122. MyMaine Birth: Nikki’s Two FreeBirth Stories and Her Experience with The Radical BirthKeeper School and MatriBirth Midwifery Institute

The recent discourse surrounding free birth and the Free Birth Society has sparked intense debate in birth work communities. Today, Nikki - a birth professional and mother who has personally experienced two free births, is here to share her  journey through the ideological landscape of the programs offered by the Free Birth Society.

Nikki’s path into birth work began with stumbling upon a free birth video that completely transformed her perception of childbirth. After years of viewing birth as something clinical and frightening, she witnessed the raw beauty of an unmedicated, unassisted home birth. This discovery led her down a path of nursing school followed by a traditional midwifery apprenticeship lasting four years. Throughout this time, she was gaining hands-on experience with a medical midwife, attending births, and developing clinical skills.

Nikki’s introduction to the Free Birth Society came through their Radical Birth Keeper School (RBK). Initially, the program seemed aligned with her evolving beliefs about birth autonomy and women's sovereignty. The content challenged many of her medical perspectives on birth, presenting new ideas about prenatal care, monitoring, and interventions. While some concepts resonated deeply, she maintained a balanced approach, continuing her medical midwifery apprenticeship alongside these new philosophical teachings.

The RBK program introduced the term "birth keeper" – described as someone who attends births not as a medical provider but as support in the absence of any healthcare professionals. This role differs from a doula primarily in that doulas typically work alongside medical providers, while birth keepers attend free births where no medical professionals are present. However, what started as a clear distinction became increasingly murky as the terminology shifted from "birth keeper" to "midwife" – with the creation of their program Matribirth Midwifery Institute (MMI) - a term that traditionally implies medical training and hands-on skills.

Nikki’s first pregnancy occurred after completing the RBK program. She initially planned to have her midwifery mentor attend her birth, but as her pregnancy progressed, she felt increasingly called to birth unassisted. Her labor began suddenly, progressed quickly over 10 hours, and resulted in a beautiful birth experience. The only complication arose when her placenta didn't deliver immediately, requiring assistance from her  midwife the following day. Despite this challenge, her overall experience reinforced her belief in the power of unassisted birth.

Later, Nikki enrolled in the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute (MMI), marketed as "the world's leading sovereign midwifery school." This program, costing $12,000, promised comprehensive knowledge,  but ultimately delivered rushed content created just before it would be released each week, rambling lectures, and increasingly extreme ideologies.  The program began shifting from midwifery education to fear-mongering about legal risks and encouraging participants to become "mentors" rather than birth attendants – a clear bait-and-switch from what was initially promised.

During Nikki’s time in MMI, she experienced births that challenged the program's rigid free-birth-or-bust mentality. She attended births requiring hospital transfers and was made to feel she had failed as a birth worker for supporting these transfers. This cult-like environment, coupled with the dismissive and condescending treatment of students who asked questions, on top of the overwhelming lack of content that was promised, eventually led her to leave the program.

Nikki’s  second pregnancy occurred while enrolled in MMI. Interestingly, the program's emphasis on stillbirth and loss created tremendous anxiety for her – something she hadn't experienced during my first pregnancy. After leaving MMI, she experienced a quick three-hour labor and another beautiful free birth, though she faced some bleeding challenges requiring support from her midwife friend.

Through these experiences, her perspective has evolved significantly. While she still believe’s strongly in birth autonomy and the beauty of unassisted birth for those properly prepared, She has developed a deeper respect for all birth choices. She no longer judges women who choose hospital births or medical management, recognizing that each woman must birth where she feels safest.

The journey through free birth ideology taught Nikki that dogmatism on either side – whether medical or "sovereign" – serves no one. True birth autonomy means supporting women in making informed choices without shame or judgment, and providing transparent, evidence-based information rather than fear-based manipulation or ideological indoctrination.

Transcript for Episode 122 of MyMaine Birth

Nikki: 0:00

And coming out of MMI, which is the second free birth society course that I took, coming out of that I realized that doula isn't a bad word. I think we were kind of I'm going to use the word brainwashed or conditioned. I was at least, you know, I can only speak for myself I was conditioned by the free birth society that doula is a bad word, that you don't want to be a doula, you don't want to be a medical midwife, those things are bad and you want to be this other thing. So first they were using the term birthkeeper, which I think is a fine word to use. It's, you know, a woman who's attending a birth, not doing anything medical, like a doula, but in the absence of any medical provider. So typically a birth keeper is going to be there. There's no midwife, there's no doctor, she's not doing anything medical, so she's acting as a doula. But typically a doula is going to work in the presence of a doctor or a midwife. So I guess that's the big difference. But for some reason the word birthkeeper shifted, and Emily and Yolanda and some of these other free birth advocate or educators, whatever you want to call them, for some reason the term birthkeeper shifted and now they want to be midwives and I think that kind of muddies the waters, because most people are going to see a midwife as a woman who is coming to a birth with medical skills and hands on skills.

Nikki: 1:41

So these birth keepers, I really do think it's just a separate thing and there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with being a birth keeper, there's nothing wrong with being a doula. But I think it's very, very important to be completely transparent and honest with your experience level. And of course, I do want to give Emily and Yolanda some credit here. They have always as from the trainings I've taken with them, they are always encouraging women to be honest and to be transparent. I've never heard them encourage women to lie about their experience and they have spoken to the importance of being honest with your clients. But I think using the word midwife if you don't have that sort of medical training and hands-on skills, I do think that can be very misleading.

Angela: 2:35

I'm Angela and I'm a certified birth photographer, experienced doula, childbirth educator and your host here on the my Main Birth podcast. This is a space where we share the real-life stories of families and their unique birth experiences in the beautiful state of Maine, from our state's biggest hospitals to birth center births and home births. Every birth story deserves to be heard and celebrated. Whether you're a soon-to-be mom, a seasoned mother or simply interested in the world of birth, these episodes are for you. Welcome. You're listening to episode 122 of my Main Birth.

Angela: 3:15

Today's birth story guest is Nikki, and she is here to share all about her two amazing free birth stories, as well as her experience with the Free Birth Society and the programs that they offer. I first met Nikki last year around this time when we had both signed up for the MatriBirth Midwifery Institute, which we thought, according to their marketing, was going to be the world's leading sovereign midwifery school. Be the world's leading sovereign midwifery school, spoiler. It was not any of that, but yeah, let's get into her story. Hi, nikki, welcome to my Main Birth. Hello, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. As you know, I very much support women's rights to birth where, how and with whomever she chooses. So the purpose of these episodes are more to highlight the separation of the beautiful idea of free birth, which is a perfectly fine option for many healthy women, from the more dangerous ideologies that are promoted by the free birth society.

Nikki: 4:19

Yeah, both things can be true, right, you can support free birth and also recognize that Emily and Yolanda are ripping people off.

Angela: 4:27

So true. So we first met each other around this time last year, when we were first starting MMI, which we're going to be talking all about. But first will you start by sharing a little bit about you and your family.

Nikki: 4:42

Yeah, of course. So I have been studying midwifery and serving women in the birth space for about five years now. I live in New Hampshire. My business is Born Free Family. I live here with my husband and my two children, both of which were free birthed. On my property we have a little homestead and, yeah, for the past couple of years I've just been a stay at home mom doing a lot of homemaking and homesteading while trying to run my business on the side, and it's just been really wonderful.

Angela: 5:20

Amazing. Now would you share a little bit about your views on birth growing up, Like what like stories did you hear around birth while you're younger?

Nikki: 5:46

always got the impression that she it almost seemed like she didn't really remember or didn't care to remember.

Nikki: 5:48

It didn't seem like a really big thing for her. Just, you know, she had the standard hospital medicalized births, did whatever the doctors said, and then kind of moved on with her life. It wasn't a big deal for her. And you know, I remember later on, maybe when I was 13 or 14, my best friend's mother was talking about her one day and it was interesting because she presented it as a rite of passage of sorts, but not a positive one. And it's so interesting because pregnancy and birth, I do believe, is a rite of passage and it can be so empowering and so beautiful, but this woman presented it as this horrific, awful thing. So after that I kind of decided that maybe I didn't want to have children. And yeah, it wasn't until I was maybe 20 years old that I stumbled upon a home birth video. It was actually a free birth video and that got birth back on my radar and that was what reintroduced me to birth and showed me that birth can be this beautiful, wonderful thing.

Angela: 7:12

Yeah, so where did it kind of take you from there?

Nikki: 7:17

Yeah, so from there, I just knew immediately after. So I think at that point in my life I was already teaching yoga, but I was looking for something more. That wasn't 100% fulfilling for me. I knew I wanted to work with women, but I wasn't really sure exactly what my path was. And I saw that free birth video.

Nikki: 7:43

It was really inspiring to me and I started doing a quick Google search on how to become a home birth midwife and, of course, all Google told me was that you know, you have to go to nursing school and you need to become a certified nurse midwife to do any sort of midwifery, which, of course now I know is very, very far from the truth. But at that time I just I was. I was searching for my path, so I just was going to do whatever it took. So I enrolled in nursing school, did that for a few years and then, while I was in nursing school that's when it was actually my now husband introduced me to my mentor and the woman that I apprenticed under and yeah, so he was the one that told me that there was another path into midwifery and that I didn't have to go to nursing school and do all this stuff. So I did graduate from nursing school, but after that I started a midwifery apprenticeship.

Angela: 8:42

Oh my gosh, that's so cool. I love that your husband led you in that direction.

Nikki: 8:45

Yeah, it was kind of funny because when he brought it up I was very dismissive of what he was saying because I'm thinking you're just a guy, what do you know? He didn't have any kids Like you don't know anything about this. And it turns out his old roommate was a midwife and she was training midwives in the home that they were living in. So he actually knew a lot more about midwifery than I did, even at the time.

Angela: 9:15

Oh my gosh, that's amazing, wow. So what kind of yeah happened then after you finished nursing school? How did things go for you?

Nikki: 9:40

I started my apprenticeship. I did that for about four years. At the time I was also working as a doula, just trying to get as much experience in birth as I could. I also worked as a nurse for a little bit, not in any sort of birth or you know a maternity capacity, but I just whatever, just a job to get through my apprenticeship.

Nikki: 9:56

And yeah, so I think about two years into my midwifery apprenticeship I discovered the Free Birth Society. It was actually my very first. She wasn't really a client, it was just a friend who invited me to her birth. It was the very first birth I attended. It was a home birth with a midwife and she was the woman who introduced me to the Free Birth Society. But I didn't really get into it until a couple years later Learned about the Radical Birth Keeper School and then at that point I enrolled in the Radical Birth Keeper School. It just seemed based on how it was presented to me. It seemed like my beliefs were very in line with them. At this time, like I said, I was still doing my medical midwifery apprenticeship, but I was looking for something more and I was looking for something a little bit more outside of the system.

Angela: 10:54

So what were your thoughts as you were going through your apprenticeship with a midwife? Maybe some experiences that came up throughout that program that might have led you to start the Radical Birth Keeper School, like what were you kind of noticing throughout your years during apprenticeship, that kind of led you there.

Nikki: 11:12

Yeah. So the midwife I was working with was pretty respectful of women's autonomy. There were I don't think any red flags were being raised at that point for me. I don't think any red flags were being raised at that point for me. I was still very medical in my thinking from my indoctrination in nursing school and just my entire life of indoctrination that birth is in the hospital and it's this medicalized event and it's dangerous. So I think it was a very slow progression of me getting more and more out of the system, me questioning more things.

Nikki: 11:51

I think the experience I witnessed in birth up to that point, any medical intervention that happened, I was able to justify it and I was able to. I thought they were all absolutely necessary and, like I said, the midwife I was working with was relatively hands-off. But now reflecting, now that I've been, you know, supporting women outside of this, of the system, so to speak, I can reflect now and see that some of those things weren't entirely necessary. So I think the RBK program was kind of my start of questioning medical midwifery, because when I enrolled in the RBK school I was kind of just looking for something to complement my apprenticeship. I was still fully sold on the medical midwifery model. And yeah, it wasn't until that program where I started to question things, and a lot of the things that came up in that program that Emily and Yolanda taught I had never even thought of.

Nikki: 13:00

There was this one time I think I really didn't even know what I was getting myself into.

Nikki: 13:06

I think I was.

Nikki: 13:08

I don't know what I was expecting, but yeah, at the beginning of the program she, emily, was talking about how basically no medical interventions and no monitoring is necessary at all, like you don't need any prenatal care, you don't need any of this. Monitoring is necessary at all, like you don't need any prenatal care, you don't need any of this. And of course that was opposite of what I had known to be true at that point. So we kind of went back and forth about whether things like taking vital signs, like taking blood pressure, or taking doing blood draws, because to me and even now I still think this that is just a method of collecting information and it's really what you're going to do with that information. You know you could take a high blood pressure and just transfer a woman and say, no, sorry, you're not my client anymore, I'm transferring you to an OB and you can birth in a hospital, but you don't necessarily always have to do that over a high blood pressure reading. So yeah, me and Emily kind of went back and forth on that.

Angela: 14:11

Yeah, you had like private conversations outside of like the class or no, it was during class.

Nikki: 14:16

Yeah, yeah, it was pretty much all during class, but it was interesting because throughout that program I think it might have been a 12-week program, but throughout that program I think it might have been a 12-week program, but throughout that program things slowly started to unravel for me and some things I agreed with and some things I disagreed with. Because even after I completed the RBK school, I continued on with my midwifery apprenticeship and I went into women's homes, I took their blood pressure, I drew their labs, I attended births in the capacity of a student. So you know I'm listening to heart tones, I'm doing all of the things that Emily and Yolanda disagree with, you know. So I think at that point in my life I was still pretty balanced.

Angela: 15:00

You know, I took what resonated with me and I still continued to do my own thing, yeah, so you didn't feel too manipulated then in the RBK school with like those conversations you were having back and forth, or was it manipulative?

Nikki: 15:15

I was. I, yeah, it felt now looking back on it, the way I was spoken to. I was definitely being spoken down to and almost maybe not necessarily, I don't, you know, I don't want to assume her intentions, but I could see how maybe she was trying to make an example of me as the woman who is questioning things, and I think she was, and I think she was. I think they both were very persuasive. So, included in the RBK school you also get access to the Complete Guide to Free Birth. So I took both of those courses and I think by the end of both of those courses I think I was persuaded more against the medical model.

Nikki: 16:07

You know, like I said, I was still doing like the classic medical midwifery, but I was definitely starting to question things, especially things like ultrasounds.

Nikki: 16:17

And I remember I was working at a birth center with a different midwife at the time and I brought that up to her because I was very disturbed about what I was learning about ultrasounds.

Nikki: 16:27

And of course, you know, especially Yolanda presents it as something that can be very, very dangerous for the baby.

Nikki: 16:34

And I have done my own research on this and it's, you know, you can take it both ways, but yeah, I just remember there were things I was learning that I would bring to the midwives I was apprenticing under and I was just so, so concerned about these things that I was learning and thankfully they were able to kind of bring me back into the middle ground, you know. So when it came to the ultrasound, this woman told me yes, there is potential for for harm, especially if you're doing multiple ultrasounds, excessive ultrasounds. But if you're just doing an anatomy scan at 20 weeks, that could give you valuable information that you might want to know. And of course, women should have the right to decline or accept these sort of tests. So I'm really grateful that I had women in my life, midwives who were able to kind of complement what I was learning from Emily and Yolanda. I think that really really benefited me to kind of keep me more moderate and more open minded.

Angela: 17:48

Yeah, totally. So you finished the RBK school. How long was it until you found out you were pregnant for the first time after that?

Nikki: 17:57

So I think it was another two years, maybe a little less than two years.

Angela: 18:02

So would you tell me about how you found out you were pregnant and your thoughts in choosing your care?

Nikki: 18:09

Yeah, so I got pregnant a month after our wedding. So we weren't really trying, but we weren't. You know, we were going to start trying soon. I guess I wasn't actually like I had stopped using using any sort of cycle tracking for birth control. Yes, we got pregnant very quickly and at that point I had thought that I wanted the midwife the main midwife who I was apprenticing with. I had thought that I had wanted her to attend my birth at that time and it wasn't until towards the end of my pregnancy actually that I had decided that I just couldn't have her there. I think it was a mix between wanting to free birth but also personal issues that we were having. I just had a feeling that if she was at my birth, that it wouldn't end well. Basically, I had a feeling that I think the word sabotage is kind of abrasive. But yeah, I felt like I would be kind of better off by myself. Kind of better off by myself.

Angela: 19:26

Yeah, so how were you feeling throughout that pregnancy?

Nikki: 19:36

Yeah, I was really excited, I was feeling really good. I think it is actually the first trimester was very rough for me because I was working full time as a night shift nurse and also I was taking doula clients and doing a midwifery apprenticeship, so, and I was teaching yoga. So I basically had like four jobs working night shift, which is, of course, horrible for anyone. But it became really, really difficult once I got pregnant and I think that caused me to have very extreme pregnancy symptoms. I was very nauseous, I was so tired. I was actually very, very depressed in the beginning of my pregnancy.

Nikki: 20:13

It was kind of a really hard point in my life and it was so strange because I was so, so excited to be pregnant. I was so excited that after years of supporting other women, it was finally my turn. But I was just so sick and having a really hard time at my nursing job that it kind of just, yeah, it made the first part of my pregnancy really tough, but at about 15 weeks I had left that job and focused on my business. That's when I started to separate from the midwife I was working with and start my own business, and I did a lot of rebranding. I started the blueprints for my birth prep course. So I started to get this new energy after that 15 weeks and started to feel really good and I was just able to be excited and you know, move forward?

Angela: 21:12

how were you feeling towards, like, the end of your pregnancy?

Nikki: 21:16

yeah, I think so the the whole pregnancy. I wasn't really interested in doing very much for prenatal care. I had that midwife come visit me a couple of times. Like I said, we had worked together for four years and she knew that I was pretty outside of the medical system already. So she basically just told me listen, if you want me to order a test, if you want me to come see you, I will. But I'm going to kind of she knew I wasn't really interested in too much in regard to medical prenatal care. So she said, yeah, just call her if you need something and I'll leave you alone. So I did some minimal prenatal testing, but not very much.

Nikki: 21:59

And maybe halfway through my pregnancy I guess we started to have some complications in our personal relationship and in our business relationship. Like I said, I started to do my own thing and we started to separate. And I think I was 36 weeks when I finally broke it to her that I couldn't have her at my birth. And yeah, like I said, I just I was just really called to free birth at that point and I just had this deep inner knowing that this was just something that I needed to do on my own and I think, being pregnant while attending births, I think it was a very different experience than attending births, not being pregnant and not having any kids.

Nikki: 22:49

I think I really started to analyze what was going on at these births and it was almost like I was looking at the scene from a lens of a woman who was about to give birth instead of a birth worker. You know what I mean. So I was seeing things that people were doing at these births and I'm thinking I would never want someone to come into my birth space and do these things. And it doesn't mean that those things are necessarily wrong or disruptive, it just would have been for me personally. So some women are very interested in all of the testing. You know they want to birth in the hospital. They don't care if nurses and doctors that they've never met are in their space while they're birthing, and that's totally fine for them. But I mean, this woman was basically my best friend and I knew I couldn't have her there, you know. So I think we're just all different and I was. I'm very glad that I was able to have that insight to set myself up for the birth that was going to work out for me.

Angela: 23:56

What were the final weeks and then days leading up to when your labor started looking like?

Nikki: 24:08

your labor started looking like yeah, I feel very lucky that I just enjoy being pregnant. I feel really natural being pregnant. I was really focusing on my nutrition, I was focusing on exercising, you know, preparing for baby yeah, I it's funny because I was setting myself up to be pregnant for, like, mentally, I was telling myself, you know, don't expect to have the baby until 42 weeks, at least 44 weeks, because I didn't want to be focused on that due date and then go past it and then be really disappointed and start to get uncomfortable, because I've seen so many women have that experience where they're thinking, okay, I was supposed to have this baby two weeks ago, and that's when I think the end of pregnancy symptoms really start to get exacerbated, because they're thinking in their head I should have already had this baby, but I ended up having her a day after the projected due date. So it's funny, I was ready in a sense, but I think mentally and spiritually I was not ready, because I'm telling myself okay, you still have another two weeks at least.

Nikki: 25:19

It's interesting because my mother and my mother-in-law messaged me the day before she was born to check in. So I think their maternal instincts kind of knew that something was up, but I had absolutely no clue. I remember the night before she was born, I was in the shower making a mental to-do list, thinking, okay, tomorrow I'm going to go to the grocery store and I'm going to make bonbons. Thinking, okay, tomorrow I'm going to go to the grocery store and I'm going to make bonbons.

Angela: 25:51

And that obviously did not happen, because I went into labor very maybe a couple hours after I was having those thoughts. Oh my goodness, so how did things get started?

Nikki: 25:58

Yeah, it was 2.30 in the morning. I was just settling into bed and right when I laid down I started having sensations. They were pretty mild, kind of like a lower crampy sensations, and very soon I realized that they had a pattern and that I was probably in labor. But still, I think, because I had worked in birth for so long, I had seen this play out so many different ways and I didn't want to get myself too excited. I didn't want to waste my energy and I also saw the value in trying to get some sleep. So I really tried to get some sleep but it got pretty intense rather quickly. I ended up coming downstairs because I didn't want to wake my husband up and yeah, I just kind of labored all night and I think it was about five o'clock in the morning when I just wasn't able to rest anymore. Laying down was impossible. I was trying really hard to get comfortable but they were starting to get really really intense. So, mind you, this is only about three hours into the birth process and I think maybe around 7 o'clock my husband came downstairs because he got nervous because I wasn't in bed. Stairs because he got nervous because I wasn't in bed. And still, at this point, even though I'm having very intense contractions. I'm thinking, you know, this is probably. You know, I'm probably not going to have the baby until later tonight, but it might, you know, once the sun comes up it might just fizzle out completely and it could be a couple more weeks, you know, because I'm thinking of all of these different scenarios that I've seen play out. But no, it kept chugging along and gradually gaining in intensity. And it's kind of funny because, you know, I told you I had that to do list in my head. So I'm thinking, well, I better check some things off of this to do list, you know, because I might be having a baby tonight. To-do list, you know, because I might be having a baby tonight.

Nikki: 28:03

So I'm mopping the floors. Thankfully I decided against going to the grocery store. That was a little too much for me. But I'm mopping the floors and they are just getting so intense and I'm moaning through them. And it got to the you know I'm at the end of mopping the floors and it got to the point where I'm having to run across the floor to my birth ball and I'm just really breathing through them, almost screaming through them, and I'm thinking I better hurry up, because I'm not going to be able to mop these floors for very much longer. And at that point I was thinking, yeah, maybe I should run a bath and start to relax.

Nikki: 28:51

That was maybe at 10. And yeah, so I kind of I mean, things got really intense, I'm just trying anything I can do to get comfortable. Nothing's working. And at around noon my waters released and she was born. Maybe two minutes later. It went from super high intensity to all of a sudden she was there, which of course that brought a certain sense of relief because I'm not in the intensity of the birth process, but it was also very, very overwhelming because, remember, I'm telling myself that I'm not going to have her until later tonight or later that night or maybe even the next day. So when she was born, about 10 hours after the birth process started, as a first time mom, yeah, it was very, very intense.

Angela: 29:52

How did your placenta come out?

Nikki: 29:56

Yeah, so that was kind of tricky, it didn't. I yeah, it was very challenging to birth my placenta. I yeah, it was very challenging to birth my placenta and I think maybe that was because I wasn't entirely ready to be done with my pregnancy and I think maybe just that abrupt ending of the birth, like the main birth process, I think maybe that could have caused some, some difficulty with me birthing my placenta. Another theory is maybe I needed to be witnessed by another woman in that stage. I really do stand behind free birth for me personally. I mean I didn't. During the birth process I couldn't even really be witnessed by my husband. I mean, if he said anything or even touched me, I was just really. I think for me in the birth process I'm just so at such a heightened state that any extra stimulus is just too much for me. So most women want that constant attention and support of their husband or another woman, but for me I just really need to go through that journey alone and that was consistent for me in both of my births. I just it's a solo journey for me. But yeah, so it was the next day after my daughter was born and I mean I felt like I had tried everything to birth this placenta and I wasn't really worried because I wasn't excessively bleeding. I felt really good, I didn't feel sick, I wasn't having any other indicators that something was wrong, but I just knew that the placenta needed to come out and it was. It was pretty stressful. I was still able to establish a breastfeeding relationship with my daughter. I was still able to bond with her and start resting and relaxing. But still in the background of everything was the truth that I needed to birth my placenta. So, yeah, the next day I actually the midwife, the main midwife I apprenticed with she actually texted me in the middle of the night and asked me if my daughter was born. She just had this intuitive sense that it was. It was the day of the eclipse that she was born. There was a solar eclipse. So she texted me and said I don't know if it was the eclipse or I don't know if your daughter was born, but I, she knew something she could sense like a shift in the energies or something. So when I woke up that morning, I ended up calling her and letting her know that my daughter was born and that the placenta still hadn't come. And she offered to come help me and she was able to do a newborn exam. She was able to check me for tears, so it was nice for her to also offer those things for me and I was I think I was.

Nikki: 33:13

I took so long to reach out to her one because we were having a little bit of turbulent turbulence in our relationship. But also I was thinking it was going to have to be a manual extraction because, like I said, I had tried everything. You know, at this point I'd been attending births for four years and I know pretty much all of the tricks to get a placenta out and I had never encountered anything like this in my practice. And well, I had seen a couple instances where women weren't able to birth their placenta and it required basically the midwife going in and reaching into her uterus and getting the placenta. And usually that happens because it's kind of suction cupped into inside. So I just I really didn't. I mean, I've seen it before. It's obviously painful, it's obviously very uncomfortable and I just didn't, I didn't want that.

Nikki: 34:12

So finally, you know, I, so I invite her over.

Nikki: 34:17

I'm thinking that that's going to have to happen and thankfully she wanted to try something less invasive.

Nikki: 34:24

Before doing that she had me sit on a wooden birthstool. She applied pressure to the top of my uterus With her other hand, she pressed in with her two fingers on my pubic bone, she had me bear down and my placenta plopped right out. Oh, my goodness, I could have kissed her because it was very stressful and you know, I'm thinking she's going to have to do this incredibly invasive maneuver and yeah, so I was so grateful to her to be able to support me. Even after all of the kind of drama that we had had in our personal life, even after separating professionally, I was just so incredibly grateful that she was able to come and support me and help me and just kind of hold space for me. So, yeah, it was really. Yeah, I'm just, I'm so grateful for helping me because, right, the alternative if I didn't have her would have been to go to the hospital and my postpartum story would have been very, very different if I would have had to go to the hospital.

Angela: 35:37

Right. So how was your postpartum time?

Nikki: 35:42

Yeah, I mean, in some ways it was so magical and wonderful and then in other ways it was pretty challenging. I think you know I'm very lucky to have an easy time breastfeeding. So both of my children just latched immediately, but I did feel kind of unsupported immediately. But I did feel kind of unsupported I'm. You know, my mother and my mother-in-law both came. My mother and my mother stayed for a week and then a couple weeks later my mother-in-law stayed for a month. So we did have people in the home who were very supportive.

Nikki: 36:24

But I think, just as a first time mom, I didn't really exactly know what I needed. And you know, even as a woman who had worked in birth for four years, you really I just didn't know. Until I had my own experience I was thinking that maybe I would want a lot more space. But really what I needed was community and I kind of needed my friends to gather around me and to support me and I think I just didn't advocate for myself. So in some ways it was just so dreamy to have this new baby and while things were really simple, in other ways it was pretty lonely.

Angela: 37:08

Yeah, postpartum can be a lot of ups and downs for sure. Yeah, so what paths did you take with your birth work after that?

Nikki: 37:17

Yeah, yeah, so I took a break from attending births in person. I don't. I think I took about a six month break, but I did already have clients that I was supporting, so I was still doing prenatal appointments. Like I mentioned earlier, I rebranded my business. I rebranded my business so, yeah, actually immediately postpartum, that was a big thing that I was working on was doing all of the things to rebrand my business making logos, you know, setting up all of the backend stuff.

Nikki: 37:55

I do all of that stuff myself and this isn't my first business, so I'm kind of getting pretty good at it at this point. But it still requires a lot of work and now, looking back on that, I probably should have taken a beat and just let my postpartum time be and work on that stuff later, because I do think it's more challenging and you just think energetically. You're just not really in. Most women aren't in that headspace to be doing all of this business creative stuff. But I did it and in that postpartum time is when I recorded the bulk of all of the videos for my birth prep course. So that's about 70 videos that are five minutes to 45 minutes in length. So it was just very it took a lot of time and thankfully, you know, my mother-in-law was there so she was able to kind of hang out with my daughter while I was doing all of this business stuff.

Nikki: 38:55

So it was a lot of hard work but it was very much a labor of love and you know I'm so proud of what came out of that time a labor of love, and you know I'm so proud of what came out of that time. And I think in a way it was kind of a good time to do it because everything was so fresh for me. I had just gone through my own pregnancy. I had just gone through my own birth. Most of the births I had attended up to that point were home birth with a medical midwife, and then maybe you know, I'd also attended hospital births. I had attended a couple births in a birth keeper sense where I just kind of hung out and didn't really do any of the medical observation and just supported a woman in a very hands-off sense. But the bulk of my experience had been pretty medical. So it was nice to have my own completely free birth experience to complement my other experiences I had attending births.

Angela: 39:54

You know, I have a side question. You kind of just mentioned, like you did, a couple like as a birth keeper, where you kind of didn't do anything medical and the way you described it it sounded like a doula.

Nikki: 40:05

Yeah, it's funny, and a birth keeper is so it's funny that you say that, because I was thinking that, as I was, I almost didn't want to say it. But yeah, as a doula basically, and you know, I think I mean we'll get more into this later but coming out of MMI, which is the second Free Birth Society course that I took, coming out of that I realized that doula isn't a bad word. I think we were kind of I'm going to use the word brainwashed or conditioned. I was at least, you know, I can only speak for myself. I was at least, you know, I can only speak for myself.

Nikki: 40:44

I was conditioned by the free birth society that doula is a bad word, that you don't want to be a doula, you don't want to be a medical midwife, those things are bad and you want to be this other thing. So first they were using the term birth keeper, which I think is a fine word to use. It's, you know, a woman who's attending a birth, not doing anything medical, like a doula, but in the absence of any medical provider. So typically a birth keeper is going to be there. There's no midwife, there's no doctor, she's not doing anything medical, so she's acting as a doula, but typically a doula is going to work in the presence of a doctor or a midwife. So I guess that's the big difference. But for some reason, the word birthkeeper shifted, and Emily and Yolanda and some of these other free birth advocate or educators, whatever you want to call them For some reason the term birth keeper shifted and now they want to be midwives and I think that kind of muddies the waters, because most people are going to see a midwife as a woman who is coming to a birth with medical skills and hands-on skills.

Nikki: 42:01

So these birth keepers, I really do think it's just a separate thing and there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with being a birth keeper, there's nothing wrong with being a doula. But I think it's very, very important to be completely transparent and honest with your experience level. And of course, I do want to give Emily and Yolanda some credit here. They have always, as from the trainings I've taken with them, they are always encouraging women to be honest and to be transparent. I've never heard them encourage women to lie about their experience, and they have spoken to the importance of being honest with your clients, into the importance of being honest with your clients. But yeah, I'm just, I think, using the word midwife if you don't have that sort of medical training and hands-on skills, I do think that can be very misleading.

Angela: 42:54

Yeah, absolutely so. Did you find out you were pregnant for the next time before you started MMI, or was it after?

Nikki: 43:04

It was after. So I MMI the. I heard about MMI. I was maybe three months out, I was maybe three months postpartum, so I still had a newborn. And I am rebranding my business.

Nikki: 43:22

I had just separated from my mentor and I was still searching for more knowledge and, like I said, I had a pretty extensive hands-on medical apprenticeship. I did do the Radical Birth Keepers School so I had a taste of that outside of the system midwifery. But yeah, I really wanted more the system midwifery. But yeah, I really wanted more. And now in hindsight, I think what I was looking for was more in line with what Wapio or maybe Sister Morningstar offers and I had enjoyed the Radical Birthkeeper School. I heard about MMI. It basically sounded like it was going to be similar to the Radical Birthkeeper School but way more in depth. And that's exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for more knowledge from the outside of the system perspective. I wasn't really interested in any more medical knowledge. So I mean, that's not what I was looking for at all. And yeah, unfortunately that's not what I was looking for at all. And yeah, unfortunately that's not really what I received from the program.

Angela: 44:27

Yeah, when did you start to notice that things were lacking?

Nikki: 44:31

I think I was so excited in the beginning and it was also a huge financial investment for me. So I think it took a long time for me to admit that things weren't as good as I wanted them to be, because I didn't want to admit that I had made a huge financial mistake that has impacted my family. My husband was actually the one who pointed out early on like he was kind of listening in the background of my calls, and I think immediately he was like his red, like alarm bells kind of went off in his head, because he's listening to me on these calls and I think I don't even remember there was a call these are three hour long calls, one almost every week, and then once a month we had a pod call. These are three hour long calls, one almost every week, and then once a month we had a pod call. So, and then on top of that we have all of the prerecorded content. So I'm on the computer listening to this all day almost.

Nikki: 45:37

So he would hear it in the background and it just didn't seem right to him. It seemed like a bunch of fluff. So he would ask me are you really getting your money's worth out of this program. What is the return on investment? Because he's thinking my wife's not really working very much, he's mainly supporting our household financially, which he is absolutely fine with, our household financially, which he is absolutely fine with. But for me to take out, you know, a $9,000 investment in my business, he wants to make sure there's going to be a return on that investment. Yeah, so anyways, to answer your question, I was really excited in the beginning. I did notice that it was the same exact things in the Radical Birth Keeper School, because we got the outline of the program in the beginning and it was pretty much exactly the. Still hoping that we're going to go more in depth and my biggest intention with starting this program was to learn more about the business side of things, which we kind of touched on in RBK, but not enough, I didn't think.

Angela: 47:01

So I'm just really hoping that I'm going to learn more about the business side of things and yeah, and it sold that aspect of it, but then it's like it's the fourth quarter, like they covered it a little bit, I guess yeah, I really didn't like how it was set up and in the radical birth keeper school it was birth section.

Nikki: 47:23

It was kind of split up into three parts, so it was birth, the self-mastery stuff and then the business stuff and we were doing all of those simultaneously through the 12 weeks. So I was kind of expecting that in MMI. So I'm thinking I'm going to get a year of business coaching, but really that's not what we got at all and I actually didn't even get to that part it was the first quarter, I think when Yolanda had hopped on and talked about a birth that she attended in Nicaragua.

Angela: 47:54

that kind of freaked the whole cohort out a little bit.

Nikki: 47:58

Yeah, out of respect for, like, her privacy, I'm not going to get into too many details but she hopped on to a call. So, like I mentioned, we have these almost weekly calls and she came into this call and wanted to kind of debrief a birth that she had attended with us, which isn't abnormal. That's a lot of what we were doing in the program. Sometimes students would debrief I debriefed a birth that I attended Emily and Yolanda would frequently debrief births that they were attending, so it wasn't out of the ordinary at first, but she's basically debriefing a birth where something went wrong and it had clearly really rattled her mean. She was very shaken up by this birth and I felt like she had came on. So most of the women in the program are either brand new birth workers or they haven't even started their careers in birth work and I felt like she was very inappropriate in the way she was basically trauma dumping and fear mongering into the whole room. Basically told women that if they were going to attend births that they were probably going to get arrested and go to jail. That there's no way to attend births safely, there's no way to attend births legally, which is absolute, complete baloney. I know women who have been attending births for 50 years that have never had any sort of legal issues. But the thing is they're following the laws, they're licensed, and listen, I don't like licensure, I really disagree with licensure. I am not a fan of NARM, I don't really like any of that, but that's kind of the way to do it without having issues. There are rules that most states and most countries have, that most states and most countries have, and really, if you follow them, you're probably not going to run into any serious issues. So, yeah, I just oh, and then that that was kind of when the program turned from a midwifery program into now they're encouraging us to just do coaching and to be mentors. And listen, we're not. I mean, it's crazy to charge $12,000 for a birth mentor program. So I felt like it was absolutely a bait and switch. They portrayed the program as this really, you know what did they call it? The the world's leading sovereign midwifery program, and that's just not what was delivered at all.

Nikki: 50:53

So, yeah, that Yolanda's freak out was a major red flag for me and I spoke up in that class and I because I thought it was so wrong what she was doing to scare all of these brand new birth workers. I mean, it was just I. So I felt like it would have been more appropriate, for maybe, if she took some time to like deep, maybe debrief it with, like one of her mentors, I didn't. I thought it was very inappropriate for her to present that situation to the class while it was so fresh and while it was still going on. I mean, while she was presenting to it to us, there were still certain aspects of the situation that were unraveling for her. So I thought maybe she should have even taken the day off. Yeah, it was just very inappropriate. I thought so yeah, maybe that was in the first quarter and then the second quarter comes around, which is the birth quarter, and it was very, very much lacking.

Nikki: 51:57

I was very disappointed by the program and what they were presenting. But again, I was still not wanting to admit that I had made this huge financial mistake and I was just trying to get whatever I could out of it and was trying to be positive and whatever. And it wasn't until I started speaking to other women who were in the program and I probably spoke with maybe about 15 women because I was, again, I'm trying to get the most out of this program. So I was doing a lot of one on ones with other women who are in the program program. I'm doing a lot of meetings, I'm messaging women and I was starting to realize I'm not the only one who's thinking this is lacking. And yeah, it seemed like almost half of the women who were in the program were at least a little bit disappointed by the content thus far at least a little bit disappointed by the content thus far and a lot of women were wanting more.

Angela: 53:16

So, as far as the content went, having had taken RBK and also, which included the complete guide to free birth, how would you say this compared to the information in there, would you almost like?

Nikki: 53:21

my opinion was that it was less information than in the complete guide, not only was it less information, it was longer videos, but it was just a lot of ranting and rambling, like there was no cohesive flow to the videos. It just seemed like, especially Yolanda's videos was her talking around in circles around a topic and never really making any clear or concise points. And I don't know if she thought, if she made a 45 minute long video, that it would make up for the lack of legit information. I don't know what the deal was there, but the videos also seemed like they were very rushed and it was clear that they were making and releasing the videos as we were going through the program, which is very strange.

Nikki: 54:18

That's not typically how you would run a program like this. Typically you would have all of the content outlined, you would do all of that work before we even started, but it felt very, very rushed and extremely unprofessional. I mean, I've taken a lot of trainings. I've taken a lot of trainings when it comes to birth, like university courses. You know I went through a whole nursing program, so I've done a lot of different types of courses and I've never experienced one as messy and unprofessional as this one. Seriously, and like I said, I really enjoyed the Radical Birth Keeper School I felt like the Radical Birth Keeper School. Those videos were polished and professional and they were pretty much to the point. But this was yeah, just it wasn't what they promised.

Angela: 55:12

Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. So did your views on birth as a whole start to shift at all throughout the program as things especially started to unfold like just leading up to when you decided to remove yourself from the program?

Nikki: 55:29

So I think while I was in the program my views on birth were pretty extreme. I think that started in my first pregnancy, towards the end of my first pregnancy, and then I think I once I had this free birth where things went pretty well. I mean my birth was pretty simple and straightforward. You know we talked about the complication with the placenta, but other than that, I mean my birth was totally simple and straightforward. So I think that kind of proved my point that things only go wrong because midwives are coming in and sabotaging birth. And then of course, that belief was reinforced from what we were learning in this program. So I think, especially in the beginning of the program, my views of outside of the system birth were very extreme.

Nikki: 56:24

And while I was in the program I started attending births again and I had actually attended a couple of home births one with a midwife and one with just me present where things didn't go quite right. Both of those births turned into hospital transfers and yeah, that was very confusing for me. The first one I blamed on the midwife. I said she just wasn't patient enough, she just didn't want to wait. Maybe she was scared, maybe it was because of her licensure she didn't want to get in trouble whatever. And that birth actually ended up in a surgical birth because the baby was breached and the hospital wasn't willing to do a vaginal breach delivery, especially on a first time mom. So that was very confusing for me and I was kind of going back and forth on you know what, if it was just me there, would she have had this awesome home birth or would something bad have happened to her or the baby? So I was kind of that was very confronting for me. I'm trying to figure out and of course there's really no way to know.

Nikki: 57:38

But that was when I started to question okay, is, is medical intervention sometimes necessary? And then the next birth I attended was just me present and she was in labor for like four days and eventually she decided to transfer to the hospital and honestly I was relieved because I was starting to get nervous too. But I'm being told in this program that women only transfer if they have bad support, basically. And I actually debriefed that birth with the class during one of our live classes and I left that class feeling like crap. I yeah, I don't. I mean I'm not sure if this was her intention, but Emily basically made me feel like I was a bad birth worker and that you know, there's really no reason to transfer unless it's a blatant emergency or unless a woman just has inadequate birth support. So yeah, I was almost further confused and I was really questioning myself as a birth attendant confused and I was really questioning myself as a birth attendant.

Angela: 59:06

Yeah, I remember that call and I remember feeling very sad for you as she was basically tearing you apart. Like I was like, oh no, like you know, because like where I was coming from, I wasn't like fully also, like you know, ingrained in like free birth or bust I guess. So I could see, I guess, the nuance in it and I was just, yeah, that was, that was hard to see her treat you that way in that call.

Nikki: 59:30

Also, I want to just insert here that we were also being told that it was normal for women to be in labor for four or five days. So up to this point, right, I'm attending births with a medical midwife and typically, yeah, there'd be a transfer before that point. So this is kind of a new thing for me. Oh right, okay, so it can be normal for a woman to be in labor for that long. So on one hand, I was really trying to support this woman, but on the other hand, I still have it in the back of my head. This isn't normal. There is something preventing her from birthing her baby, and so I was very conflicted because up to that point I felt like longer births there was something wrong. And there is something that's you know, and it could be a number of things. It could be her physiology, it could be something with the baby, that's kind of holding the baby up. It could be something hormonally. Maybe she can't get comfortable. I mean, there are so many reasons that cause these longer births and I don't think it's normal, and I think a skilled birth worker can help women to not be in labor for four days.

Nikki: 1:00:52

But it was kind of being presented to us, as this is just in the range of normal and you just need to be down with being in a woman's home for a week, yeah. So it was confusing to me. I felt like, oh, maybe I'm just not as knowledgeable as I thought I was. I just don't have the experience that I thought I did.

Nikki: 1:01:13

I was very much gaslighting myself and then, after months of debriefing this birth, after months of mulling it over in my head, I just couldn't let this birth go.

Nikki: 1:01:27

I needed to figure it out and after really analyzing it, I've came back to what I originally thought to be true, which is it's not really normal to be in birth for that long. No woman wants to be in labor for five days. It's ridiculous to expect birth attendants to be in a woman's home for that long and to just move in and live with her, which is basically what we were being encouraged to do. You just you know, if you're not down to move in with a woman for two weeks, then you can't do this work and I just think that's absolutely ridiculous. And thankfully I've come back to reality to recognize that. And it can be for a complication or an emergency, but it can also just be because a birth is taking a really long time and a woman is exhausted or she wants pain relief. Whatever reason a woman chooses to transfer is valid, and it's really not any of my business to judge her.

Angela: 1:02:43

Exactly, and I feel like that is something that is kind of promoted within the communities and the courses is not not directly, but in their persuasive ways. It's like you know, oh well, they couldn't do it. You know there must be something wrong. How did they co-create that? When, like sometimes maybe things just happen and like that is what it is, yeah, that when, like, sometimes maybe things just happen and like that is what it is, yeah, and just the the shaming of people, like if they don't, it's like I just feel like that was really not okay well, it's interesting too, because there's this blatant hypocrisy where they say that you don't judge a woman and there's no hierarchy of birth and oh, you're supposed to respect every woman's autonomy and her freedom to choose.

Nikki: 1:03:29

But then there's this very strong undertone that if you don't successfully free birth and if you even have a birth attendant there, you have somehow failed. And it was such this weird mind game because they kept saying, oh, sovereign birth is sovereign birth. It's okay to have a midwife or a birth keeper or birth attendants there, but if you do, you're outsourcing your responsibility, your responsibility. So they're saying it's okay. But there's also this very strong undertone that if you don't birth completely alone, you're not enlightened and if you don't get that, then you just it like they would almost make us feel like we were dumb if we didn't get it. So it's just so much hypocrisy and weird mind games that were being played on us that I didn't fully unravel until I had exited the program. And intentional, but they are teaching some weird stuff. Yeah, it's just really weird and this is why so many people have accused them of running a cult, and I think that language is pretty strong, but there's definitely some culty stuff going on there.

Angela: 1:05:01

Yeah, yeah, totally, I guess, to back it up a little bit, would you tell me about when you found out you were pregnant for the second time and yeah, like what your thoughts were and like yeah, all that.

Nikki: 1:05:14

So that's pretty interesting. I didn't actually accept that I was pregnant until around Christmas. I actually took a pregnancy test on Christmas Eve and it was positive. But it's such a long story. But basically I had already been pregnant for three months but was kind of gaslighting myself into believing that I wasn't pregnant even though I had taken a previous positive pregnancy test. And I convinced believing that I wasn't pregnant even though I had taken a previous positive pregnancy test and I convinced myself that I had miscarried.

Nikki: 1:05:48

And it was just a weird and confusing time. I was very disconnected from my body In the background of everything. I'm in MMI and that is consuming my life because we're on these three hour long calls. I'm glued to my computer. Again, it was a huge financial investment, so I'm trying to really get my money's worth and it was just, yeah, really consuming my life and I. It was a time in my life where I just really needed to go touch some grass and come back to reality and enjoy my life and get off of the computer. So, yeah, it was just like a weird, a very weird time. So, yeah, I had been pregnant for basically the whole program but hadn't really accepted that until Christmas.

Nikki: 1:06:47

Until Christmas, and then I think I it gets confusing with the, with the numbers, but I had thought I was six weeks and I could feel kicking, could feel movement inside, which is not really possible that early, and I could also feel it from the outside, which is absolutely. I know, every woman is different, every baby's different, everyone's body is different. It's just impossible. The baby doesn't even have legs yet. You know what I mean. You're not feeling movement from the outside.

Nikki: 1:07:16

So that was my first clue that I was further along than I thought I did. So I had three possible conception dates, so I just kind of bumped it up to the middle one. And then, yeah, after some other assessments, I actually had listened with a Doppler, which of course we're being taught in MMI that the Doppler is the devil and it's going to kill your baby. So I listened with the Doppler to because I would have been 10 weeks along at that point and it's possible to hear with the Doppler at 10 weeks, but it's going to usually take a little bit to find the heartbeat and it's also going to be very low, like right above the pubic bone, and I had a feeling I'd find it around my navel. So that was my test to see how, if I was further along, so that and my measurements, consistently I was measuring bigger than I would have been. I kind of used some of those assessments to determine my real conception date.

Angela: 1:08:33

So what were you thinking then at that point?

Nikki: 1:08:36

So my first due date was the end of August, and then it moved up to the beginning of July and then it moved up to the end of May. So it was, yeah, to be three months off is crazy, but also to not know you're pregnant or just to be blatantly denying that you're pregnant for three months, that that was actually really hard for me. I I felt like really bad about how disconnected I was from my body. I felt really sad about missing the entire first trimester of my pregnancy.

Nikki: 1:09:20

Yeah, I mean, I, I really I try to be very connected with my body and very in tune. And now I can kind of see that it was because I was so obsessed with this program that I wasn't really able to to live in my body and be in the moment, and that, you know, of course, is my responsibility. So I'm not blaming that on any program or anyone else, but but yeah, it was really. It was really kind of like disappointing and sad that I had missed so much of my pregnancy, especially as someone who loves pregnancy so much. It was kind of a bummer, but um, but yeah, I mean it is what it is so how are you feeling then?

Angela: 1:10:08

like after that, like into the new year, as things progressed?

Nikki: 1:10:12

I had another pretty straightforward pregnancy. I had a lot of anxiety in this pregnancy. I death in stillbirth and miscarriage was an overarching theme that just kept coming up over and over again and so we we talked about it in mmi. But I had also taken a training on supporting women through loss and I had also made it one of my personal missions to support women through loss and to kind of shed light on it, and at first it didn't bother me. But as I progressed through my pregnancy there were a lot of women in the Lighthouse membership. I was also in the Free Birth Society membership. There were a lot of women who were experiencing loss. There were a lot of women who were experiencing loss.

Nikki: 1:11:20

So it felt like every time I logged in to Mighty Networks, into that the membership, it felt like every time I logged on there was someone talking about how they lost their baby. So you know, and also it was being very much normalized in the program. Yeah, I don't, I. So in my own experience attending births I had only ever experienced one baby who had passed, and that baby had passed a couple of days after they were born. So to me it's not normal, like stillbirth isn't normal.

Nikki: 1:11:52

I know it happens and I know sometimes it can't be prevented, but that I don't think it's that common. But for some reason in this program they were presenting it as something. It was weird. They're using this weird language like, well, it's not common, but it's not uncommon. Okay, what does that mean If it's? You know those are two opposites. If it's not uncommon, then it's common. So that was kind of weird.

Nikki: 1:12:39

But I felt like some of now, upon further reflection, I think some of those losses probably could have been prevented if there was some sort of assessment prenatally or if there was a skilled birth professional present during the birth. So I still stand by that every woman has the right to decide what kind of birth they want to have, where they want to birth and who they want present at their birth. So I don't want to blame any families for what they choose. It's always a horrible thing when a baby passes, no matter how it happens, and I don't think we should be blaming families who are mourning and grieving. But I think maybe in the free birth society sphere I think they were normalizing it a little too much.

Angela: 1:13:15

Um, and so it's also have that nuance in the mindset of like free birth or bust, because yeah, like a lot of you know, it was a lot of persuasion to like be free birth or bust or very bad things will happen to you if you go into the medical system at any point for any reason and well, a lot of yeah.

Nikki: 1:13:34

So there's that fear-mongering of if you go to the hospital they're going to assault you, which is true sometimes, but I've also I know women and I have attended births who actually had positive experiences in the hospital. Do I think I would have a positive experience in the hospital? No, because of who I am as a person, I'm very adverse to the medical system. I just very adverse to the medical system. I wouldn't go unless it was an absolute emergency. But some women are looking for those services and it really is a shame because even the woman I attended who ended up transferring, she felt an incredible amount of guilt and shame and she didn't even want to share her birth story and still, almost a year later, she is still having a hard time navigating that and I think it's mainly because of that home birther bust mentality. She definitely didn't have that mentality the whole time through her pregnancy. She always told me that she would rather go to the hospital than have something and that free birth or bust mentality is very prevalent in the community and it made it so she doesn't really feel safe sharing her birth story with any of those women and I think that's so sad. Yeah, yeah, it really started to mess with my mind Like, is this a sign? And I mean I can talk about it now because I mean, as you can see, I'm holding my son and he's perfectly healthy.

Nikki: 1:15:30

But I there were times in my pregnancy where I was absolutely convinced that I was going to have a stillbirth and it was. It was. It was really painful and challenging in it. It was, yeah, it brought up an overwhelming amount of anxiety. I was constantly questioning, questioning myself Am I doing something wrong? You know, like, should I be doing something? Like? Yeah, it was really difficult and thankfully I did seek out.

Nikki: 1:16:06

You know, I'm doing my own assessments as someone who's completed a midwifery training, doing my own assessments as someone who's completed a midwifery training. But I eventually went and saw this was actually after I had left MMI. I saw out a midwife in my community who I had attended births with and who I trusted and who I knew was free birth, friendly, and I went in for a prenatal appointment with her and she was just able to reflect back to me kind of what I knew from doing my own assessments. But it was just really comforting to get a second opinion and I think if I would have stayed in the program and stayed in with that indoctrination of, you know, free birth and wild pregnancy. I think I might not have done that, you know. So it was nice to be able to to accept help.

Angela: 1:17:02

Yeah, definitely Did you birth after you left the program. Then you okay, so yeah.

Nikki: 1:17:09

I had been out of the program for several months at that point, as these stories like overlap each other a little bit.

Angela: 1:17:19

what was the final thing that kind of made you want to leave the program?

Nikki: 1:17:23

Yeah, I think it was a lot of things, a lot of things. There was one woman who was kicked out of the program who was actually in my RBK cohort and she wanted to stay in the program and she was removed for speaking her mind. What she said wasn't even that bad. I mean. I was appalled that she was kicked out of the program and she wasn't the only one. There were a lot of women who were kicked out of the program. But I think her story specifically was really troubling to me because she had really didn't do anything wrong at all and she was so upset and really wanted to stay in the program. So just seeing how Emily and Yolanda were treating women who had paid them thousands of dollars.

Angela: 1:18:21

Like tens of thousands of dollars in her case.

Nikki: 1:18:24

I know yeah in her case, she had gone to the festival, she did RBK, she did MMI, so she was all in right. So you would assume that they would kind of trust her character, that she you know she's invested so much into their programs and their courses so it just seemed really out of pocket for them to just boot her like that, without any explanation, without any conversation. So there was that watching women. I mean, I'm a free speech absolutist. I understand that it's their program and they should have a certain amount of guidelines in, you know, like a code of conduct. I'm not opposed to that, but it seemed like women were being punished for speaking their mind and for asking reasonable questions. So there was that. But even up to that point I still wanted to stay in the program because I didn't want to completely lose out on my investment. Because I didn't want to completely lose out on my investment, I knew that a refund was probably out of the question, so I just wanted to see if there was anything more I could get out of the program.

Nikki: 1:19:41

What really put the final nail in the coffin was the last two live classes that I attended.

Nikki: 1:19:56

Live classes this that I attended, there was one where yolanda addressed the reddit drama and just the way she spoke about it I felt was very strange.

Nikki: 1:20:06

She um, yeah, she compared her the situation to thecible, which, if listeners don't know, is about the Salem witch trials, and yeah, she was very dismissive of anyone who was asking questions. It's all drama, don't even pay attention to it, it just seemed. Her reaction to it seemed very, very sketchy to me. So that kind of raised some red flags. She wasn't acting like an innocent person, but still I'm like on the fence, still not sure if I was going to leave, was going to leave, and then there was the final call that I attended, which was presented. I'm trying to remember the exact language that they used. I think it was a time to join our hearts in connection, something like that. That's what the call was described as. So it was an extra call where we were allegedly supposed to be able to present some questions and kind of like recalibrate into the program after some drama, some people getting kicked out and all of that.

Angela: 1:21:21

Well, also, four of the mentors had left. They had mentors that were in, you know, guiding these pod calls. There were just smaller groups of women in the program and you yeah, four of them left as all of the red thing was starting that's.

Nikki: 1:21:35

That's an important piece. So not only were students being kicked out and willingly leaving, because in it's not just because of, you know, the reddit drama we don't even need to get into that. People were leaving because they were so disappointed about the course content and they were so disgusted by Emily and Yolanda's conduct in the live classes and how condescending and rude they were being to women. This is why people were leaving. It had nothing to do with any gossip or drama. It was specifically because of Emily and Yolanda's conduct and because of how much the course was lacking. It almost wasn't even worth staying in.

Nikki: 1:22:23

So in that call, the call starts out with Emily making legal threats to the entire Zoom room because people were recording the live classes and they were posting it on Reddit, sharing it privately, which is another thing that was very disturbing to me.

Nikki: 1:22:48

I was very disappointed that other women in the program who I guess naively thought would be able to honor the privacy of this space and to respect other women's privacy and the sensitive things that we're sharing, I was very disturbed that those very private conversations were being shared. So that was very disappointing to me and that was actually another reason why I no longer really felt comfortable engaging candidly in the program, because there were obviously women in the program who were not acting in good faith and who were sharing private conversations on Reddit and everywhere else. So that was another thing that was disturbing to me, and of course that's not Emily and Yolanda's fault. That is just other women kind of being bad actors in my opinion. I don't want to assume their intentions Perhaps they didn't have bad intentions but I still don't think it was respectful of other people's privacy.

Angela: 1:24:04

That was a turning point for me at least. At that point I was like this is such an unsecure space. Anything you say in here could end up with reporters from the New York Times, the Guardian, like who knows who else is. Like there's other women sharing these conversations with who knows who, and that was very disturbing for me.

Nikki: 1:24:21

Yeah, and you know I'm typically a very private person, but if I feel safe to do so safe to do so I will open up to people. And I felt very safe in the membership, in the courses I had taken with Free Birth Society. I felt very safe sharing with Emily and Yolanda and pretty much any other woman who was in that space. And it felt very violating. I don't think anything I really said was shared publicly maybe a few things, but yeah, it just felt very violating. I don't think anything I really said was shared publicly maybe a few things, but yeah, it just felt very violating to know that those sensitive conversations were being shared. So basically, that was the reason why Emily was making legal threats to the whole room. Basically, if you're sharing stuff and we find out you're screen recording and screenshotting, I have a whole legal team and I will attack you and all this stuff.

Nikki: 1:25:17

So felt like a weird way to start off a call that was described as a way to join our hearts in connection. That was kind of bizarre, but whatever. So I'm still listening and I asked a question. It's not really appropriate for me to share what my question was about, but I shared a question in good faith. I wasn't um, I wasn't trying to ask it in any certain type of way, it was just an honest, open. It was just an honest, open, genuine question that I was askinglit and the way I was spoken to, the tone in the words that were used by Emily as she was speaking to me felt very demeaning. She was absolutely speaking down to me. It felt very rude and I was blown away. I was completely shocked and that was the point where I knew that I could no longer engage with these people anymore.

Angela: 1:26:54

Okay, so you broke free and you're. We don't know exactly how far along. Do you estimate you were pregnant at this point? Like roughly?

Nikki: 1:27:03

I don't even remember. I was probably, we'll say about halfway through my pregnancy.

Angela: 1:27:09

How was like the rest of your pregnancy after you left the program?

Nikki: 1:27:13

Overwhelming. I had a lot to unravel, but I'm also very grateful that I left the program because it gave me that space to unravel all of the conditioning and to kind of come back to my own homeostasis and determine what do I actually believe in, what do I know to be true, given my experience in birth, in giving all of my studies with all of the trainings I had done so I didn't necessarily discredit all of the things that I had learned I will say that I learned so much from Emily and Yolanda. I think the radical birthkeeper school was a much more positive experience. I think they were a little bit more sane at that point. I think they both really went off the rails by the time we enrolled in MMI. I think they are both very extreme in their beliefs now, but still, even in MMI there were valuable conversations. So basically, I took the entirety of all of my knowledge and all of my experience and I came back to what I know to be true and I think that was extremely important for me to do to finish out my pregnancy and to enter the birth portal again. So yeah, I had space to do that.

Nikki: 1:28:41

It was wonderful to be able to get off of the computer. I probably didn't touch my computer for the whole rest of my pregnancy, unless, unless it was, you know, things I needed to do for business. But yeah, I even took a step back from my business and only, um, I really cut back on what I was doing. Now I am only doing a weekly newsletter and a monthly free resource. I moderate some other groups. But yeah, I kind of came back into my in-person existence and got much more. Yeah, just really took a step back from the technology aspect of my business and my life and it was really refreshing.

Angela: 1:29:30

What were the final, like weeks and then days leading up to when your labor started looking like.

Nikki: 1:29:36

It was still. I was still very anxious. I was very, very anxious because of all of the stillbirths that were happening in the membership. I was afraid that I was going to basically turn into a statistic of women trying to enjoy my time with my older toddler as you know, my last few weeks with her as an only child and just enjoy my husband and enjoy my life, and I think for the most part, I was enjoying my pregnancy. You know, I still felt good. Physically, I felt really good, but it was kind of like that lingering fear in the back of my head and, yeah, it was just a weird time because I didn't feel that way in my first pregnancy. I was so confident in my first pregnancy and I just knew that everything was going to be perfect and it was, and I just trusted myself and my body and, um, yeah, so it was definitely a challenge and I think I think these I'm grateful that these things presented themselves for me because I learned a lot. It really humbled me and this experience really, I think made me a better birth worker and made me, yeah, just really humbled me. But as I entered the birth process this next time, it kind of all came back and I just trusted my body, I let it unfold.

Nikki: 1:31:29

This birth was very, very quick. It was only three hours. It started kind of similarly to the first birth, where it started out as kind of some cramping, some weaker sensations, and so that started. At 5.30 in the morning, right when I woke up, my older daughter woke me up and then I started feeling sensations. My husband was already awake so I didn't even tell him I was in labor yet, but he offered to take her so I could get some more sleep. And I did not get any more sleep because it very quickly progressed into very intense contractions, very quickly progressed into very intense contractions and, yeah, within three hours he was born. It was, yeah, it was very similar to the first birth, where I was kind of just running around trying any position, doing anything I could to get comfortable, not really able to do so, and it was a little different. So in my first birth I had the full fetal ejection reflex where I didn't even push, I just let it happen and she just came out.

Nikki: 1:32:48

And this birth I had a moment, I mean, I was screaming. It was so intense, it was so painful, so I'm up there screaming. And then I had a moment where I thought to kind of go inwards and to be more quiet and to kind of conserve my energy and I squatted down and then I got this overwhelming urge to push and I actively pushed him out and it was maybe three pushes, maybe more than that, maybe like five. And then he was born and he was I. I caught him and he was pink and screaming and he was perfectly healthy and I think I during the birth process I had forgotten my fears, but just an overwhelming sense of relief as I saw him and he was just clearly so healthy and so perfect.

Nikki: 1:33:51

And he was just clearly so healthy and so perfect and he was thriving and I just kept thanking God over and over and over again. I was just so insanely grateful to have a healthy baby. God everyday sense and it has really brought this new sense of gratitude for the health of my family into my life. You know I've always been grateful, but it was kind of on a new level just because I had all of those overwhelming thoughts in my pregnancy.

Angela: 1:34:27

But yeah, did his head come out with one contraction and then his body with the next. It wasn't all just in one.

Nikki: 1:34:34

I think I'm not even sure if I waited for the next contraction. I think it was just so intense and I don't even know what was happening. I was just ready for him to be born. It's just so intense and so painful that I think in the moment I just didn't even care and was just once I realized that he was in the birth canal and that he was coming. I just kept pushing, I think. I think I just was really ready to be done.

Angela: 1:35:04

Yeah, oh my goodness.

Nikki: 1:35:05

So how did your placenta come this time placenta come this time Actually easier, I so after he was born I called to my husband. He came up, so unfortunately he wasn't present for either of their emergencies. But he came up and I noticed pretty quickly that I was bleeding a lot more than I was in my previous birth and it didn't really concern me at first, but I was. I was nervous about the placenta so I was kind of afraid to give it any sort of meaningful traction or pull. But I did notice that I was bleeding a lot so I did take some herbs to to try to to help me birth the placenta and to kind of, you know, take care of some of the bleeding.

Nikki: 1:35:57

I was definitely concerned at that point and I actually made the decision to call that midwife that had helped me in my previous postpartum time and she was on. I don't even think she knew my due date. She had no clue that I was in labor. She was on her way to prenatal appointments and she dropped everything she was doing, canceled her appointments to come immediately to my house to help me. And again, I mean this woman. You know we've had our ups and downs in our relationship, but the times I needed her most she was there for me and I'm just so incredibly grateful for that. So she came.

Nikki: 1:36:38

At this point before she came, I called her. The placenta still hadn't come and I was still bleeding a lot. After I got off the phone with her, the placenta came maybe 10 or 15 minutes later and that was a huge relief just to have that done, and I think the bleeding was still pretty significant but it had slowed down quite a bit. I don't know if that's because the placenta came out or because I had taken those herbs, but at that point I was feeling pretty lethargic and pretty lightheaded and she was able to come and help me. So that was great.

Angela: 1:37:15

Yeah, having that support if you need it and not feeling shameful if you have to ask for it is so huge yeah.

Nikki: 1:37:22

And I also want to say you know I'm very confident in my ability to birth my babies. Like I said, it's very much a solo mission for me, so I don't really need too much support in that time. I also birth my babies very quick, so there's not a whole lot of time for any sort of support. I think maybe if I had longer births, maybe eventually I would want some help. But I really didn't anticipate that my husband would obviously need to be caring for our older daughter. I knew that wouldn't be a problem during the birth. I knew it would be great for him to just go off do his thing and take care of our older daughter.

Nikki: 1:38:05

But after the baby came, I need help, just even logistically help with him, help to get me to the bed, help with birthing, the placenta. I need him to go fetch me things. You know I'm going to need water, I'm going to need food, there's cutting the cord, there's so many things going on and I didn't really anticipate how challenging that would be for my husband. It was just impossible. He can't take care of our daughter and take care of me and clean up and do all of the things.

Nikki: 1:38:39

So that was something I really didn't anticipate. So that was another reason why it was so nice to have this woman come, because she cleaned up, she put the placenta in the freezer. There are just so many things that she helped that also. It's just nice to have a seasoned birth professional there. You know, my husband doesn't know all of the things that need to happen. This woman has attended hundreds of births. So she just came into my home cleaned up, like she just knew exactly what to do to help in that moment, and I think that was a huge help as well.

Angela: 1:39:16

Yeah, oh, that's awesome. So how like you're obviously still postpartum, but how was your like immediate postpartum and the last few months?

Nikki: 1:39:25

A lot harder. I felt really really good with my postpartum. With my first postpartum I felt like I had this whole hormonal reset. I felt like immediately I had so much energy. I felt really strong In my second postpartum, I think because I had lost so much blood and so I had gotten pregnant three months postpartum so I had no time to replace my nutrient stores. I was breastfeeding my whole pregnancy and my whole postpartum. Still I'm breastfeeding two babies now.

Nikki: 1:40:04

So I felt very depleted, I felt tired and I really felt called to rest and I I fully understood how important rest was in this postpartum time. And I, um I you know I had one dear friend who came every day for the first five days of my postpartum and she would come in, she would do the dishes, she would bring me water, she would bring me food, she would take my older daughter outside just to get her out of the house, and having her support in those first few days was just so helpful. And then, after my mom came and stayed for a week and a half and she was able to support me and just stay with us. So, and then my mother-in-law came, maybe a week after that and she stayed for a week. So in some ways it was very similar to my first postpartum and in some ways we had support, but it still wasn't enough.

Nikki: 1:41:19

So again, I felt really lonely. I felt let down by some of my friends. You know, in some ways I have had visits from some of my friends and they've brought me meals and they've celebrated with me and they've held space for me. But, yeah, two of my longtime best friends. We've been best friends since we were 12. Both of those women I'm two months out and both of those women have yet to come to visit me. They haven't really checked in very much and I've felt very let down and disappointed by that and it's really and you know they aren't the only ones, but it's really made me question who's here to support me in all phases of my life and who isn't?

Angela: 1:42:13

just to put it simply, have your views shifted on birth now, after all of the experiences that you've gone through now would you say they've changed at all.

Nikki: 1:42:26

Yeah, absolutely, I feel so much more open-minded. Absolutely, I feel so much more open-minded. It's interesting because I feel like I'm back where I was. Well, no, not even I was going to say that I'm back where I was a couple years ago, but I'm not. But I am.

Nikki: 1:42:43

I was more open-minded hospital and I can you know the hospital isn't for me and it's not typically where I choose to support women. Usually I support women at home. But my sister that is the place for her and she is very type A. She wanted all of the monitoring is very type A. She wanted all of the monitoring. She opted for the epidural and that was just what worked for her and I was able to support her in that. I think it was really so.

Nikki: 1:43:23

She had her baby a month before my son was born. So I was pregnant her whole pregnancy. We kind of like walked that journey together but we took two completely separate paths and I think at first that was very hard for me to hold and it was very difficult for me to respect her choices because I kind of am a know-it-all and I felt like I'm doing things the perfect way. But after witnessing her birth and supporting her through that, I was able to fully recognize that that is the place where she feels more comfortable. And, yeah, I was finally able to come to a place where I completely respect her as a woman and as a mother, and I completely respect her as a woman and as a mother and I completely respect her decisions.

Nikki: 1:44:13

And that's another thing that I'm very grateful for, because it didn't feel good to be judging both of my sisters' birth their babies in the hospital and I attended both of those births and it doesn't feel good to be judging your sisters and to be judging other women, to be judging your sisters and to be judging other women, and I don't I'm not better than anyone else. So it felt really nice to come to this point where I just completely respect them and we don't do things the same. That's fine and it's. You know, it's really none of my business how they want to birth their babies and how they want to raise their children. And, yeah, it feels good.

Angela: 1:44:55

Yeah, it's kind of brings it right back to the whole point. I feel like why I'm doing all of these episodes, and it's to highlight that the idea of free birth is an amazing, beautiful idea that definitely works for a lot of women beautiful idea that definitely works for a lot of women. But it doesn't become a good thing when it shifts into an ideology where it's like everyone should free birth.

Nikki: 1:45:17

Yeah yeah, it can become very dogmatic and I don't think everyone should free birth. Thinking about my sister's sister's birth specifically, she, she doesn't want a free birth. So there's that. But I also don't think that she's a good candidate for free birth. And at one point in my life I thought that free birth, I thought that everyone could free birth. You know, I was excited. I had my own dreamy free birth. It was great and I was just so excited and I'm thinking everyone should do this, everyone should know this bliss and this joy.

Nikki: 1:45:53

And you know, and still I do see where I disagree with some of the practices that happen in the hospital and I don't think that they are always, you know, conducive to the hormonal matrix and all of that, but I still think that not every woman I want to be careful with my words, but I think it's important to have a certain level of knowledge and confidence to safely free birth.

Nikki: 1:46:33

And I think there's a reason why some women transfer unnecessarily when they free birth, and when I say unnecessarily, I mean just without the presence of an emergency or complication. I think some people believe that you don't need to do any research to free birth, and that might be the case for some women, but I also think that they kind of got lucky and I do think it's a good idea to have at least a certain foundation of knowledge. The reasons why I am so confident free birthing is because I have so much experience in birth work and a foundational medical knowledge where, if my baby did need to be resuscitated, I would know what to do. You know what I'm saying.

Angela: 1:47:25

Yeah, I definitely think it is important to do some research if you're planning on free birthing, for sure, and to just be careful because, as we're highlighting, there is some misinformation out there in certain programs. So yeah, and then also, like you mentioned, there are ideologies on both sides, like the hospital has their whole set of ideologies of how things should be, which you know isn't a good thing on either side. But to have these ideas and to just let women choose, you know, do their own research and choose what's best for them, I think is really what's most important.

Nikki: 1:48:00

Yeah, absolutely, and that's a huge reason why I created um, the birth my, my birth prep course is because I saw the value in providing information and I tried to be as non-biased as possible. But I really just wanted to present women information so they could make their own decisions. I'm not really interested in telling people how they're supposed to birth, but I do think that it is very valuable to have real evidence-based information, because there's so much garbage out there and there are so many people who are just giving their opinions without anything to back it, and I do think it is really valuable to have some sort of research or evidence to back what we're saying. Of course, there's a lot of anecdotal information that can be valuable, but, yeah, I think it is helpful to present the medical perspective and the out-of-the system perspective and everything in between, and then women can just take that information and choose what feels best for themselves.

Angela: 1:49:18

Yeah, that's so important. So how can people get ahold of you, what's your website, and is there anything else you want to share about your birth course?

Nikki: 1:49:29

Yeah, so my website is bornfreefamilycom. I do mainly these days, I do coaching virtually, and I also support women locally in person for postpartum care, locally in person for postpartum care. So I do stuff like yoni steaming yoga, meditation, stuff like that, and, yeah, I also have the knowledge is power birth prep course, which is my go at your own pace comprehensive pregnancy, birth, postpartum and newborn care resource. So you can find all of that on my website and I also have contact information on there as well, so people can shoot me an email if they have any questions or if they want to get in contact with me.

Angela: 1:50:29

Awesome. Knowledge is power. I love that yeah.

Nikki: 1:50:33

Great name for it Awesome.

Angela: 1:50:34

Well, thank you so much, Nikki, for taking the time to chat with me today and for sharing your story.

Nikki: 1:50:40

Yeah, thank you so much. This was really wonderful.

Angela: 1:50:44

Before you go, I just want to remind you I have a ton of resources for pregnancy and birth. If you're pregnant, whether you're a first-time mom or if this is your fifth baby, I want you to check out the show notes, because I have some free trainings and free downloads that you can sign up for, as well as the link to access my Labor of Love, a comprehensive, self-paced online childbirth education course. I created this course specifically for moms who don't want to be told what to do, regardless of where you're birthing or who you're birthing with, and I'd honestly love to teach you everything that I know so that you can prepare for an autonomous birth experience and prepare to step into your role as the leader of your birth journey. So click to the show notes, check out all of those links and, if you ever have any questions, feel free to DM me at my main birth over on Instagram.