I had four hospital births, all with an epidural. That’s what I thought you were supposed to do when you had a baby – get an epidural and escape from the pain. No one likes pain, so why not skip that part? My first birth was at 41 weeks and three days after my water broke. The second birth was…
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A Healing Home Birth After a Fourth Degree Tear: Part Two
If you haven’t read Part One of this story, please start here. The choice for me to have a homebirth was easy. I was emotionally and physically healed from my 4th degree tear, and BOTH are necessary to deliver vaginally again, which I call a VBAST (vaginal birth after a severe tear). For others who have had a 4th…
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A Healing Home Birth After a Fourth Degree Tear: Part One
I always knew I would have natural childbirths. My mom had four very fast labors and delivered naturally. My sister followed in her footsteps. Childbirth wasn’t something that I feared. It is a normal bodily function that women have been doing for thousands of years! I would just be another one of those women… When I got pregnant with my…
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The Birth Story of BeardBaby
Today is her first birth day. One full year. A full circle around the sun. To celebrate, I am sharing the day of her birth. I openly admit I wanted it to be just ours for a while. As I spoke at events this past year and had the opportunity to share beardbaby’s birth story, I was also able to process.…
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Quinlan’s Birth Story
It took me over a month to write my son, Sawyer’s, birth story. There was so much to process. Some parts were so traumatic and others felt triumphant. I spent over a year in therapy after his birth, to work through my anger and fears associated with the violation that came with being physically and verbally assaulted through my labor.…
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Natural Birth: Conquered with Type 1 Diabetes, Polyhydramnios, Macrosomia, and Shoulder Dystocia
The night before Kate’s birthday, I left work early. I’d been having contractions for weeks, but something was different that night. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but knew I needed to get home and get to bed. A little background: I was getting so many contractions due to having severe polyhydramnios. I had almost double the amount of…
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A Wilde Birth Story, from NYC
We named him Wilde, just as his entry into this world was. My partner, Simon, and I arrived to the hospital early on a late, September, Monday morning. My water had broken and I had been laboring lightly at home. I was just barely full term, four days into my 37th week of pregnancy. My midwife said to come into…
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The Story of Aurora
This story is hard for me to write, because while it ends with a glorious rainbow baby, it begins with an intensely bad storm. February 5, 2014, Chris and I learned that we were expecting our second child. We were surprised, but glad. I called my parents that night at Barnes Jewish Hospital, where my dad was a patient, and…
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This is Aubree: A Disabled Daughter Story
This is Aubree. She was delivered on the 11th of November, 2012, at 7:02pm via an emergency C-section, after a 52 hour labour in which she suffered a lack of sufficient oxygen and blood supply to her brain. This caused extensive damage, known as Hypoxic Ischaemic Encephalopathy. She didn’t meet her milestones and at 14 months old, we were told…