ep. 20 - Harness Your Raw Power: A Powerful & Transformational Birth with Sarah and Matthew Bivens

When it comes to giving birth, most people think about hospitals. However, has homebirth come across your mind? For Sarah and Matthew, halfway through their pregnancy, they did. And this experience turned them into advocates of powerful and transformational births. Listen as they talked about the ways that their preparations differed - Sarah prepared herself emotionally and mentally while John prepared himself physically and logistically. They also touched on the importance of preparing themselves as a couple for parenting two children at once. Finally, they shared the importance of sexuality and intimacy as partners.

Sarah and Matthew Bivens are the creators of Doing It At Home, a platform for empowering home birth content and community. The Doing It At Home podcast started in 2016 when they were pregnant with their first child and switched from hospital birth to a home birth halfway through the pregnancy. Both balanced lifestyle coaches prior to becoming parents, Sarah and Matthew have taken their past coaching experience and married it with their passion for home birth to make DIAH the ultimate space for home birth empowerment. Together since 2012, Matthew and Sarah currently live in Marietta, Georgia, with their daughter Maya and are pregnant with their second child, due later this winter 2022.

In this episode:

• Sarah and Matthew share their story of how they switched from planned hospital birth to a homebirth halfway through their first pregnancy and how this led to them becoming advocates for home birth.
• It is important to be open to questioning one's beliefs about birth. This helped Sarah and Matthew make the switch to doing it at home.
• Sometimes, the birth partner can be completely wiped at the end. It is important for your partner to be there for you fully during labor as much as possible.
• Sarah discusses her experience of having two pregnancies, one of which was unplanned and difficult.
• It may take time to reach a place of trusting the process, but it is important to honor your own timeline.
• The couple shares their experiences preparing for their second home birth, noting that the preparation process has been different due to the addition of a second child.
• Bringing in more sexuality and intimacy into the relationship is in alignment with couples. It is incredibly significant and is a component of health, just like physical and mental health.

Key Takeaways:

• Be open to questioning your beliefs about birth
• Address your fears with intentionality
• Have trust in divine timing through the difficult process
• Allow yourself to trust the process in order to focus on other things
• Every birth requires a different type of preparation
• Establish rituals to support sexuality and intimacy in your relationship

Tweetable Quotes:

“Sarah and I are open to questioning why we do things and examining things in different ways... That allowed us and made it easier for us to say, ‘You know what, maybe the hospital isn't for us.’... Let's get intentional about what we want our birth vision to be.” - Matthew Bivens

“When you make choices like your birth, that's just the beginning, that's the tip of the iceberg because then you have a human that you're making choices for… People have a lot of opinions on that, too. But it was mostly just around the safety, or the question of the safety. And it really came from uneducated places of just fear, and you know, masked in care and love.” - Sarah Bivens

“We very much believe that sexual energy is incredibly significant. You know, lifeforce energy, and that it has the ability to heal has the ability to create to manifest. And so not only to create new life but to create abundance on so many different levels.” - Matthew Bivens

Connect with Sarah and Matthew!Website: https://doing-it-at-home.teachable.com/ Podcast: https://diahpodcast.com/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Doing-At-Home-Confident-Experience/dp/B098GVJ9KL 

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Visit https://www.orgasmicbirth.com/ for more information on how to have fulfilling and enjoyable births.

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Orgasmic Birth Podcast: Pleasure in pregnancy, birth, and parenting. I believe pleasure is our birthright - from our sexuality, birth, parenting, and beyond, we can find pleasure when we create space for joy and intimacy in our lives. Join me to have deep conversations about breaking the taboos of Sexuality + Motherhood/Parenthood. 

Listen to leading experts in sexuality, healing, and childbirth as well as stories from new parents, doulas, doctors, midwives, and nurses. We will discuss how to positively prepare for childbirth and parenting by expanding love and intimacy in your life.