Interview with former midwife and current midwitch Anna from Sweden || Chatting physiological birth, birth culture and midwifery

Today I chat with Anna as a part of the midwife stories series. 
Anna is actually Swedish and currently lives in her midwitch cottage in Sweden, but to my delight, the day of this interview, I learnt she studied and practiced midwifery in Australia!
 She shares her eclectic journey pre birth work and how her passion for human rights is what has continued to motivate her in this work. Anna has so much knowledge, and it was truly wonderful to talk to her about midwifery, physiological birth, witches, birth culture and the importance of knowledge sharing amongst women, but also birth workers. 

Anna also is the host of the Natural Birth Podcast and has some great online offerings for which she has given me a code which is my name ELSIE to get 10% off her courses and offerings.

Don't forget to check out the May sponsor https://letstalkbirth.au/ and use ELSIE15 to get 15% off 


Resources: 

• Midwives as the OG witches https://www.salon.com/2023/10/23/were-midwives-the-og-witches-how-the-history-of-mystic-medicine-and-reproductive-health-intertwine/
• What is Human Design? https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3wnnx/human-design-meaning-what-is-it
• All of Anna's courses and offerings https://www.sacredbirthinternational.com/work-with-anna

Connect with me, Elsie, the host :)

www.birthingathome.com.au
@birthingathome_apodcast
birthingathome.apodcast@gmail.com

CHAPTERS

00:00
Introduction and Background

01:31
Anna's Eclectic Journey in Midwifery

13:16
Women's Rights and Connection to Spirituality

24:11
Transition to Becoming a Mid-Witch

26:53
Supporting Women in Birth and Postpartum

29:13
Conclusion and Future Plans

29:42
Reclaiming the Word 'Midwife'

38:13
The Medicalization of Birth

43:26
The Rise of Free Birth and Home Birth Programs

49:28
Mentoring and Educating Sacred Spaceholders

51:19
Creating Safe Spaces for Birth Workers

Transcript

0:02

You're listening to Birthing at Home, a podcast. I'm Elsie, your host. I recorded this episode on unceded Wurundjeri land in Nam, Melbourne, Australia, where Aboriginal peoples had been birthing at home on country for thousands of years prior to the British invasion. They are the original storytellers. If you want to learn more about me, the podcast or how I can support you in achieving your home birth, be sure to check out my Instagram at birthingathome.com. underscore a podcast. As a part of the Midwife Story series, today I chat with Anna. Anna is Swedish and currently lives in her mid -witch cottage in Sweden, but to my delight, the day of this interview, I actually learned that she studied and practiced midwifery in Australia. She shares her eclectic journey pre -birth work and how her passion for hearing rights is what has continued to motivate her in this work. Anna has so much knowledge and it was truly wonderful to talk to her about midwifery. physiological birth, witches, birth culture, and the importance of knowledge sharing amongst women, but also birth workers. And also as the host of the natural birth podcast. And she has some great online offerings for which she has given me a code, which is my name, L -C -E -L -S -I -E to get 10% off her courses and offerings. Don't forget as well, if you would like to work with me, please check out my website, birthingathome .com .au. Enjoy this episode everybody. Welcome, Anna to Birthing at Home, a podcast. Thank you. So lovely to be here. Thank you. And you're joining me all the way from Sweden and I think it's 11am for you right now. Yeah. 7pm for me here in Melbourne. But that's the power of social media, right? Like connecting and then I was, yeah, I am. thought that I would, you know, go onto your website and like have a little look this afternoon. And then I saw you were on the birthing instincts podcast. And then when you said that you were in Australia, I was like, what the heck? Like, I did not know that. So, and do you want to give a bit of like, background to who you are? Obviously, we know that you live in Sweden now, but you know, where you've kind of been, I guess? Yeah, well, you know, doing a back Crown is always so hard. I'm crowning 38. Where do you want to stop? So yeah, I'm born and raised in Sweden. However, I've been quite nomadic my whole life. So since I was 17, I haven't lived anywhere more than a year until I arrived in Australia, arrived in Bar and Bay actually. Not the first time, but the second time I arrived in Bar and I stayed and I ended up staying for like six years or something. And I... did become a midwife there as well. So yeah, my background story, you know, I've always been very passionate about human rights, women's rights, minorities rights, children's rights. I studied that actually in Stockholm University when I was 20. I've always been very also interested in nature medicine. So between the age of 18 and 20, I studied Nature medicine, Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, massage, all kinds of holistic therapies, herb medicine. And then I went out into the world at 21, started in Australia actually as a backpacker, 21 year old, fell in love with that country, kept on kind of coming back. as I was traveling other places around the world. I mean, I've been a tourist guide in Venezuela. I've been working in a bar, you know, when I was younger, you know, in the hospitality. I've been, you know, cleaner in motels. I've been waitressing, bartending, guiding, doing all kinds of stuff. And then I decided to become... massage therapist, spa therapist and working with tourism and health. I did a kind of a uni degree in that in Sweden when I was like 24, 25. I started an organic day spa for a year. I was a consultant around Sweden and then the world doing yoga. I started doing women's circles. I I trained in mystical dance, teacher training, and was very fascinated about ceremonies and rituals and women's work and started doing that now maybe 13, 14 years ago. I had a yoga house in the north of Sweden for a year that I called House Harmony. And then I went out again on the road. I've been traveling a lot during these times, but then I went back to New Zealand when I was 28. and I was working there around at festivals and yoga studios and holding women's circles and yoga and workshops and I got very much involved with understanding more and more about home birth and I met these amazing incredible women home -birthed babies and one became my friend and she was very involved in the home -birth and kind of movement in New Zealand and I was so fascinated because New Zealand you know obviously has compared to Australia as I know now and you know, totally different maternity system. And so when I landed in Byron Bay when I then was, I think 28 or 29, and I, because I was invited there to hold these women's kind of journeys, programs, retreats with another woman. And I was there for half a year doing that and just absolutely fell in love with the community. And I met some people that were midwives and I learned that it was 25 % home birth rate in Bahrain and almost everyone else went to the birth center also having natural physiological births. And I'd always had, you know, midwifery had always been in the back of my mind but like the traditional midwife, right? That old school midwife, that you know, being with woman, home birth, natural birthing. And in Sweden, and most of the world and most of Australia too for that matter. You know, it's very medicalized as you would know because you've gone through the system. And so I never wanted to be a midwife in Sweden because I had to become a nurse first. You have to do three years of nursing, then you have to work as the nurse for I think a year and then you have to do one and a half years or something of midwifery extras right on top of that. But then you're already so schooled into the medicalized system right? Yeah and it's totally different worlds. That was never something I wanted but then when I landed in Byron I was like, well, you know what? If I was... Well, mind you, I thought it was more like New Zealand so I was a bit naive. I didn't really do my research. I was like, there's an opportunity to, you know, learn from the Byron midwives and I could walk alongside them for three years. And of course, also I did placement at tertiary hospitals and I was in the uni world but I was naive thinking that, I know. this really hippie alternative beautiful natural place I'm going to be able to and I did and what I know now having you know worked and been out and you know met so many midwives and around the world whatever I did get a unique training because I was there so I did see you know all of my my personal continuity of care clients throughout my three years almost all of them had natural physiological births either at home or in the birth center right or even in the hospital. When I went to tertiary hospitals to work I ended up attracting, or maybe because of my presence, you know, what's the hand and the egg here? I don't know. But I almost never had any medicalization of my clients. So most were physiological, natural, even in hospital. When I was there on placement, you know, people just coming in too. I just, this happened to be like that for three years. I had to have extra time to experience cesareans, because no one would have a cesarean with me. No one would have an emergency cesarean with me. I don't know what happened. It was just how it happened, right? Yeah. And the same with like epidurals and all of that. So I had very little medicalization even during my tertiary kind of hospital experiences and placements. So I had this very unique three years of just so much normal and natural. Yeah. And my graduate year, I ended up standing up in LA Beach with Sundays at a little country hospital that, you know, I don't know, you I know you stopped. being a student maybe before you went to placement or I mean graduate. Yeah, finished. Yeah. So my graduate year, you know, you're not supposed to as a graduate be left alone. Well, day two. Like literally being in a country hospital. Yeah. The rules go out the window. You have no mentoring. You have no one. Like I had no one. I would have night shifts. I would be there. half of my shifts by myself, there was no other midwife, no other manager, it was me. And then I had to call if I needed extra help, but I could have a floor of like, you know, postpartum mamas, someone being induced, someone in, you know, early labor, someone coming in in labor, you know, and it was supposed to be low risk, but so much was not. So that was an initiation by fire that year. Very unsafe, to be honest, how they practice. I think they've changed that because I put up such a... I'm not a quiet person, as you might or might not know. I will speak up when I think something is wrong. And I did a lot and it made me unpopular for sure. But yeah, after that year, I never went back to the hospital. I decided that, you know, this is definitely I knew from the beginning, literally the first week of starting uni, I cried and I think I cried every week during my four years. Yeah. Because of the trauma, the violence, yeah, the violence system, you know, and I remember I got the question maybe half a year into my training, like how's it going? And I just, you know, I was... Those four years of my life were hard because I had to somehow I knew there was a higher purpose for me going through this hell because sometimes it was really hell. Yeah. So much traumatic because of what I saw in the system not ever ever a birth in itself like that is to me it's not traumatic it is the obstructive violence I witnessed it is the system that is violent it is that me as a student and also as a great midwife, my allegiance had to be with the institution. I could not be the full midwife that I wanted to be for women because I'm employed by an institution that tells me I had to follow these policies and guidelines because if something did not go the way you know it should go then I would have been in the wrong even though the policies and guidelines most likely would cause trauma to the woman I had to do those things. Of course I again, was the little rebel I was known as the, you know, bar and hippie at my graduate year and that, you know, I wasn't toeing the line. But in saying that you still have to, you can't be in the system and fully be woman centered. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the real, yeah, that's the real part of it. And I guess, yeah, that's many reasons why I didn't finish because I was like, I don't want to go do a grad year. I don't want to go to the hospital if I, if it had been an option to go straight into, you know, working with private practice midwives, but you know, that, you know, do more physiological, they have a more physiological approach and, you know, you know, mindset, maybe it would have been different, but also like midwifery in Australia is just, It's just even the home birth midwives are, you know, witch hunted, you know, I guess all the way back. Like, so you started doing all of these, you know, natural therapy kind of things and the women's circles and whatnot in your, you know, initiation into womanhood and whatnot. Like, was that stuff on your radar or like how, how is it in Sweden? Like, you know, in terms of like girls education, is it similar to what Australia's probably is in that like, we don't really get anything or like, what was your experience? yeah, absolutely. For sure. You know, I have always been you know, how every family has a black sheep or whatever you want to say. I was always the weird one, right? From from from very early on, I was the sensitive kid. I was too sensitive. Everyone thought I was too sensitive. Yeah, well. Right and I've always... So when I look back at my childhood I had always had a strong rights pathos like I remember being a seven -year -old and this boy was bullied in school yard and I alone and I was quite bullied on and off like throughout my school years right being so different. Yeah. Although speaking truth and just not bit it not yeah towing the line as always but as a seven -year -old I saw that these boys bullying him several boys. I placed my body in front of his and said, don't do that, like stop it. So, and now I can think like, whoa, I was, I was cool, you know, but that was not like, so I didn't have this thought process of I'm going to put myself into trouble. Reflecting on that. I just did, I just acted. So I would do those things like as a very young child. And you know, as a, I think 14 year old, or maybe younger, 13, I discovered what the church had done to women, the witch trials. Very early I discovered that somehow through social science, like through history, whatever, somehow that came up and I learned about it. And there was this strong remembrance in my body as a very young girl that that was me. Like I have experienced that. I feel that that's... That affected me so deeply. It catapulted me into some sort of rage about the world and about what women and children experience because of the world we have. And I remember somehow then my dad told me as a 13, 14 year old, he's like, I know a witch. He told me. My parents are like the straightest and I was so shocked. I was like, what? And they said yes. And so he got in contact with her and said, hey, my daughter needs some guidance. Yeah, from a witch. From a witch. Yeah, she called herself a witch and a shaman. And she was from the north, a shamanic woman from the north. And I got to sit in circle with her and like 50 year old women, 40 year old women. I was 13. And she taught me, she taught me, yeah, things. And since then that just became my normal. I was hanging out with much older women than me. I learned that my sensitivity and intuition was not something that was wrong, but was a superpower. And how to harness that and how to like, you know, strengthen that within myself. And then, yeah, on that path it was. So it's always been for me. the natural world, natural healing and then human rights, what is right and wrong, being very strong, advocating for people, for myself, for what I believe is truth. That has been throughout whatever I've done. I also went into studying with the city mission, so I was very involved with homeless people and... went traveling to other countries where there was orphanages, which is not something we have in Sweden anymore. And women who trafficked it. Yeah, so I was very like immersed with those things as well as a young child and. Yeah, wow. Yes, like, I can't remember your question. Sorry. No, but that's like, wow, that's so special that you got to sit in circle and like, you know, connect with. women that had this still connection to themselves and that sort of like spiritualness because yeah, pretty much that's in mainstream society that's. Yeah, I mean, if, if I said, you know, if I can just imagine I go to work tomorrow and say, like I spoke to a witch yesterday, they would be like, what are you talking about? Like, you're mad. It's just not, it's not like part of at least, you know, the mainstream world anymore, like that connection. And in, you know, in these conversations and in this kind of community, Do you remember there being kind of discussion about birth and within that, you know, like birthing at home and whatnot? Not as a child, no. You know, I can just remember I've never been, believe it or not. like a baby person, you know, some people like see a baby and like, my god, a baby. I'm like that with dogs. If I see a dog, I'm like, my god, look at the dog, I need to pet the dog. But never with babies. And still I'm not like that with babies. Even though I've been a midwife for so many years and all of that, I just, but pregnancy. The idea of pregnancy has always fascinated me and just, I think, you know, how I entered midwifery was for a woman. Now, definitely for the babies too. And it's so important how the babies enter this world for sure. But from where I came from was for women, you know, women's strength, power. You know, it's like the ultimate testament to how powerful we are as women is to birth new life. I just, it's a woman's superpower. And that's how I came into Midwifery and that I think is where I'm coming from. Yeah. Sure. I've been a kind of, you know, feminine embodiment coach, whatever you want to call it, for years. And that's where I came from, like sitting with women, like looking at their first rite of passage, how was their first men are, how did that inform them about the woman that, you know, she was supposed to be in this world, what it is to be a woman, looking at her relationship to sexuality, which I would say, during all my years, say 15 years of working with women in this kind of space of like her embodiment of her body, self love, body love, sexuality, her relationship to her, you know, vulva, vagina, iony, her, you know, men are all of that. 99 % of women do not have a healthy relationship with either of them. All of them. It's just, and even the woman you think would don't. There's just such a disconnect to being woman. Yeah, being cyclic and our sexuality, you know, we're so, we're so the world tells us the sexuality is from a very kind of toxic, immature masculine way of like a rabbit or something. Yeah, which is not it's so far from feminosexuality. You can come. And that's why so many women don't have orgasms have never had an orgasm are so disconnected with our body. There's just this. It's a It's all, it's body shame, it's all the things. But so coming from all of that, that's where I came from coming into Midwifery. Wanting to continue this work of like, how can women really understand their powers, women through birth and not, which I then witnessed so much in the system, being freaking broken even more than the world already does for women, right? But even more so in birth, like. failing to progress, the biggest reason why, you know, medical, well what's happened in medical institutions, being cut open for so many wrong reasons, all of these things, right? Yeah, and taking that power and saying, we saved you. And so then the, you know, the women don't, yeah, like, don't even know it, like they don't know that the power of that whole process and... Yeah, certainly. I reminded me of a recent episode I recorded with someone about perineal tearing and she had a free birth and she was saying, like, thank God that or not, you know, thank God, but like, I had been, you know, she was saying I had been looking at my vagina and I knew what my vagina looks like. So after I had my free birth, I looked at my vagina and I was like, well, like I can tell that perhaps there's a tear here that you know, is a bit more than what I might be able to heal naturally at home. And I was like, my gosh, I haven't looked at my vagina. You know, that connection. It's just like, there's so yeah, it's but yeah, certainly again, you're not encouraged to do that because yeah, like why would you be looking at your vagina? Like, yeah. Are you, are you a rabbit? Like, like it's just, yeah. Yeah. Like so many, so many thoughts and words and frustrations and yeah, but that's, that's magical. So just pausing here to thank the May sponsor for the podcast. Let's talk birth. and share a discount code with you all. At Let's Talk Birth, they're dedicated to providing unwavering support to women as they prepare for childbirth and beyond. You can discover tailored doula support, created products, and expert guidance from endorsed midwives and certified lactation consultants all in one convenient place. Join their community and experience a space of knowledge, compassion, and shared experiences as you navigate your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey. We hold the mother while she holds the baby. For an exclusive 15 % off this May, use the code LC15, that's E -L -S -I -E 15 at checkout. You can visit letstalkbirth .au to see all of their amazing products. I recently got the Bink glass water bottle and I love it, but they have amazing carriers and very, very cool brands. in store, so make sure you check it out. And thank you again so much. Let's talk about for supporting the podcast. Okay. Now we get on with the rest of the episode. So after you finished your grad year in the country hospital, did you like, where did you go from there? Did you go back to Byron Bay? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I went back to Byron. I went back to Byron when COVID happened. no. Well just before actually that's wrong but before yes so I went back to Sweden for a little while to visit my family and then I came back and yeah so I did home birth and I started what was then called the spiritual midwife. Yeah. Now I'm called the spiritual mid -witch. Yeah. And yeah and because I... I did a whole journey, you know, during my grad year, I had this very strong, strong intuition telling me I needed to become self -sufficient, I needed to go out in the countryside and like grow my own food and just become self -sufficient. I had this very strong urge and I was in this beautiful apartment overlooking the ocean in the week Sundays, it was amazing. But I just had this strong just feeling, I didn't know where it came from and the year after COVID happened. happened and the world changed and so like that's where it came from. And so I had a very strong feeling like that and then I went back to Australia from Sweden literally just a month or two before you know the lockdowns kind of happened in March come back I think end of January or something like that. And my plan was to start educating more about physiological natural births and and try to prevent all this trauma I was seeing in the hospital, you know, trying to help women optimize their chances of having a natural birth outside or inside the system. So that's where the natural birth course, my signature course was born. I actually did that at home in my brother's kitchen in Sweden, that course. Recorded it there between 2019 and 2020. And then, and went back to Australia. And then I also created the nursing postpartum course because of course if women are bad at kind of preparing properly for their birth, they're even worse when it comes to preparing for their postpartum. Like so many women will prepare up to their teeth for having a home birth, a free birth, a natural birth, whatever. And then very, very like, very extreme of those, I would say like 5 % of those actually prepare properly for a postpartum. So anyways, that's where that was birthed. few months later after that. And I attended home births in Byron and then I started traveling up and down because I'd make so much connections in Queensland as well. So I was traveling with both my temple works and my women's circles and also started to coach around the world women who wanted to have natural physiological births in all birth settings and also birth trauma like starting to help women understand why their birth unfolded the way they knew that did and for women to actually have someone really truly compassionate listening to their story when they had a traumatic experience and also being able as a midwife to read their notes and go you know what most of this trauma that I would live I would say 99 % of women coming to me with a birth trauma healing session, it is the system that created that trauma. It's because of all the interventions and the things that did not help her uphold the physiology. That's what made it traumatic. She wasn't heard, you know, so much of aesthetic violence. So that's what I started doing. And then I started mentoring women who wanted to become facilitators in holding space for women generally like all rights of passage is not just birth and women's circles and this stuff and then I thought what the heck it's been one and a half years in 2021 they still haven't opened the borders my dad had cancer and I just there was so many different reasons that I went I think it's time for me to go back to Sweden for a while and I don't know for how long but I felt like it was time so that brought me back to Sweden in 2021, then I was back again in Australia and traveled a bit more. But now, last year in 2023, in May, I decided to come back and finally buy my piece of land, my little midwich cottage, and now I'm growing my own food and I'm working towards self -sustaining, you know, as much as I can. But, you know, I can have my own fire stove and... fireplace and my own water and my land where I'm growing stuff in my greenhouse and I'm getting chickens. And so I'm on my way, you know, having that strong intuition in 2019. It only took me four years, but here I am. That's incredible. In Sweden, which I did not think. But again, the pandemic just turned the whole, you know, world upside down and values changed. And all of a sudden it was time to return to my homeland. Yeah. Yeah, and I listened to a bit of your interview on the perfect instincts podcast later this afternoon. And it was about the term midwife. Do you want to give a bit of an explanation from my listeners about, you know, midwife midwich why the change, especially because you did call yourself the spiritual mid wife previously. Yes, and I have such a you know, I love the word midwife, you know, and I really do. you know, feel that the institutions and powers to be really have stolen that word. So in different countries around the world, and because I'm international when I work, so I haven't told you yet, but I you know, I started also 2023. So last year, the sacred birth record mentorship, so I now mentor and educate women who want to work as sacred spaceholders and birth advocates for women much. a much deeper, broader, more holistic, very much, you know, everything you should learn in midwifery school, except the medicalization and your medical skills. I teach my, you know, beyond the doula training kind of women. Yeah. And So because I'm international and I coach women from all over the world and I am, you know, I became a midwife in Australia and in Australia and in also other places around the world, not all, I now am not registered. I'm a midwife but I'm not registered. And because I'm not registered here in Sweden and I'm no longer registered in Australia, I decided to let that registration go. I cannot legally call myself a midwife. And so that's why I changed my name to mid witch. So it's kind of to protect myself because there's, as you kind of mentioned, there is a witch hunt on midwives, especially if you're not toeing the line being an obstetric nurse, because to be honest, if you work in the system, you're an obstetric nurse, you're not a midwife. It's, you know, you're constantly having to, you know, ask daddy doctor for permission for everything and you know everything becomes medicalized so very little is actually in the scope of midwife because midwife is natural birth it's like it's the guardian of the physiological the normal and really that only really happens at home yeah and maybe in birth centers depending on the birth center and you know if it's a connect to a hospital what kind of midwives are there but so they've stolen the word. I would say, you know, to summarize what I'm trying to say, the institutions have stolen it. Different countries have criminalized you calling yourself that, you know, midwife if you're not registered with a board that governs you, controls you, can punish you. And very much do. You know, as you just said, so many midwives, most midwives will be reported in Australia to APRA, other, you know, organizations around. yeah, all the time. Yeah. And so it's a way to protect myself and then also to claim the word mid or witch because you know I don't generally go around calling myself a witch but a lot of people frown at that world, thinks about like a scary woman that wants evil in the world and that is the image that actually the patriarchy and the church very much has branded into our psyche and it's still so very active you know. in our modern world. And it's not true. You know, which was someone who healed people midwife also midwife was the first to burn in the witch trials, the midwives were the first to be burned because they were the last women in society that had power over something which was not power or something. If you if you talk to a midwife, they don't have power or anything. But you know, looking from a masculine point of view from the church and so on. Yeah. they did not have control over women at the birthplace, right? That was midwives. So they had some sort of power. And so they were the first to burn. Midwives, they would attend both births, but also death. They would be kind of the wise woman of the village, the witch, the midwives, same thing. So, you know, and that's a man's respect as well. And, you know, in, in a community sense, like if you're respecting the, you know, the midwife down the road where you can't really like, you know, also pay the same respect and same allegiance to the patriarchal figure, right? So it's, yeah. Yeah, because the midwife would heal and you know, whoever was the figure at that time would kill. Their practice wasn't healing, right? And so, you know, back in the day too, it was an oral tradition because obviously midwives weren't educated, they couldn't write. So nothing almost has been kept, you know. in writing, so it's all the men, right, that started writing stuff from their point of view and barber surgeons and all these scary men who did things to women and took over and obstetrics is based on practicing on slaves and poor women, truly, the men did to kind of learn. And yeah, there's a shift around 1900s and all of a sudden, the rich would... you know, have this barber surgeon present and then all women wanted that and it gives a status symbol to just have him there and they slowly took over. And then, you know, we have the scary stories about Twilight Sleep and women being drugged and not remembering and thinking that that was the gold standard and all women should have that. But then, you know, finding out the truth about that. there's so much horrific story about how the obstetric world took over. And it's very much still based on that. Yeah. In our Even though it's just a different form now, but the same kind of attitudes remain that women's bodies are parts, they're supposed to work in one way. And that is not true. Yeah, women are not the same at all. They're all very unique. Yeah, I couldn't help it to remember that I'm pretty sure the word hysterectomy comes from like hysteria. Like just, there's, I mean, you don't learn that at school. Like no one's teaching, like you, there's so many situations, like you accidentally kind of come across things. Even the way that I came across, you know, midwifery, like I went to university to deliver babies. And imagine my shock when you find out, well, actually the woman's delivering the babies and you're just meant to sit on your hands. and, but my whole entire world changed. and this whole, you know, the past 10 years has like, I wouldn't be who I am now without having begun that journey. So even though, you know, I've talked about it before that I didn't, you know, finish, I did the three years of, midwifery nursing and just finished my nursing in the end, but like all of that knowledge and all everything that I have. I learned then triggered a response to now. And, you know, that's why I chose to home births. And that's why I'm doing the work that I'm doing and sharing, you know, stories because yeah, I totally acknowledge and, I'm desperate to discover and relearn all of this lost knowledge that yet it was an oral tradition. We weren't writing these things down. So all of the variation in birth, Well, you know, the hospital medical system has it in their textbooks that, you know, one plus one equals two, but like, that's not what birth is. It's not an equation. It's not, you know, a piece, piece of machinery on a, conveyor belt. It's, it's power. It's magic. Birth is magic. And. And all these variations of normal you never see in hospital because they never allow it because it's pathologized. So most women are pathologized. Most women walking into hospital will be, if they're not induced, they're augmented, right? They will be breaking their waters. They will be giving them centosanone. They will be doing something to that woman. Most women will get something, like very few. I saw that you learned from Ria Densie. I love how she says, you know that. you know, it's physiological birth is almost extinct, which it's true. It's scary, but it's true. And that's why this podcast that you have, what I'm doing, like this is so important that we are now telling these stories for women to really reprogram their subconscious minds and understanding and believing in just their natural God -given ability to birth. Like most women, given the right circumstances, can... and should be able to birth fully on her own. Yeah, very few need help. Yeah, very few. Yeah. But today we are programmed that it's life and death. And you know, you need the hospital and people say that, you know, instantly we say if you're gonna have a home birth, you know, but what if something happens? It most likely won't at home. Yeah, that's the thing. I say the opposite. Are you going to go to hospital? my God. Yeah. What if something happens? Yeah. You know? Yeah. because there it definitely has such a high chance of happening. Yeah. Something's going to happen to derail your desire of having a natural birth. Yeah, absolutely. and so like in terms of home birth and, well, I guess in Australia, word on the street is that free birth, the Karen area and the coal mine kind of thing is on the rise. and home births hopefully are on the rise in Australia, despite the major systemic issues. in Sweden, is it similar? Like what's briefly, are you able to give a bit of, you know? Yeah. So currently it's changing because of just massive. So when I returned, I think 2021, a third of the midwives left. that year. Like there's been massive protests, our cries to just because it's all over the world that is happening all over the world. Just midwives are having enough and the young midwives coming out are just absolutely indoctrinated into being obstetric nurses, just obstetric nurses. Because all the old midwives, all the ones with experience, all the ones that trust birth still leave because they're just so appalled of what's happening. All the unevidence based practices like inducing women at 39 weeks now or you know all these things that are happening that are just causing absolute trauma to women and babies. Midwives can't stand it, true midwives can't stand it and they're walking. So that happened and there's yeah massive outcries and in the media and stuff like this and you know free birth definitely has gotten its place all over the world now. I think all countries report about this you know women choosing this and of course usually not from a good angle of course, but it's at least being noticed because it is more and more happening, right? And you know, a lot of times it's just come together, all home birth and free birth the same, which is definitely not the same. But how it is here. So Sweden is very unique that so far it's been almost one of the only countries that women have no choices here, publicly funded choices. It's one choice and that is tertiary hospital. If you want to have a home birth, you have to pay for it yourself. You used to be able to have a home birth for publicly funded means up until 2010. And then something happened again, a witch hunt of midwives and someone else got in power. You know how this happens. It's always trying to not give women the choice and the power. And now that's kind of happening again. So it's very curious. Yeah. I found my little cottage in one of the most conservative regions in Sweden where, so where I found my cottage is only half an hour away from massive big Viking graves and like the epicenter, the spiritual center of Sweden, Scandinavia actually in the Viking times. And from before and after. Now of course when Christianity came to Sweden, the church. took over this sacred spaces, this was where all the tribes would gather, all the people would gather every year for ceremony, celebrations, all of these things. The church took over, so now there's like this place where most churches are, right? Because it's the spiritual center of Scandinavia. So I'm only half an hour away from this. And this is also where the university hospital is and where they're most against home birds in the whole of Sweden. Like the doctors, everyone there, like home birds, it's like witchcraft. But I moved here for some reason. I don't know why. It wasn't a choice to move there for that at all. It just happened to be like I found my dream house there. And couldn't. And about a month after I moved there, I get the news that there's this politician that is bringing in publicly funded birth centers and home birth in this region. That is the most against this. That is the most like very patriarchal conservative. you know, against this, right? So this is very curious and the curious that I moved there at the same time. So I'm actually going to have lunch with her next week. And hopefully this will spread around Sweden. And, you know, I'm also involved in a home, like home birth midwives network that we are working towards, obviously strengthening this in Sweden and changing what's currently a very medicalized, highly technocratic model. Yeah. Where midwives are. So midwives in Sweden has even a bigger scope of medicalization than Australia. So they can do four steps of vacuum. They have much more of that. They're somewhere in between a midwife and a doctor in Sweden. Yeah. Wow. And it's a different practice. We're bringing in more and more in Sweden continuity of care, but that doesn't exist at all. It's very much this year that that's being talked about and. brought in slowly into different places. It's changing. You know, water birth was banned for a long time because one baby died which has nothing to do with water births. You know, it was banned for ages. Now it's coming back. So it is happening, but it's so very highly controlled by the medical society, by the obstetricians and gynecologists that never ever see a natural birth. They are ruling still over midwives and mid -wifery everywhere around the world. Yeah. Yeah, in Victoria this year, hopefully by the end of the year, there'll be five publicly funded home birth programs. And so there's three new ones this year. And I'm doing a lot of advocacy work. Like I really kind of started Home Birth Victoria after finding out that it had sort of died during COVID any sort of, you know, organization, like formal organization of people in the home birth community. and we have like 500 members in that. It's only a Facebook and Instagram group at the moment, but, yeah, we have 500 people in that Facebook group already just after a couple of months and we have multiple meetups, across the state. but yeah, like the publicly funded home birth, it's, it's so tricky because for some women, it's going to make home birth and you know, the best chance of having a physiological birth more accessible. But for example, for me, I have big babies, my first baby was 4 .5 kilos, my second baby was 4 .6 kilos. So in any of those programs, I am not eligible because that's part of the exclusion criteria. They, you know, say, you know, we have the home birth program, which is great. But like, how many women are low risk enough and can remain low risk enough to actually get the chance to even, you know, be at home in labor. And then, I believe the transfer rates are around 30, 35 % for publicly funded home birth programs. And that's not like an accurate statistic to be giving because they're so restrictive anyway, like they're going to transfer for things that, you know, midwives that are trained in home birth, you know, and that's their, the physiological birth and all of the variations. they wouldn't transfer for the exact same reason. So it's just, it's so frustrating because you want to be grateful that, okay, finally, like maybe something's happening, but at the same time, it's like, but this is still not really right. Like, yes, it's because still when it's publicly funded, it's still dictated. Those criteria are dictated by the obstetricians and gynecologists that again has no business in midwifery. Yeah. no business in midwifery, but still they do because still society are valuing them higher than the knowledge of midwives. Even though they're putting their nose in business, they have no idea about, they've never seen a natural physiological birth. None of them have. Yeah. Yeah. They don't learn about it. Like, And that's not the type of person I would want to be at my birth, right? Like you, you, yeah, it's just, it's chaos, but we persist and we're both here. and, yeah, you're obviously doing amazing work and to be working with women all over the world. Like that's, that's incredible. is that what like, takes up most of your time these days? Yes, it does. So I've really found my passion. So I've always been a natural kind of educator. I don't know if you know about human design. Have you ever heard about human design? Yeah. So in human design, I am a hermit leader slash teacher. That's my design at birth. And it's so true. I love being tucked away in the countryside in my little Midwich cottage, you know growing my food being in the garden and then I pop online and I have the world to teach for and I freaking love it So yes, you know in my mentorship I have women from Australia all the way, you know, South Africa Europe the US Canada South America like It's just absolutely fabulous. I love love it and it's so needed, you know for me The real I got asked to start a doula training, that's where I came from. I just got asked several times. I had three people in one month. I never mentioned it. I haven't, you know, that I just asked, do you teach people? Do you teach people how to hold sacred space for birth? And I was like, no, but it seems to be a thing that people want. So that's how I came about creating it last year. And I've now had two cohorts. I'm currently teaching the second cohort and I'm starting a third one now in August, end of August, 2024. And it's an absolute delight and pleasure to spread, you know, to just plant these birth workers around the world that really understand sacred space holding in birth, because it's one thing to understand physiology and know all the things like a midwife or I have midwives in my cohort, I have doulas that have already been working 10 years and I have total newbies who've never, you know, never had a birth. worked in an office and I have mamas who've had a natural birth. I have all kinds of women from all walks of life that are just passionate about birth, right? A natural, physiological birth. And the spiritual aspect of seeing it as a rite of passage, that's kind of what draws them all to my mentorship. But you know, even those, like even these, even midwives and doulas who worked for a very long time find so much value in this mentorship because it teaches something that just is not taught anywhere. It's not taught in midwifery school, it's not taught in doula trainings. at least not most traditional ones. What is it like to really hold sacred space and how is your presence really affecting birth? Like I said, in my training three years, I barely had anything medicalized happen when I was there. Why? Maybe it's just that I attracted that or maybe it was the presence that I brought to the space. I think it's a combination of that. It really matters, your nervous system. what you bring into the space, your own relationship to your own body, your sexuality, your own vulva, looking at your vagina. Like we just, we go through, you know, a deep, deep dive, two months in my mentorship about like looking at your rite of passages. If you had your own births, what are you bringing in as a birth, working into the birth space? You need to really be aware of that. Being able to calm your mind, you know, this, you know, meditative state of being, being the ocean of awareness. So I bring so much knowledge about that. And that really comes from, being a yoga teacher, holding women's spaces for so long beforehand, being a coach for so long before being a midwife, and how that really also affected my practice to such great outcomes that I had with women. I'm now teaching others how to help their clients have similar outcomes because it matters. It matters who you have at your birth. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like... Yeah, you can choose your birthplace and it might be home, but if the space isn't right, then what's the point? and you know, I've experienced that firsthand. Like I thought, you know, at uni I learned so much about home birth because I was just lucky and I had, you know, the, the, the right tutors and the right lecturers, but going into my first, birth, I just thought. well, I've planned a home birth. I'm having a home birth. Cool. But actually now I can reflect so much and I'm like, no, the space, the things, you know, I, yeah, I had a home birth, but it wasn't exactly how I had like. Imagined it might well, not even imagined, but you know, it didn't go the way that I had hoped. And I think like, I know a lot of that is because. the space I hadn't like given thought to, you know, who I was inviting, the energies that they were bringing, the backgrounds that they were bringing, you know, their values. And yeah, I mean, most, most women that are like, are pregnant. And, you know, having babies don't. you know, haven't received any sort of knowledge about any of this. So that's, yeah, amazing that it feels like you've got like little. witches or little soldiers, you know, like all over the world and like one day we'll take over, take back our power. That's what I feel. I love, you know, that this is attracting women from all over the world. It's amazing. It's all rich because we're all teaching each other about the systems in different countries as well. And there's international sisterhoods being formed, which is also so amazing. It's a very deep kind of self -development program in its, you know, in becoming a a good birth worker, you're also really understanding yourself deeply and forming really solid relationships. Because that's something that's missing, I feel, in the birth world too. During uni, I don't know if you had, I think you did probably, but we would have debriefing circles with our cohort or with maybe our peers with a midwife, right? And we got to debrief birth experiences. And then that doesn't really continue in practice. Now I would gather with some of the home birth midwives in Byron. you know, maybe two, three times a year we would do like continuous development, you know, maybe maybe recess or something, and we would chat and share and share experiences, learn from each other in a safe environment. And that's a big part of this mentorship. You know, every month we meet the whole school and everyone gets to share their birth they've attended, share about clients, get, you know, feedback, you know, me as a mentor helping them, but also from the cohort learning from each other's experiences. That is richness. That is. invaluable as a birth worker. Yeah, we need those spaces to debrief safely, and confidentially, obviously, about our experiences and sometimes cry sometimes laugh and learn from each other. Yeah, I feel just another, you know, comment on that is that I feel that. there's, it's the divide sort of creates attention and competition. And so discuss open discussions and sharing and, you know, this reflection isn't, you know, supported in, in pretty much any, well, in healthcare in general, but like, you know, in the midwifery birth world, because, like, there's such a fear of risk and, of, you know, adverse outcomes and, you know, disclosing that maybe you've had an adverse outcome, you know, that can feel like, I imagine like quite risky because yeah, like, I mean, here in Australia, yeah, I probably knocking on your door. so that's, yeah, that's really beautiful because that's, that's how we learn. That's how we pass it on. that is the woman's way that it's the midwives way. Yeah, that's what midwives have done throughout the ages. We've been learning by watching and going alongside other midwives. That's how midwives were created back in the day. It wasn't that uni. That's again, and so much as you know, that we learned at uni was bullshit. It was totally unnecessary. So many things that we spent money and time on just to get that piece of paper that then chained us to the institutions. I mean, it's... Yeah, oof. Yeah, yeah, oof. And that's why people that, actually a lot of the women coming to my mentorship are ones who have been nursing at midwifery by just going like, I did not want to go into the system. I don't want to work in a hospital. I don't want to, you know, and they choose this path instead. Yeah. Which I think is a superior path, to be honest. Of course. Of course. Thank you so much for chatting with me, Anna. Do you have any last questions or comments or anything like that? No, I just think that, you know, what you're doing is amazing. So important to spread these home birth stories. To normalize home birth is so important. We do have... a very small growing number, but it needs to increase and women need to understand that actually if you are a healthy woman, you do not have really truly high risk, you know, core morbidities like heart problems, like, you know, something that truly needs you being in the hospital, then you're actually statistically better off at home. Yeah. If you want to have a natural normal birth, do not visit the hospital. They will make you pathological and choose home birth.