The Birth Keepers: Journey Moon – episode three

This is The Guardian. Hi, I'm Shewing Kahler, and I'm Lucy Osborne. You're listening to The Birth Peoples, a new six-part series from The Guardian Investidates. Just before we start, this series contains references to baby loss and maternal harm. It's 2013. Lauren is an actor. And Chris is a session musician in a band. Some reason, today, he's dressed as a pirate. I was cast in his best friends' music video. We met at a video shoot, very typical LA thing. And I look over and he walks in and I thought, "Oh my gosh, that sexy pirate right there is my guy." And I was dressed as a cat. And they had dressed me as a sexy kitty. And so he said later that he saw me. And he was like, "That sexy kitty is mine." So we were both kind of thinking the same thing. Something with her and I just, I don't know, it just worked. It clicked. And it went from a little coffee date to spending every single day together, to starting businesses together. And 12 years later, here we are. Soon after they met, they realised they were both tired of LA. And that they wanted something very different from life. So they bought a trailer and moved to Joshua Tree National Park. Picture, cactus is a vast rocky desert under a dramatic blue sky. My goal from my life was to be basically wild and free. From the land barefooted, you know, in the sand and the cactus. Being a part of nature was huge for me. That was relaxing to us, you know, just be able to, like, read a book, chill, walk around on the land, and nobody even knows that you're there. Did you know that you wanted kids? Did you always know you wanted kids? Oh yeah, we wanted kids from when we first met. Chris was one kid, I wanted like 10 kids. Eventually, he's, you know, I was like, "Yeah, let's do like 12 kids." So he changed his mind pretty quick. And then that's what we wanted for them to do. To be wild and free and have the healthiest start to life as we could give them. Did you get pregnant quite quickly? Right away. The first try, we're shot for this month, we were pregnant. From the Guardian Investigates, I'm Lucy Osborne. This is the birth keepers. Episode three, journey moon. Initially, the plan was a hospital birth, but Lauren got a bad vibe from her first meeting with her doctor. It asked me how I was feeling, never, like, even gave me eye contact, kind of just a lousy kind of doctor. And so we lost faith very quickly. Then they found a home birth midwife that they liked. But they just started a new business, leasing holiday trailers and camper vans on their land. Money was tight. I didn't have cash up front. I had $5,000 to hand her right then. And that's what she wanted. And that made us say, "Okay, well, can't do a midwife." Like many women, Lauren started scrolling, looking for information on natural birth. The whole algorithm stopped once you look at something they show you other stuff, and then I got just hooked on the free birth society. Lauren started with the FPS podcast, which back then was only a year old. And the thing that really hooked her was the birth stories, Emily Saldaya, interviewing mothers about their free births. He held them up to my chest and was just like kissing him and smelling him, rubbing my face on him. And then Avalon, the dog, the wolf, the midwolf, comes over. I mean, she's by my side throughout the whole thing. She was like, "She wouldn't even go outside the beach." I got so hyped up on those stories, because everybody did it. I mean, it was so successful and had amazing stories with birthing in a yard, birthing in a river, birthing outside by a fire. I'm just still night, and I'm in labor here, and I'm looking at the moon, and this amazing fire, and I'm just twirling my hips, and just feeling the warmth of the fire on my belly. That's what I want! And if they can do it, I can do it too. She listened to it every day. Oh, I was listening like six, seven podcasts a day. I was blowing through them. I probably listened to all of them. Lauren also joined the FBS Facebook group, which back then was a smaller group of women, and was free to join. She became friendly with the members, including Emily. It got to where we could talk on Facebook or Instagram. I trusted her very, very much. I felt like she proved herself, since she had led all these other women to these great victories in their births. And so I was excited for my turn, my victory with my baby. Lauren discussed the idea of free birthing with Chris, and he was on board too. I loved it. I loved the idea of it. I loved the concepts. You know, they tell you not to do the OB/GY and stuff, so I quit doing that. No more doctors. No tests. No, you know, no blood work or visits or other sounds, nothing. We didn't know what her gender was. We stayed away. We stayed away from the doctors, because my body was meant to do this. Probably have noticed similarities between Lauren's story and Nicole's, which we told you about in episode one. In fact, there are certain things we've heard over and over again, as we've interviewed dozens of women for this investigation. Women being directed to FBS content by social media algorithms, often after searching for more mainstream content. The addictive quality of the FBS podcast, particularly the epic free birthing stories. Bad prior experiences with the medical industry, and a trust in Emily's knowledge, and especially her confidence. And here's the main one, the one we heard from every single mother we spoke to, a sincere, deeply held belief that they were doing what was best for their baby. It was all for her. And it just took a bad turn. And it was what was meant to be something special for her, turned out to complete opposite. And yeah, yeah. It was never out to prove anything. Never for my own, my own sake. It was to give her something special. Lauren's due date came around in October of 2018. And the plan was to give birth in their silver, air-streamed trailer in the desert, surrounded by wilderness. Half an hour away from the nearest hospital. I had all the stuff. I had my little, my little labor basket ready with all the stuff I would need. We had lots of snackies, water bottles, things like that, so that we didn't have to go out and get anything. It was all ready. Here's another pattern you'll hear a lot. After listening to so many incredible free birth stories on the podcast, Lauren thought her birth would play out like theirs. But once her labor began, Lauren was blindsided by how excruciatingly painful it was. I stood up. I couldn't stand up. I laid on my side. I couldn't lay on my side. I was so much pain. I was stuck almost leaning over a bed. Lauren started to feel something wasn't right. By day two, the contractions weren't spread out anymore. It was just one long contraction. Lauren tried to stay positive to remember what she'd heard in the podcast. Not to let the negative thoughts enter her mind. But by day four, it really felt like her labor wasn't progressing. It just wasn't moving. It wasn't going. So she decided to message Emily directly on Facebook Messenger. Okay, so here I've got them in order. October 4th at 10.42 a. Lauren told Emily she'd been in transition. The intense part of labor before the pushing. Since the previous night, the pain is unbearable at this point. And I just want to know if I'm not progressing. Emily replied, "You're not in transition. I'm so sorry to say. You are still in the beginning stages of labor and need to reset." And I asked even at one to two minutes apart, I've been having surgery since the first. She just said, "You got this, Mama. You've got to get out of your head." Lauren persists. She says, "I've been throwing up, too. This pain is so intense." Emily replies, "The pain is not unbearable. It's not unbearable. This is birth. You make a choice to move through one sensation at a time or you make a choice to go to the hospital. There's no way out." Emily told Lauren, "You'll have to die a thousand deaths and let go of everything you think you can't do." This is totally normal. It doesn't sound like anything to worry about. This is temporary, I promise. Women always progress. Not progressing is not a real thing. Your baby is coming. Oh, here, reading this. How does it feel reading it now? It's just now that I know I actually was not progressing and not progressing is actually real. So that gives me chills to think about that. On the 6th of October, six days after her contraction started, Lauren starts seeing what she thinks may be "maconium." Still no earth-side baby. I'm pouring colored fluids, though. Maconium is a baby's first stall. It can be a sign that a baby is in distress and it can sometimes also be dangerous if it gets in their lungs. Emily does not initially respond when Lauren first mentions the colored fluids. She says, "I'm so proud of you. Stay hydrated. Things are happening." Lauren brings it up again. "Is the fact that the fluids are a little yellow and smelly okay?" Emily replies, "Smelly bad or just birth weird smelly?" Which I have to say is a question I'd personally find quite difficult to answer. Emily then asks, "Yellow tinge like maconium, what week are you?" Lauren replies, "Not a nasty smell, but it's not pleasant either. Yellow, mostly, but I woke up around four and poured some brown fluid." Emily responds, "Maconium is much more likely at this stage for normal, natural reasons. Have you taken your temperature?" Lauren sends a photo of a yellow brown stain. Emily responds, "It looks totally normal, healthy, and neotic fluid also does not look gushy brown or yellow to me." Which is a good thing. It doesn't even look like maconium to me. All looks well and healthy. Write those waves, sister. Your baby is coming all as well. While Lauren was in her trailer messaging Emily, she also turned to the FBS Facebook group. You might remember us talking about this before. It's common for women in labor, but literally during their labors, to post in the group with their concerns. Like, is this normal? Is this okay? What's going on? I was just getting nothing. But you're doing good. You're just in the beginning. Just let it happen. Just let it happen. Not everyone in the group agreed. Renee Lapointe, a midwife from Massachusetts, was also watching on. She'd initially joined the FBS Facebook group, mostly out of curiosity. But quickly, she'd become concerned with what she was seeing. Women would say, "I have this unusual discharge." Or, "I have a fever." And instead of being told to get help, they were told, "Just do what your body is telling you to do. Just listen to your instincts." Well, their instincts led them to come to this group and ask questions. Which you saw Lauren's post about her prolonged labor and the maconium. Renee was really worried. I remember saying, "That's not okay." And people saying, "That's a variation of normal." And that's not a variation of normal. She needs help. And I remember typing, "Please go to the hospital." And as quickly as I would type it, it would get taken down. And there were several of us doing that. The posts were being deleted by FBS group admins. And they were being deleted because they were against the group's rules. There was no assistance talk, meaning you could never recommend somebody go into the doctors. You couldn't even recommend that somebody call a local midwife or home birth group. You could not recommend anybody do anything outside of what their instincts told them to do. So everything in the group just focused around. Free birth is the best thing you can possibly do and anything outside of that is garbage. Lauren says she can't remember ever seeing these messages from people like Renee, urging her to go to the hospital. Wow. If that was being deleted, and then that's the reason I didn't see it. That's really sad. That's really sad. I didn't know that. Renee, I just wanted to let you know that we found the mother and her name is Lauren. And she was really grateful to hear that somebody had tried to at least try to give her the correct advice on the Facebook group. But she had no idea. She didn't know. I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't know that she could. You know, it just makes me sad because it wasn't just me. There was several of us in that group trying so hard. I'm sorry. I don't get emotional. I'm pretty stone cold. I didn't know that she didn't know that there were people that were trying to help her. And how lonely that must have felt. On the evening of the 6th of October, six days into her labor, Lauren sent Emily a picture of a stain. It was luminous green. Emily replied, "That's mech." Meaning, "Maconium." The next morning, Lauren messaged Emily, saying that she hadn't peed since the day before, that the "Maconium" smelled, and that she hadn't felt much movement from the baby. Emily said, "Do you know any midwives that could come over? What are you thinking? How far are you from hospital? Do you feel concerned?" Lauren replied that she was 30 minutes from hospital and that there were no midwives around. She then added, "I'm starting to feel like something may be off. I've been trying to stay positive, but this feels wrong to me." Emily warned her what to expect if she goes to the hospital. She explained what test they could perform, and she said, "Some people fudge the date and when their water's open. If you go in and say your waters have been open for 24 hours plus, they will see section immediately." Lauren told Emily she was going in, "I think I'm going to go in. I feel terrible about it, but I don't want to let my pride hurt this baby. Yeah, I'm going to not tell the whole truth for sure." "Oh wow, should I say 12 hours?" Ugh. I hate all that. It's just like gross. That's so gross to read. Ugh. Why is it so gross to read? I feel like I wanted her approval. I wanted her to tell me I was doing good. I wanted her to tell me I'm doing everything right. I wanted what she wanted, and I wanted to do what she thought was best. No, what I thought was best. And that's just gross to see. But like everything in her hands. Ugh. That's just so embarrassing to read. I don't mean to be embarrassed. It's totally, you know, you can totally see. You were paying your trust in someone. You thought that she was giving you the right advice. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's kind of sad to see all that trust. Ugh. Ugh. That was full. Just falling into her arms, basically. And that's just something that I don't do now. And I would never do it now. And then anything vaguely, like, well, what did I do it then? Like, what? What? I don't know. I guess I just thought she had my best interest. Emily sent Lauren a script of how to lie to doctors at the hospital. It said, quote, "I recently began labour and my waters opened this morning. But it had a bad smell and I thought it best to come in." Before they set off for the hospital, Lauren could still feel the baby. Filter, kick in, filter, move in. I was like, all right, we're going to have the baby today. Let's go to the hospital. We're done. We rushed through the hospital doors. Lauren didn't use Emily's script. They admitted her. We're in the room. And they were checking for a heartbeat. And the nurse said they're not seeing or hearing a heartbeat. And at that point, you just. It's like the whole just nine months of everything just kind of goes just to that moment. And you just think, no, I can't be. You know, check it again. And Lauren, I just kind of looked at each other. And then that moment, she said there was no heartbeat. I remember looking over to my husband and he just went, it's okay, it'll be okay. And you had to stay strong until she was born. They basically just said we got to get her out right away. Took me right back to labor and delivery. And they just without even asking, they started loading me up in meds. It was excruciatingly painful. It actually ruined my ability to be able to have babies naturally. Because of all the pushing, they ended up having to do to get her out. Yeah, they needed like seven doctors to hold her down, help assist with her. And this went on for a long time. I mean, this wasn't just like a five minute or a day. I think this went on for like 45 minutes. And at that point, I was extremely worried for Lauren. Because there was the chance of her not surviving this too. And I found out later that they actually told my husband that there was a chance that I was going to die too. So my poor husband was having to cope with the fact that his daughter had just passed away. And now he might be watching his wife pass away too. And so, you know, so many thoughts are going through my head of just like am I about to just lose everything right now. And it's one of those moments in life that just kind of create that little scratch on the soul that just would never leave. Do you know what kind of position she was in? Her arm and shoulder was lodged and the left side of my pelvis, so much so that they had to pop her up and push her out. They ended up having to use all those tools, all that lovely stuff. What do they call it? The poor subs and the vacuum to pull her out. And the whole thing was just a really, really rough experience. Lauren and Chris's baby was still born at 9.30 a.m., weighing 8 pounds, 13 ounces. They had already chosen a name, Jenny Moon. They gave me two days to hold her and they put her on my chest right away so I got to feel her while she was still nice and warm and dark hair. She had a nice thick dark hair. Can't wait to tell in the picture she had the hat on, but can we see the pictures? This is the one of the first times I got to hold her. Can you tell us about what she looks like? She looks a lot like my husband. She was the only, my husband's a Mexican Italian and all my other kids were born very white and she is very born pretty dark. We never got to see what color eyes she had or anything, but I like to imagine maybe she had blue eyes like my daughter or she could have been the only one with brown eyes. It's just, it's fun to, to imagine. Well, she had beautiful lips, like full lips. Lauren said that while she was giving birth, the medical team were in emergency mode and they were blunt and direct. But afterwards, everybody was incredible. They're very, very sympathetic. She still remembers one nurse in particular. Her name was Rebecca. She didn't leave me the whole time. She stayed with me as she ended up changing shifts with someone so she could stay with me. The local hospital was very small and Lauren says that every staff member, janitors, midwives, nurses and doctors, all lined the corridors. This journey mean was taken away to be cremated. And they all had white roses and they laid it on her as she was rolled out by the corner. That was the, that was it. That was the last time we got to see her. That one's going to get me. Oh, sorry. I was doing pretty good. We showed the messages exchanged between Emily and Lauren to several experts. One professor of midriffery told us that they were, quote, "Huge warning signs that her baby was in distress." By the point Lauren first reported meconium as smelly brown fluid, Emily should have advised her to go to the hospital. Another said, quote, "This was not a tragedy but a preventable death." In experienced home birth midwife told us, quote, "This outcome was overwhelmingly avoidable." Coming up, Emily faces her first backlash. Lauren and Emily kept messaging after journey mean's death. I've seen the messages and Emily was kind. Lauren told her about how nice the hospital staff had been and Emily said, quote, "So glad that you feel she and you were both so respected." Lauren said that afterwards, for a while, the two of them became closer. They spoke over the phone. She was telling me not to blame myself. And I didn't. I blamed, I guess, the situation. I saw it as a crappy situation. It was something terrible that had happened. I tried not to blame anyone. Obviously, to be honest, I completely blame myself. But as far as everyone else knew, I blamed no one. So when she started talking about that, I saw it as her just helping me get through the grief. Don't blame yourself. But when I look back now, I see it as, hey, don't blame me. She didn't want me to blame her. Because it was all like, hey, make sure you're not blaming anybody. Make sure the blame's not on anyone. And so now I see it as trying to keep her hands clean. At least that's my interpretation. While lying in the hospital bed, Lauren posted what had happened on the FBS Facebook group. But the page was being watched. Some, like Renee, were there because they were worried about the mothers. But others were anti-free birth itself. They took screenshots of Lauren's last post and shared it on anti-free birth Facebook groups. And that's when the abuse began. One day I got a message that was just a picture of me sent to me with a caption added. And it just said, baby killer. And I was like, you know, call Chris. And I was like, look at this. Like, who is this? And the message is just started pouring in. I would get 10 messages a day if not more. Just like memes and long messages about how they wished that I was the one that had died. And we're going to call the cops on you. What's your address? We're going to call the cops. Like, stupid stuff. And, you know, a lot of them were death threats. A lot of them were, we hope you brought in jail. As well as the private messages. People posted publicly on social media about Lauren and Emily. As Lauren lay in bed, just days after losing her first baby, she read things like, the twat from FreeBest Society needs drop kicking from a fucking window. And I wouldn't mind seeing this monster swing from a light post. I don't know why I kept reading them, but I did. I think maybe I'd, it made me feel like I deserved it. I deserved that, you know, somebody telling you you're the worst person. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, pretty much I am. It just, at the time, it felt justified that, yeah, I am the worst. Now that Emily knew that the Facebook group had been infiltrated, she decided to close it down. In its place, she created a new private membership platform, with no room for outsiders or dissenting voices. And to keep people like that out, this time, you'd have to pay to join. And there was an interview to get in. Emily let Lauren in for free. Emily also interviewed Lauren about journey moon for the FBS podcast, but it never came out. At first, she thought she'd not been articulate enough. But now she looks back on it differently. I think it was too positive with the hospitals. I was very much like, oh, I had a great experience. And, you know, yeah, the birth of this part was painful. But if I had gone in earlier, you know, like I was too, feel like that might have been the wrong direction for her podcast. A journalist from the Daily Beast interviewed Lauren, under a pseudonym, about the death of journey moon. Lauren says that before the interview, Emily told her to lie to the journalist, and not mention the private conversations they'd had during her labor. Emily had said that we should keep our private conversations to ourselves. And we'll just tell her that basically she was just encouraging me. So anything they had to do with advice or going to the hospital, I was to keep private. And so we did. We just said, no, yeah, she was just encouraging. I barely talked to her. The end of the relationship between Lauren and Emily was messy. Lauren gave birth to her second baby, Scarlett, less than a year after journey moon. Because of the injuries she sustained in her first labor, she was advised to have a C-section. I was like, fine, I just want, I just want a baby. Just, just give me my baby. Lauren posted in the new group about the birth of her daughter. She didn't explicitly say it was in a hospital. And Emily told Lauren she had misled the group. She was kicked out. I don't know. Maybe my wording was bad. But I didn't feel that was necessary. And then I haven't talked to her since then. That was it. She blocked me and then we're done. If you look back now over the whole story of FBS, from Emily meeting Yolanda, to the growth of the Facebook page, to the multi-million dollar global business it would later become. To me, the story of Lauren and journey moon, feels like a fork in the road. Her baby had just died, perhaps preventably, an unspeakable tragedy, and one which Emily had undeniably been a part of. FBS had never been under scrutiny like this before. One path might have been to pause, to look inward, to ask, is this right? Do we do anything wrong here? Could all of this have been avoided? But that's not the path that Emily went down. Instead, she doubled down and took FBS behind a paywall. This time, only for true believers. FBS against the world. In her final post on the Old Facebook group, Emily wrote, "This is not the time to run, hide or be silenced. It is a time to become more steadfast, more powerful and more protected in this radical work of healing the deepest wounds on this earth." Years later, Emily still sometimes talks about those days. Not so much about the facts of what happened to Lauren and journey, but as a kind of moment of FBS folklore. The time, she and FBS nearly got cancelled, but fought back and emerged even stronger. And as for Lauren, Emily says she didn't even know her. Here she is, speaking to students earlier this year. Okay, so the very first public slander thing I ever experienced, and it was a complete lie, but when a baby died in the Fibre Society Facebook group, or when a mother lost her baby and with my permission posted about it, the story wound up that I was her virtual midwife, which is not true, we had never worked together. I didn't know this woman at all. Next time on the birth keepers, FBS grows into a global business empire. Emily Saldaya and Yelanda Norris Clark were both approached for comments about the issues raised in this series. Neither provided a substantive response. In reply to one email, Emily said, "Some of these allegations are false or defamatory." After we published the findings of our investigation, Emily posted a statement on Instagram, branding our report propaganda and suggesting it contained lies. She previously criticized other media coverage for unfairly depicting her as "some manipulative cult leader" and said she does not care whether women free birth, but wants them to have the option to choose. Yelanda has previously said FBS was the most ethical kind of business you can run. She has said FBS critics fail to understand its commitment to mothers taking radical responsibility, and that she should not be held responsible for her mother's choices. Yelanda has also said, "She has always been transparent that she's not a registered midwife." In May, FBS released a disclaimer, saying its content was not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition related to pregnancy or birth. It added, "For medical advice, consult your healthcare provider." You can read all our reporting on the free birth society at the Guardian.com. Reporting and presenting was by Sharon Carley and Lucy Osborne. The series producers were Elizabeth Cassin and Joshua Kelly. The development and field producer was Lucy Hoff. Music composition, sound design, was by Rudy Tegadelo. The commissioning editors were Nicole Jackson and Paul Lewis. This is The Guardian.