Getting to the Heart of Birth - Nikki Shaheed

11/05/2020

Getting to the Heart of Birth
Nikki Shaheed

This episode was sponsored by:

Please donate HERE

We are a 501 3c Non-Profit. Our aim is to prevent and heal birth trauma through education. Women need to understand their options and rights in childbirth so that they can have a safe and healthy birth.

Today, we talk with Nikki Shaheed (www.nikkishaheed.com), one of the Co-Owners of Birthing From Within International. She is also a childbirth mentor and doula, and is the author of Heart Centered Pregnancy Journal (https://birthingfromwithinsanantonio.com/pregnancy-journal/).

We begin with Nikki sharing how she got involved in the Birthing From Within courses. We talk about the importance of finding your inner wisdom and becoming aware of how your imprinted beliefs impact your decisions in preparation for birth and parenting. We talk about how to go from feeling primarily defensive through your birth experience to making your birth process a transformative experience.

We talk about the importance of setting up your birth experience and preparing yourself beforehand so that you can feel protected internally and protected by people you trust. Nikki then tells us how self-compassion is everything in processing your entire birth experience. We discuss more in-depth the importance of self-awareness and doing the work prenatally to accept your emotions and responses to help you through your birth experience.

Nikki then shares what makes Birthing From Within different from other birth modalities, including its focus on “the heroic journey” when training doulas and birth workers. We talk about crossing thresholds and making shifts without shame, and embracing the transformation and education that comes with your birth experience. We talk about defining your most sincere intention with your birth and building your birth team around that intention.

We finish by discussing how the Birthing From Within program helps protect birth workers with burnout and trauma. We invite both birthing mothers and birth professionals to visit https://birthingfromwithin.com.

• 1:13 Nikki’s Story
• 4:22 Practicing Self-Awareness and Rewriting Your Story
• 26:48 The Birthing From Within Program
• 42:03 Preventing Burnout for Birth Professionals

https://birthingfromwithin.com/
Check Out Her Book Here

Connect with our guest!

https://birthcircle.com/birth-directory/view/nikki-shaheed
https://www.instagram.com/birthingfromwithin/
https://www.facebook.com/BirthingFromWithin

Podcasts are sponsored in part by Empowering Fearless Birth
donate@empoweringfearlessbirth.com

The way we live our lives is led by the stories that we tell ourselves. Often, when preparing to take a step toward something new, negative stories from our past experiences can sneak in and influence the new stories. This especially tends to happen in pregnancy and birth when we are holding onto stories about how the experience is going to be frightening and that asking for help will make us weak. With the right prenatal coaching, those stories can be rewritten so that birth can happen in a way that overcomes all fear and doubt.

Sarah and Nikki discuss the way we form the stories that we tell and how that affects the way we approach birth. They also talk about how changing the story can help to make the birthing experience a meaningful transformation, regardless of whether it goes as planned. They talk about training birth workers to help mothers with this story transformation, and helping those workers to protect themselves from burnout.

Nikki is one of the Co-Owners of Birthing From Within International and leads trainings for birth professionals from all around the world. She has been working as a childbirth mentor and doula in San Antonio, TX since 2012. Nikki has guided hundreds of families and birth professionals across the threshold of birth, and has captured her ability to help people find their inner wisdom and self-compassion in her book Heart Centered Pregnancy Journal.

This episode was sponsored by:

Please donate HERE

We are a 501 3c Non-Profit. Our aim is to prevent and heal birth trauma through education. Women need to understand their options and rights in childbirth so that they can have a safe and healthy birth.