55. Empowering Women To Advocate for Their Dream Birth: 1 Year Anniversary of Your Birth Bestie Podcast

Celebrating ONE YEAR of Your Birth Bestie Podcast!

My goal has been for pregnant women to feel heard, supported, comforted, and also challenged by some of the decisions you may have to make during pregnancy and childbirth.

I also want pregnant moms to have the information from all sides, so they can make the choice best for their family. I love sharing how to have the best pregnancy and birth experience, enjoying this special time, without the overwhelm and uncertainty.

I hope you have enjoyed the last year as much as I have! Thank you for being here!

Please support the show by  writing a review wherever you listen. It helps more than you know!

Year 1 Recap:

55 Episodes

5,000+ Downloads

Top 10% of Global Podcasts

54+ Countries Reached

Top Featured Episodes:

37. Early Signs and Symptoms of Pregnancy and When to Take a Pregnancy Test

3. Empowering Pregnant Moms to Be Their Best Advocate for Hospital Birth

21. First Prenatal Appointment Expectations and Questions to Ask Your Provider

18. Labor Positions, Pushing Tips, and How to Avoid Perineal Tearing During Birth

2. A Traumatic First Hospital Birth: What I'd Change Now as a Midwife

🌸 Connect with Beth

Website - www.familyfocusedmidwifery.com
Instagram - @family.focused.midwifery
Pinterest - bethconnors_cnm
Etsy Shop - Your Birth Bestie

👋 WHO AM I?

Welcome, friends! I am Beth, a certified nurse midwife, doula, and childbirth educator. My philosophy is rooted in autonomy, informed decision making, and positive mindset to help expecting parents plan for a beautiful, stress-free birth. I am here to provide value to YOU through tips and practical advice, either to guide you through pregnancy or to help you prepare for childbirth, postpartum and beyond. There’s no fluff here - only info that adds to your positive experience and saves you stress and uncertainty.

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 55 of Your Birth Bestie podcast! This week officially marks one year of starting this podcast and I cannot thank you enough for being here and listening each week. This is by far my favorite way to get quick, but impactful information into the hands of expecting parents and I am seriously so, so grateful for your support. Over the last year I have learned a lot in the process and tailor each episode to some of the most popular questions that come up with my own clients, with people who send me messages through instagram or directly from my website, which you can do too at bethconnors.com/ask, but I really want this to be a space to get unbiased, nonjudgmental, and empathetic, practical answers to all of your questions about pregnancy, labor, birth, postpartum, and beyond in motherhood. So I hope I have been doing that justice and would love your feedback moving forward. I have a lot of great topics planned and guest speakers coming up, but I do this for you, so your ideas and feedback are the most important.

With that being said, I have to ask you a huge favor that if you’ve been listening for awhile and enjoy this content, I would love it if you could review the show wherever it is that you are listening from or hit the 5 star review that just takes a second. It would make my day, but also helps in the podcasting algorithm to show these episodes to more moms who are looking for the same kind of information and encouragement. So I appreciate you so much if you are able to do that for me.

If you’re new here, welcome and I would love to hear from you too and where you are in your journey, or what brings you to this podcast! You can find me over on instagram @bethconnors_cnm or on my website bethconnors.com to contact me. The connections I have made with other moms and business owners over the last year has well exceeded my expectations, so thank you again for being here and supporting my efforts in helping moms feel connected to their pregnant bodies, their babies, trusting birth, and overall feeling informed and prepared for their labor and delivery journey.

This episode is just going to be a short one, basically recapping the last year with some of my listeners favorite takeaways, my own thoughts, and then a peek ahead to what is next!

So within the last few days, this podcast has hit 5,000 downloads which is incredible and also perfect timing for the one year celebration, is in the top 10% of global podcasts, and has reached over 54 countries! I love growing this space and connecting with more families and seeing how accessible such life-changing and empowering information can be over something like a podcast. It still is just blowing my mind thinking about it!

If you’re new here or unsure which episodes to listen to next, I also wanted to feature the most popular episodes this year. And those include:

37. Early Signs and Symptoms of Pregnancy and When to Take a Pregnancy Test

3. Empowering Pregnant Moms to Be Their Best Advocate for Hospital Birth

21. First Prenatal Appointment Expectations and Questions to Ask Your Provider

18. Labor Positions, Pushing Tips, and How to Avoid Perineal Tearing During Birth

2. A Traumatic First Hospital Birth: What I'd Change Now as a Midwife

And what this tells me, is that women want to feel empowered during their pregnancy and birth, they want to know how to be their best advocate, just like in episode 3. I know you’ve heard stories of women having challenging birth stories and wish things could have been different, even knowing soon after that they could’ve been and had regrets. I don’t want this for you at all! I experienced this with my first pregnancy and that’s exactly why I am here today sharing all of this with you. 

There is information out there that is being withheld just for lack of time in prenatal appointments and lack of being able to have an open conversations with providers, uncertainty by families to feel they can speak up and control the trajectory of their pregnancy and labor – ultimately affecting their birth story and experience or feelings of their birth, and increased medicalization of birth or rushing along the birth process with interventions that are standard but not necessary for low-risk moms wanting to support the natural, physiologic birth process. 

Women’s bodies know how to grow and nourish their babies without much effort at all, that we have to also learn to trust and support our bodies in the process of labor and birth as well. So sharing information with moms and especially encouraging them in the final days and weeks of their pregnancy to shift their mindset into trusting their baby and their bodies, until something tells them otherwise is a very powerful and impactful role to have in a mother’s journey and I’m so proud to be a part of this work. Pregnancy and birth are not medical events and should not be treated as such across the board. There is a time and place for those conversations, but normalizing trusting birth I have found to be so rewarding and very effective too with clients. So hopefully you have felt that message throughout these episodes too.

Episode 21, I talk about the expectations you should have going into your first prenatal appointment and also tips on how to get a good feel for if the provider you have is a good fit for you right from the start, because this is huge. I’m glad it is one of the most popular episodes this year because creating that foundation of trust and expectations in your provider for your entire pregnancy, labor, and birth is so important. You need to have someone that you trust, but also that will respect the times when you have questions, when you want the information to make a decision yourself, and to feel supported in whatever you choose, knowing it’s the best for you individually. Centering women in their care should be a core value in maternity care settings and when done well, it changes the entire experience and outcome for families in a positive way.

And then episode 18 and episode 2 are both great episodes too because 18 is all about labor position recommendations, pushing tips, and preventing perineal tearing during birth and overall knowing that you have a choice when it comes to these things. All of the information I share I feel like can come down to the point that you have a choice and you have the right to all the information to make that choice. You have the right to take risks too if that is part of the conversation and decision, because risks are different for everyone and everyone has different values. This is why your provider shouldn’t be making all the decisions for you it is more of a collaborative approach. 

Tying this into one of my first episodes, episode 2, is where I share my first hospital birth story that was traumatic and I would have down a thousand things differently, but the difference is that I didn’t know I had a choice. I didn’t know I could question my providers recommendations or why would I even feel like I needed to if they were the expect, I didn’t know I didn’t need an induction unless medically necessary, or that I could postpone or decline medical intervention like an IV or breaking my bag of waters to speed up labor, or antibiotics for GBS, purple pushing on my back only for four hours, not asking for more time between interventions and allowing my body to dictate the rate at which my baby was born, asking more about why a vacuum device or c/s were being recommended, what were the risks, what if I did nothing, was that even an option. Because long story short, the unnecessary interventions and traumatic birth story could have been avoided had I just declined a cervical check prenatally in the clinic. It was simple. But I would have never thought to speak up for myself and didn’t know why I would or wouldn’t do certain things, I just completely went with the flow. This caused me problems postpartum with tearing, pubis symphysis pain, mental health struggles, breastfeeding struggles, and I’m sure the list could keep going.

What would have changed my birth, and if you listen to the episode I talk more about it, but that’s unbiased evidence-based information, support and encouragement to make an individualized decision, time and space to do what was right for me. Plan ahead, don’t ever feel you are being rushed into a decision, find a supportive birth team, even a doula or birth coach to help you with this, and customize your pregnancy and birth goals to be exactly what you want them to be unapologetically. There is support for you out there to make it happen and if changes to your plan come up, you feel informed, equipped, and supported to make the next best decision and your experience goes on seamlessly with continued confidence and satisfaction that you did everything your way.

My takeaways from this year and that I will continue using moving forward, is that all of you women part of this community feel head, feel supported and comforted, feel challenged by some of the decisions you may have to make but also have all the information on both sides so YOU can make the choice best for your family. I also want to continue providing practical tips and strategies on how to have the best pregnancy and birth experience and enjoy this time without overwhelm and uncertainty. As always, please reach out to connect, I love hearing from each and every one of you and let me know how I can help you during your pregnancy and parenting journey. 

Thank you again so much for being here to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of Your Birth Bestie podcast. The best way to support the show is to leave a rating or review wherever you are listening from and share this podcast with a friend who you think would love to learn more about their choices and how to make those decisions during pregnancy and birth. I appreciate your ongoing support more than you know and I hope to see you back here next Tuesday for another episode. Bye everyone!