This week, Nikki sits down with Kristen — mother of two — who vulnerably shares what it meant to reclaim her birth story after a deeply traumatic, unplanned cesarean during COVID.

For her second birth, Kristen prepared differently. She did the Push Prep course. She did the inner work. She educated herself. She found her voice. She built a team that aligned with her values. And while her second son was born in Chile with Indigenous Mapuche midwives, in a setting that looked very different from her first experience, this conversation isn’t about one specific kind of birth.

It’s about something much more universal.

It’s about what every woman deserves in birth — whether she’s delivering in a hospital, birth center, or operating room: to feel informed, safe, respected, and like an active participant in her own care.

Together, Nikki and Kristen unpack: • What birth trauma really is (and how it lives in the body) • How preparation shifts not just outcomes — but confidence • The power of advocacy within any medical system • And how to approach a second birth without fear running the show

This episode is for any woman who has ever wondered: Can I do this differently next time?

Kristen shares:

• Being transferred from home to hospital mid-labor in a rainstorm because her midwife had another patient to manage — and not knowing she could say no
• The disconnect she carried in her body for years: "I felt a bit dead inside. I felt like my body had failed me"
• Why it took 18 months to even name what happened
• How her team in Chile asked about her childhood memories, her fears, and her earliest life experiences — before a single clinical question
• The transition moment where birth trauma came flooding back and how her midwife held her through it without judgment
• "I see you. I respect you. This is not what you came for." The 7 words that changed everything
• Birthing a 9.5 lb baby with two pushes after a two-hour pushing stage the first time
• Eating chocolate while getting stitched up by a lesbian couple who treated her vagina like a Picasso
• What reconnecting with her body felt like after years of disconnect
• Her advice to every woman carrying an unhealed birth story into a second pregnancy

Ways to Connect with Kristen:

Kristen's Contact:

Instagram: kristenokeefe | Email: kristen.okeefe2@gmail.com

Midwife Spotlight: Sabina Velasquez Sabina is a Chile-based midwife who works internationally and has trained around the world in traditional, physiological, and culturally rooted birth practices. She is U.S.-certified in natural breech birth and collaborates with physicians in placenta research and education.

Her care is deeply holistic — honoring birth as both a physical and ancestral experience. Contact: sagavego@gmail.com or WhatsApp +56976165883

What if the difference between lifelong isolation and restored dignity was $633?

In this powerful conversation, Nikki sits down with Kate Grant, founding CEO of the Fistula Foundation, to talk about obstetric fistula — a preventable childbirth injury that affects millions of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia when emergency obstetric care isn’t available.

After days of obstructed labor, many women lose their babies and are left with a constant drip of fecal and urinary incontinence, often facing abandonment and social isolation. And yet — 90% of the time — a trained surgeon can repair the injury and give a woman her life back.

For $633.

Kate shares how Fistula Foundation has grown from funding 500 surgeries in one Ethiopian hospital in 2005 to supporting more than 17,500 surgeries across 30 countries this year — and why she wrote No Woman Left Behind to tell the stories of the heroic surgeons, generous donors, and resilient women at the heart of this work.

This is Nikki’s charity of choice — and an organization she is proud to support — because no woman should suffer for lack of basic, life-saving care.

If this conversation moves you, we invite you to learn more, share the episode, and consider supporting the work.

Kate shares:

• What obstetric fistula is—and why it doesn't exist in countries with access to emergency C-sections
• "I would rather be blind because people will sit with the blind person, but they won't sit with me"
• The first fistula patient she met in 1994—a teenager abandoned by her husband, blamed for her own injury
• Why Fistula Foundation only funds indigenous doctors (African doctors training African doctors)
• How they've funded over 100,000 surgeries—and why they're on track to keep growing
• $633 funds one surgery that transforms a woman's life permanently
• Why 85% of their donors are women
• The connection between poverty, lack of access to care, and women bearing all the risk of childbirth
• Why they don't take government money (U.S. contracting procedures are too onerous)
• How a $15 million gift from MacKenzie Scott was spent in months—turned directly into surgeries
• 37% of women have stress incontinence by age 50 (even in the U.S.)
• Why prevention would require massive systemic change, but treatment is achievable now
• The book: No Woman Left Behind by Kate Grant (foreword by Dr. Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone)

Website: fistulafoundation.org Book: No Woman Left Behind by Kate Grant (100% of proceeds go to the foundation) Email: info@fistulafoundation.org (for book club Zoom calls!)

This week, Nikki sits down with Anne Matthews, fertility and women's hormone expert, founder of Energy Tree Studios, and one of Canada's few qualified traditional Chinese medicine practitioners (ABORM). After their joint participation in a menopause panel left them speechless, Anne and Nikki knew they had to have this conversation.

Together, they unpack the pendulum swing around hormone replacement therapy (HRT)—from being considered "dangerous" 10 years ago to now being prescribed via AI platforms without proper testing. They're not anti-HRT. They're anti-blanket prescriptions for symptoms that might not be perimenopause at all.

Anne shares real stories from her practice, the critical tests women should demand before accepting an HRT prescription, and why advocating for yourself isn't "being difficult"—it's being smart.

Anne shares:

• Why a physician said "my 10-year-old could prescribe HRT" using AI platforms
• An ovarian cancer story: a woman diagnosed with "perimenopause" who actually had stage 3 ovarian cancer
• Why women in their 30s are being told they're perimenopausal when they're not
• "At what point between 12 and 44 are we considered whole and healthy and not pathologized?"
• The parallel to birth control in high school: same blanket-prescription energy
• Why exercise works better than SSRIs for depression (and why nobody wants to hear it)
• Critical tests to request: thyroid panel, ferritin, B12, vitamin D, insulin, A1c, autoimmune markers, pelvic ultrasound
• Day 3 hormone panels vs. irregular cycle testing—when to test and what to ask for
• Why healthcare for women is broken at every life stage—and how to advocate anyway
• Click here to download the PDF mentioned in this episode: Testing to Consider for Women 40+

Ways to Connect with Anne: Instagram: @energytreestudios Website: energytreestudios.com