Thank you to Karen for sharing this absolutely beautiful birth story with JulianArts. The only way we will ever reclaim birth as a gentle, lovely, life-affirming event rather than a gory, medicated, terrifying drama is to share the good stories! All types of birth stories are welcome here--the invitation is always open to share YOUR birth story. Just send me an email using the contact page to let me know you are interested.

Here is a snippet of Karen's homebirth story...

Hurray for your own bed, your own blankets, your own kitchen, your own food, your own toilet, your own shower, your own closet, your own jammies, the smells of your own home, your own telephone, and your own sunlight coming in your own window on your own newborn baby who hasn't been taken out of your sight unless you've wanted him to be and your da*n well happy about it, too....) Click on the Read More link to finish reading Karen's story

I gave birth to our third, Aren, this month on May 3rd with Jen and Jill. Jen has been encouraging me to share my birth story (and a few little things I learned) and I figured I'd better get around to it before it becomes too foggy to remember.

We had a great birth. I couldn't have asked for better. My first two were non-medicated, midwife attended hospital births. While my husband and I had a little hesitation to choose homebirth this time, once we'd committed, I wasn't expecting it to make so much difference that I was at home. It did. The two most noticeable improvements to my birthing experience were being truly comfortable with the people in my labor setting and having a much easier emotional/psychological/physical recovery.

With my first two hospital births, I didn't feel that my expressiveness in the heat of labor was hindered by my environment. Vocally and physically, I would say that I was able to put myself where I needed to be. However, the comfort and SECURITY of being at home this time led me through a different process verbally and emotionally than I think I might have had otherwise. And being able to express more verbally and not being challenged by
my environment brought me to greater awarenesses about what I really experienced and process during birth. Those were realizations that I didn't come to during birth, but rather after. I had a chance to look at how I reacted and the "gestalt" like response that came out of me, and it opened up new personal realizations about my life and where I'm at.

The familiarity and relationship that we built with Jen and Jill (aka Jill and Jen :)!) made the birth experience more intimate in that they had a sense of our relationship, our boundaries and our needs during labor. That was fantastic. I need a lot of space to myself during labor, and their sensitivities to what WE needed were a big part of what allowed me to dig into a more emotional process than I had with my previous births. Albeit I had a little extra emotional moment or two - the benefit of being at home again shining through as the support of my husband and the midwives helped me overcome being sucked into a fearful or emotionally consumed state.

As far as recovery goes, the security and comfort of being home and not having to relocate from my birth environment to my home environment was HUGE to me. I have had a hard time in the past with the shift in environment from hospital to home, and especially putting such a tiny, precious thing in a car seat and traveling. That was so stressful to me.Not having to deal with such a huge environment shift when you're postpartum is a beautiful and healthy thing. I didn't feel that there was any delay in my being able to begin healing/revitalizing myself and bonding with and enjoying my son. My family was around me. My wits were, too. (Self-assessed opinion... you can ask my husband if he agrees!) I've had ups and downs in the last couple weeks, but I think this is by far my best postpartum experience, yet.

I'm putting in a big hurrah here for the midwives... who allowed me to birth my son at his pace without any forced pushing whatsoever...... What a blessing!!!!! I'm guessing it was a combination of this being my third and not forcing pushing, but I had so little perineal discomfort that I was beside myself. Unbelievable.

Two little things I learned from this process: If you already have children, I recommend getting them out of the house the first few days for overnight stays intersperse with short visits to see you and the baby. My kids were home TOO soon. They overnighted with grandparents the first two nights and were home 5-8 hours during the day. Although I had help in the house (my husband took vacation time), I needed more solitude with the baby. The noise and the chaos of daily life wore me out the first week, even though I wasn't doing the chasing, feeding, playing, etc. Next time I'll be bossier about carving out a week plus of solitary confinement with babe.

Also, we called our family members to tell them I was in labor early on, which resulted in everyone coming to the house to visit/hang out regardless of whether they were invited. We thought we had formulated a good plan for the kids to be taken care of, etc. However, I found myself managing grandparent expectations and phone calls to get people out of my house while I was in labor, which was an unnecessary stressor. I recommend being
very clear about your expectations of who will be with you when you birth with anyone who you'll be calling once your in labor. I wasn't concerned about hurting anyone's feelings before I was in labor. I just didn't think I needed to tell people that they weren't welcome to be in my house while I was birthing. Not so. Then, once I was in labor, it seemed like a bigger issue that it probably really was. For us, we just wanted it to be husband, wife, midwives and new babe. It ended up being just that. The family came after the birth, which was perfect.

All the thankfulness in the world to Jen, Jill, and the support of the growing consciousness of the world for putting homebirth into my experience!!!!

Blessings-
K.