A Breech Homebirth Mama/Midwife Shares Her Knowledge & Expertise

Join as Jessy shares her story of choosing home birth to birth her breech baby as well as her insightful wisdom - both from both her perspective as a mother and as a trained and licensed midwife. She has been in birth work since 2016, first as a doula and then as a midwife. She strongly believes that babies are born how they are conceived: in peace, safety, and comfort. Jessy loves using natural medicine to help heal the body and aid throughout pregnancy, labor, and the postpartum period. She has two beautiful girls and spends her free days outside on the mountainside of Utah or reading a good book. 

Check her out on Instagram  @two_heartbeats_midwifery www.twoheartbeatsmidwifery.com

If you would like to feel more confident in your knowledge of delivering a breech baby at home connect here at Breech Without Borders https://www.breechwithoutborders.org/

Transcript

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Welcome to Women of the Wild Podcast. Here, our community of wise women comes together to explore and discuss naturopathic medicine, fertility free birth, and cultivating inner peace and joy through embracing alternative lifestyles. These are powerful women and pioneers in the modern age who choose to live and heal free of Westernized limitations. Many we will speak to have bravely and successfully cured themselves through chronic and even terminal illness prior to setting forth on their mission to offer healing to others. Together we return to our roots, to our inner wisdom and our birthrights to the wild in all of us, and together we grow to change the world. I'm your host. Today, we're having the pleasure to connect with Jesse Collins. Jesse has one of the beautiful mamas featured in my most recent book, women of the wild. She was gracious enough to share her powerful birth story there with everyone. And now she's agreed to pop on and let us dig a little deeper into her wisdom I'm gonna start by letting you introduce yourself and just tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do and what you're passionate about as far as in the world of naturopathic health. Yeah. So I am a midwife. I am licensed in the state of Utah. So I'm a C P M, so certified professional midwife. So I specialize in natural birth at a hospital, in a home birth setting. I use a lot of homeopathics in my work and tinctures they have a lot less side effects than medications do. Because I am licensed, I can administer medications but I don't love to use medications. Because they have a ton of side effects and a lot of which we don't even know because they haven't been studied for the side effect. They are really only studied for the use in medicine. That's a little bit scary to hear. Yeah. Especially when you're dealing with the, the world of birth as far as like the side effects, you know, not only to the mother, but to the child or children too. Oh, yeah. Well, it's so from an ethical standpoint, it's really hard to get pregnant people. In for studies because if you're testing an unknown drug on them, who wants to put themselves and their unborn child at risk, unfortunately, sometimes these studies are carried out in hospitals where women don't even know they're being studied on. They'll just sign a piece of paper as one of their forms and there you go. They've given consent. Wow. So you're, you are focused mainly in home births, correct? Yes. Yeah. So what brought you to B more passionate about that as opposed to taking a, a more conventional approach, you know, to be a nurse or something like that? So I mean, in high school I wanted to be a nurse cuz that's the typical thing you hear about. But I read the autobiography called the midwife. I'm forgetting her name now. Jenny. Jenny Lee. I wanna say it's her name. A biography in high school and she was a midwife based in Britain in the 1920s. So she worked primarily in home birth. And I really loved the stories and the closeness that you got with the clients. So that kinda put me on the path of. Midwifery, but then what kind of solidified it is, I was a doula and I worked as a doula at a university hospital about half an hour from where I live and what I saw in the hospital as a doula. It was just, there's no other word there. It was just horrific. There are some points where you just wanna scream, but because you worked for the hospital, you couldn't do anything. Like you're there to support these women, but you're, you can't speak out against the hospital. So that kind of solidified my belief in home birth that's so interesting that you got to have that experience firsthand and see how it really goes and make that choice for yourself. I'm curious. You're licensed in Utah. When I was pregnant and I was going to have my first baby, I originally wanted to have a midwife president because I was like, well, that would be nice to have somebody there if I needed them and so I did a little bit of research and I got to talk to a couple, and they were very sweet, very straightforward with me. And they were like, Hey, yeah we know what you're hoping for and what you wanna do, so we're gonna tell you straight up, like that's probably not gonna happen because. We can lose their licenses here. Do you guys have the same issues that you have to work around and like different little loopholes that you have to follow and things like that out in Utah? I. So unfortunately, yes. Have regulations And I for being a licensed midwife. So in Utah you can actually practice as an unlicensed midwife. And so I worked with WIC with a practice of women who, some are unlicensed and some are licensed, so we kind of can get around some of the rules that way. So with the unlicensed midwives, they can take breech and twins and women that go past 43 weeks, stuff like that. But then have more regulations because that's just what the state has done and really what the control of the hospital and their overarching influence has done with licensure. Cuz they have a lot of political power, unfortunately. Hmm. But, In Utah, we've had a lot of amazing advocates for midwifery, hence why midwives don't have to be licensed in Utah. But if you're not licensed, you can't carry medication. So I honestly really tossled back and forth and sometimes do tossled back and forth maintaining my license still in Utah and or just starting and being unlicensed for a bit, so, We'll see if you, if you give up your license, you're allowed to kind of try it out for a bit and then go back to it if you choose. Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool how they've worked things out in Utah we're, we are so blessed that I believe we're one of two states that can practice with unlicensed midwives, but still practice as a midwife. I can't remember the other state, but it's really, really rare that it happens like this. Yeah, that's very interesting. It seems like you guys have a lot more freedom, which is pretty cool. I feel like that should be much more widespread than it is. Oh, for sure. For sure. And I mean you, you're the number one case to show that like, if women don't get what they want, they're gonna do it anyway. Right. Right. That's human nature though, isn't it? You can't tell us what to do. We're gonna do it. I would love to jump into your birth story a little bit and just get you to share a little bit about yourself and your own birth journey. Yeah. So I'll start off just briefly describing my first one. My first was pretty uneventful. My pregnancy was really good. I was a midwife at that time. So I delivered at the birthing center that I worked at cuz we were living in a really, really tiny, tiny apartment at the time. And it was really wonderful. No major complications or anything. But for my second one, I, we tried to get pregnant for about. It was a little bit over a year that we were trying to get pregnant and right at the point where I was starting to look into like more infertility things because there's two types of infertility. There's one with your first and one with your second. So I was thinking I had the second type after not being able to get pregnant for a little bit. What do you mean by that? What is the one with the first and one with the second? So there's, it's called primary infertility. So primary infertility is where you can't get pregnant with at all. At first, like with your first baby, you're having struggle and then some women have that struggle to get pregnant with their first, but then any pregnancies after that, they don't have a problem. And then there's secondary, and this is all the medical terminology that they've come up with. I'm sure there's a ton more like hormonal, just a ton of other things that they didn't, don't even talk about. But the secondary is where you've gotten pregnant with your first without a problem, but then it takes years and some people never are able to get pregnant again. So I was thinking I had that, and honestly I think I was just, Too stressed. Mm-hmm. Cause I had a month where I just relaxed and I just kind of blew it all away and like, okay, well if I get pregnant, great. If I don't get pregnant, fine. Like, we weren't even really trying that month, and that's the month of course that we got pregnant. So, Which, I mean, we know that the stress, the cortisone levels can definitely impact your fertility, so, absolutely. So we got pregnant with her and then like a couple days later I started bleeding and so I was so disappointed and thinking I had a miscarriage. But then my midwife that I had for my other birth, She suggested that I check my progesterone levels. So we checked the progesterone levels and they were low, so I started on some progesterone to get those levels back up and I was able to carry her and didn't have many more complications until I was about 10 weeks along. With my previous pregnancies or just previously, I am prone to ovarian cysts. So on your ovaries there's cysts that can form when they pop out eggs, the cyst forms, pops out an egg and then it goes away. But sometimes the cyst will form and it doesn't ever hop out an egg, and it just keeps growing and growing and growing. And so it's called the ovarian cyst. But that formed and we knew that was there from a previous pregnancy. And when a ovarian cyst breaks, it's very painful. There's no other word for it. It's just not fun at all. So I was having that pain. And I knew it was the ovarian cyst because it was on the side that we had identified the cyst from. And I've had them break before. And so I didn't wanna go to the hospital because I don't, I don't love hospitals and I knew that they would probably just wanna give me drugs and keep me there and just monitor. So I was like, now I can do this at home. So we handled the pain. I called my husband from work and handled all the pain pretty well. And I thought it had burst, and then I woke up from a nap and it was a lot worse. So that's when my mom came over and she, she used to be a respiratory therapist, so she's definitely more medicine minded and she. At that point was like, okay, you do, we really need to go to the hospital. What if it's something with the baby? And I was like, okay. When you put it into perspective that way, I don't want something to happen to the baby. So we went to the hospital and we found out that my ovary had twisted, so there was torsion that was in the ovary caused by the cyst. So it was twisted and it was cutting off blood flow to that ovary and that they needed to do surgery. And I was more scared for my baby than I was for the surgery. I was like, great, if I lose an ovary, that's fine. I want my baby to be safe. And he's like, the doctor we spoke to is very, very Straightforward. He didn't really discuss pros and cons until I really like asked the pros and cons of like, okay, well what about, what is the anesthesia gonna do to the pregnancy? It's only 10 weeks. Mm-hmm. What about about this? So that's the thing with going into the hospital, is you really have to. Dig and ask questions for them to give you more information. Unfortunately, I can't imagine the amount of pain and stress you must have been in in that moment, and then still to be able to think clearly enough to ask the questions that were necessary. Like Bravo, you know, like I would've been an absolute mess. Oh, well I was, but I think at that point some, it had like lessened a little bit so I could still like cognitively process. It was the very, very height of the pain at that point we ended up going forward with the surgery we weighed out all of our pros and cons and felt like that was the best option for us and. After the surgery was done, the doctor came back to do an ultrasound and I don't know if he had never held an ultrasound before or what his problem was, but he ultrasounds like clear up in my abdomen, like next to my ribs. What? And baby is it 10 weeks? It's like, well beneath your belly button. And so he's. And I was so tired and nauseous from the anesthesiologist. I just was like, fine, I'll go and just do an ultrasound myself. What in the world that gives you so much faith? Right? Yeah. What? And he like, what did he even think? What was he actually showing you that he thought was a baby up there? Oh, I don't know. That's wild. It was, he was pointing to like a tiny smudge that looked more like a baby. That would've been like six weeks along. Like they're so tiny, you can just make out like a little peanut. And he would say, and I was like, no. At 10 weeks they have like arms and legs and Right. No. So that was crazy. But after that we went, I went and just did an ultrasound on myself and confirmed that she was really good and we had found out that it was a girl. At this point we had done that little, it's called a sneak peek test where you like contest the blood of the mom to see if the what the gender is. Okay. So lot more people than I'm sure anyone's used to, but. We had done that, and so found out she was okay. And so many tears of joy and stuff like that. If you don't mind me asking with your, your expertise as a midwife and everything, did you have a wild pregnancy from that point on? Or, you know, what was your prenatal care like? So I did have a midwife and she did the prenatal care in my home. So I didn't have a, I didn't go back to the birthing center at this point. I wanted a home birth. And so I just hired the midwife that I had previously. But I told her I wanted it to be pretty hands off, like do very little like you can monitor the baby, that's fine, but I don't want. Any like drugs or anything, I wanna just kind of be by myself and have my family there. So from that point, so she called the Leopold Maneuvers where they put their, your hands on the mom's belly and you can feel where the baby's at. And so she was doing that and we were feeling that our, the baby was consistently breech. And so breech means butt first. How did you feel about that? Were you nervous? Yes, a little bit. So I knew that because my midwife was licensed. Breach meant that she would either need to transfer me to the hospital or I would need to hire an unlicensed midwife if I wanted a midwife there. And I like talked to my husband and he again is from like a more medicalized community and he was not comfortable trying to do it himself. So we had done the research and most obs will tell you that you need to get a C-section because baby is breach. Like there, there was a big trial that came out, it's called the term breach trial that basically showed that vaginal birth was more dangerous than having a baby C-section for breach. But they, what they didn't consider for that trial was if the mom ever wants to have a pregnancy again and deliver, then she's gonna have to have a vbac, which makes it more dangerous for mom and baby to have any subsequent pregnancies after the C-section, of course. And there was just a bunch of things wrong with that trial. So we had discussed like pros and cons of everything and I was like, well, I'm not getting a C-section because that's really just way too invasive and unnecessary. So he agreed and we talked to the midwife and she was like, okay, well technically I'm not able to deliver breach, but if we can try to turn her. Then she'll be head down and we can move forward with that. So we did what's called a gentle version. So a gentle version is where you put the hands on the mom's belly and then slowly just encourage the baby to move into a head down position. And I, I was feeling okay with that at first. But this is when I wish I would've trusted my instincts more as a mom. She did it. We ended up doing it three times and baby the, she would flip back every single time after that. And the last time I had tied a scarf above my belly to kind of encourage her to stay in that head down position. But I, I just felt like anxious about it, and I felt uneasy, and I just was like, something's wrong. So when I went to bed, I couldn't sleep with the scarf on, so I took it off, and right away she started moving and she moved back into the butt first position. So that in my mind was like a confirmation of like, okay, for whatever reason, this baby needs to be breached. So, So we didn't try to turn her again, and I, I told my midwife that, but when my water broke, she flipped and she was head down, but time baby was breached and she just kind of kept it to herself. That's really funny. She was like, oh, it's coming out. But first, yeah so how was the birth experience for you? Was it peaceful? Was it everything you dreamed of? It was really nice. So with both of my labors, my water has broken first, which is, Crazy cuz that only happens in like 5% of labors. The water breaks first and then contractions happen. But I was, I woke up and I guess I had a really strong contraction and my water broke on my way to the toilet. And so I like texted my midwife and I. Could feel her moving. So I was comfortable with that. But then my labor, I went back to sleep and my labor kind of stopped. And so I was like, oh, okay, this interesting. I'm in labor. So we sent away, I had my daughter, and so we had my mother-in-law come pick her up, and my sister and my mom, they were at my last birth and they wanted to come to this one, but I just felt like I wanted it to just be me and my partner for a little bit. So I said, no, we're not ready for you to come yet. I'm not really contracting at this point. I just want to relax and let the labor come back. And so that's exactly what we did. We didn't take any like tinctures or anything. We just relaxed. We went for a walk, we came back and slept. And the labor just naturally came back on its own. Which just shows you if you just trust your body and trust the process, like you, you can't be pregnant forever. It will happen. Very good point. Cause I know a lot of women end up feeling that way. They're like, is it ever going to happen? They all come And I mean, babies, they don't have calendars inside and some of them will just take longer than others. So at that point labor started happening and I was getting some pretty intense waves. So I just contacted my birth team. I had a photographer come. As well. But I had told everyone previously in my first pregnancy, I hated when people talked during contractions or even between contractions, cuz it annoyed me. Cause I wanted to be in on the conversations, like talk about me without me knowing. It was a really weird, I told everyone like, We're being quiet, silent, nothing. So I had my hypnobirthing track playing and I was just in that more hypnotic, relaxed state throughout the labor. I went to the bathroom and there was thick meconium coming out. And so meconium is like baby poo for people. That's the medical term is meconium. And the fear with meconium in your water is that baby can breathe it in and it can get in their lungs. But with it being a breach, so butt is first, the meconium is just straight coming straight out. So my midwife, she saw the meconium and I was under the impression that she thought the baby was head down, but she told me later she knew the whole time that the baby was, but she was just, I see some meconium. I have to ask if you want to transfer because of the amount of meconium. And I was like, Nope, we're good. We're not transferring. We're gonna stay here. And so we just continued to labor. I absolutely love the bath. That is where I am just completely able to relax. I know you weren't able to have a blow up your bathroom. Were you able to, Jenny, I'm trying to remember your birth story now. Yeah, yeah. So I had I, you know, I had this whole grand plan and I had a, a birth pool and everything that I was going to set up in my living room and it all happened so fast. The pool is still in the box. I was like, well, she can use it to play in when she's older. Well, if you ever have another one, water is absolutely amazing. I call it nature's epidural. It just, it really works to fully relax you and help you just handle those waves. I mean, I love the women that go and birth in the ocean. That just sounds amazing. Yes. Yes. Oh, I just love that idea too. One of the ladies that actually I spoke to a bit earlier, she did ocean Birth in Nicaragua, if I'm not mistaken. And you can actually find her story on the podcast too. It was pretty cool. If I ever do a second, that's gonna be my plan. That's awesome. I feel like I, I thought I heard her podcast, but maybe not. Anyway, so We ended up getting out of the bath and going on the bed. And then I just started spontaneously pushing and I think I was in my own head about it cuz in my other pregnant, my first labor I started. Spontaneously pushing, but baby got caught on the cervix a little bit, so it kind of stalled my pushing for a bit. And so for some reason I was in my mind on that. And so I ended up reaching in myself to feel what I thought was a cervix and held, pushed that tissue and held it out of the way, which was such an empowering experience to have it be yourself, like your own hands in there instead of someone else. And then you can fill your baby. And so you can feel with the pushing, bringing her down. So anytime a mom wants to reach down during pushing, do it because you feel so empowered by you, you're doing this work, you're pushing out your baby and it's amazing. So I pushed her out into my hand and her butt just kept coming and coming and coming and I was thinking. That really intense crowning sensation was just not stopping because her, oh my gosh. So honestly, like labor felt it completely. The same to my first, which was head down. The only difference was this little tiny bit at the end with just that intense crowning sensation lasting a little longer. Cuz obviously you're pushing out the body and it comes out slower than like, boop, ahead and boop body. I like the sound effects. Oh, Yeah, so we, my midwife ended up having to do a small maneuver cuz her cord was pretty short, and so she released her shoulders and then I pushed out her head. Which the whole fear again, again for breach is the head entrapment. But there is a ton of maneuvers and breach without Borders For anyone who wants to deliver a breach baby, you can take their courses and feel very well prepared to deliver a BRE baby. So for anyone who wants to free birth, I definitely recommend looking into those maneuvers for those like, One in 100 chance, the very, very slow, slight, slight chance they could happen. Very cool. What did you call that again? Just so that everybody gets it? Yeah, so it's Breach Without Borders. So they're an international team that travels around the world and they teach simple breach maneuvers to help get babies free if they have a little bit more trouble coming out and breach. Beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, and they're great advocates for vaginal breach birth. So anytime someone wants to deliver vaginally, I'm like, they're. So she came out and she cried right away. We put her skin to skin with me. But her cord was super short. I could only get her below my belly button so. She was just on my lower abdomen, just lying there looking around. Her eyes were just so wide and just, ugh. I love that. Just newborn gaze where they're like, whoa, taking it all in. That's so beautiful. Like such a beautifully empowering bonding moment. Ugh. It really is. Honestly, I'm getting teary eyed just thinking about it cuz it's just such a powerful moment where you're holding your daughter for the first time. Ugh. Anyway, first you're gonna make me cry now, so we had a little bit more trouble getting the placenta out. But I was so determined to not go to the hospital because my fear was, is we'd go to the hospital and they'd find out she was breached and want to take her back and do all of these unnecessary tests when she was fine and perfect. And so I didn't want, I really, really didn't wanna go. And so I pushed honestly harder for my placenta than I did for. My baby to get it out. And so can I, can I ask you, since you're, you're an expert on a lot of things medically and otherwise how did you know that you were having difficulties with your placenta? Because, you know, you hear stories from so many different women and there's so many different timeframes for it to come out. You know, how do you know when you're, you're having trouble or if it's just taking a little bit? So when the placenta comes off the uterine wall, you see a separation gush. So meaning that those blood vessels from the, that were connecting the placenta to the wall have separated and are open. So, You see that gush and for the women that it takes hours and hours, they, they won't see that gush. The placenta will just kind of be in there, and it sometimes takes a while for your body to just naturally let go and release it. I've had women like get in the shower to again, relax, get that oxytocin flowing. Breastfeeding is another thing that can help kind of relax your body, help it release all of that. So what had happened with mine was part of it released and part of it didn't. So I was bleeding. And when you're bleeding the uterus, it's kind of like a huge bloom. So it's blown up in pregnancy, and then after pregnancy it goes down and we want it to keep down in that small state. But when there's a lot of blood, In there as well as the placenta. It can't stay closed and close off all those blood vessels. So that's the point where you get like postpartum hemorrhage and a likelihood of a postpartum hemorrhage that way. Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. Thank you for clarifying. And how can you tell whether it's just the gush or if you're potentially in hemorrhage? I think that would be important to be able to recognize. Yeah. So you can tell if you feel where the top of your uterus is if it's slowly rising in your abdomen. That's when you can tell there's probably some blood in there. So what can happen too is the placenta can come off the uterine wall. You'll see a separation gush, and then it'll just kind of hang out in the uterus and act kind of as a cork for a right above the cervix. So it'll just kind of sit there. And the blood will kind of collect after it. So that's why it's really important after, if you're feeling those contractions to kind of bear down birth your placenta. But what I've found is all the moms that do free birth or home birth, there's so much in tune with their bodies that. Honestly, for most of them, I don't see problems because you, you're just trusting your instincts. You're trusting what you need to, to birth that placenta. And rare circumstances for mine where it separated but not fully, it was a little bit more work to get it out. But for most cases, it's just gonna come right out thank you for letting everybody know all that lovely information. So we'll get back to your story now. I'll let you keep going. Okay. So we pushed to get the place sent out cuz we could see it in there. And my midwife and so we. Got up into a squat cuz that's a really good gravity heavy position if the placenta's just hanging out getting yourself into a squat to kind of open up your birth canal, let it come out. So we did that and we pushed we ended up saying a prayer. All together, which was such a special moment for me. And we got up one more time. This was the last attempt before I had to go, and I was like, I am not going So determined. And I pushed with all my might and I felt the placenta come out. And it ended up coming out in two chunks that were connected. So the first chunk had separated and that's where we were seeing all that bleeding from. And then the second chunk was the one that we were trying really hard to get out and get released, and we were doing all the tinctures at that point. I had consent consented to some Pitocin, which I originally really didn't want because. One of the things that they don't tell you is Pitocin can cause postpartum depression. It's one of the things that have been linked to that. So I really didn't want that cuz I didn't want that increased chance of depression. But I did consent to it cuz I didn't wanna go to the hospital. So we ended up doing that and it came out and what we found was that, The way the cord has had inserted into this placenta it's called, it's called the VE insertion. So you can look it up. There's a bunch of pictures online, but. It's where the cord, it usually connects to the center of the placenta, and it's a really good connection. You can pick up the whole placenta from just the cord. The ve misin insertion is where the cord separates out into, there's two vein or two arteries and a vein, and it separates out into those through the amniotic membrane and then connects to the placenta in three different places. So that increases your risk of problems with baby. If you, if they ever find it on an ultrasound, they'll say, oh, we recommend a C-section, stuff like that. Gotcha. But clearly that's not that's necessary at all since you did it. Yeah. And it just, I mean, it just shows that well, and the cool thing, so what we found was because my placenta was implanted in the bottom of my uterus so closer to baby, and it was so short, this cord was less than 12 inches long. It was so, so short, and we figured out that was why she needed to be breached because of this weird cord insertion, this super short cord. So every time we were flipping her back, she was being pulled back and feeling that constriction in her blood flow. And so she being a super smart baby, just kept turning back to breach because she knew that is what she needed to have happen. How absolutely cool is that to just be able to trust your baby to know what's what. Honestly, and I, it just shows that, I mean, there's two people a part of this birth experience. It's not just you, it's your baby. So talking with them and connecting with them and trusting them, like for myself, I think the reason why I felt so. So much anxiety after turning her that third time. It was cuz I was picking up from what signal she was giving me. At that point, she was like, OK mom, no more. I have to be breached. This is happens for a reason. so cool to think about. You're so right though, because you truly, you're. You are one for such a long time, and I, I absolutely feel like you connect with each other in an intuitive level and speak to each other in that way. That's absolutely beautiful. I just love your story. Thank you so much for taking time to come and talk with everybody. And before we wrap up, I would love you to share your best advice for any new mamas out there. Honestly, my best advice is to educate yourself, arm yourself with that knowledge, but overall, trust yourself. Trust your instincts because you are right and you're, you are a mama and mamas. We have these instincts about our babies and about our bodies listen to everyone, but trust yourself. If you'd like to get your hands on a copy of Women of the Wild, you can find a link for that in the show notes or on my Instagram as well, or simply just pop over to Amazon and type women of the Wild into the search bar. It's positively full of amazing firsthand birth stories and birthing prep wisdom from women all over the world, and definitely worth the read if you're exploring the ideas of free birth or home birth. Thank you all for being here with us today. If you would like to further discuss this topic, or if you're ready to begin a healing journey of your own, I am here for you through the link in our show notes or through Instagram at live. Your legend, love and gratitude til Tuesday.