The Birth Keepers: Death plan – episode six

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:30episode part six. Hi, I'm Shirin Kale and I'm Lucy Osborne. You're listening to The Birth Keepers, a new six-part series from The Guardian Investigates. Just before we start, this series contains references to baby loss and maternal harm.

1:01In spring this year, after that group of students had been kicked out of the Matri-Birth Midwifery Institute, Emily and Yolanda seemed to have a moment of taking stock. From the women who left the program, who did give us quite a bit of negative feedback, a theme among all of them was this is not a midwifery school and you shouldn't sell it as that.

1:37So in response they rebranded the Matri-Birth Midwifery Institute or MMI. Emily explained why on a call with the remaining students. I'll be honest with you guys, I think I just overplayed my hand. I think Yo and I overplayed our hand, calling this a midwifery school. Now, it would be the MatriBirth Mentor Institute. Which is the same thing. It's literally the same thing. Like, none of our material changes. It's the same program, same everything. Emily appeared concerned about the use of the term midwifery, which is regulated in many jurisdictions. You know, it's hard for me to admit this because I don't want it to be this way but when it comes down to it in some legal frames the word isn't ours to use.

2:34FBS also added a disclaimer to their Instagram claiming its content was for educational and informational purposes and not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical condition related to pregnancy or birth. It said, for medical advice, consult your healthcare provider.

2:58Emily and Yolanda were also dealing with another unfolding crisis, the Reddit community. You've mentioned it before, the one called Free Birth Society Scam. It accused FBS of using cult-like tactics, and it also included stories of baby loss and mothers nearly dying after listening to FBS content.

3:25In August, Emily and Yolanda decided to respond by recording a podcast episode together. They were both pregnant at the time they recorded it. What is a really shocking development in the beginning of this year, to catch wind of a hate group that has formed about you and I. Emily and Yolanda pushed back hard. Here's Yolanda. They made up a bunch of stories and told a bunch of lies and a bunch of other women who I think were also to some degree lonely and isolated believed them. and ultimately it was and is nothing, really just jealousy, the normal stuff, the stuff that anyone with any degree of impact or fame deals with, projection essentially.

4:15The episode was an hour and a half long. It was called The Fruits of Cancel Culture and Mob Mentality. I know with unwavering truth that what I'm bringing to the world is incredibly important and of so much value. And that the work I do is in devotion to mothers, babies and humanity, whether they appreciate it or not. It's not of my concern. They called the Reddit backlash a public smear campaign, witch hunt and bandwagon of slander and vilification. They also rejected the idea that FBS is like a cult. The contention is that, you know, how is it possible for this story, this story that you're both villains and liars and grifters and thieves and baby killers and manipulators and cult leaders, how can it not be true if so many women are saying it, right?

5:27From The Guardian Investigates, I'm Lucy Osborne. This is The Birth Keepers. Episode 6. Death Plan.

5:47What do you think about the FBS message about radical responsibility? You're shaking your head. I don't know if it's appropriate for me to say it's bullshit. Adair's daughter, Ilex, was stillborn in January 2021, following 115 hours of labour. Adair was working as a musician and songwriter in North Carolina at the time. She did not have health insurance and couldn't afford a private midwife. She had not considered an unassisted birth before finding FBS. OK, I'm going to press play now. OK. We played extracts of Emily and Yolanda's podcast, the one we just mentioned to Adair. Here's Yolanda. I would describe the short version as sort of being a bunch of very deeply insecure, bitter, sad, lonely women who had put us on a pedestal and really projected onto us what I see now was a real desperate desire for a guru.

6:48Like, they were looking for cult leaders. and they did a kind of 180 when they realized that we're both human to begin with we're just we're normal human women and that we're also actually truly committed to self-responsibility which i think for many people if not most people is an unbearable proposition it's very difficult for people to really understand even what that means let alone how to implement it and And these lonely, bitter women banded together and created, as you said, a little hate club so that they could feel a sense of validation. Adair hadn't listened to it before. We watched her react.

7:29There was this quiet fury on her face. I want to be clear that, like, I don't think, I don't think it's their responsibility what choices I made with the information they put out there. Like that part is on me, but I wonder where their personal radical responsibility comes in, in recognizing the impact of their work and understanding that women like me are not making our personal choices in a vacuum. And I feel pretty angry hearing them essentially say that they don't hold any responsibility to any of us in any of this. Like what was the point of the work you were doing, if not to influence people and make a change in the world.

8:21There was another section we wanted to play. Ready for the next one? The part of the podcast, this bit from Emily, that honestly shocked me. Women who are thriving aren't spending their time in hate groups. And so it's already just such a bottom-of-the-barrel consciousness. I mean, I feel really, really sad. It's a sad thing. And learn from it, see what's here for us, and move the fuck on, because that shit is like, it's like I'm picturing in Bali when you get a pedicure, you can choose to put your feet in a little fish tank where the fish just chew off your dead skin. It's disgusting, but I've done it.

9:06And that's what it makes me think of, just these little, like, gross, like, gnats. Sorry, I just had to take a second with that one. You're a gnat eating my dead skin at a high-end resort that I can afford to go to because I've taken money from you. You poor, low-consciousness dweeb.

9:34I'm going to say two things. One, against all odds, given the last five years of my life, I'm actually thriving in a way that I'm really proud of. I'm happy with my work and my family and my friends, and it's a good life that I have found. And I want to point out that directly because of my involvement with Free Birth Society, I will never again thrive at the level that I once could have because my child is dead. And my child is dead because of information that I received from Emily and Yolanda. I made life-changing decisions based on that information that I paid for.

10:34Like Adair, every lost mum we've spoken to has spent months, years trying to unpick what happened to them. What responsibility does FBS have for what happened? What responsibility do the mothers have? Emily and Yolanda offer a service for mothers seeking to understand why their births went wrong. It's called a birth trauma debrief. We've seen no evidence that suggests that either Emily or Yolanda have any training in grief or trauma therapy. Camille, hi. In May last year, Camille Voito logged on for a Zoom call with Yolanda from her home in Frontignon in the south of France. I imagine meeting you so many times.

11:15I just never imagined this case. I'm so unbelievably sorry. Camille had lost her son Marlo in a free birth just weeks earlier. At the time, Camille couldn't afford Emily's$350 per hour price for a debrief. But Yolanda agreed to give Camille a discount of her rate. So Camille paid her$150. I just remember seeing her on my computer screen and talking to her live and thinking I was talking to a celebrity like, oh, I'm so grateful. I'm so lucky I get to talk to Yolanda. Camille had decided to free birth after researching it for over a year, seeking out French and English resources. She'd purchased the complete guide to free birth, listened to the podcast every day and read Yolanda's book, Portal.

12:08Maybe you want to tell me your first reaction from reading it, because I took the time to write it yesterday, so it's fresh. Camille had emailed Yolanda an overview of what had happened during Marlo's birth ahead of the call. My first reaction when I read it and the response that I had after reading it several times is how much your beautiful baby's birth resembled births that I've witnessed and my own births as well. And just how unfathomable the mystery is of life and death. Early in her labour with Marlow, there was a moment when Camille saw meconium in her waters where she felt there was something wrong.

13:02But she opened her laptop, re-watched some of the meconium chapter of The Complete Guide to Free Birth, pushed away that intuition and decided to stay home. On the call, Yolanda told Camille that it sounded like a normal birth. There's really nothing about your story that indicates anything that really is out of the realm of what can be completely normal in a birth that results in a baby that is fine and healthy. you know that's what I thought and that's why I needed to talk to you because it's like of course you're trying to make sense of everything and it's like when your brain goes back on it's like what's going on but we can never know if things would have turned out differently if there had been a medical professional there but when I listened to her recording of the debrief there was something Yolanda said that I wasn't able to get out of my head.

14:08There's an overall assumption that the outcome was wrong, that death is the wrong outcome. And I don't think that's, I don't think that can really ever be true.

14:34We've talked about the FBS philosophy on birth, but we haven't talked about their philosophy on death. Here's Emily telling her students about it. So a baby dies and a story could be she shouldn't have died. Right? Now whose business are we in when we say the thought she shouldn't have died? Emily taught them to always have what she calls a death plan. They needed one because, as Emily has suggested to her followers, stillbirths are not rare. It's not rare. It's not rare in the free birth world. It's not rare in the normal mainstream hospital setup. natural death is occurring at all stages of life.

15:23And it's just, I don't know if I'd say common, I don't know what would define it as common, but it's definitely not rare or uncommon. Her first advice, if the baby is stillborn, don't rush to call 911. Let the family grieve in peace. There is no rush to do anything if the baby is gone. Something that will sometimes happen, or I'll hear about these stories is the baby's born dead and somebody, the doula or the dad or whoever, will knee-jerk call 911 in case there's just something that can be done. Well, obviously that doesn't actually make logical sense. Dead is dead. In a conversation with students about avoiding the involvement of child protection services, Emily warned them to be wary in cases in which babies die after being born alive.

16:24Then she told her students that if she gave birth to a baby that later died, she would mislead the police into thinking the baby was stillborn. I would certainly lie. If my baby was born alive and then died, and then I involved the police, that baby was born dead. Yeah. What's the benefit? Yeah. I'm pretty careful on this recorded line, though.

17:00Emily also suggested it was up to parents to decide whether to seek medical help in an emergency. For some women, giving birth to a severely compromised baby at home and allowing that baby to die with dignity in the arms of their family who love them is a reasonable outcome.

17:23We spoke to experts about this. They said that children have rights to medical care. So if a child dies that was born alive and you didn't try to help them or call 911 after you saw they needed help, that's potentially breaking the law. That goes for parents as well as anyone else present, including birth keepers. If grieving families chose to bury their baby on their land, Emily passed on this advice. I remember asking an underground midwife in Australia what they do with babies who die. And she said, we just dig a little deeper. Yeah. And I appreciate that. I've never forgotten her saying that.

18:21There's this apparent fatalism in FBS that can be hard for outsiders to understand. If you've given birth to a baby, you'll be familiar with that terrifying moment between the baby being born and the baby crying. That silence when you don't know if they're OK. It can be so scary. But Emily and Yolanda, they're willing to wait that silence out and not worry. Because they teach that babies need to choose to claim their breath. Choose to live. Here's Emily speaking on the FBS podcast. So babies don't need to be suctioned. They need to learn how to breathe on their own. They need to, you know, I could get into a whole thing about the spiritual context of this.

19:09But I just think it's so, I think it is so profound to marinate on this idea of your baby walking with this story at his back or her back that she knew how to get born. And she claimed her breath. Even if that process can take far longer than most people would find acceptable. Some babies can take, you know, five minutes, even longer. You know, I've heard of babies transitioning, yeah, for even 10, 15 minutes. Here's Yolanda talking about free birthing one of her children. He was born limp and seemingly lifeless. And it didn't even cross my mind to give him breaths or to do anything to him. Just because that's not how I approach things.

19:59That's not, it just, that's not my instinct.

20:05Emily took the same approach when she had her second baby in a free birth in October 2022. She filmed the aftermath of the birth and posted it on the FBS Instagram. Her newborn son appeared pale and limp. Hello. Hello, my sweet baby. Emily glanced at her husband, Johnny, behind the camera who was filming her. I knew you were a little boy. The baby grunted and showed signs of acute respiratory distress. Take your time. Over an agonising four-minute, 40-second video. I'm not worried. I'm not worried about you. It was hard to watch. That was just absolutely nuts.

20:52Yeah, it's OK. In the video, Emily did not call 911 or resuscitate him. It's okay. Yeah. The video got 8 ,200 likes on Instagram and was influential in the FBS community. We showed it to experts. They observed the baby was floppy, pale and not breathing. One said that it would be standard practice for a professional in these circumstances to suction the baby's mouth. Within a minute, a midwife or doctor would have begun resuscitation. Not just to keep the baby alive, but to ensure they did not suffer brain damage from oxygen deprivation. Michelle Telfer, a Yale midwifery professor, said, quote, It's like watching a parent sit by the pool while their child is quietly drowning and they do nothing.

21:54Emily's son survived and she later reflected on the moment on the FBS podcast.

22:22But I just breathed instead and smiled and kissed his face, knowing that he would claim his life.

22:43For Emily and Yolanda, when a baby claims their life, they choose to live. And when a baby dies, to quote Yolanda, it's not necessarily the wrong outcome.

23:01Coming up, Camille tries again to get answers.

23:28In the months that followed Camille's birth trauma debrief with Yolanda, she started to have more questions. Had she been right to put so much trust in this woman and an FBS? Whereas before, we have an expression in French that says, je buvais ces paroles, like I would drink from her words, Like I would be fed from her words. Whatever she would say and they would say with Emily, I would just take it as true. Drink the Kool-Aid. That's how we say it in English. Drink the Kool-Aid. I was drinking it. She had come to realise that she wasn't the only mother to lose their child after following FBS.

24:05So why, in all the podcasts she had heard, had she not heard any woman regretting their decision to free birth after losing a baby? She wanted answers, but more than that, She wanted to hold FBS to account, not just for herself, but for all the lost mothers. Camille, hello. Let me put you on full screen. Yolanda agreed to do another birth trauma debrief with Camille, but now her rate had increased to$800 an hour. This time, Camille was less starstruck and was not afraid to ask Yolanda more difficult questions. She was also pregnant again. And you're pregnant, you're seven months pregnant now. Yeah.

24:51Camille told Yolanda that this time, she wanted to give birth with midwives. You know, it's just this idea that, yeah, it could also happen at birth, accident, and if it happens, I want to make sure, you know, someone can help me. Well, you can't make sure of that. You can't ever be sure of that. people die in the hospital babies die in the hospital yeah birthing mothers die in the hospital so I mean that's this is the truth of it so this idea that the hospital can provide you a guarantee of security and safety that the hospital can guarantee that your baby will survive is not true I've worked with many women whose babies have died in the hospital I agree with but I'm just saying with like bleeding to death.

25:44If my artery or something like and it's blood, you know, that's where you go, right? If you're bleeding to death, you go to the hospital.

25:59Would you rather die free birthing than going to the hospital? I can't really answer that.

26:14I've never been in that situation where I felt that I have that choice, where I've been faced with that choice. The call between Camille and Yolanda got increasingly tense. Do you understand that by saying this, when you spend a year and a half listening to you and reading your book and listening to all of your content, do you understand that it could influence women not to go when they could have been or they could go in extreme cases like that because you were the only one I listened to Yolanda you and Emily for a year and a half and when I felt maybe the need to seek help I didn't because I had your voices in my head telling me everything was going to be okay that it was a variation of normal.