Our culture, our media, and our communities like to share the worst-case scenarios. Calm, peaceful, normal stories and situations are not as “exciting” as the dramatic ones. They don’t get as much attention. In birth, especially in home birth, we most often hear the stories where everything went wrong, but we neglect to realize that MOST of the time, things go right and everyone is safe and healthy and untraumatized.
When people express to me that they are scared and hesitant about home birth I often find myself wishing I could bring them along to the home births that I attend. There is something powerful, sacred and lifechanging that washes over you when you enter into a home where a woman is laboring and a baby is being born. The peace, the power, the sacredness of life being born into the world is not something that can even be explained or shown but must be experienced. I wish I could bring all those fearful of birth, especially home birth, to the births that I get to attend.
The best I can do for now is to continue to share the peace and the beauty through photos and video and hope that you at least catch a glimpse of the reality and truth of *most* births.
(Please read Kim Woodard Osterholzer, Midwife & Author‘s original words in this post. She is such a wise, intuitive, gentle, patient, and experienced midwife that I have the great pleasure of knowing and attending births with.)