Mind-Body, Birth: Your Guide to Fearless Childbirth received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Samantha Vaive.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Mind-Body, Birth: Your Guide to Fearless Childbirth. January 14th, 2025
What’s the book’s first line?
“I overheard a conversation between two women.”
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Mind-Body, Birth is a research-based, easy-to-understand, and inclusive guide designed to help you achieve your best birth. Birth doesn’t have to be something you suffer through just to get to the good part—birth can be the good part. In this book, you’ll learn how to move beyond the fear of childbirth, allowing you to have a joyful birth experience that you are excited about. Mind-Body, Birth breaks down what actually makes childbirth painful (it’s not what you think) and offers strategies to reduce that pain. You’ll learn the barriers that get in the way of an awesome birth experience. You’ll also explore traditional and non-traditional ways to enhance your birth journey and improve outcomes for you and your baby. The book guides you through activities, and journaling prompts you to deepen your understanding while you explore the path to your best birth. As the book comes to an end, you will use these activities to build your personal birth toolkit—a comprehensive resource that will guide you toward a joyful birth. Whether this is your first time giving birth or looking to improve upon past experiences, Mind-Body, Birth equips you with the knowledge and confidence to feel prepared and excited about your upcoming birth.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
I overheard a conversation between an older woman and a younger woman. The younger woman was saying, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to have kids. I don’t think I do, but everyone says when you hold that baby for the first time, everything changes.” The older woman got really quiet and said, “Yeah…that didn’t happen for me.” So, I turned around and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but did I hear you say you had a c-section?” She said, “Yes, I had an emergency c-section.” I replied, “Oh! The medications they give you during a c-section block the oxytocin receptors in your brain, so even though you are being flooded with bonding chemicals, you can’t feel it.” She stared at me. After a long time, she said, “For twenty years, I’ve thought something was wrong with me. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?” All I could say was, “Yeah, there is a lot they don’t tell you.” I decided in that moment I never wanted anyone to feel the way that woman felt.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
If you or someone you love is having a baby. There is no reason to suffer needlessly. People deserve a better birth.
When did you first decide to become an author?
I have always loved writing. I had dabbled some, even going so far as to self-publish a book when I was twenty. In 2016, I was feeling lost and like I was lacking a focus. My friend Jarren encouraged me to NaNoWriMo. I did it in October because I’m not a very patient person. But I did it. 50,000 words in under 30 days. I wasn’t expecting it to be anything. I was surprised to find how much I loved it.
Is this the first book you’ve written?
This is the first book of this kind that I have written. After college, I wrote a short book called “She Much Prefers the Rabbit Hole.” I’m pretty sure it’s terrible. When I did my first NaNoWriMo, I wrote a semi-autobiographical but very embellished work of fiction. Then, I wrote the second book and most of the third in that series. I wrote a doctoral dissertation, which was the inspiration for Mind-Body, Birth. After writing a dissertation, I was really struggling to write Mind-Body, Birth in a way that made it appealing to the general public. I was stuck in PhD mode. So, I did another 50,000 words in 30 days. I wrote a fantasy romance about a young woman who must offer herself up as a bride to a powerful Fae in order to save the human lands from a blight called the “canker,” fully knowing the Fae will likely kill her on sight. I called it “A Bloom From Darkness.” I hope someday to finish the series.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I help people have awesome birth experiences. Whether through my online class or on one of my luxury retreats, I get the privilege of helping people love one of the most significant events in their lives.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
I work best under pressure, but usually only if it’s imagined or self-imposed. That’s why the 30-day format works so well for me. Every book I’ve finished had a completed draft in under 30 days. It’s the editing that takes me months and months.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The best and hardest part of being an indie is doing it on your own. I don’t like being subject to other people’s timelines. As I’ve said, I’m not very patient. I also live with the type of ADHD focus where something becomes all you can think about until you can’t think about it anymore. If I don’t get things done quickly, they stop mattering to me, despite how important they were at the start. That is why the 30-day format works so well for me. In an Indie world I can go at my pace. I can move things quickly. With Mind-Body, Birth, I was talking to an independent publisher who said, “ok, if we work really hard, we can have this book out in a year.” I was thinking, “A year?!” I couldn’t do it.
But that meant I was on my own, which is hard. Being a writer, even if you’re the greatest writer in the history of humanity, doesn’t mean you’re good at everything else it takes to get a book read. Especially now, when there is so much access, our feeds are so inundated, and people can buy their way to an NYT bestseller. It’s hard to break in. I am grateful to indie authors that I have seen do the work. They inspire me. Like Shoshana Rain, I have had the privilege of ARCing for her a few times. It was after finishing an ARC and the devastating 12-month timeline offered to me by a publisher that a friend said, “Can’t you just do it on your own?” I said, “No.” Then I thought, “but Shoshana did. I think maybe I can.” Now, here we are.
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
The best advice that I ever got came from my friend Jarren when he was encouraging me to NaNoWriMo. He said, “It doesn’t matter what you write. It doesn’t matter if it’s good. Just get the words on the page.” There was so much freedom in that. Prior to that experience, I had been paralyzed by dyslexia and school typing classes before spellcheck was invented. I was so worried about my writing being “correct” that I didn’t give myself space to just let my writing be good. I believed that if your grammar and spelling weren’t perfect, then your writing had no value. My grandfather’s girlfriend read my first book, “She Much Prefers the Rabbit Hole,” when I was 20. Her only comment was, “There’s a lot of typos.” I was so mortified that I put the book in a box and refused to acknowledge that I had written it for almost a decade. Looking back, that’s so ridiculous. I have read incredible books with typos on every page. I’ve read great stories with horrible prose. I’ve read amazing prose with terribly boring storylines. And it’s all good. I’m glad I read it all. So my advice for fellow indie authors is this: It is your imperfections that make you interesting as a person. The same is true for your writing. Your writing doesn’t need to be perfect. Perfect is dull. Perfect is the death of creativity. Just get the words on the page. You can figure the rest out later.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
I would be hard-pressed to go this route unless they had some really great offer. My spouse is a musician, and I’ve worked with bands in the past. 25 years ago, all any musician wanted was a record deal. Now, no one cares about those. Everyone and anyone can record an album. You don’t need a record label. If you have one, you lose creative control. You lose timeline control. You lose money. What you want is a booking agent. Someone to do the leg work of getting you shows. Having a publisher is kind of like that. It used to be a requirement to get anywhere. Now, it’s someone you have to share control with. If a booking agent or a publicist came calling…that’s a different story.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
Writing for me is almost a compulsion. Writing gives me focus and a sense of purpose, even when I’m just writing for fun. It helps me process or clear out all the noise. It’s one of the reasons I find myself going back to school constantly. I love homework because it means I’m writing. I have such a strong attachment to words that most of my tattoos are quotes rather than images. Of course, fame and fortune and saving the world always exist somewhere in the back of your mind. But I don’t think I could stop writing even if I knew definitively that those things would never happen for me.
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
Is the answer Sarah J Maas? Are we supposed to say Sarah J Maas? I do love her work. I am a TOG over ACOTAR, and you can fight me. But I love Terry Pratchett. He’s a legend. We owe a lot to Anne Frank. I love Pete Holmes, Trevor Noah, Anna Kendrick, Amy Pohler, and Tina Fey’s autobiographies. They are all incredible in different ways. Bukowski, though I wish a lot of times that I didn’t love his writing so much. I love Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan. If you read Mind-Body, Birth, you will quickly learn that I am a huge fan of Emily Nagoski’s, and I’m basically obsessed with Peggy Orenstein. Of course, Dr. Seuss. And I would be completely remiss if I didn’t include Carissa Broadbent in this list. Crowns of Nyaxia is my top of list; if I could only take one series on a desert island, book loml.