Cait
Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of The Born to rise podcast. I’m your host Cait Scudder, and today I’m joined by our newest guest, a woman who is very near and dear to my own heart. Karen Welton, aka pain free birth on Instagram. Now, not only is Karen my own birth coach, but she is a global leader, supporting women to overcome fear and pain and discover how powerful they really are in childbirth. As a doula and childbirth educator she has supported hundreds of women in their childbirth journey, her ecourse pain, free birth and postpartum bliss. teach women how to partner with our bodies divine designed to have a pain free, ecstatic birth and postpartum experience. In the past year, she has grown her following of 100,000 women from around the world. Her goal is to change the global culture of birth so that women no longer fear birth, but look forward to it with joy. Now, I am just so excited for you guys to hear this episode because Karen’s work has helped me so much in the lead up to my own birth. And I can’t wait for her to share her wisdom with you here. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Karen Welton. You guys this woman has a very special place in my life. She is my personal birth coach, and an incredible educator, content creator and real pioneer in the field of birth for women Karen Welton of pain free birth Karen, thank you so much for being here.

Karen
Thank you for having me. This is an honor.

Cait
Karen, you obviously know that you have been so influential in my life and in my world I’ve just shared on the intro here that not only have I taken your course and it’s just been a revolution in preparing for my second birth, which is happening in eight freakin weeks. I can’t even believe it. I’m excited. It’s so good. But you know I’m just so I’m I’m so firstly just like thrilled to be working with you, but also so inspired by the movement that you are blazing and pioneering for so many women to really redefine what birth is, what the experience is what it can be stripping away so much fear and stigma and story and really just exploding open a new entire framework and perspective about what the whole experience can be. So for those of our listeners who are not super familiar with you and your work, tell us more about what it is that you do.

Karen
Hey, guys, thank you for having me. I started my business pain free birth. Two years ago, actually, before that, I was really I was I’m a doula and a childbirth educator. And nine years ago, when I had my first daughter I was really believing for and pressing into having a pain free birth experienced. Knowing everything I’d heard about birth was that it’s supposed to be painful. All the horror stories were painful, or traumatic in some way. And I just felt like there was something in my spirit that said, You know what, maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. So it started me on this long journey. Long story short, I have had three beautiful home births, most of which were pain free, with three beautiful daughters. And I developed my course during that time to teach women how to do the same thing how to accept and embrace labor and every contraction how to shift our mindset to believing that it’s a positive, transformational empowering event in our lives. And it’s not something that we have to fear and also just learning how to work with our bodies instead of against it. So I developed an ecourse and have lots of material. I have all of it up on pain free birth is my instagram or my website, as you can see, but I love helping women really believe in their own innate ability to birth and partnering with that and the way we were divinely created from the beginning and understanding what’s happening in our bodies as when laboring and really learning that story. render and trust process. So there’s so much more I could say, I’ll just leave it at that for now.

Cait
Oh my god, so good. And I love hearing about and have loved to just following your journey and learning about your three beautiful home birth experiences and really how you have turned your experience, personal experience and the witnessing that you’ve done in all the doula work that you’ve done and just created. So this your course, which is a revolution, if you have not taken Karen’s course, and you are wanting to get pregnant or preparing for birth, do yourself a favor and get this course. I was just saying to Karen, before we went live here that I you know, for my first birth I, I took a hypnobirthing class. And you know, it was I’ll share a little bit about my birth, I don’t normally like talk about myself on an interview. But I think it is relevant because it’s how I came to know you, Karen and came to know about your work. I teach and coach on mindset, and business, but mindset a lot for a living. And so moving into my first birth with Ella, I was so surprised actually at how much I felt rocked by and unprepared for how much of a mindset game and journey and experience that birth is. And what I found in having a birth that really didn’t result in the way that I wanted. And, you know, we were planning for a home birth had to be transferred because meconium in the water, and then it was just like intervention after there. So much tension, you know, the pain tension fear cycle, like really kicked off for me, I ended up having like a third degree tear. And while I was able to deliver vaginally, it was it was excruciating, it was anything but pain free. And I think that so much of the excruciating feeling was a a lot of like intervention. I mean, I know I’ve told you like nurses like holding my legs up and screaming and just like all of those kinds of experiences, but also, the feeling of I’m doing this wrong, or the feeling of, there’s got to be a better way and almost like beating myself up in the process of like being fully dilated. And I think like so many women go to birth, either without any sense of what else is possible. And without the tools. And so I know, I was just saying to you, I have gone through your program, you know, we’ve been working together privately and I am just like, so excited to birth having had like, what I would definitely call a traumatic first birth, like, I cannot wait to go into labor. I’ve got eight weeks baby. Right. Um, I, I am so thrilled for this. And one of the things I’m really excited to talk with you about. And I know that we’ve had a little bit of this conversation before Karen is like the parallel and the overlap between the way that birth happens, right, like the physiological process of contractions beginning and the whole essence and so much of your course in your program in the work that you do educating women on how to navigate labor is about learning to embrace contraction. And I want to talk about this specifically, and ask you about, you know, to talk to us about what it means to embrace contraction, because I think for so many of us, and I know for me, I’ll just speak from my experience, I took a hypnobirthing course, I you know, practice yoga and meditation and mindset. But in when that labor hit for my first child, it was like, I didn’t know how to breathe, and I didn’t know what to do. And I felt like I needed to like, go use my breath to almost like dissociate from my body. And like, I was not giving my contractions a bear hug, like you talked to you like you talked about let’s, let’s put it that way I was, I was using my breath to almost like push away discomfort. So I want to talk about that as it relates to to the physiological process of birth. But one of the things that I really also want to dive into is the overlap and the parallel between embracing contraction and birth and embracing contraction in business. So to give us a foundation, like talk to us about labor and what it means to embrace contraction when we are going into birth as a birthing person, and how like how do we even begin to embrace and as you say, give a bear hug to those contractions when that intensity starts to build?

What does it mean to embrace contractions while in labor

Karen
Wow, yeah, that’s a great question. I could go a lot of places with it. Yeah, that really is at the core of, of what I teach. And I think the first thing I address with with women coming into the space of like, okay, wait a minute, what do you mean paying for birth birth is supposed to be painful, like we have to get over that mental hurdle because so much of First of all, so much of our perception of birth, just like finances, just like business just like, you know, what we do is about your mindset and what you believe is possible. And so much of birth is our mindset as women typically in Western culture is culturally influenced by the culture around us. And most of it being fear based. So if you are in a Western culture, America, Canada, Europe, you’ve probably been taught, especially in America, I tend to see like women fear it a lot, just because we, we’re told, like, it’s supposed to be painful, that could come from your culture, your friends, your family, you know, your parents. And it even comes from theology, a lot of women like are taught, oh, it’s Adam and Eve, they, you know, they send to the garden. So God cursed us. And we’re now laborers painful for every woman, just like we believe our periods. I mean, all these things that make us a woman are bad. And we could get into all of that, what I do is I flipped that all on the tab, and I go, You know what, maybe there’s a blessing on this, that we’re not realizing. And first, we have to really shift our mindset from believing that birth is some scary traumatic event to embracing it, and believing that our bodies were divinely created to do this, just like your bodies knows how to breathe, your body knows how to eat and digest food, you know how to blink, you know how to, you know, throw up, like, all these things are physiological functions that your body does without you having to control it or think about it. And if we look in the animal kingdom, we can see like, animals know how to birth, they typically have straightforward births, especially when we leave them alone and don’t interfere. And it’s very, like natural and physiological. And humans are mammals. And we are designed in a very similar way that when we go into labor, we need quiet dark space, we need to feel supported, we need to feel safe. So much in the same way in animal retreats in the wild, to find in a dark, quiet space. Female humans also need dark quiet supportive space because the hormones that go along with that oxytocin for bonding and contractions, goes into that same adrenaline and cortisol and, and it’s causing tension in your body and more pain. And so when we’re fighting it in that way, and this can happen from like, early labor, we feel those contractions start. And our brain tells us Oh, no, this is gonna hurt you. This is bad, right? This is your enemy. You have to suffer through it brace for it, like all of those mentalities, ways of thinking about labor rise to the surface when we actually start feeling contractions. And even for someone like you who practice who, who took, you know, courses and classes. And you were like, Okay, I’m ready for this. Labor. Still, intense labor is still hard work. So a lot of people get confused. When I say like pain free birth. They’re like, What do you mean, you don’t feel it, like, explain what you mean by pain, free birth. And I’m like, first of all, it doesn’t mean you don’t feel anything. In fact, you feel everything on a much more deeper visceral level, than if you ever if you got an epidural or ever had pain medicine and labor before. This isn’t about not feeling or numbing or separating from your body. This is about deeply being embodied, connected and one with your body, and understanding and knowing what’s happening and, or in, in an in a way that you’re not scared of it, but you’re able to be present with it. So I think it’s so easy for us especially like, type a moms like yourself, I love I loved when you reached out to work with me because I love working with CEOs and successful women. And I find very often that women who are super successful in their life, and they know how to get stuff done, right? Like you’re you’re a boss, they’ve, that we they often have the hardest time surrendering and birth because it’s it’s almost like, counter intuitive from the way you’re trained to just like go after stuff like something’s not working, I’m gonna figure it out, I’m gonna fix it and that tenacity serves you so well in life. But in labor, your brain is supposed to go offline, like it’s not supposed to function. We have to become almost animal like, primal. And it’s the back of the primal part of our brain that is active in labor. But if we’re trying to figure it out, if we’re scared, if we’re trying to control it, if we’re beating ourselves up and feeling like a failure, all of that releases hormones that don’t serve you and labor the adrenaline and the cortisol, which tighten your muscles, tighten your pelvic floor and actually cause more pain. And so, catching it at the very beginning, and this is what I teach my course. How do you catch it at the very beginning in early labor, that’s when you start practicing that and when that contractions first building, that’s when you lean into it, you don’t pull away you don’t lean, resisting it. And I think that happens even in the flow. If you’re talking business like learning how to lean into the flow, instead of trying to control it and force a certain outcome. So much of it is expectations to like would we have these expectations at birth is going to be beautiful and candle lights and blissful and pain free and it absolutely can be. But then the moment that first contraction hits, if you haven’t prepared for the intensity, you don’t have some serious tools in your bag to like, manage the intensity of what it is, knowing that it’s supposed to be hard work. It’s supposed to be intense, but I’m built for this, I can do whatever like labor throws at me, I have the ability and I practice the ability to trust and surrender and lean into it without having to control it. Birth is 90% mental.

Cait
It is so much and it’s so funny. I always like the analogy that I really bring to this is like in my one experience of giving birth so far. It was literally like an Ayahuasca trip. I don’t know if you’ve ever done Ayahuasca Karen, but it was like, you are in another ether. And it’s just like this whole other realm. But you are so right that it is about and I love that call out of like high achieving successful women. We have the hardest time my midwife like God bless her, I love her. She’s a naturopathic doctor. She’s incredible. She’s Ella’s pediatrician. And she is. She’s my midwife, again, for this birth. I think she very much was like, subtly, but she didn’t say directly, but like very subtly hinting of like, surrender is going to be a big theme like you are a high achiever, your brain is not required here, like your brain does not birth your baby. And this is a theme that I explore with my clients all of the time is like the and I love what you said, Karen about the expectation piece when we expect whether it’s going into a birth for the baby to just plop out and again, I have like, I just shared this on my birth story podcast solo episode that I did like a year and a half ago after Ella was born. But I took this Hypno birthing course and I think it was very No well meaning. But the like, some of the videos were so outdated, there was like a woman eating like a five course chicken dinner fully dilated, sitting up in a hospital bed. So I legit was like, Alright, I’m gonna have to like do a little breathing. But like, it’s fine. It’s just gonna be a little intense. And so when it was like, super intense, I had all of this expectation. And when I felt what my felt sense experience when it was different, I thought I must be doing this wrong. There’s something wrong with me, I’m failing. I’m making a mistake. There’s another way let me think my way through this. And I noticed Yeah, so much of the business, we do the same thing, right, we plan for a launch, or we create an epic reel. And our expectation is it’s gonna go viral, I’m gonna make a million dollars like it’s all going to come pouring down. And yet, if the result that comes back is, you know, I don’t like nobody buys initially or the real flops completely or whatever it is like the result isn’t instantly there are the way that we as business owners and as women who run businesses, like we treat that we think I’m doing it wrong, panic mode, and it’s like the fear tension pain cycle that you didn’t arrive and that is like physiological and birth is absolutely something that we go into a mindset spiral into in business and it creates so much more suffering. And needless thing and in the parallel that I am like so interested in Karen in your work and in the way that you bring this to light for women is like the naturalness of the intensity of the cycle. Like, there is nothing wrong with us as women when we experienced tremendous sensation and feeling coursing through our bodies. And there is nothing wrong with us as business owners when we experienced tremendous sensation during the period of a launch, birthing your gifts into the world, offering your programs and the like vulnerability that that bring raising your rates and not having someone join like very it is so natural and what I just think is such a revolution that you offer Karen for so many women is the reframe of contractions are bad to be avoided. Negative, any sort of stigma around them to contractions are like holy they are beautiful. This is part of the process. This is this is to be embraced and when we embrace it, it actually alchemize it so I’d love for you to like talk to us because I remember like practicing this watching your course preparing for for my second birth now and being like oh my god, there is like there is such a code here when we like as you were just saying and obviously your course teaches us how to do this. And guys, if you’re listening on the podcast, we’re gonna put a link in the show notes for Karen’s course, I literally cannot recommend it highly. And I’m like, gonna get emotional just talking about it. Because I feel like you have given me such a gift. And I know that so many of like 1000s of women have been impacted by you in this way. And so I’d love for you to talk to us about I mean, I was just like, admiring the beautiful overlap and parallel between the expectation that we have about birth, how that causes us to get to our heads and think we’re doing something wrong, how much that happens in business, and just like inverse contraction is not bad. It’s not something to be avoided. It’s something to be embraced and welcomed. So too, is it in business, like we are gonna have to add squishy seasons, we are gonna have seasons that feel hard. And usually, I say this to my clients all the time. And I see this when we feel contraction, we are on the way to the biggest expansion of our life and hot days all better believe that is true in business or in birth, rather like the car. I mean, there is a big opening about to happen. And so I’d love for you to talk to us about what happens when we in birth, like actually learn to embrace that intensity, embrace those surges, embrace the contraction, like, what, like physiologically starts to change in the way we experience those contractions. Because I remember, like, learning that from you and being like, my mind was like the mind blown emoji.

What happens physiologically when we learn to embrace contractions instead of resisting it

Karen
Oh, that I could go so many places with this. Yeah, I think at the root of this is like the mentality that that when hard things happen to us, it’s suffering, it’s bad, we’re gonna we’re gonna be in pain. And if we, you know, like, I remember going through a traumatic experience, like two or three years ago. And I, but I remember like, seeing through like, the darkness and being like, Okay, this is this sucks. I hate this. I feel like I’m all alone and trauma, like everything’s going bad. But it’s making me stronger. And for, for women who have the like, mentality, like to not run away from pain, and hardship and hard things like life isn’t promised to be like easy right? But when for those of you who are like, I’m going to press into this, like, I am motivated, I know what I’m called to, I know what I’m created for. And that gives you the motivation to go through the hard labor, whether it’s creating a business or birthing a baby. And for those of you birthing a baby or wanting to birth a baby at some point, yes, it is hard work. But it doesn’t have to be suffering and traumatizing.

And I think our ability to surrender and embrace the hard things in life, whether that be a contraction, or like, like I love that analogy of like a contraction in your business, that means that there’s expansion coming in that moment that you feel the intensity, what’s happening, like, let’s talk about the physiology of birth for a second here. So your uterus is a bag of muscles. And labor doesn’t happen like as an outside force coming upon you like so many women who are trained to think birth is painful, have this view that like labor just to get to you. And we don’t know what could happen. An emergency could happen at any point in time, right? Like it’s this high stakes, high anxiety, painful thing experience and you better get the drugs get the epidural because you’ll be screaming and pain right like that’s the way we talk about birth in our society. And we vomit this on to pregnant women all the time don’t get me started on going down that rabbit hole. But if you’re if you were exposed to that mentality and or if you carry even like drops of it. And you feel those contractions happening, you’re going to feel like oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can do this. Oh, this is early labor. How am I going to handle transition? Or how long is this going to take? Like you said, you’ve got in your head you started to panic, you started to believe things are going wrong. What am I doing wrong? And all our triggers come up like maybe I’m really not cut out for this. Maybe I really can’t do this. Maybe I’m really not meant to be an entrepreneur. Maybe I’m really not. You know, I can’t my body isn’t you know, built for birth like whatever. All are adults and this is universal. Like mama if you oh yeah, labor or business or life. Totally. Even if our thoughts come to the surface.

Cait
They do. I literally remember saying to turning to Toby, and turning to our midwife and thinking back to some of the beautiful advice that some of the mamas in my life had given me and they said to me, you know, when you feel like you just can’t do it anymore. You’re about to meet your baby and I remember I was in like transition or past transition and my contractions had really slow down at the end. I was supposed to be in the pushing stage. It was just like oh, it was like so horrible. The way like the nurses were in any everything and I literally remember thinking Karen having the thought like that is true for her and for all the other women in the world but for me like I am doing this wrong, I just can’t do it. So it was like, this shame feeling of, of the story of when it’s so hard and you think you just can’t do it, you’re about to meet your baby. But like, for me, I, I’m broken, like I’m about to like, go have an emergency C section because I can’t keep going and be like, I this doesn’t apply to me. And you’re so right. Like, we think the same thing in business, we think I’m just not cut out for this, I must be missing the strategy. Other people have this strategy, and I don’t have it or other people have the charisma and the confidence or the sexiness or the right, real whatever. And, and it means that they are, you know, get to slay the game, but like I’m broken, there’s something wrong with me. Yeah, it is a lie. It is a lie in birth in a lie in business.

Karen
Totally. And I think we all have some version of that lie that we’ve had to overcome. Anyone who’s done anything great in their life has probably had to overcome those inner belief systems, the keeping us playing small, right? Like we have said no, like, and those those transformations where we reshift our mindset only really happen through struggle. Like it doesn’t happen when you’re sitting on the beach with Margarita and life is great. It happens through the hard parts. And let me just like blow your mind here for a second, like every contraction we experience in birth. Like if I asked you like, what’s the purpose of that contraction, you might go well to dilate, right? Like we know it has a purpose. But that’s actually secondary. If we look at the uterus, as this amazing, brilliant organ which is freaking magical, right? Grows from the size of a pear to a watermelon then shrinks back down. I love what Ina May says she’s like, if men had an organ like that could do that. They would surely brag about it.

Cait
Yeah, totally. They whip it out. Look at this bad boy.

Embracing your femininity and womanhood and what it is capable of

Karen
All right. So first of all, like just being in awe of what your body is capable of, let’s let’s start practicing that rather than cursing our femininity, cursing our womanhood complaining about periods complaining about our gut whatever, like, okay, side note. So the uterus is pulling up, it’s three layers of muscles thick, and at the top is the fondest. When you’re when your belly is really big. And you’re in labor, your third trimester, right? Your cervix is really thick and dense and the rest of your uterus is thin, well, in labor, what happens, this energetic thing happened. And that happens in the presence of oxytocin and love hormones. When you feel safe, peaceful, happy, protected, your uterus gets surges of oxytocin from your body, and it causes contraction. But what the uterus is actually doing is not just dilating, it’s building strength in the fundus. The fundus is there as an engine to push that baby out. So every contraction in labor is actually pulling and stretching and thinning out the cervix at the bottom, to pull all the energy to the top of that uterus. And it takes time to first of all, to open the cervix so that your baby can pass through. Because it’s a sphincter, right? But it’s also building energy and power. It’s strengthening you. So talk about like feminine power. Every contraction is physically making your uterus stronger, so that it can push a baby out. Just like in life, when we go through contractions. When we go through hard things. You can take them and tell me that this is hurting me, it’s making me weaker, I can’t do this. I’m a failure. Or you can say, this is making me stronger. How do I partner with what is the I need to learn? How do I rise to the next level that I need to rise to, in order to make it through this contraction, this hard thing, and the more you embrace the surge is when you learn to lean into it. And I love visualizing these things. And I talk all about that in my course on how to how to have a pain free contraction every time. And it really comes down to like, what is your physiological response to that hard thing you’re experiencing in your body? Is it to constrict? Is it to control is it to pull away in fear? Is it to give no go into shame, doubt spiral, like all those things are going to just further drag you down that fear tension pain cycle. But when we lean in and we go, okay, this is making me stronger. Every wave is bringing I saw someone mentioned that, like I’m the I’m the ally in every way that’s bringing me closer to my baby, but also just being in awe and like what if we could be happy in birth like happy when hard things come joyful, whereas there’s these these things that are so difficult and intense and also so glorious, and so create creating like it’s bringing us closer or babies, but it is physically making us my uterus stronger. And then that uterus, that baby moves down rotates, comes down to the perineum and it looks neat, it pushes. It’s the uterus that pushes and so many of us have this backwards and all the hospitals have it backwards. And that’s what they did in your labor, they coached you to push pull up your legs, hold your breath count to 10. Well, let me tell you that’s creating so much tension and pain. In the process. Your bodies aren’t designed to do that, ladies, so don’t learn how to push, physiologically there is a much easier way to do it. When that love works in your body.

The mindset of things happening for you instead of to you & embracing intensity

Cait
Oh, I love seeing that someone just said they bought a book just about your birth course. I’m so happy to hear that. But yes, and the way that you use this in your courses, like, is is so amazing. But you’re so right. And I, I just again, I just keep coming back to the mindset piece when we are in when we are in labor and how connected that is to the mindset of when we are experiencing a contract. That’s like, how do you handle if a client wants to leave or ask for a refund? Or, you know, and that happens in the same week that your VA quits and the same week that you’re in a launch that’s slower than you want? And there’s like a shitstorm going on at home. We can feel how normal Is it right to feel like oh my god, like you were talking before like God’s cursing me like it must be Mercury Retrograde, and I must be in my Saturn Return. We try to We either go into shame and like collapsing, I’m bad, I’m a failure, are we going to blame? Well, this person is bad and this person is wrong. And this person did it wrong. And when in reality, there’s like, there’s such another way, which is, this is happening for me not to me. And I have when I’m able to embrace this even in the intensity of the sensation, even if we would prefer a different sensation. Like I will never forget on one of our private coaching calls you had me like you were we were practicing breathing. And then you were like, Okay, great. Go get an ice cube. And we’re going to do this again. I was like, What am I going to do with an ice cube and you’re like, you’re going to hold it in your hand. And you’re going to feel how cold it is. And you’re going to like completely soften your body. And this was so impactful for me, Karen and I know you facilitate this in your course as well. But I actually did this exercise at one of my business retreats for the ladies there because it was so impactful for me to have the physical reminder that we get to choose like, we don’t get to choose the sensation that arises but we get to choose how we respond to it. And as business owners, there’s gonna be uncomfortable sensations. And spoiler alert, you can make a shit ton of money like multiple seven figures over here and like I gotta breathe through those contractions sometimes, like I have shit that comes up. And my ability to regulate my nervous system, my ability to regulate, you know, the my emotional response, my ability to regulate my mindset impacts how I’m able to lead my team, how I’m able to continue showing up whether I go into fright, flight, fright, freeze, spiral out, blame people start acting erratically. Like start experiencing a ton of like fear, tension pain, or how I’m able to lead myself through that it’s the exact same practice of when I experienced that ice cube sensation or that who like to steam train rolling through in the body during a contraction, like I don’t I cannot and my brain certainly cannot and hopefully this is helpful for other controlling people who are listening to this. No, it serves as well in so many areas ladies, but in birth like the control like our ability to take the reins and lead the way it’s not going to stop the intensity of the sensation what is going to stop that and try it and not stop it but transform it is how we relate to it and it’s such a beautiful it’s such a beautiful code and key and transmission that you teach Karen is like transforming our relationship to an uncomfortable sensation to one of embrace to one of this is working for me and the way that you and in your in your program like talk about how that actually literally moves us closer to the baby is is a true revolution.

Karen
Yeah, it’s, I love the words you’re using, like you said expansion. Softening like those are 100% words. It’s like the feminine energy in labor. And that require birth requires something of us it requires that we put aside our understanding or control our fears. Really our mind has to totally get out of the way and that’s the main thing that messes up most births in America I’m convinced.

Cait
Totally we live in our brains most of the time and it’s like our brains do not birth our babies.

Karen
Yeah, you can’t think your baby out and when we go down that path of fear and intimidation and all the all our triggers. It creates more tension, more pain. Like we talked about like we spiral out but when we take the intensity and instead of disassociating prime it right we embrace it. Like I say, give that contraction a bear hug. Embrace it. I would have envisioned when I first learned this and my first birth, and I had painful contractions in early labor, and I was like writhing trying to get away from them. And I’m like, God, you said, like, you promised me this, like, I’ve been preparing for this believing, for pain free. This is about pain free, like, what am I supposed to do? And I’ve heard like it my spirit, embrace it. And I’m like, but I don’t want to like it’s so counterintuitive. And so many of us have these ingrained habits and thought patterns to like, fight something that’s hurting us, right. But when we take birth as something that is not hurting you, but actually very good and very normal, that physiological and, and it’s like an energetic thing. But this isn’t just like happening outside you around you in your business, it’s happening inside you. But it’s not happening to you like that’s the difference, becoming one with this surge. This is your power as a woman, you are embracing your power to birth, this is an ancient power. This is a power and an energy that has birthed you and all of your ancestors, and you carry this divine blueprint in your body to birth your baby. And when you partner with that incredible energy happening involuntarily that you can’t control. magical things happen. And instead of bracing, controlling, contracting, pulling away, you’re expanding, we’re softening, we’re opening. And I and I literally said okay, I’ll try anything right in this moment. So as that contraction started swelling in me, I was like, okay, I’m gonna embrace it. And it took a lot of mental thought in the beginning to like, embrace that surge, embrace the power of that contraction. And I just remember, like, absorbing it through my body. And it takes a lot of mental energy. And then like, throughout labor, none that one didn’t hurt, and none of them after that hurt. And I realized, oh, wow, this is actually working. Like, I can actually feel this contraction. But if I’m relaxed, and I’m opening, and I’m embracing it, it doesn’t feel painful, like it did in the very beginning. So it convinced me this is real, this is possible. Then I got into transition. And these like waves of oxytocin started hitting me because I’m getting even more happy that this is really like it’s not just like, all the hard parts coming, right? Because like we said, so much of its mental, because I kept thinking, Oh, this might be still early later. The hard part will be later when I realized I’m like eight centimeters. This is the hard part. Like it’s working, I got this, I was like laughing in transition. So yes, like it’s so much of it is about our ability as women to embrace this beautiful divine process that we were created for, to learn in the moment to expand, not just like, as like a happy, fluffy thought, but to like physiologically expand our womb, expand our pelvic floor, expand that space around baby, and welcome that surge because the energy of the contraction does all the work. We don’t have to force anything. And I think that’s why so many births go off course, especially in the second stage. And when women are taught, or told you don’t know how to push, get in bed, get on your back, hold up your legs, hold your breath and push. And you can take a beautiful physiological birth and hijack it and derail it. When we tell women what to do, because we teach them to that they don’t know what they’re doing, and you should abandon your intuition and your instincts. And now, you’ve done this beautifully up until now you’ve worked with your body and worked with your contractions and you’re working so hard and you’re so internal, but now we’re going to force it now your body just doesn’t know what to do and we have to hold our breath and literally force our babies out of us. And I just have to call BS because it’s like it causes so much damage to women’s competence as mothers and to your pelvic floor it’ll it’ll damage your pelvic floor so don’t do that. But even in those intense pushing surges, when all our job is to expand, it’s not to push it’s to expand at birth flows from feminine energy and when we partner with the feminine energy in our body that is expansion and surrender and softness like I had a doula tell me in those like super intense surges because even I need that coaching like on my third birth, right? She said she looked me in the eyes as she knows like I’m pushing like that me pushing my body it’s pushing and she just said keep your butt soft. And I just felt like all that any energy, just tension, you know, like release it. So we we partner with the softness with with what our body’s doing and we get out of the way we let that force that is like a freight train going through your body. Take over and allow yourself to open and the moment we do that. Our job is to open and get out of the way and your body in a physiological unmedicated birth is gonna provide all the energy in the steam to get that baby. Down and out.

Cait
So good Karen, there’s so many nuggets in there so much wisdom. I love that I just I like felt my butt soften when you said that. Oh, good, I’m gonna tell Toby whisper that in my ear when I’m pushing.

Karen
Yeah, like we need those remind me that was like a birth affirmation card soften your butt. Yes.

Cait
I love that. I’m feeling that totally for you. product line. Yeah, gear, swag gear. On a t shirt. Exactly. Soften your butt. So good. Karen, I gosh, I can’t believe we’re already almost coming up on time. This has been such a juicy conversation, I really want to ask you. If you had to give, I asked this question a lot to our guests. But if you had to give one piece of advice, I’m going to tailor it a little bit for for what we’re talking about one piece of advice to women to specifically get out of their head, get into their bodies and really embrace the beautiful, wild, ecstatic, physiological natural God given designed process of birth and everything that that entails the extreme highs and euphoria, the intensity that asks us to really like source, our deepest sense of self, like, what would that piece of advice be to get our mind and our energy in the right state to move into a birth for the most beautiful experience that we can have?

Advice for having the most beautiful birthing experience

Karen
I think the thing I would say the most, I think it’s two parts. One, we have to ditch the fear. Because the fear is what shows up and sabotages our birth. Like, we have to identify where our triggers are, where our fears are, where the stories are, that we’re holding in our soul of other people’s births that went bad or painful or hard. Because whether you know it or not, you’re carrying that around with you. And those stories surface in labor unless you deal with it, right. And then to have a practice where you are safe in your own body. Because those there’s you don’t have to get rid of every fear you do, you probably should, like do some work to like, deal with the big ones. But like, we’re all going to hit those walls, like we talked about those walls of doubt and, and shame and like how to, I’m not sure if I can do this, there’s going to be intense moments. And in those moments, it’s having that team around you to remind you like this is you’re safe, you’re doing this. So I think a good practice I love to do just to get me in that feminine energy is just to move my body, whether that’s dancing or like nonlinear movement, or going for a walk, but like being in touch with who I am as a woman getting out of my head and practicing something that is physic physical like moving my body flowing like like feminine energy flows, it doesn’t it’s not rigid, so much of rigid, like when rigidity shows up in birth, it freezes it stalls it makes it more painful. So it’s like anything, whatever helps you like turn on music, get, you know, start dancing I love like you Google like women dancing and labor. They teach their moms how to like dance and move their hips and, and I think like if you don’t have time to like, take, you know, an e-course and at first, like get educated know what your body’s doing, because it is a mental game. But just practice that like that. Energy practice. Being in that place of surrender, and partnering with what your body’s doing. I think that like in the moment is probably the best thing learning remembering to like, hold and expand and move and flow with this powerful things happening in your body and and understand what that is what’s actually going on. So that your your, your mind doesn’t play tricks on you and doesn’t say oh no, this is wrong. I’m doing something wrong. When you understand what’s happening. And you trust your body. That’s like key if you can trust and take the back seat, let your body be the driver, you’re sitting in the back seat. You’re the passenger, then you’re good mama like you’re good.

Cait
Oh, good. I love that so much, Karen and just the wisdom of like, letting the beautiful wisdom of our feminine nature guide us. It’s it’s so so good. Thank you so much for everything that you do, and the work that you share in the world so generously and the wisdom that you’ve shared today on this episode. It’s been so so beautiful to chat with you. Tell our listeners who are listening on the podcast where they can follow along with your journey. With the wisdom that you share, get access to your program, tell us more about the ways that we can get connected deeper into your world.

Karen
Yeah, you can find me on Instagram at pain free birth and I’ve got lots of high laid some resources on my feet and highlights, you can even find the story of my own home births, or at least one or two of them in my highlights under my story for those who want to learn more, or hear more about that, and on my website, painfreebirth.com Has all where you can get access to the pain free birth childbirth course as well as the postpartum bliss course. Because in the same way, we think of childbirth as painful and scary and awful. We often a lot of women struggle in the postpartum. And so I have a whole course that includes segments on breastfeeding and help healing birth trauma Latchi, like all like mindset, how to bond with your baby, so much stuff that we don’t typically talk about. And just generally like getting the right mindset for postpartum too, and learning how to prepare for it. So that’s also available on there.

Cait
So beautiful. Thank you so much, Karen, guys, if you are listening on the podcast, we are going to include all of those links in the show notes to all of both of Karen’s courses, her Instagram. So Karen, thank you again, so much. You have just completely given me so much excitement and enthusiasm and empowerment and education around what birth can be. And like I shared, like the parallels for how that relates to all of us as entrepreneurs is so profound. And you’re just you’re pioneering a revolution, Mama, and I’m so grateful to be a part of it with you. So thank you so much for your generosity for sharing with us and for this beautiful conversation.