Why am I considering a home birth?

A friend of mine had a home birth and both she and her husband speak very highly of the experience.

For a good portion of this pregnancy, I was just not sure if it was for me…without doing more research on the subject, I just kept thinking,

I do not want to feel that pain…

I had such a positive experience delivering Charlie and Theo in the hospital… no complications, no tearing, no sick feelings, just smooth sailing…

Why a home birth, then?

Why would I want to mess with a good thing?

Since committing to a spiritual practice, I look at pain differently…

We are taught to move through the pain…work with it, not against it…

Some compare having a home birth to running a marathon… there are painful moments but you know that it will end…

I found myself overwhelmed with a sense of needing to learn more about this experience…and for the past few days, it has consumed me…

Rather than watching the scary titled Youtube videos, I first chose one titled, ‘A Peaceful Home Birth‘…this was a bit transformational and of course, I sobbed….

It’s very touching to see a completely different side of child birth…. one more peaceful than what I experienced…and I thought my two were pretty peaceful…

But this woman was in pain…but she wasn’t…she found her inner peace…that inner peace we all long for…

Watching ‘The Business of Being Born’ was very enlightening and its sequel that starts off with celebrity interviews which I really liked…

The beautiful thing about learning more is that I can choose to watch people who have done it and lean on their faith….

When Gisele Bundchen talks about the visualization she did throughout her labor, listening to her meditation music and “allowing her body and baby to do their job”…. I feel strength, power, and my own words being echoed back to me….

I am willing…. I am allowing….

She totally spoke to me and I appreciate it…

I appreciate her experience and the ones of so many others who put their minds to it…. they were focused on their end result and created the outcome they wanted…allowed their body to do its work…

Then I looked back on Charlie’s birth and I’m not sure they even asked me if I was ok with Pitocin… they never told me the risks or what it did, other than, “speeds up labor”…

We never talked about it during my routine visits… nothing…

And I probably didn’t even need the Pitocin at that point because my water broke naturally, I was dialated and Charlie was born about an hour after they started the Pitocin…why?

Now, I signed a waver when I got an epidural and I’ll tell you what… you never get used to that…

Both times I remembered being really freaked out…I’m signing my right way to possibly die here…

but I thought, “what are you gonna do?”

With Theo, my doctor recommended that I get induced about a week prior to my due date because I was petite and the baby would only get bigger…

One less week being pregnant, sure!

But I had a lot of questions and just wasn’t sure about it…I must’ve talked to the nurse at his office a few times before I committed fully to it…

Looking back… my intuition was guiding me to ask more questions…

Now I am…

This is about a choice….and recognizing why women automatically think M.D. and hospital when they think of having a baby…. society has norms for a reason and just like the banner in my 1st grade classroom said,

“What is popular is not always right and what is right is not always popular”…

It’s important to make an informed decision that is best for me…for yourself….

If no one gives you all the options….they didn’t give and you didn’t ask…how is that an informed decision?

If you look for the horror stories, you will get the horror stories….

If you look for the beautiful success stories, you will get those, too….

I may be high risk for having a crying spell because I watch something that touches and inspires me…

But I’m at a low risk for having a baby…and I am willing to explore my options and I am incredibly grateful for the women who have come before me…lighting a path…for us all…