The Birth Keepers: I choose this – episode one

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:30Thanks so much for listening.

0:35Hi, 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.

0:56Yeah, I have it. I have it. I have it. You have the crown. I can't believe it. That's the crown. It's one of them. Oh, gosh. I recognise it. Yeah.

1:17It's summer, earlier this year, and my guardian colleague, the investigative reporter Lucy Osborne, is in Omaha, Nebraska. She's interviewing a woman called Serendipity Day, who works for a business called the Free Birth Society, FBS, led by the influencer Emily Saldir. It is gold metal, or like, you know, it's gold-plated metal, probably not real gold. If you go to her Instagram, you'll see it on her head.

1:53In the Free Birth Society, images of Emily and her crown are everywhere. Like in the artwork for her podcast, Emily gazes at the camera. The crown on her head has a base of sculpted roses from which extend long golden spikes. She's naked, wearing only a white robe which is open to show her baby bump. It's a beautiful image but there's something unsettling about it. it's a bit culty. Like, she's the leader of all pregnant women. And for many she was.

2:43Emily built a social media empire. The website, the Instagram, the YouTube channel, the podcast with millions of downloads. It was Emily in their ear for hours each day for every milestone of their pregnancy. Selling a simple message. Women can exit the medical system and take back their power. You don't need ultrasounds. They're dangerous. You don't need doctors and midwives. They'll assault you with unwanted medical exams. You can do this on your own. You can free birth.

3:26They made millions from this message, but behind the scenes, terrible things were happening. I feel ashamed about this, but I didn't think that the deaths were bad until a year after I left the membership. Like, I thought that they were completely normal. um i thought that this is just what happens when you have a free birth group you know one of her like uh mantras that she repeats over and over and over again is like well we can't really know you know we can't really know if they were able to save them if they went to the hospital like no one really knows if that life would have still been around had she sought intervention.

4:15And yeah, I believed that until very recently. And how's it feel now coming to that realization? It makes me like nauseous, you know, it makes me like sick to my stomach that I could have normalized it to the extent that I did. And that there's a whole entire platform normalizing it.

4:45From The Guardian Investigates, this is The Birth Keepers. A year-long investigation led by me, Shirin Kale, and my reporting partner, Lucy Osborne. Episode 1. I choose this.

5:10okay so before we get started i just want to address one thing people have a lot of views about birth and the right way to do it and lucy and i we don't take a view on that we're not anti-natural birth we're not anti-c-sections and we're not anti-free birth either. Women should make choices that are right for them, whatever those choices are. But those choices should be based on good information, real facts. We had been reporting on maternity failings in the UK and seen a lot of content on social media around birth that didn't seem accurate. One account really stood out, the Free Birth Society.

5:55It wasn't just that their posts and podcasts didn't seem factually correct, they were also really extreme so we started monitoring them and making some calls and then one day I was sent a video by a source. I'm going to tell you about it just not yet but I will say it's the most upsetting thing I have seen in my career. I've thought about it many times since and it's why we're telling you this story.

6:29I literally am embarrassed by how quickly I've eaten my cake. I'm so honored. It was so delicious. What's your recipe that you... Nicole Garrison lives in suburban New Jersey. She's in her 30s with long, dark hair. She's Italian-American from this close-knit family. She baked me banana bread and laid out all these different teas for me because she knew I was British. Which one do I want? I'm going to try chamomile honey. Nicole found out she was pregnant in October 2022. and like many pregnant women, her algorithms knew it almost immediately. She hadn't made up her mind about what kind of birth she wanted to have, so she set about doing her research.

7:08I wanted to have something outside the hospital and initially I was thinking like maybe home birth, but maybe birthing centre. I like the idea of midwives. Nicole typed in terms like midwife and natural birth. Each click took her down a new rabbit hole and one day her algorithm gave her something she had never heard of before. The Free Birth Society. Nicole was curious. She picked an episode of the podcast and hit play. Into the wild I'll go and into the wild I am. Within minutes, Nicole was hooked. Just like as soon as I heard Emily talking, I was like, oh my goodness. What we know of birth has been inevitably filtered through the medical industry.

7:58But what is the truth about birth? Join us as we hop right into it. I just started consuming the podcast like a maniac. I did that. Nothing got taken from me. I walked through that. I was full of doubt. I fought and screamed. And then I had my baby. Not the midwife saved me. I couldn't have done it. Oh my goodness. This is my tribe. Like, this is what I've been looking for. It was such an overwhelming feeling. You cannot say pussing out on a feminist free birth podcast. Please reframe. The presenter was Emily Saldaya, founder of the Free Birth Society. You just heard her talking on the FBS podcast.

8:43Emily didn't respond to our request for an interview for this series. So every time you hear her, it's from FBS content or appearances on other people's podcasts. What was it about Emily that really was so appealing? Oh my gosh, she was just so brash. I don't know, so strong in her language and so sure. Often we'll say things like, God, you talk about it like it's evil, like it's just evil. And it's like, well, yeah, yes, yes. I don't know what else to call it. I remember watching her and listening to her and being like, she's kind of a little too much for me, but there was something that I liked about that.

9:24I flipped her out and she was just saying, you know, you can read all the hippy dippy books you want, but you really need to go see a doctor. Fuck you. Yeah. No. I have had a lot of things happen to me in my life that left me feeling very out of control, disempowered. And free birth gave me an opportunity to take back my power. It only took, you know, a few podcasts for me to be like, oh my goodness, why don't I just free birth? You're probably wondering at this point, what's free birth? Lots of people get this confused with home birth, which is when women give birth with midwives at home. Free birth means giving birth alone, without any help from doctors or midwives.

10:14It's legal in most parts of the world and usually safe for healthy mothers. But the version of free birth that FBS was promoting was radical. Not only no hospitals or midwives, but also no prenatal care, no blood tests, no ultrasounds, no backup plans. It's you on your own.

10:45For Nicole, it was Emily who drew her into FBS. But for Nicole's friend Olivia, it was Emily's business partner, Yolanda Norris-Clark. Pregnant women are sold the rhetoric of informed consent as an emancipatory concept, and it sounds really great, very rational, very respectful. Oh man, Yolanda fascinated me. And yes, she really drew me in more than Emily. Olivia lives in Northern California and she studied anthropology. She's really well read and interested in tons of stuff, but particularly women's health. She was researching women's experiences in the medical system when she came across Yolanda on Instagram.

11:26Most women have been conditioned since our own births into a very split, fractured relationship with our own bodies to the point that we actually believe that that guy, that random doctor, knows what's best, and that when he tells us, he's just going to put his hand in front of him. There was a video of some critique of the medical system, which really spoke to me because the medical system, the mainstream medical system, had already really failed me on a few different levels. The entire construct of medicine is based on coercion and abuse. so FBS is Emily's business Yolanda is Emily's business partner but she's more than that she's sort of Emily's role model Yolanda's got all these kids 10 at the last count and she free birthed eight of them she's articulate and she's beautiful and she makes motherhood look easy.

12:20She says what she says in a particular way that now looking back, I feel is a little hypnotic.

12:33I'd like to suggest to you that much, if not most of what you know about childbirth might be wrong. She speaks with confidence and authority. And in retrospect, I've had to remember that the term con man stands for confidence man. What they're selling is confidence.

13:03Both Nicole and Olivia signed up for the FBS membership, a closed online group with around 600 members. For an annual fee of$499, you get to connect with like-minded women from around the world and have calls with senior FBS figures, including Emily herself, an exclusive club. Welcome to the Free Birth Society podcast. This is a radical space for women who are ready to celebrate their autonomous choices in birth, motherhood, Some of the women even featured as guests on the podcast. There are two types of episodes. Most feature Emily interviewing women about their free birth stories. She tells us about her idyllic first birth off the grid in her yurt in the mountains, snowed in with just her partner and her wolf dog Avalon.

13:53These stories are often incredible multi-day epics. Women overcoming self-doubt to push through and free birth their babies on their own terms. So free, Emily, I cannot tell you. I felt so free. I felt like the most powerful woman in the world. I felt like I can do anything. Often, these women came to free birth following previous traumatic births in the hospital, where they had medical procedures, like vaginal examinations, performed on them without consent, or where they felt coerced into interventions they later felt weren't truly necessary. This is real. This is undisturbed, real birth. and I have to tell you and there's part of me that feels a little sadness because I didn't get this with my other two children.

14:48It's so sad. And these aren't just stories they really happened. Lucy and I have spoken to women who've had the most incredible free births after finding FBS. Life-changing experiences. After listening to these stories Nicole wanted the same But she began to believe that in order to have that birth of her dreams, she needed to avoid licensed midwives. Because, as Emily said on the podcast, licensed midwives sabotage women's births with unnecessary interventions. And I was like, I am not letting this happen to me. The other type of episode is the one in which Emily interviews women she considers experts on birth.

15:33If a mother goes into labor as a healthy mother and a healthy baby, then that's what you come out with. Nicole would take this advice as gospel. I would take specific ones that I felt I really needed to listen to and I would dissect them and I would write notes on them. Going through Nicole's diaries with her, it's like watching her get radicalized in real time.

16:03oh my goodness yeah it's been a minute since i've looked at these notes

16:10do you want me to read them yeah uh so it says uh processing fears what would happen if my baby died what would happen if i die i would take full responsibility i allow myself to be ready to face whatever i have to face and And thus, I am clearing the fear. How does it feel looking at these notebooks? That's a different person. And it's... It feels crazy reading it. Like, it feels... Like, my stomach is genuine. Like, I just... I don't, um... Like, it feels like a robot. And what's crazy is, like, no one had a gun to my head while I was writing this.

17:11It took me a while to understand how Nicole got to this point. What does she mean? There's this belief in FPS, which is that if you prepare properly and you get your mind right, you can have the birth of your dreams. Here's Yolanda on the FPS podcast in an episode called Thank You God, choosing the portal of pain-free birth. Oh, I absolutely know now, without any doubt whatsoever, that orgasmic, blissful birth is a choice that any woman can make to have. To Emily and Yolanda's teachings, a huge part of it is like, you know, if you think it, if you believe it, if you imagine it enough, you can have it.

17:54And if you don't get the birth you want, it's because you didn't do the work. If your birth didn't go to plan, That's on you. You take responsibility for it. FBS calls it taking radical responsibility. But if you're worried, don't be. Because most of the time, FBS teaches that birth goes wrong when doctors and midwives mess it up. Free birth is the safest choice. I'm not seeing anything go wrong. I'm not seeing hemorrhages. I'm not hearing about hemorrhages. Of course, some babies will still be born not alive. There's no mammal who's eradicated stillbirth. And I say this with a lot of sensitivity and I'm not meaning this cavalier at all, but I don't know that that's a problem.

18:49I think that that's just a part of life trying to come in, that stillbirth happens everywhere in all mammalian species across the board. So aside from that, you know, it is a very, I could count on one hand in the last seven years that I have even heard of a story of a baby being born term that needed true medical support. constantly ringing in my head was, if a healthy mom and a healthy baby go into labor, a healthy mom and a healthy baby come out of labor.

19:36As Nicole prepared for her free birth, she closed herself off to the world outside. I lied to almost everyone. None of my family, who I'm the closest with, none of them knew this. But she didn't want to go through this alone. She looked for new friends inside the membership instead. People she knew would understand. And the person she connected with most was Olivia. We became really good friends. Yeah, we got to the point where we were, you know, talking or texting every day. But Olivia was starting to see things in the FBS membership that were worrying her.

20:26Emily and Yolanda would often say they're not medical professionals and they only speak from their lived experience. They would acknowledge there are situations that are life-threatening but they presented them as extremely rare for women who choose free birth. And Emily and Yolanda would say of course it's always a woman's choice if she wants to go to hospital but olivia and other fbs followers were left in no doubt about emily and yolanda's views on what they called the medical industrial complex and the harm it caused them and their babies transferring to a hospital was generally always seen as a failure of your trust in your body's ability to do this I never personally saw a time where from the authorities, from kind of the key people, from the insiders or from Emily herself, that transferring was ever seen as the right move.

21:28And Olivia also noticed something. There seemed to be a language that everyone used. A lot of women were really parroting the same phrases over and over again. It became very clear that there was an acceptable script of things you could say. And so people would come on in a birth process, having been in labor for days with concerns. and it became very clear to me that the acceptable things to say were, you got this, mama. Trust your body. Trust your baby. Everything's happening as it needs to. You're going to meet your baby soon. Everything's okay. Keep going. And it started to occur to me that none of us had enough information to say that.

22:23We didn't know what was really happening in that woman's home or in her body.

22:34But the encouragement would get lots of likes. And anyone who said anything that was like, oh, you know, that might be serious. No likes and sometimes shut down.

22:53there's actually a specific rule that you agree to when you sign up to the membership no sharing of planned engagement in the medical system anytime someone would come on and talk about um that they might get any kind of medical procedure or check done there were a couple incidents where Emily reminded them of the rule that you can do that elsewhere but not here.

23:31Nicole's waters broke on the 3rd of July 2023. I felt euphoric. I was so excited and just like, oh, it's finally here. So when she texted me that her waters had broke, I was so excited for her. And I responded, so funny. I had a strong feeling about you this morning. And then I said the thing that I had learned to repeat. You got this, mama. Oh, God.

24:11Coming up, when radical responsibility crashes into reality.

24:28Nicole's labour wasn't progressing. A day went by, two, three. with each day that passed with open waters, Nicole's risk of infection was increasing. On the fourth day of Nicole's labor, she spoke to Olivia. She still hadn't given birth, so that was four days. Her waters had been open for four days. We were concerned, but what Yolanda had said was in both of our heads that, you know, I believe Yolanda said that she like went swimming and went to a soiree and like it was no big deal. Like again, it's this myth of ease. Birth is just easy, Yolanda says, you know. Having your waters open for days, no big deal.