doula | These Light Footsteps

I’m posting my second birth story because I think women’s experiences of birth are essential to share. This is true whether the birth went perfectly, was miserable, or anywhere in between. In sharing our birth stories, we share our power as women and are able to process, learn, and grow.

Having hung around the birth community enough, I feel the need to say that I share this to educate and inspire, not to belittle any other birth experience. I want women to know they have choices in their providers, in their birth environment, and I don’t think women usually even consider this until they are pregnant at which point they just assume they should do whatever everyone else has done! But birth is an event that we’ll never forget and has lifelong impacts on mothers and babies. It’s important to choose your birth team wisely! Your birth team and environment may look completely different than mine (and that’s great — I totally understand my path is not right for everyone), but I hope you researched and investigated your options for what is best for YOU.

As with my first home birth, I opted to receive co-care. This means I went for prenatal visits with a team of hospital-based midwives in addition to my home birth midwife. I was thoroughly screened to ensure that I am healthy and a good candidate for home birth. In addition to my amazingly experienced midwife, I also had a doula, my brave mother, my incredibly supportive husband, and my 3.5 year old daughter attend the birth.

If you’re really interested, you can also see my edited birth video. Enter password “sec”. The video is here: https://vimeo.com/223386080.

(Oh, and one final note! All high-quality images are courtesy of Barefoot Smiles Photography. All other photos were lifted from a home video or came from an iPhone which explains the disparity in quality!)

Sage’s Home Birth Story

This pregnancy was another positive experience overall. There’s nothing that can compare to the feeling of another life growing inside. There were no complications aside from some intense bouts with allergic reactions that I’ve never seen the likes of before! At one point I spent over a month with a swollen face and extremely itchy hives. Not fun.

The last weeks of pregnancy also threw some curve balls – my 3 ½ year old came down with a viral illness in week 38 and my beloved grandma passed in week 39. I thought there was a very real possibility that I’d be in labor during her funeral as my first born came 5 days “early”. Continue reading →

I feel a little strange making this post public because I am actually a very private person and this is a very intimate topic! However, over the months that I was pregnant with Baby Light Footsteps, I became very passionate about birth and women’s birth experiences. I want to share this story to add to the voices of women who are telling positive stories about birth. Birth does not have to be driven by fear, it does not need to be scary, and it can be done without the use of drugs.

These sentiments are much different than what we are commonly exposed to in the media and what we often hear when we are told others’ birth stories. Every birth is a blessing and I would never want to take away from someone else who experienced birth differently than me, but I am honored to share the story of my daughter’s peaceful and empowering homebirth.

Please also note that my decision to homebirth was researched extremely carefully (obsessively, really) and that my decision to (and preparation for) birth at home is not explained here. Please email me if you’d like to discuss the decision further, or maybe there will be a future post about why I decided this was the safest choice for me and my baby!