Doing It At Home - The Home Birth Podcast

“What’s going to happen if…?” This is a question many of us ask as we prepare for birth. And what if instead of ignoring whatever combination of thoughts and feelings that fill in that blank after the “if,” we get them out there and allow ourselves to process? In today’s interview with Mekensie Gonzalez, she shares her journey to home birth with her daughter Eden. From sitting on an airplane and o...

What if you want a home birth, but your partner doesn’t? This is a big challenge that we hear about often. The birthing person is desiring a home birth and the partner is not. It takes conscious time and communication to share thoughts and feelings, work to understand each other and find a solution that best serves the family.  And there could be many reasons for not being on the same page. Maybe...

How do you navigate a bunch of challenges that can throw off your birthing plans? Ideally the only bump in the birth journey is the belly kind, but sometimes the road to home birth presents different obstacles to overcome. Our guests Jocelyne and Eddie Zaldivar share their experience with us. It includes some of the top things we’ve heard from other home birth families when it comes to hiccups in...

What do you do when you were born at home yourself, over 30 of your cousins have been born at home and you have over 40 chiropractors in your extended family? It’s a safe assumption that you’d have your babies at home too! For our guest Jani Barnes, having babies at home was all she knew. So having both of her children at home, unassisted, was a no brainer. Her husband Greg is a chiropractor, and...

Don’t you love the birth world? We’ve been able to connect with so many amazing people in this space. For today’s episode we’re sharing the #birthjunkie love and bringing you an episode from our friend Heidi and her podcast, Birth Story Podcast. We had Heidi on the DIAH podcast in episode 256 and we genuinely find her wonderful. So why not share some more of that with you?! Enjoy an episode that o...

What role is the father-to-be (or parent-to-be) supposed to play in birth? How can that father/parent-to-be show up better in that role? In today's conversation, Matthew and Sarah dig in on this topic, focusing on the future fathers/parents who don't always get to be in the spotlight. This is a great episode to listen to if you're a father-to-be, OR if you know one then share this episode with the...

Can birth be redemptive? We often hear on the show how different birth experiences bring the opportunity to heal and take back your power.  This is an element of our conversation with Sarah Leahy. Sarah shares the varying aspects of her two birth experiences. Her first, an unplanned cesarean with multiple interventions, left her feeling like her body was broken and it had failed. Following her bir...

How can we approach birth as a healing process? This is a great theme that comes up in today’s interview. We had our friends Dr. Vanessa Gale and Dr. Dave Bell come to our home to record their birth story in person! Their daughter Rosalie and our daughter Maya are friends and schoolmates. We’ve had the joy of getting to know them better and now we get to talk about babies and home birth! Vanessa a...

What are you focusing on the most when it comes to your birth? As you prepare for your home birth, there are obviously many factors and considerations. Are you truly allowing yourself to envision the success of the experience, whatever that looks like for you? Today’s guest, Angela Potts-Mang’andah, walks us through her home birth journey from first starting with hospital care, then shifting care...

How active can labor and birth be? Sometimes you hear about mothers moving around a lot during their births. Other women prefer to stay still. Gotta love the variations of normal. For today’s guest, Nicola Poole, she shares the story of her 36-hour labor home birth with her daughter Gabrielle. During those 36 hours, Nicola did a lot of “body work” to help move baby into optimal position (her head...

How do you prepare for a birth, after you’ve already experienced one? This can be an interesting headspace to be in. Because on one hand, you’ve given birth - so you might have ideas of what to expect. But on the other hand, you know things this time around that you didn’t know before and you might also understand that births can look drastically different from one to the next. This is one of the...

What’s your favorite part of home birth? For our guest today, Sofia, she shares how much she enjoyed the hands-on aspect. With the idea for home birth originally coming from her husband Daniel (You don’t hear this all the time, which is why we love this detail. Daniel’s first child from a previous relationship was born at home, so he suggested it to Sofia when they became pregnant.) Sofia shares h...

What if you and your partner don’t agree on home birth? This is a really great question and I’m sure it comes up for a lot of us, especially when home birth isn’t a first obvious option or even something you’ve never heard of.  It’s a conversation that comes up in today’s episode with Catherine Muskox. She shared both of her home birth stories with us and breaks down the different elements of each...

How do you prepare for birth beyond the physical factors? Today’s guest is Amy Zhou, a certified Health Coach and Medicine Woman who specializes in teaching women (and men) how to heal their body, mind and spirit naturally at home. She’s also a new mama to her son Nathaniel, who is three and a half weeks old at the time we recorded this episode. We cover a lot of great things with Amy. For starter...

Are you switching from a hospital birth to a home birth or find yourself new to the option of home birth and are exploring? In today’s episode we’re sharing a resource we put together for the DIAH community - particularly those who might be new to the space. We’ve gathered about 40 episodes together and created 2 separate playlists: one with birth stories including a switch from hospital to home a...

If baby is breech, does that automatically mean you can’t have a home birth? That depends on each situation and of course where you live and your care options. In today’s episode, we chat with Nona Djavid about both of her pregnancies and home birth experiences. Both involving breech position at different points in time. For her first, she found out at 37 weeks that her baby was breech, and that m...

In today’s episode we’re bringing you the home birth story of Jessica and Seth Burdette. Have you ever felt like you were limited with your birth options? Our couple today, Jessica and Seth Burdette, share their story about doing what was best for their family and creating the birth experience of their dreams. At 35 weeks Jessica and Seth decided to make the switch from a hospital birth with OB ca...

What can birth teach us about handling tough situations? Simply stated: A LOT! Matthew and Sarah sit down to address some of the current energy that’s circulating throughout the world, and how we can draw upon the experience of birth to empower us and help us move through it. Lessons like surrender, awareness, mindfulness and choosing love over fear. Plus we give you real, actionable, practical ta...

How late is too late to switch your birth plan or care model? The joke (but not really a joke) response we often see in the birth circuit is, “Once the baby has arrived.” In other words, it’s never too late to evaluate what you want in your birth experience, and to make the adjustments to bring that reality. Our guest today is Sarah Radcliff, mom of 4 (2 belly babies and 2 bonus). Sarah shares her...

How does faith influence your pregnancy and birth? This could be linked to religious affiliation or not. Birth in and of itself includes elements of trust and surrender, the cycle of ebb and flow. It’s natural to associate it as a spiritual experience. Today’s guests open up their story and hearts to us as they share their journey to home birth. Amy Jo and JJ Mann, or Team Mann as they often refer...

What happens when your birth turns out different than how you pictured it? Two-time DIAH mama Kimberly Huck can relate to this question for her second home birth. We’re so excited to have Kimberly back on the show (she joined us back in episode 53 sharing her fast labor and Bradley Method influenced water birth with her son Henry) to share the birth story of her daughter Josie. We talk to Kimberly...

Have you seen the commercial about real postpartum that’s been getting some attention lately? A recent commercial from company Frida, creators of FridaBaby and FridaMom with parenting product favorites like the snot-sucking NoseFrida, recently released a commercial highlighting their postpartum care products like an upside down peri bottle. The ad has sparked up attention. For one, not being accep...

Is it possible for a birth experience to empower you and leave you feeling a little defeated at the same time? That was what Dr. Brittany Zis thought about her home birth, at first. For one thing, it was 55 hours long, and a couple of unplanned factors popped up - like her cervix being completely closed after almost a day of contractions, pushing challenges and baby changing position at the last m...

Is your partner planning on taking time off when baby arrives, or did they in the past? And what about going pain med free for your birth -- do you ever get questions or responses like, “what are you trying to prove??” Today’s episode, both of us are addressing listener emails and touching on things like paternity/partner leave, particularly when the partner isn’t interested in taking it. So we br...

Did you hold onto any shame from your birth or postpartum experience? In today’s episode, our guest Dorit Palvanov is setting an example on how to let that go. She shares details of her 3 birth stories: from hospital to home to back to hospital. Dorit walks us through the processes and the ups and downs throughout her journey to motherhood. From interventions and a dissociated feeling with her fir...