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Welcome to Birth, Baby!, your go-to podcast hosted by Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly, seasoned birth doulas and childbirth educators from Austin, Texas. Join us as we navigate the intricate journey of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care, offering invaluable insights and expert advice. Through candid interviews, personal anecdotes, and evidence-backed content, we aim to empower families with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. Whether you're seeking guidance on prenatal care, birth planning, or navigating the early days with your newborn, we've got you covered. Tune in to Birth, Baby! and embark on your parenthood journey with confidence.
The information provided on this podcast is for general information purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your qualified health provider with any questions you may have.
Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast.
Reliance on any information provided here is solely at your own risk.
Welcome, this is Birth, Baby.
Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.
Ciarra is a Birth Dula, HypnoBirthing Educator, and Pediatric Sleep Consultant.
Samantha is a Birth Dula, Childbirth Educator, and Lactation Counselor.
Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum maturing.
Today we have Meagan with us.
She's a full spectrum doula, student midwife, and childbirth educator.
Following the home births of her three children, she shifted her career to birth work and now helps families find joy and flow in their birth journeys.
Meagan's approach is caring, intuitive, and education focused.
She believes deeply in the power of birth to transform women and families and strives to bring deeper connection and trust to families in the birthing room.
Thanks for being with us today, Meagan.
You're welcome.
Thank you so much for having me.
We're so excited to have you here.
Meagan and I served together on the board for our doula organization a couple years ago, I guess now, or a year ago.
I don't even know how long it's been.
And it feels a little bit like we kind of went through the fires of Mordor together.
Yeah, we kind of went through our own labor and birth together.
So we're really bonded.
So I'm very excited to talk about all of this with you today.
And Meagan used to be on the Empowered Beginnings team as a doula back in the day.
So it's very exciting for me to kind of have this full circle and she's gone on to do her own things.
And now she's here to talk with us.
I love it.
We're so excited for you to get into midwifery so we can start working together with you as a provider.
Get on it.
So exciting.
So tell us about you and your journey into birth work.
So I was a mechanical engineer for about 15 years before shifting into doula work.
As you mentioned, I had three kids all born at home.
The first one was born in 2010.
And after his birth, I really struggled postpartum with breastfeeding issues and sleep issues and mostly just feeling really lonely.
And I always kind of, I think I had a spark back then that if I ever did anything different with my life, I would help other parents through this transition from person to mother or father.
And fast forward 10 years, two more kids continuing to work, didn't have time to think about anything, much less do anything different to forward my career.
Our wonderful babysitter mentions that she's moving to LA to do doula training.
And while she's talking about it, there's just like sparks going off in my heart.
And it was like, this is what I was meant to do.
So within like two weeks, I was signed up for full spectrum doula training with DTI, really intending to be a postpartum doula because that was kind of my passion.
But I did the full spectrum work because I had had two pregnancy losses along the way and I wanted to be able to support different life events, reproductive events throughout.
So-
Sorry, for people who don't know what a full spectrum doula is, because I don't know if we've actually talked about that on here before, but what is a full spectrum doula?
What does that mean?
So we're basically trying to support the entire reproductive life of a person.
That can be anything from infertility to pregnancy loss, to even gender changing pregnancy through postpartum.
So anything that has to do with someone's sexuality and reproductive life, we're trying to support.
So, yeah, so thinking that I would go into-
That was an awesome description.
Yeah.
Yeah, so thinking that I would go in and just do like postpartum work, I had to attend my two births to certify and I'm in the birth room and I'm just like, just like loving it, just loving the energy of the birth room.
And I don't know, I don't want to say that there's problem solving in birth, but like maybe that's the thing that kind of sparks my engineer heart in the birthing room is kind of like, ah.
I get that.
It's almost like a puzzle.
And I am more of a type A personality too.
And I think that that's also what I enjoy about it.
You really have to use your brain, even though you're quiet in the corner sometimes.
Yes.
And sometimes that is like, do I need to be quiet in the corner or do something different right now?
So yeah, I think that's really like, people are like engineer to doula.
That's a weird transition, but I'm like, it's kind of similar.
That's kind of where my thread goes.
I think that makes sense though.
It's like, to be a good birth worker, you need to be like the caretaking engineer brain, caretaking problem solver, because that's so much of what we do.
Yeah, exactly.
And people come to you with different issues and things like that, and want you to help them kind of navigate the care system.
And it really is, it's just, I don't know, there's always something different in birth work.
Every birth is different.
I learn at every single one, and it's really the learning aspect of it that keeps me kind of entertained.
I think that was what kind of drew me away from, more away from the postpartum into the birth side.
And then I just got deeper and deeper.
The more I attended births, the more I was like, oh, I want to do what the nurses and the midwives are doing.
And then I started my midwifery journey last summer, and I'm hoping to become a certified home birth midwife sometime in 2025.
So don't hold your breath, but it's coming.
We're so excited for that.
We're holding our buds, even though you're telling us not to, because we're so excited.
You're going to be amazing as a midwife.
That's really awesome though.
Sounds like you kind of came into it from, from a different way than some of us do.
So that's always, it's always just cool, I think, to hear about that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Everyone's story is so different in how they get into birth work.
And then, so you did the birth doula portion, you're now going and doing the midwifery portion.
And I know you have a million certifications between their trainings and all sorts of things.
Yeah.
So I've, gosh, I've done my robozo training with Gina Kirby here in Austin.
At some point I wanted to do more of the childbirth education piece, just because I felt like people needed more continuity of care in that situation too.
So really I got my HypnoBirthing educator certification last year.
And then the, something about ecstatic birth really appealed to me.
I found her kind of at the end of my first year being a doula and just the, it was mind-blowing thinking about shifting our birth culture from one of like pain and suffering to actual joy and pleasure in the birth experience.
And just everything I've been learning in that program over the last 18 months is just, I mean, it's like mind-blowing every step of the way.
So what is ecstatic birth?
What does that mean?
Yeah, you're gonna need to define it.
Yeah.
So the way my teacher is Sheila Camara Hay and the way she defines it is, it's just thinking of an ecstatic experience.
So an ecstatic experience could be anything.
It usually involves something physical, some sort of physical trial, something mental and also has a spiritual component.
So if you think about it, this can be anything from sex to birth to even some religious and spiritual practices.
Note that I didn't say it was going to be easy.
A lot of ecstatic experiences are hard along the way.
Think of something that you've, like some physical trial that you've maybe signed up for, say running a marathon, climbing to the top of a mountain or something.
You might struggle along the way.
You may have moments where you wonder if you can complete it, but when you get to the end, when you're standing at that finish line, when you're standing at the top of a mountain and those endorphins are kind of running through you, that is that ecstatic feeling.
So that's how we define ecstatic birth.
This is so interesting to me because with HypnoBirthing, because I'm also an educator, you, you know, I taught my first class of a series last night and I always talk about how I kind of want to throw the word pain out the window because not everything has to be pleasure or pain.
And then if I ask them to scan their body right now and they had to choose, are you in pleasure?
Are you in pain?
Most people would choose pain if they were asked and had to scan their body.
And last night, I knew we were going to be doing this interview with you.
And I was like, you know, most people aren't going to say they're in pleasure in labor.
So why do we have to say they're in pain?
I was like, unless it's ecstatic birth, I'm going to learn a little bit about it tomorrow.
So I, and I even said, I think she says you can orgasm during birth.
So is that what this is?
What is this?
You can.
So we like to open the possibility that you can orgasm during birth.
So we're kind of just blowing open the possibilities of what you can feel in birth.
We say in HypnoBirthing too, like I'm not gonna tell you what you're gonna feel.
Some people can with that peak hormonal release at the peak of labor, or even anytime along the labor process, can experience an orgasm in the traditional sense, or even just orgasmic energy kind of flowing throughout their body.
So just because you can though, doesn't necessarily mean you will, and we don't like to tie it to outcome necessarily, or talk about having a goal of it.
It's really just opening yourself up to the possibility of it.
And a lot of the things that we teach, the conversations that we have, the body practices that we do, kind of open you up to that experience a little bit more.
So you've been in this training, and now are you certified in this, and now you're teaching these classes?
I'm not, I'm working on my certification.
Midwifery School is taking a big hit on me.
And then you're going to teach the classes.
Like kind of like we teach HypnoBirthing classes.
Yeah, and I'm not sure exactly what that's gonna look like.
I might do more like an interactive kind of circle environment, intimate circle, something like that, or even private training.
I'm working those concepts into my doula work as well.
Just kind of opening the possibility of like, hey, here's how you create this really central environment for your birth.
Here's how you support peak hormonal release during birth.
So kind of how I'm doing it now.
I find with HypnoBirthing, even though we take clients who aren't HypnoBirthing, that I sometimes it's almost hard to work with people who aren't only because I'm like, I know how great it can be.
So I can kind of see that maybe moving that direction for you.
It's like, even though it's not all you focus on, it's going to be something that you kind of incorporate with your work.
Even people who don't do HypnoBirthing with us, I still use some of the tools.
Right, absolutely.
There's no separating it, I think, once you learn it and how, I don't know, I come in very opinionated about like how births should be and how powerful it is, because I think people don't realize like-
No, not you.
How powerful-
I don't have opinions.
But it's like people don't realize how powerful and transformative this experience can be and is meant to be.
This is one of the peak, you know, rites of passage in our lives as women and as birthing people, you know, it's just, it's underestimated, I think, in our society right now.
So it's kind of like enjoying the process while you're in the process, rather than just it's something you have to get through in order, you know, to have this baby, is basically what it is.
Exactly.
And also recognizing that we give birth with our sexual bodies, whether we want to acknowledge that or not, 100% sexuality is threaded through our birth experience.
That's why you see maybe people that have struggled with sexuality in the past or have adverse experiences, they can struggle with birth in the same way.
So recognizing that our sexuality is threaded throughout our entire birth experience and using those tools really to elevate our birth experience, using, I always talk about with my clients, setting up your birth like you're setting up a romantic evening with your partner.
That's the environment that we want to have to support our birth because it really should be.
You can't open up, you can't give birth in front of strangers or in an environment that's really not set up to support that.
So recognizing that we can use some of the tools, Sheila always says a vibrator is an amazing birth tool.
So if you don't have a vibrator in your birth bag, put one in there.
As a doula, I don't think so.
I'm not having a reusable vibrator, but those clients sure could.
Clients could put their own vibrators in their birth bag.
Yes.
I would love to buy those and have those on my expense report from my CPA.
I'm sorry, I have to buy a new vibrator about four times a month because it's in my doula bag and it's a one-time use.
Yeah, disposable vibrators.
Her face, I can just imagine.
Spencer's is about to have a whole new clientele.
Yep.
So you said the thing about, you can't do this in front of strangers and the kind of change of the hormones and all of that, the reason behind that.
Does that mean that this is something that's very difficult in a hospital birth and you guys more gear this toward a home birth setting?
It can be done in a hospital birth.
It's not something that we don't necessarily prescribe a setting for the birth.
It's more thinking about what supports that hormonal release for you.
Some people are going to feel more comfortable in the hospital situations.
Maybe they have their doctor that they've loved.
I have a client right now who's with a doctor that she's loved since she was 18.
Maybe she feels most supported in that situation.
So really gearing it toward every individual person is really important because everybody's gonna be so different in where they feel comfortable.
Yeah, I mean, we talk about this like all the time in classes.
We talk about how, you know, oxytocin is that love hormone, that, you know, bonding hormone, and it's released in so many different ways.
And so we teach these things in our classes, but I think it's different when you put it in that frame of like, no, this is really like the focus and you can actually experience those things in this experience.
I just, I don't know, that's really cool.
Yeah, it's amazing.
And once you start talking about it and think, and one of the things that I think Ecstatic Birth does really well is getting you into your body, teaching HypnoBirthing and ecstatic birth.
They're both, there's a lot of similarities, but one thing that ecstatic birth does that HypnoBirthing doesn't so much is really getting you into your body, using sound and breath and movement to really let those hormones and that all that energy kind of flow through you.
And they do a really good job of, you know, sometimes there are feelings that we didn't expect to feel, things that we didn't expect to happen during our birth experience.
There are fears that come up.
We don't, you know, say that there aren't, but we really help those things move through you and help you process those while you're in the midst of your birth experience through movement and sound and all of those different tools versus like trying to push them aside and pretend they don't exist.
The movement thing is really interesting to me.
I wish I could kind of have a peek into what that all looks like.
And I don't often feel like I really want to go to somebody else's childbirth ed class, but feeling like when you start teaching these, I kind of want to be a fly on the wall and see it.
So I know what I'm referring to, you know, when I send people your way.
I just think this is so interesting.
Yeah, it's really fun.
And yeah, I mean, if you're curious about like what that might feel like, I encourage everybody to just turn on a really good piece of music that you feel like you can move to and feel into what your body wants to do.
Where are you feeling pleasure?
Where are you feeling pain?
And what is your body?
How does your body want to move to support you feeling the most pleasurable way you can feel?
When I'm in a birth with someone, oftentimes I'll kind of encourage them, like make sure you're moving around because they stay kind of still.
And especially if they want to hip squeeze or something like that, they feel that they have to stay still while I'm squeezing their hips.
And I'm like, I'll move with you, move whatever way.
So I love that you're practicing that during pregnancy because some people do get a little bit shy or feel weird about doing that when they're in labor, although their body is instinctively telling them to do so.
Exactly.
And part of our job as duelists too, and this is what I learned through my training as well, is we are in that hormonal flow with them, right?
You can't be in the birthing room and not have high levels of oxytocin in your own body.
So something that I really learned has been really mind blowing for me is developing my connection just kind of intimately with them.
And I'm really like, I feel like sometimes I'm just in it with them.
You know how we're all pushing with them when they're pushing?
There's not a birth worker in the room or somebody who hasn't had a baby before that's not pushing with a pushing mom.
Absolutely.
So yeah, it's just being in it.
And so when they're moving, you're kind of like moving the same way and you're kind of like enjoying the music with them.
And I think that really adds to the oxytocin in the room when you're also producing it.
Definitely.
So are these classes meant to also be like a comprehensive childbirth education class, or is it kind of like an add-on to other classes that you would take?
It can be, and it depends.
I think everyone has a different amount of things that they want to or need to learn about birth.
To be honest, I no longer think everyone needs to know everything about birth in order to give birth.
That it is something that is in our bodies, it is innate, and sometimes the less you know about it, the easier it is for you to do, because you're not developing things that you're afraid of.
Sometimes I think this is why teenagers are really good at it.
I've had a couple of teenage clients.
Those girls just bust out babies, y'all.
It's incredible, and they also feel invincible.
They're just like in life, younger people feel like they're just, nothing can harm them, and it serves them well in birth.
And yeah, kind of like a less you know in that situation.
Exactly, but I think so many of us are coming to it, especially when we're like in our late 20s and 30s and 40s now, where we've got so many years of like hearing the birth stories, absorbing the media, and it's like, oh, well, this is something that we should be afraid of, that we need to know everything about in order to go into.
And there are some situations, like maybe navigating a hospital situation where you may have providers that aren't supporting your decisions, things like that, that maybe you do need to go know a little bit more about, but sometimes not knowing is the best thing for you.
I was different.
I needed to know everything.
So I get those type A mommas, right?
So yeah, and I haven't decided how much of that kind of physiology, this is where I think HypnoBirthing does a really good job is like integrating the physiology into the class.
And I haven't decided how much of that I'm really going to share.
And maybe it's case by case, how much people want to know.
Yeah, that's so cool.
I mean, I could see it both ways, right?
Where you can do it as like an add-on.
And we've done like the traditional birth class.
And then I want to learn these other concepts that are just so wildly different.
Or like in HypnoBirthing, Ciarra teaches the whole thing.
And it's not really beneficial for you to go take another class after you've done HypnoBirthing because it can change some of the language and different things like that.
So I can definitely see both sides.
And I would imagine it would be very much person by person.
Some people want to need to know everything and maybe that's best for them and the birth that they're planning and others maybe not so much.
So how can partners support ecstatic birth?
What does that look like for them?
I love this question.
Partners should be in their learning with their birthing parent basically.
And I want them learning a lot of things.
A lot of times partners are coming to the birth with a lot of fears and stories and things like that.
And it's the birthing parent that's kind of dragging them along and come over here.
And this is what I want to do.
So partners really need to get in there and learn as well right along with the birthing person and learn about physiology and what best supports their laboring partner and therefore the baby.
We believe in midwifery that when the mom is happy, the baby is happy.
So that's something that's really important.
I also love to encourage partners that their job is to protect and create that wonderful, juicy birthing environment that allows the laboring person to get really sensual and open.
So that starts from within, really dealing with your own fears so that you can come to the birth in the most supportive way possible and really be present with your partner.
And that also extends to protecting the energy in the birthing room, whether that's balancing family members or that unsupportive nurse or something like that.
So really protecting that birthing energy and also just love on her.
I tell all my doula clients, just love on her and treat her like the queen that she is because she is a queen in this moment and beyond.
So that's the best thing you can do is just be really present and loving a lot of touch if she wants it and just do whatever you do on a date night.
Again, I love this so much, that you're practicing and talking about these things prenatally because sometimes, the doula's prescription in labor is, all right, I'm gonna walk out and whatever happens behind this closed door has nothing to do with me.
And I'll kind of hold space in the hallway to make sure nobody comes in.
And we've had some clients who have gotten very intimate in their birthing space and not everybody is comfortable with it though.
And talking about it prenatally normalizes that a little bit.
And some partners are just kind of afraid and don't know what is okay to do.
Don't know where that boundary is and what's safe to do.
So that's really great that you're having that conversation so that it's not so foreign in the moment.
I hope so.
And that's the hardest thing I think about integrating Ecstatic Birth into our current birth culture is that it is so foreign.
And people, you start talking about sex and birth and people are like, oh, that doesn't sound right.
Why would I close the door and shut the midwife out or shut the doctor down?
And it's like, well, that's what's gonna facilitate the most pleasurable and the most successful and fastest birth, honestly.
It's kick us out, be undisturbed, have a dark space, you know?
I know a doula that was in there and they didn't kick her out.
They just started doing some things and she was like, just gonna go on a walk.
So, hey, you know, it's okay to kick us out.
You can have space.
I love that description of do what you do on a date night because that looks different for everybody.
And that can be intimacy in a lot of different ways.
Like some people are just holding hands and doing lots of like words of affirmation and maybe bringing flowers or giving a gift or something.
And then other people are like making out in the corner of the bar.
And that's great.
You know, that's not for everybody.
But you're so right.
That's such a great point, Sam, cause my husband during my labor was like tickling my back, holding my hand, and that is intimacy for us.
And he's not an overtly intimate person, especially not a PDA kind of person.
So that would have been very weird for him to do.
And it would have made me uncomfortable cause that's just not him.
So that is such a great description.
And I love that individualizing it to every single person.
It does look different for everybody.
Maybe it's snuggling and watching movies that makes you fairly loved and juicy and all of that stuff.
It's, you know, everybody's so different.
What a great word, juicy.
Juicy.
Birth is juicy.
You've said that a couple of times now.
I like it.
Yeah.
I just think that it's really beautiful.
And I think that gives them something to practice in that, you know, pregnancy period.
And also gives you at least just a baseline of where you can be as far as supporting your partner in their ecstatic birth.
So that's, it's beautiful.
I love it.
Love it.
And I always say, you know, practice on those date nights.
What helps you, whatever helps you relax into the hormones of sex are going to help you relax into the hormones of birth, whether that's, you know, low lighting, maybe it's going out.
Maybe it's music.
Maybe it's smells, things like that.
Food, anything that helps you get into that mood is going to help you get into the mood for birth.
Yeah, that's amazing.
I love it.
So what piece of advice would you give to pregnant people who are wanting to experience this type of birth?
I think my number one piece of advice right now is to just learn about your physiology and what is going to support your best birthing experience and your hormonal release, whether that's, you know, having a really undisturbed labor to skin to skin with your baby and, you know, having a really undisturbed birth and what breastfeeding really looks like.
I think in our culture, so much advice runs completely counter to our own physiology and our biological design that it's hard for people to really let go of the things that are in their head, the things that they're hearing, and to really get into their bodies and what feels right for them.
So I really encourage you to learn about all those things and really support that maximum oxytocin soup that you should be in during birth and postpartum for your best experience.
And what a beautiful way to start parenthood too, just being so in tune with your instincts and in tune with what works for you.
I mean, we hear that with people, especially people who have delivered in a hospital of just, well, I was told to do all these things and I'm on a timer for when I feed my baby and I'm so concerned about all of this.
And then kind of being told like, hey, you can listen to your instincts, you know your body, you know your baby, you have been communicating together for so long.
And being able to fall into that intuitive parenting is so important and starting parenting off with a birth like that just sounds so beautiful.
Yeah.
And Sarah Buckley has such wonderful work around the hormones of birth and what happens when we kind of block some of the natural physiological processes and it's just, starting off with that maximum bonding period and having a birth that gets you on that high, that you believe that you can do anything.
And then you go into motherhood and you're like, I can do anything, even if I'm struggling, even if I'm not sleeping, even if it's hard, I can do this.
It's just a completely different paradigm, I think, than our current birth culture likes to tell parents.
Well, now that we've had this interview with you and we're putting this out there, everyone's gonna be like, where can I do this?
Where can I find you?
So can you tell people how they can find you?
And we'll also put it in the show notes.
Yeah, I'm mostly on Instagram right now, kind of sharing everything that I'm learning with Ecstatic Birth and some of the things that are piquing my interest from my midwifery training.
And that's at Meagan Noble ATX.
That's Meagan with an A.
Also, I have a website, meagannobel.com, where you can reach out to work with me as a doula.
I do HypnoBirthing classes still, or just to chat about things.
I'm still working on my offerings around Ecstatic Birth, whether that's the circles or private training, but reach out if you're interested and I'm happy to put together something for you or a group of people that's interested.
I feel like it would be a super fun workshop for us to have like a client workshop where we do one.
There are so many different things you could do with this.
So I can't wait to see what you come up with and thank you so much for being here and teaching us all about this.
You're welcome.
It was super fun.
Thanks so much, Meagan.
Thank you guys.
Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby!
Thanks again to Longing for Orpheus for our music.
You can look him up on Spotify.
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See you next week.