Back from a Break

The entire next year now will have stories of

Divya brings to you the new addition of Hospital birth stories to draw the distinction between what to expect in a system vs

• The Home Birth stories
• The Free Birth stories
• Educative episodes on
  1. Episiotomies
  2. Ultrasounds and more!

There are more updates in here , tune in now!

Support the Show.

Sign up for Traverse the Labor Land and Own your birth programs! visit www.birthagni.com/contactus

Support the show:

• If you like what you hear, leave us
  • a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode!
  • a review on Apple podcasts.
• Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FB
• Share on Instagram and tag us @divyakapoorvox
• Support the production by making a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/birthagni. This ensures the continuity and quality and a good coffee on sleepless recording nights!
• Subscribe to the FREE newsletter at https://www.birthagni.com/#subscribe and receive DISCOUNTS, SALE updates and GIFTCARDS on our premium 'Own your Birth' program
• You can book a 20 min FREE Discovery call at https://www.birthagni.com/...

"Birth" encompasses a multitude of social, cultural, and political dimensions. Whether considering human rights, power dynamics in families, bodily autonomy, government schemes, hospital protocols, reproductive rights, or policies, all the macro and micro aspects of our existence that constitute 'Life' impact a woman's birth.

Today, I'm joined by Sanjana Krishnan, a Political Scientist by profession, with a passion for regeneration. She is the co-founder of the Beejvan Biodiversity and Collaborative Research Foundation and also a home birthing mother of two daughters, who enjoys learning about various indigenous healing modalities.

Together, we delve into:

1. What is Politics and how it intertwines with our social and cultural fabrics, impacting a woman's birth experience.
2. Gender Roles and Power Dynamics.
3. Social Positioning and Power Dynamics in families affecting Birth.
4. Government Policies and Schemes affecting Birth.

and more...

Explore Parts I and II in Episodes 102 and 103, and Episode 92 with Public Health Researcher, Baneen, delving into similar themes!

Support the Show.

Sign up for Traverse the Labor Land and Own your birth programs! visit www.birthagni.com/contactus

Support the show:

• If you like what you hear, leave us
  • a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode!
  • a review on Apple podcasts.
• Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FB
• Share on Instagram and tag us @divyakapoorvox
• Support the production by making a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/birthagni. This ensures the continuity and quality and a good coffee on sleepless recording nights!
• Subscribe to the FREE newsletter at https://www.birthagni.com/#subscribe and receive DISCOUNTS, SALE updates and GIFTCARDS on our premium 'Own your Birth' program
• You can book a 20 min FREE Discovery call at https://www.birthagni.com/...

Sign up for the Free Birth Awareness Session:

https://www.birthagni.com/contactus - Select 'upcoming free birth awareness' in the form
Direct Registration: https://forms.gle/kYeTcRPMzZvWKcYA9

Contrary to her previous experience (EP 102) of a quick birth at the birth center, Sanjana manifested a slower transition this time and knew instinctively that she wanted to give birth at home, with her daughter as a witness to the simplicity of life and birth.

We are often presented with the narrative of a painless birth and today the 'option' of a painless birth with medical interventions at play. What if these narratives are carefully selected to create an image that suits the industrialized system, benefiting from the victimhood of women in their own bodies? What if the natural bliss of birth is being carefully shielded away from us?

In this episode, we discuss:

• Experience of Pregnancy
• Sanjana's preparation for birth and postpartum
• Experience of Labor and events leading up to birth—unmedicated, undisturbed
• Ecstasy of Birth, when birth becomes painless
• Postpartum Experience

Resources discussed:
Book : Ten Moons: The Inner Journey of Pregnancy, Preparation for Natural Birth

About Sanjana:Sanjana is a Political Scientist by profession focused on urban-rural linkages, urban studies, and inequalities in India. She is the co-founder of the Beejvan Biodiversity and Collaborative Research Foundation. A winner of the Erasmus scholarship, the German Chancellors’ Fellowship, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Her project, Beejvan, won the Lush Spring Prize 2023 in the UK.

Sanjana is also a home-birthing mother of two daughters and very passionate about immunology, and enjoys learning about various indigenous healing modalities. Her quest for truth, led by her intuition, beyond what science and religion have attempted to understand and preach, is what led her to birth her daughters and raise them on her own terms. The journey of healing is non-linear and ongoing, and she trusts it is a beautiful one, even on the worst days.

Support the Show.

Sign up for Traverse the Labor Land and Own your birth programs! visit www.birthagni.com/contactus

Support the show:

• If you like what you hear, leave us
  • a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode!
  • a review on Apple podcasts.
• Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FB
• Share on Instagram and tag us @divyakapoorvox
• Support the production by making a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/birthagni. This ensures the continuity and quality and a good coffee on sleepless recording nights!
• Subscribe to the FREE newsletter at https://www.birthagni.com/#subscribe and receive DISCOUNTS, SALE updates and GIFTCARDS on our premium 'Own your Birth' program
• You can book a 20 min FREE Discovery call at https://www.birthagni.com/...

Every woman sheds a part of herself as she goes through the rites of passage - Menarche, Birth, and Menopause - the life-altering experiences that hold huge significance. We all arrive in pregnancy with something we have learned from our life experiences, which helps us visualize our birth in a certain way. Some of us desire it to be a breeze, some of us desire it to be painless, some of us desire it to be with friends and family, some of us want to avoid surgery at all costs even if we do not know what birth can look like, some of us consider it our identity linked to birthing naturally as women.

Sanjana's journey has been the same, very much like many of us. She is self-aware, reflective, and growth-oriented: inward in her journey of pregnancy and birth. Her transitioning definitions about herself contributed to the decision of prioritizing her ideas about birth over the little juggles of life.

Listen to the journey of transformation for a woman through pregnancy and birth as we re-discuss them as the rightful dimensions of growth a woman is gifted with, which she has all the right to experience guided by herself rather than any authority or outward force.

About Guest: Sanjana is a Political Scientist by profession focused on urban-rural linkages, urban studies, and inequalities in India. She is the co-founder of the Beejvan Biodiversity and Collaborative Research Foundation. A winner of the Erasmus scholarship, the German Chancellors’ Fellowship, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Her project, Beejvan, won the Lush Spring Prize 2023 in the UK.

Sanjana is also a home-birthing mother of two daughters and very passionate about immunology, and enjoys learning about various indigenous healing modalities. Her quest for truth, led by her intuition, beyond what science and religion have attempted to understand and preach, is what led her to birth her daughters and raise them on her own terms. The journey of healing is non-linear and ongoing, and she trusts it is a beautiful one, even on the worst days.

Support the Show.

Sign up for Traverse the Labor Land and Own your birth programs! visit www.birthagni.com/contactus

Support the show:

• If you like what you hear, leave us
  • a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode!
  • a review on Apple podcasts.
• Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FB
• Share on Instagram and tag us @divyakapoorvox
• Support the production by making a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/birthagni. This ensures the continuity and quality and a good coffee on sleepless recording nights!
• Subscribe to the FREE newsletter at https://www.birthagni.com/#subscribe and receive DISCOUNTS, SALE updates and GIFTCARDS on our premium 'Own your Birth' program
• You can book a 20 min FREE Discovery call at https://www.birthagni.com/...

Unnecessary Cesarean sections are common in India for unjustified reasons and poorly read overdiagnosed factors which in many cases have not been proven to be emergencies. The lack of application of basic evidence based information once applied can in itself lift our rates of natural birth high up. The maternity system today needs to keep up with atleast the guidelines in place as a starter and the experience if not the outcomes may improve.

Listen to Lavanya's story to learn about :

• Story of Changing Doctors and buying time from the OBGYN
• Induction and its side effects
• Meconium
• Working through Postpartum after Cesarean
• Birthtrauma reflected as Postpartum Depression and PTSD
• Birth trauma and its physical ramifications

Lavanya is a Yoga teacher who met with an unnecessary cesarean some 5 years ago and had been looking for answers to align with what she felt in her body. She found answers and shares what she feels really happened.

Support the Show.

Sign up for Traverse the Labor Land and Own your birth programs! visit www.birthagni.com/contactus

Support the show:

• If you like what you hear, leave us
  • a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode!
  • a review on Apple podcasts.
• Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FB
• Share on Instagram and tag us @divyakapoorvox
• Support the production by making a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/birthagni. This ensures the continuity and quality and a good coffee on sleepless recording nights!
• Subscribe to the FREE newsletter at https://www.birthagni.com/#subscribe and receive DISCOUNTS, SALE updates and GIFTCARDS on our premium 'Own your Birth' program
• You can book a 20 min FREE Discovery call at https://www.birthagni.com/...

Google tells me that the idea on Gentle Parenting has been around since 1930. The internet is now leveraging on its popularity including big media houses like the Times of India who recently , well , precisely on 26th March '24 published a photostory with the title that goes ' Why Gentle Parenting is not for Indian Kids'!

This one poorly argued photostory had many FB groups and mom channels in uproar with the complaint of how rigid the idea behind this photostory has been.

Gentle parenting has been my approach too and more like respectful parenting and my ally in this has been Shailaja Paramathma, a dear friend from the times when I was trying to work my hand at writing.

Shailaja has worked in the core administration team and also as the Admin head for different establishments for a period spanning over a decade. Wearing different hats in her career, she has been an English teacher, having worked for the French Embassy as well as a Journalist for a few years before she embraced Parenting as her full time occupation.

We decided to go ahead and disseminate this story and present our counter arguments based on real life experiences in an intimate and fun filled conversation today.
Find TOI photostory HERE

Support the Show.

Sign up for Traverse the Labor Land and Own your birth programs! visit www.birthagni.com/contactus

Support the show:

• If you like what you hear, leave us
  • a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode!
  • a review on Apple podcasts.
• Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FB
• Share on Instagram and tag us @divyakapoorvox
• Support the production by making a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/birthagni. This ensures the continuity and quality and a good coffee on sleepless recording nights!
• Subscribe to the FREE newsletter at https://www.birthagni.com/#subscribe and receive DISCOUNTS, SALE updates and GIFTCARDS on our premium 'Own your Birth' program
• You can book a 20 min FREE Discovery call at https://www.birthagni.com/...

Pre eclampsia in late pregnancy is often arrived at with one episode of High BP, two episodes of High Blood Pressure or a case in previous pregnancy without any symptoms in the current one.

We see how the current care dynamics in the medical world is quick to categorise a symptom which may need further diagnosis to confirm if someone really has a condition or not, Pre -eclampsia being one of them.

While only 6-8 % of women statistically are at high risk of pre-eclampsia or further issues, the micro and over management of the situation often results in lack of support for women desiring natural births (which is how birth happens, naturally!)

In this episode, however, we do not discuss prevention or management but what Pre-eclampsia can mean at a physiological level for birthworkers and pregnant women to ask better questions!

This episode covers:

• Definition of Preeclampsia
• Changes in the Circulatory , Liver and Kidney Systems involved directly or indirectly with Preeclampsia
• Questions a pregnant woman can ask when presented with a similar situation.
• What all factors can help better and reliable diagnosis of the situation

If this helped, we encourage you to leave a comment/rating/review on the platform you are listening to this from!

Support the Show.

Sign up for Traverse the Labor Land and Own your birth programs! visit www.birthagni.com/contactus

Support the show:

• If you like what you hear, leave us
  • a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode!
  • a review on Apple podcasts.
• Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FB
• Share on Instagram and tag us @divyakapoorvox
• Support the production by making a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/birthagni. This ensures the continuity and quality and a good coffee on sleepless recording nights!
• Subscribe to the FREE newsletter at https://www.birthagni.com/#subscribe and receive DISCOUNTS, SALE updates and GIFTCARDS on our premium 'Own your Birth' program
• You can book a 20 min FREE Discovery call at https://www.birthagni.com/...

Dr. Brewer's pregnancy diet, also known as the Brewer diet, was developed by Dr. Tom Brewer in the 1960s. It emphasizes the importance of nutrition during pregnancy to prevent complications such as pre-eclampsia and to support healthy fetal development. The diet focuses on consuming a variety of whole foods to ensure adequate intake of protein, vitamins, and minerals.

The key principles of Dr Brewer's Pregnancy Diet are shared in the episode.

Tune in now!

We briefly discuss Diuretics which will be elaborated in the upcoming episodes

Support the Show.

Sign up for Traverse the Labor Land and Own your birth programs! visit www.birthagni.com/contactus

Support the show:

• If you like what you hear, leave us
  • a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode!
  • a review on Apple podcasts.
• Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FB
• Share on Instagram and tag us @divyakapoorvox
• Support the production by making a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/birthagni. This ensures the continuity and quality and a good coffee on sleepless recording nights!
• Subscribe to the FREE newsletter at https://www.birthagni.com/#subscribe and receive DISCOUNTS, SALE updates and GIFTCARDS on our premium 'Own your Birth' program
• You can book a 20 min FREE Discovery call at https://www.birthagni.com/...