Welcome to the 45th episode of the podcast and to our one year anniversary! This is such a wonderful milestone of creating content for you that is relevant and helpful in navigating your way through giving birth in Finland, especially as a foreigner. Thank you for being with me on this journey and for coming back each week to listen to these episodes! On the podcast today, I have Anayte on to talk about her birth story which was also attended by her Nest doula Rosalia. Anayte shared how, already in her childhood, she was inspired by a book which spoke about birth as a marathon and how this book influenced her view of birth. She shared the impact that having a doula had on her, the process of facing her fears before the birth, and how useful it was to learn pain coping techniques in preparation. At the end of the episode I asked Anayte what she learned about being a mother from birthing her daughter. Stay tuned until the end to hear what she took away from this rite of passage. Speaking of rites of passage, I am hosting a very special webinar all about rites of passage and moments of transition in our life. Together with my friend Tori Milner, we will be giving you practical tools on how you can learn from one transition to support yourself in another. This webinar is for anyone in a rite of passage or before a rite of passage, wanting to support people who are going through transitional moments, or maybe have had challenging transitions in the past and want to change that for the better. If you are pregnant as you are listening to this, then the webinar is 100% for you! Join me there to get a closer look at preparing for the rite of passage and transition that birth is towards motherhood, also if it's your second or third or fourth child. You can join me on this webinar using the link in the show notes! And now, let's get into this week's birth story with Anayte. 

Links:

• To find out more about Rosalia (birth doula): https://birth.fi/
• Sign up for my webinar "Connecting Our Rites of Passage to Support Life Transitions" https://fienta.com/rites-of-passage-and-life-transitions

Topics:

• preparing for birth like a marathon
• the process of choosing a birth doula 
• importance of facing your fears in birth preparation with a doula
• the impact that the pain coping techniques workshop Anayte took 
• the pain coping technique that Anayte found useful in birth 
• a birth that started with the water breaking 
• a birth in Lohja 
• the added value of having Rosalia as the birth doula
• the desire to be micro managed in the immediate postpartum 
• Anayte's learning from the rite of passage of birthing her first daughter