All that really matters is a healthy baby. Truer words were never spoken, right? But wait … if I’ve learned anything from my birth stories (and trust me, they run the gamut) a healthy baby is only part of it. Certainly a healthy baby matters very much, but someone else gets swept under the rug way too easily: a healthy mom!
It Takes a Village to Raise a … Mom?
Listen to this excerpt from today’s guest, veteran midwife and legend in the birth world, Anne Margolis:
There was a time throughout history and around the world where we used to live in communities, tribes, or communal settings where a woman who just gave birth was treated like a goddess. She was left to heal, and rest, and breastfeed. All the women in the community took care of everything else … childcare of the other children, her work responsibilities if she was working outside the home, errands, cooking, cleaning, all of that.… The woman was so surrounded by this circle of love and support.
Wow. Something tells me times have changed!
Anne Margolis, Midwife Extraordinaire
After two difficult births of her own, Anne Margolis left her career as an obstetrics nurse to find a better way to birth. Now Anne has personally ushered over 1000 healthy babies into the world in her 22 years as a Licensed Certified Nurse Midwife and OB/GYN Nurse Practitioner. Her single mission? To help moms feel safe, honored, and supported, in the hospital or at home.
Here’s just a bit of her empowering message:
Women who are pregnant: I just want you as much as possible to know that your body knows how to grow, and birth, and breastfeed a baby. Your baby knows how to be born, and you have the strength in you. Even in the heat of things when you think you don’t, you still do have the strength within you to do it.
As a doula, I’ve seen moms do incredibly hard (and beautiful) things. Above all, let’s bring back a culture that celebrates the strength of moms in all types of births and supports them for as long as they need.
Getting off my soapbox now … and turning it over to Anne!
In This Episode You’ll Learn

Anne’s own birth stories and how they set her on a path to a new calling
why the U.S. ranks so low in healthy baby and healthy mom birth outcomes
ways the current health system marginalizes and disempowers women during birth
how to be at peace with the unexpected happening in childbirth
whether home birth is really dangerous (and which major health institution actually recommends it)
when it is actually safer to choose a hospital birth over a home birth
the forgotten fourth trimester of pregnancy, and what a mom really needs to heal
why it seems like more women face postpartum depression or even psychosis (and what we can do to reverse the trend)
what Anne is doing to empower moms to change the system from the ground up
and more!

Resources We Mention

Learn more about Anne Margolis at