Homebirth Myths, Truths, and Tips with Katelyn Fusco – The Happy Homebirth Podcast – #27

Dr. Kevin Conners
Hello everybody, this is Dr. Kevin Conners for another episode of Conners Clinic Live. We have a special guest today. Being a cancer clinic, this is a little bit different for us. We’re so excited to have Katelyn Fusco in here today.

She is a home birth mother and she has the podcast The Happy Homebirth Podcast. I was introduced to her by my daughter, who has been following her podcast, said, “Oh my gosh, dad, you need to have this gal on, she’s fantastic. I just love her. I love her podcast.” She spoke so highly of her, I did a little bit of research into what she does. I’m not personally involved with home birth at this time. The daughter that is going, that introduced us, is going to have her first baby and it will be a home birth. She was our home birth baby. We have five kids, I think I mentioned it before. We had one, this is the daughter, at home. So we are intimately involved with it. I have another daughter that had multiple home births, daughter-in-law, multiple home births.

So why are we talking about home birth when we’re a cancer clinic? Because it’s a natural way to live. It’s a natural way to keep your children safe. It is to me, it’s just, in our heart it is, this is how you need to raise your kids. I know it’s not for everybody, we’re not trying to shame people that go to the hospital for birthing, but we do want to speak to this. So, Katelyn, you’re a home birth mother, home birth educator, obviously, an experienced attendee of home births, host and creator of the Happy Homebirth Podcast. You have a lot of information and webinars, your “Homebirth Mythbusters.” We have to chat a little bit about that. The “Top 8 Homebirth Resources.” Let’s just jump into it, Katelyn. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Katelyn Fusco
Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. This is such an honor and a privilege to be here. My name is Katelyn Fusco, like you said, and the way this all started, for me. It’s kind of an odd story. I feel like most of these things are. My mother had all of her children via C-section. And so growing up, my idea of birth, my thought was, Oh, well, my mom had C-sections. She wasn’t able. I’m using air quotes for those who are listening. She wasn’t able to give birth vaginally. So I won’t be able to as well. My body just isn’t designed to work that way. So growing up, that’s what I thought. I’d be a C-section mom. And you know, there are certainly times when that’s very, thank goodness we have that.

But the idea that children are growing up thinking that they’re not even capable of trying to attempt natural childbirth is pretty sad. And it was just by chance, once I had graduated college, I had a mentor in my field who told me that she had given birth to her baby in a tub. Outside of the hospital. And my mind was just blown. I had never heard of anybody giving birth in a tub. Is that safe? Is that sanitary? And, you can give birth outside of the hospital! What? The concept was just so new to me.

Which is funny when we think about the fact that home birth is as old as humanity, you know, so that happened, like that chance happening, that chance moment of learning that there was another option just shattered my world in the best way. And I am a researcher at heart. So I went home and just started finding all of the information that I could about giving birth outside of the hospital. Home birth honestly wasn’t even on the table at that point. I was looking at this birth center and I was years off from having children. But I already was thinking, wait, people give birth without even an epidural? That seems kind of hard. I think I want to do that. You know, it just became this interesting like, wow, people can do that. Well, I want to be one of those people.

So that was put on the back burner as I continued on in my field that I had trained for in college. And at that time I, soon after I graduated, I realized this is not really what I want to be doing forever. So I knew that I was very interested in holistic health. I decided to do a health coaching certification. During that certification, I was asked to kind of find a niche. Who am I going to focus on? Who am I going to be serving? And I thought, Well, wouldn’t it be amazing to work with pregnant mothers and really help them focus in on nutrition so that the next generation is impacted as well? And so these mothers are learning techniques, they’ll pass these on to their kids.

I then thought, Who would be interested in this information and thought, Well, maybe midwives, maybe midwives’ clients would be interested. So I went to the Government, the DHEC website for my state and found a list of midwives and just started calling them one by one to see if they’d be interested. And lo and behold, the first midwife who answered her phone, turned out to be the midwife that I would work with and who would be my midwife when I had my children. And once I asked her if she’d be interested, she said she’d love to meet. And once I met her and found out what it was that she did, I was like, “Oh. This is what I need to be involved in. This is incredible.” This concept of home birth, giving birth in your own home, you’re not being touched and poked and prodded by these other people.

It was just such an incredible concept to me. And once I attended my first home birth, there was absolutely no turning back. Once you see something that powerful. Yet intimate and vulnerable and, just, a woman doing this, you know, nobody’s touching her. She doesn’t need any help. She’s able to bring forth life. I mean, it was, it was just astounding, and it’s forever engrained in my mind. And at that point, I was hooked. So I became an apprentice to this midwife, and I worked with her until I got pregnant myself and continued on apprenticing.

That was really neat to be both the apprentice and the client and kind of learn from both sides. I had my first baby at home. I continued to work with this midwife until she hit toddlerhood and my midwife moved away. And at that point I thought, Well, I’m going to have to find another midwife to work with. This is going to be hard. My daughter really probably needs me at home right now. So that’s when I came home, decided to quit attending births for the time. being, and then realized there really aren’t any resources for home birth mothers. And so that’s when I started creating resources for these mothers. I started with the Happy Homebirth Podcast. Which is essentially just mothers sharing birth stories, telling how they were successful.

And a lot of times, you know, that’s what we need to hear. We need to hear the actual stories of how things unfold, what circumstances came up that were unexpected and how were those dealt with, just the ins and outs of what birth can look like and how there’s quite a spectrum of what normal is.

So we started there and then I became pregnant with my second daughter. And thought that even though my first birth was wonderful, there were some things that I didn’t even realize were possible. Just based off of interviewing other women, I thought, Wow, I really maybe could be more present during this experience. So I created some techniques for myself to use during my second birth, and I ended up having a shockingly peaceful and present birthing experience. And I thought, Well, if I can do that, I think that other moms can certainly do that. So that’s when I created Happy Homebirth Academy, which is a comprehensive childbirth education program focusing specifically on home birth.

Because most childbirth education programs, even those that, you know, are pro-unmedicated birth, are still really geared towards the hospital, not very, not as helpful as they could be for moms choosing to give birth at home. So that’s where we are today, and that’s how I got here.

Dr. Kevin Conners
Well, that’s a great story. Some of the things I want to touch on that you said that make me sad because we see the same thing. We have been so reeducated in this country towards the practice of hospitalized medicine and that the doctor knows best. And you can’t know anything. The current state of affairs, you’re being ridiculed if you do any research on your own to try to take care of yourself, and made fun of. Deplatformed. So it’s it’s a sad state of affairs.

We see it all the time with our cancer patients. People hear that they have the C-word. And boy, they’re just going to go right down the standard protocol pathway without really investigating other things. It’s very similar with any health experience, whether a person’s pregnant like you said, your friend told you about a water birth and you’re like, Oh my gosh, what is that? You know, is that even sanitary? How little we know, it’s really, it makes you kind of sad when you when you look back at yourself and go, Oh my gosh, how indoctrinated was I? How in the dark have I been? You know, you think of when we had our fourth child. The one that has been following your podcast, when we had her at home, it was just me and my sister who were helping my wife.

Of course, my wife did all the work, but we were like lone sharks. I mean, having a homebirth was not a cool thing at all back then. There was zero support. I think I went off a little blue book emergency childbirth book that I had. That’s the only resource. This is before the internet, and that was the only resource. To have a resource like you have created for women to be able to be supported when their family and friends maybe are less supportive than they could be, partly due to their ignorance. They just don’t know. It’s just a blessing. It’s just a huge blessing for people to have that information.

Katelyn Fusco
Well, I appreciate that.

Dr. Kevin Conners
So what are some main things that if you were, you know talk about your Mythbusters because I think, I loved that term of your little webinar series that people can subscribe to because just what we’re talking about, there’s just so many, so much misinformation out there about everything, but certainly about homebirth. What are some of your Mythbusters that the biggest things that people would communicate to you or that you have found over the years doing this?

Katelyn Fusco
Oh yeah, there are a few that just get asked over and over. I feel like I should just make a form email to be able to send to people with some of these because it’s just, like you said, the indoctrination is just so strong and you don’t really realize it until you somehow rise above it.

But one of the things that I have heard over and over again is, well, I can’t have a home birth right now because this is my first baby, so I’m going to have this baby in the hospital. And then if it goes well, I’ll come home, you know, for the second one. So, with that, you know, my thought is, well, you don’t have to have a bad experience to allow yourself to have a good experience. And I say that based on countless, I mean, the hundreds of interviews that I’ve conducted, pretty much every one, there are some exceptions, but they usually turn to home birth with their second, third, fourth child because they’ve been burned so much in the hospital because they’ve been abused or manipulated. And the doctor said, Oh, sure, we’ll support you and we’ll let you give birth naturally. And then they say, Oh, actually, you know, the baby’s in danger, and now you have to have Pitosin. And this cascade of intervention comes on after that.

Dr. Kevin Conners
So usually the baby’s a danger because you’re giving birth in the wrong position in the hospital and then they push a drug on you and say things like, “Oh, good thing you were here. This would have been a catastrophe if you were at home.” Just the lies that are propagated are just mind boggling.

Katelyn Fusco
It’s sick. It’s so wrong to think. I mean. You know, it starts well before the mother is even in labor. If they let her get to labor. That’s, the problem is, you know, at, at what, 35 weeks they’re already starting to do cervical checks. What’s the point? What does that have to do with anything? And then with all of the ultrasounds, oh, we’ve got to check the baby. Well, there’s not very much fluid, and this baby looks to be huge. I mean, ultrasounds, number one, they weren’t even made for what they’re being used for.

So the fact that they’re using this to check on babies, there can be great, you know, I’m sure that many things are found and that’s wonderful. But a lot of times a lot of problems arise from these constant scans because they’re going to pick up something. And the chances of it being accurate are pretty small. They say there’s a two pound or more estimate difference for an ultrasound. So these doctors are saying, Oh, your baby, your baby’s huge. Your baby’s huge, you’re not going to be able to birth this baby, you’re going to have to have a C-section. And it turns out it’s a seven pound baby.

Like, it’s just their fear tactics upon fear tactics upon fear tactics to make the mother and the family feel like they need the doctor to save them. When they don’t realize that you hold all of the power, you are the one that’s in control. Don’t let these people make you think otherwise. And unfortunately, like you said, our society is just set up at this point to where we think that if a doctor says it, then it’s as good as gold. And yet these doctors have not been trained in physiological childbirth. So what are we doing? Why are we listening to this?

Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah. It is. It’s frustrating. I’m sure you get frustrated all the time over this and you just shake your head and you just got to move on and take care of the next person that wants to really do things right.

Katelyn Fusco
Right. And I mean, continuing to put the information out there. I am seeing and especially with, you know, the state of the world right now, there are more people that were kind of on the fence about giving birth at home are jumping to the home birth side because they’re seeing what’s going on in these hospitals right now. And a lot of trust is starting to be, starting to waver. And I mean, I think that that’s a good thing for us to have happening.

Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah, it seems like going to the hospital is a good place to die. Yeah, it’s not a good place to die. But if you want to die, that’s a good place to go, I guess.

Katelyn Fusco
Right. Another one that really comes to mind is the idea of Homebirth not being safe. You know, I can’t have a home birth. It’s not even safe. And this one, I think, is, there are two, I think, that are just the biggest underlying issues and this is one of them, is this concern for safety. And what I feel like is missing, the missing information is that midwives, if you choose to use a midwife, they are trained medical professionals. They don’t just show up to your house barefoot. And I mean, some, you know, if you want to choose one that’s not a medical professional, that’s totally fine, and they probably have some great tricks too.

But if you’re choosing, you know, a certified midwife, a licensed midwife, they’ve been trained in lifesaving techniques. So some of the biggest issues that arise during birth for the mother would be hemorrhage postpartum. Midwives carry medication and herbs for that. So usually, if there is a little bit more bleeding than one would want, they’re going to start with herbs and head it off. If they need more, well, then they’ve got that. They have it with them. So there’s not this concern of, Oh, something goes wrong and then we all die. That’s not how it works.

Dr. Kevin Conners
Right.

Katelyn Fusco
And then, there can be shoulder dystocia, is another another issue that people really, really worry about. And these things that are occurring, they are true emergencies, but they happen whether you’re at home or in the hospital. So with the shoulder dystocia, the benefit of not being at the hospital is when you’re at the hospital, number one, if your baby doesn’t come out in one contraction, they consider that a shoulder dystonia. Which is just Physiological, like, that’s, physiologically incorrect. There is oftentimes a break between once the head is born and once the body is born. But if it doesn’t come out in one, they’re going to start trying to yank the baby out and they call it a shoulder dystocia. When you’re at home, midwives know that this is common. And when there is a true shoulder dystocia you have, you’re not attached to anything. You’re not hooked up to anything. You’re not being forced to lay on your back. You can get up and move positions. Switch your body around and the baby comes out.

I mean, that is what happens. So that’s another really big concern. And then the third one that people really worry about is, “Well, what if the baby’s not breathing?” And that happens. Babies need stimulation. It’s usually one out of every ten babies needs some amount of stimulation, but usually that’s a flick of the foot. Or rubbing the baby, or one or two little breaths. The difference is when you’re in the hospital, they immediately, what’s the first thing they do is they cut the cord. Your baby’s born, cord is cut. Your baby is still receiving oxygen through the placenta, through the blood supply, until the placenta is done pulsating or until the cord is cut. So the safest thing for your baby is to remain attached to the placenta so that it has those few moments, even minutes to come around. That’s perfectly normal. And when we’re in the hospital, you see, once again, everything counter to what makes physiological sense is being done.

Dr. Kevin Conners
Everything counter to what’s natural for the sake of expedience of the hospital. Oh, this will make it faster so the doctor could get out of the room and get on to the next thing so the nurses can sweep the baby away to the nursery. You can just go on and on, the absolute inhumane treatment of childbirth in the hospital. Sorry, I get passionate about this because it’s just horrific.

Katelyn Fusco
It is, and I mean, it’s everything I, you know, it makes you wonder because every single thing that is done is counter to bonding. It’s counter to the mother and child having those moments together with the pheromones where they are both covered in all of the hormones of birth. And those necessary imprinting moments are just stripped away from everybody at the hospital. That’s very concerning that we’re growing up in these generations where the bond has been, at the very least, we can say it’s been manipulated.

Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah. Exactly. So those are some of your biggest myths that you have to overcome. Would you talk about your checklist of your eight, or give your top five, you don’t have to give away all your secrets here.

Katelyn Fusco
Yeah, sure.

Dr. Kevin Conners
What are some of the other things that a person who’s considering this might encounter, might want to know about?

Katelyn Fusco
So my top eight resources that I’ve created, it’s, it actually, it links to different podcast episodes that I’ve done or that others have done that talk about some of the most, kind of important aspects of this journey. And one of the things that I really, and it has become one of my goals for mothers to understand, is this relationship to what birth really is and what it has been all along. And that’s a rite of passage.

And when we look at, you know, traditional societies, there was so much buildup to birth, you know, usually couples that were about to conceive. They were given special diets, highly nutrient dense diets. There was such a To-Do made about giving birth. And now, I mean, the watered down version of that is a baby shower. I mean, that’s really basically, you know, here there are these huge ritualistic experiences and now we have a baby shower. It’s just, it’s kind of interesting how that has watered down. But what happens is when we don’t realize that this is just a massive transformational experience where you are going from maiden to motherhood for the first or 15th time, I don’t care, every single time this is a huge, transformative moment. When we don’t realize that as we’re preparing, we get to the moment and don’t know what to do. And so when we prepare, knowing, “Hey, there’s a huge transition coming up, this is transformational.” It’s wonderful.

And expressing it as something good and positive and life changing. When we do it that way, there’s excitement and there’s a realization that, “Oh, I’m in control of this and I have responsibility.” Versus asking for others to take this from us. No, we want to experience it. So that would be my first thing would be recognizing that this is a rite of passage and it’s a wonderful thing. And then the second aspect would be this idea of responsibility, and kind of like what we’ve alluded to a number of times is we have, so often we’re so used to and so conditioned to give away our responsibility. “Oh, doctor, take care of me.” You know, “What is wrong with me? Tell me what is wrong with me and I will do whatever you say.”

Versus, I know my health better than anybody else. I know my body better than anybody else. I am in control and I am responsible for my health, a for this situation. It’s the exact same with birth. You are, as the mother, you are the responsible party, whether you want to be or not. Whether that feels like a burden or not. I mean, it’s reality when you become pregnant and you’re growing a new life, you are the one that is responsible. And it can feel scary. Or we can step into this fact and hold it for all that it’s worth and milk it for all that it’s worth. Really enjoy every aspect of it and know that we are going to take care of our child better than anybody else, any single person else.

This opportunity, this birth, this labor, all of it. It means more to us than it does to anybody else, so we can feel confident in the decisions that we’re going to make. We don’t have to give up our responsibilities to a doctor who says that, you know, your baby’s too big and your pelvis is too small. So really understanding that, I feel like it’s critical.

Dr. Kevin Conners
Well, I love those two points because they equate so much to our practice with cancer as well. If you don’t embrace your cancer in the way that this is, this can be a good thing. There’s things to learn about this. Let’s embrace this and deal with the fear side. Because just like you are talking about, women are fearful and they end up giving responsibility over to somebody else that’s holding on to that responsibility and not be this kind of like a victim in this whole situation.

Your body makes different chemicals, your adrenals and your pituitary make different chemicals. Whether you’re stuck in that fear state, you stay in the “sympathetic tone” environment. Things are not going to work. Your immune system’s not going to work as well, dealing with the disease, and you talk about pelvic relaxation. If you’re at more of a parasympathetic tone, a home environment, comfort, at ease, familiarity, your parasympathetic nervous system is going to relax those ligaments and the tone of those ligaments. So it just, it complements so much and that, getting rid of that, turning over responsibility to somebody else. And part of it is, again, something that we, as Americans have been conditioned to do. “Oh, they’re the experts. Let’s just give it to them.” And we grew up in the last several generations of not wanting to take responsibility for our own actions as well.

“Well I don’t want to have to learn all that. I don’t want to do all that.” And it’s a shame because there’s consequences to be paid if you live your life that way in all sorts of things. Well, what is the last piece of advice you could give our listeners?

Katelyn Fusco
So one of the things and actually, as as I was listening to you, say that I was just thinking about, you know, with the responsibility and shirking that responsibility, how it has been kind of programed into us when we step to the other side of that, there are, just, so many benefits and also, recognizing that your outcomes may not be perfect. If you give birth at home, there is no guarantee that things are going to go well for you. If you give birth in the hospital, there’s no guarantee that things are going to go well for you. That is something that, like you said, and I think it’s why we’re so willing to give responsibility because we think someone else is going to come and save us.

You know, this doctor is going to come save me from my illness. This doctor is going to come save me from my labor. That that’s not how it works. You know, if we can accept the responsibility and accept the fact that we don’t necessarily have control over our outcomes, we just have control over how we prepare, then we can kind of let go of the rest. And I, I always think about control versus surrender. What can I control? Well, I can control how I prepare. I can eat in a way that is nutrient dense and helping my body and my baby. I can educate myself on every aspect of pregnancy, of labor, of childbirth. I can select a team around me that is going to support me and that I trust and who knows that I am the leader of the team. I can do all of these things. And then, the specific outcomes, typically because of all that preparation, they are going to go well. That’s, you know, when you prepare, so much is put in your favor. However, like I said, I mean, we can’t, we don’t know. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, just like we don’t know in the hospital. So understanding that there is a balance of control versus surrender and learning to be OK with it because that’s just the way that life is, you know.

I can’t control what happens to me when I get in my car. I can do things to prepare. I can wear my seatbelt. I can drive according to the traffic laws. I don’t know what else is going to happen. I can’t, you know, say that this is a specific outcome that’s going to happen. And I mean, it’s a hard fact, but that is the fact of life. So that’s aside. But the other thing that I wanted to talk about here at the end is, why can we say that birth is safer at home? What are the things that make it safer?

So I have five different things that I wanted to share about that. And number one, like I said, with midwives, they’re trained. They are medical professionals. But we are safer with midwives because they’re not trained in surgery. And whereas OBs, their main training is surgery, and that’s wonderful for when they have to provide surgery. But are they going to see everything as a pathology that require surgery? I don’t know. If your eyes are trained to see something, then that might be what you’re seeing.

So there’s not going to be any positive for a midwife to add additional interventions, whereas with a hospital system, they’re going to be making more money if they add different interventions and it’s easier for them.

Dr. Kevin Conners
You do have to follow the biases.

Katelyn Fusco
Yeah, exactly. So number two would be that midwives know the mother and baby, they know them individually. So they know their benchmarks for normal. Whereas when we’re in a hospital system and we’re kind of just like, on the conveyor belt of treatment, you might not see the same doctor ever. You know, each prenatal appointment, you may see a different doctor. I know that our local hospital system has doctor groups of like 17, so you’re not going to know all of those doctors. Best case scenario, you’ve met the doctor once in that situation that’s going to be helping you deliver life into the world? So they don’t know you.

They don’t know your baby. They don’t know what’s normal for you. Whereas if you’re working with a midwife that you see consistently, she knows exactly what your blood pressure normally is. She knows exactly where your baby normally likes to hang out. All of these things that are so important and critical to understanding the story that’s being told during labor. So that provides a huge level of safety because a midwife can know, “Oh, this isn’t normal for this baby to have these heart tones.”

Or, “This isn’t normal for this mother to have this blood pressure reading.” These things are really important, and doctors aren’t going to be able to pick up that. Number three, physiological labor, I said prefers on this paper that I wrote down, but it requires dark and quiet, known places for the correct hormonal release. So, you think about, one example I think it’s in one of Dr. Bradley’s books, is your cat, your cat doesn’t just walk out in the middle of lunch hour and sprawl out and have her kittens in front of everybody. That’s not how physiological hormones work. So your cat will go off to a closet or under the house, somewhere dark, usually at night, to give birth to these kittens away from everybody else, because that’s how the hormones flow the best. So when we take birth, oftentimes mom will start laboring at home and then what do they do?

They leave their house. That’s intervention number one, is just leaving your safe home where you were comfortably laboring. They go to a hospital where they know practically nobody. Where there are fluorescent lights everywhere. Where there are machines that they’re hooked up to, nurses coming in and out, asking for different things, and having you sign admission paperwork and usually sign, like “OK” a C-section when you first arrive, which is like, Why?

But so all of these things are happening. Do we think that that’s positive for hormone release? No, that’s the opposite of what your body needs when you’re trying to relax. Everything that’s going on around you is making you tighten and close up. So, home is where we are used to being vulnerable. It’s where we are used to being surrounded by people that we love, and intimacy. There’s an allowance for darkness or low lighting. You know this place.

So there’s safety there. And then, number four would be, when hormones are less active, so when we’re going to the hospital would be the example, then there’s, or excuse me, when we’re staying home. When hormones are more active there is less of a chance of issues arising because we have all of these different hormonal feedback loops that are going on during labor. When you put something in that feedback loop, like when you halt it, then there is so much more chance for stalled labor or all of these different things to happen. Whereas if you just don’t touch it, just don’t touch anything! Let the hormones go on their own. There’s far less opportunity for mishap to arise. And then number five, I think this is really huge and people are not talking about it enough, but you kind of alluded to it when you said, “Well, hospitals are a great place to go to die.”

But we have our own microbiome in our house. We have our own germs, we have our own bacteria, everything around us. We are used to it. We know the bacteria in our house. We know this microbiome. And one thing that is interesting is people used to think that the amniotic sac was sterile. There was nothing in it, just sterile fluid. That’s I mean, that doesn’t even make sense anyway. But it’s not. It’s got all of our bacteria in it. So what bacteria, do you think, is going to be in there? It’s going to be the same bacteria that we’re exposed to consistently in our environment. So our baby is used to this bacteria. Our baby is used to this microbiome. You’re telling me that it makes more sense to take them to a hospital, have them exposed to this totally new microbiome that includes like crazy strains of staph and strep, versus keeping them at home in the microbiome that they were literally conceived into and grown into? It’s certainly something to consider.

Dr. Kevin Conners
Oh yeah, that is huge. We could have a couple hour seminar just on the microbiome, right? Well, Katelyn, you are a wealth of knowledge. What a blessing. We’re going to have all your information up on this video for people to go to. And I understand most people that are listening to our podcast are dealing with cancer, but they have family members that would maybe like to start out life the right way and do things the correct way. Last thing I want to ask you is a question that we get from patients as well when people are choosing a natural way, an alternative, sadly, you could say, it is alternative to standards of care, whether they’re choosing the natural way, there’s pushback that they get from family members. What do you tell your clients to do about that pushback?

Katelyn Fusco
Well, that is a great question, and I certainly understand how that would be common on your end as well. I’ve kind of given two concepts about this. You have two choices, really. It’s, “OK, do these family members – and usually, of course, they have your best interest at heart. They care about you. They’re worried about the choices that you’re making, they’re just misguided. So, is there a chance that by you providing education, they are going to come around and accept what you are saying? If so, then by all means provide them with the education, kindly talk to them and say, “Look, this is what we’re deciding.

This is why we’ve chosen it. Here’s some research to back it up if you’d like.” And that’s great. If, however, you know that whatever you say is not going to make a difference, hard as it may be, sometimes the best thing is not to say anything at all and just close it for discussion because we don’t want constant negative feedback from what we’re doing. If in your mind, you know that homebirth is the correct option for you, or if in your mind, you know that you do not want to go to the hospital for chemo, if you know this, then you have to stand strong in what you believe. And maybe it means we don’t talk about it with these other people. We can kindly close that door. So I’ve told my clients before, you can say like, “Oh, thank you so much. This is what we’ve decided to do. And it’s not up for discussion because this is the choice that we’re making.” But it is about, it’s kind of like what we’ve been talking about. It is about coming to terms with the fact that you are in charge of your own body and you’ve got to just accept that responsibility. Sometimes it’s not fun to do that, but sometimes I mean, but that is, that’s your choice.

Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah, that’s the healthiest way to do it. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much again. We just love having you. I’m so glad my daughter, you know, just introduced us. And now I can see why she loves your podcast.

Katelyn Fusco
Oh, thank you so much Dr. Conners. It was such a joy to be here.

Dr. Kevin Conners
We’re going to keep spreading the word. And we’ll have you on again.

Katelyn Fusco
That sounds great. Thank you.

Dr. Kevin Conners
Bye-Bye now.