Expecting Fathers: YOUR IMPORTANT Role during Pregnancy and after with OBGYN Dr. Nathan Riley

[00:00:00] There, there's not much. I mean, you can find a bazillion books on a lot of things around birth. Yeah. And a lot of things around women. There's not a bazillion books for men who are expecting this to come around. Yeah. I, I grew up taking care of kids and working with kids, but, you know, there were a lot of questions when Sarah got pregnant the first time, it was like, oh, uh, I gotta fix everything now.

I gotta fix the whole house. I gotta figure out how to pay for all this. Like, the freakouts were real, so. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing how little, um, you know, and there's no guidebook. There's no guidebook for like, how to be a dad. Like this is, this is a true journey. And, and, you know, the, uh, you're, you're a big strong guy.

You're, you're also a father. How many kids do you have? Just so I know. We have two, two kids. So we've got two little girls of our own and same here. In some ways, I kind of feel like, yeah. So, so guys like us, we're like oozing with masculinity. Um, you're a, you're a big strong man. I'm a. I'm a wiry, you know, I'm like a [00:01:00] wiry climber, you know, but we both kind of show up in the world as like this, I'm gonna show up and, and conquer, and conquer the task in front of me.

Well, childbirth is interesting because there's actually not a task to conquer. It's actually your first exercise, and really, I think, leaning into some of these sacred polarities, what is the role of a man if there's not a problem to be solved? So our fathers, our uncles, our grandfathers, most of the men in our lives have modeled for us that, hey, if you're, if you're a, a ca, a competent, capable man, then you're valuable.

But there's not really a role for you in the birth process. Like, it's not a clear problem to be solved, I should say. But there's, there's plenty of responsibilities and opportunities there for you to actually lean into what I call the divine masculine, which is really the mountain. As Sarah, your, your partner was going through her births, you know, your, your births together in these, in these incredible experiences, given that there's not a problem to solve, you know, your job.

As, as the fallible man is to actually hold the container for this river to [00:02:00] just run where the river's gonna go. That's the divine feminine. So really what we're talking about is the art of holding space, palms out, chest out, and just taking it and letting it maybe even erode you a little bit, you know, change, you, change your contours, kind of displace parts of you elsewhere.

Change your identity. There's one really great exercise that I did at, um, it's so cliche, but we did it at Burning Man, where we, my wife was pregnant with our, our first, and we were at Burning Man in 2019 or, or whatever. And, um, we went to this, this event at a tent. They were gonna allow 30 women and 30 men into the tent.

And the women were separated from the men, and the men went outside to prepare. We didn't really know what we were getting into, but what the men ended up doing was standing face to face. And there was a guy your size looking at me, probably taller. He was like six four. I mean, he was like a big guy. And.

The exercise was for one person to stand with their shoulders down, their chest, out their chin up, and their palms facing outward, and to just for the other person, to just emote. [00:03:00] And for most men it comes out as anger rage. It's that, it's that, it's that feeling that comes up when you're in a bar and you're just letting out all that pent up aggression in another person's face, and that person is going to stand there and take it, which for us meant is actually very, very hard.

Well then you switch the roles and I did it to them. And interestingly, you know, I got kind of the chills when I was being screamed at like, you could smell their breath like they were right in my face. Normally that would be like, we're going to war here, you know? And I got chills when they were, they were doing this to me and then we reversed the roles and this large in charge, muscular, handsome, very probably capable guy, actually started crying.

And so when we as men are just open to receiving what another person is giving us, there's some pretty complicated shifts that happen energetically there. So what happened after this exercise? We did the, some moves for the haka and there was a lot of like brotherhood kind of stuff. After that, we went in and then we [00:04:00] held space for the women.

We stood for about three hours, and the women one by one came into the center of the circle and they picked a man from the crowd that, that sort of like triggered something in them. And, and what I mean by that is, is like maybe their father left them, you know, he was an alcoholic and left the family, or your, their husband died from a cancer.

Early in life they felt like, The masculine had a, had abandoned them for some reason, or maybe they were raped in a, in a parking garage late at night. So there was a lot of pent up anger, and most women in our lives do not get the opportunity to merely express without us coming to the rescue. You know, like, oh, don't worry.

There, there, there, there. It's okay. Just, just receiving that emotion. And there was not a dry eye in the room. These men who are all big and strong and tough, and they obviously have, you know, money because they're a burning man. We all were just puddles of tears. The women were puddles of tears. And what happened was, one by [00:05:00] one men were brought into the center.

The woman, whatever her form of emotion was, would just lay into them. Similar to the male exercise outside. And we were supposed to not say a word. There was no language from the men's side. We were just supposed to receive that. So what are we, why are we talking about burning Man? This is what happens in childbirth.

There's a great opportunity for you as a man to, to hold, anchor your family down and to allow this beautiful, sacred unfolding, which is the birth of your child. And that's not what I was sort of modeled when I was, you know, soon to be a dad. I've, I've been to thousands of births. I am an ob, G y N, I've done many, many c-sections.

I've done, I've been to so many births, I can't even count them all. And I wasn't prepared for the reality of what it meant to hold space for the person I love the most, and to enter to welcome in the person I maybe love second most in the world. And then third, most with our, you know, with our, our second daughter who actually was born at home.

So this is [00:06:00] really where I think, you know, I love where this conversation, how this conversation is evolving as we see men's groups popping up and we see a lot of big, strong guys who are being more susceptible to just receiving a person's feelings. I actually think this is where real masculinity. Has the opportunity to go and I, I feel like I'm, the conversations I've been having with a lot of men who come into my practice, whether they're gonna be having a baby, they're trying to conceive, there's a lot of deep inner work and like the inner child kind of needs to be loved through this.

And we're not really seeing that. There's no guidebook for that. But I think as we have this conversation, as we see it evolving, I actually think this is a great opportunity for us to reclaim masculinity in a lot of ways.

Here's the million dollar question. How do men like us reach our full potential? Growing to the men we dream of being while taking care of our responsibilities, working, being good husbands, fathers, and still take care of ourselves? Well, that's the big question. In this [00:07:00] podcast, we'll help you answer those questions and more.

My name is Brent and welcome to the Fallible Man Podcast.

Welcome to the Fallible Man Podcast. Your home for all things, man, husband, and father. Big shout out, fallible Nation. You guys help us keep doing this. And a warm welcome to our first time listeners. Thank you for choosing to spend some time with us and give us a chance. My name is Brent, and today my special guest is Dr.

Nathan Riley, o b g y N, and advocate for home birthing. Nathan, welcome to the Fallible Man Podcast. Thank you, Brent. It's my pleasure to be here. Now, Nathan, we, we like to start kind of easy peasy, so I've got a silly question in the show for you. All right? Yeah. Now here's, here's today's question and you guys play along with us.

If you breed a zebra and a donkey, what animal do you get? Is it A, a donkey, B, a Donka three, a za Don, or four a donkey? Oh, it's [00:08:00] definitely a as as a Don, it's always, it's always C. It is a Don. That's my final answer, Regis. It's always C love, multiple choice. You're talking to a professional multiple choice test taker.

That is definitely a C one right there. Alright, now guys, remember that, you know the rules. Don't cheat. Wait for the end of the show. We'll answer that later. Well, Dr. Riley, I don't do huge introductions because that doesn't, I, I can read off all kinds of stuff about you, but that doesn't help our audience know who you are.

So, in your own words today, who is Dr. Nathan Riley? I wake up every single day. Remember that, that blue oyster cult sketch from Ss n l like guys, I wake up every day and I put my pants on. The only difference between me and you is I make gold records, right? Uh, I don't make gold records, but I, I wake up every single day and I get my girls from their bedrooms.

I make them breakfast, pour them a little bit of milk, and then, um, do some movement and get to work as a, uh, truly holistic women's health [00:09:00] specialist. Um, with a big focus on fertility and childbirth, um, informed consent, um, and of course, throughout the day, throughout every day. I am also a husband. I'm a friend.

I've got plenty of people relying on me to show up in the best way that I can. To make their lives easier, to make them feel loved. And um, and I try to make money on the side through podcasting and through my practice whenever I can. Now, Nathan, if you could have a conversation with anybody in history, past, present, living or dead, doesn't matter, who would it be and why?

Richard Feynman, he's one of the original physicists on the Manhattan Project. If anybody out there wants a great 150 page fast read, surely you're joking. Mr. Feynman, this guy was brilliant, but he was able to break down really complicated topics that ended up applying to everything from the challenger or to, to some of our early, uh, space launches, but also more importantly to the Manhattan Project and the development of the nuclear bomb.

And [00:10:00] he, uh, he wasn't just a physicist, he was a drummer. He drummed in like a carnival band and in, in Brazil, he was a painter. He found like, Um, women in, in bars at, at his local bar that, that volunteered to let him, you know, paint them. And those paintings still remain in that bar. Like this guy was a true renaissance man, but he also had this kind of, um, sensibility to him, you know, around not being confu, like, like don't let yourself be drawn one way.

Like you have to think for yourself. And that really has served me quite well. I read that book back in college based on the librarian's recommendation. I was like, I want a book. I was there for like, to tutor kids in math or whatever and, and I said, what's your favorite book? And she said, uh, I got the book for you.

And she went and got it and I sat there and read it front to back and then I read it again and I was like, God, there are some really interesting people out there. So that curiosity has actually served me quite well. And if I could meet him, man, that would be really, really fun. Fine. Fineman was hilarious.

We all think of like doctors and scientists and lab coats. [00:11:00] Dude had a VW bug. It was totally just pimped out. It was awesome. Not a bug, sorry. Van VW van that was just totally fineman. Oh, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Oh, wow. I'm glad that you, you gave me something new there. That's awesome.

That's, so we are actually located just north of where they developed the bomb. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. Hanford, uh, nuclear power plant and military research and development is where it was done. And that's 35 minutes south of us. Uh, we're just north of the Hanford Reservation is what they call it. Brent, send me your address.

I'm gonna send you a copy of, of this book I'm talking about. Yeah, I think, and I wanna share like a little snippet because you, like, you're right at the site where they started testing these, these early bombs. There's a great scene. I think it's in the book actually, where he and Oppenheimer, they're, they're making a, a film about Oppenheimer now.

Can't wait to see it. It's gonna be so good. We can go together. I'll visit you and we can go and get some, uh, we'll have a mandate. Um, but, uh, the guy from Peaky Blinders plays Oppenheimer, and [00:12:00] one of his close colleagues, of course is Richard Fineman. And, um, they're sitting on like, they're, they're sitting and waiting.

The bomb goes off. They're not supposed to look at the bomb because the thing is probably blindingly bright. But Feynman claims that he was the only person to ever see a nuclear blast with his blind, his naked eye. 'cause he took his glasses off. It's like, this is a one, its once in a lifetime. I'm not, see what this looks like.

So he had these big, these big, you know, you know, like stunner shades on. Took them off, saw it, and then the blast goes, everybody cheer cheers. And he looks back and he sees Oppenheimer sitting on the gate, the, the, uh, tailgate of his, uh, of his truck. And he goes and sits next to him. And I imagine like Oppenheimer's legs are kind of swinging and he's super contemplative and I.

And Feynman's, like we did it, like we got the bombing and Oppenheimer's. Like, what have we created? Like what did we just see? Like that was not okay. Like what we just created is going to change the, the course of history. And it certainly has, but that little exchange between these two, like very humble physicists who, um, who have [00:13:00] every reason in the world to celebrate, but this little exchange where they were reflecting on what does this mean now for the rest of humanity that now that we have this, this technology available to us and we created it, like how are we gonna live with that?

It was an awesome little exchange, but, um, I'm gonna send you a copy of the book. You just have to text me your, uh, your address. All right. Are, are you, uh, just outta curiosity, are you a big Bing fan fan? I used to watch it and I, I, med school and residency and everything took me away from tv. We definitely watch TV now.

We love tv, but then I just kind of lost the ability to keep up with sports and sitcoms. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I've definitely gone through swings where. I, I watch way less television, but I think that's better for me anyway. Now of course I read there's great tv. Like TV is awesome. People that are like, I don't watch tv.

I'm like, well, you're boring because there is a lot of really good stuff out there. Almost. There's so much of it. It's easy to like, yeah, let it overwhelm you. That's what I was doing for a while. Yeah. All my free time was watching television just to keep up with like the 13 so shows I [00:14:00] watched on regular news.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. It is a lot. Now I read in your website you are a dad joke King, so give us your best dad joke. Oh my gosh. Um, oh, you're putting me on the spot here. Okay. Um, that'd be good. This is forever. Let come back to, come back to that. I, I, I'm just not in the, I gotta, I gotta like, it has to come up so organically.

There's not even like a, it's not even like a joke and punchline. You know how this goes? Oh yeah. It's in the moment. There's a sub sort of like double entendre that you can play with and it, and it just like lands totally flat with everybody but yourself. I'll bring one up as we're talking, I promise.

Okay. Okay. They just flow. They flow so naturally I'll hold to that. My daughters are just getting to the age where they're now starting to get the eye roll and be like, dad, dad, for a long time they, huh? How old are your girls? They're eight and 11. Eight and 11. Wow. Yeah. The eight year old's almost nine.

But yeah, they're al she's, she'll be nine next month. Um, or by the time this airs, sorry, she'll be [00:15:00] lying. By the time this airs, she'll be nine. But yeah, something I have look to look forward to. Yeah. At nine and 11, I'm, I'm getting the dad an eye roll. It's like, no, you didn't, it it is the fun time to start making dad jokes.

'cause now it really embarrasses the kids. They, they hit that age, they're like, oh, be the best. Yeah. Did you really say that right? Yeah. No, Nathan, I told a joke the other day, oh my God. I'm like, we were building a calendar, like, so the penny or our toddler could keep up with what, what days we're gonna, you know, be doing things, activities during the, the week, like the library or whatever.

And I said, oh man, I feel so bad for this calendar. Its days are numbered. And like, of course the toddler didn't like, it's not for the toddler, it's for me and for my wife to roll her eyes like dramatically. So they roll off out into the street like meatballs. But uh, she was like, oh my God, like you are going to just like ruin their lives as adolescents.

But I'm so looking forward to it. For all of you who [00:16:00] are listening, what you can't hear is, you know, Sarah's in the background engineering this podcast as we go and she's in a whole nother room in my house and like I just heard her die laughing at that joke. So it was appreciated for sure. Thank you Sarah.

Thank you. Somebody out there just appreciates really good humor. Nathan, what purchase of a hundred dollars or less have you made in the last year that's had the biggest impact on your life the last year? Um, man, I love this podcast interview. This is so much fun. Um, Okay, so I bought a, uh, I went to Home Depot looking for a cold tub.

You know, there's all these like five to $10,000 tubs out there, and Oh, yeah, their own, they're awesome. I love cold immersion, but it was like, I can't really, we're probably gonna be moving. I can't justify a cold plunge or something right now. We don't have a lot of space. So I went to Home Depot and I asked them about a cold tub, and they didn't have any, they had like short ones, but I wanted like a six footer.

[00:17:00] And, um, later that day they called back and they were like, you're not gonna believe this. We just got one returned to our store. We don't normally carry these, but it's, it's dented. Do you want it? And they gave it to me for $99. Wow. And that is an awesome deal. For those who don't know, it's like one of those big, you know, oh yeah.

Two foot by six foot tubs. And so I've got it for 99 bucks versus five grand for a cold plunge. And all I have to do is go and buy a lot. $10 worth of ice. And I've got my, my, my cold immersion after Jiujitsu, so Oh, I'm, that's pretty on that one. Yeah. No. As someone who's, who's looked into the pricing on those is like, wow.

They, they want a whole lot for money, for something to Yeah. Water. Yeah. Something. Some of them are like 15 grand now, like the blue cube, like no, no shade to them. Like, I mean, they're probably beautiful and made of like Pacific Northwest Cedar or whatever, but it's like, shit, it's 15 grand. I could buy a freaking car, a motorcycle for that, you know?

Oh, yeah. It's insane. Nathan, what are you [00:18:00] most proud of? I am most proud of making it through 14 years of education and not losing myself. I. Remaining curious, remaining funny, remain funny to some people. Um, Sarah, thank you for that. Um, remaining just like kind of lighthearted about everything. 'cause I think, you know, we've all been through quite a bit over these past couple years.

It has actually been the greatest period of growth for me and my family. Mm-hmm. Just being able to be curious and, and to not like, kind of sweat what's happening in the industry or in medicine or whatever. I, I've always kind of done my own thing and that has really, really served me well. But there's a lot of doctors that I have a lot of compassion for who lose themselves because they, I, they identify with the job and when the job starts to become not so much in service to their, to them.

They, they start to, you know, slip down a, a, you know, a, a spiral, you know, start to spiral down. And I, I just feel very, very fortunate to have maintained me, the meanness, the Nathan ness of [00:19:00] me, um, throughout all of those years of training and it's, it's remains who I am. So Awesome. Now, Nathan, what is one just random fact that most people dunno about you?

Random fact that people don't know about me. Wow. Um, yeah. Everything's fair game here, so. Wow.

Uh, you know, I think, I guess one thing that people are often surprised by is I'm really strong, like, I'm happy to say it now, like I'm 38 and I am, I am really, really strong. Like I just started doing juujitsu. And these, like 18 year olds, like their, their technique is way better than me, but they're like, holy shit, like you're really strong.

Like they think I'm on testosterone and everything, and I'm not a big guy, but I've just always had like the, the, the sort of strength, maybe it's from the rock climbing days and whatnot, but I, I have started to have to own that [00:20:00] where I'm like, well, I'm strong from my age or whatever, but like, it feels good to be in my late thirties.

I'm not using any hormone replacement and I, I recover quickly. I, I can hold my own in almost anything. And that, that to me is like, uh, it's not really an answer to your question, but I've actually been recently kind of having to honor that in myself that I've really taken care of myself and people are usually surprised by how much weight I can put overhead and, and whatnot.

So, It's not really probably what you were expecting me to say, but I, I have just this past couple months, I've like had to really sit back and say, man, you're approaching 40 and you're, you're looking good, you're feeling good. You're lifting heavy weights still like that. That to me is, uh, worthy of, of acknowledgement.

So I'm gonna pat myself on the back today. You know what? There's, I told you everything is, everything is fair and don't ever apologize for holding onto your strength. Holding onto your strength will make life a lot better later on. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I, I am not shy at 43 about flaunting the fact that I am way stronger than most of [00:21:00] 18 to 25 year olds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's something, you know, we get caught in these spirals of like not wanting to boast or not wanting to whatever, but like, when's the last time you said I did a really, really good job at that thing? You know, usually people, there's punitive measures, but there's not like a lot of rewards.

There's not a positive reward cycle, whether you're in a doctor or in any other advanced training program. I don't remember once in four years of residency as an OB G N a hundred hour workweeks being told that was really good. You did that really well. It was always like, you could have done this better.

Right? So like at some point we have to like acknowledge I'm still really good at certain things and I'm so happy I. I have this strength or this mobility or this clear skin or whatever else. Like, I think sometimes we have to be a little bit, a little bit less, a little bit cocky, like a little bit, um, in order to honor just like our virtues, our gifts, you know?

Otherwise, nobody else is gonna honor it. You have to honor it yourself. So, um, man, that's like a t-shirt there. We can come up with a slogan there. [00:22:00] Be careful that will show up on my website, you know? Yeah, yeah. When my first t-shirts was out of one of these conversations. How dare you steal my ideas. We'll wear, we'll wear our t-shirts together to the, uh, to Oppenheimer when we, uh, go to the movies together.

Sounds like a plan. No, you know what? It's, I, it's one of those things people lose track of as you get older, you're also fighting cum, cumulative wear and terror. Yeah. And a change in your hormones, right? Because guy's, testosterone starts dropping and keeping up with your health starts getting more complicated.

Uh, so yeah, it's absolutely something that should be celebrated. I have a buddy who just, I mean, he's ripping down for a bodybuilding show. Yeah, he's upper thirties, I think, and yeah, he's, he's ripping down for a bodybuilding show and it's just looking amazing. And he's like, I probably shouldn't gloat about this on Facebook.

I'm like, dude, sing it loud and proud. Yeah, man, own it. This is a brand new thing for him. Like he's never done bodybuilding or anything like that. And it's like, dude, you're, [00:23:00] you're in your upper thirties and you're going, I'm, I'm gonna do this. So yeah, celebrate that. I'm, uh, I'm totally in agreement, 100%.

And, uh, Nobody, you know, people may say, oh, you shouldn't boast. Like, I, I, I actually think that there are certain things that, uh, if you're honestly doing well at something at 38, I actually think that we really, really should be honoring that. That actually, I think, would serve a lot of people really well if they could just be acknowledged for how, how great of a dad they are, or how great of a partner they are, or whatever.

It's not boasting. It's true. Like own it. Like you need to embrace that. The, uh, the vi the gifts, the virtues, the values. You know, that you've, you've spent 30 whatever years, 40 years, you know, honing, you know, I think, I think we should be acknowledging that. Absolutely. Nathan, before we move into the next segment of the show, what's something specific everyone should know about you?

Be before we dig into this, going into the next portion of the show. I have never, ever, ever been [00:24:00] good at following rules. Um, I. I will just leave it at that. Fair enough. I like it as a fellow rule breaker, I can, I can align with that. Yeah. Especially if the rules don't make sense, I'm just not gonna do it and, right.

Well, we'll leave it there. Logic, I, I'm a big fan of logic and reason and Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without good reasoning. I'm not gonna do the thing that you want me to do just because somebody told you to tell me to do it. It's just not gonna work like that for me. So I'm, I'm largely unemployable and maybe that's the, the, uh, the sub, the subheader there.

Now guys, we've been spending some time getting to know Dr. Nathan Riley. In the next part of the show, we're gonna dive into modern childbirth and why you should be part of the decision making with your partner and what that looks like. We're gonna roll to our sponsor and we will be right back with more from Nathan.

How well do you sleep at night? Do you toss and turn and wake up more tired than when you went to bed? Sleep is commonly one of the critical elements people fall short on in their life. The [00:25:00] quality of sleep you get directly affects your ability to control your weight, your ability to add muscle, your stress levels, and your everyday job and life performance.

If you're ready to move to the next level, then sleep has to be part of the plan. Check out our forensic@ghosted.com if you're ready to get your best sleep. I love my ghost bed. I've been sleeping on one for a couple years and it's made a huge difference in how I sleep. Hit ghosted.com and use the code, the fallible man 30 to get 30% off your order and start getting better night's.

Sleep tomorrow. Now let's go on to the show guys. Welcome back. We've been getting to know Dr. Nathan Riley. In the next part of the show, we're gonna dive into modern childbirth and why you should be part of the demi decision making with your partner, uh, what modern trial birthing looks like and why it may not be your best solution.

Uh, we, we spent some time getting to know Nathan, but now we, we were willing to get into his expertise and really address these things that a lot of fathers just aren't [00:26:00] aware of. Yeah. So Nathan, let's walk through the traditional modern childbirth process for any of our, uh, yet to be parents or expectant fathers so they know what's gonna come their way, what people see as this is how we do it.

And then we'll start digging into why you're on different paths in that. Well, let's, let's change the word traditional to conventional. 'cause nowadays, 99% of babies are being born in a hospital under the care of a doctor or a midwife that works in the hospital. There's a lot of interventions. You know, the baby comes out, they clean the baby off, they give some shots in the feet, they put goop in the eyes, they wrap the baby up like a little burrito and give it, you know, the baby to the mom.

And then you stay there for a couple days in the hospital and you go home and it's, it's all you like, hopefully you're ready. What I do is not that I, that's what I trained to do and I, I became very, very quickly disillusioned with the amount of interventions and the sort of lack of, um, [00:27:00] maybe lack of appreciation for this.

Not just being a medical procedure, but rather a a, an incredible transformation for two people who are welcoming a child into the world. So, you know, many, many nights I was up, you know, in my call room at the hospital residency is a hundred hour work weeks for four straight years. There were times when I didn't even see sunshine for six weeks 'cause I was on night float.

It would end up in adrenal fatigue and, you know, just, Just, it was really rough. So at some point it's like, I fell asleep. I'm, why am I being woken up at 3:00 AM every single night to go and do this exam by, you know, putting my hand in somebody's vagina who I don't really know to quote, check the baby.

And, um, it, it annoys the nurse. It annoys me 'cause I'm not sleeping ever. It annoys the pregnant woman. It annoys her partner. Like, what do we do in this? So I just stopped doing it. And of course, time and time again I was called to the principal's office and there's a little bit of remediation. You don't like following rules, you don't like doing what you're told.

We don't know what to do with you. And I was like, well, I don't have any reason to do that. [00:28:00] It's not changing anybody, anything for them. They're not, they're not having better births or whatever, less blood loss, whatever you, you wanna, you know, measure by me going in 3:00 AM and interrupting their sleep and putting my hand in their vagina.

Like, it's just not, it's not showing anything, any benefit. So I just stopped doing it. There's the whole rule following thing that policy's stupid. I don't wanna do it. And I, I, you know, I would be a little bit more polite about it. 'cause you don't wanna get fired from residency. That's a terrible thing to happen.

But what I did end up doing was finding, you know, countless articles, studies that actually justified my lack of desire to intervene in this process. And I was finding I was getting better outcomes. So that was the first sort of, A little flag for me, like, man, this hospital advertises safety, but the outcomes are better when I don't use all those hospital related things in childbirth.

Around the halfway point of residency, I also started attending home birth. There was a, a doctor, Dr. Stu Fishbein, who was at the time still practicing in Los Angeles where I did my residency, and he invited me to some home births with him, and I got to see just how [00:29:00] incredible this can be outside of the hospital, but midwives and people who have births outside of the hospital have for my whole life been characterized as, you know, stupid, uninformed, irresponsible, whatever else I.

But that didn't, that wasn't enough for me to, to ignore that sense of like, wow, there's something primal and beautiful about this, this home birth experience that I don't see in the hospital where there's, you know, a building that's buzzing with E M F and terrible, crappy vegetable, you know, um, oil laden cafeteria food and crappy tasting water and beeps and interruptions and sounds everywhere, and right angles and just uns, scratchy, scratchy, um, hospital gowns and all this.

Like, that's not a very comfortable place to have a baby, but that still remains the trend. So what I just started to do is, let me explore midwifery a little bit. And when you use the word traditional, Brent, what I, what came to me was traditionally birth did not take place in a hospital. Birth took place in the home and everybody says, how could you have a home birth?

[00:30:00] Your baby's gonna die. And all this. Perhaps, but your baby's also not necessarily guaranteed a safe passage in the hospital. When we intervene, we end up kind of throwing in this cascade of things that happen that lead to bad things down the road. And once you're on that path, once you're in the river, those rapids are coming regardless.

Like it's not hard to get off of the off the tracks once you're on that train. So what I sort of started thinking was, what if we could craft, what if I could craft a practice whereby I am caring for people who don't necessarily wanna jump into the hospital environment to have a baby. And that would require me to really understand what is a woman's experience in childbirth.

And what I found by asking that question, and their partners by the way, was that this for them was not a disease pregnancy. Um, it was not a medical procedure birth. This was something way, way more important. So how can we honor that experience? You know, people talk about birth plans, but if you bring a birth plan into the hospital, it's oftentimes a checklist of what you do and don't want.

That's not good enough for me. In fact, I, I did a [00:31:00] fellowship here at uc, San Diego, where I studied hospice and palliative medicine. And that was my, that's my second board specialty. Sorry, I'm getting like some pings here. Um, so in the end of life process, you know, you would never say, here's the right way to die.

It doesn't really make sense. So why would we say, here's the right way to have a baby? And there's really no right answer to the, you know, the birth process, unless I know your story, your values, your history. What are your fears? What are your joys? What's your connection like with your partner? What's your connection to something bigger than you?

Whether it's spirit source, God, call it what you will after I know all of those things, I can help you in your end of life process. And I decided I'm gonna do this and apply it to birth. So once you fully understand a person, you get to really know them, which is not possible by the way, in that five minute visit with your OB G Y N every couple weeks.

Once I get to really, really know you though, now I can start to align your care to the best of my ability with your desire. So that doesn't mean that it's better to have a home birth or a hospital, [00:32:00] hospital birth, in my opinion. Although my wife and I, if we did have more kids, we'd be having them all at home.

'cause we had our second at home and it was the most incredibly rapturous, sort of ecstatic experience of our life. Um, so, you know, in, in, in, in, in exploring this, I also started to learn, gosh, these men have absolutely no modeling for what's about to happen. You know, they're on their phones while their wife is getting their cervix checked and all this.

And like, what if we could bring them into the conversation? Many men actually nowadays want to be involved. They don't really know what their role is. And there's many. Sort of, it is kind of like a, a, a corollary of, of feminism that men don't belong in birth. You know, this is a woman's thing. Women caring for women.

Well, that's fair. Fine. I'm not a woman. I can't really comment on that. But I also know a lot of men that really, really, really want to honor this process of bringing their child into the world. And I was certainly that man. Like I, I really wanted to be involved and I had no idea really what it even meant despite having gone through thousands of births.

So what I do now is I help people [00:33:00] basically give birth on their own terms. I actually help them get pregnant on their own terms and using a lot of lifestyle modification, not cranking a bunch of synthetic hormones into people trying to get their lifestyle dialed in so that even if they do end up with I V F in vitro fertilization, that that $15,000 investment ends up worth it after nine and a half months of growing a baby.

Um, so giving birth, getting pregnant, giving birth on their own terms, whether that's in the hospital or at home. I do attend home births now, but it, stepping away from the system has allowed me the opportunity to really, really get to know people and to develop a really loving relationship with them so that I can actually be in their corner when they're going through not this medical procedure, but the sacred unfolding that is bringing their baby into the world.

I, there, there, there are a lot of questions to unpack in this, but I, so all I can fall back is on my own experience, right. We have, we have two little girls and I know that it wasn't, I don't wanna say they were bad experiences. They [00:34:00] weren't perfect for sure. Um, our hospital was a little better in some aspects than some other hospitals are.

Like, uh, there was no taking the baby and injecting the baby and doing like, the first hour, almost hour and a half. Yeah. The baby went straight from delivery to mom and that was where she was until I, I think they gave us like an hour, hour and a half or something, uh, straight to skin contact. And, you know, the rooms were very different than some delivery rooms.

It, it was a bigger, very big open kind of suite almost for every delivery room there. And the hospital really valued keeping the baby close to the parents. So I feel like it was a better, uh, I, I've talked, I, I have a lot of friends with kids and, and some of the stories they tell me, it was like, uh, no, I, I would've come out swinging.

It would've ended badly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Sarah's comment said that [00:35:00] it's because she's specified it that way. That's what it was. Is that was one of the options there. But I know Sarah had some questions early on about home delivery and like water births and stuff like that. Sure. I don't feel like there was a lot of information from the doctors and the hospital on that kind of possibilities.

Yeah. As you've been through your practice, have, have you found that most parents just, they, they aren't even informed about the different possibilities they have? Yeah, that's exactly right, Brent. I mean, I, I think with what, with the way that the media portrays certain things, childbirth in particular, it looks like absolute hell, right?

Like, you don't really get to see what is it like whenever a, a baby just emerges and is in your arms, on your bed, in your bedroom after birth. Like, we don't really get to see what that's like and really the likelihood of your baby dying, where regardless of [00:36:00] where you give birth, whether you have a, an OB or a midwife is so infinitesimally small, but the stories of the bad things happening are what?

Stand out, just like in anything, right? We always talk about the bad things without talking about the. Other 99% of times when things went right. The um, I guess the biggest problem now is having to combat the narrative that babies are safe more safely born in the hospital, one of the silver. That's probably our task because that's probably my biggest task with the podcast than everything.

Um, it's, again, it's not really my, my prerogative to convince people to not have a hospital birth. If you wanna have a hospital birth, my wife decided that our first one, like go, you do you. But I want you to at least understand that there's an option there for you to have a home birth. So that's actually sorely lacking.

There's a variety of options. There's the hospital, there's a birth center, which is kind of like a diluted version of the hospital. Then there's the home, and then there's something called a wild birth or a free birth where you have no birth attendance at all. And most people who pursue a free birth actually do just fine.[00:37:00]

Now, if you ended up in an emergency and you're two hours from an operating room. Then something bad can happen. But one of the really, really, really big things that is being neglected, and this was one of the silver linings of covid. One thing that came outta this covid period was that people realized that their doctors weren't really giving them enough information to make an informed decision.

Um, an example of that would be if I say something that makes you hesitant about a vaccine, regardless of my views on the vaccine, I can actually get my license taken away. Mm-hmm. So in the culture of, of maternity care in the United States, a lot of doctors are not out there saying, you should, you're a great candidate for a home birth, because they're not, they're, it's not their license that they're worried about.

It's the culture of the rest of their practice. The rest of the docs that they work with, what are they gonna think? If I'm promoting home birth, that's not gonna fly well with most OBGYNs, which is why it couldn't be. That's why, again, I'm unemployable because I'm like, Hey, I'm all about informed consent.

If you wanna have a home birth, more fucking power to you, that's great. We did it. We loved it. But it may not be for you. But if a doctor's saying, Hey, [00:38:00] it's not safe to have a home birth. You should have a hospital birth. It's under emphasizing some of the beautiful benefits of birthing autonomously in your home versus all of the hoopla that comes in the hospital.

So it's not truly being informed. You're not really being informed. And a lot of people during Covid started having home births, partly because they didn't really feel like they trusted the medical system or, you know, it's, it's, uh, the doctors and nurses who were telling them the risks and benefits and maybe just started developing a little bit of distrust there.

But furthermore, if you went into the hospital during Covid to have a baby, and we had two during covid. One was immediately before Lockdowns, one was dead center of the, of the pandemic. You might have a swab shoved down your nose while you're having these painful surges, bringing your baby into the world.

And if mom or dad tests positive, there were some babies that were being held in the NICU until mom and dad tested negative for a week or so after. So your your, your baby's getting stripped away. So part of the thing that was part of the decision that my wife made is like, you know, I don't really want to go through all of that.

I don't wanna be talking about Covid. I don't want to even [00:39:00] have that a part of my story. Let's just do it at home. And of course, it was like an hour, 46 minutes of labor from the times. Her time, her contractions picked up to the time the baby emerged asleep on her chest in her bedroom. And she used words like that was very healing.

That was like, everything's full circle now. Like I felt so respected and so comforted in the home environment. If that was a part of an OBGYN's counseling, then a person can make the, a really, truly informed decision. But the narrative kind of speaks for itself. You're, you're silly, you're irresponsible, you're uninformed if you wanna have a baby outside of the hospital because the hospitals.

They advertise safety. We have operating rooms and whatnot. Then again, we also have one third of babies being induced, meaning pregnancies being encouraged into labor prematurely. One third of babies are being born by C-section in the United States. So we're not really doing all that great. In fact, our data on maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality is the worst of all developed, um, western nations.

So we, we have a, we have a big problem here. [00:40:00] That's, that's horrifying to think of. 'cause we like to think of ourselves as pretty advanced when it comes to medicine. Oh, yeah, yeah. Now let, let me ask you if you'll do something on the record here. Okay. Dr. Mason Riley, licensed, certified O B G Y Y N Yeah. Are home birth safe.

I'm gonna answer that with a different question. Um, I'll ask you. Um, is, is a, a back squat safe?

Yes, absolutely. Right now if you put, if you and I were working out at the gym and you had 500 pounds on the back, uh, on your back and you put the bar down, I don't know how much you back, you, you back squat. I, I probably pretty strong. 5 35. Okay. So, so you've got your, you just, you just prd. Right? And then I'm like, I got that.

I just said how strong I am. Right. And I go and try to lift 5 35. My knees are gonna buckle [00:41:00] and I'm probably gonna break something. So is back squat safe? Yes. For me. Yeah. So in that circumstance with that, within that context, Back squat is safe. We could do the same exercise with motorcycles. Are motorcycles safe?

If you had been in a, in a horrific motorcycle accident, you might consider that, that your risk threshold is lower than mine. But I ride a Harley a 2009 sports story, and I zoom around town with a little rocket ship between my legs, like an Abso like an absolute asshole com, you know, in, in many people's opinions.

Um, so the reason that this exercise is important is that the word safe is a very relative term. It it really depends on your preferences, your, your story, your expectations, and the reality of your circumstances. So let's reframe the question. Is home birth safe for many women? If safety means that you and your baby don't die in childbirth?

Absolutely. In fact, probably 90 plus percent of women can have a home birth [00:42:00] and have absolutely no issues whatsoever. There are some women who maybe you would say, Hey, given the circumstances here, if our goal. Is a living baby and living mother. After this, it's probably a better idea for you to be in the hospital, but that also is still not my job to say you can't have a home birth.

It's my job as a doctor to give you risks, benefits, alternatives, using non-coercive language when you're not under duress. Um, you know, in pain. Haven't slept for two days, you know, as a result of your induction of labor. And then to support you in that decision. That is my job as a healthcare provider.

That's what I went to all the school for. That's why I'm $500,000 in debt, is to give you my clinical, um, my, my expertise, my clinical opinion as to what your circumstances would tell you about the likelihood of something bad happening versus nothing bad happening, and then for you to make an informed decision.

If you wanted my one-off answer, I would say home birth is safe, but I do believe it, it provide, you know, I think that it benefits [00:43:00] from a little bit of further unpacking a little nuance there, because a lot of people would say, it's not safe to back squat because it's bad for your knees or something because somebody out there had too much weight on, had poor form and strained their back or, or you know, their knees or something like that.

So is it safe for your knees if you do it under Brent's guidance? Maybe if you ride a motorcycle without a helmet, that's not as safe as riding a motorcycle with a helmet. You see my point? So this is where all that counseling would come in, but you only get five to seven minutes with your ob, G Y N.

They're not really doing a lot of counseling. So in my practice, I'm doing a ton of that, like 90 minutes, 90 minute visits, because I love getting to know people on a deep level. And once I know you really, really well, then we can reframe your questions around, is it safe for me to have a home birth and whatnot with some additional questions and clarifications?

And then you leave feeling like, wow, he really gets me and I feel really good about this, this, uh, this answer that's coming from within the, the hell yes or the fuck no to having a home birth. That's what I want people to leave with. Okay. [00:44:00] I, uh, and I, I, that totally makes sense to me that explanation because I am a certified personal trainer.

Yeah. And I, I'm the annoying certified personal trainer. Like, I will ask you a million questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. I, I wanna know every injury you've ever suffered, any problems you have with, do you get stopped up easy? Do you have like, ear problems with your balance? You know, so like, I am digging in Yeah.

And making little adjustments to make that back squat safe. Yeah. Based on your answers. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one of my friends asked me, he's like, what's the difference between you and the, my stupid phone app? Phone app? Doesn't know every injury you've ever had and can't walk in the gym with you and go, oh, your, your back's really struggling today.

'cause he has some back issues. Oh, you know what? We're gonna, we're gonna revamp this a little bit. We're gonna work the same muscles. We're just gonna change the exercise because we don't want to agitate that back today. Yeah, that's exactly. And so that's what it sounds like is [00:45:00] just a much deeper, I know I still have so many questions.

Uh, just things I don't understand about that process even after two kids. Yeah. Do you wanna do like a rapid fire round? Um, I'm don't, we're not gonna go there yet, but guys, we've been discussing what is the current standard of, what'd you, where did you use instead of traditional? Oh, conventional. Uh, conventional childbirth.

Thank you. Uh, that one just slipped right outta my head and what that looks like and why Nathan has taken a different route with his clients and with his practice. There are a lot of options out there that you are just not necessarily aware of that may be a better option for you and your partner. In the next part of the show, we're gonna dive into the father's role around childbirth and the childbirth process, because this is something that's not talked [00:46:00] about.

I've had two kids and this is something that I felt like I just did not know where I fit. My wife and I have been married for 23 years now. We, we have a great marriage. Uh, you know, we're not perfect, but we communicate pretty well about these things. She always had me involved with everything, but I felt like there were so many questions as a father I did not know or understand in my role in things, uh, that I really could have used some clarity on.

And that's what we want to give you in this next part of the show, guys. 'cause we want you to have some clarity about your role in this relationship with your partner as you go into this incredible experience of becoming a father. We'll be right back with more from Dr. Nathan Riley. Now, before we go any further, I wanted to share with you guys, I don't always tell you how much I love doing my podcast.

Like I passionately love what I'm doing and one of the things that makes my life better as a podcaster is to work with a company like [00:47:00] Grow Your Show. Grow Your Show is a one stop podcast. Do it all. Now I use Grow Your Show for my marketing, but Grow Your Show is literally a one stop shop. You can record your episode and just drop it off with them and they take it from there.

It's amazing. If you are interested in picking up podcasting as a hobby or maybe you're looking to expand your business and use podcasting in that aspect, talk to my friends over Grow Your Show. Adam will take care of you. I guarantee it. I trust him. He's my friend, he's my business colleague, and I wouldn't trust anybody else with my show.

Guys, welcome back. In the last part of the show, we're discussing conventional childbirth and you know why you should be part of this decision making paradigm. And while we didn't say those words specifically in that, I think there's clarity because. There's so much that we don't know. We're supposed to decide so many things that can be addressed.

So many things that are options that we as men a lot of time aren't aware of, [00:48:00] that hopefully now you have a better idea of the possibilities and this portion of the show we're gonna adopt, jump into the father's role in around childbirth. And why, why it's so important that you are an active part of this process.

Yeah. And so let me, let me lead off is why do most men tend to distance themselves from this process and experience, have you found? Well, I think it's what we've been modeled. I think that most of the men in our lives have modeled that this is like a woman's work. You know, even the idea of menstruation is kind of this gross thing.

We don't wanna talk about it. We don't wanna teach young women about their bodies. You should be ashamed that you have this men monthly bleed. But women are super, super. I don't wanna, I mean, it sounds so cliche. They're very, very powerful. But more importantly, they're actually so deeply connected to the rhythms of nature that we, men actually rely on women to kind of keep the pulse of our [00:49:00] lives, um, kind of steady.

They keep the, the boat upright. You know, many of the women in our lives are keeping the emotional, sort of anchoring within the household while we men are doing our our man stuff. But childbirth is one of those interesting experiences where, you know, as I've already mentioned, there's not really a problem to be solved there.

And we are now going to be holding the container for the women in our lives. And women have been, you know, as I've mentioned, they've been sort of, um, been made to feel guilt or shame around their bodies. Um, the media certainly makes women often feel, you know, inadequates or they have to have a flat stomach at all times, all this type of stuff.

And now they're gonna be open and exposed, you know, babies coming out of their, their dirty, opening this vagina. We don't talk about the vagina, you know, heaven forbid we even see a vulva. Right. And then we might see a vulva open up and a baby emerges from it, you know, I mean, it's. It's, uh, mother culture.

This milieu of cultural influences has [00:50:00] made it actually sort of like a woman's thing to talk about women's problems. You know, how, how often do you see in TV shows where a man is embarrassed to buy tampons for his wife? Like, I felt very honored to buy tampons. It's like I have a woman who loves me and ask me to go get tampons.

Like, like, it's just not something we learn about, right? So there's this, this whole even before pregnancy fertility awareness methods, um, where a woman actually starts to understand how her cycle is changing throughout a 28 to 30 some day. Um, these various phases, you know, 13 times per year, it used to be 13.

Based on the 13 lunar cycles during the year, 13 bleeds per year when women were connected to nature. Now with all of our distractions and everything else, now it's sort of like, I don't know why I'm not getting pregnant, and a person has, a particular woman in my practice might have no idea how to even determine if they're in their fertile window or whatever.

So I'm kind of, kind of going on a tangent here, but the, the whole point being that this type of talk is not, ev has never been the purview of men. And of course people always ask me, why [00:51:00] would you wanna go into gynecology as a man? And I'm like, because I'll never have the answer to that test. Like there's no multiple choice question as to what a woman is experiencing through the birth of a baby, especially if it's your own baby.

So there for me was a, a deep curiosity around this. And as you get deeper and deeper and deeper and maybe even a little bit esoteric and metaphysical, you start to realize women are so deeply connected to nature. I mean, even the lunar cycles alone. Um, and if you actually invest a little bit further into that, women have always been inextricably linked with nature.

There's this powerful force that men have never really had purview over. Even when the church and state were on the rise in the middle of the last millennium, you know, we're talking 17 day, you know, 17 16th, 17th century before the witch hunts. Women were caring for women because it was not like, it doesn't matter how much power the state and the church, you know, we're talking specifically the Protestant and Catholic church, didn't matter how many, how much power they, they, they, they sort of claimed for themselves, women were still going to care for women in childbirth, partly because men didn't really know what the [00:52:00] role was.

And, and then otherwise, um, as we developed these fancy medical establishments, establishments and whatnot, these feudalistic societies still had the sort of folk healers, which really became the practice of midwifery, caring for peasant women, which was like 95% of the population. So fast forward, now, here we are.

If you're a man who does wanna be involved, the question is how can I be helpful? Right? And when my wife was pregnant, I remember I was like, okay, we're gonna have your favorite lemonade. We're gonna have sage. I'm gonna have copal. I'm gonna have all these things. And, and she was contracting at home and she was like, no, no more sage, no, just leave me alone.

And um, and, and I sort of started to investigate that for myself. And when I started getting really, really deep into it, I came to this oxytocin molecule. And everything that a man can do is related to this oxytocin molecule, which is the love hormone. It's a hormone and it's a neurotransmitter. It does a number of things, which I'll get into.

But before I do [00:53:00] that, I think it's also important to, um, well let's actually, let's just get into that now, because there's actually quite a bit related to oxytocin. That is, that is super helpful when a woman is having a baby. You don't wanna be activating her cerebral cortex. That's the big, sexy part of our brain that lets us do all these incredible cognitive things that humans can do over the animal animal world.

And within that cerebral context, you have all these neurons that are firing at all times. If I talk to you while you're doing a heavy lift and I distract you from the heavy lift, You might not be able to lift as heavy. You need to actually stop thinking and need to let your, like, instinctive strength stabilize and lift.

You're not li, you're not thinking about anything but getting your butt off the ground and standing up into a fully erect position to set that pr. It's no different for orgasm. It's no different for any deep sort of intimate connection, and it's certainly no different for childbirth. So what's this oxytocin thing have to do with it?

When I [00:54:00] talk to you during childbirth, if you're, you know, a woman giving birth, it starts to get those, that cerebral cortex going. And sometimes I might ask you questions or say things to you or touch you in a certain way that actually triggers a flight or fight response. So your sympathetic nervous system starts cranking out catecholamines like epinephrine and, and, and norepinephrine.

And that suppresses. Oxytocin. So why is oxytocin important? Oxytocin governs over ejaculation and orgasm. It governs over conception by causing, excuse me, a quivering of the lower part of the uterus to bring sperm up towards the openings of fallopian tube. Oxytocin also drives the childbirth process and ultimately leads to what's called the fetal ejection reflex, where the baby's like not there, and then suddenly bam, the baby just like fly, uh, flies out of the, uh, the uterus.

Excuse me. And then of course, oxytocin also governs over the milk letdown reflex when a woman starts breastfeeding. So if you are having a baby and you're watching a person from afar, actually let's, let's [00:55:00] just take the third party bystander. A woman who's undisturbed will oftentimes try to eliminate all sensory innervation, so they're gonna be, have their eyes closed.

They might even be down in a prayer position on all fours. They're trying to eliminate all of that external noise, similar to when you and I are trying to lift something very, very heavy. It's not the same, but you could apply this to almost anything that is kind of an out-of-body experience. Ejaculation, ISS a great example.

It's hard to ejaculate whenever a bunch of people are watching you and talking to you like you're just not, I mean, I don't, I don't suggest anybody go out and try that right now. Yeah. I promise. Four careers. Yeah. Your, your love life is gonna fall apart if you have a bunch of, you know, audience members watching the whole time and beeping machines and all these distractions.

So what a woman is left undisturbed, and this really doesn't happen in the hospital, which is a big part of why I stepped away from that system. They get down on, on fours. They want to eliminate all of the noise. My wife was like, no more sage, no more copal. I was, I was actually stimulating her brain in a way that was going to interfere with [00:56:00] this balance, um, with the love hormone, this neurochemical oxytocin.

So if we can leave a woman undisturbed in childbirth, and this is where the man comes in, Then the baby is going to be born flooded with the love hormone. And just think about what that means on a global scale. What if everybody baby was born flooded with oxytocin? And we're not talking about synthetic oxytocin, which is called Pitocin in the United States.

It does not work like oxytocin. It, it works at the uterus like oxytocin, but it does not bond the baby to the mother. That same chemical that leads the baby to being so deeply connected to mothers the same, the same chemical that also brings out the milk and also actually helped lead to conception. So this baby was born in love all the way through.

And at the very, very end, now we're gonna disturb things so that the baby is not flooded with love, but from their mother as they emerge into the world. What would our world look? How would our world look differently if babies were [00:57:00] born flooded by the love hormone? And that's why when people have a home birth, they feel completely different than being in the hospital.

'cause there wasn't all the distractions. Yes, healthy mom, healthy baby. But we're getting, we're going deeper now than just healthy mom, healthy baby. Now we're getting to the actual experience and why so many women, when they reclaim their power and decide to have an autonomous birth in home, out in the woods with the dolphins or wherever there is a healing process there, they feel so much more connected to the experience as opposed to dissociated from the experience.

And so your question was, what can a man do? Yeah. A man's role and responsibility is to hold the ground and make sure that there is as little disturbance as possible for their partner. And that might mean doing absolutely nothing. My mentors, Stu Fishman, who I told you about, who had take taken me to my first home birth, he had said, I'm gonna teach you the art of doing nothing.

Which is actually a very active process. You're still kind of looking for dangers and for threats, right? Like if you're out in the [00:58:00] woods, your role might be like, let's make sure that there's no predators nearby, or whatever else. If we were to look at this through the evolutionary lens, maybe the original midwives were actually standing guard to make sure nobody walked into the birthing experience and disrupt that, disrupted that process when it's left.

Undisturbed birth is very, very quick. It's very, very uncomplicated. The babies just kind of come out. Mothers know exactly what to do. The baby's immediately addicted to their mother, thank God, because that's actually why we wanna keep them alive. Despite the lack of sleep and despite their needs, and they're screaming at us, I am addicted to you as, and as much as I don't wanna believe that I need you in my life the way you need me in your life, especially the bond between a mother and a baby.

But what we're seeing in the hospital is with the multiple inter, you know, the 3:00 AM wake up, I'm gonna stick my hand in your vagina. I am always saying things that are activating your fear. Your fear system, your flight or fight system, I'm always touching you in a way that was maybe not even necessarily consensual, it's just what we do.

I gotta check on the baby. Go ahead dad. [00:59:00] Hold her leg back. Like, and she might be saying no, and I'm just gonna say we have to do it for the baby or whatever. This is the routine in the hospitals. So what men can do is whatever is in your power to make a very, very undisturbed birth environment. And really it's as simple as close your eyes with your partner, get in the bathtub and start really leaning into what would the ideal birth environment look like?

What comes out of those conversations? And it might be multiple conversations over the nine and a half months that you're gestating. This baby might end up actually being the perfect birth plan. And while it may not go exactly that way, you guys have also now connected. You have let your partner know, I am here.

I am your anchor, I am the mountain. You can flood through, you can erode me. And just like at that Burning Man experience, I'm gonna stand here and just hold, hold you. I'm here. I'm here with you. I'm here to hold you. Sorry, it sounds like I'm getting choked up, but I actually have like a peanut or something in my throat sometimes I do do get choked up talking about this because [01:00:00] one of the most important points of of advice that I received when we were expecting our first was from another really famous, really well-known midwife who had said, remember the birth goes by in a second.

You and your partnership are gonna survive for 18 plus years after this as you're raising this child. So as much as we should talk about the birth, what type of support person are you going to be that's going to set the stage for the relationship to come. You can be involved, you can be invested, and you can learn to stand in your masculinity and hold space.

Or you can be kind of this aloof child living in a man's body who's not really willing to just be vulnerable enough to say, I don't have the answers, but I've got you. And that's really, really powerful. Lemme let me throw in my 2 cents here. Worth guys. Is being deeply involved in this conversation with your partner.

One of the most important things that's gonna happen is you're gonna advocate for your wife or your spouse. You know, y'all have talked about this. You know [01:01:00] what she wants. She is now compromised, she's in pain, she is struggling with this natural, you know, this is what I want to do, and there's all these things trying to interfere with it.

Your job is to protect and advocate. You know what she wants. You know what you guys planned on. I actually threw a nurse out of the room with our first child. I stood up and said, get out and if you come back, I will physically throw you out. And the doctor started to open their mouth and I said, shut your mouth.

Get the out. Because she kept trying to push. Uh, my wife did not want chemicals involved. Yeah. She kept trying to push, oh, we need to do this. We need to do this. I finally threw her out of the room. It's like, Nope, get away. Do not come back. If you come back, we're going to have issues. I knew what my wife wanted.

I felt very good at that moment. 'cause it's like, yes, we talked about this. I know what my job is. You are not gonna push this on my wife. So guys, being involved with this process is very [01:02:00] important for you and for your partner and for your child. You are their advocate. Amen. And that was just an impulse thing at the time because I knew what we had discussed and what we wanted as a couple, as the parents of that child.

And my wife wasn't in, in a position to fight with that nurse. She shouldn't have to fight with that nurse. That was ridiculous. That's right. Yeah. This shouldn't be a fight. I mean, even for, even for the, the strong advocate, man, you. If you, if you've started preparing for this ahead of time, there's also this practicing of like, no, thank you.

We never should be going in. We never should have to feel compelled to really flex our, our advocacy. You know, it should just be as simple as, sorry. No, thank you. And if they're not listening to you, then we just need a new nurse. You know, there's a really, really compassionate way to do that, that actually comes so seamlessly when you've actually rehearsed this with your partner.

Like, what is really important to her? Oh, that's not, IM, we're, we're [01:03:00] not gonna do that. Thank you so much. But when do we ever do that? You know, Brent, you might call me up to go to, like, do you wanna go out to eat or something? And I'll come up with a, some asinine reason for why not, like, we just don't practice actually saying, no, thank you.

I'm good over here. I'm good, I'm good tonight. Just hanging in and watching Netflix or something. I, I don't really wanna go out tonight. Like, we don't do that. We actually come up with these really roundabout ways of either avoiding the question altogether, or we come up with an excuse why we can't do it when we really just don't, it's not feeling like a hell yes to us.

So a big part what of what I do in my, my new course is called the Born Free Method, is it's as much about information as it is around, um, honing your intuition as authoritative knowledge. If something doesn't feel good, then let's just practice saying, no, thank you. Like we're good. We're not gonna do that.

But we appreciate the information. We right. That might be enough for that person who was like me at 3:00 AM not wanting to do it in the first place, to be like, great, I'm right with you. Thank you. Like, we'll see you in a couple hours or something, you know? So there's, there's ways to go about this that don't even require you to flex.

I mean, I wouldn't want somebody like you who, who back squats 500 some [01:04:00] pounds to be threatening to throw me outta the room. But sometimes that's also, that's also a part of our role is like, you're not hearing us like, get the fuck out. Like you might even step outside of the room so you don't activate the cerebral cortex of your birthing wife.

And say, listen, we don't like how you're, how you're treating us. We want a new nurse. We really appreciate, appreciate your time, but this isn't, this isn't what we signed up for. This is not a medical procedure. We're trying to have a birth here. We're trying to welcome in our little girl. And that really means something.

These are people in hospitals. They're not like robots, even though they might act like it. They're people that have a, there's a human kernel in there somewhere and all you have to do is really tap into that. You guys are showing up in fully informed consent and you're, you're standing in your truth.

That is an impenetrable wall whenever you and your partner are that intimately linked. If you guys are going in as a unit as opposed to one person just dealing with a nuisance of having to be there with childbirth, you guys become a, a force of nature in the hospital. And so that's a big part of my advocacy as well.[01:05:00]

What is next for Dr. Nathan Riley? I. Well, this course that we just launched this course, it's called The Born Free Method. It really is the most comprehensive childbirth education program. Um, out there. It includes 12 months of weekly calls with me and Sarah Rosser, who's one of the farm midwives. Um, the launch went ex exceedingly well, and that will really provide me a lot of, um, bandwidth to start doing a lot more advocacy work and work on some other courses around certain topics that are really important in the world, like male, male factor infertility for a lot of the dudes that are out there with low testosterone and they have absolutely no idea what to do about it, but they've got no sperm and they get on t r t and their sperm count drops to zero, and then they're on Clomid and they're doing all that.

I'm sure you're, you've, you, you're aware of that whole story, but also the plasticizing agents, a lot of the things that are bringing men's testosterone down sort of from lifestyle. So I'm gonna be putting a course together for that. I've got a. H p v course, um, which is the virus that is thought to, to lead eventually to cervical cancer.

We're gonna do a natural course, a, a, a [01:06:00] course on naturally clearing h p v, like, so there's, this is really in my wheelhouse. Like I am so invested in trying to help people reclaim their health, and I think that we can do most of it with lifestyle modification as opposed to continuing to outsource our power to the doctors and nurses who are really just falling orders from state legislators, federal legislators, these three and four letter organizations that drive all of our policies.

I want people to really realize just how, how much is in their wheelhouse, like how much power they really have. Where is the best place for people to find you, Dr. Riley? Well, if you wanna, if you wanna have me as your doctor, if you have women's health issues, if you're a dad out there and you like something we've talked about, I do a lot of men's um, counseling.

I also do a lot of, um, women's healthcare. It's all natural. It's truly holistic in, in, in the sense that we're not just talking physical attributes of childbirth, for example, or fertility. We get into the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects as well. So beloved holistics.com, you've got the page up there, here on the video.

Uh, an important free [01:07:00] method.com is where you can find the childbirth, um, program that I just mentioned. And, um, that is like my magnum opus. Um, everything that we've talked about in far, far more. Um, there's no cla, no courses like this out there that are including a whole unit for dads, a whole unit on cannabis and psychedelic use, which is actually becoming increasingly, um, of interest amongst the masses.

Um, how can we use lifestyle modification to prevent all of these pregnancy complications? And most importantly, How can we advocate for ourselves through the lens of informed consents and really kind of owning, um, our radical responsibility. Now guys, I know all of you are really worried about this, but the answer to if you breed a zebra and a donkey, what animal you get?

You picked the donk. Let's just see, I actually had to dig into this. There are the first three are all acceptable. Zaki, donka, and za Don. So I didn't get it wrong. I wasn't wrong. Yeah, correct answers. I, I've never picked multiple choice that actually had three answers before. Wow. [01:08:00] Congratulations is the only thing that's not Dr.

Riley, I appreciate you taking the time to be on the show today and to help our listeners. Man, there, there is so much, that is such an incredible experience to become a father, and we want you to have the best experience possible. I will have Nathan's contact information below all the ways you guys can connect with him.

Nathan, what is the most important takeaway you want people to hear today? From an early age, we have been conditioned to give away our power to our parents, to our teachers, to our religious leaders, to our politicians, to the tax man, to whatever. But I want people to remember there is so much power in claiming responsibilities over your life and taking responsibility for your actions.

And with great power comes great responsibility. So once you realize that and you realize that I am a free person, man or woman, to make [01:09:00] decisions that impact me and my family and taking ownership of the outcomes of those decisions, that is real freedom, and that's what I really want people to take away.

This is all in your power. You just have to be willing to decondition yourself from that outsourcing. And the sooner you do that, the better your life will get. Guys, I can't say it much better than that. So be better tomorrow because of what you do today, and we'll see you on the next one. This has been the Ible Man Podcast.

Your home for everything, man, husband, and father. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to www.thefallibleman.com for more content and get your own Fallible man gear.