Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: Home Birth Midwife Shares Miracle After Miracle

Ryan and Annie interviewed a lot of midwives before their home birth. Every one of them ran through the schedule — first visit at 20 weeks, this at 22, this at 30. Hannah Penaluna did almost none of that. She talked about how she'd walk with them, and about inviting the Holy Spirit into it. This episode was recorded at her kitchen table outside Atlanta, and it covers a lot of ground: seven years of hospital midwifery in Australia, including a remote posting in the Torres Strait where she cared for a population with heart disease, diabetes and deep trauma; why 2021 made staying impossible; and the resuscitation she'll never forget — a baby with meconium aspiration who took no breath for fifteen minutes, parents praying in tongues over her, "House of Miracles" playing in the background, and an MRI weeks later showing a normal brain.

In this episode

• Why every clinician in her practice is required to have a personal faith, and how they ask permission to pray
• A client who realized that being prayed for was what brought God into her life
• Free miscarriage care, rising miscarriage rates, and why she says those babies deserve to be named and grieved
• Australian midwifery vs. the American model — and what it was like working high-risk in a low-resource setting
• The conversation with her husband over Sunday coffee that ended with a move to the US
• The resuscitation: what meconium aspiration is, why you can't see it coming, and what happened in that room
• Why she's now convinced the EMS team who walked in were angels
• What she believes God's design for birth actually is — and where she's grateful for the OR, the epidural, and the C-section
• The hormone cascade at a birth, and why midwives get called oxytocin junkies

Chapters

00:20 — Around a kitchen table outside Atlanta
00:51 — Meet Hannah Penaluna: Australia, four babies, three home births
02:14 — What made her different from every other midwife they interviewed
04:25 — Why faith is a hiring requirement in her practice
05:52 — The client who said prayer brought God into her life
08:14 — Praying over charts, and what it does to a difficult relationship
09:24 — Every baby is a miracle: on miscarriage care and grief
12:17 — Hospital midwifery in Australia, and the high-risk years
13:48 — Thursday Island and the Torres Strait
15:04 — 2020, 2021, and knowing it was time to go
16:18 — Praying with women when you're not allowed to
18:04 — The coffee conversation that moved a family across the world
19:34 — Why Georgia
20:53 — Building a practice from nothing
23:35 — A mansion in Buckhead, and God saying "I led you from that to this"
25:20 — The resuscitation: what meconium aspiration does
26:44 — "House of Miracles" playing as the baby was born
28:53 — The EMS team she's sure were angels
29:28 — Fifteen minutes, and an MRI that showed nothing wrong
31:40 — Clinical skill isn't the opposite of ministry
34:57 — What is God's design for birth?
36:56 — Growth, discomfort, and what we take from mothers when we remove it
38:13 — Labor land, the hormone cascade, and oxytocin junkies
40:31 — Sacrifice: the midwife's body, the mother's body, the cross
43:46 — Closing and prayer

New episodes every Tuesday, 6 AM ET.

Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com

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Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? ryan@healthinthespirit.com / annie@healthinthespirit.com

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.