Lavender & Letting Go (Warning: Miscarriage/Baby Loss)

My life has taken a sad and unexpected turn. I was 14 weeks pregnant with my third baby and we found out on Friday afternoon that the baby had died. Very early Saturday morning, he was born at home. Though it was different in some ways than a full-term birth, my experience of miscarriage was [...]

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And Even More Birth Quotes

Continuing my semi-regular addition of birth quotes I’ve used on the Talk Birth Facebook page recently.
“When women understand what’s available to us at birth, then we won’t ever give that over to an ‘expert’ the birth power, the orgasmic power that’s in our bodies” –Christiane Northrup
“Women have the inner power and the inner knowledge of [...]

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Moving During Labor

The second Healthy Birth Blog carnival is up on Lamaze’s Science & Sensibility blog. It is a great collection of links to posts about the importance of Healthy Birth Practice #2: Walk, Move Around, and Change Positions During Labor. For the blog carnival I contributed a post/handout I made last year called How to Use [...]

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The most important event shaping my life as a mother?

Recently, this quote from a Midwifery Today blog post came to my attention: “your birth is the most important event in shaping your life as a mother.” It has generated some pretty heated discussion and negative feelings amongst some writers in the blogosphere. Despite my intense commitment to birthwork, I stumble over the quote a [...]

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Birth as a Rite of Passage & ‘Digging Deeper’

I’ve posted about the idea of birth as a rite of passage before and want to share some additional quotes from The Pink Kit:
Whatever the culture, when a woman surrenders to the process, accepts the intense sensations, works through each contraction, and digs deep within herself to achieve the end goal–giving birth–she is touched by [...]

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Let labor begin on its own…

One of my blog posts that gets the most hits and is a consistently searched for topic is one that I wrote called “how do I know I’m really in labor?” I revised it recently for participation in a blog carnival at Science and Sensibility about letting labor begin on its own. Let Labor Begin [...]

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More Birth Quotes

Reposting some of the quotes I’ve recently shared via my Facebook page…I’m surprised by how many hits my blog gets for people looking for “birth quotes.” I think as long as I bother typing them into Facebook, I might as well then copy them here for those people searching for birth quotes to find! (Here [...]

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Quick Births

I recently finished reading the book Permission to Mother by Denise Punger (you can read my full review in an upcoming issue of the CAPPA Quarterly). In one of the Appendices of the book, she addresses “Herbal Inductions–Are They Safe?” Her response is “no” and she adds “A homebirth does not equal a ‘natural birth’ [...]

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Favorite Birth Class Videos

The question of “what are your favorite teaching videos?” has arisen on several email lists I belong to recently. I decided to re-post my answer here, since I had it freshly typed up!
I have quite a few birth DVDs now and I don’t show them in class anymore, but I offer the selection to my [...]

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What to Expect When You Go to the Hospital for a Natural Childbirth

I’ve been debating about whether to share this post or not. I’m concerned that it may come across as unnecessarily negative, pessimistic, or even “combative” or “anti-hospital.”  However, I do think it is honest and I’ve decided to share it. There is a fairly “normal” course of events for women having a natural birth in [...]

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