My Birth Stories: From a Home Birth with Midwives to a Freebirth
This is a story I’ve been meaning to write for literal years, but haven’t ever gotten around to writing. With one adult child, another child on the brink of adulthood, and a world that seems to be pretty interested in talking about freebirth suddenly… It's time.
You might wonder how someone can remember and tell their birth stories so many years later. But almost every woman you meet will be able to tell you all kinds of details about her births, even in old age. Birth is a powerful experience that imprints on our minds in ways that no other experience does in the same way.
Reading other people’s birth stories can be deeply moving and inspiring. Or they can trigger fear or cause old traumas to resurface. They can also bring out a sense of defensiveness in women who went through very interventive and traumatic experiences with birth.
But worrying about making others uncomfortable isn’t a reason to stop telling our birth stories. Stories can be a light in a dark tunnel for many, and as social creatures who depend on each other, we need each other’s stories so we know what is possible.
So I’m telling mine.
Homebirth of My Daughter (2003)
I was raised by a mom who was anti-doctors and anti-allopathic medicine. I didn’t go to a doctor a single time as a kid, and instead was raised on whole foods and with herbs as medicine. So for me, this worldview is my normal.
When I decided I wanted a baby at 18 years old, I knew I wouldn’t be going to a hospital. I didn’t know much about midwives at that point, but my older sister had had a baby at home with a midwife, so that information easily fit into my worldview and I knew I would do something similar.
When I got pregnant, I tried working with a popular midwife in my town, but after one prenatal visit I knew the dynamic wasn’t what my soul was craving. After being introduced to a young, new midwife and meeting with her, I knew she was the right person for me.
I would go to her house for my prenatal appointments and she would do the basic midwifery check-ups: assessing fetal heart rate with her fetoscope (and letting me listen), checking my urine (and showing me how to read the strips), assessing fundal height and (later on) positioning of the baby. She would talk to my baby and was so gentle and kind.
That would probably take all of 15 minutes, and then we would immediately launch into friendship hanging out time. Sometimes I would spend 4 hours at her house asking a million questions, talking about life, having her show me books (that I would often borrow), and just generally having my social cup filled in a deeply satisfying way (I was new to the area and didn’t have friends yet).
I loved it. She was so smart and open. Loving and kind. She read a ton and pointed me toward ideas that led me deep into rabbit holes of research. For example, I discovered elimination communication online after she mentioned she had heard that mothers in China would use a bell to encourage their infants to urinate. I soon after discovered Jean Liedloff’s Continuum Concept, which deepened my parenting style convictions and sparked my love for anthropology.
We had the best conversations an insatiably curious 18-year-old could have with her friend and midwife.
I was also being occasionally seen by two other midwives in the area that were senior midwives who had been training my midwife. They were lovely and helpful, and one in particular taught me a lot.
My pregnancy was pretty uneventful physically (once I got past the awful morning sickness). I was recovering from an abusive childhood, with lots of nervous system dysregulation and a recent “running away” from my childhood home the year before that I was still processing. It was a lot emotionally. And my midwife was very kind to talk me through it all.
I was intellectually curious but emotionally unmoored. I’m sure that was challenging for her to navigate - bless her.
Awkward photos taken by my mother - ha… So glad I have them though.
At the end of my pregnancy I was very attached to an earlier due date that I had come up with based on my period (I’d only had one ultrasound early in the pregnancy to try to establish “correct” due dates). So I generally had two due dates - the one that matched my last period and the one that the ultrasound tech had given me that was several weeks later.
So that last month of my pregnancy I allowed myself to get very distraught about when my baby was going to be born. It was truly mentally agonizing.
I turned 19. No baby. Christmas and New Years came and went. No baby.
I was starting to lose it.
(In retrospect, I can absolutely see why a lot of moms - especially first time moms - have a tendency to do this. I could have chosen to be at peace with the process, but instead I allowed myself to get overly obsessed with arbitrary due dates and created nervous system disruption, which wasn’t fun and was a crappy mindset to carry with me into labor.)
My midwife offered to strip my membranes (these days called a “sweep and stretch”) and I agreed. (If I remember correctly, she did it twice on two different days.) I finally decided to take castor oil a day or so before my baby was born. It was disgusting, of course. But I was willing to do whatever it took to make this baby come out already!
I spent about 24 hours uncomfortable. Throwing up. Anxious about birth. Bowel disruptions.
I lived in a teeny tiny one bedroom apartment with my husband, yet I had invited a whole crew to come to my birth (for reasons I can’t even remember now - I probably allowed others to talk me into it + felt nice-girl pressure not to leave anyone out). Those I had invited included: my midwife + her senior midwife mentor, an in-law family member who was a nurse, my mother (who I had a tense relationship with), and my mother-in-law (who I had a great relationship with). SEVEN adults in a 500-square-foot space.
If you know anything about first time births, they are often long, mentally challenging, and emotional. Having an audience this big was not the right choice for me, but I was 19 years old and didn’t know what I needed or what I was allowed to want.
When I knew I was in “real” labor, I called my midwife and she came over to check on me. She went back home and told me to rest for a few hours (which, of course, I didn’t - classic first time mama choices).
That evening, the whole dang crew arrived. At first it was fun having so much attention on me and my baby. But very quickly, those mammalian instincts kicked in and I knew that it wasn’t where I wanted to be.
I asked if I could go for a walk by myself and was told they didn’t feel comfortable with that (which immediately hit my free-spirited Sagittarius nature in the wrong way). I was allowed to go walking if I took my husband along, and not for long.
I’d never given birth before, so I struggled to cope with the increasing pain and intensity. I wanted to get in the bathtub, and I was allowed to get into the regular tub for relief. It helped quite a bit…to the point where it seemed like my labor had stopped.
They had me get out of the tub and walk around to get labor going again (in retrospect, the right choice here would have been for me to stay put, allow labor to be quiet, and to get a long nap along with everyone else). It kicked in again after some time, and I was back to lots of intensity.
Everyone was laying all over the floor of the apartment, every which way…sleeping. And I remember being so absolutely annoyed that everyone was resting and I wasn’t.
I labored all night and was getting panicky about my capacity to actually make it through - I was incredibly exhausted. I had wanted to try for a water birth, but we filled up the tub too soon (back in the days when people were using brand new horse troughs bought just to be used for birth tubs)... and then we ran out of hot water.
At a certain point, the midwives checked my cervix and found a bulging bag of waters, and asked if I would like them to break it. I was tired, angry, exhausted, wanted to be done, and did I mention exhausted? So I said “whatever will get this baby out of me.” And so they did. (Quick note: this isn’t actually evidence-based in a physiological birth - you can read more here.)
Labor continued to pick up in intensity. A while later (maybe a couple of hours?), the midwife checked my cervix again and said I was almost all the way dilated, but I had a cervical lip. She asked if she could push it out of the way for me during a contraction or two.
Hands down, that was the most painful part of the whole thing. Quiet little young people-pleaser me immediately loudly demanded that she take her hand out of there and quit it (I have this moment seared into my brain like a technicolor movie). She talked me into allowing it to continue, but I certainly didn’t like it and thankfully she stopped soon. (Additional note: this intervention also doesn’t align with physiological birth - you can read more here.)
During the last few contractions I was so incredibly exhausted that I remember thinking, “I’m so glad we don’t have a gun in the house…”
Then things shifted, and I started getting the urge to push. Roughly 30 minutes and a couple contractions later, my baby flew out of me in one big gush. They plopped her onto my belly and she laid there tense, screaming, and purple as can be (she probably wasn’t that purple, but that’s my memory of her). I just stared at her and didn’t know how to feel.
I was tired. I was finally free of that overwhelmingly intense experience (which lasted a total of 18 hours). And I was super over being bloody, wet, not cozy, and surrounded by people.
I knew that I liked her. But I didn’t have that rush of “omg I love you” in those first few moments. Mostly, I just felt tired and awkward.
The placenta came out a short while later and we cut the cord after it stopped pulsing. I didn’t bleed too much (thankfully). They checked me for tears and I only had some skin splits on my labia, so I was free to go.
I handed my baby over to my mother and mother-in-law, grabbed my husband (because I was supposed to have someone with me), and announced that I would be taking a shower.
And so I did.
Then I got into the coziest clothes, got into my bed, had my baby handed back to me, and could finally relax into deciding what I thought about her.
A couple of hours later everyone left, and I could finally heave a sigh of relief.
I had been someone with disordered eating patterns and during my pregnancy, I had tried very hard to be a raw vegan (you can read my nutrition journey here if you’re interested). That generally just meant that I was hungry (hangry) all the time with blood sugar levels all over the place.
This showed up in my postpartum, as I was so exhausted I could barely function. Breastfeeding was so hard. Sleep was so hard. My baby woke up every 45 minutes all day and all night, and wouldn’t let me put her down ever.
I felt like I was dyyyyying.
Thankfully, I could pass her over to her father when I was about to lose it in the night, and he would safely take over her care while I crashed into a coma for an hour.
I fell in love with her slowly. Breastfeeding took 3 months to finally even out (with an awful week-long bout of mastitis in the process). If I had taken a postpartum depression test, I’m certain I would have checked every single box.
Finally, when she was around 4 months old, she was less fussy, she was smiling and interactive, we were sleeping more, and breastfeeding had at last gotten easier. I realized then that I was deeply in love with her.
Freebirth of My Son (2005)
When my daughter was 18 months old, I fell pregnant again. I wasn’t excited about this at first, as I was just finally feeling like I could function as a mother and human, and I knew I didn’t have the physical or mental reserves to tolerate the process all over again. (Child spacing is a legit issue for women as far as nourishment and nervous system depletion is concerned…)
I was deeply morning sick again (both pregnancies I lost a lot of weight and couldn’t keep water down for several weeks). I know now that this was because of my dysregulated blood sugar levels and overwhelmingly constant raw vegan hunger…
After my daughter’s birth, I went deep into researching birth from an anthropological and evolutionary perspective. And, in the process, I’d discovered unassisted birth.
So I transformed my attitude about being pregnant again into an opportunity to have an unassisted birth.
Thankfully, no one outright confronted me about my choice (and I told almost no one, which helped). My midwife was supportive, even though she said she only wished she was brave enough to do it. She spent an hour with me going over emergency protocols so I would feel like I had some idea of what to do if something went wrong. She loaned me her fetoscope so I could listen to my baby’s heartbeat as much as I wanted to.
I didn’t have any prenatal visits. I didn’t get any testing of any kind. I took my herbal supports, ate as raw vegan as I could (with occasional raw cheese binges when I was craving it).
I spent a lot more time preparing my mind and learning how to surrender. I sank into my body. I talked to my baby. I prepared mentally for the challenges of labor. I knitted cotton baby hats and socks. I found organic baby blankets, cloth diapers, cozy clothes, and new slings. I dug out the tiny Baby Bjorn potties I’d used with my daughter. I allowed myself to get excited. To nest. To read traditional and spiritual midwifery books.
I read Unassisted Childbirth by Laura Shanley. I subscribed to the Compleat Mother magazine based out of the UK. I lived in the MotheringDotCommune forum (if you know, you know) - when I had access to a computer and internet.
I still didn’t have friends who were as nuts as I was. But most everyone around me was cautiously supportive (or at least graciously kept their opinions to themselves).
…Until I got a long letter written by one of the senior midwives who had helped to provide my prenatal care with my daughter. It was very well intended and filled with love. She had attempted to have a birth on her own, and ended up losing her baby in the process. Clearly she had a lot of heartache and grief around it, and understandably so.
I took her letter to heart. I sat with it. I wondered if I was behaving truly crazy. If I was allowing idealistic philosophies to drag me into something dangerous.
In the end, I decided that, dangerous or not, this was what I truly wanted and nothing else would work for me. I wrote her a kind letter back thanking her for her concern and appreciating her love. And then I burned her letter so I could release the fear into the smoke and walk away from someone else’s experience.
During this time, I was reading lots from Jeannine Parvati Baker (a spiritual midwife, herbalist, and yogini who wrote several books that were very popular for many years). I realized when flipping through the back of her books that she lived about 1.5 hours away from me. She was a proponent of spiritual midwifery that was very hands off. As she got older, she became someone who also spoke openly about unassisted birth that was spirit-led.
When I saw where she lived, I also saw a phone number.
So shortly after the letter incident, I called her number. And she answered.
I was so nervous to be talking to a birth celebrity, but she immediately made me feel like I was sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of tea in hand. Her voice was warm, loving, and oh so friendly. She immediately understood me, listened to me, validated me, heard me, and so gently reflected all of my power right back to me.
She laughed so easily. Told the best stories. Applauded my release of the fear of someone else’s story. Told me I was amazing and strong and could do this.
We talked for at least an hour and, before we hung up, she asked me to call her again and that she was looking forward to hearing about the birth.
I’m pretty sure I cried for a while after we hung up. And a deep penetrating warmth filled my body that told me I had been allowing fear to live in my body and I would now allow strength and connection to live there instead.
So I turned my focus to tuning into my baby, talking to my baby, asking my baby what we were supposed to do, and getting things ready for the birth. I didn’t get many supplies. A few chux pads, some herbs for a postpartum bath, a peri-bottle and some sitz bath herbs. I had intended to do a lotus birth with the placenta (keeping the umbilical cord connected to the placenta until it fell off naturally), so I didn’t even get supplies for the umbilical cord. Didn’t care about weight or measurements so much. I did get a homebirth birth certificate for fun and a paper measuring tape so I could at least go through the motions.
I also had several traditional midwifery books, the fetoscope I was borrowing, and a deep sense of connection to my intuition.
I wasn’t planning on trying for a water birth because the idea of being wet and slippery didn’t appeal to me. I wanted my body firmly on the ground where I could do whatever I felt guided to do with strength, leverage, and full autonomy.
This time around I wasn’t in any hurry to get the baby out. My attitude was that the baby could stay in there as long as he or she wanted to, as I was enjoying my time with my beautiful 2-year-old daughter. I also knew at this point that it was best to let the baby decide when to come out, instead of trying to control the wild experience of birth. I surrendered to the process and made peace with the uncertainty.
On March 28th, I could tell that contractions had changed and I could feel that labor was coming. I had a moment of “Oh god, I have to do that again…ugh.” And then I immediately followed that thought up with, “It’s okay - I know what to expect now and I can handle it differently this time.”
I started losing my mucus plug on March 29th in the morning. Contractions were super irregular, but they were occasionally more intense. They picked up during the afternoon and became more regular.
I was up for most of the night, mostly alone (exactly how I wanted to be). I remember being restless in the house and deciding to go on a walk by myself (moving in freedom and following my instincts!).
I walked around the block in the wee hours of the night, stars overhead, a sliver of a moon watching me. I would stop at every ancient tree in the darkness and gratefully hang on through each contraction. I spent a lot of time thinking about all the women who had given birth before me and all the women around the world who were laboring right at that moment with me.
I allowed myself to feel the vastness of time and space. To recognize that my body was a portal for a soul. To sink in and * feel* it deeply.
I got around the whole block very slowly, then went back inside and back to bed. At some point, my contractions got quiet again and I fell asleep for several hours.
The next morning, my contractions still hadn’t picked back up and a fearful voice in my head started saying, “This isn’t normal - labor should be continuous. You need to do something.” I spent some time researching and carefully considering herbal remedies. I looked at herbs at the health food store.
But in the end, my gut said, “No interventions, Sarah. Keep this simple.” And so I did nothing and surrendered to the process once again.
I spent the day with my daughter. She was still breastfeeding, so that triggered more contractions. I took a nap. Spent lots of down time interspersed with reading about birth and reading beautiful unassisted birth stories in my books.
Finally, contractions picked up a lot in the afternoon. I did some more walking and they picked up even more.
At around 6:30pm I was with Tyler (my husband) at our bookstore. I had stayed in the car while he ran in to do or get something. I suddenly had to turn around backwards in my seat and the contraction made me cry with its intensity. I then knew this was the real deal and it was time to go home.
As soon as I was home, I hopped into the bathtub with my daughter. We chilled in there for quite a while. Lots of contractions, cozy time with my girl, and relief.
At a certain point, Tyler’s mother came over to check on us and asked if we wanted her to take my daughter. I had really wanted my daughter to be at the birth, but I could feel myself drifting into labor land and feeling the need to focus. So I agreed to let my mother-in-law take her to go play for a while.
At this point, labor started roaring through me like a freight train. I spent at least an hour or more crawling around on the thinly carpeted floor, entertaining myself through hard contractions by turning my moanings into animal sounds. I found it quite funny and a channel that kept me in a positive space and away from fear. (Though I think I was likely also using it as a distraction from going deeper into the intensity…)
I crawled and crawled and crawled, howling and mooing and whatever else I could think of (our poor upstairs neighbors…). I was so grateful to not have an audience so that I could do whatever came to mind without being self-conscious and interrupting the flow. I didn’t want to be talked to or touched. My husband sat in the other room and quietly watched.
In between contractions, I grabbed my midwifery book and would read through about the symptoms of the phases, making sure I could interpret what I was feeling (totally unnecessary, but it was a useful mental distraction - though again, likely a distraction from going even deeper).
I got into a position where I could feel for my cervix, and I could feel my baby’s head and found that all the cervix had melted away.
Then I could feel things shift and I knew he’d be coming out very soon. I grabbed a chux pad and threw it on the floor. My bag of waters popped open, and the amniotic fluid rushed out.
I was on my hands and knees, and could feel that the position would make him fly out too fast. I tried to change positions so he would emerge more slowly. But the contractions were one after the other, so I made peace with the position I was in.
I could feel my body starting to bear down, as the contractions changed to pushing the baby out. I could feel him turning, navigating my bones, and intelligently maneuvering to come out. I felt the deep urge to help my body in pushing, and my baby flew out and I caught him as he came out at 9:00pm.
I sat there with a huge rush of endorphins and oxytocin, feeling like the most magical being on earth. I immediately adored him. I exclaimed out loud “Oh, I could do that again! That was so easy!”
I felt strong. Powerful. Well-rested. Supported. Loved. On a major high.
My baby came out completely asleep (literally, not metaphorically or euphemistically). I was a little concerned at first, since he didn’t seem pissed off and certainly wasn’t crying (aren’t babies supposed to do that?). I laughed after rubbing his back and realizing he was breathing just fine, he just didn’t feel upset enough to cry. He quietly looked around the room and at me.
I just stared at him and marveled for a while.
Then I was getting chilly, so I got up and climbed into bed with him. I attempted breastfeeding and he latched right on. We just hung out for a little while, and then my mother-in-law came back with my daughter.
My daughter immediately hopped onto the bed, poked the top of his head, and proclaimed “Baby! Baby!” with all her exuberant toddler energy.
My mother-in-law offered to keep her overnight so I could rest with my new baby, and I reluctantly (but also gratefully) agreed. They left and I was back to being in my baby bubble.
I waited and waited for the placenta to come. I decided to call a friend who was a midwifery student (not so much because I was concerned, but more because I wanted a female friend to come witness my badassery). On her way to my house, she kindly borrowed a scale, a cord clamp, and some cord scissors from her mentor (I had decided that a lotus birth actually sounded annoying).
When she arrived, I still hadn’t had my placenta come out and asked her to take a look. She discovered that the placenta was just sitting at the opening of my vagina and had probably been ready to come out a long time before that. So it just flopped right out when she gently pulled. If I had known that was a thing at the time, I would have just gotten more upright to push it out!
I didn’t bleed much - used a total of maybe 2-4 chux pads over the whole process (including attempting to catch all the amniotic fluid).
I told my friend that I was pretty sure I had torn a little bit and she confirmed that it was likely a 1st degree tear. She grabbed some nori (seaweed) from my kitchen and popped it in between the tear, sticking it back together again. The salt stung a lot, but subsided quickly.
I wanted to do an herbal bath with my baby, and my friend helped me fill up the tub, set up the herbs, and light the candles. She helped me in and then left to go home.
I had been very excited about the bath, but pretty quickly realized that it wasn’t really what I wanted so soon after birth. So after 15 or so minutes, I had my husband help me get out and get back into bed all cozy and ready for sleep.
We slept for most of the night and I’m certain I nursed my baby a couple of times, though I don’t remember it.
What I do remember vividly is waking up to sunshine and birds singing the next morning, turning over to look at my baby in my bed, and realizing he was already awake and quietly looking around the room.
How different he was! Quiet, gentle, an easy nurser, not fussy, an easy sleeper. All things that I desperately needed. (And, I’m quite certain, he was just reflecting my own much calmer nervous system state, as my daughter was also reflecting my anxious nervous system state when she was a newborn.)
Breastfeeding was easy since I had never stopped nursing my daughter, so my nipples didn’t hurt much. They did have to adjust to a newborn sucking pattern, so there was a transition period. But my daughter was VERY pleased when my milk came in and her strong sucking helped to keep my breasts from engorging so I could avoid pain and mastitis.
On day 2 or 3 of my postpartum, I was feeling so good that I decided to walk the two blocks to our bookstore with my baby in a sling. As soon as I got to the bookstore, I knew I had made a mistake. I remember sitting on the stool behind the counter and having a customer talk to me, asking about the baby, and was surprised I was there.
I just remember being sooooo tired suddenly and wanting to climb into bed more than anything. So I asked Tyler to come pick me up, we went home, and I went right to bed and didn’t go out again for a couple more weeks. (And that was my lesson on the need for postpartum rest.)
I called Jeannine Parvati Baker at some point to tell her my birth story and thank her for her confidence. She was so loving and kind, and was so excited for me (even as she was lying in her own bed dying from hepatitis C).
All-in-all my unassisted birth was exactly how I had dreamed it would be. It helped me to heal from the interventions, passiveness/stuckness, and panic I had experienced with my first birth. It helped me to reclaim my body, learn to trust myself, and experience true embodiment. I discovered that my body ebbs and flows in response to my needs during labor (as most women’s do), and if I had been supported to rest more during my first birth, I might not have gotten so incredibly exhausted and hopeless at the end. I also might have experienced more of an oxytocin high after the birth - rest, rest, rest is essential for the intense rite of passage of birth.
Would I recommend freebirth to others? Absolutely. Under certain conditions. And with lots of mental and physical preparation. Birth may be “natural” but human birth is very intense in the realm of mammalian birth.
Birth is a shamanistic experience. And rites of passages demand preparation. Freebirth requires a reclamation of self-responsibility and deep honesty around risk. It demands that we face death, grief, loss, and old wounds. And it asks us to deeply surrender in ways that modern humans aren’t used to doing. This is the spiritual journey aspect of it all.
I am deeply grateful for both of my birth experiences, as they taught me so much about my body and capacity as a woman and as a human being. I learned more about myself in my birth experiences and the following years as a mother than through anything else I’ve done in my life.
(Yes, I look like a 12-year-old here. No, I was not. I’m a proud supporter of young mamas and NOT being teased about being children just because we look young.)
Though it is challenging and oh-so-hard, I highly recommend all of it to any woman who is interested and capable. Being a mother is an incredible way to develop strength, resilience, wisdom, capacity, deep calm, compassion, and deep inner knowing. Birth is the intense portal that stretches our capacity to be more than we’ve ever been before.
Freebirth is just one of the powerful ways to get there.
It’s been 17 years since I gave birth unassisted and my thoughts around freebirth (and birth in general) have evolved a lot during that time. I’ve written a deep dive into my current perspective on unassisted birth, which you can read here.
