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.

In this article I will be going DEEP into the 3 things you need to know when hiring your care provider 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 Your OB or Midwife

If You're Planning a Natural Birth

If you've read the previous 2 articles where I went deep into the 26 Essential Tips for Planning a Natural Birth, then you know that #1 on my list is Choose Your Care Provider Carefully.

But before I get into the 3 things that you need to know when it comes to choosing your care provider, 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 choosing your care provider is one of those things that will make or break

your birth.

Why Choosing the Right Care Provider is Key

Choosing your care provider matters!

And if you choose the wrong one, they're going to lead you down a medicalized path that is going to then cause you to doubt yourself.

Or give in to that induction…

Give in to that C-section…

It can sabotage your birth experience, especially if you have a Category 5 care provider and you don't know it.

Throughout this article I will be telling you how to spot a Category 5 Care Provider, their overall psychology and why they are the absolute worst kind to hire (especially if you’re planning a True Natural Birth), and how to outsmart them so they can’t Bait & Switch you.

I will also be sharing additional resources that will help you go deeper into how to hire the right care provider and confidently advocate for yourself.

Avoiding the Bait & Switch

Okay, so you know that it's important to have the right care provider, but a lot of the questions out there that you ask during the interviews are going to just put you down that same rabbit hole, where you end up Bait and Switched by the end.

If you don't know what Bait & Switch is, this is when you go your whole pregnancy and you think that you've got everything handled and that your care provider is awesome.

They assured you that they were going to support your natural birth, but then at 35 weeks you bring in your birth plan to finalize everything.

And suddenly they're looking at your plan and they're going…

“No, we don't do that.”

“No, you might be able to have that.”

“It's policy that…”

“We prefer this…”

And then they undermine your confidence.

They even do sneaky things like membrane sweeps, or they break your waters during the membrane sweep, or they are pushing cervical checks.

And they're wearing down your resolve to have a natural birth, with the insidious plan of getting you to follow their path.

That's the Category 5 care provider that I mentioned earlier.

So basically, what happens is you've got two camps…

You've got the care providers who wish that they could support natural birth, but for whatever reason they're not confident or don’t actually know how…

And then you have the camp of the one that really just got into it for the money.

And if they had their way, they would give every single one of their clients a C-section.

In fact, the only ones that don't get a c-section are the clients that ended up going too fast in labor to get one.

And yes, those people do exist, and they are the reason why the GOOD care providers who WANT to support True Natural Birth often have their hands tied, and they are also the kinds of people you hear about when moms tell their horror stories about being held down, manipulated, threatened, or even forced into c-sections and other medical procedures against their will.

The problem is that we live in a society that sees the medical professionals as infallible “experts”, so even if you did file a complaint, often it won’t change anything and these care providers will get nothing more than a slap on the wrist…if they get reprimanded at all. That’s because the entire obstetric model was founded during a time when women couldn’t complain, and that’s why you need to understand the context of what is really going on in the system, and why it’s SO hard to just say NO.

The Dark History of Maternity Care and How We Got Here

You want to have your True Natural Birth.

You want to be able to go through your pregnancy feeling confident and you want to be able to have your choices honored, correct?

Well, this is where you have to understand our birth culture because for a very long time, there was no such thing as Informed Consent.

In fact, that only became a thing in birth in the 1990s.

Before that, there was Informed Consent introduced in the 1970s, and the reason this happened was because there were a lot of psychological experiments that started to go really, really bad.

One of them was the prison experiment.

There was another one where they would pretend to be electrocuting somebody in another room, and it caused a lot of psychological trauma for the people that were in the study.

So by that point, the mental health industry was like, “Okay, we have to do something about this.”

“We have to do Informed Consent so that anybody who goes into these studies or

does a medical procedure knows what they're getting into and can assess the risks and benefits.”

However, maternity care was overlooked for this because there was still the pervasive attitude that anything that gets the baby out healthy and gets a live mother can be done, and there was no Informed Consent.

You also have to look at the historical context. When maternity care was first established, women didn't even have the right to vote.

Women weren't even able to have bank accounts under their own name.

Marital rape wasn't even a thing until about the 1990s!

So when you understand the context of what you're really working with, and you understand that there was no Informed Consent until the 1990s…

And there was no such thing as Evidence-Based…

And that a lot of practices in maternity care were done just as routine until they could be proved to be harmful, or there was something better out there in the medical community that worked more efficiently, but they didn't count in the trauma that happened in this…

You can then kind of see where we're running into trouble with True Natural Birth.

And if you want to know more about that, then I highly recommend that you check out “Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage” by Rachel Reed.

This book goes deep into the historical context of birth, goes into the medical practices of the time and helps you unravel the threads of our society.

So you can see…

“Oh, that's where that practice came from.”

“Oh, maybe I might want to question that a little further.”

There's also a really good section on just physiological birth itself, which is the True Natural Birth, through Eve's Story.

It also shows you what you really need to know about physiological birth versus what the medical system has taught you.

And then you can kind of see why care providers are so hesitant to actually support True Natural Birth.

Of course, it’s not enough to simply ask them if they support natural birth, or even to try to use a list of questions to figure it out, because the Category 5 Care Provider will lie through their teeth and appear super supportive while subtly chipping away at your confidence over the next several months, and the others might not know all the nuances of what True Natural Birth looks like, or even offer the kind of birth experience YOU want to have.

That’s why it takes approaching things differently when you’re interviewing your care provider, and I’ve narrowed it down to just 3 questions to ask yourself as you reflect on your options and how the interview process went.

I lay this out inside my e-book “How to Hire Your Care Provider” which is included inside Your Empowered Birth Workshop. You can learn more here, or click the image below.

Once you have the basic structure on how to conduct the interviews, your next step is to assess whether the care provider you’re considering will actually work for your birth plans, and that leads to…

The 3 Questions to Ask Before You Hire Your

Care Provider

You aren’t looking for just any care provider, you need to find one who will actually support a True Natural Birth.

So the key is you need to find a care provider that's already aligned with that.

And they might be resistant at first.

They might even come in a form that you didn't expect.

In fact, just trying to find a midwife will not help you.

Check #2 on my list of 26 Things That You Need to Know if This is Your First Time Planning a True Natural Birth to learn why not all midwives are created equal.

Or just watch the deep dive training on that.

So the thing you need to really understand is that it doesn't matter if you're hiring a midwife or a doctor.

What really matters is…

#1) Are they truly aligned with supporting a True Natural Birth?

Because there's two camps that your care provider can fall into.

They can either be mostly hands-off, or they can be highly medically controlled or somewhere in between, but still with the mindset that birth is more of a disaster waiting to happen rather than a physiological process.

Or…

Birth is a physiological process that sometimes needs medical intervention.

Now, this does not completely eliminate bias, because as medical professionals, they have mostly been practicing in a hospital environment.

If you want to know how that really plays out, all you have to think about is cats giving birth.

If we took cats who typically go and hide under the bed or go into a closet or go and hide in a shoe box under the bed…

(I mean, cats will fit in anything, but you understand, they will go and hide and they're birthing their babies and they're fine.)

But what happens if you took these same mammals and put them under bright lights and had people disturbing them the whole time trying to assess their progress?

We would end up coming to the conclusion that cats don't give birth very well.

And you can replace this with any other mammal.

All other mammals need darkness.

They need quiet.

They need safety.

And they need to feel that safety in their bodies to be able to birth effectively.

Otherwise, the labor process shuts down.

And now you can kind of see why doing the medicalized version of birth is causing a lot of problems.

However, that's their training.

They also don’t see a lot of physiological births because they're attending hospital births, with the hospital environment, and the people that are going into the hospital typically just follow these protocols without question.

They are mostly trained in managing birth, not sitting back and just letting birth unfold.

But Dr. Michel Odent said it himself…

“Do not disturb the birthing woman.”

And he said that midwives, the best ones, are “knitting in the corner.”

She's not doing something to the mother.

She's sitting there and she's just minding her own business.

One of the things that I tell all of my clients when they're planning a True Natural Birth is they need to find a care provider that is willing to be hands-off.

Even if they aren't typically hands-off…

Even though they're used to their clients asking for more support…

When you're looking for your care provider, you need to be very clear that you could do this birth yourself and you're only asking them to come in as backup or as a little bit of support if you need it.

But otherwise, you're very, very clear on the fact that you don't really need them.

You know that your baby is going to come with them there or not, but you're inviting them into your space.

They need to be honored by the fact that you're choosing them to be in that sacred space, not to control it, but to actually be part of it.

And to recognize that even if they don't make it to the birth, that you did it yourself.

Some of the best midwives that I've talked to over the years are the ones who say, “My client did it themselves.”

And my own midwife from my home birth even said the same things.

After I had my daughter, she's like, “You did it yourself.”

And I mean, I technically did because my midwife didn't come in until I was pretty much almost done pushing.

My daughter’s head was halfway out.

And then the midwife just pulled her out of the water and put her on my chest.

They did a few assessments after the birth, but I did it myself.

You need to have the care provider who is willing to recognize that birth is a

physiological process, pregnancy is a physiological process, and they're willing to take their hands off and make suggestions.

However, they can't have any attachment to that.

And if you want to know more about what that looks like or how to get your care provider on board, how to see if they're open to that, then I highly suggest you check out my book, “How to Hire Your Care Provider.”

It's a short little e-book.

It tells you a little bit more about the history of birth and the historical context of where your care provider is coming from.

4 Big Mistakes That You're Making When Trying to Hire Your Care Provider gives you a little bit more on the red flags.

And it also tells you the overall process that I teach all of my clients when it comes to hiring their care provider so that they know that whoever they've hired is not going to Bait & Switch them later.

That leads into the next question you’ll want to ask after assessing how your care provider responds to your birth plans…

#2) Do they see YOU as the Decision Maker?

Okay, so now that you understand that your care provider needs to have the proper philosophy, the next part of this is that they also need to see you as the Decision Maker.

They need to recognize that you are the one in charge, and they need to be open to learning a new way, even if they've never practiced that way before.

Jenni did this with her second baby.

She had already looked at what she wanted out of her care provider.

She'd gone through the Empowered Birth Method, where I taught her to write up her statements and questions AFTER creating her birth plan, and then inform the doctors and midwives she was interviewing of her plans.

Actually, a lot of the questions that are inside “Your Empowered Birth” for how to hire your care provider and choosing the Right Facilitators for your birth came from what I taught Jenni.

And so she was very clear on what she wanted in her birth.

She wanted a hands-off birth, even though she had some issues with her medical history.

She had chronic high blood pressure.

She was concerned about possibly getting gestational diabetes.

She’d also had postpartum preeclampsia with her first baby, and she wanted to keep an eye on that, so that didn't happen again.

She kind of knew that she would need to have some medical support.

She had wanted a midwife, but we couldn't find any in the area willing to take her on.

However, eventually she went and applied at a family doctor/obstetric practice that had been recommended by one of our local doulas.

So she went and applied, sharing her desires for a completely hands-off VBAC, and then after the initial intake form, another doctor in the practice saw her birth plan, reached out to her, and asked, “Can I be your doctor? I would like to support you.”

He was really excited to be able to see this birth unfold, and even though it was technically high-risk, his hands were basically off of it.

He let Jenni do whatever she wanted to do.

He respected her choices.

And even if it went against a little bit of the policies…

Even if it was not something typical that would happen with a high-risk client, he was at least open to trying a new way.

He also expressed some of his concerns, which allowed Jenni to understand his fears and show him that not only had she done her research, but that she already had her backup plan in place.

This is why the Birth Advocacy Report inside my Empowered Birth Toolkit is so helpful.

Because once you know your care provider's fears and concerns, you can then find information to help them with that, and you can show them your backup plan.

Jenni had already created her idealized birth plan AND she also had her backup plan.

She had already worked through her own fears and addressed everything that she was concerned with, and then she was able to advocate confidently for herself when the doctor brought up any concerns that hadn’t felt true for her.

She was like, “Well, if that happens I already have something in place for that, and I'm not really concerned about it.”

In the end she was able to get this True Natural Birth even with a doctor!

So the key is not just what kind of care provider you have, but also their qualities.

Are they open to learning a new way?

Do they have an open mind?

If they have a very closed mindset and they believe that they are in charge and that you don't know what you're talking about, and that it's their job to persuade you to see

reason, you might have a Category #5.

Make sure you check out my list of the 17 Red Flags that you want to watch out for in a care provider.

This list gives you the overview of the typical Red Flags that are sometimes hard to spot in our doctor-centric birth culture, so that you can advocate for yourself or recognize that you have a Category 5 Care Provider (and find someone else).

And if you want a deeper dive, make sure you also get the Empowered Birth Toolkit because this comes with a Birth Advocacy Report.

This report goes into the 4 Different Types of Fear that your care provider may be dealing with that causes them to resist your birth plan and try to push you into what's typical.

And it also tells you how to deal with the Category 5 care provider who is overly controlling, thinks it's their way or the highway, has absolutely no empathy, doesn't care about your birth plans, and would rather you just toe the line.

And if you don't, they're going to threaten you.

There are other things that go into this toolkit as well, but I put things in and I take things out, and this is an ever-evolving resource.

It's basically a Google Drive file that you get access to when you join the newsletter where I give you deeper dive tips every single week.

I also tell you about what's going on in the Empowered Birth Circle, which is my network of birth workers and other people that kind of tie into the Empowered Mom philosophy.

Because I believe that wisdom comes from multiple perspectives.

I also believe that information needs to be more accessible.

And when a lot of the mainstream stuff people keep sharing the same resources over and over…

The ones that I know are not going to help…

Whereas the really good stuff is typically hidden.

When I find gold, I want to share it, so you might not find these resources any other place, because people aren't telling others about it.

It's not something that is mainstream.

It's like a best-kept secret.

It's like if you were in a small town and you just arrived and you have absolutely no idea

where anything is, and some of the best restaurants are actually hidden downstairs, and

they look like little holes in the wall.

And you don't really know what's in there…

And because it kind of looks on the outside like just nothing, you walk right past it.

Meanwhile you're going to the one that everybody else on the tourist line is going to, and it's crap.

It's not what you wanted.

So when you want to do something in a new town, obviously you want to talk to the locals who already know the area and want to help you!

Just think of me as your friendly neighborhood doula and coach who knows all of the good people to get into connection with…

And knows where all the secrets are…

And knows all the loopholes in the medical system and can guide you to your True Natural Birth.

Your Empowered Birth.

Now, you might be wondering why the heck would I give all of this away for free?

What's the catch?

Well, the catch is that if you're going to take the free path, then all I ask is that you Pay It Forward.

Like, share and subscribe to the social media channels.

Share the videos, tell others about this.

Because I'm committed to you having an Empowered Birth.

I'm also committed to every mom having an Empowered Birth and that's why I have 3 Paths for working with me…

#1 is the Do-It-Yourself Path where you can just take every single video, resource, guide and all of my content and you can piece this together yourself.

That is the path where you can also get the Empowered Birth Toolkit which I put resources in, and I take them out, and I just keep interchanging them.

The only one that stays in the toolkit the whole time is the Birth Advocacy Report because this is the most valuable resource when it comes to getting your care provider on your side and there's no way I would ever dream of taking that out.

You also get access to other resources.

You just keep going into the drive, you keep following the newsletter and you know when new things are coming in.

And this is basically how you are going to be able to get the Empowered Birth Method.

You can sign up for the Toolkit here, or click the image below.

The second path is Self-Study.

Maybe you're someone who prefers to have things laid out a lot easier.

Maybe you don't mind paying a little bit of money to get a course or a book.

Maybe you would rather have a little bit more support from e-mail or maybe just a quick message back and forth.

With Self Study VIP you also get targeted laser coaching, where I get deep into whatever issue you're having.

I usually do about one or two sessions per course.

So if you do get Your Empowered Birth Academy, this is how you get everything.

It's almost as good as me coaching you directly, but without the hefty price tag.

You get all of the recorded content, you get all of the little PDF guides, you get all of the eBooks, everything that I create.

It's like a bigger database of all the information that I create.

You can get started with our FREE Self Study Program, Your Empowered Birth Workshop here, or click the image below.

Finally, the last path is Premium Coaching, however I don't work with everyone.

I'm really committed to my family, I'm committed to my friends, I'm committed to my own energy, and self-care is incredibly important.

When I was a coach in the beginning, I would do a lot of really long one-to-one calls and sessions.

I'd be running classes, and I was very much in danger of burning myself out, which unfortunately is why your care provider often doesn't get to tell you all of the things that you need to know because they don't have time either.

They can burn themselves out, especially if they're supporting True Natural Birth.

So you need to be mindful of what your care provider is really dealing with.

And the Empowered Birth Method really helps you to pinpoint the deep concerns that you really have so that when you go into those appointments with your care provider, you're like, “Here's the thing that I'd like to discuss with you.”

And you don't have a million different questions.

They aren't confused, you aren't confused, and you can both get on the same page.

And I do have more tips on birth advocacy within Your Empowered Birth Academy.

You can also check out my book, “Your Empowered Birth.”

I put this stuff out there because when I was a first-time mom, I didn't know how to navigate that medical system.

When I was a second-time mom, I kind of figured it out and I was using my appointments mostly to talk shop with my midwives because of what I'd learned.

And I was also getting the inside information about what they were dealing with, with their other clients.

They weren't naming names or anything, but they were basically telling me the struggles that they had, the limitations that they had, and what this was ultimately doing and causing them to burn out.

The truly good midwives typically had about 3 to 7 years before they would burn out and not be able to practice anymore.

The same with doulas.

It was like clockwork.

The ones that stayed longer typically ended up practicing in more of a systematic way that then led to more trauma for their clients.

They couldn't handle it anymore at a certain point.

And they'd just be like, “You know what? I have to retire.”

In fact, my midwife with my first baby had even said, “I'm retiring in two years. So I won't be around when you have your second.

And I'm gonna tell you right now that a lot of the practices…the way people are doing

birth, if you really wanna have a True Natural Birth, you need to find a different midwife

practice and it needs to be more holistic.

And do not go with the first one you see, just really be careful because most people are relying on machines, they're not relying on their hands.”

She'd been in that game probably since the 70s.

She really understood what was going on and she just told me everything.

I have spoken with other midwives that have been practicing since the 80s and the 70s, and they've told me similar stories about how things used to be back in the day versus how they are now.

That’s why I am passing the information on to YOU, because they can’t speak candidly about it to their clients. Which leads to the final question you need to ask…

#3) Who do they have to answer to?

You need to also recognize where your care provider has privileges in which hospitals and what organizations they happen to be under.

Because even if your care provider happens to be of the more natural minded and is willing to let you lead and take their hands off things, you still have to be aware of their limitations.

There may be insurance issues that come up because they have to carry insurance and the insurance companies may have restrictions on how they're allowed to practice.

Which means that, if you're declining a test or an intervention or a routine procedure, then the insurance companies might not like that and will increase your premiums, or even penalize your care provider by increasing theirs.

Or maybe it's that your care provider happens to be practicing in a hospital that is very medical minded.

In which case, if you are having a home birth, this isn't a problem because they can't really see what's going on.

Except if you call them too early in labor, which is what happened to me, they then have to call the hospital and say that a home birth is taking place.

Which then still puts you on the clock.

So what happened with me is that I called my midwife to the house.

She assessed my progress.

I was at almost 6 centimeters, and she had called the hospital to tell them.

And because she was under this organization, this governing body of how she's

allowed to practice, and she'd been newly certified, (it had only been 3 years) she then had to keep reporting the progress.

Except I wasn't progressing.

And because I wasn't progressing 1 centimeter per hour as I was supposed to, there came a point where she needed to ask me again to consent to another cervix check to see where I was at.

Now, I didn't want this.

However, I could also kind of sense she needed to know.

And against my better judgment, I allowed this.

It was incredibly painful.

It was traumatic.

It was probably the worst part of my labor.

And what happened is that my labor ended up stalling out.

And she said, “Okay, now labor has completely stopped.

And we have two choices here.

I can call the hospital and say that this was a false start and go home.

Or we can keep going like we are, and I'll have to assess you again in four hours.

And if you're not any further along, then I'm going to have to transfer you.

We'll have to consult with an OB.

They'll probably tell me that you need to transfer.

They're going to want to break your waters and get things moving because you've

been in labor for over 24 hours now.

And things need to be moving because you're a second time mom.

Maybe there's a problem.”

And I'm sitting and I'm thinking in my head, “There's no effing way that is happening.

I would sooner do this myself.”

She continued, telling me, “If you choose option one and I go home and then you go back into labor and you call me, I'll have to come back and reassess you.”

This is when I realized that I couldn't call her back until I was pushing because of the limitations that she had.

So you need to be mindful of the fact that even if your care provider truly does believe in True Natural Birth, even if they are willing to take their hands off of it and trust your judgment, they are also dealing with their own level of restrictions.

And again, if you want to know more about that, you can check out “Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage.”

There was actually a quote in that book, a little anecdotal story, where a midwife was saying, “Well, you know, we could have a mom in labor and her waters could be completely intact.

And then like, she's doing fine, but the OB comes in and they're like, “Why aren't the waters released yet?”

And then what do you do in that situation?

Because now you've got somebody higher up on the hierarchy.

They're kind of putting pressure on you to conform to what is believed to be proper.

And mom doesn't want it.

So there's a very coercive environment.

So not only do you need to know what the restrictions and limitations are of your care

provider if you're having a home birth, but if you're having a hospital birth, this is a whole other can of worms that you need to figure out.

Does that hospital support physiological birth?

Because this is another thing that I recognized is that my midwife for my first pregnancy was fully on board. She believed in True Natural Birth.

She had seen it for decades and she'd also come into the practices before midwifery had been registered under our medical system.

So she understood that birth could happen without intervention.

But then she had also seen all of these restrictions.

And because I'd been told I couldn't have a home birth, I went into the hospital and I wasn't aware of the hospital policies around natural birth and how long a mom is allowed to be pushing for.

I didn't see until later just how much my midwife had to fight that system to keep the OBs out of my room, to keep the hospital from pulling rank on her.

And the only reason she was able to stand up as strong as she could probably was because she was two years away from retirement.

And if they slapped her on the wrist or whatever, it didn't matter.

Whereas there were a lot of younger midwives out there, newly certified even, that would not risk their job just to allow a mom to have more autonomy in her birth.

So when you're in a toxic hospital environment, you have to be aware of something called Horizontal Violence in that system.

And that is what your care provider is dealing with.

You need to recognize…

What hospital privileges do they have at what places and what is that environment?

And how is that going to affect their practice?

Which ties again into that story I told you from “Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage” with that midwife who then had the OB come in and ask why the waters hadn't been broken.

Like, “Why haven't you broken her waters yet?

That's something that needs to happen because she's still in labor.

Let's speed this up.

Get in the bed, get out of the bed, send her home.”

Never mind about physiological birth, because again, birth is a business in the hospital.

So for more on that, though, you might want to also check out Speaking of the Village podcast with Dawn Thompson and Nicole Harlot.

In one of the episodes Dawn Thompson actually said that the way that the medical model of birth is, it's not sustainable to have a True Natural Birth.

There's no money in that.

It's not a sustainable model.

So of course the system is going to try to control it as much as possible!

The system isn't broken.

The system works exactly how it was designed to work for a business model.

But it doesn't work as a physiological natural birth model for you.

So it's not working for you, it's working for them.

The Big Takeaways

So to recap, the three things you need to know when it comes to choosing your

care provider/hiring one, is that you need to first look at their overall philosophy and how they view birth.

Do they view it as a physiological event where if they miss the birth, they know that you could do it with or without them?

Or do they view it as something that they need to attend and control and manage?

Because if you want a True Natural Birth, you need somebody who is at least willing to recognize that their role is as a supporter and Facilitator of the physiological process, not to control it.

That it will happen with or without them.

That you could birth your baby in your car, that you could accidentally birth your baby at home or intentionally birth your baby at home.

That even if you call them at the last possible minute, you've got this.

Even if they don't get there until after the birth has already taken place, it's not a dire emergency.

They need to have confidence in your body.

#2 They also need to be willing to let go of any of their fears or limitations and try a new way.

Even if they've been practicing a certain way and it's been what other people have been asking for, they need to see you as unique and your birth experience as unique.

They need to look at your birth plan and they need to be like, “Okay, I'm going to follow your lead.

Here's something I'm concerned about.”

And they're taking the back seat though, as you are telling them, “I'm confident with this and I want to move forward.”

Or “I didn't consider that. Let me just take a step back and think about if this is true for me.

Okay, it might be true in this case.

Okay, so now I've got another backup plan.

If that thing happens, this is what we'll do.

And do you have any input on that?”

And then it becomes a collaboration, not shared decision-making, but an actual collaboration where you are the one leading and they are the one following your lead and bringing their expertise and their tools to it.

It's almost like if you were renovating a house and you have this vision for how you want your place to look.

And you've hired a contractor.

Now the contractor can see where things can fall apart, but you don't want the

contractor to suddenly say to you, “Yeah, you honestly can't design that house at all.

And I'm going to just do my thing and you're just going to like it.”

That just wouldn't work.

Instead, you want to ask, “Oh, can you tell me more about that?

Why wouldn't that work?

Okay, would that be in all cases?

Okay, well, I'd really like it to be done this way.

So how can you learn a new skill or be open to trying something new so that this can

possibly happen?”

Because nothing new develops until you're willing to try something out-of-the-box.

And finally, you also need to know what the limitations of your care provider are, what they're really dealing with.

The overall culture that they're dealing with in their hospital or with their colleagues.

What insurance is going to try to do.

Maybe there's a form that you need to sign to make it a lot easier for your care provider to follow your lead.

But whatever that is, you need to recognize they've got limitations, they've got fears, they've got concerns.

This is not just about your birth, this is about their career and their livelihood.

You need to recognize they're human.

And I mean, look at it this way…

If you're a customer coming into a store and you want somebody to do something that's against company policy, you're more likely to get what you want if you

understand the limitations of that person.

So oftentimes, even when I was in retail, we had some really stupid policies.

And I knew they were stupid.

I knew that they were screwing over the customers.

And at the same time, I couldn't directly say that.

But what I could do is that…

If somebody was really open to me guiding them…

And they weren't rude to me…

And they weren't trying to go over my head…

And they weren't trying to be nasty to me and make it seem like it was my fault that this policy existed…

I was more likely to show them the loophole so that they could get what they wanted.

And I mean, that's it. That’s the essence of advocating for yourself using the secrets of the Empowered Birth Method!

When you become a Birth Consumer, you suddenly recognize that you have a lot more power! 

If you look at the medical system as a business, then you need to come at it like a consumer.

You need to recognize the consumer mindset.

You need to be like, “Okay, I'm shopping for a care provider.

Is this even the store that I want to go to?

Is this even the type of person that I want to deal with?

Do they even have what I'm looking for?”

Because if they don't, they're not the right fit.

And if you really want a deep dive, then you can also go and get Your Empowered Birth Academy, which is my full program, which will help you to advocate for yourself in the medical system.

Module 4 will teach you everything that you need to know on hiring and firing your care provider, and how to strongly advocate for yourself and get what you want without the typical pushback or trying to “convince” them with multiple articles just to “let” you try.

And ultimately, you're going to get your Empowered Birth.

So now you know the basics of what to look for when choosing your care provider for a True Natural Birth, and you also have been introduced to the deeper dive resources that will enhance your Empowered Birth Journey. Of course, now that we’re at the end, I have one request of you in exchange for all the secrets I just shared with you…

Pay It Forward and Share This Article!

Tell others where to find this. The Empowered Birth Community and Movement can only grow as long as we’re all doing our part to put the message out there, and I’m committed to delivering valuable articles, videos, and programs to every mom who needs support in planning her True Natural Birth.

For more on our overall mission, be sure to also check out the True Natural Birth Starter Guide, and keep following for more because the next topic I’ll be addressing in this series will be how to hire the right midwife, particularly so that you avoid accidentally hiring a medwife.

So if you loved this article, I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments.

And If you have any questions, you can always reach out to me, hello@empoweringmomsbirth.com

Or if you don't mind putting your questions in the comments, I do go through and I read the comments, I do answer them, however if it’s time-sensitive the fastest way to get an answer from me is again to e-mail me or you can just sign up for the Empowered Birth Toolkit and hit reply to any of my weekly newsletters.

Happy Empowered Birth Journey!

Namaste,

~Carly

This article is also part 2 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.