150: What Home Births Taught Dr. Nathan Riley About Restoring Magic to the Childbirth Process

Meredith Oke: 00:06:01

Doctor Nathan Riley, welcome to the QPC podcast.

Meredith Oke: 00:06:03

This is going to be fun.

Nathan Riley: 00:06:05

Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

Meredith Oke: 00:06:08

All right, so as we were, we were just discussing

Meredith Oke: 00:06:11

before I, before I hit record, it seems to me,

Meredith Oke: 00:06:14

anecdotally anyway, that the migration of ob GYN

Meredith Oke: 00:06:19

physicians into the integrative medicine,

Meredith Oke: 00:06:22

holistic medicine, is, is a very narrow path.

Meredith Oke: 00:06:26

Like when I think of integrative physicians, a

Meredith Oke: 00:06:28

lot of them have come from family medicine,

Meredith Oke: 00:06:30

internal medicine, and the obs are just for the

Meredith Oke: 00:06:34

most part anyway, seems to be like really locked

Meredith Oke: 00:06:37

into their system. So how'd you, how'd you break

Meredith Oke: 00:06:39

out?

Nathan Riley: 00:06:42

Well, thanks for having me. First off, that's a

Nathan Riley: 00:06:46

really good question. I probably give a slightly

Nathan Riley: 00:06:48

different answer and I don't want to go into my

Nathan Riley: 00:06:49

whole story, but yes, I was trained

Nathan Riley: 00:06:51

conventionally. I went to the med school, the

Nathan Riley: 00:06:53

residency, I did fellowship and end of life care,

Nathan Riley: 00:06:55

which is actually informs how I care for women in

Nathan Riley: 00:06:59

families, in childbirth and. Because birth and

Nathan Riley: 00:07:02

death are really, really quite similar when you

Nathan Riley: 00:07:04

get down, really down to it. And I say that

Nathan Riley: 00:07:08

through the lens of not like this informed

Nathan Riley: 00:07:11

consent thing, but more about the relationship

Nathan Riley: 00:07:13

building that's required for a practitioner to

Nathan Riley: 00:07:16

really support somebody. You know, if you're

Nathan Riley: 00:07:17

going to be dying, there's no right way to die.

Nathan Riley: 00:07:20

But if you have cancer, the oncologist is

Nathan Riley: 00:07:22

automatically going to say, if you're in my

Nathan Riley: 00:07:23

office, you're here for either cutting it out,

Nathan Riley: 00:07:25

burning it out or you know, giving you chemical

Nathan Riley: 00:07:29

stuff in order to try to get your, your cancer

Nathan Riley: 00:07:32

at, you know, at bay. And that isn't necessarily

Nathan Riley: 00:07:36

the best option for everybody. You know, a 95

Nathan Riley: 00:07:38

year old with skin cancer versus a 25 year old

Nathan Riley: 00:07:41

with skin cancer or something like that, like

Nathan Riley: 00:07:43

that's a very different conversation. And it's

Nathan Riley: 00:07:45

not just one option for every single person who

Nathan Riley: 00:07:48

comes in the door. So, so anyways, I did that. I

Nathan Riley: 00:07:52

got recruited out right before COVID We didn't

Nathan Riley: 00:07:55

know Covid was going to happen, but I got

Nathan Riley: 00:07:56

recruited to do inpatient pallia care and

Nathan Riley: 00:07:58

inpatient obstetrics work as a laborist, which is

Nathan Riley: 00:08:02

obstetrics and gynecology. When you're a

Nathan Riley: 00:08:04

laborist, basically you're on call for anything

Nathan Riley: 00:08:06

that comes into the hospital that doesn't have an

Nathan Riley: 00:08:08

assigned practitioner. So let's say, Meredith,

Nathan Riley: 00:08:10

let's say you, you have your, your OB GYN you've

Nathan Riley: 00:08:13

seen for 40 years, or let's say, let's say

Nathan Riley: 00:08:15

you're, let's say you're 20 and you're going to

Nathan Riley: 00:08:17

Try to have a baby. And you've seen this doctor

Nathan Riley: 00:08:20

for five years. You get pregnant at 25 and you

Nathan Riley: 00:08:25

know, you go back to your OB GYN and they're

Nathan Riley: 00:08:27

like, oh, congrats. And you go through the whole

Nathan Riley: 00:08:28

pregnancy thing. Well, they may not be the doctor

Nathan Riley: 00:08:30

that's necessarily there at your birth. There

Nathan Riley: 00:08:32

could be a group of doctors and let's say, let's

Nathan Riley: 00:08:35

say you just moved to a new city and you haven't

Nathan Riley: 00:08:37

ever actually established care, but you show up

Nathan Riley: 00:08:39

in labor, they don't know who to call, there

Nathan Riley: 00:08:41

isn't anybody to call. So they have somebody on

Nathan Riley: 00:08:43

staff who's at the hospital, employed, contracted

Nathan Riley: 00:08:46

with the hospital to take care of all of the

Nathan Riley: 00:08:48

quote, emergencies that come in. And really

Nathan Riley: 00:08:51

everything is seen in, emerge as an emergency in

Nathan Riley: 00:08:53

childbirth, which is kind of the crux of my life.

Nathan Riley: 00:08:56

Is it really an emergency? Is this really a

Nathan Riley: 00:08:58

disease? Is this something really begging for

Nathan Riley: 00:09:00

medical intervention? Probably not, but if it is,

Nathan Riley: 00:09:04

then I'm here with my tools in order to help fix

Nathan Riley: 00:09:07

it. So I did that for a little bit. We had our

Nathan Riley: 00:09:11

first daughter in the hospital in February. It

Nathan Riley: 00:09:13

was February 23, 2020. And we all know what

Nathan Riley: 00:09:16

happened in March 2020, where the lockdowns

Nathan Riley: 00:09:19

happened and the masking and the swabbing and the

Nathan Riley: 00:09:22

vaccines and all of this. And I immediately kind

Nathan Riley: 00:09:24

of put pause. You know, I, I actually had

Nathan Riley: 00:09:26

resigned from my position cause I wanted to be

Nathan Riley: 00:09:28

able to spend more time at home. Those long 24

Nathan Riley: 00:09:31

hour calls are just brutal. It's like two days to

Nathan Riley: 00:09:34

recover and then there's a 24 hour shift itself

Nathan Riley: 00:09:37

where my wife would be left at home.

Meredith Oke: 00:09:38

The shift is 24 hours long usually.

Nathan Riley: 00:09:41

Yeah, usually you start at 7am, go home the next

Nathan Riley: 00:09:44

day at 6:59am and that whole time you might do

Nathan Riley: 00:09:49

several C sections, you might do a, several, you

Nathan Riley: 00:09:52

know, vaginal bursts, you might be in the ER

Nathan Riley: 00:09:53

doing some ectopic, you know, surgeries, removal

Nathan Riley: 00:09:57

of a fallopian tubes or draining a Bartholin's

Nathan Riley: 00:09:59

gland cyst or whatever. There can be all kinds of

Nathan Riley: 00:10:02

stuff that happens when you're the guy who's

Nathan Riley: 00:10:04

responding to everything that comes in without an

Nathan Riley: 00:10:07

assigned practitioner. So you're, you're managing

Nathan Riley: 00:10:09

the, the emergency room and labor and delivery

Nathan Riley: 00:10:11

and the triage, meaning you're helping people

Nathan Riley: 00:10:13

come in or out based on where they are in their

Nathan Riley: 00:10:16

process. So if you're in early labor but you're

Nathan Riley: 00:10:17

not ready to be admitted, you know, you might

Nathan Riley: 00:10:19

just give some recommendations on, on, you know,

Nathan Riley: 00:10:21

an easeful early transition through that early

Nathan Riley: 00:10:24

labor process, but they're going to go home to do

Nathan Riley: 00:10:26

that and come back later. But, you know, you've

Nathan Riley: 00:10:28

got your ultrasounds, you've got your scalpels,

Nathan Riley: 00:10:30

you got your pharmacy on site, you're there and

Nathan Riley: 00:10:32

they come into this facility and you help decide,

Nathan Riley: 00:10:36

you know, who. You're the gatekeeper,

Nathan Riley: 00:10:38

essentially. And that's 24 hours. That's really

Nathan Riley: 00:10:40

hard work. And not to mention, you're now in a

Nathan Riley: 00:10:43

room in a building that's just buzzing with

Nathan Riley: 00:10:46

electricity. You've got lots of sitting and lots

Nathan Riley: 00:10:50

of looking at computer screens. The hospital food

Nathan Riley: 00:10:53

is terrible, so you have to bring all of your own

Nathan Riley: 00:10:55

food in if you want to eat healthy. It's just. It

Nathan Riley: 00:10:57

just wrecks you. I mean, it really, really does

Nathan Riley: 00:10:59

quite a number on the individual who's doing

Nathan Riley: 00:11:01

that. And so I resigned from that position and

Nathan Riley: 00:11:05

that was already kind of in the works. From early

Nathan Riley: 00:11:07

on in my training, I knew that this was going to

Nathan Riley: 00:11:10

be hard because it was so out of alignment with

Nathan Riley: 00:11:13

how I saw birth as a, as a sort of a, an ideal,

Nathan Riley: 00:11:20

you know. And I had attended some home births

Nathan Riley: 00:11:23

before that with Dr. Stu Fishbein out in LA and

Nathan Riley: 00:11:27

some midwives at the time. And I was like, wow,

Nathan Riley: 00:11:30

this is really different doing this outside the

Nathan Riley: 00:11:31

hospital. So I always had dreamt like, oh, maybe

Nathan Riley: 00:11:34

I would do that. But I also have these surgical

Nathan Riley: 00:11:36

skills and I have this kind of reasonable way of,

Nathan Riley: 00:11:41

of approaching childbirth. I can bring that into

Nathan Riley: 00:11:43

the hospital and still do that and, and just do

Nathan Riley: 00:11:45

it better than I was trained. But I resigned

Nathan Riley: 00:11:48

because it was like, this is too much work. It's

Nathan Riley: 00:11:50

just 24 hours of hard labor twice a week. I mean,

Nathan Riley: 00:11:54

it was sometimes Friday into Saturday and then

Nathan Riley: 00:11:56

Sunday into Monday. So I'm doing like, I get like

Nathan Riley: 00:11:58

a little break in between. It was just, it was

Nathan Riley: 00:12:00

just hard. And then to be doing my regular 9 to 5

Nathan Riley: 00:12:03

Monday through Friday with hard stuff around end

Nathan Riley: 00:12:05

of life care and pout of, you know, symptomatic.

Meredith Oke: 00:12:08

So you were doing this on top of a nine to five.

Meredith Oke: 00:12:11

Good Lord. Nathan. I just. Side note, I think

Meredith Oke: 00:12:14

it's important. I just want to acknowledge,

Meredith Oke: 00:12:16

because I know a lot of times when we, we start

Meredith Oke: 00:12:19

to understand how the medical system works, we

Meredith Oke: 00:12:21

get really mad at doctors.

Nathan Riley: 00:12:23

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:12:23

And I just want to take a moment to acknowledge.

Nathan Riley: 00:12:25

Thank you.

Meredith Oke: 00:12:26

The hellscape that it can be to work in that

Meredith Oke: 00:12:31

system. And like, when are you supposed to be

Meredith Oke: 00:12:33

researching new things and understanding.

Nathan Riley: 00:12:35

Yeah. And that's exactly right. Yeah. Like, what

Nathan Riley: 00:12:39

time does a person have to really start reading

Nathan Riley: 00:12:41

about the mitochondria and maybe reimagining, you

Nathan Riley: 00:12:45

know what, you know the importance of, of being

Nathan Riley: 00:12:47

outside in the sunshine. You're never seeing

Nathan Riley: 00:12:49

sunshine. So why, you know, why would I read a

Nathan Riley: 00:12:52

book that is convincing me that my entire

Nathan Riley: 00:12:54

livelihood is putting my own health at risk?

Nathan Riley: 00:12:56

Like, it's almost nice to just be ignorantly

Nathan Riley: 00:12:58

blissful about that. Which goes into your. One of

Nathan Riley: 00:13:00

your questions, which is, why don't B.G. wayans

Nathan Riley: 00:13:03

do this? But we'll get to that. Get to that

Nathan Riley: 00:13:05

later. So I was doing the palliative care thing.

Nathan Riley: 00:13:08

Covid happens. I try to go back to that job. They

Nathan Riley: 00:13:10

don't want me back. I'm the California kid with a

Nathan Riley: 00:13:11

nose ring, tattoos. I wear colorful outfits, I

Nathan Riley: 00:13:15

ride a Harley. Like, I don't know, I just had a

Nathan Riley: 00:13:17

totally different look about me. And this is

Nathan Riley: 00:13:19

Kentucky. I live in Kentucky. It's an old boys

Nathan Riley: 00:13:22

club. You know, I'm not, not a member of a

Nathan Riley: 00:13:23

country club. I don't even know what the name of

Nathan Riley: 00:13:25

a country club is. I've never picked up a golf

Nathan Riley: 00:13:27

club except to smash a ball in the wrong

Nathan Riley: 00:13:30

direction at a driving range, you know, and so I

Nathan Riley: 00:13:33

don't really fit in. I'm not one of those guys.

Nathan Riley: 00:13:35

But I figured I'm an md and when I started seeing

Nathan Riley: 00:13:38

problems happen, like I'm a big bad doctor here

Nathan Riley: 00:13:40

at this big beautiful hospital system and I

Nathan Riley: 00:13:45

started pointing out some things that were, you

Nathan Riley: 00:13:46

know, inconsistencies, you know, like, this is

Nathan Riley: 00:13:49

kind of strange. We're going to cut off this

Nathan Riley: 00:13:50

lady's leg. For what reason? Like, well, she has

Nathan Riley: 00:13:54

cellulitis, okay, but she's also got a stroke.

Nathan Riley: 00:13:56

She has no family members to help consent for

Nathan Riley: 00:13:58

this. And she's going to go back to this facility

Nathan Riley: 00:14:01

to rehab. She can't even follow my finger, like,

Nathan Riley: 00:14:03

who's rehabbing here? Like, what is going on

Nathan Riley: 00:14:04

here? And I started just finding these little

Nathan Riley: 00:14:06

things and, and I won't say more about that

Nathan Riley: 00:14:08

because I did sign an NDA. But the point is that

Nathan Riley: 00:14:11

you start to see these things happening on the,

Nathan Riley: 00:14:14

the administration of medicine. And when you

Nathan Riley: 00:14:17

start questioning those things, people don't

Nathan Riley: 00:14:18

really like it. So my team was like. And I was

Nathan Riley: 00:14:20

also like, hey, I need a real office. I'm in like

Nathan Riley: 00:14:22

a closet with dirty hospital beds out outside

Nathan Riley: 00:14:25

that I have to push through to get to my

Nathan Riley: 00:14:26

patients. You know, the palliative care teams

Nathan Riley: 00:14:28

aren't always very well respected and. And so

Nathan Riley: 00:14:32

they didn't want me back. And so I said, well, I

Nathan Riley: 00:14:34

have to go back. This is my job. And I tried for

Nathan Riley: 00:14:37

a little bit, but it was in the middle of COVID

Nathan Riley: 00:14:38

2N 95S. And by the way, at the very beginning, I

Nathan Riley: 00:14:41

was quite. It was like, there's Humvees parked

Nathan Riley: 00:14:43

out front. The National Guard is involved. Like,

Nathan Riley: 00:14:45

this did sound very scary, but right away I was.

Nathan Riley: 00:14:48

I remember actually I'd reached into, like, grab

Nathan Riley: 00:14:50

some nuts. And I was eating while I was

Nathan Riley: 00:14:52

documenting, while I was back in the hospital and

Nathan Riley: 00:14:54

I hadn't washed my hands, and I was like, oh, my

Nathan Riley: 00:14:57

God, like, I'm getting the plague or something.

Nathan Riley: 00:15:00

And very, very quickly, early on, it was like,

Nathan Riley: 00:15:03

okay, there's something up here. And then, of

Nathan Riley: 00:15:05

course, ACOG, the American College of OB GYNs,

Nathan Riley: 00:15:08

wants us to start promoting and recommending the

Nathan Riley: 00:15:11

vaccines. And I obviously was. Was like, well,

Nathan Riley: 00:15:14

where's the safety data? We haven't even had a

Nathan Riley: 00:15:16

vaccine for longer than a minute. And now we're

Nathan Riley: 00:15:19

pushing this on pregnant women who we've also

Nathan Riley: 00:15:21

been shaming for everything from sex in pregnancy

Nathan Riley: 00:15:24

to wine in pregnancy to sushi in pregnanc. Get

Nathan Riley: 00:15:28

rid of your cats. It was like, now we're going to

Nathan Riley: 00:15:31

inject this new thing. I don't know. So in the

Nathan Riley: 00:15:34

sort of interim, I started also kind of exploring

Nathan Riley: 00:15:38

that. And I was like, gosh, there's a lot wrong

Nathan Riley: 00:15:39

with this. And. And so eventually I said, I'm

Nathan Riley: 00:15:44

going to leave the hospital. I'm going to go to

Nathan Riley: 00:15:46

work for hospice, and there's a beautiful hospice

Nathan Riley: 00:15:48

agency here in town. But then I got fired on the

Nathan Riley: 00:15:51

spot because I took my mask off taking care of a

Nathan Riley: 00:15:53

dying older guy. My grandfather had died during

Nathan Riley: 00:15:55

COVID at age 100 alone, waving to us in bubble

Nathan Riley: 00:15:59

wrap from his window in his room. And I was like,

Nathan Riley: 00:16:01

I'm not going to let that happen with this guy.

Nathan Riley: 00:16:03

Like, of course I'll take my mask off. Like, I

Nathan Riley: 00:16:04

wasn't opposed to wearing it, like, if that's a

Nathan Riley: 00:16:06

policy, but, like, this guy deserves dignity. And

Nathan Riley: 00:16:09

it was the next day, they were like, come in.

Nathan Riley: 00:16:11

We're not. You don't have patience. Today we have

Nathan Riley: 00:16:12

had a meeting, and HR is there with a little

Nathan Riley: 00:16:14

envelope. And that was the end. That was the end

Nathan Riley: 00:16:16

of the conventional route for me.

Meredith Oke: 00:16:18

Just to clarify, you were fired for removing your

Meredith Oke: 00:16:21

mask, alone in a room with somebody who's dying

Meredith Oke: 00:16:25

their dying breath?

Nathan Riley: 00:16:26

Yeah, yeah. And that's a part of the story that

Nathan Riley: 00:16:30

I've had to do quite a bit of healing from. But

Nathan Riley: 00:16:32

really, in retrospect, it was the greatest gift

Nathan Riley: 00:16:35

that. I mean, I got to end that career clipping

Nathan Riley: 00:16:38

an old man's toenails, rubbing lotion on his

Nathan Riley: 00:16:40

skin, making him a bowl of soup, and hearing

Nathan Riley: 00:16:42

about the many wars he had participated in as a

Nathan Riley: 00:16:44

part of a, you know, his. His background and his

Nathan Riley: 00:16:48

amateur baseball career. Like, all of the

Nathan Riley: 00:16:49

dignity, the dignifying things that we would all

Nathan Riley: 00:16:52

like. So I felt like I did the right thing. I got

Nathan Riley: 00:16:54

fired. It's okay. And I should still be sending

Nathan Riley: 00:16:56

them floral bouquets on September 3rd just

Nathan Riley: 00:16:59

passed. I should have sent them a floral bouquet

Nathan Riley: 00:17:01

every year because it. It really propelled me and

Nathan Riley: 00:17:04

compelled me to do what I really wanted to do.

Nathan Riley: 00:17:07

And that started with home birth. I was doing

Nathan Riley: 00:17:09

home birth for quite a bit, and then I found a

Nathan Riley: 00:17:11

niche supporting midwives in. And really in

Nathan Riley: 00:17:15

honoring what traditionally midwifery brought to

Nathan Riley: 00:17:18

maternity care that OBGYNs could never even catch

Nathan Riley: 00:17:21

a whisper of. And in part of helping people with

Nathan Riley: 00:17:26

the preconception through postpartum space, we

Nathan Riley: 00:17:29

can now utilize some supplements maybe here,

Nathan Riley: 00:17:31

some. Some integration of some environmental

Nathan Riley: 00:17:34

modification here. And then, of course, the

Nathan Riley: 00:17:36

sunlight, the grounding, all of this other stuff

Nathan Riley: 00:17:38

really helps throughout that continuum, including

Nathan Riley: 00:17:40

in the birth itself. So that's what I get to do

Nathan Riley: 00:17:43

now. And I make. I make way more money now than I

Nathan Riley: 00:17:46

would have in the past. And I don't. I have all

Nathan Riley: 00:17:48

the time in the world to raise two little girls,

Nathan Riley: 00:17:50

five and three. My second, by the way, was born

Nathan Riley: 00:17:52

during. In our bedroom right across the way here.

Nathan Riley: 00:17:55

And all of this stuff is heresy to OB gyns, which

Nathan Riley: 00:17:58

leads us to, why don't more OB gyns do this?

Nathan Riley: 00:18:01

Because it just sounds like heresy to them. It

Nathan Riley: 00:18:03

sounds like, this is how we do it. Why would we

Nathan Riley: 00:18:06

do it those other ways? Even if they had that

Nathan Riley: 00:18:09

information or access? I mean, they have access,

Nathan Riley: 00:18:11

but even if they were to pursue it, it's really

Nathan Riley: 00:18:14

confronting to what we were taught to do in our

Nathan Riley: 00:18:16

residency training and in our career. And what

Nathan Riley: 00:18:18

would. What would my colleagues think? And all

Nathan Riley: 00:18:20

this other stuff comes up and the inner child

Nathan Riley: 00:18:21

starts to. To. To. To. With. Because you work so

Nathan Riley: 00:18:25

hard to get here and you don't want to rattle,

Nathan Riley: 00:18:27

you know, rock the boat. But I've been rocking

Nathan Riley: 00:18:28

the boat since I was little. My mom will tell you

Nathan Riley: 00:18:30

that.

Meredith Oke: 00:18:32

Born boat rocker.

Nathan Riley: 00:18:34

Yeah, it's true.

Meredith Oke: 00:18:36

I had my middle child at home, and I even

Meredith Oke: 00:18:41

remember telling certain people there was a woman

Meredith Oke: 00:18:43

I knew who was a nurse. And I remember. I don't

Meredith Oke: 00:18:47

know why I felt I needed to let her know I was

Meredith Oke: 00:18:49

doing that, but I did. And, you know, the look on

Meredith Oke: 00:18:52

her face. And she Just immediately went to, you

Meredith Oke: 00:18:55

know, well, what if you bleed out and what if

Meredith Oke: 00:18:57

this happens and what if that happens? And, you

Meredith Oke: 00:19:01

know, and I remember saying, like, they don't.

Meredith Oke: 00:19:02

They don't just, like, show up. They have. They

Meredith Oke: 00:19:06

have, you know, access to medicine and things

Meredith Oke: 00:19:09

that might be needed in the moment. But, you

Meredith Oke: 00:19:12

know, even just in that personal conversation, I

Meredith Oke: 00:19:15

felt that. Yeah, that judgment, which is the same

Meredith Oke: 00:19:20

judgment we all felt during COVID Right. Which is

Meredith Oke: 00:19:23

like, how dare you be so selfish? How dare you

Meredith Oke: 00:19:26

take such a risk when.

Nathan Riley: 00:19:28

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:19:28

So this is the correct way to do it. And we all

Meredith Oke: 00:19:31

know that. What's wrong with you?

Nathan Riley: 00:19:34

And to their credit, they're right in the sense

Nathan Riley: 00:19:38

that every. Many, many, many, many, many. Almost.

Nathan Riley: 00:19:41

Almost everybody feels that way. So even the act

Nathan Riley: 00:19:45

of you having a home birth or even a free birth,

Nathan Riley: 00:19:47

which is a very different conversation, is truly

Nathan Riley: 00:19:52

an act of civil disobedience. It really is

Nathan Riley: 00:19:54

confronting to people. And if you're a doctor

Nathan Riley: 00:19:58

advocating for that, you are seen as a part of

Nathan Riley: 00:20:01

the problem. And so that's something I've had to

Nathan Riley: 00:20:03

work through, and it's no longer impacts me at

Nathan Riley: 00:20:07

all. But there's a lot of pressure, you know, for

Nathan Riley: 00:20:09

moms to do it. Right. And who knows how that

Nathan Riley: 00:20:11

conversation around the Thanksgiving dinner, you

Nathan Riley: 00:20:13

know, table goes. You had a vaginal breech birth

Nathan Riley: 00:20:16

at home. Like, you put our little nephew in

Nathan Riley: 00:20:19

danger. How could you be so irresponsible? You

Nathan Riley: 00:20:22

know, there's. There's this side eye thing that

Nathan Riley: 00:20:24

people do, even in families around you, just

Nathan Riley: 00:20:27

honoring your own autonomy and not wanting to

Nathan Riley: 00:20:29

have a C section or interventions. It's very

Nathan Riley: 00:20:32

confronting for people. So I want to give people

Nathan Riley: 00:20:33

permission to say, like, yeah, that sounds good,

Nathan Riley: 00:20:35

but it just wouldn't work for me. That's okay.

Nathan Riley: 00:20:37

Yeah, it's okay to have babies in hospitals, but

Nathan Riley: 00:20:39

whenever you have a home birth like you did, it

Nathan Riley: 00:20:42

is a very different experience. And it's actually

Nathan Riley: 00:20:44

very nourishing and can be very empowering for so

Nathan Riley: 00:20:46

many women, too, and their partners, I should say

Nathan Riley: 00:20:48

their families.

Meredith Oke: 00:20:50

Absolutely. I. And I had that experience because

Meredith Oke: 00:20:52

I had, you know, I read all the. I was reading

Meredith Oke: 00:20:56

all the holistic books and. And lived out of that

Meredith Oke: 00:20:59

mindset. But where I had my first two children in

Meredith Oke: 00:21:03

Toronto, Ontario, and they. Ontario is actually

Meredith Oke: 00:21:06

set up to have home births with a midwife under

Meredith Oke: 00:21:08

your insurance. But you have to get in there the

Meredith Oke: 00:21:11

second you're pregnant or it's full. Like, it's.

Meredith Oke: 00:21:13

It's a very. It's really hard to get in. But it.

Meredith Oke: 00:21:16

It does exist. So my first one, I, I totally

Meredith Oke: 00:21:19

missed the window. So I, I was in my heart with a

Meredith Oke: 00:21:23

midwife, but in. But in reality, I was with the

Meredith Oke: 00:21:27

obgyn, who had a vacancy was the only. There was

Meredith Oke: 00:21:30

like, I. The whole city was booked up. And yeah,

Meredith Oke: 00:21:34

socialized medicine, you have to just go with

Meredith Oke: 00:21:36

what. What's available.

Nathan Riley: 00:21:38

There's pros and cons, of course. Yeah, yeah,

Nathan Riley: 00:21:40

yeah. The fact that you're midw care is covered

Nathan Riley: 00:21:42

by insurance is already a pro.

Meredith Oke: 00:21:44

Yeah, no, it was. It's huge. And yeah, it's.

Meredith Oke: 00:21:48

It's. It's pretty amazing. Anyway, yeah, so I

Meredith Oke: 00:21:54

was, you know, I had read all of these, all of

Meredith Oke: 00:21:57

this literature, and I've heard of all these

Meredith Oke: 00:21:59

experience of birth being this really empowering

Meredith Oke: 00:22:02

experience. And I was like, it was

Meredith Oke: 00:22:05

transformative, but I'm not sure I would call it

Meredith Oke: 00:22:07

empowering. And then I. A couple years later, I

Meredith Oke: 00:22:10

had a home birth.

Nathan Riley: 00:22:11

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:22:12

And you know, with these midwives in my bedroom

Meredith Oke: 00:22:15

and they needed an extra person because one was

Meredith Oke: 00:22:18

still under training. So there is like a very

Meredith Oke: 00:22:20

experienced woman, but. But she was kind of like

Meredith Oke: 00:22:23

napping in the corner because she just got off a

Meredith Oke: 00:22:25

flight from India. I remember being like, how

Meredith Oke: 00:22:29

dare you sleep during all of this? And then I

Meredith Oke: 00:22:31

thought, well, if she's resting, clearly

Meredith Oke: 00:22:33

everything's going well. But they were, you know,

Meredith Oke: 00:22:36

in the hospital, it was like, do this, do this.

Meredith Oke: 00:22:37

Lie down. And then I remember, like, as the labor

Meredith Oke: 00:22:40

got going in the home birth, I was like, okay,

Meredith Oke: 00:22:42

now what do I do? And they were like, I don't

Meredith Oke: 00:22:44

know. What is your body? What does your body want

Meredith Oke: 00:22:46

to do? I was like, oh, you know, and I just. So I

Meredith Oke: 00:22:52

just went with what my body wanted to do. And I

Meredith Oke: 00:22:55

just. That was my mom. Like, oh, this is what

Meredith Oke: 00:22:57

everyone's talking about.

Nathan Riley: 00:22:59

Yeah. So that's the empowerment. Yeah. That

Nathan Riley: 00:23:02

little switch is. What does. It is. What do you

Nathan Riley: 00:23:05

want to do? Are you talking to me? I mean, that's

Nathan Riley: 00:23:09

very. That can be very empowering for somebody to

Nathan Riley: 00:23:13

finally say, hey, don't outsource your power to

Nathan Riley: 00:23:15

me. What do you want to do? I'll be here to help

Nathan Riley: 00:23:16

guide you or to give you recommendations or some

Nathan Riley: 00:23:20

data or whatever. But you're the captain of this

Nathan Riley: 00:23:22

ship. That right there is the flip in the

Nathan Riley: 00:23:25

paradigm from the obstetrics model to midwifery.

Nathan Riley: 00:23:28

For the most part, not all midwives are. Do that,

Nathan Riley: 00:23:30

doing that, but when they're doing it, well, I

Nathan Riley: 00:23:33

think that's. That's the start of it right there.

Meredith Oke: 00:23:37

You mentioned earlier the, the midwife Approach

Meredith Oke: 00:23:41

versus the obstetric approach. Could you say more

Meredith Oke: 00:23:43

about that? Like how you see the what the role of

Meredith Oke: 00:23:48

the midwife as it's sort of quote unquote, meant,

Meredith Oke: 00:23:51

meant to be.

Nathan Riley: 00:23:53

Yeah. And I want to be careful with that language

Nathan Riley: 00:23:56

because I don't, I don't like the should, would,

Nathan Riley: 00:23:58

could language. Uh, so I don't think that there's

Nathan Riley: 00:24:01

any right way to do midwifery in its fullest

Nathan Riley: 00:24:03

expression. Of course, yeah. In its fullest

Nathan Riley: 00:24:06

expression. Midwifery starts with relationship

Nathan Riley: 00:24:09

building. And most of the time, and this is too

Nathan Riley: 00:24:13

sort of in defense of the obstetrics model, you

Nathan Riley: 00:24:17

are a part of a massive business operation and in

Nathan Riley: 00:24:20

order to meet their, their bottom end or their,

Nathan Riley: 00:24:24

to make their, their, their ends meet, but also

Nathan Riley: 00:24:26

then to make a profit, you need to see so many

Nathan Riley: 00:24:29

people in a day. So they might expect you to see,

Nathan Riley: 00:24:32

I don't know, up to 12. One of my colleagues out

Nathan Riley: 00:24:34

in LA, she was like, man, I'm like, really

Nathan Riley: 00:24:36

struggling with this because now they want me to

Nathan Riley: 00:24:38

see like 12 people in a morning. And the problem

Nathan Riley: 00:24:41

is, as you get better at this and faster at this,

Nathan Riley: 00:24:45

even that rapport building, you might do it

Nathan Riley: 00:24:47

really, really quickly and efficiently, but

Nathan Riley: 00:24:49

you're going to be rewarded with more work. This

Nathan Riley: 00:24:51

is that productivity model. And people blame

Nathan Riley: 00:24:54

capitalism and all that, and, yeah, sure, I guess

Nathan Riley: 00:24:56

that's a part of it, but the reality is they want

Nathan Riley: 00:24:58

to squeeze out as much of your energy as they

Nathan Riley: 00:25:00

can. And in the clinic, sometimes that's the

Nathan Riley: 00:25:03

hardest part of an OB GYN's life, is I have to go

Nathan Riley: 00:25:06

in, get out. And I know that this lady wants to

Nathan Riley: 00:25:08

talk more because she has a history of a

Nathan Riley: 00:25:09

stillbirth, but I'm only given 15 minutes with

Nathan Riley: 00:25:12

her. So we measure the funnel height, we check

Nathan Riley: 00:25:14

the fetal heart tones, maybe. I mean, everybody's

Nathan Riley: 00:25:16

doing ultrasound now. There's a, there's a

Nathan Riley: 00:25:18

potential problem with ultrasound, but we're

Nathan Riley: 00:25:21

going to do all those things, collect your urine,

Nathan Riley: 00:25:22

look at your chart, make sure that we're not

Nathan Riley: 00:25:24

missing anything, and then we have a couple

Nathan Riley: 00:25:25

minutes maybe to, to chat so that you can trust

Nathan Riley: 00:25:27

me. And that's just not done. But in the

Nathan Riley: 00:25:30

midwifery model, you might meet with your midwife

Nathan Riley: 00:25:32

three hours, you know, I mean, it could be a long

Nathan Riley: 00:25:35

visit. Now, I don't know what it's like in

Nathan Riley: 00:25:36

Canada, but most midwives here in the States who

Nathan Riley: 00:25:41

are not certified nurse midwives, there's a big

Nathan Riley: 00:25:43

distinction there. Most certified professional

Nathan Riley: 00:25:45

midwives and most traditional or classical

Nathan Riley: 00:25:47

midwives who are not certified Certified

Nathan Riley: 00:25:49

professional midwives through an organization

Nathan Riley: 00:25:50

called narm. They're really just doing this

Nathan Riley: 00:25:53

because they learn through an apprenticeship

Nathan Riley: 00:25:54

based model and they know what they're doing and

Nathan Riley: 00:25:56

some of them are better than everybody, including

Nathan Riley: 00:25:58

myself. They might go to your house and spend the

Nathan Riley: 00:26:02

entire morning, they might have a whole pot of

Nathan Riley: 00:26:04

coffee with you, you know, or you know, have some

Nathan Riley: 00:26:08

quiche that you've heated up and you actually

Nathan Riley: 00:26:10

have this person coming into your home, taking

Nathan Riley: 00:26:12

off their shoes and respectfully finding where

Nathan Riley: 00:26:15

they fit in the room so that you can be on your

Nathan Riley: 00:26:17

labor ball or doing this, or you might have your

Nathan Riley: 00:26:19

kids and your dog running around. They're on your

Nathan Riley: 00:26:22

turf. And, and they, they, they, they have a

Nathan Riley: 00:26:26

unique appreciation for the honor that it is to

Nathan Riley: 00:26:30

come into your space versus you going into the

Nathan Riley: 00:26:32

assembly line. You know, wait in the clinic room,

Nathan Riley: 00:26:35

get your vitals, they ask you about domestic

Nathan Riley: 00:26:37

violence, they ask you about depression. You go

Nathan Riley: 00:26:39

into the office, you sit on the crinkly paper,

Nathan Riley: 00:26:41

maybe you have your pants off, they have the

Nathan Riley: 00:26:42

swabs already ready for GBS screening, they go in

Nathan Riley: 00:26:44

and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And you're gone. And

Nathan Riley: 00:26:46

you never even really got to ask like about, you

Nathan Riley: 00:26:50

know, I'm afraid, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm really

Nathan Riley: 00:26:52

scared about what might happen because this

Nathan Riley: 00:26:54

happened to my family member, you know. Oh, I

Nathan Riley: 00:26:56

wouldn't worry about that. That's low risk. You

Nathan Riley: 00:26:57

may just, you just don't get into that dialogue.

Nathan Riley: 00:27:00

So home birth midwives work very hard. They're

Nathan Riley: 00:27:02

basically on a 24 hour call schedule at all

Nathan Riley: 00:27:05

times. And that deserves some respect. Just like

Nathan Riley: 00:27:08

the obs that are in the hospital just racking

Nathan Riley: 00:27:10

their brains, trying to stay alive while doing,

Nathan Riley: 00:27:13

you know, life saving surgeries or whatever. And

Nathan Riley: 00:27:16

so that is really the distinction now, the, the

Nathan Riley: 00:27:22

I'll say traditional because I mean like way back

Nathan Riley: 00:27:24

before we had modern obstetrics, traditionally

Nathan Riley: 00:27:25

midwifery didn't use a lot of interventions. They

Nathan Riley: 00:27:29

didn't use ripening agents for the cervix or

Nathan Riley: 00:27:33

many, many rounds of labs or they didn't do non

Nathan Riley: 00:27:38

stress tests, they didn't do a lot of that stuff.

Nathan Riley: 00:27:40

There was a lot of intuitive sort of

Nathan Riley: 00:27:41

understanding of, and also asking you what does

Nathan Riley: 00:27:44

your intuition say? And, and there's a part of

Nathan Riley: 00:27:46

that little piece where it's like, hey, what do

Nathan Riley: 00:27:48

you think? And if you say I don't, I think

Nathan Riley: 00:27:51

something's not going well right now. It doesn't

Nathan Riley: 00:27:54

matter what the labs and everything else say.

Nathan Riley: 00:27:55

Like we need to address that. We need to really

Nathan Riley: 00:27:57

sit with this and figure out what are we going to

Nathan Riley: 00:27:58

do? That was what women caring for women used to

Nathan Riley: 00:28:02

look like. And unfortunately, midwifery is being

Nathan Riley: 00:28:04

perverse more towards the obstetric side because

Nathan Riley: 00:28:06

of our litigious sort of environment here. States

Nathan Riley: 00:28:10

and even the federal government mandating that

Nathan Riley: 00:28:13

midwives do it a certain way. Licensing is

Nathan Riley: 00:28:15

putting restrictions on what you can and can't

Nathan Riley: 00:28:16

do. A license is merely a permission slip from

Nathan Riley: 00:28:20

the public agency that says you can do this job.

Nathan Riley: 00:28:24

And even my barber struggles with this. He's

Nathan Riley: 00:28:26

like, man, during COVID I couldn't cut hair

Nathan Riley: 00:28:27

because I couldn't open my shop. And if you came

Nathan Riley: 00:28:30

to my house and the board of barbers found out I

Nathan Riley: 00:28:33

was doing haircuts outside of an accredited

Nathan Riley: 00:28:35

facility, I could lose my license. I would lose

Nathan Riley: 00:28:38

my livelihood. So these, the. Even this licensing

Nathan Riley: 00:28:41

procedure, what this used to be, which is, hey,

Nathan Riley: 00:28:44

Meredith, you need something? Let me hear what

Nathan Riley: 00:28:47

you need and let me like, really understand where

Nathan Riley: 00:28:50

you are coming from and where you want to go. And

Nathan Riley: 00:28:53

then let me see if I can rally my resources

Nathan Riley: 00:28:54

around you and if I can't, let me help find

Nathan Riley: 00:28:56

somebody who can. This is a community effort as

Nathan Riley: 00:28:59

opposed to you tiptoeing into this machine. And

Nathan Riley: 00:29:04

there's a good reason to have the machine. But if

Nathan Riley: 00:29:07

we started with this default relationship

Nathan Riley: 00:29:10

building, trust building environment, I really

Nathan Riley: 00:29:12

think birth would go a lot better. And I actually

Nathan Riley: 00:29:14

think this is how we change the world. It's a,

Nathan Riley: 00:29:16

it's a, it's a far. Maybe it's a stretch, but I

Nathan Riley: 00:29:19

really think that if we can kind of operate

Nathan Riley: 00:29:21

around with some reverence for, for how

Nathan Riley: 00:29:25

transformative this experience is and how this

Nathan Riley: 00:29:27

relationship building is needs to be our

Nathan Riley: 00:29:29

priority, single priority. I really think we

Nathan Riley: 00:29:31

would change the world because the way that

Nathan Riley: 00:29:33

babies come into the world really matters and the

Nathan Riley: 00:29:36

way that women go through that transformation

Nathan Riley: 00:29:37

really matters.

Meredith Oke: 00:29:39

Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, there's. There's a

Meredith Oke: 00:29:44

certain level of trauma that. That comes out of

Meredith Oke: 00:29:46

that experience that I think overlays onto your

Meredith Oke: 00:29:51

experience of motherhood for. For quite a long

Meredith Oke: 00:29:53

time. And if we could, yeah. Soften that or

Meredith Oke: 00:30:01

create a way where, yeah, it felt normal and

Meredith Oke: 00:30:06

natural and wasn't associated with so much

Meredith Oke: 00:30:12

trauma, I think that would really. I agree. I

Meredith Oke: 00:30:15

think it would completely change the world. I

Meredith Oke: 00:30:17

think we totally underestimate the effect that

Meredith Oke: 00:30:20

all of this has on all of the humans who are born

Meredith Oke: 00:30:23

in that system.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's also this growing

Nathan Riley: 00:30:30

distrust between people and the, the people at

Nathan Riley: 00:30:34

large and our medical institutions for, For a

Nathan Riley: 00:30:38

complicated set of reasons, not least of which is

Nathan Riley: 00:30:41

the stuff that happened during the COVID moment.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:44

And I don't like to harp on it because I actually

Nathan Riley: 00:30:46

was not a person who was. Who was putting.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:50

Changing my profile picture that was like, all

Nathan Riley: 00:30:52

about, you know, health, freedom and all that.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:54

Like, I wasn't that guy. I did feel that inside.

Nathan Riley: 00:30:56

Like, oh, my gosh, like, we have a lot that we're

Nathan Riley: 00:30:58

going to lose here if we don't push back. But at

Nathan Riley: 00:31:01

the same time, it's my job as a physician for

Nathan Riley: 00:31:03

everybody to feel safe. And I don't think anybody

Nathan Riley: 00:31:06

who takes a firm hard line against anything is

Nathan Riley: 00:31:11

necessarily doing us much good, because we, as a,

Nathan Riley: 00:31:14

As a. An institution, let's say, the medical

Nathan Riley: 00:31:16

profession, what we've lost is trust. And so you

Nathan Riley: 00:31:20

use the word softening. I, even during COVID

Nathan Riley: 00:31:23

started getting so riled up that I found that I

Nathan Riley: 00:31:25

lost a softening. I needed to actually soften in

Nathan Riley: 00:31:28

order to, like, sit back and start to receiving

Nathan Riley: 00:31:30

and listening again. And there are certain

Nathan Riley: 00:31:34

individuals, even in the field of quantum

Nathan Riley: 00:31:38

biology, who have a very harsh tone. And you're

Nathan Riley: 00:31:43

not going to convince everybody by bullying them

Nathan Riley: 00:31:46

into believing what you believe. It doesn't work

Nathan Riley: 00:31:48

like that. And so when OB GYNs want to start

Nathan Riley: 00:31:52

bullying people and making them feel silly or

Nathan Riley: 00:31:54

stupid or incompetent or irresponsible for

Nathan Riley: 00:31:57

wanting to just have a little more autonomy in

Nathan Riley: 00:31:59

their birth, the. The use of, Of. Of. Of bullying

Nathan Riley: 00:32:03

behavior and language is furthering the divide

Nathan Riley: 00:32:07

between the consumers and the people that we've

Nathan Riley: 00:32:09

actually taken an oath to care for. So we have to

Nathan Riley: 00:32:11

be very, very aware of our language and very

Nathan Riley: 00:32:14

discerning with how we approach various topics

Nathan Riley: 00:32:17

that are very divisive, naturally, given the

Nathan Riley: 00:32:19

state of North America. And we want to draw

Nathan Riley: 00:32:22

people in, we actually want to be curious as

Nathan Riley: 00:32:24

opposed to reactive. And that's like any obgyn

Nathan Riley: 00:32:27

who's listening. I just want you to be curious

Nathan Riley: 00:32:29

about why people aren't going into hospitals to

Nathan Riley: 00:32:31

have births. Why? Is it. Is it because they're

Nathan Riley: 00:32:33

irresponsible, or is it because they don't feel

Nathan Riley: 00:32:35

that they can trust you? And if we can start to

Nathan Riley: 00:32:38

just slowly put those Lego blocks together to

Nathan Riley: 00:32:41

build a tower of trust where we can both meet in

Nathan Riley: 00:32:44

mutual agreement around curiosity, I think it's

Nathan Riley: 00:32:47

going to do quite a bit of good. And it actually

Nathan Riley: 00:32:48

might be very healing for women who have had

Nathan Riley: 00:32:50

traumatic births. But, yeah, I'll just leave it

Nathan Riley: 00:32:54

at that.

Meredith Oke: 00:32:56

Yes. No, because, I mean, I agree that I think

Meredith Oke: 00:32:59

the medical system absolutely has its place and

Meredith Oke: 00:33:02

it's very, very good at, particularly crises,

Meredith Oke: 00:33:05

whether it's a accident or major infection or,

Meredith Oke: 00:33:10

you know, but when birth becomes medicalized,

Meredith Oke: 00:33:15

we're de facto then saying that birth is a crisis.

Nathan Riley: 00:33:19

Right.

Meredith Oke: 00:33:20

When it. That's not the default nature of it. It

Meredith Oke: 00:33:24

can. There can be a crisis that occurs. But we

Meredith Oke: 00:33:27

take that. It's sort of like as the starting

Meredith Oke: 00:33:30

point.

Nathan Riley: 00:33:31

Right.

Meredith Oke: 00:33:31

This natural, you know, process that we've been

Meredith Oke: 00:33:36

engaged in since the dawn of our existence is

Meredith Oke: 00:33:40

somehow a crisis that must be managed by a crisis

Meredith Oke: 00:33:43

management system.

Nathan Riley: 00:33:45

Yeah, yeah. And. And this is probably a good

Nathan Riley: 00:33:49

opportunity to talk about what's. What's really

Nathan Riley: 00:33:52

lacking in the purview of a conventional. I don't

Nathan Riley: 00:33:56

use traditional because traditional would predate

Nathan Riley: 00:33:58

conventional. Tradition would be like way before

Nathan Riley: 00:34:01

we had Rockefeller medicine, what were people

Nathan Riley: 00:34:03

doing to care for one another? And there are

Nathan Riley: 00:34:06

going to be principles there that we can apply to

Nathan Riley: 00:34:08

this beautiful technologically advanced society

Nathan Riley: 00:34:12

that would make a beautiful marriage in order to

Nathan Riley: 00:34:14

help us move forward and budge that needle. So

Nathan Riley: 00:34:17

you, you mentioned crises. Pathology is what ob

Nathan Riley: 00:34:20

gyns are good at. We're good at surgery and

Nathan Riley: 00:34:22

pathology. We are way better than anybody else at

Nathan Riley: 00:34:25

managing pathology. And specifically with the

Nathan Riley: 00:34:29

need for surgery in childbirth. There's no

Nathan Riley: 00:34:31

question about that. But when we see the

Nathan Riley: 00:34:34

consequence as the cause, meaning certain bad

Nathan Riley: 00:34:39

things can happen in pregnancies and with our

Nathan Riley: 00:34:41

chronically ill society here in the United

Nathan Riley: 00:34:44

States, yes, we have a lot of good reasons to

Nathan Riley: 00:34:47

have obgyns, but nobody's really talking about,

Nathan Riley: 00:34:52

what if we didn't think of pregnancy as a

Nathan Riley: 00:34:55

disease? And what if we. Instead of focusing on

Nathan Riley: 00:34:57

the bad things that happen? This is a lesson from

Nathan Riley: 00:34:59

Michel Odon, who's a Parisian general surgeon who

Nathan Riley: 00:35:02

wrote so many books. I don't. 20 books or

Nathan Riley: 00:35:04

something. He said we're asking the wrong

Nathan Riley: 00:35:07

question. We're not. We shouldn't be asking, why

Nathan Riley: 00:35:09

do these bursts go wrong? You know, why do these

Nathan Riley: 00:35:12

bad things happen? We should be asking, what

Nathan Riley: 00:35:13

about, you know, Stephanie riley, who had two

Nathan Riley: 00:35:16

perfect pregnancies? Why did she have an hour, 46

Nathan Riley: 00:35:20

minutes of labor and have a baby breathed out

Nathan Riley: 00:35:22

with some somatic breathwork in her bed, on her

Nathan Riley: 00:35:25

chest, without any reason to even have any

Nathan Riley: 00:35:27

medical personnel there? We had midwives there,

Nathan Riley: 00:35:29

but they didn't do anything. Why did that happen

Nathan Riley: 00:35:33

for her? We should be focusing on that. And that

Nathan Riley: 00:35:35

gets us into, okay, maybe the years and

Nathan Riley: 00:35:39

especially, let's say, the months. But. But even

Nathan Riley: 00:35:42

the years preceding pregnancy. What could all of

Nathan Riley: 00:35:45

this environmental modification do in order to

Nathan Riley: 00:35:49

make sure that more women are having that

Nathan Riley: 00:35:51

beautiful quote, easy birth versus it becoming a

Nathan Riley: 00:35:55

pathology, which is the reality for many

Nathan Riley: 00:35:57

families. It does become a pathology. And now you

Nathan Riley: 00:36:00

don't really have any choice. If you want a

Nathan Riley: 00:36:01

living baby, we have to go to the operating room.

Nathan Riley: 00:36:04

And nobody's asking that question. And part of it

Nathan Riley: 00:36:07

is that we don't learn anything about this in

Nathan Riley: 00:36:09

medical training. The other part is that we're so

Nathan Riley: 00:36:13

consumed with the hospital environment and the

Nathan Riley: 00:36:16

technology and this myriad of interventions that

Nathan Riley: 00:36:19

we can't even see outside of the box in order to

Nathan Riley: 00:36:23

improve our practice, which is not, hey, let's.

Nathan Riley: 00:36:26

Let's do some complementary medicine. The

Nathan Riley: 00:36:28

sunlight, the grounding, the nutrition, the

Nathan Riley: 00:36:31

sleep, stress management, interpersonal

Nathan Riley: 00:36:34

relationships, the quality of your water, all of

Nathan Riley: 00:36:37

that should precede pregnancy. And then you have

Nathan Riley: 00:36:42

a chance that's way below average of those bad

Nathan Riley: 00:36:44

things happening. And those are the people that

Nathan Riley: 00:36:48

I've studied. That is where my. That's how I got

Nathan Riley: 00:36:51

into this quantum biology space. It's like, where

Nathan Riley: 00:36:54

can I further address some environmental poison?

Nathan Riley: 00:36:58

And I'm using poison, generally speaking here. It

Nathan Riley: 00:37:00

could be mental, it could be physical, it could

Nathan Riley: 00:37:02

be whatever. Where are these poisons disrupting

Nathan Riley: 00:37:05

the natural process that could unfold and has

Nathan Riley: 00:37:08

always unfolded until we're being bombarded with

Nathan Riley: 00:37:12

all of this other noise that is rattling our cage

Nathan Riley: 00:37:17

such that pregnancy does become a disease more

Nathan Riley: 00:37:20

than it should and leads to C sections nearly 40%

Nathan Riley: 00:37:23

of the time and inductions about a third of the

Nathan Riley: 00:37:25

time. How can we get ahead of that to prevent

Nathan Riley: 00:37:29

those things from happening? And when you haven't

Nathan Riley: 00:37:33

learned it, you haven't lived it, and you haven't

Nathan Riley: 00:37:35

been incentivized to do that. It makes it very

Nathan Riley: 00:37:37

hard for any practitioner. It doesn't matter how

Nathan Riley: 00:37:39

old they are, how experienced they are, where

Nathan Riley: 00:37:40

they are in their training. It makes it very. It

Nathan Riley: 00:37:42

makes it very, very hard for you to say, you know

Nathan Riley: 00:37:44

what? Maybe I was wrong and I'm gonna start

Nathan Riley: 00:37:47

trying something new. Nobody's giving them that

Nathan Riley: 00:37:49

incentive. So me being free of that, I was. I was

Nathan Riley: 00:37:53

able to do everything. I was able to say, let's

Nathan Riley: 00:37:54

just go off full overhaul, not even using

Nathan Riley: 00:37:57

expensive technology here. We don't need $150

Nathan Riley: 00:38:00

blue light blockers. We'll talk about blue light

Nathan Riley: 00:38:02

in a second. But we don't need $150 blue light

Nathan Riley: 00:38:04

blockers and an $8,000 sauna and a $4,000 house

Nathan Riley: 00:38:08

filtration system. How about we just get you a $4

Nathan Riley: 00:38:11

can of oysters and you have that three days per

Nathan Riley: 00:38:13

week because it's electrically Charged. It's very

Nathan Riley: 00:38:16

nourishing. And you know what? Let's throw in the

Nathan Riley: 00:38:17

cheapest part of the cow in North America, the

Nathan Riley: 00:38:20

liver and the heart. Let's throw that in there.

Nathan Riley: 00:38:22

And then let's also, you know that chicken

Nathan Riley: 00:38:24

carcass that you got from the farm down the

Nathan Riley: 00:38:26

street? Let's make some bone broth out of that. I

Nathan Riley: 00:38:27

haven't. You have. It hasn't cost you anything.

Nathan Riley: 00:38:29

Maybe more than 30 bucks a month. We start with

Nathan Riley: 00:38:33

those foundational principles and then we start

Nathan Riley: 00:38:35

fine tuning from there. And lo and behold, again,

Nathan Riley: 00:38:39

I can't say I have zero. Problems occur in the

Nathan Riley: 00:38:42

pregnancies that I take care of. And I'm caring

Nathan Riley: 00:38:43

for everybody through born free method, remotely

Nathan Riley: 00:38:45

pregnancy preconception, through postpartum

Nathan Riley: 00:38:48

support. And I have people, you know, in person.

Nathan Riley: 00:38:50

But when we start laying that healthy foundation,

Nathan Riley: 00:38:54

the goal I tell everybody, is I can't get you to

Nathan Riley: 00:38:56

zero risk. There's no guarantee in pregnancy you

Nathan Riley: 00:38:59

could be the healthiest person ever and have a

Nathan Riley: 00:39:00

stillbirth, that can still happen. But if the

Nathan Riley: 00:39:03

average risk is, let's say, 1 in 10 of something

Nathan Riley: 00:39:07

bad happening, I don't know, it doesn't really

Nathan Riley: 00:39:09

matter. Why don't we try to drop that in half?

Nathan Riley: 00:39:11

Why don't we make it 1 in 20? And now your

Nathan Riley: 00:39:14

chances of that happening are less than the

Nathan Riley: 00:39:15

average. And that's the best that I can promise

Nathan Riley: 00:39:17

you. But that's a pretty big promise. And that

Nathan Riley: 00:39:21

does pan out over time and it has now for five

Nathan Riley: 00:39:24

years for me.

Meredith Oke: 00:39:26

Wow. And yeah, that it is sort of the inverse of

Meredith Oke: 00:39:31

what the medical system does with birth and with

Meredith Oke: 00:39:34

everything where we're like, where's all the

Meredith Oke: 00:39:36

preventative care? And it's like, that's not the

Meredith Oke: 00:39:38

model. So I love what you're doing because you

Meredith Oke: 00:39:42

are not only providing this level of care to the

Meredith Oke: 00:39:47

people in your community, but you are creating a

Meredith Oke: 00:39:50

model for how to do it that's got the kind of the

Meredith Oke: 00:39:55

best of both worlds. And I think that is what is

Meredith Oke: 00:39:58

so, so, so needed right now. We have, we have

Meredith Oke: 00:40:02

people. I mean, yes, most, most doctors are

Meredith Oke: 00:40:06

locked in the conventional system and appreciate

Meredith Oke: 00:40:08

that word choice, but there are so many people

Meredith Oke: 00:40:11

with so much knowledge, whether it's a coach or

Meredith Oke: 00:40:15

an MD or. But there's no structure in place for

Meredith Oke: 00:40:22

them to deliver that.

Nathan Riley: 00:40:25

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:40:25

Their service. So, yeah, tell us a little more

Meredith Oke: 00:40:28

about how you did that and then we'll get into a

Meredith Oke: 00:40:31

bit more about quantum biology.

Nathan Riley: 00:40:33

So how I actually developed my sort of operating

Nathan Riley: 00:40:36

procedures.

Meredith Oke: 00:40:37

Yeah. Because, I mean, there's so many people who

Meredith Oke: 00:40:39

are, you know, I see them all the time. Like I

Meredith Oke: 00:40:41

have all these things, certifications, I know all

Meredith Oke: 00:40:43

this stuff. But like, how do I. How, what do I do

Meredith Oke: 00:40:45

with it? And, well, you know, licensure comes

Meredith Oke: 00:40:50

into play for certain people or, you know,

Meredith Oke: 00:40:53

whatever it is, keeping their accreditations,

Meredith Oke: 00:40:56

building a model that doesn't require them to

Meredith Oke: 00:40:58

have an MBA or a digital media, digital marketing

Meredith Oke: 00:41:04

expertise. There's so much, so much going on.

Nathan Riley: 00:41:08

Okay, so now we're talking about like business

Nathan Riley: 00:41:10

strategy.

Meredith Oke: 00:41:12

Yeah. And we can keep it high level, but I just

Meredith Oke: 00:41:15

love that you've, you've found a way to spread

Meredith Oke: 00:41:19

out what you'd have to a lot of people and take

Meredith Oke: 00:41:22

care of yourself and have a lifestyle that is

Meredith Oke: 00:41:25

sustainable.

Nathan Riley: 00:41:26

Right, right. Okay. The first thing I would say

Nathan Riley: 00:41:30

to people, because the first. So what I'm doing

Nathan Riley: 00:41:32

is I'm putting myself in the seat of somebody who

Nathan Riley: 00:41:34

might, who might be like doubtful or something,

Nathan Riley: 00:41:39

that we could scale this or whatever else. The

Nathan Riley: 00:41:42

first thing people have to shake themselves free

Nathan Riley: 00:41:44

from is there is some job security in working in

Nathan Riley: 00:41:49

the conventional model. There's no doubt about

Nathan Riley: 00:41:51

that. But there's some big costs that you pay for

Nathan Riley: 00:41:56

that, which is really what we've talked about. So

Nathan Riley: 00:41:59

if you can say, hey, do you think I could survive

Nathan Riley: 00:42:02

without an accountant and a practice manager and

Nathan Riley: 00:42:06

a CEO suite and everybody just doing all the

Nathan Riley: 00:42:09

background stuff so you can do your job, could

Nathan Riley: 00:42:10

you survive without that? Most people would say

Nathan Riley: 00:42:13

probably, but I don't know. So that's a leap of

Nathan Riley: 00:42:15

faith. The second thing is I stopped working with

Nathan Riley: 00:42:18

insurance companies altogether. I don't send

Nathan Riley: 00:42:21

bills. I don't send super bills. I don't have any

Nathan Riley: 00:42:23

relationship whatsoever with any insurance

Nathan Riley: 00:42:25

company. And the reason for that is that there's

Nathan Riley: 00:42:27

a fee schedule that determines how much I would

Nathan Riley: 00:42:29

be paid for doing this, this, this, this, this

Nathan Riley: 00:42:32

based on specific CPT codes. And that's where

Nathan Riley: 00:42:35

documentation. That's why if you ask for your

Nathan Riley: 00:42:37

medical records from your doctor, it's like 700

Nathan Riley: 00:42:40

pages for maybe like a year's worth of your time

Nathan Riley: 00:42:43

seeing a doctor. You know, presuming you go back

Nathan Riley: 00:42:45

and forth many, many times, like pregnancy care,

Nathan Riley: 00:42:48

it might be like a 700 page PDF they send you.

Nathan Riley: 00:42:51

Great. Where do I find the stuff I actually need

Nathan Riley: 00:42:54

in there? Well, the reason you can't see it is

Nathan Riley: 00:42:56

because they want to document everything in order

Nathan Riley: 00:42:58

to maximize billing from the insurance companies.

Nathan Riley: 00:43:00

And what I do and what many practitioners who are

Nathan Riley: 00:43:03

doing this type of work do is not billable to

Nathan Riley: 00:43:06

insurance. I can't charge and get paid for three

Nathan Riley: 00:43:09

hours of what might be called lifestyle coaching

Nathan Riley: 00:43:12

or health coaching or whatever as a person or as

Nathan Riley: 00:43:15

a couple is trying to get pregnant. I can't get

Nathan Riley: 00:43:16

paid for that. They might give me like 150 bucks,

Nathan Riley: 00:43:20

but I could also make $500 an hour if I charge

Nathan Riley: 00:43:23

for it on my own. And the way to see through this

Nathan Riley: 00:43:27

is that in all of those co payments and hitting

Nathan Riley: 00:43:30

your deductible and the premiums you're paying,

Nathan Riley: 00:43:32

how much have you actually utilized your health

Nathan Riley: 00:43:34

insurance? It's great as an emergency response

Nathan Riley: 00:43:38

vehicle, like, oh my gosh, catastrophic, $50,000.

Nathan Riley: 00:43:42

I can't afford that out of pocket. So the

Nathan Riley: 00:43:43

insurance company is going to have that or

Nathan Riley: 00:43:45

something, right? Cancer, chronic illness, those

Nathan Riley: 00:43:48

types of things. So when I, when you start to

Nathan Riley: 00:43:51

illustrate for people what a scam, it's a racket.

Nathan Riley: 00:43:54

It really is. I think health insurance in general

Nathan Riley: 00:43:56

is a racket, except for in catastrophic claims,

Nathan Riley: 00:43:59

if you're gonna have a home birth in the states,

Nathan Riley: 00:44:00

usually you're not getting all of the midwifery

Nathan Riley: 00:44:02

support paid for anyways. You're paying out of

Nathan Riley: 00:44:03

pocket. And it might be like 5,500 bucks, which

Nathan Riley: 00:44:06

is a lot of money. But in the grand scheme of how

Nathan Riley: 00:44:08

much you've paid for insurance, you would expect

Nathan Riley: 00:44:10

that they would just nip that right off the bill.

Nathan Riley: 00:44:12

And they don't. Not necessarily. So when you

Nathan Riley: 00:44:15

actually consider how much you've paid for health

Nathan Riley: 00:44:17

insurance and people are like, how could you not

Nathan Riley: 00:44:18

accept insurance? You're, you're disqualifying

Nathan Riley: 00:44:21

people from working with you. No, I just do it

Nathan Riley: 00:44:22

for free. You can't afford anything. Tell me what

Nathan Riley: 00:44:25

you need, I'll help you. And because I, I can

Nathan Riley: 00:44:28

make so much money charging people that have

Nathan Riley: 00:44:31

resources, it also allows me to distribute that

Nathan Riley: 00:44:33

in whatever way I want. And I do a lot of free

Nathan Riley: 00:44:35

care. A friend of a friend is having a crisis.

Nathan Riley: 00:44:38

They just lost their job. Let me help you out.

Nathan Riley: 00:44:40

Like this is what I trained to do is help people

Nathan Riley: 00:44:42

not make money. And so you have to meet your

Nathan Riley: 00:44:45

bottom line. You can't be overly charitable. But

Nathan Riley: 00:44:47

you also, you know, you know, have a sliding

Nathan Riley: 00:44:49

scale or something like that, and people pay you

Nathan Riley: 00:44:51

what they can. Mine's all donation based and the

Nathan Riley: 00:44:53

average is 500. That's why I use that, that

Nathan Riley: 00:44:55

amount. But sometimes people pay me a hundred

Nathan Riley: 00:44:57

bucks, sometimes people pay me 700 bucks. And it,

Nathan Riley: 00:44:59

you know, it works out in the middle there. Then

Nathan Riley: 00:45:02

the other option is, well, what if you could

Nathan Riley: 00:45:04

recreate yourself and do all of that groundwork

Nathan Riley: 00:45:09

through A book or a webinar series or a massive

Nathan Riley: 00:45:12

online video library where there's also a private

Nathan Riley: 00:45:15

community where people can share and, you know,

Nathan Riley: 00:45:17

birth workers and people alike and share

Nathan Riley: 00:45:19

suggestions, ask questions. And the meeting every

Nathan Riley: 00:45:22

other week on Zoom. How much time am I then

Nathan Riley: 00:45:23

putting in? Well, it's a week. It's two hours per

Nathan Riley: 00:45:27

month. If my business partner's doing two of

Nathan Riley: 00:45:28

those calls, it's. Or one of those calls every

Nathan Riley: 00:45:32

month, and that's an hour plus of my time that

Nathan Riley: 00:45:34

I'm actually doing a live Q and A. So I had to

Nathan Riley: 00:45:37

find a way to save myself time, maximize my

Nathan Riley: 00:45:40

return on investment, and feel like anybody who

Nathan Riley: 00:45:44

wants this help can get it. And so you get

Nathan Riley: 00:45:47

creative there. But the insurance companies never

Nathan Riley: 00:45:49

get involved. I never have a boss from above

Nathan Riley: 00:45:51

telling me what to do. I don't have. I'm. I work

Nathan Riley: 00:45:53

out of my home, so I don't have all the overhead

Nathan Riley: 00:45:55

of a brick and mortar. People think that it, you

Nathan Riley: 00:45:57

know, demands respect. When you have a big sign

Nathan Riley: 00:46:02

out on a main road or something like, sure, you

Nathan Riley: 00:46:04

can pay for that. That's expensive. And now

Nathan Riley: 00:46:06

you've just thrust yourself. You've now just

Nathan Riley: 00:46:08

become house broke on your practice. Now I have

Nathan Riley: 00:46:10

to see so many people. I have to charge so much

Nathan Riley: 00:46:12

money in order to just pay my bills before I even

Nathan Riley: 00:46:14

pay myself. Like, I don't like any of that. I

Nathan Riley: 00:46:16

don't like any of that. Because now if my girls

Nathan Riley: 00:46:18

need me, I could say, meredith, I'm sorry, I

Nathan Riley: 00:46:20

gotta pause. Can we pick this up in 10 minutes?

Nathan Riley: 00:46:22

I'm not gonna do that because they're at school.

Nathan Riley: 00:46:23

But, you know, the kids might need me and I can

Nathan Riley: 00:46:26

run down in there and be with them. Because

Nathan Riley: 00:46:28

really, at the end of the day, I don't care about

Nathan Riley: 00:46:29

what I do in medicine. I mean, I do care about

Nathan Riley: 00:46:31

it, but that's not my number one priority. My

Nathan Riley: 00:46:33

priority is these little girls need a responsible

Nathan Riley: 00:46:35

male figure who's going to show them how to

Nathan Riley: 00:46:37

laugh, love, cry, and sing all day, every day.

Nathan Riley: 00:46:42

And that is my only job. And of course, making

Nathan Riley: 00:46:44

love to my wife and developing intimacy there so

Nathan Riley: 00:46:47

she feels, well, you know, well head and

Nathan Riley: 00:46:49

emotionally balanced by her male partner. But if

Nathan Riley: 00:46:54

I was in the hospital system doing that and

Nathan Riley: 00:46:56

making lots of money, I can make lots of money.

Nathan Riley: 00:46:57

Sure, I could do that, but I wouldn't have any of

Nathan Riley: 00:46:59

this other stuff. So a pros cons list helped me

Nathan Riley: 00:47:03

kind of figure out. And also, I was fired,

Nathan Riley: 00:47:05

remember? So it was sort of like, well, shit, I

Nathan Riley: 00:47:07

gotta figure this out.

Meredith Oke: 00:47:09

There's that decision made?

Nathan Riley: 00:47:11

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I, I, I have a lot of

Nathan Riley: 00:47:14

compassion for people that want to break out, but

Nathan Riley: 00:47:16

you actually have to have a little bit of trust

Nathan Riley: 00:47:18

in the process if you're really good at what you,

Nathan Riley: 00:47:20

you do. And by the way, stop doing

Nathan Riley: 00:47:22

certifications. And I'm not telling people, don't

Nathan Riley: 00:47:24

go to QVC and get this certific certification. I

Nathan Riley: 00:47:26

didn't do it because I honestly just didn't have

Nathan Riley: 00:47:29

the time to go through extra work. But I got some

Nathan Riley: 00:47:32

principles there that I can bring into my

Nathan Riley: 00:47:33

practice, and I might go back to it and get

Nathan Riley: 00:47:35

certified later. But people are so focused on

Nathan Riley: 00:47:38

getting these letters after their names, and

Nathan Riley: 00:47:40

compulsory education can be blamed for that. You

Nathan Riley: 00:47:42

know, the more titles you have, the more years of

Nathan Riley: 00:47:43

school, the more valuable you are in society. I

Nathan Riley: 00:47:45

get that. And it's easy for me to say because I'm

Nathan Riley: 00:47:47

at the top of the ladder as an md. Like, I get

Nathan Riley: 00:47:49

that there's certain privileges that come with

Nathan Riley: 00:47:51

having these certain credentials. However, it's

Nathan Riley: 00:47:54

like reading a book on meditation but never

Nathan Riley: 00:47:56

practicing meditation. At some point, you have to

Nathan Riley: 00:47:58

start practicing and actually getting experience

Nathan Riley: 00:48:00

with people. The books, the data that is, that is

Nathan Riley: 00:48:03

a small part of why I'm so good at what I do. I

Nathan Riley: 00:48:07

put this stuff into practice immediately, and

Nathan Riley: 00:48:09

that sometimes detracts from my ability to

Nathan Riley: 00:48:11

continue studying because I need to figure this

Nathan Riley: 00:48:13

thing out. How does this work? What the hell are

Nathan Riley: 00:48:16

they talking about with blue light? The

Nathan Riley: 00:48:18

mitochondria. Like, I have to go back and review

Nathan Riley: 00:48:20

that in my textbooks. Like, I have to really,

Nathan Riley: 00:48:22

really do it. I can't just take orders from

Nathan Riley: 00:48:24

somebody else to say, this is the protocol.

Nathan Riley: 00:48:26

Because then I'm doing the same thing that every

Nathan Riley: 00:48:28

other doctor in the world is doing. And a lot of

Nathan Riley: 00:48:30

integrative practitioners or whatever are doing

Nathan Riley: 00:48:33

that. They're making that mistake. Like, there is

Nathan Riley: 00:48:34

no protocol. There is no protocol that works for

Nathan Riley: 00:48:38

every single person. You have to figure out what

Nathan Riley: 00:48:41

Meredith needs, and that's going to take this

Nathan Riley: 00:48:43

rapport building. It's going to take time for me

Nathan Riley: 00:48:45

to understand your story. The longest I ever met

Nathan Riley: 00:48:47

with somebody was 4 hours and 45 minutes in our

Nathan Riley: 00:48:51

first visit. Because it was like, whoa, there's

Nathan Riley: 00:48:53

so much going on here, and I can't just throw

Nathan Riley: 00:48:56

supplements at this. I actually need to

Nathan Riley: 00:48:58

understand your story, do a whole biographical

Nathan Riley: 00:49:00

sketch. And once I know that story, then I can

Nathan Riley: 00:49:03

say, okay, what would be the most impactful thing

Nathan Riley: 00:49:07

we can do right now? And then what do we do in

Nathan Riley: 00:49:10

the long term? And that does require quite a bit

Nathan Riley: 00:49:12

of time. If I was doing more certificate training

Nathan Riley: 00:49:15

and more functional medicine training and all

Nathan Riley: 00:49:16

that, I've done all of that. But now I have to

Nathan Riley: 00:49:19

actually sit here and work with people and throw

Nathan Riley: 00:49:22

the security blanket of. Of quote, education off.

Nathan Riley: 00:49:26

So that's my advice, I guess, for people that

Nathan Riley: 00:49:28

want to try something new.

Meredith Oke: 00:49:30

Yes. And I think that's. That's such an important

Meredith Oke: 00:49:33

point about. About the integration. And we do

Meredith Oke: 00:49:38

collect education as a way. As a way to feel

Meredith Oke: 00:49:41

better, as a way to buffer. And I find that

Meredith Oke: 00:49:44

people use it as a bu. To not do the thing that

Meredith Oke: 00:49:48

scares them, which, for the most part, is

Meredith Oke: 00:49:51

reaching out to people they might be able to help

Meredith Oke: 00:49:53

and starting conversations and putting themselves

Meredith Oke: 00:49:55

out there a little. And I, you know, I. I have

Meredith Oke: 00:49:57

it, too. I'm not. It's. It's normal.

Nathan Riley: 00:50:00

We all have it. I still love it. I do. It's like,

Nathan Riley: 00:50:03

oh, man, I really want to learn from Nico in the

Nathan Riley: 00:50:06

qvc, so I'm gonna sign up for that. And then when

Nathan Riley: 00:50:07

I did it, I was like, oh, I really need to start

Nathan Riley: 00:50:10

putting this into practice. I can't work on my

Nathan Riley: 00:50:12

research project. You know, it's. It's all of

Nathan Riley: 00:50:13

that, like, I'm just reflecting so that people

Nathan Riley: 00:50:15

appreciate, like, you're not a failure if you

Nathan Riley: 00:50:18

just go into practice and make some mistakes,

Nathan Riley: 00:50:20

like, that's okay. And then you come back to the

Nathan Riley: 00:50:22

drawing board and you're like, how did I get this

Nathan Riley: 00:50:23

wrong? Where's my mentors at? You know, and then

Nathan Riley: 00:50:25

you go back and you practice.

Meredith Oke: 00:50:26

Yeah, let's review. And what was going on with

Meredith Oke: 00:50:28

this person? And things don't. And that's. I

Meredith Oke: 00:50:30

think, you know, where, you know, what our

Meredith Oke: 00:50:34

mission is, is to really bring this idea of

Meredith Oke: 00:50:38

translational medicine and of translational

Meredith Oke: 00:50:40

education. And we. There's all of this stuff

Meredith Oke: 00:50:43

happening in labs that's giving us all this

Meredith Oke: 00:50:45

incredible scientific insight. But what does that

Meredith Oke: 00:50:49

mean in reality with a living human?

Nathan Riley: 00:50:52

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 00:50:54

And, you know, everyone gets put on their own

Meredith Oke: 00:50:57

trajectory, and you get better, and then your

Meredith Oke: 00:51:00

body's like, oh, I feel so safe. I'm so

Meredith Oke: 00:51:02

stabilized. And then all your trauma comes up

Meredith Oke: 00:51:04

because your body's finally feels safe, you know,

Meredith Oke: 00:51:06

like, you just never know where things are

Meredith Oke: 00:51:10

headed. And we've been so trained. Well, what

Meredith Oke: 00:51:12

does the study say? Well, how many times? How

Meredith Oke: 00:51:14

many days in a row and how many. You know, and I.

Meredith Oke: 00:51:17

I'm totally with you. I think it's. It's getting

Meredith Oke: 00:51:20

into that living, breathing relationship with

Meredith Oke: 00:51:24

people and then. And that empowerment that we

Meredith Oke: 00:51:27

talked about earlier, helping them to understand

Meredith Oke: 00:51:30

what they need and having the. The knowledge to

Meredith Oke: 00:51:33

make. To make such helpful suggestions and see

Meredith Oke: 00:51:37

where it goes. Like, let's see where it goes.

Meredith Oke: 00:51:40

Okay, so we talked a little about quantum

Meredith Oke: 00:51:43

biology. Tell me, sort of you were mentioning

Meredith Oke: 00:51:45

you, like, you asked every single faculty, like,

Meredith Oke: 00:51:48

to define it. And I do want to say, I fully

Meredith Oke: 00:51:51

acknowledge we're just, like, putting labels on

Meredith Oke: 00:51:54

things to have some way to navigate the world and

Meredith Oke: 00:51:59

navigate, you know, what we're trying to

Meredith Oke: 00:52:01

understand here. And I think quantum biology is a

Meredith Oke: 00:52:05

fun way, fun thing to call it. And I Bless John

Meredith Oke: 00:52:11

Jo McFadden and Jamel Khalili for coming up with

Meredith Oke: 00:52:15

it. But, yeah, it's a loose term. So where. Where

Meredith Oke: 00:52:20

are you at with it?

Nathan Riley: 00:52:23

You know, my initial interest in the term, when I

Nathan Riley: 00:52:27

saw it coming up, I was like, whoa. So I used to

Nathan Riley: 00:52:29

be a really, really dedicated physics student,

Nathan Riley: 00:52:32

and when I saw the word quantum coming up, it

Nathan Riley: 00:52:34

brought me back to, like, Gary Zukovs, the

Nathan Riley: 00:52:36

Dancing Woolly Masters, and the Amsterdam. What

Nathan Riley: 00:52:40

was it called, these meetings in the early 20th

Nathan Riley: 00:52:43

century whereby the physicists were all meeting

Nathan Riley: 00:52:46

around this material mechanical Newtonian physics

Nathan Riley: 00:52:49

versus what Max Planck was starting to describe

Nathan Riley: 00:52:53

as quantum entanglement. It was like, whoa, this

Nathan Riley: 00:52:55

is psych. This is really interesting stuff. And

Nathan Riley: 00:52:58

even Einstein was like, this is spooky action at

Nathan Riley: 00:53:00

a distance. So I was thinking, oh, I was thinking

Nathan Riley: 00:53:03

quantum. And then we got into it and I was like,

Nathan Riley: 00:53:05

what's quantum about this? But then, you know,

Nathan Riley: 00:53:08

then I actually put my, like, sort of

Nathan Riley: 00:53:11

apprehensions aside and was like, okay, we're

Nathan Riley: 00:53:13

just talking about particles here. We're just

Nathan Riley: 00:53:15

talking about the quantum. We're talking about

Nathan Riley: 00:53:17

electrons. We're talking about that. And then it

Nathan Riley: 00:53:19

started to make sense why we'd use that term. But

Nathan Riley: 00:53:22

I was honestly confused by it. It actually kind

Nathan Riley: 00:53:24

of has a branding issue, in my opinion. So that's

Nathan Riley: 00:53:27

just my. That's just my, my, my two cents.

Nathan Riley: 00:53:29

Because it actually took me a little bit of time

Nathan Riley: 00:53:31

to get past my original apprehensions. And once I

Nathan Riley: 00:53:34

did, I was like, okay, we're talking about a part

Nathan Riley: 00:53:36

of a cell that I really know very little about,

Nathan Riley: 00:53:39

which is the mitochondria and, and how melatonin

Nathan Riley: 00:53:44

and all these different receptors throughout the

Nathan Riley: 00:53:47

body are starting to bring together a more

Nathan Riley: 00:53:50

holistic view of, let's say, hormone medicine or

Nathan Riley: 00:53:55

something like that. I mean, you could take so

Nathan Riley: 00:53:57

many different approaches to this floral bouquet,

Nathan Riley: 00:54:00

and until you've walked all the way around and

Nathan Riley: 00:54:02

studied every facet of the human body, you're not

Nathan Riley: 00:54:05

going to appreciate the complexities of the human

Nathan Riley: 00:54:08

being. And so I guess that was my, that was my

Nathan Riley: 00:54:13

initial holdup. And then when I really started to

Nathan Riley: 00:54:16

appreciate what was being said, I realized I

Nathan Riley: 00:54:18

don't really know much about the mitochondria.

Nathan Riley: 00:54:20

And I'm not sure anybody does, to be frank. You

Nathan Riley: 00:54:23

know, one of my criticisms, I, I, I'll just, I'll

Nathan Riley: 00:54:26

just share this with you because I, I want people

Nathan Riley: 00:54:28

to appreciate if you get into this, it, it's very

Nathan Riley: 00:54:30

confronting. So you have to like, really be

Nathan Riley: 00:54:32

thoughtful about what do we know and what, where

Nathan Riley: 00:54:35

is there more for us to explore? And one of those

Nathan Riley: 00:54:38

things is like, I've never seen a picture of this

Nathan Riley: 00:54:42

electron transport chain. It's always these

Nathan Riley: 00:54:44

illustrations and there's this bio, you know,

Nathan Riley: 00:54:46

this, this, this, this, this bilayer, this, this

Nathan Riley: 00:54:49

two membranes, and then there's these protons

Nathan Riley: 00:54:52

laid in there. And when the, the mitochondria

Nathan Riley: 00:54:55

swells, they become out of order. And I'm like,

Nathan Riley: 00:54:58

how do we know that? Like, it makes sense

Nathan Riley: 00:55:01

logically, but I don't see a picture of it. And

Nathan Riley: 00:55:03

even if you go into. What's his name? Ling.

Nathan Riley: 00:55:07

Gilbert. Gilbert Ling. Is he, no, he, Is he the

Nathan Riley: 00:55:09

one that wrote that book? It might be Ling's

Nathan Riley: 00:55:11

book. It's a, it's another book and it really,

Nathan Riley: 00:55:14

it's a guy who, who was a, an electron

Nathan Riley: 00:55:16

microscopist and he was looking at the organelles

Nathan Riley: 00:55:19

within the sound. He's like, I think most of this

Nathan Riley: 00:55:21

is artifact. I can't remember who wrote that

Nathan Riley: 00:55:22

book. Maybe it was Ling. Anyways, it's not Ling.

Nathan Riley: 00:55:27

It's a green cover book. It's like, hang on, I

Nathan Riley: 00:55:31

gotta do this. Now. Where is the book?

Meredith Oke: 00:55:33

Yeah, well, which one you mean?

Nathan Riley: 00:55:36

It's one everybody in our classes talks about,

Nathan Riley: 00:55:40

but I don't know where it is at the moment. Geez,

Nathan Riley: 00:55:46

I have so many books. Well, anyways, I'll send a,

Nathan Riley: 00:55:49

I'll send it to you later in an email. But, but

Nathan Riley: 00:55:52

anyways, he was like, you know, I'm not certain

Nathan Riley: 00:55:53

that we are, you know, that we know for sure that

Nathan Riley: 00:55:56

the cell works in the way that it does. Like the

Nathan Riley: 00:55:59

Golgi apparatus, the ribosomes, all of this

Nathan Riley: 00:56:02

stuff. Like, how do we know that that works, that

Nathan Riley: 00:56:04

that's the structure of the, the within the

Nathan Riley: 00:56:06

cytoplasm of the cell. When I'm suspicious that

Nathan Riley: 00:56:12

of these little organelles actually popping up as

Nathan Riley: 00:56:14

little bubbles and artifacts in our images. Now

Nathan Riley: 00:56:18

empirically, when we apply these principles from,

Nathan Riley: 00:56:21

from the lens of quantum biology, they do seem to

Nathan Riley: 00:56:23

work. But just like with COVID or vaccines in

Nathan Riley: 00:56:30

general, just because we saw a drop around the

Nathan Riley: 00:56:33

time, let's say polio around the time that this

Nathan Riley: 00:56:36

vaccine was introduced, that doesn't actually

Nathan Riley: 00:56:38

mean that you understood what you were treating

Nathan Riley: 00:56:40

to begin with. We just saw a drop. Was it the

Nathan Riley: 00:56:42

vaccine? Was it hygiene? Was it the terrain

Nathan Riley: 00:56:45

theory? Like, all this stuff that's been swirling

Nathan Riley: 00:56:47

and that is a. It is a fallacy without.

Nathan Riley: 00:56:49

Throughout medicine where we say, well, this

Nathan Riley: 00:56:51

works. An SSRI makes Meredith feel better. She

Nathan Riley: 00:56:54

was depressed and she doesn't feel depressed

Nathan Riley: 00:56:56

anymore. Is it because she was deficient in

Nathan Riley: 00:56:59

serotonin? Or was there something else about

Nathan Riley: 00:57:01

this? Or was it a placebo? It doesn't really

Nathan Riley: 00:57:03

matter. The point is that we say, see, we were

Nathan Riley: 00:57:05

right. And it's like, well, not everybody

Nathan Riley: 00:57:07

improved with the ssri, so it can't be just that.

Nathan Riley: 00:57:09

We need to actually be curious and expand the

Nathan Riley: 00:57:12

conversation. This is more fodder for good

Nathan Riley: 00:57:14

conversation. And nobody's really willing to have

Nathan Riley: 00:57:17

conversation anymore. It's very, very dogmatic, I

Nathan Riley: 00:57:20

think, throughout every, every aspect.

Meredith Oke: 00:57:21

Well, it's almost like if you don't claim that

Meredith Oke: 00:57:24

certainty, no one's going to listen to you. So

Meredith Oke: 00:57:26

you claim, like a false certainty in order to get

Meredith Oke: 00:57:29

people to listen to you, and then you have to

Meredith Oke: 00:57:32

hold that position because you claimed it with

Meredith Oke: 00:57:34

such certainty.

Nathan Riley: 00:57:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, you know, fertility

Nathan Riley: 00:57:39

is a real. This is a really great example. And I

Nathan Riley: 00:57:41

think that there's something here within the

Nathan Riley: 00:57:42

quantum biology world for us to appreciate the,

Nathan Riley: 00:57:46

the, the. The role of voltage. And we'll just say

Nathan Riley: 00:57:53

electric gradients, but voltage in the merging

Nathan Riley: 00:57:57

of, like, sperm and egg. There's this explosion

Nathan Riley: 00:58:00

that happens. It's zinc, magnesium mediated. This

Nathan Riley: 00:58:02

explosion happens. And when people hear zinc and

Nathan Riley: 00:58:05

magnesium, then they say, we should supplement

Nathan Riley: 00:58:07

with the zinc and magnesium. But is that enough?

Nathan Riley: 00:58:09

Without actually understanding what the hell is

Nathan Riley: 00:58:11

going on here? And you can see it. You can see it

Nathan Riley: 00:58:14

in like a, you know, if they use different, you

Nathan Riley: 00:58:16

know, colored lenses on cameras, you can actually

Nathan Riley: 00:58:19

see this explosion happen. It happens for a

Nathan Riley: 00:58:21

moment. It's like the green flash. If you watch

Nathan Riley: 00:58:23

the sunset in the west off the coast of

Nathan Riley: 00:58:25

California and you get that right, like just the

Nathan Riley: 00:58:28

right angle, the sun will go green for a second.

Nathan Riley: 00:58:30

Like, wow, how magical. But instead of saying

Nathan Riley: 00:58:33

it's because of this and this and this, and we

Nathan Riley: 00:58:34

have the data to prove it, why not just be

Nathan Riley: 00:58:36

curious? Like, wow, maybe there's an alien whose

Nathan Riley: 00:58:39

head exploded just over the rise. I'm like, I

Nathan Riley: 00:58:42

don't know. It could be anything. So what quantum

Nathan Riley: 00:58:45

biology has really done for me, the greatest gift

Nathan Riley: 00:58:49

has been that has really opened up my mind and

Nathan Riley: 00:58:53

made me uncertain of what I thought I knew about

Nathan Riley: 00:58:56

human biology. And that is a real gift to the

Nathan Riley: 00:58:59

entire construct we have around human biology and

Nathan Riley: 00:59:02

human health. And without those questions being

Nathan Riley: 00:59:05

seated, we just halt our progress. It's arrested

Nathan Riley: 00:59:10

development altogether. And that, you know, comes

Nathan Riley: 00:59:13

at the cost of the health and the fertility and

Nathan Riley: 00:59:17

the really well being of the masses. So I can

Nathan Riley: 00:59:20

really thank you guys for helping me get through

Nathan Riley: 00:59:23

some of those early apprehensions in order to

Nathan Riley: 00:59:25

open up more questions. And I'm okay not having

Nathan Riley: 00:59:27

the answer that that puts me in a unique

Nathan Riley: 00:59:29

category. But for now I have some answers that at

Nathan Riley: 00:59:32

least I can say, well, let me try to show

Nathan Riley: 00:59:35

examples in which that might not be true. And

Nathan Riley: 00:59:37

that's where you learn the most, is whenever you

Nathan Riley: 00:59:39

earnestly are willing to be wrong. And that

Nathan Riley: 00:59:41

actually is the scientific method asking the

Nathan Riley: 00:59:44

right question and being really, really honest

Nathan Riley: 00:59:46

with yourself with regards to what the answer is,

Nathan Riley: 00:59:49

instead of just not publishing that, like, hey, I

Nathan Riley: 00:59:51

found this. And this seems to confront what I

Nathan Riley: 00:59:53

thought I knew about childbirth. We don't do that

Nathan Riley: 00:59:56

anymore. Now it's a matter of getting your

Nathan Riley: 00:59:58

published research out there and showing that

Nathan Riley: 01:00:01

you're the boss. And I will never be the boss

Nathan Riley: 01:00:04

because I just don't have that approach about

Nathan Riley: 01:00:07

anything, I guess.

Meredith Oke: 01:00:09

Yeah, we've got enough bosses. Yeah, we need

Meredith Oke: 01:00:13

more. We need more curious cats.

Nathan Riley: 01:00:15

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 01:00:16

And yeah, I love that framing of it. And I think

Meredith Oke: 01:00:21

that's all, you know, the end of the day, I think

Meredith Oke: 01:00:24

that's all we're all trying to do here is to open

Meredith Oke: 01:00:28

up the conversation and saying, well, what if

Meredith Oke: 01:00:31

it's like this? Or what if it's like this? And

Meredith Oke: 01:00:32

we're at the beginning of the beginning of the

Meredith Oke: 01:00:34

beginning of trying to understand, you know, and

Meredith Oke: 01:00:38

putting, putting labels on things and trying to

Meredith Oke: 01:00:41

come up with definitions. And, you know, there's

Meredith Oke: 01:00:43

people doing research and calling it structured

Meredith Oke: 01:00:45

water and people doing research and calling it

Meredith Oke: 01:00:47

exclusion zone water.

Nathan Riley: 01:00:49

Oh, yeah.

Meredith Oke: 01:00:50

You know, like, it just goes on and on. Like

Meredith Oke: 01:00:51

we're, it's. But that's kind of like the glorious

Meredith Oke: 01:00:55

creative chaos of all of it. And then we come in

Meredith Oke: 01:00:57

and try to make some sense of it. And as you say,

Meredith Oke: 01:00:59

it's like, okay, well. And you know, bringing it

Meredith Oke: 01:01:02

back to the practical and the personally

Meredith Oke: 01:01:04

empowering ourselves personally, it's like, okay,

Meredith Oke: 01:01:07

well, what happens if I take this model to be

Meredith Oke: 01:01:12

true for now and do the things it recommends? How

Meredith Oke: 01:01:16

do I feel how do people feel? You know, and, and

Meredith Oke: 01:01:20

take it from there.

Nathan Riley: 01:01:22

Yeah, I think we, we really do. Meredith, need

Nathan Riley: 01:01:24

more empiricists that are like, huh, Nathan said

Nathan Riley: 01:01:28

this, Let me go and actually experiment with that

Nathan Riley: 01:01:30

and see if it helps. And it helps some of these

Nathan Riley: 01:01:33

people, but it didn't help these other people.

Nathan Riley: 01:01:34

Why did it not help those other people? And why

Nathan Riley: 01:01:36

did it help these people? Like, we really need to

Nathan Riley: 01:01:40

get back to like a real scientific approach to

Nathan Riley: 01:01:43

everything. Instead of working on our next of 15

Nathan Riley: 01:01:46

books, maybe actually spend some time writing

Nathan Riley: 01:01:48

your masterpiece. And that might require your

Nathan Riley: 01:01:50

entire life to ask one question and to really

Nathan Riley: 01:01:53

explore that question. And that's actually what,

Nathan Riley: 01:01:55

what, you know, some of these, these scholars

Nathan Riley: 01:01:59

that have done so much, this is really what they

Nathan Riley: 01:02:01

did. And I'll bring Jack Cruz up for a second

Nathan Riley: 01:02:04

because everybody knows, you know, Jack Cruz. I

Nathan Riley: 01:02:07

think Jack Cruz does not have a very kind way of

Nathan Riley: 01:02:09

speaking to people. And I don't like that. It

Nathan Riley: 01:02:11

goes back to that not making me feel safe to ask

Nathan Riley: 01:02:13

questions thing. It reminds me of residency, and

Nathan Riley: 01:02:15

I know where that came from for Jack. I'm sure

Nathan Riley: 01:02:17

he's a good guy, but he feels like he has a lot

Nathan Riley: 01:02:19

to prove and, and it's not enough that he's a

Nathan Riley: 01:02:23

neurosurgeon and he's done his whole life's work

Nathan Riley: 01:02:25

trying to understand the leptin signaling

Nathan Riley: 01:02:27

pathways and all that. That's all great. And to

Nathan Riley: 01:02:30

his credit, he became so fascinated and obsessed

Nathan Riley: 01:02:33

with this one topic that he went deeper and

Nathan Riley: 01:02:36

deeper and deeper and deeper until he was like,

Nathan Riley: 01:02:38

pretty darn sure into that. I have to give

Nathan Riley: 01:02:41

anybody credit, like, you've really dedicated

Nathan Riley: 01:02:43

your task to. You dedicated yourself to a task to

Nathan Riley: 01:02:47

like, really try to see where is it that you

Nathan Riley: 01:02:49

don't understand this prism. Like, have you

Nathan Riley: 01:02:52

looked at it from every angle and seeing how the

Nathan Riley: 01:02:55

light refracts and reflects and, and once you

Nathan Riley: 01:02:57

find something that's, that's like, huh, Sparks

Nathan Riley: 01:02:59

your curiosity like a child. My, my daughters

Nathan Riley: 01:03:02

will look at these gemstones in the sun and

Nathan Riley: 01:03:04

they're like, if I turn it this way, it's blue.

Nathan Riley: 01:03:05

And if I turn it this way, it's white. That is

Nathan Riley: 01:03:07

more scientific than the way most people are

Nathan Riley: 01:03:09

operating in the world right now. And to me, it's

Nathan Riley: 01:03:11

so refreshing to have little kids who just teach

Nathan Riley: 01:03:13

you to be curious again without having, without

Nathan Riley: 01:03:17

necessarily feeling like your value is based on

Nathan Riley: 01:03:20

how certain you are about the world. Because if

Nathan Riley: 01:03:23

we are going to be an actual bring back science,

Nathan Riley: 01:03:26

not scientism, not the cult of medicine, but

Nathan Riley: 01:03:28

science the scientific way of looking at the

Nathan Riley: 01:03:30

world. All that that means is I'm curious, and I

Nathan Riley: 01:03:34

want to see if my hypothesis is correct. And if

Nathan Riley: 01:03:37

you're willing to be wrong, you learn way more

Nathan Riley: 01:03:40

than having your internal bias. Biases, I should

Nathan Riley: 01:03:43

say confirmed. And so I guess I've had that gift.

Nathan Riley: 01:03:48

I've had parents that have, like, really allowed

Nathan Riley: 01:03:49

me to ask questions. But when I find teachers

Nathan Riley: 01:03:51

that are not willing to respect. Respond to

Nathan Riley: 01:03:52

questions, I move on. And I move on, and I move

Nathan Riley: 01:03:55

on. And. And that's also okay. It's also okay if

Nathan Riley: 01:03:59

that. Your hero says something that you're like,

Nathan Riley: 01:04:01

that doesn't sound right. And then you experiment

Nathan Riley: 01:04:03

and it's not right. It's okay. That should be

Nathan Riley: 01:04:04

contributory. But right now we're being scorning

Nathan Riley: 01:04:06

people, and I want people to have permission to,

Nathan Riley: 01:04:09

like, lean into being wrong instead of, you know,

Nathan Riley: 01:04:12

trying to argue that you're right.

Meredith Oke: 01:04:15

Yes. If we, you know, if we could reward that a

Meredith Oke: 01:04:20

little bit, even, you know, like, tell me about

Meredith Oke: 01:04:23

all of your hypotheses that didn't turn out. And

Meredith Oke: 01:04:26

you get a gold star for each one. Because it led

Meredith Oke: 01:04:29

somewhere. It led somewhere, and it's teaching us

Meredith Oke: 01:04:32

and it's giving us the safety and the freedom to

Meredith Oke: 01:04:35

do that in our own lives, for our own selves.

Nathan Riley: 01:04:38

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: 01:04:39

And to find others and connect with them. Well,

Meredith Oke: 01:04:43

Nathan, thanks so much for your time. And so

Meredith Oke: 01:04:46

sharing your. Your experience and your insights,

Meredith Oke: 01:04:49

like, what a crazy ride. What a ride we are all

Meredith Oke: 01:04:52

on. Let. Could you let our audience know how to

Meredith Oke: 01:04:57

find you or where to connect with you?

Nathan Riley: 01:05:00

Yeah. Born Free methods, really what I'm focused

Nathan Riley: 01:05:03

on right now, that's where I provide this

Nathan Riley: 01:05:06

extraordinary opportunity to, like, lean into all

Nathan Riley: 01:05:09

things pertaining to childbirth. But it's not

Nathan Riley: 01:05:12

like, let me dilute Williams Obstetrics for you,

Nathan Riley: 01:05:15

or let me just pull these papers for you and show

Nathan Riley: 01:05:17

you how to do things. It's really a matter first

Nathan Riley: 01:05:19

of starting off with who you are. What is the

Nathan Riley: 01:05:22

mission you and your partner have in bringing a

Nathan Riley: 01:05:24

child in? And we can even conceive or we can even

Nathan Riley: 01:05:27

talk about this through the lens of conscious

Nathan Riley: 01:05:28

conception. Like, there's so much happening that

Nathan Riley: 01:05:30

isn't measurable, and that doesn't make it any

Nathan Riley: 01:05:32

less valuable. And, Meredith, just to go back to

Nathan Riley: 01:05:35

your birth, when you felt what it was like to

Nathan Riley: 01:05:37

have a home birthday, it wasn't because your

Nathan Riley: 01:05:39

blood pressure and your blood loss and then your

Nathan Riley: 01:05:42

white count was all these things, you know, when

Nathan Riley: 01:05:44

you. When you take a sample of blood out of

Nathan Riley: 01:05:45

somebody, removing it from the living organism

Nathan Riley: 01:05:47

that already is a, is a misstep in our part in

Nathan Riley: 01:05:49

the functional medicine world, Blood matters

Nathan Riley: 01:05:52

little to me when it's outside of the body. And

Nathan Riley: 01:05:55

while you might get some value in that, I'm not

Nathan Riley: 01:05:58

going to understand the value of having a home

Nathan Riley: 01:06:00

birth to you by looking at your blood or your

Nathan Riley: 01:06:02

vital signs. I need to know what that is. And so

Nathan Riley: 01:06:05

just because something's not measurable doesn't

Nathan Riley: 01:06:07

mean, or that we can't take a picture of it,

Nathan Riley: 01:06:09

doesn't mean it's not, it's not true for an

Nathan Riley: 01:06:12

individual or for the collective. So really

Nathan Riley: 01:06:16

starting to transcend obstetrics. And to help

Nathan Riley: 01:06:20

appreciate that the measurable, immeasurable,

Nathan Riley: 01:06:23

dare I say, spiritual, sacred aspects of the

Nathan Riley: 01:06:26

birthing experience are just as valuable as what

Nathan Riley: 01:06:30

the objective outcome is ended up being, I've had

Nathan Riley: 01:06:33

people who have spiritual transformative bursts

Nathan Riley: 01:06:36

through an elective C section. You know, I mean,

Nathan Riley: 01:06:38

there's ways of talking about this and moving the

Nathan Riley: 01:06:41

needle just a couple degrees off north that might

Nathan Riley: 01:06:45

get us out of this quagmire of, of whatever it is

Nathan Riley: 01:06:50

that people, you know, label it with. And I get

Nathan Riley: 01:06:53

the, you know, the, you know, the privilege of

Nathan Riley: 01:06:56

doing that for couples around the world. And we

Nathan Riley: 01:06:58

have a fertility deep dive there. We also have

Nathan Riley: 01:07:01

free pregnancy loss course for people who were

Nathan Riley: 01:07:03

struggling with the recurrent loss or they had a

Nathan Riley: 01:07:05

stillbirth, or somebody had to interrupt a

Nathan Riley: 01:07:07

pregnancy for anomalies found on ultrasound. We

Nathan Riley: 01:07:11

also talked quite a bit about some of these

Nathan Riley: 01:07:12

quantum concepts I had recommended. I had. We

Nathan Riley: 01:07:14

didn't even talk about this, but I had

Nathan Riley: 01:07:16

recommended because I started studying this stuff

Nathan Riley: 01:07:18

actually way long time ago. And I had realized

Nathan Riley: 01:07:21

there's melatonin receptors everywhere, including

Nathan Riley: 01:07:23

the myometrium, the muscular part of the uterus

Nathan Riley: 01:07:26

and the endometrium. And the placenta can produce

Nathan Riley: 01:07:29

and respond to melatonin. And there's a 24 hour

Nathan Riley: 01:07:32

circadian rhythm with regards to the strength of

Nathan Riley: 01:07:34

uterine contractility. So what if a woman comes

Nathan Riley: 01:07:38

in and it's nighttime? We put blue light blockers

Nathan Riley: 01:07:40

on her and see how her labor progresses. And they

Nathan Riley: 01:07:43

kind of laughed at me in residency. I was like, I

Nathan Riley: 01:07:44

wanted to do this study, and I never did because

Nathan Riley: 01:07:47

I didn't have any support for it. And even now

Nathan Riley: 01:07:49

it's like, I want to put red lights in all the

Nathan Riley: 01:07:51

rooms. And, and when I do that in people's homes,

Nathan Riley: 01:07:53

it seems to work really well. I just did this for

Nathan Riley: 01:07:55

my best friend who had a breech baby in Florida.

Nathan Riley: 01:07:58

And we just had red lights everywhere, like Full

Nathan Riley: 01:08:01

spectrum red, near and far in, you know, infrared

Nathan Riley: 01:08:06

that are. That are. That are just being

Nathan Riley: 01:08:07

broadcast. This is how I'm seeing everything. And

Nathan Riley: 01:08:10

then when the. The daytime comes, we turn those

Nathan Riley: 01:08:11

lights off and we have sunlight coming in the

Nathan Riley: 01:08:13

room. Like, this stuff matters. There's plenty of

Nathan Riley: 01:08:15

research that is also done in the 90s, mostly,

Nathan Riley: 01:08:17

that actually said, hey, there's something to

Nathan Riley: 01:08:20

this circadian rhythm of also childbirth, of

Nathan Riley: 01:08:23

reproductive health. And so I bring some of that

Nathan Riley: 01:08:27

in there too. But also rituals and mythology and

Nathan Riley: 01:08:30

storytelling, like, there's a real cultural shift

Nathan Riley: 01:08:32

that has to happen. And also, like, forget about

Nathan Riley: 01:08:35

credentials. Who is the person that makes you

Nathan Riley: 01:08:37

feel safe? And we help you select a birth worker.

Nathan Riley: 01:08:39

We help you, you know, figure out where you want

Nathan Riley: 01:08:41

to have your baby. And that's all the born free

Nathan Riley: 01:08:43

method. So there's plenty there for people who

Nathan Riley: 01:08:45

want to. To. To talk, to be appreciated for how

Nathan Riley: 01:08:51

important childbirth is. And you get lifetime

Nathan Riley: 01:08:55

access and you get me in your back pocket. So I

Nathan Riley: 01:08:57

become your concierge doc and support person and

Nathan Riley: 01:09:00

health coach and all of that. Whenever you're in

Nathan Riley: 01:09:01

the program, that's the best way to find me. And

Nathan Riley: 01:09:04

then beloved holistics is my private practice.

Nathan Riley: 01:09:06

Nathan Riley Objuann on Instagram, if people have

Nathan Riley: 01:09:09

questions, and I just want to say, like, thank

Nathan Riley: 01:09:12

you. If you're listening to this episode, you're

Nathan Riley: 01:09:14

probably one of those curious people. You're okay

Nathan Riley: 01:09:16

with maybe not having all the answers. And if you

Nathan Riley: 01:09:18

don't have the answers, neither do I. And I would

Nathan Riley: 01:09:21

love to meet you and to chat with you and to try

Nathan Riley: 01:09:24

to expand our understanding of this human

Nathan Riley: 01:09:26

beingness on its physical, mental, emotional, and

Nathan Riley: 01:09:30

spiritual levels. And so I welcome everybody to

Nathan Riley: 01:09:32

reach out. I'm a very, very easygoing guy to talk

Nathan Riley: 01:09:34

to, and I love meeting people from these

Nathan Riley: 01:09:36

conversations. And Meredith, thank you for having

Nathan Riley: 01:09:39

me and for spending some time with me and letting

Nathan Riley: 01:09:41

me do this thing, which I get very passionate

Nathan Riley: 01:09:45

about. So thank you so much for the opportunity

Nathan Riley: 01:09:47

as well.

Meredith Oke: 01:09:48

Oh, thank you for being here, Nathan, and for the

Meredith Oke: 01:09:50

work that you do. It is transformative on many

Meredith Oke: 01:09:54

levels. And that is I. The word quantum is

Meredith Oke: 01:09:58

criticized because it's like, what does it mean?

Meredith Oke: 01:09:59

It doesn't mean everything. It means everything.

Meredith Oke: 01:10:01

Right. And. But it is like an accordion, and it

Meredith Oke: 01:10:03

does. It can expand to encompass all that you

Meredith Oke: 01:10:06

have just said, and then we can drop words

Meredith Oke: 01:10:09

entirely and just absolutely be in that

Meredith Oke: 01:10:12

experience.

Nathan Riley: 01:10:14

Yeah, be. Just be and ask. But why? Like, just

Nathan Riley: 01:10:18

ask. How did you come to that conclusion? And

Nathan Riley: 01:10:19

that opens up conversation around all of this

Nathan Riley: 01:10:21

stuff, even in Its like nuanced complexity. Like

Nathan Riley: 01:10:24

it's just so much fun when we can just have a

Nathan Riley: 01:10:26

free flowing, curious conversation. Even if terms

Nathan Riley: 01:10:32

are hard to agree on, like that's, that's

Nathan Riley: 01:10:34

actually irrelevant. It really is, totally

Nathan Riley: 01:10:36

irrelevant of it really.

Meredith Oke: 01:10:37

And that's what your work is so, is so profound

Meredith Oke: 01:10:40

because you are, you are transcending that in, in

Meredith Oke: 01:10:43

what you do. You can break down the melatonin

Meredith Oke: 01:10:46

receptors in the placenta, but also understand

Meredith Oke: 01:10:50

the, the spiritual moment that's occurring.

Nathan Riley: 01:10:53

So yeah, yeah, yeah. One last little thing about

Nathan Riley: 01:10:55

that is, is like if we can understand everything

Nathan Riley: 01:10:59

about childbirth by becoming, you know,

Nathan Riley: 01:11:01

mechanistic with it, I feel like we've already

Nathan Riley: 01:11:04

missed the boat because, you know, even if it was

Nathan Riley: 01:11:07

like, oh, the mitochondria were like this and we

Nathan Riley: 01:11:09

can prove it and we can demonstrate, like, I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:11:11

just, I'm just picking on the mitochondria

Nathan Riley: 01:11:12

because that's such a fascination right now. But

Nathan Riley: 01:11:15

even if we knew that, would that really change

Nathan Riley: 01:11:19

how you have a baby? And it may not. In fact,

Nathan Riley: 01:11:22

many people who don't worry at all about the

Nathan Riley: 01:11:24

mechanics, they actually have the easiest births.

Nathan Riley: 01:11:26

So I just want to encourage people to not get so,

Nathan Riley: 01:11:28

so consumed with this material, reductive means

Nathan Riley: 01:11:32

of understanding human beingness and to actually

Nathan Riley: 01:11:35

possibly rest in the surrender to the like, the

Nathan Riley: 01:11:38

unknown and just be maybe okay with not knowing

Nathan Riley: 01:11:41

the answer. Like, there's also some magic there.

Nathan Riley: 01:11:43

So I just want to, like, that would, that's what

Nathan Riley: 01:11:45

I would put on a billboard. And I want people to

Nathan Riley: 01:11:47

feel okay not having the answers to like, life is

Nathan Riley: 01:11:50

much richer when you don't know why your little

Nathan Riley: 01:11:52

five year old suddenly is able to pronounce five

Nathan Riley: 01:11:55

syllable words. Like, you could talk about the

Nathan Riley: 01:11:56

hippocampus or whatever. It's magic that this

Nathan Riley: 01:12:00

little girl adores me and calls me, she calls me

Nathan Riley: 01:12:02

Big Daddy Muscle man. And like, hanging out with

Nathan Riley: 01:12:06

a five year old is, is the best time ever spent.

Nathan Riley: 01:12:10

And it reminds you, like, I don't have any idea

Nathan Riley: 01:12:12

why the turtle has those spots on their back. I

Nathan Riley: 01:12:15

don't know if I ever will know. And maybe, maybe

Nathan Riley: 01:12:17

it's better that I don't know. I don't know where

Nathan Riley: 01:12:19

babies come from. I'm working on it and they ask

Nathan Riley: 01:12:22

me, like, where do babies, how do the babies come

Nathan Riley: 01:12:23

out of bellies? And it's like, frankly honey, I

Nathan Riley: 01:12:25

really don't know where babies come from. But

Nathan Riley: 01:12:28

it's pretty magical, isn't it? And they're like,

Nathan Riley: 01:12:31

it's like, where do plants come from? And I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:12:33

Like, I don't know that either. I really don't

Nathan Riley: 01:12:35

know fairies, for all I care. And Steiner's work.

Nathan Riley: 01:12:39

I'm heavy into Steiner and anthroposophic

Nathan Riley: 01:12:42

medicine and Waldorf. They say the elemental

Nathan Riley: 01:12:44

beings pull the plants up, and there's some below

Nathan Riley: 01:12:46

that pull them, push them up. Why would that be

Nathan Riley: 01:12:48

any less probable than some biologist spotness

Nathan Riley: 01:12:51

way of looking at plants? Like, it's okay for us

Nathan Riley: 01:12:53

to just be like, I don't know. Let me dream about

Nathan Riley: 01:12:56

that and see what I can come up with you. You

Nathan Riley: 01:12:58

know, come up with for you. So, yeah. Embrace the

Nathan Riley: 01:13:02

magic.

Meredith Oke: 01:13:03

Yeah. And the how, you know, how would we have

Meredith Oke: 01:13:05

been in the world before we invented all this

Meredith Oke: 01:13:07

stuff?

Nathan Riley: 01:13:08

I know, right?

Meredith Oke: 01:13:09

Like, we didn't need to know about melatonin

Meredith Oke: 01:13:11

receptors in the womb because we just had fire

Meredith Oke: 01:13:14

and darkness.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:17

Yeah. There was no reason for us to understand

Nathan Riley: 01:13:19

it. So going back to those principles, like, hey,

Nathan Riley: 01:13:21

do some fire gazing if you're looking to get

Nathan Riley: 01:13:23

pregnant. Do some fire gazing and see what comes

Nathan Riley: 01:13:26

up for you. There's a little hummingbird that I.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:29

Comes by my window. It did while we were

Nathan Riley: 01:13:30

recording. And I have a hummingbird feeder over

Nathan Riley: 01:13:33

there, But I did it to see, like, how long would

Nathan Riley: 01:13:35

it take hummingbirds to trust this feeder? I

Nathan Riley: 01:13:37

mean, this is just the way my whole life works.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:39

And this hummingbird comes up and almost is,

Nathan Riley: 01:13:41

like, thanking me, and then goes over to the

Nathan Riley: 01:13:43

thing, like, they know I'm in here. It's weird.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:45

And I was recently getting a massage from a

Nathan Riley: 01:13:46

friend who's deep into Native American medicine,

Nathan Riley: 01:13:48

and he has this little book on, like, spirit

Nathan Riley: 01:13:50

animals. And I was like, ken, wait one second.

Nathan Riley: 01:13:52

Let me just see what a hummingbird means. And the

Nathan Riley: 01:13:54

hummingbird came to me. And the meaning of a

Nathan Riley: 01:13:57

hummingbird visiting you, a visitation, is that

Nathan Riley: 01:14:00

you may to be. May need to be. There he is again.

Nathan Riley: 01:14:02

He just came by the window. Oh, he's joining us.

Nathan Riley: 01:14:05

You may need to be more flexible in the days to

Nathan Riley: 01:14:08

come. And I first saw this hummingbird before my

Nathan Riley: 01:14:10

wife left on a trip, and I had to be solo

Nathan Riley: 01:14:12

parenting for a week. And I had an oracle

Nathan Riley: 01:14:15

reading, which I'm always like, okay, go do the

Nathan Riley: 01:14:17

oracle reading. And the card that came up was

Nathan Riley: 01:14:18

flexibility. It was like, like, maybe there's

Nathan Riley: 01:14:21

magic here. Maybe there's some magic.

Meredith Oke: 01:14:23

I hear you.

Nathan Riley: 01:14:24

Yeah, yeah, I'm hearing. I. I don't know what the

Nathan Riley: 01:14:26

message is, but I'm. I'm at least receiving

Nathan Riley: 01:14:28

something here. So anyways, I. I don't want to

Nathan Riley: 01:14:32

take us out too overboard, but thank you so much.

Meredith Oke: 01:14:34

But it's fun. And life is so much more fun if

Meredith Oke: 01:14:36

you. If you let it be magic. Like, why not? Why

Meredith Oke: 01:14:39

not?

Nathan Riley: 01:14:40

I don't know. I don't know.

Meredith Oke: 01:14:41

I. I mean, you're not gonna get in trouble, right?

Nathan Riley: 01:14:44

And there's a difference. I don't know. Yeah. The

Nathan Riley: 01:14:47

magic that you and I are using. This is a little

Nathan Riley: 01:14:49

funny aside. M A G I, C K is actually the magic

Nathan Riley: 01:14:53

that we're talking about, which has been

Nathan Riley: 01:14:55

considered a cult. Black magic, all of that. But

Nathan Riley: 01:14:57

there is something different between that and a

Nathan Riley: 01:14:59

card trick. But a card trick, M A G, I C, which

Nathan Riley: 01:15:03

I'm also fascinated with, a card trick can also

Nathan Riley: 01:15:05

give you that sense of awe where. Where you may

Nathan Riley: 01:15:09

never actually find out the answer to how the

Nathan Riley: 01:15:11

card trick was done. And there's actually some

Nathan Riley: 01:15:13

medicine in that for people. It's okay if you

Nathan Riley: 01:15:16

don't know how the trick was done. You were

Nathan Riley: 01:15:17

tricked. And. Sorry, one more short little story.

Nathan Riley: 01:15:19

I was in the Magic Castle in LA years ago, and

Nathan Riley: 01:15:22

this guy, he called everybody over to a card

Nathan Riley: 01:15:24

table, and he did this trick. And he. And he. He

Nathan Riley: 01:15:26

dealt everybody a hand in poker. And while he was

Nathan Riley: 01:15:29

doing it, he had other people, you know,

Nathan Riley: 01:15:31

shuffling, cutting, dealing. And he was like,

Nathan Riley: 01:15:33

okay. So he said what every person had, and he

Nathan Riley: 01:15:36

was like, okay, now remember, I'm. I'm. I'm the.

Nathan Riley: 01:15:39

I'm the trickster here. I'm here to trick you.

Nathan Riley: 01:15:41

And even though you guys all got really good

Nathan Riley: 01:15:44

hands, I. I dealt myself a royal flush. And he

Nathan Riley: 01:15:46

has somebody else turn the cards over. I don't

Nathan Riley: 01:15:47

ever remember seeing him touch any of the cards,

Nathan Riley: 01:15:50

but he did it. And he was like, okay, we're gonna

Nathan Riley: 01:15:52

do it again. I'm gonna slow it down. And he did

Nathan Riley: 01:15:54

it again. Royal flush. He's like, it's a 1 in

Nathan Riley: 01:15:56

a350,000 chance that I would get this on. On. On,

Nathan Riley: 01:16:00

you know, by coincidence. So let's do one more.

Nathan Riley: 01:16:02

He's like, I'm going to slow this down even

Nathan Riley: 01:16:05

further. Watch everything that is happening. And

Nathan Riley: 01:16:09

he does it like they deal the cards that shuffle

Nathan Riley: 01:16:12

and then cut the deck. And he's. He's an

Nathan Riley: 01:16:13

entertainer. So there's all this stuff happening,

Nathan Riley: 01:16:15

this flourish of activity. And he does it again.

Nathan Riley: 01:16:19

He does it, like, four times in a row. Meredith

Nathan Riley: 01:16:21

and I left feeling, like, inspired again about

Nathan Riley: 01:16:24

childbirth, because it was like, I actually don't

Nathan Riley: 01:16:27

want to go and look up how he did the trick. I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:16:29

sure somebody would be able to tell me. I have

Nathan Riley: 01:16:30

friends who are magicians, but I'm okay not

Nathan Riley: 01:16:33

knowing. And there was some medicine there for me

Nathan Riley: 01:16:35

to just be okay sitting with the. Wow. Like, I

Nathan Riley: 01:16:38

was just tricked. And he even tried to give me an

Nathan Riley: 01:16:40

advantage by slowing it down. He's like, I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:16:43

gonna try to not trick you here, but remember,

Nathan Riley: 01:16:44

I'm a magician. And he did it four times in a row

Nathan Riley: 01:16:47

with new decks of cards. And it's okay to go into

Nathan Riley: 01:16:52

the magic shop and for them to do a trick for you

Nathan Riley: 01:16:55

and for you to walk away just feeling like, I'm

Nathan Riley: 01:16:57

never going to know how they did that trick. And

Nathan Riley: 01:16:59

that is actually a kind of a foundational thing

Nathan Riley: 01:17:01

for me. It's okay that there's tricks, and it's

Nathan Riley: 01:17:04

okay that there seems to be real magic out there.

Nathan Riley: 01:17:06

And it's okay that we don't have the answers to

Nathan Riley: 01:17:08

everything. And even if we did have the answers,

Nathan Riley: 01:17:10

would it really change how you live your life?

Nathan Riley: 01:17:13

And maybe not. But this is what life is all

Nathan Riley: 01:17:15

about, is just embracing the magic. And

Nathan Riley: 01:17:18

childbirth is definitely magic.

Meredith Oke: 01:17:20

Yeah. I. Yes. It's like there's like a little

Meredith Oke: 01:17:25

portal into awe. We don't have to shut it down by

Meredith Oke: 01:17:28

figuring it out.

Nathan Riley: 01:17:29

We can just go through. Right. And see what

Nathan Riley: 01:17:32

happens to see where we end up in Oz or whatever.

Meredith Oke: 01:17:40

Thank you so much, Nathan.

Nathan Riley: 01:17:42

My pleasure.