Birth As Transformation - Suzzie Vehrs

09/25/2020

Birth As Transformation
Suzzie Vehrs

Today, we talk with Suzzie Vehrs, founder of She Births Bravely, a website aimed at helping moms feel totally prepared to powerfully birth their babies (www.shebirthsbravely.com). She is also a trained doula and author of Divine Birth: A Collection of Wisdom + Coloring Pages to Inspire and Empower the Pregnant Mother (https://shebirthsbravely.com/divine-birth-book/).

She shares how when she first became pregnant, she was deeply afraid of birth, and tells how she worked against a lack of positive birth experiences to prepare for her first delivery, which, though being a somewhat difficult C-section, was not the traumatic experience she feared it would be. For her next pregnancy, she started working hard researching to improve her next birth experience, breaking the cycle of pain and developing a passion for birth that she wanted to share.

Suzzie then talks about how she formed She Births Bravely, and we discuss the work it takes to prepare for birth, explaining how that preparation can make birth a transformative experience.

We discuss how to communicate your desire for a transformative birth experience with you friends, family, and birth team, and how to prepare them to help you carry out that goal. Suzzie shares her approach to birth plans, as well as what she includes on the ones she helps her clients to make.

We have a candid discussion about the topics on Suzzie’s new guide, 11 Surprising Things That Can Happen During Birth And What To Do, which you can download here: https://shebirthsbravely.com/11-things.

We finish by talking about the resources available at shebirthsbravely.com, and encourage expecting mothers to explore the options available to them to make their birthing experience as positive as it can be.

• 0:54 Suzzie’s Experiences in Birth
• 4:11 She Births Bravely and Birth as a Transformation
• 17:01 11 Surprising Things That Can Happen During Labor
• 48:26 Resources at shebirthsbravely.com

https://shebirthsbravely.com
Check Out Her Book Here
Donate through Paypal at donate@empoweringfearlessbirth.com

Many women enter pregnancy with the expectation that their birth will be a negative experience. The culture of fear that has been built around birth in the past often contributes to that expectation becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Healing arises when the expectation surrounding the birth experience are shifted away from fear, and birth is instead seen as a powerful transformation rather than a painful procedure. Changing this paradigm and making a birth plan to help guide the experience can be the first steps forward into making every birth an uplifting experience, no matter how many unexpected turns it takes.

Sarah and Suzzie discuss how current perceptions of birth create fear in new mothers, and how that cycle can be broken. They also dig into how to navigate when the only birth stories you have in your community are negative ones, how making a birth plan can help you advocate for yourself beforehand, and let us in on a list of surprising things that can happen during labors so that we aren't quite so startled when they happen to us.

Suzzie Vehrs is the founder of She Births Bravely, a website aimed at helping moms feel totally prepared to powerfully birth their babies. She is a doula, mother, wife, sister friend and otherwise a wearer of many hats, just like you!