Birth, Baby!

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Welcome, this is Birth, Baby!

Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.

Ciarra is a Birth Dula, Hypnobirthing Educator, and Pediatric Sleep Consultant.

Samantha is a Birth Dula, Childbirth Educator, and Lactation Counselor.

Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey.

It is the one-year anniversary of when we started Birth, Baby!

Podcast.

Actually, we started it before, but it's the one-year anniversary when you guys got to listen to the first episode of Birth, Baby!

Podcast, so we're here to do a year in review.

I am a little bit in shock that it's been a whole year.

Like, it feels like one, it's been forever, and this has just been my existence for all eternity.

And also, it feels like we just started this like yesterday.

So it's a little bit crazy to me that it's been really over a year since we first started this insane project.

Yeah, it was this little dream in our brains, and we made it happen.

So I'm pretty excited that we made it a year.

I think that a lot of people taper off before that.

And we've consistently had four episodes, at least a month, so one a week, every single week, and a bonus episode a month.

So that's been pretty exciting.

Do you want to give a couple of the stats that we've had this year?

Yeah.

So a few of the stats that we came up with.

So our most listened to episodes, we have our top three most listened to episodes, and this is like most listened to in the drop window.

The release window is considered days one and two, because sometimes, let's say Apple Podcast comes out with theirs right away.

Like if we say 8 a.m.

on a Tuesday, they put it out pretty quickly, but then other apps kind of take a little bit longer to load sometimes.

So it gives you a two-day window to count it as the release window.

Yeah, yeah.

So our top three episodes was, number one, that was our Moon Tower Midwifery episode, which I knew that one was going to be a big hit, and I am so glad that we got to have that conversation and that it's been such a great resource for our community and for Moon Tower too.

Since that episode has come out, Moon Tower has opened and they're booked solid for all eternity, so I'd say they're doing pretty well.

Yeah, if you want to go back, if you didn't listen to that episode or they're not your provider, if in that episode you listened to it and you hear them say, we asked them, what was it like?

What do you think it's going to be like when you guys get full?

Are you guys going to add more rooms?

And they're like, oh, that's way in the distance.

Yeah, we're not going to get full, and now they're on a waiting list.

So we love that for them.

We're so happy.

So that was, I think that's our top episode pretty much of all time.

It was just a good one.

And then the next one is the Dula's Do What Postpartum Dula edition.

That was with Jess, who's a postpartum Dula on our Empowered team.

And that's a really great episode, especially for anyone who's wondering, like, what does a postpartum Dula do?

So if you haven't listened to that one, go take a go take a listen.

That's a really good one.

And then the last one that we have, I was a little bit surprised by this, but it was one of our Birth Story episodes with Danielle's story.

And she was a surrogate and talked about her journey through surrogacy and her delivery with that baby, which was a pretty cool delivery at a birth center with the intended parents there and everything.

So definitely a really cool listen.

She's now a Dula.

Yeah, she is now a Dula.

Yeah, she's a Dula now, which is so exciting.

So she's come a long way in a year, too.

Yeah, definitely.

And then let's see, what other stats do I have?

So our most listened to month, the month everyone was super invested in our podcast, was August of last year.

I don't know what was going on in August, Ciarra and I were drowning because our kids were starting school and also living our best lives because our kids were starting school.

So from our front, it was crazy, but I guess everybody was, that was their podcast listening to month.

Our highest episode, like highest downloads of all time, people are saving this episode was our birth prep episode, which makes total sense because that is, it's such a good episode.

It's a lot of really good information on like really practical things.

And you know, we're all about the practicality here.

So I love that people are using that and getting lots of good information from that.

And then the last stat that I have here is we had 39 total guests on our podcast as of the release today.

And spoiler alert, we have, I think probably 15 more already scheduled on our pipeline.

So if you have loved listening to our guest episodes, keep tuning in because we've got some really awesome guests coming on.

But it's just like almost 50-50, I think about with our guest episodes and our regular episodes with Just Us.

And I did a poll at one point to see what people like better.

And it seems like everyone likes a mix.

So we'll keep doing that.

You know, we give the people what they want, you guys, we give the people, we're just here for you.

Y'all.

I've loved having the guest episodes.

I keep telling people, I feel like this podcast is really just an excuse for us to talk to people, like either our friends or people that we've like been wanting to learn more about what they do.

And so having a really good excuse of this podcast and having people on to come and chat with us and tell us about all these like different modalities and things out there that we just don't know much about has been so much fun.

And I can't wait to keep doing that.

And we keep joking.

We think that we're going to run out of ideas.

But the reality is we're never going to run out of ideas for episodes because we just keep learning about more things and meeting more people who do cool stuff and hearing new stories about things.

So I think I'm excited.

Yeah, the having different people on has been so educational for me because I've known bits about the things that we have people on about, but it's been so cool to learn from them.

And sometimes we have guests on and then they come back and they ask us like, can I come on again?

And I want to talk about this.

So that's been really exciting as well.

And I think that one of the coolest things is that people are being able to use this as a resource for their clients.

So we've had quite a few people tell us that they send their podcast episode from doing it with us to their clients.

And then they're not having to repeat themselves and they're kind of getting the information out there.

And we've also had a couple of the people say that they're getting clients from us just having their podcast, their episode up.

So that's been pretty neat, too.

I'm glad that they're getting something out of it because we're not paying them to be here.

It's just all a passion project.

We're not making a single dollar off of this podcast, but even for sponsorship, if you're listening, you're like, oh, that's not true.

I know you guys have ads.

We do have ads and they all go into paying for all the things that we've already paid for.

So we are not going to do anything.

But it's a passion project.

We love doing this.

It's just fun to be able to do it, and we've both learned new things, both in recording and in the editing and marketing and posting to all the different places.

There's so many things that we didn't, I don't think we thought about when we decided we were going to do a podcast and we've learned them all.

And I'm sure there's more to learn.

I'm sure.

Yeah, and for those of you listening, if you don't realize, we do everything.

We do not have anyone that we pay, we have platforms that we pay to host on and things like that.

But we don't have an editor, Samantha does the audio editing, I do the video editing for our YouTube channel.

We make all of our own recordings, we upload everything to the apps ourselves.

So it's definitely been a learning curve, but it's kind of neat because the work that we do is hard work.

And so this makes us go a little bit more cerebral sometimes and learn a new skill, which is always good and helps keep our minds sharp.

So I've really enjoyed that piece of it, actually.

I'm sure one day we'll have people we pay to do it.

Yeah, you know, we'll enjoy that.

Like we said, we're not getting paid.

Yeah, you know.

So what was your favorite episode that we've done this year so far?

Oh, gosh, I have a couple.

Moon Tower was really fun just because we got to talk to midwives who took care of me during my pregnancy.

So that was really cool.

I also just loved that we were able to get this like fresh look and information for our listeners.

And that has been really valuable here in the Austin area.

I know that that wasn't really beneficial for our listeners other places, but I think it's something like 70-something percent of our listeners are in Texas.

So that's been really nice.

This is because it was controversial and a little bit difficult even for us to do.

I feel like it stretched us and grew us in the interviewing and all of this.

I really enjoy doing the circumcision episode because it was something out of our norm.

And I think that that's important to be able to get out of our comfort zones, talk about things that are a little bit maybe taboo or hard to talk about.

And so I really enjoyed doing that too.

But really, I don't think I've had a podcast episode I wasn't excited about.

How about you?

I've really enjoyed our birth story episodes.

I know that was something I was really passionate about when we first started talking about doing a podcast.

I wanted to be able to share some of those things.

And really, that's just been so much fun.

It's fun to relive births that I was at or relive births that you were at and I was getting all the text updates and then hear from our clients' perspective, like what they experienced and what things stuck out to them.

And yeah, kind of that look back.

It's just, I don't know, it's just really fun.

And I think it's so valuable, too.

I learned so much in my pregnancy days and all of that through birth stories.

So I love that we, you know, in addition to all the other educational stuff we have going on here, I love that we get to do those and I can't wait to keep doing more of them.

Yeah.

And since this episode comes out after the Mother's Day episode, I can say one of my favorite things was interviewing my own mama for her birth story because y'all, I learned new things from that story.

I didn't realize and my mom is not a crier and she cried on that episode.

And afterward, she texted me, she was like, I hope you're good at editing.

I hope that I wasn't awful and I was like, mom, you were great.

And she was, I didn't realize until I did that with you guys, how I had perceived things.

I had never really gotten that deep into thinking about it.

And I was like, I learned a lot too.

And she goes, I've cried again just thinking about it.

So that was pretty cool.

That is cool.

I think the power of retelling that story is huge.

It's so healing and it's so transformative to go through that and then to be able to relive it and kind of think through what things you liked and what things you didn't like.

And no matter if you're having more babies or not, I think it's just powerful.

Yeah, I really, really enjoyed that.

I didn't think that I would learn anything new, and I did, and that was really cool.

And that's just the best thing.

That's the best thing about our jobs altogether is we learn something new through every birth or every story or every podcast episode, no matter what we think we know already.

And sometimes we're interviewing our clients from births that we did with them.

The majority of our birth stories, one of us was there for these episodes.

And there are times when we're learning new things we didn't even realize they thought or felt or whatever at their birth.

And that's really cool.

And it's been really emotional, too, which is, which is neat.

So what are we planning to bring next year?

Do you have any teasers you want to give?

Y'all, we have so much fun stuff already planned.

We've been working on our schedule for the year through the summer, and there's just so many fun things.

We have a couple of really cool series that we're planning on doing.

We're going to be talking to a midwife and picking her brain about some questions that we've gotten from listeners and clients over the years.

We have a whole series on difficult births and birth trauma that we're going to be doing in July.

And then we have just we have some really cool guests that we're going to be having on this year.

I don't want to get excited about the guest from California is all I'm going to say.

There's a guest from California doing two episodes with us, and she is a wealth of information.

And we're going to dig into stuff with her.

I'm just not going to give it too much away, but y'all, it's going to come out sometime this summer.

I don't remember the date.

It might be a June, maybe June episode.

So tune in, and if there's things that you want, we still got room down the pipeline to add some fun things in.

So if you're like, hey, I wonder if they've ever considered talking about this, please email us, comment on Instagram, comment on YouTube.

I don't know, find our numbers somewhere and text us.

But call me, beat me if you want to reach me.

You're showing your age.

I just died right now.

You do not want to miss our Father's Day episode.

I'm just going to say that.

It's going to be so good, doll.

It's going to be so good.

We haven't recorded it yet.

We know what we're recording and we're really excited.

So it's going to be comical.

It might be our best yet.

No one else might listen to it other than us, but it's going to be our best yet.

It's going to be my favorite, hands down.

I haven't even done it yet.

Absolutely.

Do you want to tell everybody about the Big Bad Awesome project that we've decided to work on?

You said Big Bad Awesome, which it is BBA.

BBA is Birth, Baby Academy.

That is our giant announcement.

So some of you already know, but we have started something called the Birth, Baby Academy, named similarly to the Birth, Baby Podcast.

And we are Birth Dula Trainers.

So we have our first cohort of students coming in in September for the weekend of the 27th.

We have an in-person intensive training for three days, and we're really excited about it.

It's all created by me and Samantha.

And we are also going to have an online self-paced program coming out later in the fall, winter.

And we will have a pre-sale for that going on as well.

So it is only scholarship based for our first cohort.

When this comes out, you'll still have a couple of weeks to apply if you want to, to get a scholarship.

We are only doing scholarships for that first one.

So nobody pays for that first September training.

And yeah, we have lots of things to come with that, but we are really excited.

You want to tell them why we're doing that?

Kind of what our goal is with Birth, Baby!

Yeah, I think that, you know, Ciarra and I have been doing this for a little while, and we've seen just such a spread of doulas and how everybody has different strengths and weaknesses.

And we hear a lot about different training programs and their strengths and weaknesses.

We both trained with different programs and saw different things and felt value in different things.

And we feel as though we can provide just a different perspective, I think, on doula work and how to make it sustainable for doulas for the future.

That's a big part of our model and how we do what we do and why we do what we do.

We want to provide evidence based information and just help create more doulas in the community.

The nationwide community, we're going to be all over.

But we want to create more doulas who have the tools and ability to find that evidence based information and to work with clients to help them have positive experiences, no matter where they're birthing, how they're birthing anything.

So that's a snapshot into what we're doing.

If you want to find out more about the Academy and upcoming trainings and be in the know for when we launch our online program, you can go to birthbabyacademy.com.

The website will be live, hopefully by the release of this episode, but if not soon.

At Birth Baby Academy.

So thank you so much for just supporting us through this year.

It has been so exciting.

If you haven't told my friends yet about our podcast, please do.

Like we said, we're not making money on this.

We're just so excited for people to get the information.

We want y'all to be getting information for free.

It is a big world out there, and there are so many things that you can buy.

But this is a little bit of our way of giving back.

Like we said, yes, we get sponsorships, but that goes toward paying for the basics of what this is.

You know, we have programs we have to pay for and editing software and things like that.

So thank you guys so much for your support.

And here's cheers to another year.

Cheers to another year.

We'll see y'all soon.

Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby!

Thanks again to Longing for Orpheus for our music.

You can look him up on Spotify.

Remember to leave a review, share, and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

See you next week.