#18 – When fear peaks, trust anchors: my birth story | Part II

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Transcription of the episode

EPISODE TEASER

When you do birth preparation, there is a climax—a moment of peak doubt—that every woman experiences. There’s a moment when she says, I don’t know. I won’t be able to give birth. I don’t want to give birth anymore. I can’t do this. That’s when you go into that level of doubt. And that’s the moment they prepare the partner for, when they say, You need to support her. This is when you need to be there, and the entire team knows it.

It’s the same for you. We all have moments in our projects when we’re like, Okay, let’s just give up. This is too much. I won’t be able to make it happen. I’m done. That real “giving up” energy—I’m not able. And as interesting as it is, it happens very close to the moment when we are actually going to make it happen. It’s like a very intense energy pulling in the other direction.

It’s like climbing a mountain—you need to go over the peak. Once you do, the path goes down, and you can slide. But you have to go over that peak moment.

Mentioned in the episode:

– Listen to Part One of my Birth Story HERE
– Listen to My 2024 Review (how to not compromise on your desire) HERE
– Discover your Human Design Reading HERE

EPISODE SUMMARY

This episode is part two. It goes hand in hand with the episode where I talk about my birth preparation. Now I’m going to talk about my birth experience. I highly recommend listening to the previous episode so that you understand how to prepare for birthing a new project or a new chapter in your life. In this one, you’ll understand how to deal with the experience itself—maybe you’re already in the phase of living this new project and learning how to adapt and adjust. That’s what I’m sharing about today. If you’re in the preparation phase, really listen to part one first.

You ask yourself the right questions. As you will hear—if you haven’t listened to it, or as you heard in part one—I really shared about how much support I received. This is something I want to emphasize again today: I would not have been able to have the experience I’m going to share without support.

In the preparation phase, I worked with different people so I could face my fears, work on my beliefs, and do the groundwork beforehand. There is a saying: when a woman gives birth, if she hasn’t done the inner work beforehand, the birth itself may stall, start again, or shift. During the birth process, emotions, doubts, and questions can arise. It’s almost as if, as mothers, we need to let go and work through things in that very moment so that the birth can happen.
Of course, every woman is different. Some might say, Oh no, that didn’t happen at all for me during my birth. That’s fine—it’s just another way. But for many women, things do come up.

Maybe suddenly, during the birth, you’re afraid your partner might pull away once the baby arrives. Or maybe there’s a final question you need to ask: What do we do if this happens? Will you support me if that happens? Or perhaps it’s something from a relationship with your dad, your mother, or your own past that surfaces. It’s almost like a purging or liberation that has to happen so the birth can move forward.

It’s quite a wild process when you think about it. I didn’t know about it before engaging in my own birth preparation, but I believe it was key in how things unfolded for me. Because I had done so much work beforehand, I was super prepared.
Funnily enough, I had a friend who was going to give birth and hadn’t prepared anything. She told me, Wow, you seem to have been so prepared. My husband said, She was like an encyclopedia—she knew so much. And yes, I did know a lot. That’s part of my design. Honestly, I could almost create a whole program around it, given all the knowledge I’ve acquired and the experience I’ve lived.

But that’s not the goal here. What it shows is that I was really aligned with my design. Maybe your design is different—maybe it’s not about acquiring lots of knowledge beforehand. You might have a different way of moving, and you can discover that if you wish through a Human Design reading that I offer. I’ll put the link in the show notes—it’s a very insightful experience you can book with me.

So, back to the story: I prepared for the birth. And as I ended the last episode, I believe you were left wanting one thing—to hear the next part of the story.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

The story is we come closer to the birth month. I remember both my husband and I were saying, We need one more week to put everything in place so that we’ll feel more serene when welcoming our baby boy. And this didn’t happen.
I have my own business. I had to prepare so much, but I hadn’t finished when it started. It was Sunday. I went swimming in the morning—we had a swimming pool for the entire building where I lived. Ideal when you’re pregnant. While swimming, I told my husband, I believe he turned again.

I felt it while swimming—how he turned in the belly. Oh no, I believe he’s head up again. Because, as I told you in part one, we had a breech baby. Head up—and that’s a problem. Especially, I would say, in the US, but increasingly in many countries, professionals are very cautious about breech births. Of course, it’s not the norm, because only about 3–4% of births are breech, but most professionals don’t want a baby to be born breech. For 99% of them—well, that’s just my impression—it doesn’t feel safe.

So there I was, in the swimming pool, thinking, Okay, he turned again. I guess. I’m not sure.

The day went on. Suddenly in the evening, around 7–8 PM, my water broke. I thought, Did my water just break? What’s happening? Was it the mucus plug? My husband went completely blank—his face said, No… is this happening now?
I said, Okay, let’s call the midwife and tell her. She reassured us: It’s probably just the mucus plug, which doesn’t mean you’ll give birth in the next few hours—it can still take days. I had a few contractions, but they stopped. We thought, Okay, we’re fine.
I asked my husband to buy a few things I still needed. While he was at the market, the contractions started again. I began using the app we shared with the midwife, where she could track contractions live. At that point, I knew: This is going to happen in the next few hours.

My husband came back, and I told him, I have news. The contractions started again. The baby is coming. I had called both the midwife and my doula, and they said, Relax. Eat if you can, and sleep as much as possible. It’s your first baby—it will take some hours.

We were at home, as planned. If you listened to the previous episode, you know we had planned a home birth. My husband, at first, wasn’t into it and was doubtful, but he decided to join me on the journey. I still had some fears about whether he would support me, but with my doula and midwife, I felt really safe.

Everything unfolded exactly as I knew it would. I’m someone who prepares—it’s in my design to gather information, understand, and acquire knowledge so I can move safely. And because of that, I knew exactly what was happening: Okay, this just happened—perfectly. You are moving towards giving birth.

I had prepared mentally and emotionally, reframing the sensation of pain through breathing. I had used every moment before birth where I experienced pain to challenge my own perception: Let’s extend my perception. Let’s welcome the pain. That’s how I already work with emotions—welcoming them—so I just extended that into pain management.

It doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard, but I was super focused on my plan and staying present in the moment. I managed to take each contraction as it came. What they tell you is true: don’t anticipate the next contraction, just relax and breathe in the breaks when it isn’t painful.

It’s the same with life projects. We think, Tomorrow I have this, or next I’ll face that. But if you can stay present in the step you’re experiencing right now—even if it’s hard—you’ll move forward. Just like in birth, every contraction brings you closer to your baby. And with projects, every challenge, every “contraction,” even failures, fears, or blockages, can bring you closer to your goal if you move with it instead of resisting.

Things were moving, but then we had our first problem: there was meconium in the water. Meconium means the baby has pooped during labor. It’s dangerous because the baby might swallow it, which would require immediate respiratory support in a hospital—something my midwife couldn’t provide at home.

So we faced our first big decision: do we go straight to the hospital, as most professionals recommend, or do we stay home? My midwife said we could still continue at home, as sometimes nothing happens, but we had to be prepared for an emergency transfer after birth.

That was the first moment of real stress. And interestingly, it was also the first time my husband firmly said, No—you had the vision of doing a home birth. We stay at home. Whoa. Suddenly, he was on board. I had been waiting for that for weeks and months, as you know from my reflections in the 2024 review episode.

We had argued a lot about home birth—he didn’t feel safe with it, which I respected and understood—but I had done so much research and preparation. I knew home birth could be safe if the right criteria were met, and I had checked them all… except for the breech presentation.

At that point, though, we didn’t know for sure if the baby was breech. I only suspected it from swimming earlier, but I hadn’t told my midwife. Strangely, that turned out to be important later.
So we stayed home. The contractions continued, labor was progressing fast. My midwife asked, Are you sure? Do you want to go to the hospital? Should I come? It was hard to decide—I was between contractions, struggling to think. But we chose to stay home, and she said, Okay, I’m coming very soon—you’re moving really fast.

She and my doula prepared and came quickly. I have so much respect for this work—getting a call late at night, leaving everything, and coming without knowing how long it will take. It’s beautiful but demanding.
When my midwife arrived, I was deeply in the process, the contractions stronger and stronger. I was using the one tool I hadn’t forgotten: my breath. I told myself, The most important thing is that my baby gets oxygen. So I will breathe deeply.
She checked me and said, Oh no, I think I felt the baby’s butt. Let me recheck.

I was in so much pain I couldn’t lie on my back—I had to stay on all fours. When she checked again, she confirmed: The baby is breech. Head up. You need to go to the hospital. Emergency transfer.

She asked my husband to call 911, but he froze and couldn’t even make the call. She took over, called, and managed everything. The emergency team arrived quickly.

Before we left, my midwife told me: Gloria, you need to know that a physiological breech birth is possible. I had heard about that in a podcast months before, but the woman in that story had given birth in France. As I mentioned in part one, I had many beliefs about what was possible—or not—in the US. I had also read a book confirming how medicalized birth often is in America, even though things are changing in other countries.

I was like, Okay. She told me that. She said, Gloria, you have to know this is possible. I get into the bed, elevator with the contractions, and the guy from the ambulance tells me, So this is going to be a C-section. I’m like, Okay. I didn’t say okay, but I was like, In my mind, I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. That’s going to be a leitmotif, you say in German, like a major red thread into all the story I’m going to tell. And that’s something I work around as a coach. That’s something I encourage you to develop as you work with me. But beyond, as you listen to it right now, is understanding which are the energies in the space and where does the comment come from.

I knew this person was in the mainstream thinking, which is breach baby means C-section. I’m like, Of course, that’s how most people do it. But I knew a breach baby can be born physiologically. We move forward. I get into the hospital in the triage room, and they didn’t want me to move out of this room because the triage is like you decide if you go into the operation room or if you go into the birth section, like giving birth rooms.

Like, we’re going to say normal, not an operation. And they came in and said, We’re going to do a C-section. I’m like, No, a breach baby can be born naturally. It doesn’t have to be an operation. And they were like, No. The OB/GYN, who was there, was like, No, this is going to be a C-section. I was like, No, I know it’s possible. I knew it’s possible. I was like, Maybe in the US, it’s not super common, but I knew inside of me, it can happen like that. My midwife had reminded me.

Luckily, my doula came in quite quickly. She never came to our home. She actually went immediately to the hospital. You have to imagine, again, that’s happening between the contractions. There are moments where I really cannot talk, and there started the dance. She really used words which were quite inappropriate, super strong. I had the conversation with her and I was like, But do you do physiological breach births? Yes. I was like, Okay, so you can do them here. No, only for moms who had already a few children. I was like, Okay, but if you do it for moms who had already children, you can do it. It’s possible. You can do it. No, not for a mother who is having her first baby. Okay. And then I was like, But did you already give birth to a breach baby? Yes, but he was dead. I was like, Nice. Okay. Which after, you understand where her fears come from.

And then I was like, Okay, but is there anyone else who can do a breach birth in this hospital? No. Which afterwards, I’m like, There must have been other doctors. It’s impossible she was the only one. And I found out later, indeed. But she just said, No. And then you’re in such a specific state. It’s not a state where you can argue and discuss so much. Then I said, Okay, let us think. The energy was, let us think about it, and we want to have a chat. But I was like, Really, I want to go for a natural birth. I don’t want to go for a C-section because I know it’s possible. She was like, Do you want to decapitate your baby?

Wow. Imagine hearing that. Of course, no one wants to decapitate their baby. It’s one of the most precious things that is coming to Earth. How would you want that? But in that moment, and I’m still impressed that it didn’t affect me, I was able to feel from which energy came her entire discussion. She was in fear. She was really in fear. That was all the words, all the questions, they came from fear. And I had decided to be in the energy of, I know I can trust my body and I can trust the baby.
So it didn’t really make me doubt in that moment. I was like, Okay, I just know where she comes from. I know that most of the professionals are super scared about breech birth. I know I’ve done so much research. I know this is possible. I hadn’t researched so much about breech birth, but my belief was, if a baby comes head up, it’s how he wants to be born, and he knows what he’s doing. Nature doesn’t create something that is not possible.

So they come out, but still, there were seven people in the room, and then they started to come in and out every time. You are in the US, so you need to sign something like a discharge saying, I take the responsibility for this. I give up my right to claim if there is this problem. You can imagine that between contractions, you can’t read any documents. I was signing in a crazy way. I was not signing, but just making a line. They came in, Can you sign this and that? And 30 documents, I don’t know how many. I was like, This is absolutely crazy.

At some point, my doula asked the teams if they can just leave us. Of course, I had all the things around my belly so they could check. The baby was breathing. I had kept on focusing on one thing: let’s get some oxygen so that the baby is fine.
Here you see, again, in your own project, who is this team supporting you and who is in your way, and from which energy do the questions and comments come? That’s something you can ask yourself. Is it coming from a constructive energy? Is it their own fears coming up? And what would be a profitable energy for you to move forward with your own project?

In that moment, most of the doctors came out of the room. We were with my doula, and very luckily, my midwife. Very nicely, she didn’t have to come, but she came as well, with her birth assistant. So I had the three of them and my husband, which is actually not allowed because you can’t have so many people in the room. But that was what happened.

We started to dim the light, prepare for more physiological birth, where you have more intimacy, and you just feel safer in the environment. Thanks to them, we started to shift the energy in the room. And I can tell you, I was really praying in that moment. I was asking for support. I was really putting all my pillars, my roots into them, almost like if you had a problem with your feet and you would put your hand or arm around a friend’s shoulder and just be supported by them.

I knew they were in the right energy for me. So it was just focusing on their energy and not on the rest of the hospital team. Breathing in and out. Again, you see for yourself, where are you getting the support from? Even if it’s one person, you can always search for support.

I told you, all these people who were in the room, except my husband, they were not part of my reality weeks or months before. With them, I had the right support. They gave me a new perspective. They could answer my questions, and they actually started to coach me into how to really move.

Then the hospital team came in again, and they wanted to move me to the operation room. And then I asked, Yes, okay, if you want to move me to the operation room. They said, Just in case we need to do an emergency C-section. I was like, Yes, but can my team come with me? Like my doula, my midwife, my husband. They said, No, only one person. Of course, it would be my husband. I was like, No, we don’t move to the operation room if they cannot come with me. That was clear for me because I knew if I would be in the operation room, I was not again in the space and in the energy I needed, away from the support I had.

We said no. I have to say that during the entire process, my husband, I told him the first time he was at home and he said, Let’s do the home birth. I was like, He’s into it. It kept on going through the entire birth. He was absolutely amazing in being a strong pillar against what some of the team members shared with us. That’s really one of his qualities, very assertive, and that was extremely helpful.

That’s also to show you how sometimes people around us, especially those who are super close to us, who are vital to a project happening, can also shift in action. Things can shift. But I had to open myself up to, I can make it without him, I can make it happen. I stay with my vision and I move. And he joined, in a very powerful way.

When I tell you that, you might think, Yeah, but my partner, this person, my sister, I don’t know, my mother, whoever is playing a key role, will not shift. Do the work on your side. Do the work on your side. Imagine how you can move also without that person. And then keep the door open to maybe things unfolding in a different way.

So you get all the details. That’s also my design. You are fully in the experience. You can imagine the adrenaline, the stress, all these things. But I’m still focused on breathing in, breathing out. And then there’s a moment—we are still in the triage room—my husband said to them, If we need to go to the operation room, where is it? It was next door. I can push the bed. It’s quite funny when you think about it.

But in that moment, there’s a moment which is not funny at all. I start to have such high-level contractions that I’m like, Okay, and we come closer to the birth. Things are moving forward. And I’m like, Maybe we should do a C-section. Maybe it’s easier because the doctor feels safe. And 100%, we all had identified that the doctor was super scared by the breach birth because she didn’t know how to do it. It’s very different. And she didn’t feel safe.

I was like, Whoa, Gloria, do you really want to give birth with a doctor who doesn’t know how to do it, who is in fear on top of that? Because you can imagine doing that, which is already a special birth, but with a doctor who’s like, We can’t make it. But she was the main person. You go to the hospital to get that support. Whoa. That was hard. That was really hard.

In that moment, I started to doubt. I was like, Will I really be able? Should we go for the C-section? What do we do? That’s exactly the moment that is very well described when you do birth preparation. There is a climax, a moment which is the peak of doubt, which every woman experiences. There’s a moment where she says, I don’t know, I won’t be able to give birth. I don’t want to give birth anymore. I can’t do this—where you go into that level of doubt.

And that’s the moment when they prepare the partner, when they say, You need to support her. That’s the moment when you need to be there, and the entire team knows that. So same for you. We all, in our projects, have moments where we are like, Okay, let’s just give up. This is too much. I won’t be able to make it happen. I’m done. Like really this giving up energy. I’m not able. And as interesting as it is, it happens very close to the moment we are actually going to make it happen.

It’s like this very intense energy in the other direction. It’s like the mountain. You need to go over the peak and then it goes down and then you can slide down. But you need to go over that moment. And again, with support, it is possible. Without support, you need to have an energy around you that is, I would say, at least neutral, but not the one I had with the hospital team. I needed to have a counterbalance with the energy of my team.

And in that moment, again, my husband amazingly said, Gloria, if there is a problem, we are in the hospital, we can do an emergency C-section. He wanted to do that birth like this. He was reminding me of my vision, of what was so important for me, what I had worked on for months.

My midwife, with more technical support, heard me saying, Maybe let’s go for the C-section. Neither the doula nor the midwife told us, You need to go for that. They told me, If you want to do a C-section, that’s perfectly fine. It’s amazing. They really gave me the option.

But still, I could talk it through with people who were more neutral and in a better energy. Again, that’s an insight for you. Who are you talking to? Is that energy at least neutral, non-judgmental, so that you can have the space to feel yourself? That’s exactly the work I do. I never push you into a decision. I always bring it back to you, to feel your energy, to be in a neutral, supportive space so that you can take decisions that come from your most powerful self and not from the fearful self we all have.

In that moment, as I really dealt with doubt, it’s so interesting because I remember being super lucid. I’m like, Gloria, this is crazy. You’re working around decision-making, which really has been a challenge for my entire life—to understand how I take decisions, what is the best decision. Sometimes I take more time, and now I know through my design what’s aligned, that actually it’s aligned also to take time. But it can also be sometimes too much time, and you start to doubt.

And in that moment, I’m like, So funny. Giving birth, here you are, you have to take a decision that has an impact on the potential life of your baby, because you never know how it ends up. I’m like, Oh my God, life. How crazy is life making you work on one of the important themes you have to move through to keep going in the right direction you want.

I had told you how birth is bringing things up for you. It’s the same even if you are a man or a woman who will never give birth, who doesn’t want to, or just can’t. You have moments where you have to take difficult decisions, whether it’s in your business, in your career, or with your children, where you’re like, This is a big decision, and this is going to have a big impact on my life.

My midwife tells me, Yes, you can do the C-section. It’s perfectly fine. Just know that it’s the easiest decision right now, but over time, you will have a longer recovery process than if you do it physiologically. And in that moment, it’s so interesting because that was her voice reminding me and reconnecting me to many things I had read, integrated, and chosen. It was, wow. She really held the mirror back to my vision. She, as well as my husband, did it—with her professional knowing.

In that moment, it was really the thing that brought me back into my body. I could fully commit again to the decision of doing it physiologically. She said to us in the room, “We are just going to wait for the baby to come out. Once he’s engaged, they can’t reverse it anymore. That’s when we’ll call them.”

Hearing that, I thought, Okay, if that’s possible, then I can make this work. She wasn’t legally allowed to say more, but just her presence and calm gave me the reassurance I needed. That was when I knew—I could make it happen.
This is what I mean when I talk about coming back to your vision, your self-trust, and surrounding yourself with people who remind you of that. Their knowledge, their experience, even just their energy—it all helps you return to your project, your vision, and your belief in making it happen. And funnily enough, the pain disappeared. Once I knew it was possible, the hormones kicked in, and I was no longer in pain.

I was fully there with the baby, working very intensely with him. I was a bit afraid of hospital staff interrupting, because that was still possible. I spoke to him: “If you want to be born this way, if that’s your decision, now is the time. We don’t have much time left, so you need to come out.”

I truly believe it’s teamwork between mother and baby. And he did start to come out. At that moment, the monitor alarms went off because they couldn’t pick up his heartbeat anymore as he was moving down. Suddenly the whole hospital team rushed in—it was stressful. The doctor was very scared. I couldn’t see her because I was facing the other way, but I could feel her fear. She intervened, though she didn’t need to. The baby and I were doing the work beautifully together. But that’s how it was.
Still, when he came out, I thought, Wow—it worked out. I looked at my husband and said, “It worked out.”

Here’s the difference between vision and reality. My vision was a home birth, fully in my way, with my husband cutting the cord and the baby on my chest immediately. But we were in a hospital. They were scared, they didn’t allow certain things, and so the ending was chaotic. It wasn’t the home birth I had imagined, but I was able to stay connected to the essence of what I wanted, even in an environment that was far from ideal.

That required an extra-deep level of self-trust. Yes, I had amazing support, but ultimately, I was the one giving birth. I had anchored the belief long before labor that my body knows how to give birth, and my baby knows how to be born. That trust allowed me not to be swayed, even in the face of fear or opposition.

This is what I mean by trusting nature, life, the Earth, even the divine—whatever word resonates for you. That energy is much wiser and more powerful than any one individual’s perspective. Connecting to that deeper force gave me chills then, and it still does now.

So ask yourself: What energy am I connected to as I prepare for a new chapter in life or work on my project? How can I return to that deeper trust?

Because yes, preparation matters, but so does support. Knowledge helped me recognize the signals that I was on the right path. Support gave me strength to hold my vision. For anyone afraid to ask for support, this is a reminder: what you want can happen more easily, more quickly, or simply happen at all with the right support.

I don’t know how I would have done it without my team and my amazing husband. That birth became one of the stones I now build my self-trust upon. I managed to trust myself in the face of opposition. I managed to make my vision real—not exactly as I had pictured, but real.

And that’s the flexibility we need: we can hold a vision, but life rarely unfolds in exact alignment with it. A friend of mine had the exact birth I had envisioned—everything went smoothly at home, in water. But before my own birth she told me, “In the end, you’re going to have the birth you’re meant to have.”

That’s something I now believe deeply. Even if a birth—or a project—turns out differently than we dreamed, there are lessons and growth within it. For women who experienced birth trauma, I say this with sensitivity: sometimes the birth doesn’t go as we hoped, but still, there is meaning to be found.

When I was pregnant, I worked with women who had experienced deep loss, even the loss of a child. Together we discovered what was on their soul’s path—what they had to learn through that experience. That is an invitation for all of us: to look for the flower within our own story, whatever it may be, however it unfolded.

EPISODE CONCLUSION

So if I summarize part one and part two: What’s your vision for your project? What do you want—and what don’t you want? When you clarify that, what beliefs, fears, or emotions surface that need to be released? What mindset shifts are required so your project takes shape in alignment with your vision rather than your negative expectations—what you don’t want to see happen?

How are you surrounding yourself? Who have you brought alongside you to make it possible? Do you have a supportive community around you? Because that was crucial for me—it wasn’t just one person, but many. And as things unfold, how often can you return to that deeper, more powerful trust in life, in nature, and in your own beliefs—even when facing opposition?

And if blockages do arise—as they did for me when the doctor intervened at the very end of my birth—I had to process that too. It wasn’t exactly as I had envisioned, and I needed to forgive, to accept, and to trust that it was still right for both me and my baby. That was part of the journey. So there’s also the work of healing emotionally, of making peace with what needs to be healed.

The key message is this: trust yourself. It may sound simple, but it’s the foundation for creating the life you truly desire. Self-trust is built through practice, through deeper self-understanding, and through experiences—big and small—that show you that your way of operating can be trusted. The more you align with your energy, the more confirmations you’ll receive that self-trust makes you the most potent decision-maker—the most powerful person to bring your vision to life.
I’d love to hear how this episode landed for you. Do you have feedback? Share it with me—and with anyone who might need this encouragement.

Thank you for being here, for listening, and for journeying alongside me.