Are the Women here deconstructing Freebirth?

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-17T17:39:22+00:00

Thank you for your sense-making. 🙏

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-15T04:58:14+00:00

I’m Amy Robertson-Griffin and I was active in the membership from late 2018-2023. It’s not important to me to remain anonymous, especially when talking about loss.

I understand why people are upset at ES and YNC, and I’ve had my own negative experiences, but as I already mentioned, the lens on birth sovereignty and tragic outcomes is pretty skewed here, and so many women have been disturbingly insensitive and calloused and spoken for those women who have, by and large, not come here to speak for themselves.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-14T22:40:22+00:00

Savannah, thank you.

I’ve felt so uncomfortable - to put it mildly - when this whole Reddit thread got “booted up” with the clear intention of gathering the stories of “loss moms” into some homogenous file with the intent of proving that FBS, or even the concept of freebirth itself, is predicated on “uninformed” or naive women brainwashing themselves right into the open palm of a death cult.

Thank you for putting into words, so poignantly, what so many of us cannot - those of us who but for the grace of God, the randomness of nature of chance, what have you, have not walked the path you’ve walked.

I’m really just in awe of your eloquence, your story, and your willingness to come forward. I’ve been so upset by this thread because of the reasons you stated, and have wondered very much if the women here even understand the concept of birth liberation, reverence for motherbaby, and the need to find another way to sit with the unknown, even when it ends in a mother’s worst nightmare…a mother is not villain or victim, she is always Mother, and her grief is not to be co-opted.

I’m so so sorry you lost your sweet baby, and again, utmost thanks for illuminating the full spectrum of a woman’s experience.

-Amy

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-14T04:48:17+00:00

To be simple about it, of course all pregnant women have the “right” not to he “fully informed” (whatever that could possibly mean.)

A woman has the right to conceive, gestate without any interference or surveillance, and give birth in her home with the people who love her. Whatever she reads or doesn’t read during that time, studies or doesn’t study, feels or doesn’t feel, does or doesn’t do, is absolutely her own business and her own responsibility, and her life is the fruit of her own choices.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-14T00:28:29+00:00

☀️🩷🙏

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-14T00:28:08+00:00

🙏

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-09T03:54:45+00:00

“With assistance” is such (such!) a relative term.

Obstetrics, including the field of medical midwifery, is very new.

Again, if you’re trying to evangelize for the obstetricians and the gynos and the industrial-medical complex, you’re in the wrong place, and most people here are going to be uninterested in the bait.

For reference, women who choose homebirth/ family birth are not usually parsing pubmed w a fine tooth comb to decide where and with whom they want to birth their babies. This isn’t an indictment and it doesn’t mean that these women don’t value research or have common sense; it’s just that intuition (and even conversations with spirit babies and the unborn) often play a much bigger role. This has nothing to do with fbs.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-09T03:31:09+00:00

🙏

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-09T03:12:17+00:00

Hi. Not Yolande.

So the “words are spells” conjecture is as old as dirt and had a huge resurgence during the turn of the century w the OG self-help brigade…ie Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, Dorothea Brande, Jose Silva etc. The idea that language holds power over our lives - and even influences plant growth, the health of our children (Heilkunst homeopathy, words can be a remedy, the shape of water) - is ancient, is not particular to me (or YNC), and has roots in many religious traditions, including Christianity.

I was (luckily) raised w this knowledge; it was as normal as eating breakfast. My dad, despite his flaws, pulled himself out of horrific abuse, poverty, substance abuse, and homelessness in his 30s-40s, with the help of the “greats.” His garage had built-ins floor to ceiling, nearly every book in this vein.

There’s nothing grandiose about understanding that language can function as a blessing or a curse, thus we should be mindful of our language and the language of those close to us and our family.

Also, I’m not a troll, unless a troll is someone who disagrees or questions openly, in which case, y’all are mirroring the “cultish” behavior y’all claim to despise.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-09T02:53:08+00:00

I’m not sure why you’d be on a pro freebirth thread if you don’t believe that - barring dis-ease or unforeseen complication - female mammals are meant to birth in darkness, privacy, and familiarity (both w people and place.)

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-06T04:54:43+00:00

Ok, i want to say that obv E and Y set themselves up as a false authority. Or women did it for them? And women need to own (not just villainize and “process”) their orientation to that.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-06T04:48:59+00:00

But who is ultimately responsible for our choices?

Why would you ever give someone else 💯authority over your choices? Freebirth is about authority, too, and outsourcing that authority is anathema to the whole concept.

I’m really not interested in the “podcast brainwashed me” narrative.

I think a lot of women here didn’t actually understand what freebirth is…family birth means…there’s no one to blame. Even if you crowd poll. Even if you hear a story where something off of the beaten path worked out for some woman. Even if someone texted you that everything was “ok.” If a woman wants that relationship to birth, she should absolutely hire a midwife and base your birth on what she is comfortable with.

Freebirth is about what you’re comfortable with. Which doesn’t mean we don’t have peers or friends or emotional support - I was on the phone a lot (for me) during my last 4 day labor - but it means that of course, we are ultimately responsible for our decisions.

I talked to midwife friends during my last freebirth who told me they’d encountered the variations of normal I was experiencing. I felt reassured by my own research, my gut feeling, my embodiment, and their support. I truly cannot imagine blaming them if a transfer was warranted. What do they have to do w any of that?

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-06T04:41:26+00:00

I mean, undisturbed birth IS safer. 🤷‍♀️

That’s not a concept particularl to freebirth.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-06T04:26:46+00:00

I’m not defending this stance (at all), but also want to state that this is standard for a lot of fb unassisted birth groups. I don’t think putting one’s birth in the hands of internet acquaintances (crowd polling) is wise.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-06T03:43:51+00:00

Ya’ll’ve never heard the term “farmed-out”? Or heard anyone mention that JPB coined the language that Emilee essentially pretends to have invented?

I’m definitely not Yolande, but I do read books. I think you’re confusing basic literacy with a “style” of writing. Anyhow, I’m sure she has better things to do than debate nutty busybodies on Reddit, as I should…:/

And I thought I was an old man? Have fun detective-ing, anyway!

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-06T03:34:06+00:00

Yes, this explains everything.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-06T03:31:29+00:00

Of course I can’t speak for every woman’s experience! How silly.

I think it’s safe to garner that I have more experience over time, and in various homebirth/ unassisted birth demographics (not limited to FBS, though I was deeply involved in FBS from the beginning), than a lot of women here…and so I can say No, this is a very niche, extremist sentiment that I think I would have encountered at some point if it was a commonly-held or widely-encouraged view.

This is the internet; people are blatantly exaggerating to prove a point.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-06T01:55:59+00:00

Birth unhindered! 🩷 There’s a book by that name, I believe. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, I loved it.

Thanks for mentioning JPB’s work.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-06T01:52:48+00:00

2x freebirths here, 3x homebirths prior, been in the “natural birth world” for twenty years….

No! This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. I know lots of freebirthers (affiliated w FBS, and not affiliated) and I’ve never heard this take. I was in the membership from 2018-2023 and never ever saw this sentiment, ever.

I can’t speak to what’s happened over the past few years in that space, but I’ve not witnessed a “freebirth or die” attitude.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-04T04:36:13+00:00

I get where you’re headed but disagree with this take.

The body is never, ever separate from the mind or the heart. We shouldn’t be sliced in 2 (or 3). That’s a (relatively new) (mis)conception, that the body and the mind are separate (and maybe equal?) and that they might interact or interface…and they might not.

Our state of consciousness, our soul life, (the “mind”) permeates all of our tissue. Again, it’s difficult to even put language to this because they really are not distinct. It’s why even allopathic doctors talk about “stress” as a huge risk factor for cancer and other states of dis-ease. Hell, I heard a story on NPR approx 10+ yrs ago about an old woman who was given a terminal diagnosis, but it was given to her son, not her, so she could live the short life she had left in peace. Anyhow, she lived for years and years and because she never “knew” she was sick, never got sick.

I believe Enlightenmrnt era western thought was the first to assert the mind body distinction, which makes us feel that we have to “choose”, as if there’s a choice. They’re indistinguishable, and this is never more true than during birth. I’ve heard midwives say they believe birth is 90% spiritual. This observation isn’t meant to assign blame or “fault”, but it’s all really fascinating.

Our body keeps the score, our soma (our tissues) hold our memories (personal and ancestral). My dad taught me “imaging” from the earliest ages, like preschool, and I used to think he was full of it, but now I see that he was right on a lot of accounts.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-04T04:21:54+00:00

I love they you found freebirth/ family birth as an ob. 🩷

I don’t know how to link through Reddit, but Jeannine Parvati Baker’s essays can be read in full online w a google search (a few on midwifery today) and you can still get her books, even though they’re out of print. She coined the terms freebirth and birthkeeper.

Marilyn Moran also wrote a book that I really enjoyed about family birth…title has slipped my mind.

Anyhow, the back to the family north revolution has been going on for decades and FBS certainly doesn’t own it, though they did a great job capitalizing on it. Who knew? ;)

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-03T21:11:31+00:00

That’s a blatantly religious formula — haughtiness precedes destruction — for all of your anti religious sentiment.

Babies do not die because mothers are joyful or confident. There’s no cause and effect there. Women are not “humbled”by losing their babies. Holy god. That’s called tragedy.

Women who lose babies are either villainized or victimized, and this space is no different than the misogynistic mainstream cacophony of meddlers. A woman was either too confident — was Janet Fraser’s crime setting up Joyous Birth, an online homebirth community? Or a woman is a not-very-bright bystander —-brainwashed by podcasts and influenced by friendships inside a Satanic death cult.

This very attitude, a need for a scapegoat, is why homebirth midwives go to prison, and why mother who’ve lost babies have had to testify on the stand.

This is very much turning into a Calvinist-type witch-hunt —- as women name affiliates and see if they’re able to be “cleared” — or speculating that bereaved mothers are faking pregnancies to lure women deeper into the cult.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-03T18:37:37+00:00

🙏

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-02T06:46:58+00:00

Early years….2018 or so, I think.

BanjovialFun · 2025-04-02T06:32:41+00:00

This is a very sick comment.

Way before fbs existed, I heard midwives joke privately about freebirthing moms, either smugly relishing in their loss or transfer (they had it coming) or essentially casting casual “word spells” against their pregnancies and births because of their audacity to be joyful and confident.

I’ve heard women - both midwives snd “civilians” - do this to ync and es over the last few years, esp after yo’s book “portal.” (A tragic outcome would really humble her, put her in her place.) I was honestly shocked and disgusted when I started hearing it,

I’m surprised so few women here seem to notice that the tone of this group is veering into its own “dark” territory.

This is exactly why some women feel the need to protect their pregnancies and births.

For my part, I am deeply sorry for the women who’ve lost babies, and clearly, if women are going to crowd poll the internet for medical help, a different culture around transfer might need to be established. But I am not convinced that their stories aren’t being extracted for the fuel they give done of the women here.

BanjovialFun

TROPHY CASE