I believe that birth is a natural, safe process.

I haven’t always held this belief, as I was guided by the media, which portrays birth as an emergency while heading to the hospital at the first sign of a contraction.

When obstetrics became a profession as doctors realized the potential income that was being lost to midwives, childbirth was moved to the hospital and treated as a disease.

It wasn’t until a psychology professor mentioned water birth in class that my young mind was opened to this magical world. At the age of 21, with no children of my own, I decided to become a doula, or birth assistant.

Pregnant women don’t typically take well to inexperienced people wanting to be at the most intimate event in their lives, so I volunteered at a church crises center and attended the birth of a single mom in a hospital. Eager for experience, my second birth took me exactly halfway around the globe to attend a friend’s birthing. After passing an elephant on the road, we removed the padlock from the door of a rural Thailand hospital so we could enter its empty halls to allow her to give birth in a “safe” environment. We went barefoot before entering the “sterile” delivery room. The stark differences between my first U.S. hospital birth became evident as a lizard ran across the floor while she was pushing, yet still a healthy mother and baby resulted.

The following hospital births showed me the American way of this rite of passage—as mothers were placed in hospital gowns and strapped to beds with IV’s, given the occasional ice chip or orange Popsicle, hooked up to monitors and given drugs and interventions. This created emergency situations that led to more drugs and more interventions. Financial gain, outdated research, and litigious concerns overshadowed the miracle of each birth.

Then my path led me down a different road, to the homes of birthing mothers in the care of skilled and licensed midwives. These women were giving birth in the same bed that their children were conceived in. They were encouraged to eat and drink as they pleased. They stood and moved, swaying their hips to gently encourage the baby down as the sound of their moans filled the room like an ancient song that was written on their hearts. Interventions were minimized and problems were solved by time proven methods passed down from one generation of wise women to the next.

As the sun was rising and the cry of a newborn wafted gently from the bedroom, I glanced out at the road that led me here. My convertible was just a blue speck, stuck in the mud far down a gravel road, where I had finally given up and hiked in to attend my hundredth home birth. Somewhere between that gravel road in Asia and this one, I had realized birth was safe.

Then, in my 30’s, my belief was turned into action. It was me who would be toiling in sweet agony in a labor of love greater than no other. I, with a swollen belly, chose to bring my baby earth-side in my home. Birds sang outside my window as I looked into my daughter’s eyes for the first time and my belief became etched in stone upon my expanding heart.

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Relephant read:

“Knocked Up” had it Wrong: What Childbirth Really Looks Like. {Video}

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Author: Brooke Kochel

Editor: Erin Lawson

Image: Courtesy of Author