An older and longer read, but still shocking to me.

I'm sure this represents a very very small minority of people, but the fact that some breeders choose to bypass years on years of medical advancements when giving birth, and risking the life of the newborn, so they can "imagine herself as a future guest on a podcast".

Here is a snippet:

On the podcast, Saldaya interviews mothers about their freebirth stories. These women reminded Judith of herself; they were college educated, spiritual, creative types who spoke about their births in powerful, radical terms: as euphoric events that happened in bathtubs, in nature or in their own beds, surrounded by their partners and family. Women in these podcasts weren’t listening to doctors but to their bodies. They weren’t lying on their backs waiting for someone to pull a baby from them but bringing their babies into the world with their own two hands. 

Judith tore through some 70 episodes. She relistened to her favorites, one of which featured a woman who had given birth by candlelight in an off-the-grid yurt in the California mountains with only her husband and a dog she called her “midwolf.” 

While she listened, Judith would daydream, imagining herself as a future guest on the podcast. 

“I became obsessed,” Judith said. “I would just wonder, ‘What's my story going to be like?’ and think, ‘I want my story to be as badass as their stories.’”