Birth, Story, and the Courage to Meet the Unknown

Introduction and Welcome

Britta: Hello folks, and welcome to transformed by birth, a podcast about the rite of passage through pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. I'm your host. Britta Bushnell, author, mythologist, childbirth educator and an emotional deep diver with a side of goofball. I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode takes us into the realm of storytelling, breach birth and restorative Midwifery, yep, all in one episode. So grab whatever warm beverage keeps you company. I've got a matcha today, or take us along for a walk or a drive and join us as we dive into a juicy episode with a dear and long time colleague. Before we go there, let's light our candle. If you want to join me, please do so, or just take a special breath as I light mine, I'm lighting today's candle in honor of navigating the unknown, a critical part of becoming a parent.

Introducing Nicole Morales

Britta: It's a bit of a difficult task to come up with exactly what we're going to talk about before we begin. My guest, and I go way back, Nicole, and I go back to the early days of birthing from within, I took my training in 2002 and Nicole in 2003 which is, I think, around the time we first met our birth work. Grew up in similar soil, tended by some of the same community, and fertilized by many of the same stories. And I've heard from many of you that you love the analogy about pain being the Voldemort of birth, the thing that everyone fears, but few are willing to call by its name that I share in my book, transformed by birth. Well, fun fact, if you didn't read the end notes to learn this, you might not know that that analogy came from an article that Nicole wrote. So who is Nicole? Who is today's guest? Today, I'm honored to share the mic with Nicole Morales. Nicole might be what could be called a birth focused Renaissance woman as her skills, talents and interests expand not on a linear line, but comprise more of a spider web of connection, linking areas and producing benefit across an impressive spectrum. She is a mother, mentor, author, breach advocate and practicing home birth midwife, living in San Diego, California. She's a storyteller extraordinaire, a birthing from within, mentor for over 20 years and an approved spinning babies trainer. I've even taken a training with her at least twice. I'm not sure it may be three times. I'm trying to remember, Nicole is a deep human as a midwife and teacher, Nicole sees herself as caretaking midwifery by shifting her own compass toward deeper understandings of physiologic birth practices while highlighting the midwife's inner process of decision making. She is a part of restory birth work, a collaborative that creates books like restorative like the restorative midwifery series and workshops such as the breach release resolving Shoulder Dystocia and breach basics. When deciding who to invite to join me on this podcast, I usually think of a topic I want to dive deeper into, and then think about who I want to have that conversation with about that topic, but with today's guest, I thought of Nicole first and got stuck on just which of the many possible topics we'd want to discuss. So what that means for you, dear listener, is that you get to join in as two longtime colleagues with deep respect for one another, jump into the water of the unknown together and swim around. I suspect there will be short story sharing discussions of restorative midwifery and breech birth, but what will actually unfold lies in the beauty of the unknown. So welcome, Nicole. I'm so glad you're

Nicole: here. It's nice to be here. Thank you so much and for having me. And you know this, this unknown of where we're going, it's just there's a little bit of discomfort in it. And you know that's anytime we approach something new, that where we don't know we're going, there's there can be that, that feeling to it

Embracing the Discomfort of the Unknown

Britta: absolutely and I really love that, you name that, because I think that's part of what makes your work and my work well aligned. And also. So pretty powerful, because I think it's important to be naming that humility piece of, oh yeah. It's not just exciting to head into the unknown. It can also be fucking terrifying,

Nicole: yeah, yeah, for sure. And

Nicole: but you know, that's also, like, partly, you know, just part and parcel with birth work, right?

Britta: Oh, 100% I mean, I think that's, that's an important piece of acknowledgement and owning of what this work is, is when we work with people on the threshold of birth, becoming new parents, rite of passage that there is a dance with the unknown, not just for the parents, but for us as souls walking beside them.

The Ceremony and Magic of Birth

Nicole: I mean, that's part of the magic of it, right, not to exoticize, not knowing, right? Because the you know, it's, it's easy to, you know, talk so beautifully about it, right or magically. But it's also that the truth, the

Nicole: truth that you know

Nicole: that even the people around you, they've walked these paths so many times alongside other people, and each time we do it, that's part of that ceremonial aspect of it. You know that uniqueness and that that I you know that sense of we know what the patterns are, but we don't know what's going to play out this time and what's going to meet us on that path, and what parts of us are going to show up and what skills or resources will be be be useful,

Britta: yeah, even, who are we going to be?

Britta: Even, even the like, the identity elements of us that that meet there. And I, you use the word the ceremony of birth, and to me, that's, that's a profound sentence on the heels of talking about the unknown, and folks may have a particular idea in the age of social Media of what it means for birth to be ceremony. Can you what? What do you mean when you say the ceremony of birth?

Nicole: You know it's, it's,

Nicole: I mean, I think it's the having, the rituals that are part of art, the container, but within it, you know, it's, it's like all of these different people meet, almost like a constellation, like a family constellation. You know? It's like we all meet within this space, and what happens, or what evolves, or what gets called up from inside people

Nicole: all kind of come together and meet and

Nicole: in and,

Nicole: of course, we have the expectations of the, you know, of what it might look like from the outside, or how we expect to birth, whether it's in the pool or on a birth stool or in a hospital or wherever someone's choosing to have their baby or plant or even not planning, but it's, it's playing for it, right? Because that's, that's the truth of it, too. And everyone's kind of meeting in this place, these constellations, and

Nicole: if we have a very little control,

Nicole: ultimately, of the you know, like we can prepare in certain ways, and we can hold our resources in certain ways, and we can choose the doula and The midwife and all of the things but that unknown is playing fourth and, you know, and it's, it's kind of bolstered by all the people there their nervous system, like who they've been and who they think they are. And, you know, what do they do?

Britta: They add to the elements of the unknown. Is that part of what you're saying?

Nicole: I think that it just all kind of comes together. Yeah, that, that the nerve, I mean, I call it the nervous systems of all the people there, creates its own nervous system of birth. And that includes, you know, we've talked about this, you know, the shadow side, the unseen, the parts of ourselves that are in the closet, tucked away so nobody sees, whether it be the bitch or the warrior or the somebody who's had abuse histories or, just, you know, could be so many different things and and how all of these kind of come together and and are unpredictable, and how they play out, and they might only play out in small ways, or maybe not for This part of the their rite of passage, right? But I think that's just the ceremony of it, right?

Britta: That's the ceremony of it is so that that nervous system that is created through the weaving together of all those nervous systems and all of those elements and shadows and parts of self can weave together to create ceremony in its own right.

Nicole: It's a community nervous system, you know, and we've kind of all come together and meet it in that moment. Yeah,

Layers of Story in Birth

Britta: so are there factors that are also from the over culture that play into that?

Nicole: Well, you know, one of the things that I think, that you and I do is we think about all the different unconscious and conscious layers that are just like in there. And one of the things I've been writing about with restorative Midwifery, and this, especially within the first volume of the series, is trying to kind of pull out what are those layers of story. And story can be beliefs or assumptions or promises or vows or agreements we have about how the world works, and some of those are on the conscious, like they're off. They're like, Oh, I believe in three stages of labor, or I believe in I'm going to have a midwife, or I believe in free birth, or I believe in having an obstetrician or, you know, like, there's different things because this because fill in the blank, right? And there's these things we understand on the on the, on the top side, but then there's the things that are not necessarily seen, and they might be like an iceberg, like, you know, some of these things we see are propped out by the things we don't see, or the stories we don't tell and and so we have our individual story, and that can be how we were born, what we have in our body, our somatic experience of birth. Because I think that gets left out of the stories a lot of the time, is that the body has its story, right? And then we have the family story, you know, or maybe the births we've been at, if we're birth workers, or 

births we've had our previous births,

Nicole: the birth that we're having now. And

Nicole: then we have our family story, which, you know, Pam and Glen, of course, and others have talked about that first birth story that we hear, and how that has this incredible potential to shape as a from a child's point of view, which I think is really important with, like, an imprint, an imprint, yeah, about how birth is supposed to be, right, so that we have that family story, and then we have, like, Our community or neighborhood story. And I might be the, you know, in my in my neighborhood, different people were born at home in different countries and maybe the hospital, or maybe even the neighborhood kids heard me screaming while giving birth, you know, cussing because the doors were open in the hot on a hot August day, you know, but you know, the community itself or the neighborhood so we are in can influence us. And I guess we can also have communities, online, communities, within groups, and then that may or may not be part and parcel with, you know, the over culture story, which, of course, is, you know, mainstream cultural stories that typically kind of set down a certain template upon your brain and Just go, you know, I think Clarissa Estes is the one who used the term, and I like that term. She talks about how that that that template just gets kind of clunked down, and everybody fits within it, because it has that much power. And so we have those stories. Stories, and a lot of those stories are generated by money, are generated by power, or generated by what serves a general population to keep people in line and thinking a specific way about birth. For some people, it's about not thinking about birth and just getting through it, because you assume everybody else you know took care of that. And then you have birth subcultures, of course. So, right, you know, those, yeah. And then, of course, you have fairy tales and myths and legends and those culture, those also, I believe, you know, affect. Some would say we can frame it within birth, but we can also frame it within people's belief systems about themselves or how they think about things, just from simple myths or fairy tales, which too may have been changed along the way by people, that,

Evidence as Story

Britta: Oh, very likely have changed along the way. Yeah, absolutely. So all of those different forms of story, and I really love the expansive nature of the idea of story, and tell me if I'm wrong about this, but I think you even include the idea of evidence in story, yeah, did I get that right? And can you unpack?

Nicole: Yes, I could totally unpack that. I mean, everything is story. I think melmo said that, right, everything is story, and it's true. Everything around us is a story, and we form our stories, and the bigger our stories get that we build off of those stories as if they were true all along. And then we're doing research off of those stories that were built upon stories that were built upon stories, right? And next thing you have is evidence based birth. And now you have someone who's researching one kind of induction versus another kind of induction, with a belief system that you're supposed to induce a baby without having necessarily gone back underneath to see where some of those assumptions might have a different story to them, had they been researched, or the person who was creating the research thought a different way. So, you know, I think about evidence with like, you know, leaving the court intact. I mean, midwives didn't need evidence for leaving cords and tax when I came into Midwifery, home birth in the 1990s and nobody cared what the evidence was. It's just what you did when you saw you knew that. You knew that it was an insurance policy for resuscitation to leave the court intact. And then we get on to the era of more evidence based birth. And then it was like, Oh, well, now we've got to prove, that it's okay to leave the court intact, right? 30 seconds, 60 seconds. And you know, here we are, 25 years out, with all the evidence showing that it's that it's beneficial to leave a cord intact after the baby's born. And and some people can't hear that story, or don't believe in that story, or they know that it's that story and research is there, but their story is different, or it's all just ways that we interpret the world around us is through story.

The Cervix as North Star

Britta: Yeah, I love I love this, and I I think about it often, from, you know, my my graduate school work was around mythology and psychology and the intersection of those which a lot of people think, Oh, you must know every tiny little character in Greek mythology. I'm like, No, that's actually a classics degree, and that's not what I got that's somebody who's done classics, go talk to them, but for me, my work has been more about or my study was more about understanding the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, that that was more the investigation that I did in grad school, which meant looking at myth as a way to know thyself, and looking at it across cultures and in lots of different places and through movie, movies and and TV and film And and various different places. But it also meant looking in a way that is very hard to do, and in many ways could be described as impossible, is to ask ourselves in today's society, what are the myths that are the water that we are swimming in as. As fish that we don't recognize as myth, because we are the fish in the water. Yeah, and so that's a tough thing to unpack. And I see the the this is a difficult conversation sort of to have, but I think it's an important one is understanding that science and evidence is actually a modern day story. Yeah, that helps us understand ourselves. That doesn't mean it isn't valuable. That doesn't mean it doesn't have importance,

Nicole: you know, they're anchors. They're anchors for how we see the world. And I think about the cervix, right? Like this idea of dilation, and when doing, like, birthing from within classes, you know, like, back when I taught, I'd be like, oh, you know, talk about the stages of labor, and then just kind of start breaking it down into, well, what would that be like in your body, or what would the actual experience look like from the outside? And then, you know, kind of like you start breaking this down. And it starts with this idea that it's cervical centric, right? It's all about the cervix opening, but there's so much more happening. And it's like, how did we come to have this cervix be the North Star

Britta: of so much birth Yes, so we are a a cervical centric birth culture, yeah, we've, we've narrowed down the idea of birth progress, which I want to put progress in quotes, because that, in its own right, is another centric, yes, yeah, yes. There's cervic centric and progress centric.

Nicole: And it's when the constellations there and

Britta: they come together, and it's like fireworks. Yeah? Because we've really become this cervical progress centric birth society that is, which is so interesting, when you pull back the lens farther away from that, it's like, where is the person who is attached to the cervix, for whom the cervix is invisible, unless they actively work to see it. Yeah, who, where, where the idea of progress is also external. Yes, externally dictated. So we've lost. So we lose in the idea of being cervical progress centric. There's a lot of

Britta: important aspects left on the cutting room floor.

The Constellation of Birth

Nicole: You know, the cervix is one star in the constellation. And maybe that star is even connected to just other parts of anatomy, right? Like could be the anatomical star, right? And it's just one aspect of that star, that if we just look at it from a different angle, we can start to see it has a different color or a different way, and and there's so many other aspects of you know, you know, we think about how it came to that this process, this the progress centered cervix, you know, it comes from the lens of people evaluating and trying to develop obstetrics, right? And they're trying to create their story of knowledge that's rigid and can be duplicated. And it's and if you look at male statisticians within Europe, their relationship with probably the female body was either off of a male body or potentially even like, well, the sexual right, the truth of it is and so that that's probably rather than thinking above the brim of the pelvis, or thinking about the body in its full connections, be it, you know, the uterus and the uterine shape and the the way that the uterus is is positioned. I think doctors of old used to think a little bit about that, and less about, you know, just measuring the cervix. But you know, this idea that we've just gotten caught up in, that externalized, as you said, assessment versus, like seeing, seeing the constellation in unison. Yeah.

Britta: And in part of that constellation is most of what you just talked about was physiologic, yes, and, and you, I loved that you said the cervix is actually maybe just one part of a whole star of the physiology within a constellation, there's so many other stars

Nicole: That's right, there's so many other stars and and unique aspects of people and how they're being held and where and in what context, and with this pregnancy and this baby and this season of their life, you know, the experience is so much more than

Nicole: the assessment,

Britta: the assessment with two fingers inside a vaginal opening to the back where the cervix is,

Nicole: Yeah, and, and then this is supposed to dictate progress. And rather than being, you know, like that, process focused part of it, it's kind of left to the side, and that, you know, this idea that you're supposed to be among this continuum, you know, versus this dynamic aspect that's actually so so much about the nervous system is, is in this, right? You know, it's nervous system driven within the fetal heart rate. Is the nervous system, the nervous system of the person who's giving birth, and their sense of safety, and their hormones, and I'm talking physiology, but it's also things that we can perceive on the outside. It's the their history of what they've experienced, or this what the stories are, that of what they think they might come across. It's their fears of the future. You know the Voldemort that you mentioned at the beginning? Yeah, you know the the

Nicole: fear of the Cesarean that they have yet to have,

Britta: and that all of these aspects are are parts of that constellation that we're trying to in a society that is becoming less and less How do I explain this, that the capacity to navigate the mystery inherent within uncertainty? We go toward things that seem to give an illusion of control, an illusion of certainty. So it makes sense to me that so much of birth has been narrowed down to cervix as crystal ball of progress like that. It makes sense in an over culture that has gotten more uncomfortable in the face of mystery.

Humility in Birth Work

Nicole: Right. Well, I mean, you know, this is life, though, right? I mean, birth is just life in a very accelerated,

Britta: doing, yeah, in a compressed and accelerated and impactful kind of way it is. It is life, just in a more like kind of

Nicole: way, for sure. Yes, it's not like 20 years. It's more like, you know, three to 40 hours of your life, but a

Britta: very intense realness.

Nicole: But I think that that aspect of humility, even for birth workers, it's so important because, because we don't have guarantees, we we have these aspects of what we expect, as I mentioned before,

Nicole: we have

Nicole: the things that we see in patterns and the way that we talk about certain things, but in essence, when, every time we enter a birth, there is a Not knowing that happens, and sometimes it takes a little time longer for us as parents, you know, whereas someone who's giving birth, you know, to sink down into that humility

Nicole: of letting go, of not knowing.

Nicole: And I remember being in my first birth was very long. It was like, 50 plus hours and a long pushing phase. And I was 22 so I just remember thinking, not like, Oh, I'll go to the hospital. I just thought, I'm just gonna die. I've had a full life. I'm just, you know, and that was where I came to, is that it was okay. I'd written poetry and party, did all the stuff, and I could just walk across the room and die. And it was, of course, that's when my my baby came, right? But I got, had to get to that place where it was the full surrender,

Nicole: yeah, and

Nicole: in that, in it, in it, that confidence, I think it's important,

Nicole: but also that place of

Nicole: it's okay not to. Know, because that humility also allows you to be more curious.

Britta: Oh yes, double tap on that. Oh, my goodness. Confidence and surety is where Curiosity goes to die, like where, where there is certainty curiosity is nowhere to be found.

Curiosity, Presence, and Navigating Expert Culture

Nicole: I think there's, yeah, I think that's, I think that curiosity and presence, I mean, that's really, they go together, right? Like, to really be curious, you have to be present and with your senses and in the moment, or even just in that place of being that you don't know what's next. You don't know what's going to work next, but you but here you are,

Nicole: and this is what your experience

Britta: is. So, so, okay, so then, how do we reckon, as it you know, new new parents and birth professionals, how do we, and even in my stage of life and your stage of life, how do we reckon with the importance of humility that you speak of and curiosity and presence with today's preference for expert culture, expert ideology. And yeah,

Nicole: we are back to where we were earlier, that expert ideology, expert ending, we're skipping the process. And I see this with midwifery too. It's like, oh, this is how you do this, right? And this is the only way. There's so many ways to be good enough, right? It's like parenting, it's there's so many ways to be good enough and to to get to the other side. And it's like, it wasn't perfect. It didn't look exactly like you showed it. It should in the textbooks. But in essence, if we're giving a step one, step five or step one is step 100 and it's like, wait a second, we're not able to show the map perfectly between two and five, because it doesn't exist, right? And we can we know where we're headed. We have a map to where we want to go. We've done the work. We've got our resources, but in essence, we can edit the video later and make it look good, right? Or at least not too bad, too revealing, too much breast, you know, or too much fumbling of your equipment, or however you're doing it, you can edit it later. But in essence, that that magic or that, or that, that ability to say, I know where the map is. I don't know what I'm doing now, and maybe this isn't working, but I know to keep going and taking up what's given in the moment, and to keep moving. You're using those templates, you're using those resources. But I think what we have is we have so many trainings or classes or ways that we talk about it looking like step five. But the reality is, it's messy. Yeah, and, and, and, and I think the humility to have the messiness and to say, Yeah, I went through that messiness and and I brought myself, and I did my best, and what did I do? And what do I do when I don't know what to do?

Listening to Ourselves and Intuition

Britta: Yes, yeah. I mean, you know you're speaking my language because we've known each other long enough to know this is very, very aligned for me and I'm and I'm also thinking about the parents who I think they know too that it's messy. I think that in our bellies, in our belly knowing we know the journey to become a parent is messy. We know it and there can be fear there, there can be excitement, there can be avoidance. There's a lot of different things that can come up in that knowing when we really pause and ask ourselves, what do we expect? We expect it to be a bit messy. We expect it to be a bit wild. We expect it to not be so. Super straightforward or linear in that climbing toward a hill of progress, and in in a society that has this preference for the expert, when we go to someone and we start to like, I'm thinking of going to OBS and midwives and birth professionals of all sorts. There can be this going with that. I'm at step one, and I have questions about steps two, three and four, and our our well meaning professional. Is it Step Five saying I'm gonna get you here. Don't you worry about steps two through four? Don't, don't worry. No, I got you and and it, there's a way in which that in its own right. Yeah.

Britta: Okay, sorry,

Britta: there's a way in which that, in its own right, is, is, is taking some of that, that relationship to the messiness, yeah, and telling us that we're not even allowed to have that feeling of the messiness. Does that make sense?

Nicole: Are you following me? Yeah, you know. And it's, it's kind of like a, Hey, I got this, and I can tell you what's best for you. And it's, it's part of kind of this system, the over culture, doesn't believe in you, or it believes in that. It's going to look like this. We're going to just make it look like this for you. Versus, well, how do you know you want this?

Nicole: What a great question, you

Nicole: know. Or it's like there's there's more there, versus just oh, oh, okay, this is kind of what I want. You're going to take care of me,

Nicole: versus doing the deeper questions.

Britta: Yeah, and as you said that asking the deeper questions, I actually got a deep belly sadness, because I think there's a deep longing for that.

Nicole: I have a midwife who for my first baby, and she does a lot of counseling, and so her her tagline that I always use is, I don't know, honey, what do you think? And I'd be like, Oh, she doesn't know. What do I think?

Britta: Yeah, and whether she knows or not, is not the point, because it's not actually about her knowing. It's about your knowing, our knowing, yeah, and her knowing. I mean her knowing, can play a part in that it's it's a part. But do we

Nicole: know it to be true for this person, right? And and the other end of it is, how do we know without listening, right? And they so there's these layers and stories of listening to, of of of who you listen to, or who knows things and and I think that is the that is the biggest challenge I'm seeing parents have today say more about that of them listening to themselves. Of, how do they know how to listen to themselves? What are the what do they believe about this?

Britta: Well, there's a lot of noise that's filling their ears. Yeah, it makes it hard to hear one's inner voice.

Nicole: And I think that that is part of already broaching the unknown. Yes, yes, that they're already broaching the unknown when they don't know. Well, I remember asking somebody, she was talking about what her family said and what her friends said, and I said, Well, how do you know? And she said, I'm not good at that. I said, How do you know you're not good at

Britta: which is a way of asking, what you know, right? I mean, the beautiful, what is the that artist who has, like, stairways that look like they're going up and then going down and going, it's one of those, it sounds like that in in question form,

Nicole: yeah, yeah. Well, I, I feel like that's where so many resources lie. But also, you know, and that we have these fears or these senses of control that we're working off of, but in essence, it's like they're anchored, they're down in that well, right? Yeah. They're down in that well for us to pull, pull and drink from, right? And even, even those things that we don't want, like, how do they nourish us? Or, how are they part of the the nervous system that's going to be unfolding?

Britta: Yeah, I also like, sometimes one of the one of the trite things that I hear over and over again in a lot of birth circles is the sort of thrown at parents statement, listen to your intuition like it's it's kind of thrown at them. Listen to your intuition. And yet so often, one it's untrained, that the ability to listen to our intuition is untrained, and so it can actually be unhelpful to say, Listen to your intuition. And intuition often, in my the way I think about it is more as a processor. It's like that gut check, that's intuition. But we sometimes need to feed our intuition something in order for it to chew a little bit like if there's nothing in there, it's more about what's your instinct, but intuition is, to me, it's like it's that. It's that processor that takes the story that we've heard from our friend and our experience from our childhood and our conversation with our healthcare provider, and it puts that all in a stew, and it stirs it up, and then it takes a sip and says, What does this need, which feels different to me than the the idea that we know everything for ourselves, that I think can also leave out all these other forms of wisdom and knowing,

Nicole: you know, it just makes me think about, you know, I obviously you have a degree, and I don't in like mythology and stories, but this aspect of, you know, all the different parts of the stories are parts of yourself, right? And, you know, as you're talking about this, it's like, yeah, all of these stories that we have, they're parts of ourselves, you know, even the ones we may not, you know, want to acknowledge, or, you know, yeah, that intuition. But also, what part of ourselves is the three stages of labor, you know, or what part of ourselves is the is the cervical centric part of ourself, right? All these stories are just different characters of who we are, if we're as we're bringing things forth. And, yeah, we all navigate these things differently.

Breech as Seeing the World Upside Down

Nicole: Like, well, you know, breach gives us turns us all upside down.

Britta: Well, it just turned me upside down, I guess even in asking the question,

Nicole: well, you know, it turns us up, all upside down. And so what happens is, really, breach education isn't about breach education, just the truth. It really isn't. People are just willing to see something different, and it will inform you of. About everything. And I'm fact, when I deal with parents who are breached in the third trimester, I do, I do some body work and help out with creating new possibilities for this baby to turn half of the work we're doing is just really like, how are you going to navigate this? Because it's such an acute representation of the unknown with less resources than you thought you had, with the fear of the fact that you're going to have to fit into a square peg, and now you're a circle right? Breach just has turned everybody upside down because there's a lack of skills, because it's been relegated to being this dangerous or specialized thing, when, in fact, we can learn about breach and actually learn about head down babies. We can learn about how what would I do if I had a breach baby? Might actually be the same questions or the same things you'd think about with a head down baby, but it just expands your mind. So breach has these opportunities in them, not just for the person who's giving birth or for the baby, but also for midwives, providers for breach care, and no matter how many times people don't want to learn breach or get rid of breach or have cesarean for breach skills? The fact is, they're surprised breach. For a quarter of the quarter of breach births are surprised in the hospital setting, right? And when you have a surprise breech birth, it's you want to have the skills, because then you know how to help. And in the fact is, oh, it is breach. Is representation of not fight. It can be the fight, the flight, the freeze, the fun, but more importantly, it is about the forget. And when we forget things or we ignore things, whether we forget our skills or we forget it, forget about it, because it's not going to be us who has a breach baby. You know, it's a nervous system response. And there we are, and it's in front of us, and we're forced to look at something differently than we ever wanted to or thought we would for many times, right? I came from a different era with that, with breach, so I didn't have as much fear as a mom who gave birth breach, which is how I pivoted into that breach advocacy work, right? But it gives us new opportunities and and some people you know are changed by seeing the world differently.

Britta: I love that I love even just the concept that breach is about seeing the world upside down, like it turns the world upside down for us to look at things in a new way, even that, in its own right, is an upside down or a new way of envisioning it. Yeah.

Nicole: And one of the things I also am careful is that a lot of people really like the tagline, you know, breach is a variation as normal as you mentioned. And one of the issues with that is, it's a variation of normal is just so, so obscure, so breach is an entity of itself that has normal breach.

Nicole: Say more about that, because

Nicole: I think with head down babies, you have normal head down babies, you have very straightforward bursts, right? But then you can sometimes have complicated births, or you can have interventive or technological births, right, or sincere, you know, like and with breach, you have normal, regular breach, but you also have complicated breach and of technologically, births with breach like so it's just, it's, it's a variation. It's something of birth, really, variation of birth. And I, anyways, just, I love that, yeah, you know? And it's, and it's got its own idiosyncrasies and connections to it that allow you to see things differently that can apply to head down babies and vice versa.

Restorative Midwifery and Storytelling

Britta: So, yeah, wow. So are there other other aspects of restorative midwifery that just kind of pivoting back to that, that that you feel really vibrant about, or really connected in your belly about, that have been influenced by these various different. Aspects of the work that you have done, whether it's your work with positioning and with breach and with storytelling, and there's so many different aspects, and now this focus of your work is about restorative Midwifery, and there's, there's 13 principles that you lay out, and I highly recommend people get volume one in the series. What's the what's the title

Nicole: of every bead in our necklace? So right now, there's actually a volume 11 that's out, but it's not an audible because it's inspired one, and it'll get redone eventually. You know, I've really prayed about this process and sat with it, about it being process based and not being like outcome based. And, man, that is a struggle, and that struggle is real. You just want to check I'm a check list checker. I just want to check things off. And it's like, I gotta live life and have experiences. But, you know, so

Britta: wait, I just have to interrupt you, because isn't that just like what we were talking about at the beginning? Yeah, that this is your version right now that can connect you to that part in parents. Yeah, that also want to check boxes. And are, we are kind of driven in a in a production based society, and how, how perfect, in a way, that you're in your own dance, your own struggle with, yeah,

Nicole: and it's very humility, humiliating, humbling. But you know, the other thing about storytelling and miss here is that when you don't know what to do, or you're you're trying to see something different, like I was talking about breach, turns us upside down. So those stories so it's like, I don't know where to go, but the story does. The story has laid a map for me

Nicole: and my inner,

Nicole: my inner self, my unconscious, my I can find my way and suspend what I know with this fairy tale, and in doing so, I can be like I can learn something new about myself and and this is where I think I've been going, even just in the last weeks. You know, is just taking stories that I thought I knew so very well and using them as templates to, you know, figure out what what am I? What am I doing here? What am I? What do I really believe in? Who am I as a midwife, like asking those different those and being like, I know who I am, but you know, sometimes you get disoriented, sometimes you come back, you know, so anyways, just been using different stories, yeah,

Britta: using Different stories as maps to better know yourself

Nicole: they are maps, you know, clear says, This talks about aperture stories, or their healing stories, like their maps for healing and and I think that as we see some of these stories, they might be shock value, you know, like this, who listens to fairies tale stories and go, Oh, these are really for three, four or five year olds, because some of them are just like, shocking, right?

Britta: Especially if you listen to the the uncleaned up version,

Nicole: exactly. But you know, those weren't just for kids. Those were for that's for everybody, right? Those because the fact is, life is messy, and there's parts of ourselves that the story that's been alive for me this week is, should I should I tell it?

Britta: Yeah? Oh, please. Do we have time? Can you just give us a quick like, a version of what story is alive with you, please?

The Story: The Husband with a Temper

Nicole: It's the husband with a temper. And so you know, and I love this one, because it's been around and it's I got it. It's a finish folk tale. So there's this woman, and she has a husband who has this, like, the worst temper, and that he flies off the handle often, and he she's like, What do I do? I don't know what to do. And she goes to the elder, and the elder woman, and she says, What do I do? He's got this temper. And the the old wise woman says, well, what you need to do is you need to track down the bear and you need to pluck three hairs from the living bear,

Nicole: and do you need to bring them back to me?

Nicole: That's it? That's what you tell me

Nicole: No advice, no magic like thing, right? Just like you need to track down the bear and find three hairs and pluck them off of a living bear,

Nicole: and she's like, Okay, and so she goes home,

Nicole: and she thinks about what she has to do, and she thinks this is crazy. But then she's like, but I this is what I'm willing to do, you know, because I don't know what else to do. And so she gathers her supplies, and she, she thinks through, what would I have to do? And you know, and she talks to people about different things, and and she realizes, you know, where maybe this bears territory might be, and she heads off to the woods to find this bear. And in the weeks or the months that come, she's walking in places she's never been before, and she's, she's met, first, she's met with orphan souls, unburied, unclaimed souls, ones, not just of babies that had been abandoned or buried, and that she gives them names and places for them in the forest, so they can be given some place some of them are elders, some of them are just people unknown. And she gives them all names and place, and she finds a place for them. And then she she's met with winds that are cold and unfriendly. But she remembers to be kind to the winds and is grateful for the ones that that blow from the other direction, and she rests as she needs to rest. And she nourishes herself and takes refuge, and throughout this process, she also finds things that would that would probably help nourish the bear. And along the way, she starts leaving food, and eventually, she finds the bear, and finds the bears den, and

Nicole: she leaves food,

Nicole: and the bear kind of looks and snuffs and gets it, but it never really kind of, you know, comes forward, but it's aware of her,

Nicole: and, you know, kind of checks out what she's done. And the next day, she comes back and brings some more food and puts it a little bit closer to where she'd been standing. And she stays a little bit longer and to where the bear can smell her and see her.

Nicole: And each time she continues to come back and closer and closer, until she was just sitting there for several hours and quietly, not doing much, but nourishing and bringing food and just being there,

Nicole: and eventually

Nicole: the bear allows her to move close enough to be able to pet the bear and just pluck the three hairs from the bear.

Nicole: And after that, she gathers them up and she goes and she she comes back to the village, but the village seems different to her. And she goes to the wise woman, and

Nicole: And the old woman says,

Nicole: Do you remember how you prepared for your journey? Yeah, I remember. Do you remember that you went to places that you've never been before? Yeah, I remember.

Nicole: Do you remember

Nicole: how you think to the ground

Nicole: and the trees? Yeah, I remember and yeah, how you recognize those orphan souls? That had not, not been put to rest and buried, that had been remained unclaimed, and that you claim them as your own. Yeah, I remember. And do you remember the winds that tried to the cold and that you persisted, that you thanked them when they like blew the other way, yeah, and how you rested and you cared for yourself, and you nourished yourself just enough, and then you tracked down that animal part of yourself, that place within yourself that remains unseen, that's always been there, and has been there, not just from you, but for the generations that came from you. Yeah, you remember how you nourished the bear, how you nourished that part of yourself,

Nicole: and got closer and closer over time,

Nicole: until you were able to just pluck what was needed

Nicole: and bring it back.

Nicole: Yeah, I remember, good Now go home and do the same with your husband.

Britta: The power of storytelling.

Britta: It's been deep, right?

Britta: I'm just it's, you know, we're in podcast land, but if you and I were sitting around a fire right now, we would let silence exist.

Nicole: Yeah, people can pause this, right? Yes, so please

Britta: pause it, because the space and silence on the other side of a story is part of the story itself.

Nicole: It's like fascia of the body. It's like you can really start doing the work of releasing something, but the magic comes when it continues

Closing and Invitation

Britta: absolutely and so this might be the perfect spot for us to end and close and and is there an invitation you would Have for the story listeners who just heard this story, what are what are your invitations after they've had time for their own sitting in the space in the glow of the fire after the story, what's your invitation?

Nicole: I guess I just invite them to find what's nourishing, not just for themselves, but for their that inner animal, part of yourself, your nervous system, part of yourself that like, how do you get closer to it? How do you have compassion for yourself when you meet obstacles or walk in new places that you've never walked before,

Britta: that's so wonderful. Yes, yes, yes. So Nicole, as hard as it is to wrap up, it's time you want thanks for having me. We could talk and talk and talk. We can talk and talk. So where people who have been touched and moved and connected by this conversation and your wisdom sharing and your humility and heart sharing today. Where can they connect with you? What are the ways in this uber connected world where folks can find

Nicole: you, so they can find me, and various places? Restory, birth work, so, R, E, R, E, capital, s, right. Restory, I'm also have restorative Midwifery, has an Instagram itself, so I tend to kind of put more breach stuff and breach basics and restorative midwifery stuff that I'm like only for the storytellers, and then Nicole Morales midwife on Instagram. And other than that, I'm around in various other capacities, and doing Midwifery, taking this logo at that, enjoying that.

Final Question

Britta: So I love that. So one of the ways that I end these conversations. This is to ask kind of one final question. And that question is, what's one thing you feel passionately about that you want new or expectant parents to see, hear, feel or know during this profound period of their lives?

Nicole: That the unknown depth

Nicole: of this journey

Nicole: can look shiny and bright and can look deep and dark, and at the same time, it's part of it, what makes you who you are in the end, and you know, part of how we live our life for our to our fullest, right?

Britta: That's so beautiful. Nicole, my heart is tender. My eyes are a little damp. I'm so grateful to you. Thank you so much, and thank you listeners for sharing this time with us. If something we shared today impacted supported or moved you, please share this episode with a friend. I produce this podcast myself, and your support makes it possible to show a little love for the podcast and these conversations, please follow rate and review. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please join us on Instagram at transformed by birth. I look forward to being with you again on the next episode of transformed by birth. Now let's gather what we want to take away from this episode with an inhale

Britta: and with our exhale, we'll blow out the candle

Britta: until next time bye. Friends. You.