By Kaili Brooks • Photos by Hilary Nichols
In October, I sat down with my good friend Reilly Campbell for a discussion about birth, life, Ann Arbor, and everything in between. An Austin, Texas transplant, Campbell can best be described as a ray of sunshine. Though only 25, she is wise far beyond her years and serves as an inspiration to anyone looking to walk with women on the path from maiden to mother and beyond.
Kaili Brooks: Who are you? Tell me the story of how you found your way into birth work.
Reilly Campbell: I grew up as the oldest of my siblings and neighbors and had a lot of experience with caretaking for young children. I filled my life with families and young kids. I’ve always wanted to be a mom: all of my decisions have been guided by that. There’s this overwhelming narrative that mothering is suffering, and I always knew that wasn’t my story. My interests in college were permaculture and birth, and I found the truth that the closer we align with nature’s design, the less difficult our life will be—the more joy, ease, and simplicity we will have. Birth is the foundation of everything, and our birth experience shapes our life.
Kaili Brooks: How did you come to Ann Arbor? How have you integrated yourself in the community?
Reilly Campbell: My fiancée and I moved to Ann Arbor because my maternal roots are here, and we desired a more cyclical and village-like way of life, which the four seasons and smaller community here really allow for. The farmer’s market has been a special place for me to see familiar faces. I see people I know all the time. I’m grounded in this place. I’m home. I nanny for a few families in town and that’s allowed me to get to know the mothering community at the libraries and baby music classes which has been very special. People are a huge part of my value system. I love centering my community. I go to Earthwell Retreat Center often and help lead a yoga class there.
Kaili Brooks: What is your philosophy on birth, and what does sovereign birth mean to you?
Reilly Campbell: My business, Birth As You Are, is based on the origins of life. Sovereign birth keeping is a paradigm in which you go back to the fundamentals of birth and life and honor the body’s intelligence and birth in a way that is undisturbed and un-pathologized. It differs from midwifery today in that it is unmedicalized. We’re not trying to fix birth. [We are] just trying to hold a space for the woman to meet her full power. It’s based on the whole woman, spiritual, physical, and mental combined. It needs privacy, trust, and love, and you must trust in your body and let the physiology of birth guide you.
Kaili Brooks: What services do you provide specifically for birthing mothers or women in general?
Reilly Campbell: My big focus is on community building and gathering. One of the ways I do that is my monthly women’s circle, and I really love collaborating with the women in my community. I co-lead a perinatal yoga series focusing on connection and movement. I provide full spectrum care, prenatal coaching, and support in planning and nesting. I think it’s important to put a lot of intention into the space you’re living and birthing in, so I support women in setting themselves up for an easeful postpartum. I fully ensure that the postpartum mother is nourished and supported, ensuring that she’s spending as much time as possible with her baby and feeling loved—being a sister during her vulnerable transition to motherhood. I walk with women in their birth holding space and reflecting their power back to them. I offer birth story medicine where we will debrief your birth story and help to heal and integrate any trauma you may have from previous births. I also offer ceremonies such as mother blessings and closing of the bones to honor your postpartum body. Gathering together with other women regulates our nervous system and we need it innately, so I focus a lot of my energy on ensuring we have opportunities to be with one another.
Kaili Brooks: Where do you hope to take your business going forward? What is your vision for the future?
Reilly Campbell: I want my business to become more collaborative. I think women are meant to do things together and I’d love to work more with the brilliant women in this community to serve each other more. My big goals are to create a women’s collective and to be more present in the community, I’d like to offer events for people to dip their toes into what we’re all about at Birth as you Are—things like Menarche reclamation ceremonies or a village prenatal where women can come and honor their bodies and power.
If you are interested in learning more about Reilly Campbell and her business and services, visit birthasyouare.com.
Related Content:
Pregnancy and childbirth is a time of immense transformation. For some women it is the most beautiful day of their lives, but for so many more, the process of giving birth is a traumatic memory marked by surgery, violation, and a loss of control. In an act of conscious rebellion against this standard, women are choosing to look to the past and choose to birth the way we were always intended to: unmonitored, unmolested, and free. One such woman I talked to, “Dana,” describes her birth as being, “incredibly straightforward without any drama.”