fThis year I'd like to try something new. I'd like to share an article or blog post that I think is interesting, has important information for birthing families to consider, or is just plan awesome. I think this one falls into the important information range. Birth Stories.

As a part of the generation that grew up watching shows like "A Birth Story" on TLC I seriously FEARED childbirth. My own birth story was one of a long (50+) labor that ended in an emergency cesarean. To add a bit more drama, my mother often tells of looking over at me from the operating table and watching my little body heave, trying to catch my first breath, and then stop. And in her words, I was "whisked away."

When I look back at my first pictures, I see a fragile baby with tubes attached to it's body, flushed palms and feet with pale skin.

I determined that when I got pregnant that I would avoid all of that drama and go straight into the OR for a beautiful, forgettable cesarean birth resulting in a nice, round headed child. 

It wasn't until much later that I realized that a cesarean section wasn't "easy", but that it was major surgery. Basic knowledge of anatomy teaches us that! So I learned about birth, considered becoming a midwife and decided that I wanted to be a doula.

One of the first questions I ask my clients is to tell me birth stories they've heard. And while some of them tell stories of cesarean births and others of blissed out natural births, it's how we tell stories that it's important. And the understanding that no two births are the same.

There are benefits to hearing "good" birth stories where mothers feel empowered and partners are connected. Hearing more of these stories, I think, over stories of panic, pain, and fear, are a vital step to creating the births moms and birthing people want. Life happens, births can veer off course, but in the span of human existence it's only been in the past few decades that we've dis-empowered women and our ability to give birth. Let's take our power back, trust our bodies and trust birth.

I'm thrilled to share a site I recently found called Good Birth Stories. Below is a snippet from a positive birth story. I hope you enjoy.

Vanessa’s story – Matheo’s birthThe Spanish phrase for ‘give birth’ is, brilliantly, ‘dar a luz’ (give light to). I gave light to Mathéo Zen at 7.30pm on a late May evening in St George’s hospital in Tooting, London.
The room on the delivery ward was luminous with mellow evening sun and crackling with energy; the air iron heavy with the raw smell of blood. I’d used hypnotherapy and my sheer bloody-mindedness to achieve a birth of my first baby that was natural, vaginal, drug-free (except gas and air – woohoo!) and seeing our miniature creature on the outside for the first time was mind-blowing.
He was the softest thing I’d ever touched; a tiny peach; deliciously creamy and a little bit fuzzy all over. He had come in his own sweet time and was very pleased with himself indeed. He was calm, bright as a button, and he seemed to suckle contentedly – if painfully, but that’s another story – when I put him to the breast.

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