Everyone get a cup of tea for this....Bec is here! I know you know i talk....

Are we sitting comfortably? Good. Then i'll begin.

When i joined BB i hadn't really thought about HB. I joined for support after miscarriages. In fact i found BB by googling "miscarriage". Once i was here i found a bunch of women all walking their unique paths to birth, and having mixed experiences.

In June 2005 one of my best friends had her first baby. Her baby had been unplanned and she chose homebirth because "we all have homebirths" - she is in Germany and it's true, all 5 of her siblings were born at home. The only relative she has that was born in hospital is a neice who was in frank breech and was born vaginally without drugs or tears in a hospital 250km from where they lived (they drove for the whole labour from rupture of membranes to transition!). In July i found i was pregnant. I knew i wanted a HB. I'd read Spiritual Midwifery. That book changed everything for me. Hundreds of womens voices, calling from the 70's, the 80's, the 90's, the now, telling me what my heart already knew - birth is normal, birth is safe, birth can be Holy and beautiful.

I had seen a birth. My XP's SIL's first baby in 2004. The birth was a medical induction for post-dates (at EDD+10) and i have honestly never seen anything so violent in all my life. The mother was ignored, shouted at, medicated without permission, disprespected, assaulted (what else would you call repeatedly pushing 4 fingers into the vagina of a contracting woman while she is screaming "stop! It's hurting me! Wait until it's over!"?). Afterwards mum was too exhausted to even hold her baby, let alone feed. I gave the baby her first bottle (mum never considered BF) - a beautiful moment for ME, but an horrific trespass on the bond of the baby and her mum. A bond which i think was permanently damaged, especially when i see how it is with the second baby, born after a fast, easy, normal labour. I knew that i wouldn't go through that. I read Spiritual Midwifery. I knew i'd birth at home.

When i began to talk about it there were so few homebirthers. Basically there was Trish. I got a lot of "good on you's" from the other ladies, everyone was supportive, no one was negative about it, but i had no company on my journey. Only Trish was there, talking to me, linking me her birth story, answering my questions. I LOVED reading her tale and the tale of the accidental homebirth, which i remember resulted in terrible tearing because of the suddenness of it all, it still sounded SO much better to me than what i'd witnessed in hospital. I thought about Teyha and Trish a lot. Trish was the goddess on the path ahead, and i walked in her footsteps and had faith that as her mothering hips swayed with confidence so could mine, i WOULD birth at home.

The day of my child's birth was the most moving, enlightening, uplifting, HOLY day of my life. I can see that for some it feels more "special" to leave the mundanity of home to give birth, but for me the mundanity was seared away by the blinding wonder of the events of that day. I might have been on my humble bed in my humble bedroom when my child slid through me into the world, but let me tell you, at that moment i lived in a cathedral, no HEAVEN. There was NOTHING humble about the simple surroundings and belongings that had silently been part of my child's becoming. Nothing at all. Everything shone with joy and wonder, glory was stamped on every odd shoe, every burnt out candle, every little houseplant. The air in that room, which might have just smelled like the floor polish i'd used the week before, the washing powder of our clean sheets, the faint plastic of the shower curtain protecting my mattress, was the air we there shared with DD as she drew the first breaths of her life. That was Holy to me. Nowhere on earth could offer me that. That magical special place, where my baby was born? I got to LIVE there! XP still lives there, every birthday she's had since then the 3 of us go sit in that room and re-live our deep sense of accomplishment and joy and wonder at the miracle we experienced that day.

I look back on that room where XSIL's DD, drugged and sleepy, gasped her first breath, where a hundred other babies had done the same that year, and the grateful eyes of the staff drawn to the clock face "oh thank god, we can have a break!", utterly indifferent. Is the baby breathing? Yes. Good, want a coffee after this? The moment was profoundly holy and i really think i was the only one to glimpse it as such. Mum was drugged and emotionally shut-down from the horrific way she'd been treated, dad was scared stiff, the staff were totally indifferent.

Of course there are better hospitals, better staff, better hossie births. But for me there was no risk of that happening to me. There was no other woman or baby for my midwives to worry about. The tea they had afterwards we all shared, along with cakes, and it came from my teapot. Mine was the only birthing happening there, we were the focus of it, and there was no procedure to follow, no one needing my room or my midwives. I ate the food i wanted, i showered in MY shower with MY soap while XP held our baby, then i got into MY bed, which just happened to be the place where the most incredible thing the world had ever done to me had just happened, and i went to sleep with my beautiful newborn at my breast.

Since then i have only gained more confidence in my ability to birth. At this point in my life i never plan to hospital birth. Of course in a medical emergency i would, but who PLANS one of those?

I asked DP how he felt about us having our babies at home and he said "where else would you have them?". I know i'm the only homebirther he knows, but he's also told me he's NEVER seen a woman come out of birth like i did. I "endured" nothing, i relished it!

I'm not a hippy either. One funny moment in the labour was when the midwives arrived and one told me about how she'd "had her aura smudged" at a homebirth by an older woman who waved a smoking bunch of woods and herbs around her to cleanse her energies. I said "am i a disappointment on my ikea shower curtain then?" and we all laughed. I still have that shower curtain!

If anything BB makes me more determined to share my story, i feel so sad when i read yet another birth where mum was disrespected, baby was disregarded, family was separated. Barring medical necessity my next child will be born at home, with DD, DP and XP and the midwives around us. Born into love, into home. Birth is such a personal thing; such an individual set of hurdles, fears, hopes, dreams, experiences, bring each woman to their choices on how to birth. If my ramblings can do one tenth of what Trish's quiet, confident words did for me for another woman, then i might go on rambling, and be glad of my inability to shut up

Bx