Podcast #101 Countdown to Arrival: Navigating the Final Days of Pregnancy

This episode of the 'Intimacy & Wellness Podcast by The Steve Experience' takes listeners into the intimate and transformative final days before childbirth. As Steve and his wife await the arrival of their son, Jimmy Kaspar, they share their personal and shamanic preparations for a home birth. The conversation explores various birthing philosophies, the role of doulas and midwives, and the couple’s journey toward creating a birth space that resonates with their holistic beliefs. They discuss the challenges and decisions involved in birthing at home versus in a hospital, the support systems necessary for a conscious birth, and the spiritual aspects of welcoming a new life. This episode is a reflective look at the anticipatory phase of pregnancy, offering insights into the emotional, physical, and spiritual preparations that pave the way for a new life's entry into the world.

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Here Is The Transcript

Hi everyone, it's been about four months since I did the last podcast. I've been a bit focused on other matters in life, such as my pregnant wife.

Kateřina: Hello, how are you doing?

Steve:

And our son, who's still in the womb. He's about a few days or a few hours, depending on what he wants to do, from joining us here.

My time has been allocated differently in the last few months, as I've been helping a friend of mine launch his business, cellularresonance.com, and working more on that to improve the health of the planet. But this podcast is going to be about the last few months, the last few weeks, even the last few hours of what it's like building this shamanic ceremony of birth. I mean, I've written a book on rebirth, and it's a shamanic process.

I've been through my own shamanic journey, as you've heard on other podcasts, and I've had Katja on a few times before, and she's talked about her shamanic journey. But this must be the most shamanic of all. So we're now preparing the space for Jimmy Kašpar to enter the building and he's well on his way to do that. So, how are you feeling about this process? What would you like to voice right now with what's present in your mind, body, and soul?

Kateřina Love:

Thank you for holding the space for this interview or podcast.

It has been a very intimate time, and as we decided, we stepped a little bit aside from our normal day-to-day life, meaning we still live the same, but we moved a little bit closer to nature as we are now at our friend's house, actually, who left for a couple of weeks and we could use their space and really enjoy being in the garden, preparing and kind of chilling out.

So, this has been settling, and we've been here for about two weeks, and now it's feeling a bit different. But in the very moment, I feel it's a very intimate preparation.

Steve:

Well, I think you've examined different styles of birth a few years ago. One of my mentors was telling me about ecstatic birth, and we even had a session with Dr. Doug Lehrer around preparing for an ecstatic birth. You've also studied quite a bit of Yolande Norris-Clark's work, who's now had her 10th baby, believe it or not, over the last 20 years and really advocates for natural birth.

Often doing it without a midwife. I think she did most of her births without a midwife or a doula. We've opted to have a doula throughout the whole experience, and also a midwife. What I noticed from the midwife conversation, and we really like our midwife that we have—she's very heart-centered, very loving, and just the perfect person that we would imagine to be here with us during the birth.

But she was saying, she worked in England for quite a few years, near where I used to grow up. And the big difference there is that the midwife has, doing home births more. She was saying the main difference is with England and the Czech Republic is that the midwife is there from very early on until birth whereas in the Czech Republic the midwife doesn't really come into what was it the 30th week or?

You can have a midwife since day one if you want, but I think the difference between England and here is that the care is even supported by, or supported by, the mainstream or the medical realm which is in the Czech Republic. If the woman wants to be supported by a midwife or doula, she has to pay everything on her own.

And she's the one who is about to find one and it's nothing that medical care or hospital care or any mainstream way supports. Well, you have an insurance system in the Czech Republic a bit like America, apart from America's a lot more expensive than the Czech Republic. But yeah, the care in the UK seems to be there.

You know, they fall down in the NHS and other areas such as everything that Andrew Bridgen is exposing lately about what happened between 2020 and 2023, but I don't want to go back into that right now. But essentially, what I'm getting out with this opening is it's the holistic way and there's the medical way and seeing how those worked and how we've had to navigate things here.

We had to really research and find a hospital that was more open, and there weren't very many in Prague itself or any if we could find, even though we live in Prague, we've had to come out of Prague. Luckily my soul sister friend has let us have her house, which isn't too far away from the hospital as she's traveling with our kids.

So that's amazing. And we really appreciate that. And we've set up a space here. With the right music and setting and tone. As all psychedelic, shamanic experiences, it's all about place, people, and setting. So we found the right place, we found the right midwife, we found the right setting, we had a switch up in our doula last minute. We've heard from other mothers and parents about the last week, things before birth, things can change quite a lot in terms of where you go, or which doula or midwife you might choose, or last-minute changes and things, so we had one of those. We were happy with the doula up until one point, but then we felt like we should switch just, just felt like that way. We don't really need to go into all the details about it, but I think you should just follow your intuition and in those circumstances, and it's about your gut who you feel that should be there at the birth. Anything you want to share on all of that?

Kateřina:

Yeah, we decided that it will be clear when I speak because we decided to be at home for the home birth, but Stephen was also mentioning the hospital, meaning that we kind of choose the way to be actually registered also in that hospital. The one we found was that Steve mentioned that it's more open.

And I felt like I'll be fine to go there to do a couple of checks and, you know, be sure that I have, let's say, backup because things are happening, so I wanted to, I wanted to have also this kind of way of feeling maybe more safe in my mind but I'm not saying this is, something what gives you safety, so I just wanted to mention that, maybe when you are going through this kind of experience, it's just good to be open to anything and to any kind of story because you, we don't know, we don't know what is exactly going to happen, but at the same time I wanted to mention that because Steve was speaking about England.

The very normal way there is that actually healthy woman with healthy pregnancy being fit and healthy, she's not even going to the hospital for any checks, she's not even planning the birth in the hospital, because the hospital is for sick people. And I think this is the way how I see it.

I'm not saying that birthing in the hospital or, you know, having any kind of checks is anything wrong. I actually think it could be very useful. But I think it's useful for people who really need that care and if there is a problem or if there is a sickness.

Steve:

I think you would say sick or at risk. Risk or at risk of injury or something.

Kateřina:

Yeah. And it can even happen during your very healthy pregnancy and birth. And it's, it's totally okay to, at some point, go with the flow and with the feeling, if there's something like that happening, of course, you don't risk the life of yours or your baby and then you go to the hospital and I'm completely fine with that. I'm just saying that for the healthy woman and what I really learned from all these places of midwives and also this what is totally natural in England, that it is actually natural to birth at home too. It was since ages was happening like that.

And then we just used to switch and be in the, you know, responsibility of other people that they were basically born. But we know that if the woman is healthy, it's all about the woman who she has to birth and she has to feel safe. And it's about, as Steve said, place, but also people she wants to, you know, because it's a very intimate space.

And she has to open up and I believe that if there is 20 other people some rush in the hospital loudness It might be very difficult to actually.

Steve:

Yeah, you're a portal as Yolande calls her book, Yolande Norris-Clark. She said she was republishing her book. I assume it's going to be the same title, but if you're a portal, which I obviously can't experience as a man I can, or did, but it was a completely different experience, and that was through Ayahuasca.

I certainly became some portal then. And you need shamanic people around to cleanse energies, in my opinion. Because you know, when you open yourself up, as I found out, after the ayahuasca, as I've said, my first podcast, if you go back to that, about my shamanic awakening, that, you know, it's a lot to do with working with another shaman, an elder woman, with clearing energies, and Katja had virtually the same experience with a different mentor.

And other people are having those experiences around the world, and people are talking about it, it's not really something that hasn't been talked about, even back through the centuries, it's talked about. So, it should be common knowledge to anyone who's on this path by now. So, going to a hospital in that state, you need those shamanic people around you, your team around you just in case that does happen.

I joked with the midwife that, well, I said, surely birth is a psychedelic experience and she's washed over. I don't know how many, but hundreds of births, home births. And she said, yeah, there is a psychedelic experience. A lot can happen and every birth looks different. So that in mind, I wouldn't go and do ayahuasca or mushrooms in a hospital unless there was some kind of holistic hospital, we need to have better conversations in society around.

What actually works in hospitals, what really doesn't and be very honest about it and also on the holistic side What works and what doesn't because there's a lot of people out there that think they're healed when they're not really healed And they're leading people down blind paths And in the medical industry, there's people that just don't know the truth about or they're ignoring truths about You know, things that I said, Andrew Bridgen, MP, if you go and look him up, probably one of the only politicians in the world who's really speaking the truth about what's going on in the last few years.

That stuff needs to be talked about, and, beyond birth into childhood, when they start trying to give different medications to children, and goes beyond that with circumcision in, in the USA, which is barbaric, insane activity on week old or nine-day-old boys. It's just insane. Some of the stuff going on still in 2024.

So yeah, this holistic medical conversation is a big one and everyone should be talking about it and everyone should be involved in, in helping a more loving and healed planet, which is why I'm involved with Dr. Doug's work with Cellular Resonance (Quantum Healing). So. A bit of a diatribe, what are your thoughts?

Kateřina:

Well, I think mainly what I said, I feel that the hospital or the places like that are for people on the, as you said, people under some risk or either sick people, and I'm not saying that this place is not needed, but as, as I really read today quite a good article about there should be really two focuses or being focused on two things.

One thing is when the people need care and help from the point of view that they have a problem, they are really sick, and then I still believe that there is more than just going to being solved or being saved by someone in the hospital because everything should be treated by a holistic approach. But of course, there are emergencies, there are things like that, but for the healthy, healthy woman, healthy people, I don't think their, their choice is natural to go to the hospital, and we know that, as we said, that the birth is birthing a new life and, and, you know, bringing a new life into the earth.

It's everything. It's just not sickness, illness, or any problem. It's, it's a living experience and we should probably, as I said, as parents or people who are involved, just allow that process to be the most natural, the process be most safe. And of course, I also know that there is a huge movement, you know, in the free birth society.

There are loads of women who are actually birthing without any assistance women who are really stepping into their power and doing everything by their own which It's quite impressive for me. I'm not in the stage that I would because I'm first time pregnant first time We'll be giving birth and of course even through Now the, the very last stage, there are so many things going on with me, so many things I have to be aware of I have to look deeply.

So I'm not in the stage that I would say I am going to birth without any assistance, but I think this huge movement is showing us that it's possible, that we as a world women, we have the power to, to just naturally go with the flow. And I had now amazing, very fresh story of my friends, which I can share a little bit later about how they, how they birth actually without any assistant assistants and they, they didn't plan it.

So it just happened. And yeah, so, so it's just maybe sharing these thoughts, but yeah, The way of what we are preparing at the very moment is like having a backup. So, we are registered in the hospital, what we planned, a home birth. We have a midwife, and the midwife is bringing extra hands, as we said, her, her own doula, because we switch, and, and yeah, and it feels like waiting time.

Steve:

I think the ideal sort of society culture around health, wellness, birth all this subject that we're talking about would be one where you knew because it was written on, on the website or written on the doors all over the building where you're going or the service that you're dealing with, whether they, or you can ask them if you, if they don't have that yet, you can just simply ask, Do they believe in the soul and do they believe the soul is medicine?

If they don't, my opinion is, unless you want a really long conversation with them about it, which is fine if you want to do that, don't bother going to them as a service because you're betraying your own soul because you obviously believe in your soul. So otherwise, you wouldn't probably ask the question unless you're really, you know, Lost and kind of lost your soul and trying to find it.

So that's why I would recommend going out on this and you should be as blunt as that I think when you when you're dealing with someone You're buying a service of someone or even dealing with any pediatrician or midwife We didn't have to ask our midwife because we could see it from you should, hopefully they show it in their energy that you don't even have to ask, but sometimes you're going to have to ask.

What are your thoughts?

Kateřina:

Yeah, yeah, that's a good, good point. I think what I am realizing now, even through the process of the, of the very last stage, because as Steve mentioned even ourselves, meaning even us, what do we plan, what is in our mind, or how we see things that they will happen, and you prepare for them the whole pregnancy, in the very last stage everything can change like a wind, because you just feel things are different and It's a very, as I said a few times, intimate time and it's extremely crucial who you want to get involved with that, in that time.

And what you're saying about that, I think in that, in my mind just came that whoever even you have this question to, to ask, to question someone, if they even are about that, then you obviously Or I would choose immediately walk away, because people people who are embodying their soul, then you, you feel it.

And the rest is just a programming fear-based. And even for me, sometimes I get involved with some people which I don't see it immediately. And it, it doesn't take that much once, once they are fully showing up and then everything is a mess. Yeah, with me, I, I don't even have to say something. Provocative to someone anymore, I'll say something completely neutral because of my energy is quite, what would you say?

Kateřina:

Strong.

Steve:

And like fire maybe?

I think you're just so neutral and so honest that people can't cope. It's really intensely interesting for me to observe it really because Steve is for me like you have, you have like How do you call, uh, like some alarm when, when someone is just like, because he's so calm all the time, so chill, but as someone who is so reactive walking around, it's just basically can't handle that stillness...

Steve:

I think I know. This is exposing myself a little bit, but I don't really care. But I think I realize, I don't know if this is true, just use it in your own imagination, but it's kind of how I think of my own being at the moment. Maybe it's the same for you, and I think other people do it, but it's, yeah, I'm this element of calm, but there's, that's my body, and they see that, but there's other things going on, there's an aura, and there's, Other energetic things, as I said to Katja earlier before this podcast about the map of the true divine self that I talked about the stuff on that I don't really know about, but what I sense in my energetic system sometimes, if there's someone, it doesn't matter if it's about the birth process or someone in this birth or something related to my business or other businesses that I'm involved in.

They come into my sphere, even if it's on a Zoom call, email, in person, doesn't matter. They, I think, I send off I imagine these like torpedo, integrity torpedoes, and they're just being fired out, fired out of my system, like underneath my, in the ground or something. No, just energy and then they fire off because I do not have the time because I'm so busy Especially with a child coming in and sort of running the businesses that I run I do not have time to waste with someone who's gonna try and start a fire in my life even a day from now let alone a week or a month or a year when it yet when I've got into a deeper connection with them either in business or the birth process or whatever it is, something that's going to be deeply affecting my life.

I don't have the time to waste and I don't think anyone should have the time, but I know that in my energy field, I know it in my higher self. I know it in my whole consciousness. So if I have that as my energy going out there, I can just be calm as I want. I don't have to say anything anymore.

And it's happened so much now, in the last year in business and during this process. That it seems to be true. And I don't even have to say anything. Or I say something completely neutral or there was one example where I said the brand name of a company on a Zoom call and this guy just lost it.

But. I have compassion to these people, I don't really judge them if they do react to me, I just let them go and say, Okay, it's the universe's, or the divine consciousness, or god, or whatever word you want to use, way of showing which people should be around me. And I only have a very, very tight-knit circle, and I do allow other people in if they have high enough integrity, but most people don't, unfortunately.

But going back to the shamanic process of the birth, I also believe that when you have a child consciously and you want that child to come through the marriage or the partnership that you're in, then you have more manifestation powers. You have more creative power flowing through you, especially the woman in the relationship.

But the man can feel that as well. There's a new process going on that you can't get with your not having a child. And so it's, it's a rebirth of self on a different level. It's a shamanic process and therefore you can ask your higher self for certain new things that you need in your life, whatever it is.

And I, for example, have commanded with the birth of our son that it's going to be also the birth of justice and karma. On this planet as a new kingdom rains down here as we step into truth more So what would you like to do shamanically in this birth process?

Kateřina:

Maybe that's why he's taking time so how's the time? The waiting time because he's a couple of days. Was it one day? Overdue, but so this time thing will stop doing to you As well as the pain in your body, which you're experiencing right now in your back and all this stuff, which is going on How, how is all of that?

I think it's very an intense experience in the way of understanding that it's not about you anymore because I think my perception was saying that I thought it I will actually give birth at the end of April. It was all the time my thought, but my thought was probably not aligned with the whole process because in general I'm quite fast, I would say, like fast in doing things, fast in getting things.

It's like just my personality or my, personality. Naturally as, as even I also have a lot of fire within me, even it's not very much showed up probably through the relationships, but it's more showed up through actions and things I'm doing. I like to do things with certain temperament or I don't like to be too slow, and I think it's about, it's a process about learning.

Being patient and understand that it's not about me, because I really know we have certain percentages about the mother to be ready. We have also a certain you know Place for the baby that he is ready or she is ready and when they want to arrive, but there is also the natural natural rhythm of, of things and everything has to be set, settled, and set up.

And we had quite a lot of changes with even switching these people involved. So I can see it now very clearly that everything is on divine timing. And for me, it's just learning this lesson to understand that everything has its own time, and actually with more and more time I have, I'm probably more and more clearing my thoughts, my fears, opening more and more, and, yeah, I'm experiencing also a lot of I don't know if I would want to call it pain, even I perceive it as pain, but I think as I am having these fears or I have them, I had them and I had to understand them and clear them, then I feel the pain is related to it, so, once I'm opening more and letting, letting things go, but it has waves, so, yeah, it is intense, I feel it's it's a very unique time.

Steve:

And if Jimmy Kašpar is listening to this, age 10, 15, 20, 60,

We love you, son.

Kateřina:

We do.

Steve:

And hope that the new Earth is looking good at this point. We've done enough work to bring it through. So, I said to my own father yesterday, on text, I said, I'll probably live to 100, and my main aim is to defeat the Nazis. via satire, truth, and spiritual warfare, so. I'm sure by the time you're listening to this in 2074, they're gone, and I'll still be alive for four more years.

So, sum up your advice for women in the final week, weeks or couple of weeks of pregnancy so far, as you're very close to birth and then we'll do another podcast after birth.

Kateřina:

Just let go every plan, every vision. Open up as much as you can, but also listen to your intuition. If you think you have the best team, if you feel that you created and you're happy about that and in the end something changed and you feel that change and you, you know that you have to make some decision, just follow that intuition, follow your heart because it's not about you as a person, it's not about you, what you will achieve, or what you will do, it's about your baby, and you want to have it the most aligned, the most healthy, and the most clean way.

And you have to follow up your intuition, otherwise, everything can end up very messy, and we don't want that.

Steve:

Obviously a disclaimer that I put on my podcast is that, you know, this is not medical advice. I don't think the medical industry recognizes the soul, so, as a soul-based advice. So please, you know, obviously do your own research, speak to your own doctors, speak to as many people as you can to, get an opinion on things.

And I think you should probably mention how important it was to have a team or friends of other mothers who, who are conscious and gone through this, so you could get their advice and speak to them because, and that's what my advice for the new fathers, because this is our first child. Is yeah, support your partner or wife to be in her power, make sure she has a supportive team of women around her beyond the doula and the midwife that she can call.

I think you've had up to like 10 different women or seven that you could reach out to at any time. And I think that's very important because they, especially as I said, their mothers, they can speak about that process. That was important for you, wasn't it?

Kateřina

Yes. Yes, I think it's like having support and you knowing where you are going to talk to.

But also, the, as I was saying, listen to your intuition. The thing is that while you are going through the last stages of your pregnancy, you realize that as a woman who has to give birth, there is no one who can do the job instead of you. There is no one. There can be so many people supporting you, you can have, you can ask, you can share, but everyone will have a different opinion, a different story, and their own trauma and projections.

Everyone will tell you a different opinion on the birth, depending on their own story, and the birth, depending on their own, own birth experience, not meaning, you know, giving birth, meaning some trauma which they might be not even aware about their own, their, their own birth. It's very, very like a thin limit to speak about these things. And that's why I'm saying, what resonates is good, but then go back to yourself and listen to yourself. Because in the end. You have to do it on your own. , Yeah I agree with all of that and But with the trust to God, so you are never alone. This is the paradox of the universe.

Yeah, maybe I should mention a little bit of why the, the doula left us just slightly is that I don't feel there should be any leader in, in the birth team. It should be a you know, active divine force going through the four or five beings in that room. And the we're all being led by that divine force at the same time.

And I don't know, it just didn't feel quite like that would happen with, it might have done, I mean, I may have been wrong, but my intuition was saying, probably that doula that we were with couldn't quite hold that, whereas I could see it could be held. And with my the midwife we have, ourselves, and our son, he can obviously hold that, so.

Always, when you are about this as we said, portal experience, when you're opening up so much, it's also about your baby, and your baby's deciding very mindfully, he, who he wants to be watched by or she and I'm sure that the babies who are birthing in this time on our planet they are coming with a certain level of consciousness and they are not choosing anything What would be the old way of thinking or doing or believing and always when you have someone?

Who is thinking too much in whatever projections or not dealing with their own trauma and not being fully healed and it will always show up so i'm sure everything is happening by its reason and that's why we have to be connected to our highest selves and always listening to what we really feel is the best for us and for our family obviously So, there's a lot to chew over with that one, I think, and we'll be back in a few weeks or so to tell you how our son is doing and how he decided to arrive on planet Earth.

Thank you for listening.