EBB 381 – Ask Me Anything with Dr. Rebecca Dekker

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:00:00:

Hi, everybody. On today’s podcast, we’re going to look back at 2025 with Dr. Dekker and ask her, what is next for Evidence Based Birth® in 2026?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:00:13:

Welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. My name is Rebecca Dekker, and I’m a nurse with my PhD and the founder of Evidence Based Birth®. Join me each week as we work together to get evidence-based information into the hands of families and professionals around the world. As a reminder, this information is not medical advice. See ebbirth.com/disclaimer for more details.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:00:38:

Hi everyone. My name is Dr. Sara Ailshire and I’m going to be taking over as your guest host for today’s episode. For those of you who haven’t met me yet, I’m a long-standing member of the research team here at EBB. On today’s episode of the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast, we’re going to be doing something a little bit different for our annual EBB year-in-review episode. We’re doing a little bit of a switcheroo. I’m going to be doing an AMA an Ask Me Anything with Dr. Rebecca Dekker, all about her 2025 as a CEO, podcast host, and director of research here at Evidence Based Birth®. We’re also going to talk a little bit about what’s happening in the world of birth. And I’m going to pick Rebecca’s brain about some of the big changes you might be seeing here next year at EBB. So this is a fun chance to get behind the scenes, look at what’s happening at EBB and to get Dr. Dekker’s unfiltered thoughts about the future of EBB. And with that, let’s get started. Our guest needs no introduction. She’s a host of this podcast and the CEO of Evidence Based Birth®. Dr. Dekker, we are so happy to have you here this time as a guest.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:01:45:

Thank you so much for having me, Sara. It feels a little exciting and nerve wracking to be on the other side of the microphone, having the questions asked of me because I’m used to being the one to ask all the questions.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:01:57:

No, for sure. I’m doing my best impression of you. So it’s gonna be fun. I can’t wait. So I guess getting us started for my first question, I wanted to ask you a little bit about what trends have you been paying attention to in the world of birth in 2025?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:02:12:

Okay, so the number one thing that keeps getting brought to our attention is inductions. That’s the number one topic that birth workers and families have questions about, have concerns about. And when we did a survey at the beginning of the year of our newsletter subscribers, that was the number one problem that people wanted to have help from Evidence Based Birth® about. So there’s just been like an unprecedented amount of pressure to have inductions, particularly elective inductions. But also there’s more and more health conditions that people are being told you should be induced for this, be induced for that. And obviously a lot of that is evidence-based, whereas in some scenarios, the evidence isn’t quite as clear. And so that’s kind of like really been frustrating a lot of doulas. That’s the number one topic.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:03:05:

Oh, wow. That’s super interesting. So like, we’re definitely hearing more about inductions. Is that from our professional members or from our, like our audience or just sort of everybody?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:03:16:

Yeah, I would say it’s mostly doulas. It really impacts a doula’s work-life balance, right? Because inductions are a lot longer. So we’re seeing doulas having to balance, okay, when do I come to the induction? How do I prepare my clients for the induction? Navigating all of the complicated choices of inductions. So I guess it’s no surprise that like some of our most popular topics on the podcast and on the website have to do with induction because doulas are looking for that kind of information to help support their clients. And then also it impacts nurses and hospital care providers because, you know, an induction is a complicated, lengthy medical procedure. And so you’re seeing more and more nurses tell us, you know, most of my clients who are in labor are being induced. And globally, the rates are about 40%, about the same in the United States. At least that’s what is documented. But people are telling us that the rates are much higher in some of their communities. And also going back to doulas, one of the things I’ve noticed is that doulas, you know, the word doula is a household term now. There’s still some misperceptions about what a doula does and does not do. But overall, people have heard of doulas. They’re interested in having one when they, if they decide to have children. And that has been, I would say, a huge shift over the past 10 years. And then something else that you’ve been working on, Sara, is AI and that kind of how that’s impacting birth, ChatGPT, benefits and risks of using this information. Especially for me, the risks of the information are really jumping out, have become quite obvious in how it can spread misinformation really quickly and how the quality of information can keep kind of declining. I kind of describe it as like flushing down the toilet because AI starts citing AI. And then you don’t have actual people involved in fact-checking things. So when these large language models are searching for things to include in their large language model, they’re referring to other large language models. And so it just kind of creates this downward spiral of quality of information. At least that’s what I’ve seen. And we’re going to talk more about that next year with you. So that’s kind of a different topic.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:05:35:

Yeah, I know. I mean, it’s so important. Like when AI can’t find a citation, but sometimes like a big issue in research is generally is that it’ll invent one or it’ll hallucinate one. It’ll attribute it maybe to a researcher who works on a topic, but maybe it won’t be in the paper citing. Or maybe we’ll just like make up a new paper entirely. So, you know, for people who want to treat like a search engine, trying to learn about birth. You know, it’s hard to know what you don’t know.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:06:01:

Yeah. And to me, the search engines are getting worse as a result too, as they start depending on AI, you know, just doing some testing here and there. When I search for different subjects, if for example, Google, and if it’s using the Gemini at the top, it’ll give me answers, but then I’ll click on the links that are supposedly the citations for those answers. And the answer is not in those citations. I’m like, well, where is this information coming from? And in a way, I feel like it’s getting harder and harder to find evidence-based information. So that is another trend. Also, I mean, it has kind of an indirect impact on EBB and that, you know, when people are Googling things, they’re less likely to Google now, they’re more likely to go to some kind of other large language model, an AI service. And so we’re not getting those kinds of referrals like we used to. Instead, I think people are going directly to our website through word of mouth. And so I’m glad that we can still be there and that we do have strong word of mouth because we get so much direct traffic to our website now, as opposed to links from Google searches. So that’s been an interesting shift at EBB. And again, I attribute the fact that we’re still here and we’re still strong because of our listeners, our supporters, they keep referring people directly to our links.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:07:21:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was pregnant and on my like birth group and on Reddit, I saw EBB everywhere. So, you know, the word of mouth, both like I think people and sometimes even virtually like… It’s important. Yeah. Another thing I was actually kind of curious to ask you about, Rebecca, too, is like you’re talking a little bit about the changes of doulas. Like have any of the changes in how doula care is covered by like private insurance or state insurance? Have you seen any changes in that?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:07:51:

Yeah. So we cover that in depth in our episode with Amy Chen, which I can link to in the show notes where she talks like about how Medicaid coverage of doula care is happening in more than half the states now, I believe. So that is really positive news. There’s a mixture of good and bad news this year. Right. So we at EBB have actually seen a decline in the number of parents seeking childbirth education, which is really concerning to us because, you know, as we know, a lot of people who are entering pregnancy and birth don’t have that information passed down to them from previous generations. People don’t tend to go to all their aunts and sisters and moms births anymore. So that childbirth education, particularly in a group setting where you can ask questions and build support and really get thoroughly prepared for anything that might happen in birth, is not happening as often. I’m not sure why that is. I haven’t done any focus groups on it yet. I would not be surprised if it’s related to what we were talking about earlier. Both social media and AI models have, I think parents think they can rely on those for information, which many birth workers then kind of cringe at. Because although you can utilize social media to spread birth information, as you and I both know, the algorithms are really designed for rage bait. And, you know, just for one example, threads, which was supposed to take the place, you know, for many people of X/Twitter, which used to be a good place you could go to for like journalistic information, like current events, that sort of thing. Black Twitter was a really big thing. There was ways you could follow legitimate people and get good information. 

But the way a lot of these social media platforms are set up is to incentivize kind of like information that triggers you to want to keep watching more and to kind of go down this rabbit hole. And a lot of that is like rage bait. And I have noticed myself when I did create a threads account, because I was considering using it for EBB, like when it came out. And whenever I open it now out of curiosity, I find my mood declining. Like everything is depressing, angry, sad, which is not my normal state of being. So then I feel myself going into like the pendulum shifting. And I believe, you know, similar things on TikTok in terms of something is really exciting or it catches your eye, but it might not be true. But that’s what goes viral because that’s what the algorithm is primed to do. It wants to keep you on the platform, wants to keep your eyeballs on it. Like as you and I both know, if you’re not paying for a service, like usually you are the product, right? You are providing the service. In this case, collecting information on you, advertising to you, et cetera. So I think the problem is we’re seeing more and more people rely solely on social media or things like ChatGPT for their information instead of going to like a trusted childbirth educator. But at the same time, we’re seeing a rise in people using doulas, which is a good, I think, you know, other aspect of what’s happening right now. And maybe it’s a positive part of social media is that a lot of doulas were elevated, kind of their images and their profiles and their brands and helped popularize doulas. Plus, we have insurance coverage of doula care. But at the same time, we have the one big, beautiful bill. At least the time we’re recording this is going to impact funding for Medicaid starting next year. And that could result in the closure of hospitals, particularly in rural communities or less served communities that have a lot of Medicaid clients. This could reduce access to health care during pregnancy. So, you know, birth work is political. And whenever you have a change in administration, whenever you have big legislative changes, that can impact birth for better or worse. And I think another good example of that is in your episode where we talked about your birth story this year, the impact of the Dobbs decision on miscarriage care and birth options and how that’s still evolving in this country.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:12:02:

Yeah. You know, I mean, like nobody, I think anticipates having a miscarriage. And despite I’m feeling like a fairly well-educated person about birth, considering what I do here at EBB, I was just really, really taken aback by how much miscarriage care really is abortion care. Like those things are so deeply interconnected and it’s so important. And I think that kind of that message gets erased. There might be some like, you know, reasons for that, you know, but it’s very important. And absolutely birth work is political. And as things change, we’re just trying to keep up with all of these changes for the better and for the worse.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:12:37:

Exactly. And also, you know, as part of my role as CEO of EBB is to like understand what are the changes happening? What are the trends? And also I like forecasting. Like I like trying to predict what will happen in the future. And so, as you know, being on Team EBB, I’m always talking about, all right, what’s next? What can we do next? Given all of these trends? We’ll talk more about that when we start asking you about what we’re doing next year. Yeah. I think one example is just, for example, I start off by saying how inductions are the number one topic. So more and more resources for induction and that topic are going to be important for EBB to stay engaged in.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:13:15:

Absolutely. So kind of thinking about that, like about the information that we put out, we do a lot of it, right? Like that’s kind of our bread and butter is our Signature Articles, our special education series, education here on the podcast. So thinking a little bit about what we’ve been doing, like, is there anything that you wanted to call attention to or the research that we’ve done? Or is there anything that you’ve noticed has had an impact on the broader birth community based on what we’ve done in the past year?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:13:42:

Yeah. So trying to counteract misinformation, vitamin K is one of the first big topics that kind of put EBB on the map. When we first published the information on vitamin K more than 10 years ago, there was so much traffic to the website that it flooded our hosts and our website shut down. And we had to like switch website hosts to figure out a way to handle all the people that wanted to read this article. And I thought at the time, okay, I’ve done my job. I’ve shared the evidence. People can make their decision about the benefits and risks of vitamin K. We talked a lot about the alternatives, the drops. I was like, all right, problem solved. And what I realized is that that is not going to happen. Like misinformation just keeps chugging along. And even though we’ve been out there for more than 10 years sharing the research on vitamin K, we still see conspiracy theories. We still see lots of, really bizarre information being shared about vitamin K. So at the beginning of this year, we published an update to our Signature Article, and that was co-authored by you. And this included a new YouTube video explaining vitamin K deficiency bleeding. You helped co-author a signature training for our Pro Members, all about the impact of social media and how to fight misinformation on this topic of vitamin K. And I really think overall, our team did a really amazing job making sure this resource is updated and usable so that it can be a reliable source of information birth workers can share when they’re confronted with all this wacky information.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:15:23:

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it doesn’t have to be scary. Like that’s a big thing is like fear. At least when I was doing the research, like for the article is how much fear was a part of the misinformation. Something I really like about what we were able to do is that it’s not scary. Knowledge is not scary. Knowledge is empowering, and coming to it not from a place of fear or from conspiracy, but just like, okay, what’s actually happening? It just, I think, gives people a much better opportunity to make a decision that, is it going to be the best for them?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:15:54:

Yeah, I agree. I think I was just thinking about that when I was driving in the car the other day about, you know, the difference between making a fear-based decision versus like an informed decision that’s backed up by your intuition. And, you know, if, you know, cause we all have fears that are unreasonable and then we have fears that are reasonable. And, you know, I, I was thinking about how like, you know, you can. Arming yourself with information is empowering. And vitamin K is a really great example of that because even though there are risks and benefits to anything in life, it can be helpful to know the actual numbers. And that’s what evidence helps with. But then you also have your own values, goals, and preferences. And we also feel it’s important to talk about alternatives. Like some healthcare providers don’t want to have alternatives to different medical interventions because they want to kind of say, well, there’s one path. This is the best path. You take this path. And one of the things I’ve learned about human psychology is that. When you force someone down a path, they resist more, right? When as if you open up the options, give them the good information, respect their decision. I think it’s not only more empowering for the families, but they still end up tending to pick what the health care providers would want them to pick without as much of the kind of confrontation. So I do believe in alternatives. And that kind of leads me to our next topic that we updated.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:17:28:

Yeah, it was gestational diabetes, right?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:17:31:

Right. Right. So diagnosing gestational diabetes is a really confusing topic. And so when we signed this to Dr. Morgan on the team, she had to address just a huge amount of new research that had come out since the last time we’d updated it, I think like six years earlier. And this topic has really exploded in the amount of research available on how to diagnose GDM. And again, going to alternatives, where that comes into play is the traditional way of diagnosing GDM involves a glucola test, drinking a load of glucose in a drink. And there’s different ways of doing this that we go into depth in the article. But one of the cool things is there is a lot of new research on other methods, also other ways of making the traditional method better or easier. And so this is really an area that’s advanced since I first published about GDM again, more than 10 years ago is when I tackled it for the first time. And I knew the research would change on this, but I didn’t realize how much it would change. So it’s also kind of cool to see that there are options now that there weren’t 10 years ago. So we did a taste test of an alternative glucose drink that is considered an equivalent by the FDA. And it was really interesting just to see that there are options now that weren’t available 10 years ago. So I love that for families.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:18:58:

Absolutely. That’s something to kind of like brings those two together, vitamin K. How would you call it? Testing for gestational diabetes or-

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:19:04:

Diagnosing it? Yeah.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:19:06:

Yeah. Is that more options get more people, you know, it’s a care that they need, you know, to make sure that they’re protecting their health and able to protect their baby’s health. You know, giving people those options is really important. Like I was definitely give me the shot and give me the regular glucola drink. I’m fine with it. But I really am glad that there’s other things available to, you know, help more people feel comfortable.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:19:29:

Exactly. I think also gestational diabetes is another area where there’s a lot of bad information. A lot of people saying that it’s not a real thing, that it’s made up and evidence shows it clearly is not made up. Like there is a spectrum of blood sugar changes that can happen in pregnancy. Everybody experiences some amount of change, but it gets to a point where the change in your blood sugars can be really harmful for you and your baby. So I think it’s important to have testing available and have different options for different people who, either don’t want to or cannot drink the traditional drink. You know, the rates of nausea and vomiting are very high with the drink. So being able to offer different alternatives can be really important.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:20:14:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, it makes care more inclusive. Public health goal, I guess, right? It’s like getting, maximizing everyone’s health and well-being. That’s a wonderful way to do it.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:20:24:

Right.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:20:24:

You know.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:20:25:

Yeah. And one more thing I wanted to say about gestational diabetes, you were talking about like the options is that we actually have research now on declining the testing. And I think it’s important for that information to be available. And that was one of our more popular reels on Instagram actually was about the research evidence on declining it and that the risks do go up if you decline the test, which I’m sure some healthcare providers like intuitively knew that, but now we have data showing the risks of declining the test. So that was new information. We were able to add to that article again, so that people can make an informed decision, no matter what path they take, at least they know what they’re getting into. And speaking of respectful care and respecting people’s decisions and the options that they choose from, another resource we offered this year, Evidence Based Birth®, that’s brand new this year, is a two-page handout on Respectful Maternity Care that was authored by Dr. Morgan Richardson Cayama, another member of our research team. And based on work she did and her literature reviews and her research that she did for her doctorate. So a really amazing handout with definitions of what respectful care looks like. Also gives red flags and green flags so you can know what kind of care are you receiving right now and options for switching care. So that is a free handout that anybody can get by going to ebbirth.com/RMC, I believe is the link. We’ll also put that in the show notes. So if you haven’t downloaded that article, I strongly recommend that you get that handout and you share it with your clients if you’re a birth worker or if you’re pregnant or expecting a baby, you can download it. And I think it’s going to be really helpful for you to see what your maternity care should look like.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:22:12:

We also had one more sort of like topic that we worked on together about big babies because there was that big new study that just came out.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:22:21:

Yes. And we’ve not really talked about it on the podcast and we haven’t updated the Signature Article yet, but I think you’ll see that coming next year. And that is the topic of big babies. So we did a training this fall for our Pro Members. We call it a signature training when there’s like a whole hour of learning plus the 30 minute Q & A all about big babies. And there was a new randomized trial that was published out of England this year, looking at induction for suspected big babies at 38 weeks versus waiting until a little, I think it’s around 39 weeks to be induced. And Dr. Sara, you looked at the research on that and kind of taught that portion of the class. It was an interesting study, but I think our listeners would probably be relieved to know that it’s unlikely that this study will impact birth practices on a widespread basis in the United States at least, because even though this was the biggest randomized trial on big babies, the results were pretty neutral. There’s a very slight decrease in shoulder dystocia in the early induction group, but only with one way of analyzing data, not the traditional way, but like an alternate way they’ve used to analyze the data. Plus we don’t typically see elective inductions before 39 weeks in the U.S. so I don’t know if this study will change anything. A few of our Pro Members said they have seen it impact practice, but it’ll be interesting to see kind of how that falls into place next year.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:23:49:

I think it’s really interesting. The study didn’t tell us anything new necessarily about big babies. It reaffirmed a lot of what previous research has indicated, which is that an induction is not necessarily going to get rid of any of the potential complications that can come of a big baby. And just, you know, what we’ve learned a little bit when we’re talking about Pro Members is that it’s just really difficult to even predict a big baby until they’re born. You know, our diagnostic techniques that are available are imperfect. So that’s just like a really interesting opportunity to reflect on any of the parts of research that maybe are a little bit less exciting is that sometimes, you know, in order to like understand things, we have to do lots of research and that research might not always like give us an exciting new conclusion. And that’s just part of how we like build knowledge responsibly. So.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:24:43:

Yeah. Even though it was the biggest trial that’s ever been done on inducing for big babies, I found it interesting that they had to stop the trial early because recruitment was going so slow. It would take 20 years or something to reach the number of people they needed.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:24:56:

Oh, yeah. They wanted to recruit like 12,000 and they were getting like 10 a week or something. And it was like, it wouldn’t be possible at the rate that they were going.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:25:07:

Research is hard and, you know, kudos to the people who are out there trying to recruit people for these large randomized trials. It’s not easy. And thankfully, we do have some information from that study. But again, I don’t think it’s going to have a huge impact on birth practices, at least not in North America.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:25:25:

No, absolutely. Absolutely. So we talked a little bit about the research that stuck out this year. Were there any of the podcast episodes that really stood out to you or that had a big impact on you this year?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:25:37:

Yeah. So I’d like to share some statistics about the EBB podcast, which, you know, if you are a devoted listener to the podcast, we so appreciate you tuning in every week or when you have time. And it’s always fun to me when I interview parents for their birth stories for the podcast. And they almost always tell me that they were a listener of the podcast. They used to listen their whole pregnancy. And now they can’t believe that they’re being interviewed for the podcast, which is really fun. But it’s also kind of rare because the truth is we have 7.5 million downloads of the EBB podcast so far. And we are in the top 0.5% of all podcasts globally everywhere in terms of our downloads. That means we have more listeners, more downloads than 99.5% of all other podcasts out there.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:26:24:

That’s amazing.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:26:25:

Yeah. To make that happen, I have to give a huge shout out to Cee Cee, who is our podcast producer. To Joseph, a long-serving member of Team EBB, who edits a lot of the audio and video. To Andy, who also is an audiovisual editor for the podcast. Divine, who does all the beautiful social media graphics every week. To Jeana, who actually every week does a quality assurance listen of the podcast to make sure that we don’t have any last-minute mistakes that need to be fixed. And then also to Tiffianie, who is our content team manager, who helps keep everything running smoothly and make sure all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed and that there’s no typos. So… Thanks to the whole team. It really is a team effort. I feel like what I do as host is like small in comparison what to everybody else on the team does. And I also thought it’d be fun to share our top five episodes. Quick disclaimer, some of these have more downloads because they were published earlier in the year. So I guess it’s possible we could have a December episode that has like a lot of impressions. So because I’m publishing this at the time I am, that helps influence the numbers. But the number of fifth most popular episode with the fifth most downloads this year was EBB 349, a labor and delivery nurse’s advice for advocacy in the birth room with Trish Ware of the Labor Nurse Mama. She gives some really good, important tips for how you can speak up for yourself during labor and delivery when you’re in the hospital. The number fourth most downloaded podcast this year was EBB 357. It’s called Making Decisions About Elective Induction of Labor with Dr. Ann Peralta and Kari Radoff, CNM, from the organization Partner to Decide about their free labor induction decision-making tool that you can use online. So very cool episode. Obviously, I mentioned earlier, inductions are a hot topic this year. Number three, EBB 352 is calming breathing techniques for pregnancy with Dr. Shilpa Babbar, who is a maternal fetal medicine physician. And she shares with us several breathing techniques that are from her Indian roots and really fascinating. And she does like a live demonstration on camera and on the air.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:28:54:

That’s so cool.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:28:55:

And then number two, the second most popular downloaded episode was EBB 343. This came out in January. It was called the top 10 evidence-based strategies for lowering the risk of Cesarean. And that was coauthored with Dr. Morgan Richardson Cayama of Team EBB. And a little controversial, but you know, because sometimes people are like, you shouldn’t be telling people how to prevent Cesareans. I don’t know why we get that feedback, but we do. And I thought, you know, if you want to dig into the research references for yourself, you can, but I thought they were some good tips in there for lowering the chances of needing a Cesarean. So, and then the top number one was the one you were involved with.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:29:35:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:29:36:

Yeah. EBB 347 updated evidence on vitamin K. Hugely popular this year.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:29:44:

Yeah, that’s incredible. It’s always interesting to see what, you know, sort of sparks people’s attention. I was really blown away by the response to the vitamin K article. So it’s really fun to get to work on that one.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:29:55:

Yeah. And that one did not surprise me, you know, not because they don’t deserve to be on there, but just because you never know like what is going to spark people to all year long, go back and listen and find that episode and search for that episode and listen to it. So it’s always interesting to see, like, I think the top five kind of tell you what is on people’s mind. And I think it’s advocacy, induction of labor, anxiety, and looking for techniques to lower anxiety, techniques to lower Cesareans, and then the vitamin K, which is, you know, always controversial.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:30:29:

Absolutely. Yeah. And did you have any personal favorite episodes? Sorry to ask.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:30:34:

I know I’m like, this one’s hard because I feel like I can be biased. I really loved interviewing my sister-in-law in episode 350, Krista DeYoung. She was hospitalized in Denver for 39 days while she was pregnant. And before that, she had also been hospitalized for multiple weeks and then like had a short break and then came back. And so we talked from her hospital chair, the chair in her hospital room, her recliner, while she was hospitalized. And she was due to have a Cesarean for partial placental abruption any day. And we did like a live crash course on the air on preparing for her Cesarean. And I’m excited to tell you that the birth story from that extended hospital stay, we’re going to publish very soon in early 2026. She has such an interesting perspective because she’s a therapist and she was like having this lived experience of living in the hospital. And so she had a lot of really good tips for both parents and birth workers and nurses and doctors about helping people who have high-risk pregnancies. So I love that. And then I also loved all of the team EBB episodes this year. We were really trying to feature our own team members. So Ricky and Nova, you and your husband, Dr. Siavash, Jen, Dr. Morgan, Chanté and Julie, and Chanté again, and Miss Charlotte, who’s an elder midwife on our team. And we’ll link to these in the show notes. They were all fabulous. And it was fun to highlight expertise. And then I’m always a sucker for a good birth story. And I think it was hard to choose. Like, I don’t have necessarily a favorite, but I really enjoyed talking with Hopey Fink and Ben Levin in episode 372. They kind of had a birth that didn’t go the way they anticipated. And I just loved their energy and how they tackled it as a team was really inspiring to me.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:32:33:

Absolutely. Every birth story is interesting. You know, like someone’s had a kid, I’m like, oh. Say more. I’d love to hear about it. So yeah, it’s a really cool opportunity to get to listen to them all here in the podcast. I can totally see how it’s hard. Can’t choose between them, but it’s really great. Yeah. The ones that resonate with you. So lots of great stuff on the podcast and many things we do here at EBB. What were some of the biggest events that happened at EBB this year?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:32:58:

Okay, so it feels like a really long time ago, but we kind of kicked off the first part of the year with the EBB conference, which was our second year that we did a virtual conference. And the theme was Be the Change. So for me, my main memories of this event, you know, I’m sure the team has other memories, but I was really enmeshed in the two research topics that we presented as a research team. So Dr. Morgan helped me with diagnosing gestational diabetes, and we did a ton of prep work getting that presentation. And then you really took the lead on the evidence on the RSV shot and just kind of like RSV in general, which we’ve never published about an EBB before. So that was like an exclusive topic for the conference. And I think the audience really appreciated it.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:33:45:

Yeah, it was super interesting thing to research. I learned so much. So this year, I wasn’t eight months pregnant this time. So I felt like I got, I was a lot more like energized for the conference. It was really fun.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:33:58:

Yeah, you and all the speakers did an amazing job. I think learning about how RSV impacts pediatric care and how the shot can be given in pregnancy, all of the different options for RSV that didn’t used to exist were really fascinating. And some of the other topics that kind of stick in my memory include nutrition for preconception, all the new research on home birth, infant mortality prevention, a preeclampsia survivor story, and a lot more. So I thought it was a really amazing group of speakers. And shout out to Chanté Perryman, our director of programs, who really put together an amazing program for our attendees.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:34:39:

It was a tight ship. It was super fun.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:34:42:

Yeah-

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:34:42:

It was a lot of prizes.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:34:44:

Yeah, there’s always every presentation has a spinny wheel that usually Jen on Team EBB is in charge of spinning the wheel and giving out prizes. And there’s a lot of good energy. And I’m always amazed at how the attendees stick around for the whole day. Like, I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time focusing for that amount of time. But people stayed all day long. They were like in it. And then we have cameras on if you want. So it’s not like a webinar style. It’s like a meeting style. So you can see all of the attendees’ faces while you’re watching the presentation, which is really fun. And then our next kind of group learning experience for the first time, we did summer school at EBB. So at the start of the year, I knew I needed to update our flagship continuing education course. It’s called How to Help Families Get Evidence-Based Care. This is an enormous project because there’s about eight hours of content. And there was a lot of research that had come out. And this all needed to be updated and then taught. So I had the idea to teach it live to our Pro Members. So we had a way people could join us for the summer. And topics range from like the evidence practice gap to the evidence on midwives, labor and delivery nursing, doulas, the evidence on birth plans. And are birth plans effective? Is childbirth education effective? And then we had an amazing update to the Know Your Rights module taught by Kristen Pascucci. She updated that with a lot of new information, including new legal cases that are impacting the landscape of birth. So that is still available for our Pro Members. But it kind of was a way to force me to get that course done and teach it live. And it was a big project. So it was fun. But it was also a lot of work.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:36:25:

A lot of work. I got to help with a small portion of it and it was a lot, but yeah, it’s so energizing to get to like teach live, I think.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:36:33:

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It definitely gives it a different vibe when you’re interacting with people who are asking questions about the content instead of it just all being prerecorded. So that was great. And then the EBB instructor program has been doing really well this year. We had an increase in enrollment this summer and the team did an amazing job with reviewing applications. They’re also the programs team at EBB has been really keeping the EBB Pro Members like fed with a lot of events. There is monthly doula mentorship calls. Ms. Charlotte leads a midwifery brunch and learn every month, which is an amazing opportunity to meet with other midwives. And there’s actually some student midwives and like doulas who want to become midwives that attend that with Ms. Charlotte. And then we’ve had specialty calls like one in November about labor and delivery nursing. And then, of course, our monthly trainings, which there’s a different topic every month. And then another program that we had piloted in 2024, but we really kicked off in 2025 was the doula trainer rewards program at EBB. And this is a way that doula trainers out there who are already involved with Evidence Based Birth® can get even more involved and have special resources for their trainees that they’re training in their doula programs. So I’ll give a shout out on air to those folks. So we have Naima Beckles of For Your Birth, Laiko Hidaka, who is out of the Dominican Republic, Ms. Charlotte Shilo-Gadeau of Community Birth Companion, Heather Christine Struy of Community Aware Birth Worker, Heather McCullough of HM Birth, Lorenda Lewis of Healing with Dignity, and Lorie Michaels of Birth Pro Advanced Doula Training. We have Jen Anderson of Birth Fusion and also Chanté Perryman of Team EBB and also Anne Chanté Perryman of BabyDreamsMC.com. So big thank you to our doula trainer rewards members. We thank you for being part of the program and for what you’re doing to spread evidence-based information to your next round of trainees. And we’ll also link to all of their training websites in the show notes in case you want to check out their programs and how they’ve integrated EBB.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:38:47:

That’s a lot of stuff. Is that everything that happened at EBB this year or is there anything else?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:38:52:

Well, there’s a lot at EBB.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:38:54:

There’s a lot.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:38:55:

We get a lot of work done in our small but mighty team. But I do want to shout out our two team members who earned their PhDs. So you, Dr. Sara Ailshire, received your PhD in anthropology and Dr. Morgan Richardson Cayama received her PhD in public health. So very exciting time for our team to be able to celebrate both of you.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:39:18:

Thank you. It was really exciting. It was really great to get, Morgan, I was pushing towards the end when she was defending and it was really nice to see somebody like, okay, it’s possible. So.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:39:29:

Yeah, it’s like giving birth to a baby you’ve been pregnant with for like five to seven years for a lot of people. So it’s, it’s not easy. And we know all the work that went into it and that, and the fact that you continue to share that knowledge with us on the team and then with our listeners who, whether they realize it or not, like you’re behind a lot of what is published on the podcast. So thank you and congratulations.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:39:51:

Thank you. I got feedback that my writing has improved and like anyone who writes a dissertation knows that dissertations are not the most beautiful documents you ever produce, but I really credit working at EBB and writing for our audience for really like making me like, you know, increase my game basically as a writer. So I really benefit from it too.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:40:11:

For sure. Yeah. There’s not many places out there that teach you how to take like, scientific information and write for the public, for people who are not in PhD programs and make it accessible. So it’s cool that both of you were able to kind of practice, I would say, like hone those skills here at EBB. And then the other fun thing that kind of happened towards the end of the year is not all of our team, but most of us were able to get together in person in Nashville for a team retreat. And that was a fun location to gather together. The weather was perfect. We got a lot done. We also just fellowshipped and had a great time. And next spring, the EBB instructors are going to have their retreat in Nashville as well. So it was kind of a way for us to scope out the lay of the land, make sure we felt comfortable before we hosted a retreat there. So that was really fun.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:40:57:

It was super nice. It was a really great time. And, you know, it was nice to be with everybody. I got to talk and I learned so much every time we get together. So that was kind of making me think like, I know you know so much about birth from all of your years here at EBB, but I know you’re also always learning and you’re always seeking out new information. So I wanted to ask you, like, what was something that you learned about birth this year that you didn’t know about before or that got you really excited?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:41:22:

Yeah, you nailed it. I am always reading and always learning. And one of the things that I was learning about this year was about how like past experiences and past trauma can impact birth. So I think I’ve talked before in Babies Are Not Pizzas, I share my three birth stories, and I usually only talk about the first story and the second story on the podcast. I don’t talk a lot about my third child’s birth story, mostly because it’s not quite as exciting as the first two, but actually there was something really important that happened. I went past 42 weeks pregnancy before I went into labor, and this was really stressful for me. It happened around the holidays, but also unexpected because my first and second baby were born spontaneously at 39 and 40 weeks. So why did my body… wait so long to go into labor. And there was some confusing aspects of it as well, because I hadn’t had a period because I was breastfeeding when I got pregnant. So I couldn’t go by the LMP to determine when I was due. I guessed my due date, but then the ultrasound was different. And, you know, we talk about ultrasounds and big baby and how a first trimester ultrasound is supposed to be pretty accurate, but there was some confusion about my dates. And so I don’t know for sure if I went past 42 weeks and the decisions I would make now are different than the decisions I made then. I chose to wait for spontaneous labor. I think now seeing in the past 10 years, all the research that’s come out about 41 week induction and the benefits of that, I think I would have chosen that if I knew that, but I didn’t at the time. But one of the things I’ve always been curious about is like, why did my body not go into labor? I was definitely ready. And there’s this really funny picture of me. Maybe we can share it on social media of I’m pregnant at like 38 weeks. And I’m like, I’m so excited to meet my baby in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be another month. Or maybe it was 37 weeks. I can’t remember. I was just so excited to be done. And then for it to keep going and going, it feels like you’re going to be pregnant forever. I think I now understand what happened to me. And it took me almost 12 years to understand. So if you’re wondering what it was, do you want me to share?

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:43:38:

Absolutely. No, I’m like, I’m like, I’m like, I’m locked in. I’m like, what was it? Sorry.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:43:46:

So, you know, I’ve been reading more about the spiritual side of birth, which I know birth workers mentioned from time to time. And for example, there is a famous book by Ina May Gaskin called Spiritual Midwifery. But there’s a book called Untethered Soul that was recommended to me. And as I began processing some things with my therapist that happened to me as an infant and a young child, kind of the ages of six months through six years, there were some things that happened to me and I began realizing that I had held that in my body. And so I’ve been shedding a lot of that through EMDR, which is an evidence-based way of kind of processing and releasing trauma. And it’s made me feel a lot more lighter, more energized. And I’ve been thinking about how it might apply to birth. And so this is not research-based, but I think most birth workers would agree that birth is physical, it’s emotional, it’s mental, it’s energetic, and it’s also spiritual. And so there’s this spiritual saying of what you resist persists. And so what was happening to me at that time? When I was like 40, 41 weeks pregnant, is there was a family member in town who had been abusive to me as a child. Like not physically abusive, but verbally, emotionally. And they were in town for the holidays. And I told Dan when she got into town, I was like, well, I’m not going to have this baby while she’s here. And I was kind of saying it like tongue in cheek, you know, but, later I realized. You know, I went into labor. Like the night she left. And I only saw her a couple of times, but thinking back to like. You know, I had not processed any of that yet. I was still holding all of those emotions and feelings and physical sensations from when I was a little kid. And that was impacting my pregnancy and birth. And that is just so fascinating to me. And I don’t think I was in the right time to process it. Like there’s a time for everything. And so I don’t believe we all have to process all our traumas by a certain time point. It unfolds when it’s time. But now that I have released and processed all that and I feel so much lighter and so much better, I’m like, wow, that would have been really helpful.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:46:08:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:46:09:

So I think to me, it ended up being like, you know, I continuing to read about, it kind of inspired me to look more into the research on human psychology, how we can apply some of these principles to labor, how it impacts your sense of power, your sense of control. And then I’m also just like, I’m continuing to learn about human charisma and how we can influence change. So how can you get doors to open for you? Say you’re in a hospital and, you know, kind of goes both ways. You could be triggered by things that happen to you when you’re much younger. How do you deal with those triggers? How do you release that so that you can function in the moment? And then also for advocates who are with you, how can they combine the right amount of warmth and competence to really smooth things for you so that you can have a good experience? So those are kind of some of the things I’ve been thinking about.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:47:03:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s such an incredible story. And so interesting how like, yeah, you spoke that and it came to be, you know, like.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:47:10:

Yeah, I didn’t want it. I wanted to go into labor so bad, but I knew I could not let go and like release and let the labor process start. Because I didn’t feel safe with this person being in the same city as me.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:47:25:

Oh my gosh.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:47:25:

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:47:26:

So important. Just like in order to be in a place like. You know, where you can feel safe enough to.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:47:33:

Exactly. Like the concept of safety and birth is really important, but also fear and how holding fear, sadness, anger, all of those feelings that I had, that I had suppressed and just been told to just bottle it up, you know, and that impacts birth and labor. And that’s just fascinating to me.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:47:51:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think too, just like, coming to birth as like a researcher first before I ever like had a child myself, I didn’t benefit from having mentors who always like emphasize that this, like sort of like the metaphysical and like the psychological and the spiritual, but yeah, the more, you know, I really care this from you because it’s like, you can hold the research and the evidence and these other elements of it, like together. Cause it’s, it’s yes. And it’s both.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:48:19:

Yeah. It’s holistic.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:48:20:

Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:48:21:

Yeah. And we talk about EBB, like if you only use research, like it becomes like a bad dictator. So you have to use other parts of this world that are helpful. And I think having guidance to help people, you know, process things before birth can be really helpful.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:48:37:

Well, thank you for sharing. That’s such a powerful story. I was wrapped. So that was really wonderful to hear. And such an interesting thing. I think also really helpful for listeners who are considering. Their own life journeys and like how it comes out in births that they will have or births that, you know, maybe happened 12 years ago. So yeah, for sure. Thank you. So for our last couple of questions, I was really curious about this year at EBB, what were you the most proud of accomplishing of all the many, many things I got accomplished?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:49:07:

So I have to hold up, if you’re watching on YouTube, the My Doula Visit workbook. So this was a huge project. Many, many months went into this with lots of design work from Divine Mozo, our graphic designer at EBB. But it is beautiful. It feels like a work of science and art. And I am a creative, artistic, musical person. So anytime I can combine my love of the evidence with artsy stuff and design, I get really excited. So I’m proud of the whole team for making sure everything was running smoothly on all the times I was really focused on the workbook. And then the whole team kind of coming together to make sure that the final product was done correctly, that it had everything it needed, and that we could birth it out into the world after about a nine-month labor.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:50:03:

Very fitting. No, I was showing it because we got some copies ahead of time for the team. I was showing it to Siavash and he was so enamored with it. It cuts through the noise and like, if you’re not a birth nerd. You know, it was just a very sort of like, here you go. It also helps. It’s like a beautiful piece of stationery too. Like it makes you excited to get your pen out and start writing.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:50:24:

Yeah, definitely. It gives like start of the new year goal setting journey and just like kind of tying all the pieces together. Like I was able to include what I was learning this year. And this is page eight. It’s called looking back to move forward. It says birth is not only physical. We all bring old stuff with us to a birth, even if we don’t realize it, this is not a bad thing. It’s just a reality of life by reflecting on and processing parts of your past. You can shed light on patterns that may be helpful to you, your partners and your doula during labor and birth. And then it has journaling space for you to process things that, and also then be able to talk about that with your doula. You know, maybe you won’t be able to process this by the time you give birth. Like we’re not all in the situation where we can, but at least your doula will be aware of what’s happening. And then birth can be like a moment for people to heal. You know, it is definitely, it can be a very powerful moment.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:51:15:

Absolutely. It’s like a really great place to start conversations too. Like with like whatever doula you have, like, it’s just a nice place to organize your thoughts and. Yeah, it’s just a conversation starter, which is huge. So… for my final question then, I want to know what’s next for you and for EBB in 2026. What are we excited about doing and are you going to be exploring any new directions or what should we know about EBB in the year 2026?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:51:44:

Well, stay tuned for January. We’re going to very soon be releasing information about the third annual Evidence Based Birth® conference. It’s a virtual event and we’re very excited. We already have all the speakers lined up. So we’ll be announcing all that information soon. It’ll be happening in March, but registration will open in January. Other news with the workbook. So we kind of did several printer orders of that through the holiday season and we’ll be hopefully restocking and having the workbook available continually starting in January. I do want to do summer school again this year. I would like to teach like a five week class on how to read research. So really practical. If you’re interested in, for example, say you want to read that big baby trial, but you don’t know what you’re looking at. Like we’re going to go over how research is done, how it’s funded. And then how do you evaluate a study to see if it’s like a good quality study? How do you understand the results? And we’ll be using some actual birth studies to practice those skills. So that’s going to be in the summertime. The research, the Signature Articles. So we already have three topics that are going to be coming out in the next couple of like three to four months. So we have the evidence on what is a due date plus a brand new handout that’s free. We are going to have the evidence on induction for gestational diabetes, which is going to be a pretty big update. There’s new research on that. We’re going to have the evidence on inducing for due dates, and we’re going to be focusing more on that 41-week induction mark. And then if we have time after those are done, we probably will move on to revising the big baby article to include that big baby trial. And I’m also interested in updating the circumcision article and having new research on that. So those are the research priorities for next year. And, I really want to re-release the natural induction methods kind of sticking with the whole induction.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:53:47:

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:53:49:

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:53:49:

The year of inductions.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:53:50:

And then, I have some other big news, that I haven’t spilled anywhere else, so you all are the first to hear. So I have been really spending a lot of time in peace and quiet this year, really just kind of focusing on what’s next for Evidence Based Birth®. I feel like we’ve accomplished a lot, we’ve worked really hard, but I feel like it’s time for a shift. And I wasn’t sure what that shift was, but often what happens with my intuition is I just kind of like know something. And we had done a survey at the beginning of the year asking our listeners, our readers, like, what would you like to see from EBB? And I threw out like four or five ideas. And one of the ideas I just threw out there, but I didn’t think I would actually ever do, is that EBB would start working directly with hospitals. I think it was like 85% of the survey responders were like, yes, please do this. And I just kind of laughed it off at the time. I was like, we don’t have time for that. That’s ridiculous. That’s way too much work. And it was around July of this year that I finally realized. This is what we need to do next. So I feel like it’s time. Like 10 years ago, I couldn’t have done that. Hospitals wouldn’t have been willing to work with us. I’ve heard so many stories this year from relatives and friends of mine who go in the hospital to have a baby and then tell me, I told them I’m friends with you or related to you. And the hospital staff freaked out. They got all excited. 

So I’ve gone from being like public enemy number one, you know, in 2013 or whatever, in a lot of places to like, we actually have a lot of goodwill with a lot of healthcare staff. And that’s really exciting to me because it means I think the time is ripe for EBB to work directly with hospitals to try and get more evidence-based practices going in these hospital. So. If that just gave you chills. It does me every time I talk about it. I think that’s a sign. It’s not evidence-based, but I feel my energy getting excited. Like I feel, and everybody I talk to is like, yes, please. You know, they’re so also enthusiastic. So I’m not sure what this is going to look like yet. My goal for 2026 is to shape this program and pilot it with one or two hospitals. So if you want to be involved in giving suggestions, ideas for things you want this program to look like, and I will give you a heads up, it will most likely be some kind of designation where hospitals have to meet certain criteria in order to receive a designation from Evidence Based Birth®, similar to other hospital designations out there. So we already have kind of a running list of criteria that hospitals would have to meet and ways they could work towards that designation. If you want to give suggestions, we are going to drop in the show notes a link, and we’ll also put it in the blog article that goes with this podcast, of ways to leave your comments, ideas, suggestions. And another thing we’re really looking for is the names of hospitals that you think are already doing a really good job. To be honest, I’m more looking for the smaller hospitals that already have midwives and just maybe are not recognized. Like they’re doing good things there. Maybe a few things need to be improved, which we can work together on, but they’re not receiving recognition from the greater geographic area. I’m more interested in helping those little guys and building up the quality. So it’s really top notch and then helping them as hospitals are going to be struggling next year with the reduced funding. So anything we can do to help those labor and delivery units that are already doing a really good job and, you know, help promote them would be really good.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:57:48:

So exciting. It’s so exciting to get the chance to celebrate like the birth teams that are just doing amazing work. Like-

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:57:54:

Yes.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:57:55:

And reaching them like the greatest number of people who are giving birth in this country.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:57:58:

Yes. And it will make everybody’s job easier because doulas won’t have to work as hard, you know, if they know they’re going to a hospital that already has these practices in place where the providers have been trained in certain things. Like I feel like it could be a game changer for birth workers for sure. And then of course, once you have one hospital in a community that’s doing that and has that marketing power, then other hospitals will be like, oh, dang it. We got to get our game in order. Like we got to get in shape. So I feel like that’s the next phase or iteration of EBB and time. So if you’re excited, please let us know, please fill out that form and give us your ideas. Tell us about the hospitals you love and that are doing good work. And we hope it spreads.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:58:44:

Oh, that’s so exciting. Oh, so I’m really looking forward to this. And I kind of knew where we’re going with this one, but it’s just so cool. Every time you talk about it, it’s exciting. It’s exciting.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:58:53:

It’s exciting. Yeah. And it’s just been like team EBB knowledge. So this is the first time I’ve talked about it outside the team, so.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:59:00:

You heard it first here.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:59:02:

Yeah. And I’ll try to give you updates as we go throughout the year. You know, I can eventually foresee it affecting the podcast by having like hospital staff on to talk about what they’re doing, the changes they’re making, that sort of thing. Parents who are birthing in those facilities, like once we get it in place, it could be a game changer. But, you know, obviously we start small. So this year, 2026 is going to be kind of like a shaping year, a molding it, getting it ready. And yeah, I hope we have all of your support while we do that.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 00:59:32:

Well, thank you. Thank you so much for the switcheroo. It’s been so much fun to sit in your chair for, you know, an hour or so and get to ask you the questions. How did it feel?

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:59:42:

It feels good to be done. And hopefully I didn’t spill something I wasn’t supposed to say. Although Ceecee said we could edit out anything we need to, but hopefully we won’t have to. So I think, you know, it’s safe to say, I hope I didn’t say something too controversial.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 01:00:01:

No, it was wonderful. I mean, I see you all the time, but I really feel like I got a lot from this. And I hope our listeners did too, learned a lot. It’s nice to look back. It’s fun to look ahead. And I just want to say thank you so much for letting us pick your brain. Have a wonderful 2026. So-

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 01:00:17:

You’re welcome. Happy new year, everybody. We’ll see you soon.

Dr. Sara Ailshire – 01:00:21:

All right. Bye, everyone. Take care. Thank you.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 01:00:25:

Today’s podcast was brought to you by the Signature Articles at Evidence Based Birth®. Did you know that we have more than 20 peer-reviewed articles summarizing the evidence on childbirth topics available for free at evidence-basedbirth.com? It takes six to nine months on average for our research team to write an article from start to finish. And we then make those articles freely available to the public on our blog. Check out our topics ranging from advanced maternal age to circumcision, due dates, big babies, pitocin, vitamin K, and more. Our mission is to get research evidence on childbirth into the hands of families and communities around the world. Just go to evidencebasedbirth.com, click on blog. And click on the filter to look at just the EBB Signature Articles.