'Becoming a "Crunchy Mom" Felt Like Joining a Cult'

Becoming a mother for the first time was really difficult. Very early on in my pregnancy, my partner and I moved ten hours across the United States to a new home. We lived in a rural location where I didn't have any family or friends. Our house was located on five acres of land, so I didn't have any community nearby.

I wasn't able to find a job and fell into the traditional wife lifestyle; cooking and cleaning while my partner worked. I had been a babysitter before, however I knew being a mom would be totally different. I've had anxiety my whole life, but it ran wild when I became pregnant. Everything became completely magnified.

At the time, I had a totally scientific mindset. I had a regular obstetrician and was planning on vaccinating my baby. Shortly after moving, I visited her and said I was experiencing extreme anxiety. I was having intrusive thoughts and things felt really unmanageable.

Before prescribing me medication, she advised trying out some techniques to manage my anxiety. I had done yoga when I was a teenager, so I decided to pick that back up in an attempt to help my mental health.

Joining the "crunchy" community

That month, a mom and baby yoga studio had opened in my local town. I was one of their first members and didn't know anything about the women in the group. All I knew when I joined was that I was going to be doing prenatal yoga.

Everyone was immediately so kind and so welcoming. Most of the members were what is known as a "crunchy mom"—which, at the time, I considered to mean a mother who practices natural parenting and maintains a healthy lifestyle.

The studio was all encompassing, which meant instead of having to run around town for everything I needed to become mom, everything was in one place. There were many multi-level marketing sellers within the group, so they would hold parties where I could buy my clothes and essential oils. Everything was right there for me; photo opportunities, lactation consultants, massages. That studio essentially became my church and my community.

At the beginning, I believe these women were genuinely trying to help me out. I mentioned during the introductory session that the obstetrician may be putting me on anti-anxiety medication and they were horrified by that.

At the time, I didn't know the majority of the group were against the pharmaceutical industry, but they appeared to want the absolute best for my baby and my pregnancy. They claimed anti-anxiety medication would not be in my baby's best interest and that my obstetrician was saying certain things they didn't necessarily agree with. They told me about a midwife who was affiliated with the studio and said: "Why don't you just meet with her and see what she says."

Switching doctors and pursuing pseudoscience

The midwife was great and I quickly switched over to her practice. She didn't have an ultrasound machine, so I didn't have any scans throughout the later stages of my pregnancy. After leaving my obstetrician, I feel the group started subtly nudging me towards a certain pediatrician, who didn't agree with vaccinating children.

They never said: "You should see this pediatrician because he's anti-vax." Instead, they said: "You need to make sure you are interviewing your pediatrician, here are some questions you should ask them."

I was sent to one doctor's office, who became furious and kicked my partner and I out for being anti-vaxxers after asking: "Would you honor a delayed vaccine schedule?" At the time, I thought they were just normal questions every mom should ask while pregnant. So that sort of cemented in my mind: The medical industry cannot be trusted.

I thought: "These people at the yoga studio are the only people who have my best interest in mind. They were right about this, so they are probably going to be right about other things. I need to trust them more."

So, I switched over to a functional medicine doctor, who from that point on controlled everything about my diet. I visited a naturopath who would essentially feel a part of my body lightly and intuitively sense what supplements I needed to take and what was wrong with me; it's all pseudoscience.

Falling deeper into the community

It wasn't like I made a conscious decision to do everything the group said, but I really trusted them. Often, they gave me advice on alleviating my anxiety in the short-term and their methods would work temporarily. Those effects were not long lasting, but they worked, so I would try the next thing too. I just kept building on those habits and patterns and got totally indoctrinated into pseudoscience, without realizing it.

I use the metaphor of a frog in a boiling bath tub. At first, the water temperature is perfect and the frog is really happy. Then it gets a little bit hotter, but because the frog's body has already adjusted to that heat, it doesn't notice the increase in temperature and it escalates from there—until the frog has boiled to death. That is what this felt like.

I didn't see any of the red flags. All I saw was anxiety relieving techniques and people who cared about me. This was the only community I had, I wasn't close to my childhood family growing up and we didn't have any relatives living nearby. This was my community; I saw these people every single day.

There were things that seemed so innocent. For example, they said: "Get a salt lamp in your room, it will help you breathe better and remove toxins." Sure, that is totally innocent. That's not hurting anyone. But eventually, it added up to me believing some of the other claims they were making and later rejecting science altogether.

Nearly dying while giving birth

Because my midwife wasn't giving me ultrasounds, I didn't know that my baby was breech until I was in labor. My water broke early in the morning and during the day I called my midwife to express concern that I couldn't feel my baby moving. She should have come and checked the baby's heartbeat, but she did nothing.

About 18 hours after my waters broke I was still having contractions, but they were not close enough to warrant me going to the birth center, so right before bedtime I had one last call with the midwife.

During that phone call, she informed me she was releasing my care and suggested I go to the hospital. I asked whether she was going to meet me there, but she said no. From that point on, nobody was able to contact her.

The hospital needed all my medical records from her, but she wouldn't pick up the phone. The worst part was they didn't know the results of my Group B Strep test, so they were going to give me and my baby antibiotics as a precaution, which I thought was a death sentence.

They told me: "You need to have a C-section. Your baby is breech." I refused to have a cesarean. I had experienced so much fear mongering around this procedure, so I thought it would be the worst thing to happen to me, that I would be robbed of my experience as a mother—not thinking the worst thing to happen to me could be myself or my baby dying.

I was forced to sign a form saying that I knew myself and my baby could die if I refused this procedure. At one stage they made my partner leave the room because they thought he might be coercing me into denying life saving medical treatment. But when he left the room, I maintained the same story.

So we scrubbed up and I delivered my child vaginally in a room full of doctors and nurses from the NICU unit. There were probably two dozen people in the room, and they got students to watch as I pushed out this baby. Someone was standing there saying: "If things do not progress quickly enough, we may have to do a C-section without your permission." So I was entirely motivated to get through the birth.

During my labor I thought I was dying and I still did not trust these people. I was so convinced they were against me that I put my life and my baby's life at huge risk. Looking back, that was the moment I was the frog boiling to death, I just didn't know it.

Distrust of Western medicine

Many people would assume that because doctors saved my life, I would trust them. But I felt more convicted in my beliefs than ever. I was of the mindset that all breech babies could be born this way, here's proof, I did it. I birthed my baby vaginally and any doctor who performs a C-section is robbing a mother of this beautiful experience, her "divine femininity".

My baby came out blue and not breathing, but I was still unable to see what was going on. It wasn't until watching the birth video back much later I could acknowledge how scary that truly was.

After delivering my son, an NICU nurse grabbed him from me to care for him, but all I remember was my beautiful baby being put on my chest and a nurse or doctor violently taking him away from me. All of these things added up to—these were things my group warned me would happen.

I was very proud I had delivered my baby vaginally, even though he was breech. My son survived, so I thought that any mother could do the same thing and if they didn't, I wouldn't say they were lazy outright, but that was ultimately the judgment I would make.

When I left, I had to sign a release saying we were leaving despite the fact doctors wanted to monitor myself and my baby.

Struggles with mental health

After giving birth, my emotional state was not good. I did not get any help after delivering my baby, because I did not trust doctors. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology, you'd think I would have trusted therapists—but to me, they were part of Western medicine and would push these big pharma drugs on me, so I couldn't.

At one point, my mental health was so bad that I almost left my family. I got in the car at 3am and just drove thinking I was going to leave. At the time, I didn't think I wanted to be a mom, I had suicidal thoughts. The transition was really, really hard.

Shortly after the birth of my first child I fell pregnant accidentally. I thought I was going to end my life for real, so I had an abortion to essentially save my life. It was a really hard year. I told people in my yoga community, who said I had been gaslit by the medical community into thinking motherhood would be easy, but it's not.

They told me I had to try harder, for longer. They suggested all these supplements and natural herbs and said if I hadn't tried everything, why would I take the easy way out with pharmaceuticals, which would mess up my whole life. To them, that was the lazy route of motherhood. I didn't want to be a bad mom, I didn't want to do the wrong thing, so I just kept trying.

At that stage, I had totally stopped trusting in modern medicine. At one point after giving birth, my anxiety was so bad that I thought I might have a brain tumor and I still didn't go to a proper medical professional. I went to the same anti-vax doctor my child and my husband went to, they didn't offer vaccines in their office, it was really hard because I thought that everyone was out to get me.

Leaving the "crunchy" community

It was not until five years after I joined this community that I saw what was really going on. I was out at the playground one day with my super "crunchy" friend. We were surrounded by children and she went on an insane transphobic rant. Most of what she said I am uncomfortable repeating, but she said vaccines were linked to sexuality, and were the reason some children want to change their gender.

Her views did not resonate with any of my morals or ethics. Soon afterwards I stopped being friends with this person and that was a turning point. Once she was gone, other puzzle pieces started to fall into place. I just started realizing everything else was a mess as well.

I thought the whole "crunchy" lifestyle I had been part of was beautiful; that it was a peaceful way to live and was beneficial to my family. Every single part of what I experienced turned out to be incredibly false. I was spending $2,000 a month on organic foods, so we were almost bankrupt. I was more anxious than ever and I had put my son's life at risk. At one stage, I thought I was dying and I still did nothing about it.

For the first year after leaving the community, I only changed small stuff, which made it felt like I was improving a little bit. I was vaccinating my kids, but in the back of my mind I still wondered if I was doing the right thing. I was worried that I had become polarized from this group, but might not be doing the right thing.

Improved mental health

After two years, I got medicated for my anxiety. It was like a little switch went off and suddenly my brain had the correct chemicals to operate. Everything changed. Two years ago, I could barely string a sentence together, I was so tired and so overworked. I could not communicate in any valuable way. I had a constant fear something terrible would happen to my perfect, beautiful children, which changed for me after becoming medicated.

It's really hard to think about how it must have been for my first born, because all he saw until my second baby was born was this mom who probably seemed very unhappy with her life.

Looking back at videos, the only ones I really have of us as a family of three show both me and my child very unhappy. I see clips of me interacting with him in a way I thought was loving, but I can see the dead look in my eyes. I can see I was not there and not present with him.

With my second baby things were already starting to be different. I was still very much in that realm, but I started getting her vaccinated at two months. Now, I feel like I have two really happy kids. That makes me overwhelmingly happy but monumentally sad, because of what it must have been like for the first three years of my son's life.

If I could go back in time, I never would have moved to the town I was living in. I would have moved somewhere with my family, because I think the reason I was especially vulnerable to fall into this type of group is because I lacked community.

I didn't know what a "crunchy" lifestyle was, it's not like I thought: "Oh look at this group, who is so glamorous, I am going to join them." I just fell into it. I want to put a worm in people's ear. Let them know this whole situation exists and there are ways you can spot it. It may not seem obvious at first, you may not realize you are on a pipeline, but if you take a few steps back, maybe you can see the red flags.

Laura Gene is a mother of two who lives in the Midwest. You can follow her TikTok page or Instagram account at @iamlevelingup.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Newsweek editor, Monica Greep.