Natural Childbirth & the Path to Ecstasy

Okay, don't be scared by the title. It is mostly a joke. Though I have read natural (no medication) birth stories where the Mom experienced pleasure while birthing a baby. Yes, they were quite the read!

This is sort of an intro post to the birth stories of my girls. When we found out we were pregnant with Miss Gwen, I knew I wanted a midwife and a natural birth. Why? I have no idea. Literally, I have no idea where I got the motivation or why. We never had cable, so that certainly wasn't it. Maybe it just felt "right" I don't know. Well, when I shared this with my dear husband he was very supportive, but also pretty clueless. So in an act to bring him over to my side we watched a film I heard a lot about called....dun dun dun, The Business of Being Born. People, he ate it up!!! After watching it he may have become more into natural childbirth than me! He told anyone who would listen about the health benefits in choosing a non-medicated, and no interventions birth. He advertised this philosophy to people who don't even want children ("If you ever have children, well you should watch this movie..."). It was pretty cool for me.

Here we are in Seattle; sweet, innocent, pregnant love. 

I read books about natural childbirth, I read stories about natural childbirth and I fantasied about my own amazing, soon-to-be, birth. We took Bradely Method birthing classes and talked about Ben's role in labor all the time. Man! I'd show those nay-sayers. Bring. It. On.

The first hiccup came when I was, oh, very-very pregnant, and visiting my least favorite midwife (there were two I saw, they rotated). She was older, experienced, a mother and very no-nonsense. We were chatting about how I was having trouble sleeping or something and she suddenly brings up that she's not sure I could handle a natural childbirth (say what!?!?). She had a myriad of reasons why she thought this and reminded me that some births take up to 20 hours of labor. I forget what I said to her as I was pretty devastated. I vented to Ben and thought about if what she said was true.

Thankfully, I saw my favorite midwife the rest of my pregnancy and hoped she was the one on-call for when I was ready to birth my baby girl.

At a little over 8 months. 

Stay tuned for the rest of the story and whether I showed that midwife whose the natural birthing queen or....not.


I pick up with the story right here!!