Today on the show I speak to Jas - mother of 5 and ex-midwife. Some of you may also know Jas from her popular Instagram account - Chasing The Summerfields where she showcases her photography and beautiful life in the south west of Australia. Jas has been on quite the journey for her births and has ticked nearly all the boxes from hospital birth, birth centre, an accidental birth in the car before arrival, home birth with midwife and finally a wild pregnancy and freebirth. Jas talks about all the undoing from her training she has had to shed over the years and tells us how she ended free birthing her last babe. What is also interesting about her story is that her freebirth was also a breech birth. We ponder how this could have ended up in the system and how grateful she is, that she chose freebirth, where her birth was unhindered and unsuprisingly - straight forward. I love Jas’ kind hearted nature and her commitment to live her current truth even though she started almost at the opposite end of the street. Enjoy this conversation of 5 wildly different births.
A short bio:
I’m Jas, a 32 year old mother of five living back home in the deep south of Western Australia.
My journey to freebirthing has been a long one- a hospital birth, birth centre birth, a car on the side of the road birth, a homebirth, and finally our freebirth. Each experience left me learning and adapting, but still taking the long way around to end up exactly where we needed to be.
I trained as a midwife before all of my own births and had many layers of conditioning to strip back. Learning to trust my ever present intuition was pivotal during my pregnancy and birth.
After years of not being willing to return to work, I gave up my midwifery registration in 2020. I realised that I couldn’t re-enter the system and work with the restrictions and boundaries that aren’t at all geared to be ‘with woman.’
I’m still so passionate about birth- I know that will always be part of me- but I know that I can’t change the system while working within it. I’m currently sinking in to all the possibilities and mapping out exactly where my heart lies to find my place back in the birth realm in the near future.
