All three of our kids were born at home. Here's why.
Oh, you can't do that. It's so dangerous.
You guys are irresponsible parents.
Well, are we?
What I have learnt after three children being born at home with my wife
really calls into question some of these commonly held wisdoms.
Let me explain how the world of home birth is, in our experience, absolutely the way to go when it comes to the start of your child's life.
Why would you bother listening to me? Well, I've got three kids.
It's absolutely a case of learn by doing. All three of them were born at home, which wasn't necessarily the plan at the start.
So let me explain. I'm also an investor and think long and hard about capital accumulation.
And in this particular case, this is a classic scenario of humanistic investment or humanistic capital.
We need to be fostering this kind of area of our life or we risk overlooking some really simple ways of improving our future.
If you like what you hear, give us a subscribe, a like or get in touch on my email.
Hi at jakewoodhouse.io.
So let me begin.
Let me paint the picture.
your wife your partner they're pregnant congratulations what next well lots of planning
uh you know you've got to buy a pram you've got to start fixing a bedroom up you've got to start
getting clothes little clothes turn up oh my gosh what's gonna happen and basically your life is
about to completely change and the cliches that you hear and i tell you know other guys that i
meet this the whole time that you know the day you hold that little thing in your arms is the day
that everything changes you're a dad and instead of wondering oh who am i what do i want to do in
the world suddenly it's like oh no now i now i get it this is what i have to do i have to look after
this thing cherish it nurture it and and coach it in the ways of the world so um part of that's
obviously you know the baby's got to be born shit like how are you going to do that it's like right
Well, as the bloke, more than likely you're going to play second fiddle to your missus, and she's going to lead the charge.
What's her opinion? What's her approach?
But the reason for making this episode is just to put it out there that as half of the team, it's okay to have an opinion.
And what I've learned actually is something you could very easily share.
So if you're slightly further down the rabbit hole than perhaps your other half is in terms of home birth,
then this might well be useful to run through and to share with her.
So any future dads or anyone with a second or third coming along, then this will be useful as well.
In order to do this, I guess it's important to explain the situation that we were in.
We'd emigrated to Australia.
My wife was pregnant at the time.
March 2020 comes along and all the crazy COVID stuff starts kicking off.
And the baby was due July of 2020.
And at the time, there was all sorts of different rules and regulations that were being created by the health department that, frankly, were impossible to keep up with.
And one minute, you know, they were allowing people to give birth in hospitals.
The next minute they weren't.
Then it's like, actually, the wife can come, but the husband can't.
And so it was an extremely uncertain time.
And because of that uncertainty, we had to make some decisions of our own.
It's like, well, hang on.
If we rely on the hospital, then we don't know if I, you know, the husband can be present at the birth.
Like how absolutely ridiculous.
It's the most important team member in some ways to be there from a support perspective for the person giving birth.
And that situation, it really pushed us down a road and what's become a real journey that we didn't expect.
It has a really nice outcome in many ways.
But what it meant is, OK, what is a home birth?
And could we do this some other way?
and we ended up speaking with a bunch of different private midwife services employed one and
essentially they come to your house they do regular checkups you start to create a friendship with
them it's almost like a very personal experience you know i've heard stories of people going through
hospitals and they get cycled through different midwives and they're not quite sure who they're
ever going to see and it's it's lots of uncertainty which is frankly the complete opposite of what
a lady who's about to give birth needs.
And so, yes, the process was,
we didn't know what to expect in a way,
but it was quite comforting.
And anyway, the birth is getting much, much closer.
It eventually is upon us.
The labor begins.
And without going into all of the nitty gritty of it,
like, fuck me,
watching your missus give birth is an incredible experience,
It's like pure nature at its very, very deepest and quite profound in many ways.
I had an amusing moment that I would share, which is my one job was to pack the hospital bag.
And the hospital bag was necessary because we were doing something called a shared care, where if the home birth experience went wrong in any way, we already had an obstetrician on hand and on call that could have met us in a hospital nearby.
And obviously if you're going to go to the hospital, you want to take all your essentials with you. So some snacks, change of clothes.
People like to try and make it feel as homely as possible So they take fairy lights with them maybe a little sound system or whatever to put some music on And I haven packed the hospital bag So we like 16 hours in It the afternoon We got to this kind of amusing point in hindsight
but actually quite scary at the time where Loz was exhausted.
You know, she'd been going for hours and hours and hours.
And for some reason, things weren't quite clicking with her and the lead midwife.
And what happened is she took the decision to call the obstetrician.
She's like, this isn't going how it should be.
We need to get to the hospital.
and I was also in the room and I was getting not I wasn't anxious but I was like this isn't why
isn't this happening so I left the room the lead midwife left the room and I was like well shit
I've got to get the hospital back where is it I'm like running around trying to get all this stuff
like I won job and I hadn't done it and then it's like oh the dog hasn't been out so I had to take
the dog out to the street and I'm stood there and it's kind of slowly drizzling like Melbourne winter
and I'm like, oh my God, childbirth's actually really dangerous.
What happens here?
And you start imagining all the worst stuff.
Like, oh, we're trying to transfer to the hospital.
You know, Lauren's huge, right?
How's she even going to move?
This is actually really serious.
And I've been so hell-bent on the idea of home birth.
And so I was just quietly confident that she was just going to completely nail it.
And in the heat of the moment, the size of the task was just much, much more significant than either of us thought, right?
Just completely taken off by off guard by how intense it is.
Like you're getting a human body out of a human body.
It's crazy.
And so I was like milling around for 15 minutes, getting stressed, trying to pack this bag, fill up a bag full of crap that was never going to be useful.
and amazingly what happened is the the second midwife took control and Lauren just just
implicitly trusted her and what happened which is what we've been waiting to happen is this like
uncontrollable final phase of the labor where just the body just it just takes control and
I say 45 minutes it might have been a bit longer later Ruby was born and it was an incredible thing
to watch and I always joke about this in some ways like I just didn't know what was kind of
going to happen and suddenly this head starts appearing like oh my god that's the fucking head
and it's huge right like wow this is coming out of it this is insane now Lozard had no painkillers
no drugs no interventions whatsoever and gave birth to a natural healthy baby and within an
Now the placenta has also been born.
So the birth process is done.
You're at home and it's just so cozy and snug.
You've got your whole kitchen.
You've got your whole sitting room.
You've got your whole bathroom to hang out in.
And, you know, before I knew I was having a piece of pizza and a red wine holding my newborn baby.
and it was just the most amazing experience and completely shifted my view of the world frankly
but also my understanding as to what home birth could be and yeah I mean it's it's it's just an
amazing moment so yes like you know Lauren was in pain absolutely but quite soon everyone's gone
and it's just you the two parents and the baby and the dog like wow like we did it and we kind
slept a little bit that night and then you wake up the next day you've got a baby like oh my god
your life is different forever and so one of the reasons that this is a cool story is i don't think
it's very common and i'll hit you with some statistics in a minute but to continue on with
how this has been that was birth number one 2020 we had another one 2022 cleo and then another
Alfie 2024. So we've done three home births now, each baby born with no intervention whatsoever,
totally natural physiological birth onto the skin of the mum and me immediately afterwards
and breastfed. Now, it should sound fairly obvious that those are things that you'll want to do with
your baby, right? But something that wasn't actually obvious to me came up through this
whole process. So for example, think about a cat, right? We are also mammals. What does a cat do to
give birth? Well, actually, it will crawl under a cupboard in the middle of the night and give birth
to like eight kittens on its own, done. And in many ways, that's what human beings like doing,
right, as part of the monkey family. And what modern hospital does is not that. And so you get
these really interesting outcomes that people are getting more and more like used to as normal
but is it really normal so i'm going to run you through what some of those things now but
you know being at home we had our own birth pool with alfie we didn't use them on either time
before that but actually you know did that you can have your own music of course playing
everything's familiar kind of amusing as well once was obviously thinking through again the labor
process is noisy and your neighbors they know that a baby's being born and there's a point where
you know i know to speak for lozzy but like the the embarrassment just drops away and there's just
nothing stopping this woman giving birth and it's just the most amazing thing to watch so
yeah shout out to loz what an incredible woman but in between birth number one and birth number two
we went to go and see a lady called ria dempsey who ran these workshops about home birth and she
was big on this thing that she described as the cascade of interventions. And essentially,
it this process by which the birth support system that has grown up around childbirth and the risk that it represents has become a business And that business has incentives that aren always aligned with the
baby and the mother. For example, you know, if you go into a hospital, first of all, it's like,
are you going to have the same midwife each time? No, it's done on a shift basis. It's lots of bright
lights everywhere. You go into a room that you might have never been in before. Suddenly someone's
poking around you've never met so it's it's the complete opposite of that cat going underneath the
cupboard and like just relaxing and just giving birth it's actually making a woman um wary scared
like what's going on around me all of this like um all this new stuff there at the moment of like
trying to reach maximum release they're actually clamping up and wondering what's going on around
me and so then it's like oh the pain's too bad let's have some drugs well if you go and have an
epidural, you can't feel anything. And if you can't feel anything, how on earth do you know
when you're pushing, when you're not pushing, and if the baby's ready to come out? And then there's
the forceps that can pull it out. And obviously, this all ultimately ends in C-section, which is a
serious bit of surgery done by specialist obstetricians. So an obstetrician is a surgeon,
right? They're not just like this nice, friendly person that you meet who's like always there at
childbirth so no they are highly specialized in emergency scenarios for um what should be
like unlikely and unusual scenarios but as i'll explain that's not always the case
um i was talking to the benefits of home birth well yeah basically three main things comfort
you're at home lower risk of intervention like the cascade of interventions mentioned and then
finally just control sovereignty this is the kind of thing that anyone that's interested in bitcoin
will also get straight away. It's like, you don't need help from anyone else to give birth. It is
something that's been done for millennia and will be done for millennia into the future. And that is
very, very empowering. Of course, there are risks, right? With anything, childbirth is a risky process.
But what's interesting is that home birth is no less risky than hospital. It's less risky,
because there are all these interventions that can get involved. Now, most people will not know
that fact and the system itself will not actually represent that data again we'll run through it in
a second um the private midwives are there right they're highly specialized some of these ladies
that we met were amazing they've been doing midwifery for like 40 years they've delivered
thousands of babies it's incredible what a day job that is bloody hell but then if it does go wrong
you can have a shared care in place so you're having a home birth things don't go to plan for
some reason boom off to the hospital and there's someone there to sort you out who's familiar with
your case i think that's the key but most people you know i'm assuming it's a low risk pregnancy
and that's a fact that you can find out long before the due date of the baby and keep in mind
the due date is normally not when the baby's born especially baby number one it's often after i can't
remember how many days after the due date loz was um giving birth to ruby but it was the first time
around you build up to this moment you know and witnessing that as the as the husband it's like
oh this is the birth date and then it comes and goes and you get even bigger and even bigger and
even slower and even more uncomfortable to the event just like get this goddamn baby out of me
and that's what happens nature kicks in right uh but there are some cool health benefits to
to home and to natural birth specifically so first of all of course the the recovery time
Think about nature. Think about living in the jungle. A woman who's just given birth can basically pick that baby back up and start running if needs be, having had a natural birth. Within a day, it's incredible how quickly the body recovers.
a woman who's been chopped open in the lower part of her stomach,
like bedridden for days and days and days.
Also, a natural birth means that the baby exits the mother through the birth canal,
which carries very specific types of bacteria,
which are excellent for the immune system and the nervous system of the baby.
So in my mind, at least, if you can avoid C-section,
there are some very specific benefits to that for the baby and for the mother.
Again, not all that obvious when you go and meet an obstetrician.
So let's hit some data.
And this is really, you know, it's just so incredible.
So in Australia, it's about 0.6 of the births annually.
So sub 1% are born at home.
So of the 291,000 births in 2022, the home birth rate was 1,720.
Isn't that wild?
And my wife and I obviously have three now.
And the UK, it's a little higher, 2.4% of all births born at home.
And in the US, it's somewhere in between 1.1%.
These stats are also kind of incredible when you think about it.
So 96.9% of babies born in Australia in a hospital.
94.6% of babies born in the UK in a hospital.
So the infrastructure is absolutely in place.
And in my mind, like in other areas I've witnessed recently,
the industry, the system is playing on the risk.
Oh, you can't have a baby at home, guys.
That's really irresponsible and dangerous of you.
And what happens if, you know, something goes really wrong?
And it's true.
There are risks.
But the outside chance of you having a complication in the labor,
it really is an outside chance, right?
Especially if you've had regular checkups during pregnancy
and you represent a low-risk pregnancy.
Like you going to give birth to that baby No problem Now some other areas that are kind of of incredible to think about as well as and obviously let think about it so 96 born in hospital in Australia 94 born
in hospital in the UK 41% of babies born in Australia are from c-section so basically half
of the kids that are being born every single year are born after the mother is chopped open by a
isn't that crazy? These are just some statistics I've been running through today. And Rhea Dempsey
was strong on her data. It was an interesting part of her course, but I didn't expect it to be that
big. And so it's completely normalized for a baby to be born after a C-section. Now, I am not knocking
anyone that's made that decision or what's previously happened. But if you don't have to
go down that path, then maybe that's a better option. And that's the point of being public
about this process we've been through. And specifically that this idea of home birth
being irresponsible or dangerous, which just isn't true, especially through the lens of
the intervention. That law said many times, if there were drugs on offer, she would have
taken it. But she was at home, so she couldn't. And so she pushed through that pain barrier
and was then able to deliver a baby naturally.
And so if you go to hospital,
and there were plenty of couples at Rhea's workshop
where they were going for hospital births,
but they were going to the workshop
because they really wanted to have a natural birth
in a hospital.
And what she was trying to point out
was that the chances of you doing that are really low
because it's on offer.
And you don't know what you're going to do
in the middle of that crazy kind of 12-hour period.
You've got the birth plan, everything's there, and it just can go completely out the window.
Now, again, there are, of course, fringe scenarios where crazy shit happens.
And the absolute best place to be in that scenario would be in a hospital.
But that's literally unlikely, extremely unlikely from a probabilities perspective.
So what does this all mean?
Basically, home birth is really safe.
Definitely try it out.
And I highly recommend the process.
the other area to point out here which is always useful is looking at the incentives
like where's the money what's actually going on here and quite quickly you can find billions of
dollars are being spent on fees for delivering babies and therefore you know follow the money
honey of course there's an incentive in place for the the system that's in place to to sell that
fear or you have to give birth in a hospital you're you're uh you know you're not being a
prudent parent if you don't and for me it's like okay cool we'll look at the difference in market
size between the private midwife industry and the hospital industry like it's it's it's huge
difference but the private midwives do just as good a job if not arguably deliver healthier babies
and healthier mothers in a more safe manner.
Why aren't people doing that?
Why aren't people looking at that more closely?
I really, really implore everyone to,
if you're listening along to this
and got a baby coming around the corner,
like it's cool, man.
You can go for it.
And you're not crazy
and you're not doing anything stupid or unsafe.
We are living proof of that, right?
It's an incredible experience
to do it from home yourselves.
And you can.
And so the big businesses out there that are making money out of this, like you don't need them. It's not actually scary. And when you go through the process, you'll see that it is the most natural and honest and proper piece of proof of work that you will ever, ever see.
now lots of midwives would put surgeons out of a job if they got their way but like all these things
there's a there's a bunch of industry norms where it's like okay well you can't say this you can't
say that and they don't want to lose business for whatever reason there's then a regulatory body in
the middle and it's like okay well fine never mind don't worry about that but what i'm here to say is
you can absolutely explore this and especially as the dad it's it's okay to go out and do your own
research and say all right well actually hey babe there was this guy i was listening to the other day
and i think it's quite cool they did some home births like would you be open to it
and have that conversation share this conversation with them my wife i'm sure will be happy to speak
to anyone that you know wants to about this because she's very um what's the right way of
saying it she's she's proof that it's possible and really enjoyed the whole experience so trust
the experts like another classic scenario like maybe maybe you don't need to um you know is there
a misalignment there maybe and especially if you've got a low risk pregnancy this is something
you could absolutely consider to do so yeah of course at the end of the day like you know a baby
is a baby and we're all incredibly blessed to become parents and whatever works for you go for
it. I'm never going to judge you at all. I felt that what I've discussed today was a piece of,
let's say, quite hidden information that's unnecessarily hidden and will be far better
if spoken about in public a lot more. So yeah, basically get in touch if you've got any questions.
I would absolutely advocate for home birth. We'll do more if we have any more babies. And yeah,
long story short, you can do it. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to reach out,
hi at jakewoodhouse is my email hi at jakewoodhouse.io and also jump on nostr
chuck us some zaps and give us a boost if this is cool so thanks so much for your time today