In this episode of The Birth Pause, midwife Chloe Campbell talks with Dana, a mother of three, about the arc across her three very different births — a first birth in a hospital and two subsequent home births with Chloe. Dana settles on a title for her own story, "Evolving into You," and traces how each birth reflected where she was in her life: a rushed, under-supported hospital birth with her son Hunter, where she now recognizes the pain she felt was as much environmental and emotional as physical; a fast, disorienting second labor with her daughter Bani, aided by a serendipitous visit to an elder acupuncturist who told her simply that she was "thinking too much"; and a long, 36-plus-hour third labor with her son Baz, which she came to trust as inevitable rather than uncertain. They talk about the talismans that carried her through — a crystal held during her first birth, hand-drawn birth cards taped to the wall for the other two, a borrowed birth stool with its own long history — and about the strange, unhurried moments home birth makes possible, like her older daughter wandering in to breastfeed mid-labor. The conversation turns to why hospital-trained obstetricians so rarely get to witness physiologic birth: a medical education front-loaded with emergencies and worst-case scenarios that Chloe argues quietly dehumanizes both the process and the people in it. Dana reflects on how leaving home to labor is itself a kind of intervention, and how staying, across all three of her births, let her keep following what her body already knew.

About The Birth Pause

Chloe searched for an existing podcast to share this story and couldn't find one that felt right. Most birth story podcasts offered long, linear play-by-plays from start to finish. What she wanted was something different — interview style conversations with the families she's attended, blending their lived experience with her clinical insight, told together, in each other's presence.

The Birth Pause explores birth not as a medical event but as a spiritual and personal transformation. Each episode asks not what happened, but what it did to you.

Hosted by Chloe Campbell — licensed midwife, founder of Supernatural Midwifery, and someone who has sat at the threshold with hundreds of families across New York City. This is not a play-by-play. This is the story underneath the story.

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