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When Esau Lopez was asphyxiated for the opening 17 minutes of his life on the planet, the environment in the area remained calm, even joyful. Gentle music drifted from a speaker in a humble two-bedroom apartment in a suburb of Pennsylvania. “You are a royalty,” murmured one of companions in the room.

Only Esau’s mom, Gabrielle Lopez, perceived something was wrong. She was exerting herself, but her son would not be arrive. “Can you help [him] out?” she inquired, as Esau appeared. “Baby is coming,” the friend replied. Several moments later, Lopez inquired once more, “Can you grab [him]?” A different companion murmured, “Baby is safe.” Six minutes passed. Once more, Lopez inquired, “Can you take him?”

Lopez could not see the cord entangled around her son’s neck, nor the foam coming from his lips. She was unaware that his shoulder was grinding against her pelvic bone, like a rubber rotating on stones. But “in her heart”, she explains, “I sensed he was trapped.”

Esau was experiencing difficult delivery, signifying his skull was emerged, but his torso did not come next. Birth attendants and obstetricians are educated in how to manage this complication, which happens in approximately one percent of deliveries, but as Lopez was freebirthing, which means delivering without any medical providers in attendance, not a single person in the space realized that, with each moment, Esau was suffering an permanent neurological damage. In a childbirth managed by a qualified expert, a five-minute interval between a newborn's skull and body appearing would be an emergency. Seventeen minutes is inconceivable.

Nobody becomes part of a group willingly. You think you’re joining a great movement

With a immense strength, Lopez labored, and Esau was arrived at evening on 9 October 2022. He was flaccid and unresponsive and still. His physique was pale and his lower body were purple, indicators of lack of oxygen. The sole sound he emitted was a soft noise. His dad the dad passed Esau to his mother. “Do you feel he needs air?” she questioned. “He’s okay,” her companion responded. Lopez embraced her unmoving son, her expression huge.

Everyone in the area was afraid now, but concealing it. To articulate what they were all feeling seemed overwhelming, similar to a betrayal of Lopez and her power to welcome Esau into the earth, but also of something larger: of birth itself. As the minutes crawled by, and Esau remained still, Lopez and her acquaintances reminded themselves of what their mentor, the creator of the natural birth group, the leader, had taught them: birth is safe. Trust the process.

So they controlled their rising panic and waited. “It seemed,” recalls Lopez’s friend, “that we entered some form of time warp.”

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Lopez had met her three friends through the unassisted birth organization, a company that champions natural delivery. Different from domestic delivery – birth at dwelling with a birth attendant in presence – natural delivery means giving birth without any medical support. The organization promotes a version generally viewed as intense, even among freebirth advocates: it is anti-ultrasound, which it mistakenly asserts harms babies, downplays significant health issues and advocates wild pregnancy, meaning pregnancy without any professional monitoring.

FBS was established by previous childbirth assistant Emilee Saldaya, and most women discover it through its digital show, which has been streamed millions of times, its Instagram account, which has over a hundred thousand followers, its online channel, with nearly twenty-five million views, or its popular comprehensive unassisted birth manual, a digital training jointly produced by Saldaya with another former birth companion Yolande Norris-Clark, offered digitally from the organization's polished online platform. Analysis of the organization's revenue reports by an expert, a audit professional and academic at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, suggests it has generated revenues surpassing thirteen million dollars since that year.

When Lopez encountered the audio program she was enthralled, following an program almost every day. For $299, she became part of their premium, private online community, the Lighthouse, where she connected with the acquaintances in the space when Esau was delivered. To plan for her unassisted childbirth, she bought The Complete Guide to Freebirth in May 2022 for this cost – a vast sum to the then early twenties caregiver.

Following studying numerous materials of group content, Lopez developed belief unassisted childbirth was the optimal way to deliver her baby, separate from excessive procedures. Earlier in her three-day labor, Lopez had visited her community health center for an sonogram as the infant had decreased activity as much as usual. Medical professionals advised her to remain, cautioning she was at high risk of this complication, as the child was “huge”. But Lopez wasn’t concerned. Recently recalled was a newsletter she’d gotten from Norris-Clark, asserting concerns of the birth issue were “greatly exaggerated”. From the resource, Lopez had learned that maternal “physiques will not develop babies that we are unable to deliver”.

After a few minutes, with Esau remaining unresponsive, the atmosphere in Lopez’s space dissipated. Lopez sprang into action, automatically providing emergency care on her baby as her {friend|companion|acquaint