Elise Frosch | Preparing For Childbearing: Advice and Techniques For Ecstatic Natural Birth
Elise Frosch of Family Fungi returns to InnerVerse to discuss the primordial wisdom transmission of ecstatic natural birth. Current and future mamas and papas can tune in to learn about prenatal diet and exercise, how to relieve abdominal cramping in pregnancy, using breath work for relief and vitality, why it's okay for baby to take more than 40 weeks, techniques for easing the birth and how to practice before the big event, using a rebozo, what to do about "back labor," how the father can assist in birth, passing labor plateaus, birthing positions, placenta birth, how to fully nourish postpartum, nursing advice, and much more!
Plus+InnerVerse Plus+
InnerVerse Plus+Hear every full episode
Every extended episode, the complete Plus+ archive, premium video and a private podcast feed for your app.
Cancel any time.
Get tuned with Chance
Tuning forks find where energy is stuck in the field around your body and bring it back into flow. Sessions over Zoom, recorded for you to keep.
30 Minute Consultations
Have something to look at, or looking for guidance? We can consult oracular tools, read your chart, or just talk through whatever you choose.
In this episode
Core themes
Why She Chose to Birth at Home
Elise Frosch says that when she got pregnant with her first, she knew nobody around her who had birthed at home or had a natural birth in a hospital. About two years earlier she had attended a doula training where nearly every woman had home birthed, and the one who had not described a traumatic hospital experience. She recounts crying at her third appointment at a natural birthing center 45 minutes away, telling the midwife she was crying because she did not want to be there. Her husband James called that her first initiation. Her sister, a NICU nurse, worried.
Birth Knowledge as a Birthright
Chance Garton opens by explaining that this episode is being kept free to the public because he agrees this material ought to be common knowledge, passed folklore style from parent to child rather than sitting behind an expensive paywall. Elise picks the thread up with a story about a woman she spoke to weeks earlier who had never heard the term free birth, and argues that an option you have never heard of cannot be an option for you. Her position is not that one route is correct: she says plainly that no way in her mind is wrong, and that comfort is what decides it.
The Forty Four Week Pregnancy She Described
For her third, Elise says she calculated a due date of March 20 and then watched March 20, March 30, April Fools and April 10 all pass, reaching just over 44 weeks. She describes staying home because she did not want to hear what anyone had to say about it, then standing in the middle of a field for what she calls a come to Jesus moment, where the message she got back was, can you honor the mystery that I am. She woke with cramps around four in the morning, Avalon made her a pallet upstairs, and her daughter Sovie arrived while James was outside unlocking the gate.
Rehearsal, Rebozo and Real Communication
Mid episode Elise brings out props and her friend Avalon, using a balloon her son drew on as a stand in belly, and demonstrates rebozo work, compressions and a yoga ball for the lower back. Her stated point is less the moves themselves than the communication they build: the mother has to say which way feels right, and the husband has to be able to hear no without getting bothered by it. She notes the limit of rehearsal too, saying she and James practiced moves before her first birth and that when the day came she did not want to be touched at all.
Postpartum Ecstasy and the Maiden to Mother Turn
Late in the conversation Elise says the postpartum window gets discussed almost only as depression, and she wants the ecstatic side of it named as well. She and Chance talk about the pull of pity parties and village style gossip, and she argues that real support builds a struggling mother back up rather than circling around the low point. She describes oxytocin and prolactin, the let down reflex she can feel at her collarbones, and what she calls open eyed meditation with your baby. The maiden to mother transition, she says, is the real change: surrender to the mother rather than grasping at who you were.
Quotes
“Today we'll be talking about one of life's most uncomfortable experiences imaginable, but in a good way: the creation of new life.”
“Just seeing how nice it is to be comfortable in your own home really allowed me to see how beautiful birth can be.”
“Whenever I speak about birth and the different ways you can do it, no way in my mind is wrong.”
“I call them initiations, these small initiations that you come into during your pregnancy to allow you to stand strong within yourself and within your core.”
“The message I got back was, can you honor the mystery that I am. And I was like, all right, I'm here for it.”
“The women that know about birth, that sit with birth the most, you're only ever pointing towards something, but you never quite know what it is until you experience it.”
“When did nature ever make something the same way twice? Even in two plants of the same species or two animals of the same species, are they identical? No, there's always wiggle.”
“Then I had a baby and I was like, oh, that pales in comparison to actually having a child. It's so much more.”
“Everything ends. That was my mantra with my last one. I thought I was going to be pregnant forever, and I wasn't.”
“Your whole life is changing, and it's better to just absolutely surrender to the mother than to try and grasp at what used to be the maiden, because you are not that anymore.”
“Have fun with it. It can be a lot of fun if you let it be. It can be very serious if you let it be too.”
“I don't want you guys to feel like you're not good enough if you don't live up to her method or her style. It's most important that you just get a healthy baby here into the world.”
Elise Frosch is a natural-birth educator and "birth keeper" who, with her husband James, runs the homestead business Family Fungi; she appeared on InnerVerse twice discussing preparation for pregnancy, labor, and ecstatic natural birth.
See all Elise episodes→Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
