Some of you may remember Jesse Bartke's post about he-nesting as he waited for his son. Here's his partner Ashby's story of their water birth!

"You look beautiful when you’re in labor,” I heard my midwife say from somewhere far away. Looking back now, I wish I had been present enough to thank her, to smile or to even recognize that I heard her words. I did hear them, somehow, from the soft blue place I floated. I heard them but they hovered somewhere outside me, like the lights and the noises in the hallway and everything except my belly and my breath and the water.

Continue reading "A water birth story" →

A couple months into my pregnancy, my mom gave me and Andreas a gift certificate for 12 hours of private Hypnobirthing training with a certified instructor. The initial lessons were challenging, not because the practice itself was all that difficult (both Dre and I have had lots of exposure to and belief in focused breathing exercises, guided meditation, etc) but because the program felt, well, sort of silly…

Continue reading "Hypnobirthing isn't really hypnosis, and it's not just for birth" →

From the age twelve years I have been told I would never carry a child to term. There were days of depression, fears of never having my own children, feeling like an oddity that I didn't menstruate like my friends and all around not feeling like a "real" woman.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that this did not mean that I would never be a mother – there was ALWAYS adoption and that life was just giving me a different path.

Then on November 7th, 2007 I went in for a routine lady visit and everything was going like normal when my doctor asked me to take a urine test to check for an UTI. Didn't seem too out of the ordinary until the doctor came back in and told me that my urine sample showed that I was pregnant.

Continue reading "Miracle baby proves there's no such thing as a 100% diagnosis" →

I was a little ATTACHED to the desire to give birth in a non-hospital setting. We did our research and happily signed on with the only remaining freestanding birth center in the New York area, The Brooklyn Birthing Center. Now here is the thing about Brooklyn: It is HUGE. Just because you live in one area doesn’t mean you are ANYWHERE NEAR another area. BBC was on the way other side of Brooklyn from us. On the subway it takes an hour and fifteen minutes to get there. Our visits would last 15 to 20 minutes tops, but our commute was two and a half hours roundtrip. Not exactly convenient and it was something we wondered about when discussing what would happen on THE BIG DAY. So we took a car service to one of our appointments, just to time it, to see what we were really dealing with. It took 45 minutes. Not ideal, but doable. We discussed this with the midwives who said that this was a common thing and they would factor the time in for gauging when it was time to come in.

Continue reading "Yeah, so my son was born in the backseat of a vehicle." →

July 18th, 2009 – the day I had guessed my baby would make her grand entrance, and by 5pm I was showing no signs of labor whatsoever and feeling pretty discouraged. I was only six days overdue, as I had fully expected, but my parents had to travel back to Wisconsin the next morning, and I was extremely sad that they would be missing the birth of their granddaughter.

I spent the day feeling sorry for myself and thinking about my next appointment with the midwife on July 23rd, and how I’d probably be able to make it no problem.

Continue reading "A fast and furious second home birth" →

Q. We are planning our first homebirth with our 2nd child due in February in a state that has laws preventing homebirth. I am so excited to not be in a hospital setting….but I am becoming consumed with fear. Fear that something is going to go wrong, that we'll have to transport to the hospital for a c-section.

Fear of the baby being breech, fear of something…anything going wrong. I have a feeling that these fears may manifest into reality since I'm so worried about them. How do I get past these fears so I can have and enjoy and not worry about the 'what if's'? -Amber

Amber,
Firstly, I want to honor you for your courage in choosing a homebirth despite the state laws and lack of support. Already you are showing your courage.

I also appreciate that you so openly disclosed the fears you are wrestling. Acknowledging your fears means they have less power over you than if they were unconscious and repressed.

Continue reading "Facing your birth fears" →