equal.

The second thing you need to be clear on is if you are having a home birth, where else are you possibly going to give birth?

Things happen…

Or maybe you even change your mind.

You need to know what the backup hospitals are in your area just in case.

And you also need to be clear on what your midwife's role would be if you went to that hospital.

I have included a resource guide both inside the Empowered Birth Toolkit (in the book bonuses) and inside Your Empowered Birth Workshop that will help you choose your perfect birth location. It outlines the pros and cons of each type of environment, from homebirth all the way to hospital birth, and every out-of-hospital birth option in-between.

Once you know where you're going to be giving birth, and once you know what your birth plan is, then it's time to start shopping!

This leads us to... 

Tip #1: Apply to Every Midwife Practice

Apply to every single midwife practice that seems to align with what you're looking for.

I did this with my second baby because I knew right off the bat that I needed to find all of the midwives out there and discern whether or not they were going to support my kind of birth or if they were going to screw me over again.

I also knew that trying to get a midwife can be really tricky because they're not always accessible.

Therefore, since there is a shortage of truly supportive midwives, you need to be ahead of the game. Apply to every single midwife practice in your area and the surrounding cities, and put in the intake forms as soon as you find out you are pregnant or changing care providers.

Get it all done ASAP!

Line up the appointments.

You can sift through them after.

The longer you wait the harder it's going to be to find the right fit, and the more the

practices are going to fill up before you can even get in the door!

Midwives are really in-demand, and there's not enough supply for that demand; mostly because the medical system has a monopoly on birth.

The medical system really doesn't want midwives, especially those who support True Natural Birth and homebirth.

I mean, it doesn't make sense to them from a business perspective!

They want to maintain the cultural narrative that it's too dangerous to have a homebirth because if every mom started having a home birth…

Well…Then they would be back at square one!

Way back in the 1920s, doctors (all male at the time) had pushed all the moms who couldn’t afford to birth with a midwife or an on-call doctor into the hospital over decades, which eventually led to the hospital-based birth model we have today where 98-99% of births in North America now occur in the hospital by default.

This wasn’t always the case!

Women used to birth at home.

It used to be normal.

The idea of going somewhere else for birth seemed as weird as it is today for people to stay home and not go to the hospital.

Which is why when women started to reclaim their rights and rejected the idea that they had to suffer in childbirth, this gave these same doctors the “brilliant” idea to market hospital birth as a “pain-free” way of birthing.

They conveniently left out the parts of the narrative where most of the medical practices doctors had been doing as routine OUT of the hospital had also traumatized mothers over several generations before this, or how they had also fabricated the idea of “suffering” in childbirth in the first place.

They also launched a huge campaign to vilify the midwives who still held onto wisdom about birth that challenged the narrative they wanted to market to the masses, saying that they were uneducated, and creating another kind of “witch hunt” to eradicate the last of these women who could not legally practice medicine given the restrictions still in place at the time.

“Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage” goes into this in a greater detail…You can also kind of see it in “Call the Midwife”, where they were slowly starting to push women into the maternity care hospital instead of having the babies at home. By about the 1960s-1970s most babies were born in the hospital. 

It's only been in the last few decades that we've really started to push back against that because of the trauma that we've experienced. The problem is that even though many moms want to stay home, the midwives aren't there to support them.

There aren't enough colleges to train them, there's not enough certifications, and a lot of the midwives that were practicing before everything became legalized and certified saw the writing on the wall and have gone “underground.”

They don't call themselves midwives, so if you want one of those it's going to be even trickier to find, but they do exist.

There are many stories from these traditional birth attendants, and they can teach us a lot about why the push to legislate midwifery as a medical profession is actually detrimental to our freedom for birth choices.

I noticed this issue as I sat in on these meetings or paid attention to the conversations behind closed doors, and that is why I teach the Empowered Birth Method as the loophole out of the control of the system, WITHOUT alienating your midwife!

It takes being confident enough to birth on your own, if you needed to, so that the system is more incentivized to “bend the rules” and you remain in control!

Because what ended up happening at the end of my pregnancy, even with my midwife completely supportive, is I had to wait until the very last minute to call her.

Otherwise she was going to have to assess my progress and if I was still slowing down in labor then she would have had to legally transfer my care, because that's what the health authority expected her to do!

She'd get in trouble if she didn't.

You can again read that story inside of “Your Empowered Birth”.

Basically what I'm telling you are the things that the medical system probably doesn't want you to know because it will derail their monopoly.

Oops!

Anyway…

So you apply to every single midwife practice in the area, and then you go for the appointments.

And when you're going for those appointments this is when #2 comes in…

Tip #2: Start the Interview Process

After you know which practices have openings and have scheduled your interviews, you’ll want to ensure that you have your birth vision ready, including an idea of what you’ll be declining and what your hard lines in the sand are.

It can help to practice with someone you trust ahead of time, similar to how you’d handle a job interview, except YOU will be the one doing the hiring!

I’ve outlined a longer version of this interview process inside “How to Hire Your Care Provider”, which is included as an added bonus book with Your Empowered Birth Workshop, so if you are serious about hiring the right midwife you’ll want to get that course and dive into that e-book.

Once you have the basics figured out of what you want your ideal birth plan to be, and you know how you want to be supported, you’ll approach each of the practices and interviews and ask yourself the following questions during and after each interview.

First, how do they handle tests and exams and your decision to not do them?

Second, what is the environment like?

When you step into the space, take note…

Is it more like a medical office or is it more homelike?

A truly holistic practice is going to be more homelike, with maybe a bookshelf and toys and a library, and a medwife office is typically going to be more clinical. 

The third thing you want to take note of is what other affiliations they have in the community with other types of care providers outside of prenatal care, who can supplement the support of your midwife and keep you in optimal health.

Typically, if you are going with a more holistic practice, they may have a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, an herbalist, or a nutritionist; somebody either that they refer you to, or they're even on-site. You can look through brochures or magazines that they have in the waiting area to give you a clue.

The reason you want to look out for this is because if your midwife automatically refers you back to a doctor for every other non-pregnancy related complaint then they are more medical-minded, and if something comes up in your pregnancy they are more likely to refer you to an obstetrician, or to persuade you to have an induction at the end of your pregnancy if you go “overdue”.

Now this isn’t always the case, however it is very helpful to kind of see the atmosphere.

You get the feel of the place…

You pay attention to how they handle the tests and exams…

Are they really open-minded? 

Are they willing to just leave you to it or are they going to just assume that those tests have to be done in order for you to comply with “regulations”?

When I was going into all of these different midwife practices I was watching out for this.

And that’s how I came up with the most powerful phrase you can say in lieu of the typical “interview questions” that will immediately reveal whether a midwife is truly supportive (even if she needs to bend “the rules”) or if she’s a “medwife” in disguise.

When you bring in your birth plan to your midwife at the beginning of your pregnancy, at your first appointment you are going to be saying to them, “I plan to decline (insert test or exam or whatever you don't want to do). How are you going to support me in that?”

I did this in every single one of my appointments, and I had three lined up over the course of one week, and I walked in and I said, “I am declining every single blood test.”

I paid attention to what the midwives would say back.

At one practice I watched the midwife’s face fall slightly, and she spent a great deal of time trying to list all the reasons why she didn’t recommend me declining ALL the tests, including listing all the risks of NOT doing it, which allowed me to simply take note and move onto the next one.

Because that was a hard line in sand for me.  Until I felt that I needed it I was not going to do that.

I also was very, very firm on my determination to have my homebirth.

At the second practice, this midwife tried to convince me that I couldn’t be so adamant, because I’d already risked out once, and things do come up where homebirth isn’t safe.

And I'm sitting there and I'm like, “No. You don't get it. I'm having a home birth. You really do not understand my conviction here. You're not tricking me again. I'm going to have a home birth with you there or not. And there's no way that you’re going to talk me out of that.”

So this wasn't the right practice for me.

The third practice was just right.

I walked in and I was warmly greeted by the receptionist into a space that looked like a living room. There were couches, shelves of books in a lending library, and there were toys for my son to play with as we waited, and it really did look like a nice little setup for a home.

When I saw the midwife, instead of sitting on one of those medical tables, I got to sit on a nice little sectional, so there was space to lay down, and at the same time it was really comfortable.

She just sat on the other side of the couch, and she was talking to me, and I'm sitting opposite her.

So there's no desk or anything like that and we're just having a conversation.

Anyway, she sits there she looks over my birth plan and she just started to light up.

“Oh my gosh," she said. "This is the kind of birth we love to support! We love hands-off birth! We love it when you want to have a completely physiological birth! Absolutely you can do all of this!”

And I'm sitting there like, “All right, this practice is perfect because they're going to follow my lead.”

So you want to be paying attention to whether or not the environment and the midwife fit with your vision and your needs.

How do they respond to your birth plan?

Are they responding by lighting up or are they finding all these problems with it?

Because if they're finding all the problems with your birth plan and trying to convince you to “be more flexible”, they're not the right fit.

You don't have time to sit there and convince them at a first appointment that you deserve to have what you want.

Instead, just keep looking.

You don't hire that practice even if it feels like a good vibe, either.

You go and you interview every single one of them, and then you make a decision at the end.

Now when I hit number three, I already knew that I’d found the right fit for me.

I was also assigned my own midwife, and having that one-to-one care with somebody that I would see continuously was really important to me.

In fact Continuous Care can actually benefit you and help you feel more confident in having your natural birth.

You're also less likely to feel any anxiety because it's the same person every time.

And not only that, they really get to know you. You're not just a number.

So I really love The Continuous Care model, and this practice automatically did that.

They also shared a lot of the same views I did for how I believed birth could be, and this leads to the final tip for hiring your midwife…

Tip #3: Asses Their Philosophies and Limitations

Once you’ve assessed the environment and learned of all your options, the final test is to find the midwife who is most likely to support YOU, even if it means they need to do things differently than they are used to.

By the end of all the interviews, I understood that the first practice was highly medicalized, and they viewed birth as just a little bit more natural than what the rest of the medical system saw it as.

They had been kind of iffy about me as well, because of the fact that I had just walked in and I'm like, “I'm not going to weigh myself, I'm not going to pee in the cup, and I'm most definitely not going to be having any of these tests. I have absolutely no desire to have any blood tests taken in my first trimester. I'm just going to enjoy my pregnancy this time.”

The first time I had interviewed my care providers I’d still been a nervous wreck, not wanting to rock the boat or risk being without someone to support me, but this time I knew the game and I’d studied the map. I knew my rights, and I knew the limitations of the system.

It was because I knew what I was doing the second time around that I was able to remain confident, and that’s the key!

It’s not about words to say or questions to ask, the first step is ALWAYS to play the game in your head FIRST, which is why most of what I teach my clients is to work through their fears before they even set foot in the waiting rooms so that when they go in and interview, they aren’t trying to get the midwife to like them.

Here's the thing though…you can’t get an accurate picture of the kind of care and support you’ll receive if you come in with the mindset of someone who thinks she needs to hire just “any midwife who will take her”, nor can you blindly comply with policies and typical maternity care practices.

Now I'm not saying that you don't have to do tests and I'm not saying that you shouldn't do tests, but what I AM saying is that if you’re going to agree to a test or examination you need to understand all the implications of that. 

You also need to be aware that early prenatal visits are NOT about health (you only see your midwife once a month until the third trimester), they are about establishing a relationship and building trust. That being said, trust cannot be built properly in an uneven power dynamic, and that is why the Empowered Birth Method is your secret weapon against the medical system and the antidote to “compliance grooming” in the system itself!

Not every midwife will be transparent with you about their limitations, or who pulls the strings, but that’s WHY you’re interviewing in the first place. You need to recognize who is playing the game only enough to "blend in", while still bending the "rules", and who is licking the boots of the OBs in the system, who actually have all the power and make those rules in the first place.

This is why I wrote the Birth Advocacy Report, because it allows you to basically see where your midwife might have limitations and what fears might come up.

I wrote this report partly because I understand the struggles of the midwife community. There are midwives who have been outright threatened and reprimanded in the system simply for breaking too many of the arbitrary “rules” or telling clients things that would lead them to going against the common practices.

In fact, earlier into my birth advocacy work, I had written a blog post that promoted a local midwife and her Birth House, which I’d seen to be the perfect solution to the “No Homebirths After Cesarean” and VBAC restrictions that were often a barrier for the mothers in my community. So a lot of my work with my clients is based on what I learned while navigating this mine-field to get the information out there to moms without getting the midwives in trouble.

If you’re curious, the blog posts exist in another form, and I’ve shared the videos on my channel. I encourage you to watch them because then you’ll see the bigger picture of why Empowering Moms exists.

You'll understand the psychology a little bit better and then you can find a way to help your own local midwives who are in this fight.  Because the midwives that truly got into birth because they love physiological birth and they want to see more of that are often the ones that have their hands tied.

They're really frustrated by what's going on in the medical system, but they can't speak too loudly about that…at least not in public, and often they wait until retirement or close to it to really spill the tea!

This is something that I learned when I was working with midwives not only as a client but also as member of the larger birth community, where they would tell me stories about how the obstetricians would go over their heads at the hospital and push their clients into repeat C-sections. 

I learned about all the gaslighting of their clients, where mothers assumed the doctors “saved them”, all while the midwives and doulas knew the truth.

I learned of the limitations that they had in what they could say.

The restrictions.

The difficulties that they had in being able to have clients in the first place because they weren't getting paid what were worth.

The difficulties in getting certification.

The fact that they had to keep recertifying.

And the fact that the money and the funding just wasn't there for midwife services.

Because of this, the truly good midwives are burning out at an alarming rate, and you really need to understand their limitations.

If they are in a group practice, even if they have other midwives on rotation, this doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be available for your home birth.

Now there are ways around that so check out some of my other videos about how to get around that obstacle but the thing that you really need to understand is that if your midwife is on call, they are so tired!

They are burning themselves out just trying to take on the clients and they have to take on more than what they can reasonably handle.

Because first of all, they don't want to leave anybody behind.

And second, they need to do it for survival because of how very little they get paid in comparison to a doctor.

Which personally I don't think is fair. I think that midwives should be paid either equally or even more than a doctor because midwives are the guardians of physiological birth.

They're the ones that are going to stay for a longer labor, as opposed to a doctor that comes in maybe in the last 30 minutes to deliver the baby.

And in the meantime, they have nurses basically just updating them on where their clients are at in labor and then they're saying, “Oh just push Pitocin.”

Or “Just break their waters.”

That's how they operate. Sometimes literally.

They're like, “Well, it's time for a C-section. So I'm going to come in and I'm going to do a C-section. And then I'm going to do another C-section. I'm going to get paid for all these C-sections.”

I mean, there are Category 5 care providers out there.

(Go check out my Birth Advocacy Report to really understand what Category 5s are, or watch one of my other videos where I talk about Category 5 care providers to really understand this.)

But they come in and they automatically just want to do a C-section because it gives them more money.

And the more C-sections that they do means that they're seeing more clients. Which means that they are still rolling in it compared to the midwives that are staying with somebody much longer but not getting the recognition.

So when you understand those limitations, you also need to recognize when you are interviewing your midwife you want to ask certain questions.

And they may not be able to tell you the full answer however you can usually kind of tell by asking about what they're really allowed to do.

As an example, you can say something like…

“What happens if I go past 40 weeks?”

“What happens if I go past 42 weeks?”

“Is there anything that you think might come up in terms of the medical system or the licensing boards or anything where I might need to sign a waiver so that you don't have liability for my choice to decline XYZ?”

What you really want to be aware of is that if your midwife doesn't do something that's protocol, they can actually get into a lot more trouble than if a doctor kind of fudged on it.

The reason for this again is because of the way that the medical system is.

The way our culture is.

Midwives have been in a “witch hunt” situation, and all they need to do is take one wrong step and suddenly they're being attacked.

So unlike the situation a complication happens with a doctor and they just are like, “Oh, well, you know, things happen,” if it happens with a midwife that

can mean they lose their license.

That can even mean jail time in some cases.

They're dealing with a different dynamic.

This is why I created Your Empowered Birth Academy. It not only helps you become confident enough that you could easily birth on your own (or call the midwife much later to the end of your labor) but you also build your skills as the Birth Consumer who can advocate for yourself in the system and find all the loopholes for your particular midwife.

You’ll be able to read between the lines of what they’re saying (and not allowed to tell you directly), as well as pull back the curtain and recognize how we can get the true guardians of birth back in the right position within the system, which is “with woman”, and centering around the mother as the Decision Maker.

The threads have been untangled over generations of women supporting women, mostly in times when they couldn’t speak plainly and the system had tied their hands, and now we can take those same strings and we will weave our safety net and trampoline that gets us out of the mess that the original “fathers of obstetrics” created when they tried to take our midwives from us and commodify our birth experience in the name of profit.

That being said, Your Empowered Birth Academy is still quite advanced, which is why it comes with direct email support and two separate laser coaching sessions. 

It is mainly geared toward mothers who want a hands-off birth, even with support from a midwife or other medical professionals, as well as for mothers who face additional challenges and barriers to getting support for a True Natural Birth.

If you aren’t at that level yet, or you want to just get your feet wet, then I suggest you start with our lower-level introductory program Your Empowered Birth Workshop, which lays the foundational pieces for planning and getting your True Natural Birth.

You can check it out now, or continue reading to the end of this article for the big takeaways and final words. In any case, I wish you well on your Empowered Birth Journey.

Now that you have the basics of how to hire a midwife, here’s what you learned…

The Big Takeaways

Okay, to recap…

When you're looking for a midwife you're going to want to do these three things.

#1) Apply to every single practice in the area.

Make sure you're also asking doulas and local moms who have had home births who they used in case there's one of those midwife practices that isn't well known.

And then, once you found them all, fill out and submit the intake forms and schedule the appointments within a 1-2 week time-frame.

#2) Pay attention to the atmosphere and the overall feel of the place and recognize that not all midwives are going to support True Natural Birth.

Not all midwives are going to like it if you say you're going to decline XYZ protocol test, because then that goes against policy.

You need to recognize that some are just medwives in disguise, because they're nurses and they practice more of a hospital mindset. They don't really do home birth and the few homebirths that they do are usually very hands-on, and they're more likely to push you right back into the hospital for the slightest thing.

For example, your waters could be broken for a number of hours and suddenly they're like, “Oh we have to transfer to the hospital.”

Nothing's really wrong.

You feel fine.

But now they're starting to freak out and they're pushing you into intervention.

And finally #3)  You need to know about their overall philosophy and their limitations.

You need to recognize what is the overall “climate” of your health authority.

Does your midwife have to answer to anyone?

If your midwife has people that they have to answer to when it comes to how they practice, that informs their practice.

So if they happen to be under an obstetric practice that is really pulling all of the strings, then they may be limited to what they can actually tell you.

And they may have to push you through to the medical side of things.

If they happen to be working out of a birth center that's also very heavily restricted, then that is going to inform their practice and who they are allowed to take on as a client.

If they happen to have an insurance coverage that only allows them to practice a certain way, even if they have skills outside of that such as breech skills, it can still cause problems.

You really need to know what their limitations are, and then you have to see how willing they are to bend the rules for you.

This is again why the Birth Advocacy Report is the most powerful guide you could go through in terms of figuring out your midwife’s unique challenges. Once you know what levels of resistance they are up against, then you can find the parts of your birth plan that match those things, and adjust your strategy to match.

If you don’t already have it, then you can get it inside my free Empowered Birth Toolkit.

I also share additional tips for finding loopholes in the system within my weekly Empowered Birth Newsletter.

Go Deeper!

And that pretty much wraps up how to choose your midwife.

If you really want to go deep though I do suggest you also read my tips on how to hire your care provider if you haven't already done that.

And definitely check out some of the other videos on my channel! My top suggestions are anything where I talk about midwives and their limitations, since this will go deeper into the waythat the system ties their hands. I have included some of these inside this article, so now that you have the overview you can go back and hunt for your extra treasures!

Also, if you have any questions you can always put them in the comments.

I do read those, but I don't answer them all right away so if you really want to get hold of me all you need to do is email me hello@empoweringmomsbirth.com and I'd be happy to support you further, point you in the direction of another resource, or even give you some secret tips that I've picked up over the years of working as both a birth advocate, a virtual doula, and you know I hear things.

I hear things in the midwife community.

I hear things in the doula community.

I’m kind of a fly on the wall in a lot of mom groups.

I pay attention to what's going on and then I bring you the information, because I believe that information should be free.

It should be accessible.

It should be available to you.

And the only thing I really charge for is more access to me.

So even with Your Empowered Birth Academy the reason why I charge for that is more because if you have any questions on any of the content you can do an email back and forth exchange with me.

You're going to have more access to that.

And you also get access to one one-to-one call for anything that you really have trouble with.

Because when I do take one-to-one clients that's a hefty price tag to be able to have real estate in my brain.

I tend to work with clients anywhere from six weeks to six months, sometimes even a year and I don't work with everyone.

They have to be highly qualified, can afford my coaching fees, and are going to do the work to get the results they want.

This is why I have my three paths to Empowered Birth:

Do-It Yourself is Path #1, which you've already kind of gotten onto that track by reading this article.

You can continue to read this blog and watch the videos on my channel, and eventually you’ll get the pieces you need.

All I ask is that if you're going to do the Do-It-Yourself Path, make sure that you like, share, and subscribe to the social media channels.

Share this article with other moms who could use it, and let's get this information out there!

If you're more of a Self-Study type, then I invite you to go check out Your Empowered Birth Academy.

If you do go through it and you love it, I would also really appreciate feedback.

Because I'm constantly looking for case stories and testimonials.

And I would love to be able to showcase your Empowered Birth.

You don't even have to be a full client to become an Empowered Mom and once you are an Empowered Mom you're an Empowered Mom for life, and no one can take your power away from you again.

Pay It Forward!

So that is what I have for you today.

As I said if you did find value with this please Pay It Forward!

Drop this article in the mom groups.

Get this out there.

Happy Empowered Birth Journey!

Namaste,

~Carly

This article is also part 3 of a 27-part series of essential tips for planning your

Empowered, True Natural Birth and avoiding some of the most common traps for birth planning and navigating pregnancy. It likely has not escaped your notice that the second you become pregnant you are constantly being “sold to” or otherwise given “advice”.

Empowering Moms is different. I don’t tell you what to think, I tell you HOW to think, and how to remain in your power, so that you can trust your intuition and do what’s best for YOU, not what others think is “Best”.

The Essential Birth Planning Tips series is designed to help you in your Empowered Birth Journey. If you want to go deeper, or you have any questions, you can comment below or better yet, email the team at hello@empoweringmomsbirth.com.