0:00:03 - Emilee Saldaya
Welcome, Sister MorningStar.
0:00:09 - Sister MorningStar
Good day. I've left my Holy Land to be with you here today. It's an honor to be with you.
0:00:16 - Emilee Saldaya
It's an honor to have you leave to just get all your full, your full attention and focus. And this time we actually get to be on video, which is so fun because last time and in the past we've always had to just do it over audio. So I get to get to see your beautiful face and, yeah, get to feel even more connected to you as we get into this big topic.
0:00:40 - Sister MorningStar
Well, what I'm wondering is I'm speaking with you right now, but will I be speaking with other people, like when they see me? Because you see me, they'll see me.
0:00:52 - Emilee Saldaya
This is exactly so this is recorded, or it is being recorded right now. So this video, our conversation, will be uploaded into a bundle of different videos. So someone yeah, we'll just click on this and it'll come right to what's happening right now. Does that make sense?
0:01:11 - Sister MorningStar
It does. So I want to say hello to everyone else. You know whoever will be out there. It's so important to me because you're who I'm really talking to. I'm talking with Emily today, but the purpose of us talking we do this often, but the purpose in this way me leaving my Holy Land, coming here is to be with you. So please get yourself a cup of tea or settle yourself in so that we can go so deep in this such important subject, so dear to my heart, so important the first month, that's. That's our subject today, right?
0:01:52 - Emilee Saldaya
I'm really looking forward to just hearing what, what might come from your mouth today as we sit in presence and just call on this, this big topic. Yes, I agree, I was. I was just was remembering. I had a flash visual when you just said the first mother of of where I, where I buried my first placenta in Hawaii, and the earthworms as I was digging through and the tears that were falling and just what magic we all get to to access when we are in relationship with our placentas.
0:02:29 - Sister MorningStar
And maybe we'll go back and forth using the word placenta for people who think about that, though I must say I was also me thinking thousands of stories in Russia with some psychologists who were pregnant, they were going to be birthing and it, and so very, very learned people and they were totally on on aware that they would give birth twice, it would be giving birth to a baby and then they would also be giving birth to what they called the afterbirth. They had kind of heard after birth, but they didn't know what that meant, that it that it's actually a fetal organ, that it's a being, so to say.
0:03:13 - Emilee Saldaya
So, yes, yeah, let's start there what is the placenta and what happens after a baby is born? And and you as someone who has taught and traveled all over the world, and this is this opportunity for us to really name what you know to be true, that so many women don't yet know.
0:03:41 - Sister MorningStar
Okay, let's see where to begin. So I'll just say again that we might I might use the words placenta, or first mother, and then in some cultures they call it the sibling Same organ. Either way, whatever we want to call it, it exists and it is made by the baby. So it's a fetal organ and people so often think of it like that. The mother made it, but she didn't. The baby makes it. It belongs to a baby or part of this whole baby world. And so when I I think the thing I want to speak about so much today is that it's a birth, the birth of the placenta is a birth. It's too much in this modern world and all over we think about birth of the baby and all prenatal time, or people watching movies or videos or stories. All their focus and attention is on how I'm going to orgasmically birth or birth in pain or whatever extremes people want to go to. Either way, how am I going to get my baby out, right, what's it going to take for me to enjoy or get through or whatever, but it's all about how I'm going to get my baby out, baby's birth. And then there's this very small or like if you look at birth plans, it'd be pages and pages about what, all the things that are going to affect how I'm going to get my baby here and how you're going to treat me and treat my baby.
But what about the first mother? So you asked the question what happens between birth and baby? So we get this baby, and people sometimes even worry a little too much about that, what my baby could live or die or whatever. I always say, well, of course, anything is possible. You drove here today in a car. You could live or die driving car and more than likely, you have 18 years to focus and take good care raising this child. This is your reality, your most common reality.
Okay, I actually want to pause there and say something that's kind of a little bit heavy on my heart, which is please do not idealize me. Do not idealize me or birth or anything. Just be real. Real life is so magical and so powerful and me as an individual, I'm getting to celebrate my birthday pretty soon and it's as my one of my divine daughter says mother. We're spiritual beings on an evolutionary path, so I'm changing, I'm growing. There are things I've done or handled in my own birth, from my first baby to my third baby.
Each time, I was like, wow, how I want to birth my next baby. Right, I'm moving, I'm not a robot, I'm real, I'm changing, I'm learning and I hope that, for you, this is this is not a static teaching or time that we're sharing right now. This is, we're in the stream, this is what we're talking about today To an end in another year and another 10 years, and see, wow, what more have we come to know in this mystical, magical experience that allows us to embrace more and more miracles, more and more magical things that the the common way it misses, it does this system. So don't idealize me, please, or idealize birth. Stay real with it and notice that it's more amazing than what you were imagining. It's more powerful, and so I want to add the birth of the placenta into that experience. So it's not just, as Michelle O'Donnell would say, the cocktail of hormones. They're on their big high when this baby comes out.
The moment, the very moment that this baby's little crown you could even say her crown Well, if it's a bump, that's our crown, right for that moment. However, the moment that she comes, even in water, but especially air, there's a cattle cataclysmic change and communication that starting to happen. We could even go back a little bit and think about how did birth get started? How did my body and baby? They fight about it all the time in science, right, did baby start the labor and mother start the labor? We don't know. They're talking about it in a very serious way and then they decide one day or maybe it's the stars, you know, we just don't know many things. It's the same thing with the birth of the first mother. She's in direct communication with this baby. Even more closely, we can imagine then the month, the, the, the birthing, about mother who's got her for brain and just thinking and doing whatever. Hopefully not so much in that moment.
Right, we talked so much about the halo. I like to call it a three foot halo. It's the mother and nobody's in it, just mother and baby. If the more they have this protected sacred space, or there's no distraction out outside, disturbances interrupting this, millions of years of intelligence, it's. It's exquisite intelligence. We can't even break it down to understand it all it's so. It's so in her way, woven and ascending, like it's a moving intelligence, not static intelligence.
So, baby, she starts to be born. Even if she comes quickly, she still has to come. She's just like head, you know right. Then her little eyes. Maybe she's really looking around, it's so exciting, her nose, she's in a hurry, right and. But maybe she's baby number 20, and she just like, oh, I'm ready, just come on out. But just as all of that starts to feel this new world, she's just an information that's starting to go back and flood from her. She's wondering about things, forgive me for me talking about like she's a real person, but she is. I'm just saying she and telling proven wrong. We'll just say she. She's going to her own physiology and then now, through the cord, she is starting to give information back, of course, breath and blood flow and all of that. But this intelligence, through hormonal exchange and things we can't name, is starting to say something's changing and that which was tied and closed has space. That which was feeling warm is changing temperature, that which had sound a certain way, and that sounds changing.
All the senses, everything that has to do with senses. And we only have one place where all five senses exist and that's the head. In the head all five senses are present and usually that's make like a baby and head out right, like usually head is what's coming, and so the senses are starting to do their thing and the given information back to the first mother. Okay, so thank you for your patience with me. I know I'm a storyteller and I'm thinking of 100 stories right now.
But just this placenta, which is usually about the size, it's a high plate. You know, little babies, bigger babies, whatever. There it is, this amazing surface is on the edge of the uterus. That was the size of the bear and now size of watermelon, but the same two organs, like, so, like purposeful. They had a purpose and they're. They're living their unique purpose in that moment. And if we'll have 20 babies, they only get to do it 20 times the whole lifelong and think all the things we do in our life over and over and over, but birth it just couple of times really, and they each have this purpose that they're getting to live. They're like it's now, like this is the moment of millions of years of DNA. That said, if it ever comes about that you're pregnant and you're given birth and you need to have a baby, and then, of course, you can't have a baby if you have a placenta, it's now. So this whole surface area adhered beautifully to another surface area, exactly that size, like not going further out or further in.
We're not talking about pathology, we're not talking about unusual occurrences that you see in museums. We're talking about woman after woman, day after day, night after night, generation after generation, from the dawn of time, these two doing their thing exactly together, and too often we think, oh, it's the mother, that's her blood pressure and this and that, and putting pumping, as if a heart is a pump. It's not a pump. So right, moving, moving her life force, not just blood, her life force, her, her love, her nutrition, her energy, you know, in into this placenta, that's moving into baby. But actually it's not that, it's.
It's like Sheila Kitzinger would say sperm don't enter an egg, the egg is drawing them. They can't help themselves. She's calling them in. It's like that, the baby she's. She's calling for more later milk, but right now I'm going to say life force. I'm going to say life force instead of blood.
Only, I only needed on baby now. I only needed for certain time, because I'm actually now I'm being born, something I didn't even know what's going to happen to me, but I'm being born and, oh my gosh, now something else happening to me, and so is she. As she does this, maybe she. Maybe she even takes a little breath right right here, right, just little. She might even start to take a little breath, or maybe she's waiting until she's all the way out, or or maybe she's got a mother that's a fire sign and just all excited, and maybe she's got a mother that's a Virgo and quieter and just barely touching her. Who knows? Interaction, environment interacting, maybe birthing mother interacting, a great need for oxygen starting to occur.
But the, the court, in normal birth we're just a wild birth, will say the court. She's still just attached to this, to this surface, and so baby is going to start to play, play with taking a breath. She doesn't need a breath, right that second, because she's still getting the same breath she was always getting. She's still getting it, but it's changing like instantaneously, maybe slow, maybe fast, but it's changing. And as it changes, that's the dance that's happening baby going to start to take a little bit more breath or air Every time she does.
She needs a little bit less from the first mother. We're going to call her the first mother. She needs a little bit less, and the first mother is thinking because she's intelligent. So I'm going to call her thinking or knowing, and she's thinking because she's going oh, everybody, hold on, don't do anything, don't anybody move, like these millions of little capillaries, right, that are, you know, adherent to this surface area. She has not let go yet, baby still needs us, she doesn't need us so much. Oh, no, just somebody is like no, she still needs us, don't do anything yet. And tell, finally there's some feeling between the two of like, okay, I'm, I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm, I'm breathing more and breathing more. She's breathing, she needs us less, she needs us less. I'm breathing more, she needs us less.
Until all of a sudden, at some instantaneous moment, everybody, together, on the edge of their capillary seat, ready, set, jump Like let go, let go, like like, have you ever swam, like in a creek where you're holding grape vines, everybody holding a grape vine tenor as kids, crazy, wild kids, like all of us, and the goal was always right Can we swing out and everybody let go at the same time, at the same moment, we're all going to let go and then we're all going to splash together, right, but it's that critical, it's that amazing that they all agreed to let go at the same moment and when they do that entire surface area that is, it's, it's mind boggling how large it really is on a certain we don't want to lose that much surface area anywhere else. Right, please don't take my blood supply, my life force, that much area at all one moment. And yet they do this. They make an agreement ready, said let go, and they let go all at once and detach so, and the moment they do that, then the uterus, she starts to shrink and close. So the blood supplies are two different blood supplies, right. So one blood supply saying I'm letting go, other blood supply saying they let go, let go on, everybody agreeing and releasing.
And why are they releasing? And the other reasons? One first mother is saying we're done, we did our great job, we, we honoring this baby is now functioning and so we're going to reset. We did our great job. We passed on this great everything to next generation. Now we must protect mother, the birthing mother, and so we're going to withhold our life force now and return it back into her and keep shrinking and getting smaller and smaller. And so it's so amazing.
So, but placenta hasn't been born yet. All that happens in the, in the veiled and hidden world, the magical world, just like baby was growing in the hidden, magical world and she is born and we're just like, oh my God, she's got my eyes, but but we didn't know yet. And then now we get to see and saying for the first mother like we need to receive her with reverence for all the what she, she did. So between birth of baby and we don't even have birth of placenta yet. But that's some of the things starting to happen. While we're we're just even waiting to see if she's going to be born, this first mother. Okay, I should get a drink of water, and it was so exciting.
0:21:44 - Emilee Saldaya
And I'm going to give you an image of you at the festival, like putting on a play, like having a little puppet show. You know, stand where you could actually act out. This whole thing would be so amazing.
0:21:59 - Sister MorningStar
Yeah, it's so real. It's, it's so real, and so get a drink.
0:22:11 - Emilee Saldaya
So that is the placenta coming off of the uterine wall. And then what happens next?
0:22:20 - Sister MorningStar
Okay. So I'll just say that for that to happen even though it's happened from the dawn of time my dear just had another baby in the woods last night, mammals all over For that to happen what I just said it takes exactly what it takes for birth Privacy, quietness. Not quietness from the mother. She don't need to be quiet, but not just like if you're around little animals birthing they, they, they do the best if nobody sees anything, because it is such a delicate interplay of intelligence that needs to work that anything that is disrupting, disturbing, distracting, it's considered danger by biology and this is a biological move, deeply biological. We could call it spiritual to us because it's mystical and mysterious, so I can call it spirit. I can call it spirit I'm a nun, I can kind of think spiritual, I want to, but but it's deeply biological and so you can't have an orgasm or poop or do anything. That's biological if you get disturbed and distracted and you know all the, all the bad days. I can say that even though that, what I described, is happening and it's beautiful on the outside environment, it's just critical because that's when other other things can start to happen. Yeah, just so, that's what we want. Let's see so that three foot halo. You know the mother, she's in love with her baby, she's in an altered state of consciousness. We are, I can say we are, I remember it so well. And then the kind of like signs or clues that we have that this hidden thing is happened, or even, yeah, happening happened, like a baby coming. It's like, oh, blessed show, we call blessed show pink show. Different things are a little bit of contraction, this or that are like oh, maybe baby's going to come today. It's been 44 weeks, may come today, right, but still we get a little bit of signs. So, same there, the baby taking breaths and starting to wiggle and move is one of our first signs, like I said, because that's already giving information back. And then if, if the cord starts to lengthen, like it was a certain link or maybe shorter, and then now, wow, I've gone more room, I can give my baby all the way up here, and then I get all cord lengthened. Well then, for Santa changed, right, because it was attached, it is attached to the. So cord lengthening or little, a little bit more extra blood separation, blood not, not a faucet, not gushes, just a little separation, but that that does its thing and stops. It's like, oh, something happened, something changed. Or the mother might feel another contraction, just like, oh my God, is it twins? Kind of, kind of, yeah, you're going to birth again.
It can be so emotional for some women can be so emotional and it's nothing to me to to witness women who have so much emotion with releasing their placenta, you know, with releasing their, their sibling, to their baby, or their first mother or whatever they call it. It's like, wow, now I'm all on, thank you for doing all that work for her, and now it's me and the other. The other interesting thing if there's concealed, like you know, you just not, you don't really see. Maybe you do see some blood or not, but if baby was quiet, like she took her breath, maybe she even made her sounds. It's not the same as crying, like a baby isn't crying, she's talking, and later we find out what cry is. Cries different thing that babies do but she's talking, but then she gets quiet, she's just looking around and she's integrating her.
She came from a different Starship and finds herself now and this new Starship, with these new people and the only person that's really that, comforting his mother, the right smell, the right sound, the right, the right everything. She is who she chose and of course, maybe there's some siblings or a partner, maybe, maybe, maybe, but still, mothers is everything. But maybe she got quiet and then all of a sudden she lets out another big sound, this baby. That's another sign. Oh, because she needed more oxygen. She was getting oxygen a little bit less and less and less, but little bit still from the placenta. And now all of a sudden, the first mother is like, okay, she's good to go, let's let go, and then let go. And then the baby's like what happened? Like Wow, now I got to take a deeper breath and bigger breath. So little extra sound or cry from a baby is another. There's just so many beautiful little subtle indications and even trailing membranes. Right, maybe maybe some of the membranes start start coming a little bit more and a little bit more. Oh, I get, just see it now, just so.
But to receive this with reverence I think that's the thing I want to say right now is that the birth of the placenta is a birth. So if we would receive baby with like love and reference and she's going to be a part of our family, then just knowing that that next birth it's, it's just as big. It's just as big for baby to let go of, for mother to let go of, for the placenta herself. For all we know she's like, was a sentient being for a while and and she's now finished with her life, her life journey. So to receive her with reverence Some people do that with, like us, a pottery bowl or sacred bowl that they have have ready for to receive the placenta, or maybe it's in the water.
I'm sure she loves water. Whatever, it doesn't have to be made up, it just has to be here. Deep respect for this amazing, not just being organ and being, but the journey that she made from from part of that cellular division and beginning. And then she made her. So she was made out of tiny, almost nothing, grew herself in a way to completely take care of a whole, nother human being, and then, in just right, perfect timing, let go to do no harm to the biological mother. She's given her life back. So to receive her with reference, I think, moment of gratitude, and then from there, of course, we can have lots of fun with her. But did that answer?
0:30:43 - Emilee Saldaya
Yes, I think maybe if you could just speak a little bit further into the placenta actually coming out Just to keep telling that. And then after that I have a couple questions.
0:30:57 - Sister MorningStar
Okay, you're right, I got, I got us clued in to her separating. I got us into that. So we have our clues, but she hasn't been born yet. You're right, she's just coming.
Yes, and if she's the first, if she's the very first placenta of this mother, or if she's, if this mother has had a baby but then went a decade and new partner and new baby, she's like the first time to be born, just like baby would be. Or if this mother had previous baby or babies, but by knife and the placenta also, those are her, her ancestor placentas were born by, you know, the, the wrong hole. We should say that the taken taken rather than birthed. And all of those situations would put us right back into this moment where we are, where this placenta is going to be born for the first time through through the same portal doors that baby came through. So two portal doors, right, she must come through the cervix, she must come through the only, so always two portal doors that baby and placenta must pass through. If, if it has been a little bit of while, a little bit of time, then if the baby was born, came through, then it, the cervix, could close back a little bit, not not completely close, but it's going to close back, just like a turtle neck on a baby. We get the toddler through the turtle neck, yeah, we stretch it out, but then it goes back a little bit. So the placenta can sometimes need to dilate or open up the first portal door, the cervix, just like baby did, not as much. She's only about two and a half pounds, she doesn't have any bony structure, so not quite the same, but she still has to dilate, that she starts to get through the cervix, the portal door, and then from there make the journey.
And so they say in their song it's just a tiny trip, right, does a little bit of a tiny trip, but it can be a big, like long journey to get to the, to the out, the outer portal door. All of these, all of this journey is just so sacred. It just such a sacred journey. And the birthing mother she's now a little bit distracted. She's got two children, so to speak. She's got her baby, she's got this next birth to do. I think that's why I'm laboriously this morning speaking about the importance of this birth, because more disruptions can start to happen from the time baby's born to birth of placenta, because people forget that it's a birth and that the placenta is a journey. So the more, even if mother got herself distracted she was in her halo and just got herself distracted Something will call her back, like the contractions, and she might want to be in a more upright position, even if she kind of birthed.
Who knows how she birthed so many thousand a ways, except for standing on our head. Other than that, a million ways, 360, but often, you know, gravity helps baby be born, but baby's got some different momentum behind her. Placenta doesn't have that the. The uterus is contracting but she can't really push out a soft two and a half pounder. So so upright position and gravity and bearing down a little bit, but usually baby's still connected, right, I mean, of course I guess some people do cut a cord. That would be odd, but it could happen. It could happen. Either way they're still going to be court and placenta, so usually it just is that straightforward. I do have some photos. I don't know if I can show them or not, or at least I don't know how I would do that.
0:35:48 - Emilee Saldaya
If they're physical or digital. No, they're digital.
0:35:51 - Sister MorningStar
They're on my computer. We could share screen. We could share screen it possibly, but are you ready to do that? No, let me just. Let me just say that you know, hands being on these are or or squatting, so often the placenta is just right there. Right there, she's already kind of come through all the way, or halfway through the, the first portal door, the cervix, and she's just right there and it's really it's like the lower uterine segment. It doesn't have any contracting muscles, so there's no manner of pushing is going to change anything. It's just right there, ready to come out.
And if it was, if it's animals, you know they, especially our primate siblings, cousins and whatever you want to call them. I hope I'm not offending anybody, because it's not my intention to offend anyone, but I do get excited and I like words, so I could possibly use a word that doesn't suit you well, that fit well with your world view. They usually will just take hold of their, their cord or and their baby, and then just the not pulling on their placenta. They're not pulling their on their cord, they're guiding. They're just guiding this thing that's between their legs halfway in and halfway out and they're just guiding it on out, just slides right on out Because it's already detached and it's already down there and it's already letting go.
And the nice thing about if you've got a hold of your own cord or or yes, then you can feel if something doesn't, if it's pulling back, like you can feel if it's, if it's not quite right, if there's somebody else is is got a hold of it. And I'm not saying that can always be a bad thing. There's hardly anything that's always a bad thing. But it's so important to only use a wrist or something, not not an elbow, if you're, if the mother's like I got my baby and can help me, but it just usually slide right on out because it was already. It was already there anyway. Shall we try? I don't know. I see a green button that says share screen. Click that.
0:38:29 - Emilee Saldaya
That. Oh, there'll be one more thing to hit, okay.
0:38:33 - Sister MorningStar
Like a desktop.
0:38:35 - Emilee Saldaya
Yes, and then hit share.
0:38:41 - Sister MorningStar
Okay, allow, I see it allow. Hmm, oh, it may not work. What do I do now?
0:38:54 - Emilee Saldaya
Yeah, if you haven't done this before, you have to do the settings in your computer and you'll have to go out of zoom and come back in. So another option is you could drop them in the chat and I could pull them up If you just drag and drop into our chat right here, where?
0:39:15 - Sister MorningStar
is chat. I see chat. Oh, I see, we'll see. All right, I'll, I'll try that and either way, I could also say please join us, emily and I, if we ever have a retreat, because it's one of my favorite subjects. So if you, if you ever want to do that, yes, not, if ever we are having one.
0:39:47 - Emilee Saldaya
A woman submitted her story Live somewhere in, I think, maybe Brazil, I can't remember, but you'll love this. Look at this picture. Wait, I hid myself view one second. You put it back on. Where am I show selfie? Okay, look at this.
0:40:12 - Sister MorningStar
Oh, I love it. Yes, I have a baby and yes, I have those pictures and it's just so powerful. I think if I ever my next life, if I come back to this planet and have another baby that's each baby I was like, oh, okay, now, next time I'm going to do this and that's what I do is hold both of them. It's because it's just so beautiful. So you had a few questions.
0:40:46 - Emilee Saldaya
Yes, so Okay, what I'm thinking of is how you know that that that's so many mothers. If they have their first birth in the medical system, they're going to, almost guaranteed, have their placenta taken out. They won't birth their placenta Right, they will, they will take it out. And so I found in the free birthing world that often the most healing part of a woman's free birth might not even be the birth of the baby, but it will be the birth of the placenta and rewriting the story that she was able to do it, that she didn't hemorrhage and die. You know all these these dark stories that are told to women to justify the abuse that they receive. And so there's so much and I don't mean this to sound, you know, mean, I don't know another word there's just so much ignorance about the placenta and and that lack of knowledge is really weaponized against women to justify so much in the system. You and I know this, you know so so well. And so, bringing it to what you just shared, what I see frequently when women are birthing without wise women is they'll see something like retainer, sorry, they'll see something like trailing membranes or a clot, and they will make up that it is a retained placenta, and very often I see women use this part, the birth of the first mother. This is the dramatic part of the birth. This is the part when they transfer, when they think that something is wrong, even when they think the placenta won't come at all, and I just am curious to have you speak on that.
The last thing I'll add there is I also know how surprised many women First time birthing their, their placentas, how surprised many women report they are at how much effort it took. And so one one track that happens in this, you know, home birth, outside the medical system world, is that a woman will birth her baby and then the placenta doesn't come. She, the mother, has no idea how to, and so she doesn't even know that she might need to to cough or pull and sing and chant and get on the toilet and release her bladder. She doesn't know, no one's told her right, and so then she thinks that she has retained placenta and goes to the hospital for brutal, brutal retrieval.
And so part of my intention with this, this conversation with you, is to help close that gap for women so that they can know what to do and so that they make up less stories about. You know the drama of it. Yeah, I'd love to hear just whatever you may have to say about placentas that don't come particularly easy. What about when they take longer? What are real things to do and not do? I think people would really love to hear you speak on that.
0:44:35 - Sister MorningStar
Yeah, I'm happy to share what I can. I will say humbly that, yeah, emergencies happen, they happen driving cars and hopefully we recognize like, if something is, is you know. Just I think the difference that you and I are noticing is fear and lack of understanding of just a normal process. Yeah, that's why I'm just sort of leaving pathology out of it. Actually, maybe I'll just start with pathology, because I have a wonderful story.
A friend, carol, and she had baby and dadada and supposedly had an accretan and then next baby and dadada and supposedly create a next baby. Supposedly we it was absolutely as you describe with that baby that I was helping her with. By the way, we did use hydrastas homeopathic. Hydrastas prenatally is is the homeopathic that we used. She gave birth in a bathtub to a baby. Okay, it was not that big a deal to her. She's like I've done this three times. She gave birth to her placenta and she was over the moon. I mean, she was just like over the moon, so much so that she said hand me the phone. She called that hospital doctor or whatever and she said don't ever tell a woman that she cannot birth her placenta. Because I just did I'm just on the recording so that it wasn't just years that got it. I helped several, several women around the world use who had supposedly like who how would we ever really know? But they hold these, these horrendous trajectories, not just the facts of the past, but that in the future you will always do this and do that, and I mean I mean I'm not even scaring people when, when, when they plan to have another baby. You know they plan to do this again. I will mention hydrastas because it's worked for several people.
So if the biggest safeguard for the birth of a placenta is that interventions are, interruptions lead to interventions. So making sure that things stay as whatever you felt like helped you get your baby out. Whatever you felt like helped you get your baby out. Maybe it was sitting on a toilet, maybe it was, I don't know what. Whatever you saw helped you get your baby out. At home, you know definitely privacy and you know gathering your energy back to yourself. Those are the aspects you're going to need again. So if everybody has rushed in to see the new baby, you might have to clear the room. You know like get people out of it. Yeah, so I'm just going to. It's the biggest interruption that I watch is that people get excited about baby.
0:48:02 - Emilee Saldaya
The the attention goes to baby, everybody forgets placenta until they all get on their phones and start FaceTiming their moms and their mother-in-laws, and so they turn the lights on so that you can see the baby in the FaceTime. And now we have bright lights. Focus on the baby phones, on classic scenario of the age right now.
0:48:26 - Sister MorningStar
Well, and all of that would have completely interrupted the birth of a baby. Of course, could you imagine if it was the baby that hadn't quite been born yet? But we did all of that and we sent out word of like in one minute the baby's going to be born. And then it's like okay, the next day and everybody's like what about that baby? Because you can't do that kind of thing to a biological creature. So all of that, if you did do it, it has to. Just, you've got to walk backwards. You've got to like start stepping backwards and getting privacy, low lights. If you've been hydrating, then you got to figure out how you're going to pee or you know what.
In the old timers we never gave fluids, you know, after a baby was born and so, maybe out of a straw, we started feeding people if they wanted some food. Because you, until we have the birth of the first mother, we're not finished with birth. You're still in the middle of birthing. It's a mindset you got to know. You're not done with birth. And in prenatal village I'll have people tell me their ideal birth and they'll describe it's gorgeous, all about the baby, not a word about the birth of the placenta. And I say, well, what about your placenta? Because you're not finished with birth until you birthed the placenta, and then we could even say until baby's nursing, or da da, da, da, da, but physically, absolutely until your birth the placenta, you haven't finished birth. So all the things that that allow us to birth a baby, or have to come back into the room, and then you have to come back into the space you mentioned toilet. It's again, if it's what helped you get your baby out, and yeah, all of these things, let's, let's see.
I'm going to say getting focused on calm mind and getting determined how many of us most of us, again, even the mothers I've helped. That was baby number 21. Before she actually gives birth, she gets focused like I'm birthing a baby, like this baby is coming out. Enough enough of the playlist, enough of the backgrounds, like warrior woman, and it's that energy of like I'm birthing my placenta and word medicine is powerful for somebody to say she's coming. She's coming because, really right, we saw all the signs, so she's coming and it's got. It's got to get exciting actually.
But focused and determined, and I think it's really erroneous things like seeing a clot and thinking that they birthed part of their placenta that they, that they now have a partial abruption and a partial like not even knowing the difference between what a clot and a piece of tissue look like. You know that that can, I think, elicit fear, like make us afraid. On the other hand, a clot is okay. Well, the placenta separating right, I mean, it's one of those good signs of like placenta separating, yeah, and I think, not being at all hesitant or timid about about getting upright. Toilets are upright, in my opinion, but getting upright, getting determined and even just holding baby in one hand if the court still attached, and just using a vase or cloth or towel or whatever, because courts are slippery- I think women need to hear that you're not going to hurt yourself.
What you just said. The important word is you. If you're the one that's bringing and I use the word guiding because you're not pulling you're guiding. It's already wanting to come out. Sometimes you're pulling.
0:53:04 - Emilee Saldaya
I yanked out my last one, so primal it was, so uncomfortable I was not going to be able to relax till it was out and I just hooked my finger around my cord and just went get out and pulled it out and it was amazing. It felt so good to know that, like I said, that I wasn't going to hurt myself. It was correct for me to follow what felt very instinctual. There was no real thought about it.
0:53:42 - Sister MorningStar
Right. Well, when I hear your words and just watch what you just did, my guess is that your placenta was still partly behind the cervix as well. So you're like, but the important word is you, because if that placenta wasn't ready and if it was still adherent to the wall, then you wouldn't have kept what you're calling pulling. I'm going to call guiding, because you didn't pull your placenta off the wall and out of your body, because that sound that you made was a warrior, triumphant. A warrior, a triumphant, like I did this and I'm doing this Right. That's not the sound that happens when those of us who've worked many places see someone pull a placenta off the wall, and those sounds are not the same. If it's you, then you can feel it's just coming. Do you see what I'm saying? You're pulling, but it was coming. You wouldn't have kept pulling if it wasn't coming. It's like coming and there it is. Did it take some force and effort?
0:55:07 - Emilee Saldaya
Yeah, this one did. The last one was SUNY. I kept trying and it wasn't ready. It was fine and it wasn't until about two and a half hours and I just alternated nursing and trying in a squat. I think in retrospect it was fine how it all was.
I think if I had known that I could have pulled a bit more. And I think that's what's happening with a lot of women who are birthing without wise women, who they're out on the edge, they don't know, they've never done this before. I want women to know again what I said you're not going to hurt yourself. It might need some power, yeah, it might not, but when it does need some power and some oomph and even a cough or a pull, you're not going to hurt yourself. There's something really healing, I think, in a woman going through that. There was for me, just being like get out. It did feel tribal, it did feel primal. Also, it was me 100% knowing it was okay to be there and to be fierce about it like the lion mess. There's no way I would hurt myself.
0:56:33 - Sister MorningStar
Right, maybe also from having waited the two and a half hours from a previous birth. You're like, no, I'm not doing that again. Okay, come on, let's work, we're working together. But also you may have been tucking your tail. So when you say cough the thing about coughing usually it causes the lower lumbar area to curl, and anything that will allow the butt to curl under, then that is going to allow that ski slope. So if the placenta is still behind the cervix, it let go already, but it's just ready to come out.
Then that upright position were you upright, Emilee? Oh, yeah, I'm in a squat. Yeah, squat upright. And then that allows that upright and then ski slope to just. And then the effort which we had here, I'll just. What can we use?
Oh, I brought my bag of cords from around the world. Here's a little cord, yeah, then it allowed and you said you twirled yours around your fingers, yeah, and then just fiercely, fiercely brought her on down. But you were probably fiercely pushing also with your butt. You know what I mean. Like from the inside. Did you rope? I want to mention roping. So did you rope the cord or rope my finger? I did. What about the placenta? Like as it was coming out? Did it spiral or so? That's just another thing I want to just mention that may help a lot of people and it helped Heather that we saw at the festival and it does often help to avoid trailing or retained membranes If the placenta, if you spin the placenta, so you spun the cord and the cord's attached to the placenta, so probably if we could see it that as it was coming down it also was spinning Right Because you've already spun the cord and that's going to make the placenta spin as it comes out.
0:58:58 - Emilee Saldaya
That's. I imagine that that would also help it.
0:59:01 - Sister MorningStar
if it's behind the cervix still and there's any sort of like suction happening over the cervix, I imagine that would yes yes, yes, just like getting out of the roots of a weed a weed out the other thing that it can do, which can be important, not that we need to overthink it. The part I love about your story is you were just determined, you were using your old brain. I think the word is desperate. Okay, that'll do it too. That'll do it. That was for baby barn. But let's say that, for whatever reason, there was a little bit more blood than somebody was comfortable with, because for me, if we talk about blood, which again is life force, it's not how much blood a woman loses, it's how she tolerates the loss. So let's say that there was a little lobe, or a little extra piece that hadn't let go. So most of it has let go, but part of it hasn't. So by doing what you just described and by, I'll just add, by spinning the placenta, that will actually get the little piece that, rather than it breaking off, that's cool.
Days later the mother passes something else or whatever, but rather than it breaking off, it will usually just wrap itself in with all the rest of it and slide right on out together. And if you're home I mean of course again, we're not talking about extremes or pathology but if you're home and you're feeling like you just don't know what to do and you've birthed your baby and you need to birth your placenta, you've got all the signs that the placenta is separated and coming and you're just feeling timid, then another thing to think about is like they're going to go in there and pull, like they are going to get in there and again, maybe you're thinking, well, but they've got all the whatever life-saving things to help. But were you thinking about that that way when you were birthing your baby? No, so you don't need to think about it that way.
When you're birthing your placenta, it's like, well, damn it, if pardon me If somebody else can get my placenta out, I can get my placenta out. It's exciting and I'm just going to go back and call her reverent again, because it's we want to be the first ones to hold our baby and we should also be the first ones to hold our placenta and our first mother, and she's so intelligent and she's so powerful. Let's see, I want to say something here, but she also is counting on us to complete the job Exactly. She can't do anything just of her own self. She's counting on us. Now, I know some people have their placentas just fall out of them when they're walking to the toilet Okay great. But in general, she's counting on us to be proactive, to take hold of her and to not just push from one side when she might be so low that there's no connection.
1:02:46 - Emilee Saldaya
Well, it's like what you said earlier really knowing that there are two births, a commitment to birth your baby in peace, a commitment to home birth is a commitment to birth your placenta at home as well. And again, I see so many women, for whatever myriad of reasons, sabotage their births at this stage, whether it's fear, whether it's ignorance, whether it's I mean, we could go on a whole different. You know that we don't need to all sorts of reasons, and it's interesting, it's almost like this new, this new I almost want to call it a trend where women birth their babies. And then I hear these stories all the time now of women saying, oh yeah, it took 24 hours, 48 hours, 70 hours for my placenta to come, and that doesn't really make any sense to me at all, like, sure there could be the anomaly. Sure, okay, I've been to some births that we, you know, did all the possible things and it just took the time.
It took, okay, but it was undramatic. But do you know what I mean? I just hear so many stories nowadays of 24 hours, 48 hours, and these women, in the sovereign birth movement that's occurring, are sharing these stories of three day placentas, two days for these placentas to come 17 hours, 27 hours, and I always think someone should probably tell them that the placenta was ready to be born and they just didn't know what to do. Would you agree let me say it that way would you agree that most of the time, of course, there's anomalies, but most of the time the placenta detaches within the first two hours of birth?
1:04:46 - Sister MorningStar
Yes, absolutely. I think the thing is as I described earlier as soon as the baby is starting to navigate life, then the placenta is getting the message that her job is done and when she gets that message, she starts to let go. Now, yeah, aside from rare and unusual occurrences, I do think that the problem of the portal doors closing and then holding things is probably why it takes more effort or force sometimes than another. But I think that adding, if we could add one more thing to people visioning a sovereign birth, as you call it, is that just remembering that the birth of the placenta is your birth. You're not finished birthing and so that's meant to follow on the heels, like, just like. It's just all one thing. Now, if there is another baby in there and it was two days later and you gave birth to another baby and another placenta, that's a twin story.
But yeah, placentas are meant to follow right after a baby. You don't need to necessarily look at the clock or be time focused or worried, because the signs are there and when you get the signs, then go with it. It's exciting to be finished, like your face, you want it to be finished, because it's true. Then you can, whether you're planning a lotus birth or this birth or that birth. They're going to make a drum or whatever you're going to do. Then you can start eating Like we. Yeah, you can start eating and drinking and doing all the things, because you are now complete with your birth. So I think the big shift needs to be that when people are thinking about birthing a baby, they're answering those two questions. They're placenta birth.
1:06:56 - Emilee Saldaya
I had a friend, a client, years ago who had a free birth with her husband, and she called me. I think it was about 17 hours after the birth and she said you know, everything is great, but my placenta hasn't come. And I said, oh, okay, so you know, tell me, tell me more. And she told me about what was happening, which was not much, and I really, I think I really pissed her off. I said, well, you will birth your placenta when you want to birth your placenta. It's really that simple. Like you will, you will have it when you're ready. And she told me later that that really really kind of what does she mean? That I'll have it when I'm ready. And then she realized, of course, that I was completely right, told her body she was ready and had her placenta.
But again, these first time, moms or women from with traumatic backgrounds that have never birthed their placenta there's this space here and I'm it's why I'm so glad we're talking about it that women really just don't know that it won't necessarily just plop out. And then, when it takes effort, they think, oh, it's just not ready. And I hear stories all year long, every year, that women just take a nap after birth and they just have their meal. And they're walking around with this, with this baby, with the placenta still inside, because they don't know what is really. Very simple, you know simple steps to do, but but why would they know?
1:08:38 - Sister MorningStar
Well, there are many stories in a birth room. So you addressed a little bit of the psychology and that can happen. I've held many women with my arms around them because it was emotional for them to release their first mother. Okay, there can be a lot of reasons for that and I just respect that. But when you said you'll birth it when you're ready, in some ways that's just the psychology of birth of a placenta. It's like are you ready to be the full on mother and is it? Sometimes it's keeping the birth team there, it's like because if the placenta hasn't been born, then everybody's still staying.
These thoughts are not always in the forebrain. These sometimes they're in the heart place of just not wanting it all to end. Maybe the pregnancy has been so amazing and so much fun and everybody's been so tribal together and then it's going to end. Okay, there can be many of these situations, addressing them and thinking about them. But the more serious ones are there can be in the birth room people who are afraid of blood, or maybe they have stories in their lineage and this could be the father. The father could be.
If the father's in the birth room, he can have a story of his lineage where somebody you know, I don't know all the things lost their uterus or lost their life or lost too much blood, or in general, men are like what Women bleed and don't die? Like this is wild. Yeah, in general it's not that comfortable or easy to see blood with birth, and so the stories that are in the birth room, not just in the mother's head, in anybody's head, that's in the birth room, and I think that's why you mentioned several times wise women. But I think that's why it can be so and we must become them right. But it can be so helpful to have a wise woman in the room or on the phone or whatever that says um, yeah, that's what, that's what it takes to birth a baby. Yeah, it does that straightforward. Yeah, you got to. You got to get that out too.
1:11:11 - Emilee Saldaya
Yeah, Just yesterday I had my nanny just birthed, and she birthed alone and she, she birthed in the morning and then yesterday morning her husband called me, maybe a half hour after the baby was born, and said, Emily, she had our boy. What do we do now? It's just you know, forgot you know and didn't know what to do. It was like, yes, exactly. So let's talk more about blood loss before we bring this to a to a close, because, exactly what you said, we are taught to be afraid of our blood. Girls are, you know, men are taught to be very uncomfortable with, with women's blood, and so we have this fear, and then we have this event that is quite bloody right by by design. So what do you want women to know about blood and blood loss, or or what might be a common misconceptions about blood loss, or what are things that, yeah, that you know to be true? That would be helpful for new mothers to know, really anything in the blood loss arena.
1:12:33 - Sister MorningStar
Well, let's see we're, we're to begin. Birth is bloody, it's messy, it's wet, it's got mucus, it it just so much. And on the other hand, it's not meant to be a blood bath. It's not that it's, and the physiology of a woman, of humans, but of a woman is always behind what's happening. So if like the numbers you know of 500 to 1000 milliliters, or two and a half cups to five, they're not helpful. They're helpful in knowing that we have about eight cups of blood and our bodies right. They're not helpful in that, if you're actively losing blood, you need a placenta. You just need a placenta. It means the placenta separated and you need a placenta.
It's the first thought to just be like, well, let's birth a placenta, you're gonna have a baby. That's like a head right of a baby. It's like, okay, let's burn the baby. You don't wait a day. I say that with great humbleness. But you know, if you get a baby's head, then you need a baby. You're gonna birth a baby. I'm not saying on a panic or in a frantic or with reverence and with joy baby is coming. It's not like later, it's now. And same with placenta. If you're getting the signs, birth your placenta with confidence, and if a mother has lost so it's how she tolerates the loss. If she's dizzy when she stood up she lost too much blood you don't need to tell her oh, you didn't lose very much, she lost too much for her. Okay, she's dizzy and or unsteady or needs a moment. Maybe she needs oatmeal.
1:14:50 - Emilee Saldaya
Let's pause there for a second, because I think most people when they hear I don't want a woman, I don't want people to walk away from this episode going oh so if I'm dizzy, then I mean I've lost too much, and then they're going to dramatize that. So you know, in a home setting that is holistic and mother centered, being dizzy is good information, right that we?
1:15:15 - Sister MorningStar
respond to. We're going to get a little bit dizzy and we might get a little bit tired.
1:15:32 - Emilee Saldaya
We need some honey and electrolytes. We're thinking they're going to free birth and then they get dizzy and they go to the hospital and ask for a blood transfusion, you know, and they believe these stories about hemorrhage that are so extreme and really quite unlikely. Really, I'd love to like demystify some of this a bit, because it's not uncommon to feel, you know, a little shaky or a little weak or a little out of it.
1:16:15 - Sister MorningStar
Now I'm not talking about a lot, well, and actually you should feel a little out of it, right. But that that does bring up something that's important to me. It just my point of view, because we're trying, we birth as a tribe. But a mother that's given birth to a baby and then a placenta shouldn't be all alone, even though I know women all over the world that birth all alone. But especially when we're not that animalistic and we're not sure if a blood clot is tissue, we need somebody checking on a mother so that when I say lost more than this comfortable for her, I mean she needs to not do dishes tonight, she needs to be on vacation, she needs a drink and some extra food, and so I think that goes to. I'm going to give the other example.
Another woman might lose what we would call quite a bit and she just tie in her shoelaces once, go check her flowers out back in our garden and we can't tell her oh you, you lost a little too much blood, you know you need to have oatmeal and lay down it's like no, she, what she feels is how she's handling what happened to her, and that's what we respect is how does she feel? Not just feel in her heart, but I mean physically she's. She's letting us know how she tolerated that loss and it could be we'd be like, wow, she's my new she ro. How in the eighties she's. That's, that's amazing. Okay, that's how she tolerated. She still deserves oatmeal, but so it just to mirror a mother, to be the elephant circle, to notice what is she needing. Is she needed more food and fluids and rest, or is she needed more inner? She's got more energy and so she needs to tell her birth story 10 times. We heard it nine times, but she needs to tell it 10 times. She's so excited.
1:18:32 - Emilee Saldaya
And you know, for women listening to this being like, how would I know? I also want to say that if you, if you, can't into it what a woman needs, you can ask women. Give me an example Well, you know, I do this RBK school, where so many women want to attend births and they also don't trust themselves yet, and so they'll often ask questions like they'll be really nervous that they're going to screw it up in the room, which I appreciate the awareness of that. But also, if you're being asked to be in a room, be in the room, you know like you're, you're, you are being asked to be there and so, anyway, I just am thinking about women who are new to attending birth being nervous about not knowing if the mom, not knowing what the mom needs, if she needs more space, if she needs more, you know, warm thing, care, if she needs to be more cared for, if she needs to be telling her birth story nine times.
And I'm just, yeah, I'm just wanting to say that if you, if you can't sense it, I'm just going to say to just ask, like I've never really been around a woman postpartum who didn't know what she wanted, like who didn't know what she needed. You know she can say I'm cold, I need a blanket if if it's like that or I'm hungry. And what I'm really getting at is I think a lot of women make up that this time is really complicated of how to serve women, and it's not. It's actually the most simple Right. It's, it's ancient, it's. It's so actually uncomplicated to be present, be in your body, you know, provide warmth, love, care, witnessing heart to heart and the rest just unfolds. And I just see so many women in every and every round that we do just complicate this idea of of supporting that immediate postpartum.
1:20:42 - Sister MorningStar
Well, I, I feel that women who are helping some other woman deserve to have somebody they can call. Yeah, if they're not sure about something. Of course it would be a bigger something than shall I ask her if she's cold but or wants a blanket. But they, they don't have to be all alone, they can call someone as well. I, I actually have helped many women who I can't say that they don't know what they want, but they, I prefer to keep them in their old brain as long as they possibly can be with it. So to just offer a drink, the mother can not take it, or take it. Or if she's shivering, you don't need to ask her if she's like a blanket and just offer a blanket. It should put it on or take it off or whatever.
I think we're lacking the joy of it, the reverence of it, the because of fear of some outlying and unusual emergencies, and then the lack of the bridge from the older generations who just automatically knew a blood clot from piece of tissue or or or or, many of these signs that are just a part of a baby being born and a placenta being born. We we're actually creating each wave, each new of these movement waves. Try to create a new bridge from that old generation, that new things, and we have to learn them as we go. They're going to make mistakes. They're not going to be life and death mistakes, they're just going to be like oh I, different women have different personalities. Just when you think this is a nice thing to do, another woman is like why would you ever? You're not a bad. You're not a bad birth guardian, you're just just learning about women. But back to the first mother. I just want.
I want to say that protecting that birth, like you protect the birth of the baby, giving some time to realize that it's important and you got to give birth twice and that it it just follows right, right away. All the signs are there and just just to help this first mother out. And then there's all the exciting things of what you might do using the cord, licking the baby, sucking on the cord, using a bite of the membranes and, of course, the little bite of the placenta, if it comes, when it comes. All of these things are are natural things that help keep it all normalized. That's what we're doing at home. We're just normalizing the miracle.
How do you, how do you make a normal miracle? But that's what women do every time they give birth. They're just normalizing the miracle and those are things that can help lick your baby, kiss your baby. You're getting some of that extra amniotic fluid in your own mouth and then now that's safeguarding you, taking care of you, to just knowing I can birth my baby, I can birth my placenta. If I can birth my baby, I can birth my placenta, why not?
1:24:23 - Emilee Saldaya
So what would you consider excessive blood loss and what would be a holistic, supportive response to that?
1:24:39 - Sister MorningStar
Well, that is getting into a little bit deeper waters. You know deeper waters. But I would say first, first off, the two things that are most problematic when I think about it, is blood coming too fast, like it a little, a little gush, for that's normal. For first mother coming is a little gush and it stops, it's not going to keep coming. That's not normal. It's just not normal for blood to just keep coming.
So coming too fast, or a trickle bleed, like it's not fast but it doesn't stop, just keeps coming a little bit and a little bit and a little bit, those two things. You need a placenta. You know you've got, you've got separation, otherwise you wouldn't. Well, of course we're. We're not talking about a potential laceration from somewhere else, we're talking about the womb. And so you, you, to me it's like okay, we, we've got a head, we need a body. Okay, we've got separation, we need a placenta, we need a positive, strong attitude about it. I wouldn't wait for me, I wouldn't wait with a trickle bleed or or a fast, fast bleed, kind of like your, more your warrior type attitude of like, let's do this my favorite words, but let's do it.
1:26:11 - Emilee Saldaya
Yeah, then what about after the placenta is out? Do you, in your experiences, that less common? I mean, the first thing isn't even common. But yeah, what do you have to say about, about, afterwards?
1:26:28 - Sister MorningStar
I would say that it's even less calm. The first one is very rare as well, and at the time it's exactly what we've said it's right there and just waiting for somebody to get it out Most of these transports that we all hear about. They get to the hospital, or it comes out in the car and they decide to go on and have it checked, or they get to the hospital and the and the doctor pulls it out, or you know, guys, whatever you want to call, but it was right there, it was right there and they've got it. So we get a fast trickle or we need a placenta. Then we get a placenta.
The only then it's even more rare, right, even more rare, unusual that there would usually be like a trickle bleed, probably not going to be a fast bleed after that, and that's simply the uterus needing to contract, contract. So think of all the ways we do that nipple stimulation or baby nursing, if it's, if you've got a toddler that'll nurse, they're a nice strong nursery. Or, um, yeah, just rubbing on the men. Women do that themselves like kind of rub their little bellies to get a nice firm from uterus. Because a uterus that will contract is going to stop bleeding. It's only if the you at me right. It's only if the uterus won't contract, that it that it would would keep bleeding. It's just getting getting smaller every second. In our minds we can tell ourselves every second it's getting, it's contracting more.
1:28:07 - Emilee Saldaya
And that's why I wanted to ask it, because you know, women are just obsessed with this blood loss possibility around around birth and there's so much fear held around it. And and I want women to know that a excessive blood loss you know which, by my definition, would be, you know where, where it is truly problematic for you to function, to be, you know, to feel okay, to be okay, right, because excessive blood loss is not an emergency. It is a complication that in in most situations, in every situation I've ever personally supported it, was able to care, take it home. I've never, you know, been in that, in a dramatic situation like that, like a transfer because of blood loss. Though I hear of them and I feel very curious about them because it doesn't really match up with what yeah, well, whatever, with what I, with what I know to be true, and so I think we have this constellation here of women being afraid of blood, not being, you know, familiar with birth. Of course they don't see it, they don't know it yet.
And and then all of this obsession around hemorrhage and so many women walking around with this story told to them that they hemorrhage, that they're a bleeder, that their mother's a bleeder hemorrhage, hemorrhage, hemorrhage, right. So much, so much energy around that. So I think it's important to hear your answer because both it's very, very unlikely and even if it were to occur, there's so much to respond to and to be with and to care take in the room right way before it would make any sense in my mind to run to a stranger and have them go inside of you and shoot you up with pharmaceuticals. Like that is a violent end to this story and I think I think a lot of women don't know that there's this wide spectrum of care taking that's possible at home to regulate the body.
1:30:10 - Sister MorningStar
Yes, I hardly. I hardly know how to think about that. Because if you can stabilize at home, why would you go in? And if you're planning a home birth, you want to have some good ideas of how you would stabilize at home. That's just me. If you can stabilize at home, what? Why would you go in? And the way that we stabilize is getting a placenta out, if it's, if it's time, and then, after it's time, just caring for the mother so that the so that she's nursing and our uterus is contracting. It's just simple. It's. It's that it really is.
I mean, I don't, I'm not playing God, I'm not saying that there's not some other last rate, some, some ridiculous, even more rare situation.
In general, what we're talking about is the birth of the first mother and once she's born, then you just need a uterus that contracts and there's there's simple feeding the mother, letting her lay down and feeding her is already going to start stabilizing her, and every hour that she's stable, every hour that she's post birth, she's just getting. This intelligent temple that we live in is recalibrating itself faster, like we give it a little bit of help and it is like taking that and running with it and recalibrating and stabilizing her even faster, as long as we don't interrupt that by doing something. Errors, errors, I would say that are naïve, naive, naive, area area errors. Like the mother has to go P and she's going to walk to the toilet to go P, only she's a little bit lightheaded or dizzy because she does did the biggest work of her whole life. Okay, don't walk to the toilet. Yeah, just very simple things, just keep things and keep her quiet and calm and fed. And every hour she's just going to get stronger and stronger.
1:32:28 - Emilee Saldaya
So the movie ends are really interesting ones. So many birth trauma debriefs I've done with women who had, who had been labeled with a postpartum hemorrhage from a home birth with a medical midwife so many of their stories we can track back to. She was forced to move, she wasn't ready to stand up, she was forced to move and her body gets dysregulated, boom.
1:32:53 - Sister MorningStar
Yeah. So if you birth in a birthing tub or water, have a landing pad, that just right there, and there's just not any reason for a for a mother to have to stand or move or do a lot other than being in love with her baby until she, by her own volition, her own motivation, she wants to to do something, and then she's the one that that that kind of like, raises up the rest of the world and either says think I'll just lay back down it's. May we take back birth, may we take back first breath, may we do it soon enough so that we learn how to take back end of life and our elders and last breath, and learn how to do that at home too, because it's, the skills and the tools are not that complicated, they're, they're very humanistic, they're and and should we have an unforeseen and rare emergency, we are not in the third world, we actually. You know, I'm going to be turning 70 and I've I've only seen a doctor one time my whole life For that first child who who told me something ridiculous. He said, I'm sure he was a nice man, but he said well, we just don't know for sure if you can have a baby or little and will give you like 5050 chance. And I walked away from that experience with a supposedly intelligent and trained medical person thinking, well, they don't even know what they're talking about. He doesn't know me, he doesn't know when people who are all little and he, he doesn't know that we've all given, given birth. So of course I had my baby and an hour and 53 minutes, my first baby, because it's it's tribal for us, right. But so I'm not saying that you can't trust other people, but mostly the intelligence is inside you and if you're with a mother you need to know that that the intelligence is inside her.
Is there anything else I want to say about? About blood loss? I think it's a beautiful thing that postpartum is meant to be in a sanctuary. It's meant to be a peaceful and and slow and calm and quiet reemergence into the outer world again. And all of that allows for whatever blood loss the mother had. Then she's getting her strength back, whether it was a little bit or or for her again, it's for her what? How did she tolerated it? And then, either way, she's just building it back up stronger than ever.
When I took care of the men and I'd women, my, my colleagues would say if there's been excessive blood loss, they need to have fluid replacement. Okay, I was always against it and I'll tell you. And also in third world countries I was always against it. Here's my reasoning If a mother has had excessive blood loss, however that's defined for her, then she is basically weak as a kitten.
She will not get up and do the dishes, she will not wait on her family, she will stay in bed and take care of her baby and herself and when she rebuilds she is truly strong and healthy again. If she gets fluid replacement and again, I'm not talking about extreme situations, we're talking about normal birth with normal, unfortunately complicated, excessive blood loss If she gets fluid replacement, it is a fake sense of feeling a better like she actually feels like. Oh, I feel better. And then everybody around her sees her as somebody who feels better and they don't take care of her in the same way and she doesn't stay down in the same way and in about two months she crashes because she really did lose those red blood cells that carry on and carry oxygen. She really did lose them and her body has not had a chance to build them back up the way it would have If everybody recognized wow, she needs extra vacation, she needs extra health. And then in other countries it becomes even more serious because then it looks like they're better.
Do you see what I'm saying? I'm not talking about these extremes. I'm talking about childbirth and how much a woman deserves to have it be a powerful story, not one that some outside source saved my life. Some outside source say because then the next generation they have that lineage. So this story that mother almost died or mother almost did this or did that, then they are weaker and feeling confident that they can birth their baby. And we need to be. We need each other and we need ourselves to know that we can do what we're doing and that if we each step, if we do that, we have more confidence to take the next step and the next step and tell things are so. Ancient wisdom has re entered the home and the women and the people there taking care of babies being born and elders passing on that. This wisdom is not something we handed off, we lost.
1:39:22 - Emilee Saldaya
Yeah, it's resiliency, it's it's power, it's it's. I mean, even the opportunity to rebuild after excessive blood loss is resiliency.
1:39:37 - Sister MorningStar
Absolutely, but you need it.
1:39:41 - Emilee Saldaya
You need it, you deserve it. My goodness, I couldn't even yeah.
1:39:46 - Sister MorningStar
I mean, you're just young birth guardians, so they have they also have a right and need to have someone they can can call or talk to and say, wow, it seems like it was this or that, it was just fun and fantastic. It's like, okay, we'll get ready. She needs to tell that story 10 times, or no, it was a little bit off here or there. What do the? What did the ancient wise women do in this situation? Okay, oh, we feed her more or more oatmeal, or instead of six weeks postpartum, we call it eight weeks, or you know, that's why 40 days, of course, ended up being such a fun number for people. But it gets exciting and the whole village and the whole community gets involved. And then it said how did this miraculous birth story end? It ended with the whole community learning more and taking care of this beautiful, beautiful new generation and this new tribal lineage. I want to leave it with that. There's that song. We should sing that last song. We are she who bleeds and does not die.
1:41:03 - Emilee Saldaya
Okay, but you have to sing it alone because when I sing it with you the you can't both sing together on zoom. It's very sad.
1:41:13 - Sister MorningStar
So I will. I will do my best because I think it's a beautiful thing. And also I want to say, of course, all do respect to any extreme situation. We are not discussing those. We're talking about the, the, the childbirth that has kept the human race alive, alive from the dawn of time, and we get to be part of that. We're part of that story and thank you so much for joining us today.
So Kim of Kansas City wrote this song because she, to this, was, decades ago, hearing way too many stories from the maidens who were afraid of their bleeding and the mothers who are afraid of their bleeding and the Crohn's who are like I don't know how to get through my not bleeding and all the. And that's such an exciting journey, right, the, the wind and puzzle journey. But so this is a song that Kim of Kansas City wrote. She who believes and does not die. We are she who carries a baby to life. We are she who holds the wise blood inside. We are she who believes and does not die. We are she who believes and does not die. We are she who carries a baby to life. We are she who holds the wise blood inside. We are she who believes and does not die. And so I'm just sitting with me, yeah, when you can and where you can.
And I leave you with my last story of Donia Antonia. I did many, many births with her In the country. Women do die in childbirth. And so when we were in a birth, she and I and the woman would be saying no way though, no way, though I can't boy a more real, I'm going to die. She would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, us women, we're all going to die, but we are not going to die in childbirth, we are not going to die as women. So, yes, we must all walk on one day, but it will not be in childbirth, it will be birthing our babies in power, birthing our placentas in reverence and living not only to tell the story, but next generation who calls us part of their children. May it be so for you, and may it be so for me and my grandchildren, because I have grandchildren now. May it be so for us all.
