Dr. Stuart Fischbein + Midwife Blyss Young
474 episodes listed below
Birth choices, argued in plain language.
Birthing Instincts pairs casual life catch-ups with pointed conversations about birth, fertility, home birth, monitoring, and medical pressure. Its rhythm is unhurried, but its questions are sharp: who benefits, what evidence shows, and where families still have a choice.
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Birthing Instincts is a long-running birth conversation with a strong bias toward instinct and informed refusal. It sounds personal before it sounds formal. Episodes commonly open with the daily texture of the people speaking: a trip to Idaho, a rainy day waiting on twins, a body recovering from pain, a joke about Zoom updates, or a note from a listener who wants less banter. That looseness is part of the show’s identity. The serious work arrives through the side door. One week, that means fertility and acupuncture with Emily Marson, framed as part of a wider conversation about traditional Chinese medicine, herbs, chiropractic care, massage, pelvic floor therapy, pain, anxiety, and bodies treated as more than machines. Another week, it means Angee Hock describing investigation, search warrants, criminal charges, bias, and the emotional aftermath of a midwifery case involving a baby’s death. The show does not treat those stories as abstractions. It stays close to the human stakes. Its skepticism is strongest when hospitals, specialists, testing protocols, or legal systems seem to narrow choice while presenting that narrowing as neutral safety. The result can be blunt. It can also be tender. Recent conversations question routine monitoring, anatomy scans, repeated ultrasounds, Color Flow Doppler, induction pressure, UTI screening, antimicrobial stewardship, and how much intervention actually improves outcomes. Home birth remains a central concern, especially when Jacob Dubois appears with a book aimed at fathers and evidence-minded families. Traditional midwifery also stays near the center, including discussions of licensing, community practice, breech skills, water birth history, and protecting older forms of care. The show is not a quick primer. It wanders, repeats, jokes, mourns, and argues its way toward the point. For the right listener, that creates trust. For someone looking for a clipped, neutral health segment, it may feel too personal and too opinionated. Birthing Instincts is best understood as advocacy in conversation form: warm toward families, skeptical toward bureaucracy, and deeply invested in the right to ask better questions before birth becomes a procedure someone else controls.
Made for: For parents, birth workers, doulas, midwives, and evidence-curious families who want candid discussion of pregnancy care beyond the standard hospital script. It especially suits listeners who value home birth, informed consent, and skeptical questions about routine intervention.
What sets it apart: The show combines an obstetric and midwifery perspective with a loose, relationship-first format that lets grief, humor, technical detail, and institutional critique share the same room. Its strength is not polish; it is sustained, lived-in advocacy for birth choice.
The birth world can be overwhelming for parents and practitioners alike. Dr. Stuart Fischbein and Midwife Blyss Young and their combined 55+ years of experience are here to support you in this beautiful rite of passage. Join the weekly conversation as we blend wisdom and humor in discussing our recent births, the latest research, traditional healing, and instinctual birth.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Birthing Instincts connects birth choices to medical authority, family relationships, and the practical questions patients can bring into care.
Birthing Instincts turns pregnancy, birth, and fertility into conversations about autonomy and the institutions surrounding care. Dr. Stuart Fishbein and Bliss Young move easily between informal catch-ups, guest interviews, and close discussion of medical practices, giving…
Even an anatomy scan gets cross-examined when Stuart Fishbein and Bliss Young take the microphones.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A midwife's legal fight is told conversationally, with the human stakes kept front and center.
This episode follows a midwife's account of a June 2019 death investigation and the search warrant that came after it. It works best when it stays close to the human strain in the story: the fast police response, the detectives' pressure, and the uneasy feeling that an OB was…
A plainspoken look at how prenatal monitoring can create more follow-up than clarity.
Birthing Instincts begins with a personal catch-up, then settles into a skeptical look at prenatal monitoring and the way routine testing can keep creating another round of follow-up.
A birth and healthcare conversation that looks past the clinic and at the machinery behind the bill.
Birthing Instincts brings in Andy Schoonover of CrowdHealth to talk through birth, health insurance, and the incentives that shape medical costs.
A direct case for starting fertility care with the basics before jumping to procedures.
Birthing Instincts treats fertility as a whole-body question, not a narrow medical one. It keeps circling back to stress, environment, nutrition, and the basic idea that care should start with the cause before moving straight to intervention.
A plainspoken look at fatherhood, boundaries, and the strain they can put on family life.
Dr. Stu and Ashley Mariani spend the episode on a familiar but messy problem: how fatherhood gets read by everyone around a new baby, and how that reading can strain a couple's relationship. The strongest passages stay close to ordinary tension. A partner freezes.
Warm health talk for messy real life.
Practical midlife medicine, plainly explained.
This episode features an interview with acupuncturist Emily Marson about fertility and birth, with hosts discussing birth-related topics like the distinct smell of labor.
Traditional midwife Angie Hock returns to Birthing Instincts nearly a decade after her first appearance to recount the June 2019 surprise breech birth in Nebraska that ended with baby Vera dying two days later and Angie facing criminal charges.
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This episode features an interview with Jacob Dubois about his new book 'Why Home Birth?' which examines how hospitals medicalize birth and presents evidence for home birth options, aimed at fathers-to-be.
This episode discusses asymptomatic bacteriuria and UTIs in pregnancy, focusing on balancing antimicrobial stewardship with patient care.
This episode features a conversation about traditional midwifery and birth practices, with hosts discussing feedback from a previous episode and personal experiences in the field.
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This episode features a conversation about water birth and midwifery practices with Barbara Harper, exploring birth choices and traditional approaches.
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Two birth professionals discuss recent births, research, and traditional healing in a conversational style.
Two birth professionals discuss recent births, research, and traditional healing in a conversational style.
A conversational podcast about birth choices, blending wisdom and humor, hosted by an obstetrician and a midwife.
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A midwife hosts a solo episode sharing a Patreon segment about baby aspirin in pregnancy while her co-host recovers from knee surgery.
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CrowdHealth CEO Andy Schoonover joins Birthing Instincts to explain why he left traditional health insurance behind after his insurer denied an $8,000 ear procedure for his one-year-old daughter and labeled it 'medically unnecessary.' Schoonover founded CrowdHealth in 2021 after discovering that cash prices at doctors' offices beat insurer-negotiated rates, and the platform has now enrolled nearly 15,000 members and helped save roughly $50 million in healthcare expenses.
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WeNatal founders Vida Delrahim and Ronit Menashe join Birthing Instincts to discuss their personal miscarriage journeys and the concept of 'trimester zero' — a three-month pre-conception health optimization window they believe is largely ignored by conventional medicine.
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Two birth professionals discuss recent births, research, and instinctual birth in a conversational style.
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A conversational podcast where an obstetrician and a midwife discuss birth experiences, research, and advocacy for instinctual birth choices.
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This episode features Valerie Wiesner discussing ancient postpartum traditions like pelvic steaming and her sacred postpartum work in a conversational interview format.
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