Return to Radiance with Danielle Venables

075. My Freebirth Story & Thoughts on Reclaiming Sovereign Birth

• Danielle Venables • Episode 75

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When the cries of my newborn echoed through our home in February, it wasn't just a life that was birthed—my entire sense of self underwent a monumental transformation. This episode of Return to Radiance is a heartfelt chronicle of my journey postpartum, where the intimate dance of motherhood intertwines with the bold steps of redefining empowerment. From the evolution of my personal and professional spheres, including the thrill of welcoming new private clients and the anticipation of an oracle deck, to the broader shifts in collective energy, I lay bare the truths of my transformation. 

The power of literature in reshaping my birth experience is unveiled as I recount the profound impact of "Home Birth on Your Own Terms" and "Portal" on my understanding of childbirth. These insightful works not only challenged the narrative around labor pain but also illuminated a path for a peaceful, even euphoric, free birth with my husband. As I contrast the autonomy of home birthing with the impersonal nature of the traditional medical system, I extend an invitation to you to question the status quo and to embrace the wisdom of our natural instincts. This episode is a tapestry of personal power, where the threads of reclaiming birth, sovereignty, and transcending outdated structures are woven into a story that is as unique as it is universal. Join me in this potent discourse and share your own journey toward inner radiance.

Click here to get on the waitlist for my upcoming Oracle Deck.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Return to Radiance, the podcast with one core purpose to remind you of your innate power and essence. I'm your host, danielle Venables, an Akashic guide and soul coach, here to activate, heal and empower the new wave of soulful CEOs to become radically aligned and unapologetic. In these episodes, we will be diving into all things mystic, soul level transformation, the new paradigm of leadership, business, energetics, awakening, healing and more, as well as holding potent conversations around connecting deeply to your personal power and owning your truth. If you are here for it all, be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. While I'm confident the discussions in this podcast have the power to change your life, these episodes are for information only and are in no way a substitute for individual medical, legal or mental health advice.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Return to Radiance podcast. This is my first episode back since having my son back in February, so right away I'm going to start with. If we get interrupted I may have to pause and come back to it. So if there's some weird disjointedness in the middle of the episode, that is why, um, he is currently napping but you never know what a newborn baby is going to do um, but I'm so excited to be back and hopefully the intention is to stay really regular with the weekly episodes again moving forward. But this episode is really just going to be a little bit of a chat, a little bit of a catch up. I might share a little piece of the birth story and just the transformation and the rite of passage that came with the birth of my third child and really just kind of riffing, getting back into it. So we'll see kind of where it goes.

Speaker 2:

I am actually recording this literally an hour after the eclipse on April 8th, so energies have been a little bit weird. I've been kind of hesitant to even do much today. But here we are. We take the time when we are parents, we take the time when we have the time. So I'm here recording this for you. So yeah, first of all, I'm excited to announce that I am kind of back. There are some really exciting um updates. I have space for one or two private clients, so if that's something that you are interested in, um, we can work together. Whether that is on your business, whether that's more on the life side, the parenting side, the integration side of life, I am open to journeying with one or two amazing souls over the next few months. So reach out if you want to learn more about how we can shift you on a core, energetic soul level throughout the next six months or a year or whatever feels yummy and supportive for you. There's also some announcements coming about my oracle deck. I have been really quiet about it for a while, um, and have just been in touch with my designer, slash publisher, and there's so much good stuff coming and I can't wait to tell you guys. But I have to be a little bit tight-lipped for the time being. But I promise you an update is coming and I will link the wait list down below for you.

Speaker 2:

Now, what has gone on? So this past I want to say year has been really tough and I've spoken with a few people. I thought maybe it was just me going through the motions with my pregnancy and some of the shifts that I was going through as I was growing a human and preparing for my free birth and all of the like emotional and spiritual shifts that had to happen to come to the point of, you know, going through with a free birth as well and breaking free from the medical institution and all of the programming that we have around that. But then I spoke with some members in my community, some close friends, some past mentors, and really it sounds like this past year has just been a little bit rough for some of us where we've really been called to deconstruct a lot of our beliefs, a lot of our ways of doing things, and it's one of those things that I kind of knew was happening collectively. But to be on the other side of it and hear that confirmation and also be in a season now where everybody's energy feels so much lighter and ready to go maybe some of that clarity is starting to come forward for you as well um, it just feels really good to be on the other side of that, obviously, and just know that if you were going through that you were not alone, you were not crazy. And also it was for a reason and we were being called to deconstruct old ways, old patterns, old ways of doing business, old ways of showing up in our lives. Maybe you've had some shifts in the way that you parent or the way that you interact within your family unit. There's been all kinds of themes coming up and really demanding to be looked at in a way and with an intensity that I personally have never seen before, and I know that I'm not alone when I say that. So just know that you are in good company and it is all part of the journey, it is all part of the path that you chose to walk and there are so many of us walking that with you.

Speaker 2:

So that kind of brings me to the birth, which is such a crazy thing. So I'm going to kind of start at the start here. Um, for those of you who don't know, I had my son Walker, um at home with just my husband. So, like my kids were home and my husband's mom was here to kind of take care of the kids and help out, um, as needed. But the the intention was really that my husband and I were gonna drop into the birth space and do it, and I wasn't sure what that would look like, but I can say that there was a whole process. If you're listening to this, you're like holy shit, she's crazy. Just know that back in 2019, 2020, that was my reaction to free birth as well. It was literally. I have a friend who free birthed two of her four kids and when she would tell her stories, I was always like, wow, that is so cool, but I could never do that, and there was a big part of me that just didn't believe that I could ever do something like that unassisted, because I was still so deep in the programming around birth.

Speaker 2:

Needing medical intervention and also in avoidance of pain, has been a big one throughout my life and it's one of the beautiful transformations that has come through. This birth is, I noticed, whether it was how I was birthing my kids, whether it was how I was birthing creations in my business, whether it was how I was handling conflicts in relationships, whether that's friendship or my marriage or anything. My response was if there was a way to avoid the pain, if there was a way to avoid the discomfort, I was going to do that. I was going to take that road. So, speaking about this in terms of birth, um, speaking about this in terms of birth, I had epidurals with my first two kids.

Speaker 2:

Now, I had my son at 17 um, so that was kind of a different thing altogether, but I had an epidural with him. I had an epidural with my daughter in 2019 and so, again, like when my friend was talking about having her babies at home and not having pain medication and not having even the option of having it, I kind of was like wow, that's crazy and like why how could you do that without, without the pain relief, right? Um, and that was something that kind of got illuminated for me as I prepared myself for this birth that I was going to have to come to terms with. I knew that if I wanted to do an unmedicated birth, I needed to be outside the system. I knew that if I went to the hospital, I would ask for the epidural again, because I know myself, I know my patterns and if there's an option to avoid the pain, I'm very likely to take it.

Speaker 2:

And so I knew, and it kind of got to a point I want to say 2021 ish where my friend would share her stories again, like little pieces would come up in conversation and I started to get this niggling feeling that there was something missing for me. I started to get this nudge that if you have a kid again it's going to be a free birth. And it's so funny because we were kind of like, yeah, like we're probably done having kids, two's enough. But there was that niggling and I was always like that sounds so empowering and I feel like that's just what I need to really anchor in my new level of power, into the physical. And I'm not saying this because you need necessarily something physically to like anchor that in. You don't necessarily need external circumstances to anchor in new layers of power and just new ways of like knowing yourself and seeing yourself and all of that like identity change is absolutely possible without it, but there's no denying that going through a portal, like birth, you know those bigger rites of passage throughout life, um, that those do shift you, they transform, transform you, and so I kind of knew that I was craving some sort of big initiation like that, to know myself on a deeper level and to be able to access those depths in a different way.

Speaker 2:

And that involved for me taking radical responsibility and that involved for me taking radical responsibility of the thing that I feared the most, and I did. I feared birth every time, even when we decided to have our daughter, you know, I was like enjoying pregnancy and I was really excited, but there was always that part in the back of my mind that was like but at some point I have to birth this thing, at some point this baby has to come out, and I was like dreading it. And I remember being like that with my son too. Granted, that was at 17, like my oldest, but regardless, I was so afraid of birth, I was so uncomfortable about it, I hated everything about it. I hated the hospital, I hated the idea of like where it had to come out of. I was just like really squeamish about it. It just was not like a good relationship with what I now see as one of the most sacred and natural things that you can do, and so I had a lot to unpack.

Speaker 2:

When, I believe it was June, we found out that we were expecting, and the first thing that I told my husband was I want a free birth. I want to have this baby at home, without any medical intervention, without anybody else there, without outsourcing our power to anybody else, like just you and me, and he was like shit, are you okay? Like are you sure? But he was like so game at the same time. So once he was on board which he was pretty much immediately it really became a mental game of preparing for this home birth, right Like going from being completely numbed out in my previous births to feeling everything and also being responsible for everything.

Speaker 2:

You know, as I was preparing, I realized that with neither of my first two kids did I even remember the placenta coming out. So there are certain key things that I wasn't even. I was like how long after does it come out? How does it come out? Do we need to do anything to get it out? Like there were so many questions that feel so stupid because it should be such a natural thing. But I was so disconnected from the birth process that I had a lot of learning to do in order to kind of settle my analytical mind so that I could drop into the experience.

Speaker 2:

And so with that, over those months, there was such a profound shift that had to take place for me, right Like we're undoing the programming, we're taking the outsourcing of power off the table, we're taking the avoidance of pain off the table, or at least so. We think More on that a little bit later, but it was really like taking radical responsibility for myself, my experience, obviously, my baby, and that's not something that I took lightly. So I had to really shift, and it wasn't something that I consciously did. It wasn't like I was focusing every day on doing mindset, work and reprogramming things and questioning beliefs that I had and all of that. It was just literally from the decision point of I am going to free birth that cascaded into a whole bunch of shifts that were going on beneath the surface. And so I didn't necessarily I wasn't necessarily consciously aware of what was happening at every point in time. I just felt very out of it. I felt like I was purging a lot, going through a lot, processing a lot, without even really realizing exactly what I was processing, and in hindsight some of it was probably mine and some of it was probably collective. But I just I shifted beneath the surface into the woman that believes that she can do this, and there was a part of me that always knew right like that. That intuitive nudge was there and I had to honor that because I knew that I would regret it for the rest of my life if I did not do the free birth that I knew I wanted. Um, but then, energetically and physically, I had to catch up to what I decided I wanted or what my soul was calling me to do, and that was a lot bigger than I thought. It would be Like it really fucked with my energy for a really long time and I really didn't feel like myself for a really long time, and so I went quiet. I took, you know, nine, 10 months off at this point, um, to really just be with myself and to calibrate to what I said I wanted and where I knew that I could access more of that inner power. And lo and behold, it happened.

Speaker 2:

Um, I read two books towards the end of my pregnancy that, if you are planning a home birth or a free birth, or even if you're not, even if you're just like going through birth and are wanting to change your relationship with it, these books are fucking phenomenal. The first one is called Home Birth on your Own Terms by Heather Baker. She's a traditional midwife. She is amazing. And then the other one is Portal by Yolanda Norris-Clark, who is a huge advocate for our body's innate natural ability to carry a baby and birth it and nurture it naturally without intervention, um, and she speaks a lot about the, the systemic, like ritualistic trauma that occurs within the medical system as well. It's very interesting. Her body of work is very, very eye-opening. But those two books in that order.

Speaker 2:

So I read Home Birth on your Own Terms as sort of a way to wrap my head around what is an emergency, what is not, the basic education around the process of labor and the placenta stuff and you know, all of those things that you maybe don't pay as close of attention to when you're in the hands of a medical team, um, and then she has herbs and tinctures and all of that in that book. It's, it's really, really good. I recommend it, um, so I read that one and then in the last month before my guest date, um, I started reading portal, and that book is really about blissful birth, it's about orgasmic birth. It is about, um, you know, really transmuting pain and shifting our relationship to what we expect birth to be and really taking ownership of that experience, and so that one. I'm not going to say that I had a completely pain-free birth, but what it did do is it opened my mind, it opened my energy and it opened my body to be more receptive to a pain-free birth or to it not hurting as bad as maybe it had with my previous ones prior to the epidural, or not hurting as bad as I was expecting it to. And so that was really like I don't even want to say it was mindset work, because it was so much deeper. It was like an activation of what if birth is only painful because we believe it to be painful, and it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, is really kind of like what I took from it. That's like oversimplifying the book, but it really just helped to open me up to the possibility that it didn't have to be excruciating and that it didn't have to be like going into war and coming out with a baby, that it could just be a process that I get to descend into and emerge with a baby, and so that one really made a huge difference for me in terms of my experience.

Speaker 2:

I think difference for me in terms of my experience, I think you know there are so many factors that are so different from the ways that my first two births went, so I can't like pinpoint that it was specifically a book or specifically education, or specifically being home, but what I will say is being home, in my own space, I believe the oxytocin production was substantially higher because my body was uninterrupted. I was uninterrupted in my process and just got to be and to, you know, be with myself, tune in with my intuition, feel my body, um, and like really just drop in mentally, physically, spiritually, all of the above. But then also, you know, having these accounts from people who have had blissful births and knowing that it's possible, it opens your mind to what, if, what if it could be pain-free, what if it could be blissful. And I would say honestly, as much as there was some discomfort. And I remember at one point, um kind of thinking to myself like, yeah, I could be done with this about now, like it's getting kind of old, but I wouldn't call it pain, and that's like so perplexing to me because of my past experiences and because of, like, the resounding collective experience of birth, um, and again, I think oxytocin and the ability to like produce more of that in a home setting where you're more relaxed, definitely plays into how blissful a birth can be.

Speaker 2:

Um, but I also just remember, like through the portal of birth, thinking like what if it doesn't have to get worse because, like, my contractions were manageable. But I was like what if it doesn't have to have to get worse? And on the other other side of that, I was also like well, they don't hurt that much. Like when is it going to get worse? Cause I feel like I'm not making progress, like there's always like the little like ego going on there too. But, um, something that I really sat with through that birth was like what if it doesn't have to get worse? What if it doesn't have to be more painful? Have to get worse? What if it doesn't have to be more painful? And then my husband like walked into the room again and was like holy shit, you're crowning. And I was like what?

Speaker 2:

And then you know, shortly after I had a baby in my arms and you know you hear these stories about transition and that it gets really, really intense and you, when you feel like you're you have to quit and you can't handle it anymore and you're ready to throw in the towel and you feel like you can't do this, that's transition. And I didn't experience that Like to the point that I was actually getting in my head thinking, well, I'm not in transition yet, like it's not going to happen anytime soon. How much longer do I have to do this for um, when really I had gone through it just without the intense pain that so many other people talk about? So I'm sharing these like bits and pieces um, it's not the full birth story. I actually have the birth story sort of written out on my Facebook page. It may be a little ways back at this point, but if you reach out and you want to see it, I can link you to it. Please hold, I'm going to grab a baby, but anyway, I'm sharing these bits and pieces with you because it's one of those things that was so profoundly transformational for me, and I also feel like we are in a phase in like humanity where we are reclaiming our sovereignty in a lot of ways and, especially as women, like reconnecting to our innate power, and this is something that is so natural.

Speaker 2:

And yet we're taught to outsource our power and we go into the medical system with maybe not full trust I'm going to call it like apprehensive trust, because we feel like there's no other option. So we just kind of like go along and a lot of us feel like we're just like another number getting pushed through the system. I always said that I felt like cattle getting pushed through the system. I always said that I felt like cattle getting pushed through the system. And so we're doing this, because that's just what we've been taught to do. That's how we've been taught that birth is, and part of reclaiming our total and complete sovereignty, in my opinion and in my experience, is through reclaiming birth, because that is literally the most natural thing that exists in this world, right, and it's like such an embodiment of the power of a woman.

Speaker 2:

And when we get disconnected from that, we get disconnected from so much of our power, so much of our instinct, right Like we're taught that we need to trust the doctor, that we need to trust the professional, we need to trust the midwife who, by the way, is medically trained and licensed by the same organizations that licensed doctors, same organizations that licensed doctors. Um, you know, we were taught to outsource our own inner knowing to these professionals and I don't feel like it really serves us. You know, there's a there's a difference between intuitively feeling like something is off and deciding to go a more medical route, compared to just accepting it, because that's what's been done for the last hundred years and that's what we need to continue to do Like. I just feel like it's not, it's not all. It's cracked up to be Like we're so much more powerful than that and doing that and being on the other side of that, you know, like after I had my baby in my arms and we were like sitting in bed and it was so peaceful and nobody was coming in and poking and prodding and you know, doing fundal massage, which is not a massage at all, it's torture, and like all these other things that they say they have to do, I just got to relax with my baby and my husband and my family and we were both just sitting there like wow, what an amazing experience.

Speaker 2:

Like my husband and I both were transformed in that moment and I feel like it transformed our marriage and our relationship as well. Like I feel like there was such a profound shift in terms of him just seeing firsthand the power of the feminine right Of the feminine in her natural essence, not this manufactured feminist shit where, you know, women can do anything men can do, you know, but really seeing me do something that is unfathomable to him and him getting to bear witness to that and also to like be more in his divine masculine, you know, like protecting me, taking care of me. It was just such a beautiful exchange of sacred energy that I can't even fully put into words. But again, I've talked about flowing with the naturalness of life for years now, for probably three or four years years, and to actually get to do that in such a what's considered to be such a radical way in today's world just felt so liberating on so many levels. Um, and I just yeah, anyway, I'm gonna, I going to stop processing and like verbal vomiting here, but it's definitely something like, if this is a conversation that you want to have, like, my inbox is open. I'm so open to share and I'm starting to already see shifts in my community around this.

Speaker 2:

So it's an exciting time and I am so excited for just deeper and deeper layers of, like reclamation of sovereignty, which has always been at the forefront of my values, and just what's rising in today's world as these old systems are crumbling and falling apart and we're breaking the chains of our dependency on them, you know, through homesteading and breaking free from the food chain, through birthing at home and not relying on the medical system, like there's so many ways that I'm being called into that and I know that it's like a collective urge as well. So that's really the purpose behind like sharing all of this. So if you made it this far, congratulations. You just listened to me ramble for who knows how long. But yeah, just know that if it feels like some big external structure holds power over you, it's an illusion, and maybe hearing my story today was that invitation to shatter that illusion and to decide what's true for you instead. And maybe it's not, and that's okay too.

Speaker 2:

But I just wanted to kind of share, kind of ease back into the whole podcast thing. And, yeah, stay tuned in this space, whether you are watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform. I will aim to be back here every week with a new episode, as long as this guy stays as quiet as he has been for this episode. And just, thank you so much for being here. If you're still here, if you're a returning listener, if you're a new listener, welcome. I just really love and value the community and the people that I have gotten to know on this journey, the people who listen to me, talk and somehow pull value from it. It really means a lot and I just appreciate you. So please hit subscribe if you don't want to miss an update. If you're listening on the podcast, I am starting to do pick a card readings like oracle readings over on my YouTube channel so you can look those up. My handle on YouTube is at Radiant Soul Coach and, yeah, I will talk to y'all next week. Bye for now.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this podcast, it would mean the world if you'd take a moment to download a couple episodes and rate the show to help it reach more like-minded leaders. If you loved today's discussion and decide to share it, be sure to tag me on Instagram at Radiant Soul Coach to help expand the ripple effect of this podcast.