Birth
Birth stories and posts related to natural childbirth. A little personal experience, a little research-based, and a little opinion.
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Adelaide’s Birth Story
Adelaide is 6 weeks old today. I started writing this blog post two weeks ago, but today it’s getting posted, no matter what. After both Nora’s birth and Zara’s birth, I had their stories written within a week, but this time around it’s felt like I’ve barely had any time to process anything. Between work,…
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Building a Parenting Library — Recommended Reading
📍 WyomingI mentioned awhile ago that I received a $500 grant to start our La Leche League library. I had a lot of fun thinking about the books I would recommend to local moms and what was helpful to me the first or second time around. Of course, there were significantly more books that I wanted…
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Postpartum Care After a Home Birth
Now that Zara is most definitely not a newborn and I’m fairly certain that I have survived the postpartum period, I wanted to take a moment to finally write about my post home birth experience. This will be my last post about our home birth experience (at least until our next baby). If you missed them,…
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Managing Pain in Labor
One of the best things about having a photographer take pictures at Zara’s birth is that through the photographs, I’m able to see parts of the birth that I was oblivious to at the time. I’m able to see things that went on in other rooms and, what was most interesting to me, is seeing…
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Zara’s (Peach’s) Birth Story
First a note: This is a birth story. While there are no direct pictures of nudity, there are, of course, some in which I am not clothed and all that is blocking nudity is a baby or camera angle. In addition, this describes Zara’s birth and talks about things in my labor experience that might…
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Planning A Home Birth, Safety And Supplies
I am excited to be sharing Zara’s birth story later this week, but first I wanted to write a little about the preparations we took to get ready for her birth, most especially the supplies that we gathered and that were brought by our midwife. Several of our family members were uneasy with our plans to birth…
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Preparing a Sibling to Participate in a Birth
One of the biggest reasons we chose to have a home birth is because we wanted to make the transition into a family of four as easy as possible on Nora. I didn’t want to just disappear for two days to the hospital and then bring a baby home. I wanted Nora to have…
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Perfection
I’m still working on Miss Zara’s birth story, but I wanted to share a quick update on how we’re doing. And, honestly, the title of this post says it all. I couldn’t imagine a better beginning to our little entry into the world. Everything about this experience, from the birth to the past two days…
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30 Days of Thanks: Homebirth and Our Midwife Sybille
I took Nora for her three year old check up today (we were a little late last year and now are doomed to forever be off on her check ups because of insurance). She’s 28lbs, around 34 inches tall, and just perfect, growing on her own little curve at the bottom of the charts. I’m…
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Friends, Yoga, Love and a Whole Lot of Gratitude
Six months have flown by and now that summer’s over and I’m 15lbs heavier with a belly out-to-here, we’re just about in countdown mode for Peach’s arrival. Everyday, Nora tells me, “Wow, Mama, your tummy is getting really, really big!” and perfect strangers now feel comfortable asking me when I’m due and what I’m having…
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Birth Plans Second Time Around
Aside from sheer exhaustion and pants that are getting a little harder to button, it’s almost easy to forget that I’m pregnant. We get so busy with our days that, unless my body reminds me to slow down, I don’t think too much about it. A large part of that is the “been there, done…
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The Mother’s Role in a Not-So-Perfect Birth
This is a follow up on my post about Rixa Freeze’s birth story, and my OB friend Megan’s comment on the post. In that post, I quoted a midwife blogger who found Inga’s resuscitation to be less “jarring” and more gentle than a hospital resuscitation would have been. I first have to stipulate a few…
