Happy Homebirth

What if birth didn’t have to be a big, dramatic, white-knuckle event at all– but something as ordinary, and as holy, as your body simply doing the thing it already knows how to do?

 

Two sisters. Two babies. One day. In this episode, McKayla Kennard shares three births that look nothing alike– a hospital birth with Pitocin and an epidural, a planned homebirth that became an unplanned freebirth when her midwife didn’t make it, and a third birth she chose to do on her own terms after four weeks of prodromal labor. Then her sister, pregnant at the same time, left her own hospital mid-labor to have her first baby in McKayla’s dining room eight hours later. It’s a story about fast labor, trusting your body, and the deep family closeness that birth can create. McKayla shares it with so much warmth– you’ll finish this one smiling.

This episode is a birth-story conversation offered as encouragement and education, not medical advice, and not a how-to. Always bring questions about your own pregnancy and birth to a trusted provider.

 

Links:

FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

Youtube Episode Link: 

Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Tags: Homebirth Story, Natural Birth, Freebirth (Unassisted Birth), Fast Labor, Water Birth, Postpartum Wisdom, Birth After a Hard First Birth

What's the difference between a worry and a knowing?

 

Megan Wilson first joined the Happy Homebirth Podcast in 2020. Six years later, she's back. She's a wife, homesteading mama of four from deep East Texas, and was expecting baby number five when we recorded. In this episode, she shares the long-pushing water birth of her tiny daughter Vivian, the health struggles that followed, and the loss of her baby Kai. Then she tells the story of her rainbow baby, Elodie: a pregnancy full of recurring dreams and strong knowings, weeks of early labor that few people took seriously, and a birth so fast that Elodie arrived in the car, minutes from the hospital, at almost 34 weeks. This is a tender, faith-filled conversation about grief, healing, and learning to trust your intuition.

 

Links:

FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/80Inb4dftXc

Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Megan's first episode (2021):  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/happy-homebirth/id1446934537?i=1000510201363

Have you ever been handed the exact thing you were most afraid of… and found, when it actually arrived, that the fear just wasn't there anymore?

Two births, same mother, worlds apart. In this episode, Kaitlyn Vogelmeier shares a hospital first birth shaped by pressure she didn't want– a membrane sweep, Pitocin, three hours of pushing, and a hemorrhage with a manual placenta extraction– and then the redemptive homebirth she prepared harder for the second time around. Partway through labor, her midwife felt something that wasn't a head, and Kaitlyn, calm and sure, chose to stay home for the birth of her Frank breech baby boy. It's a story about how the right provider, and two years of quiet preparation, can change everything about how a birth unfolds.

 

 

Links:

FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/SpE_VXHYFo8

Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Have you ever lost something so specific that the people around you didn't even know to name it?

 

Marley Collins is a wife to her husband Clayton, mama to Maren and Lenora, and an engineer in Temecula, California who's currently doing part-time consulting and teaching herself to sew. Her family is from the Netherlands, where several of her aunts gave birth at home, so she knew she wanted a homebirth before she was ever pregnant.

 

In this episode, Marley shares two births. Her first, in Texas: her water broke at 39 and a half weeks, and what followed was the better part of two days of labor and pushing against a cervical lip that would not move, an unhurried transfer, and a cesarean. Her second, in California: an HBAC at home in the water, with her mother's hand in one of hers and her husband's in the other, and Marley reaching down to catch her own baby herself.

 

She's honest about the very specific grief that sat between those two births — not the surgery, not the transfer, but the fact that she missed Clayton becoming a father — and honest about the exact moment it lifted. She's also wonderfully clear-eyed about choosing her birth team, switching midwives mid-pregnancy, and knowing precisely where she stood.

 

In this episode:

 

Why finding a homebirth midwife felt like a dating app

Switching from a midwife trio to a solo midwife at 20 weeks

What a cervical lip is, and everything her midwife tried

What an unhurried, well-handled hospital transfer actually looks like

The hardest part of her cesarean, which wasn't the surgery

Finding her HBAC midwife through a raw milk co-op

Why she hired a doula for her VBAC and then let her go at 35 weeks

Learning to catch her own baby at a 37-week birth class in her own kitchen

The dime-sized reality check she found funny instead of discouraging

Her midwife's husband charting every word she said while pushing

 

Links:

FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/da8D7DISicc?si=PDWpBjoP_AKWKy2h

Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

What happens when the birth story that scares you most is your own sister's?

 

Shey Munoz has given birth to both of her boys at home in South Florida, and both times her baby came faster than anyone planned — under five hours the first time, under two the second. Both times her husband set up the birth pool, and both times she never got in it.

 

In this episode Shey shares the midwife who made the decision simple, a first labor that was over by 8:18 in the morning, the fear she carried into her second birth after her twin sister gave birth in under two hours with no midwife in the room, and the one question her midwife asked that shrank that fear down to something she could actually answer. She also tells us about her mother's twin cesarean in India in the nineties, what she counted on to get through her contractions when she had nothing else in reach, and the work she does now helping mothers understand what's actually normal in the first year after birth.

 

Links:

FREE Peaceful Birth Reset: https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

Whole Mother Homebirth | https://www.myhappyhomebirth.com/wholemotherhomebirth (use code PODCAST for 10% off)

Youtube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/Vv5VV8gH2Rc?si=qitcTwWXQ0mGsYV_

Learn more about Samaritan Ministries: https://samaritanministries.org/happyhomebirth

Guest Instagram: instagram.com/thepeacefulpostpartum