I had a very eventful, and luckily smooth, second birth and thought I could share a little picture of it. I’ve never felt as empowered as I did in this moment. My second little love decided to come a week early and fast! We had decided to do a home birth, since our previous hospital experience with our first son…
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Sweet Baby Jane: A Birth Story
Sweet baby Jane, this is how you came to be. Long before you were here, you were loved and wanted, not only by Mommy and Daddy, but by everyone in the family. I still remember when we found out I was pregnant – you were only the size of a poppy seed at the time, a tiny but very precious poppy seed. It…
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Dear Raegan, A Birth Story Letter
Dear Raegan, You are beautiful, and I love you to the ends of the earth. I had so much fear upon learning we were pregnant again. Between finances, balancing life, and figuring out how I was bringing you into the world, I was nervous. You were not planned, but you were loved from the minute we found out you existed.…
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Peregrine’s Birth Story: From Home to Hospital
An eternal 12 days after my due date, which contained both moments of patience and absolute cry-my-face-off, hormonal battiness, a complete lunar eclipse, two stretch-and-sweeps, two ultrasounds, and the looming likeliness of medical induction, it was finally starting to look like I was in labour. I had been having short, manageable contractions about 15 to 20 minutes apart for the…
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Rueger’s Birth: Learning to Give Into the Power of a Woman’s Body
First of all, I’m writing this on his second birthday. His birth is rather fresh in my memory even though so much time has passed. At about six AM on New Year’s Day, 2014, I started having mild contractions five to ten minutes apart. He was due on December 31, so it was exciting to think this might be the…
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Natural Birth In Our RV Home
On December 19, after 12 hours of labor and 4 rough hours of that was pushing, I finally gave birth in our 28 foot long RV home. Our third and last child! I had intended to birth him in the inflatable tub we purchased and set up. Even though it was full of warm water and beckoning for me to…
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Empowering VBAC from Dad’s POV
Part II of a beautiful VBAC story, as told by Elspeth Ridout McCormick’s husband. Elspeth had been having contractions all month, really. They would come in the evenings, mostly, and then they would stop around bedtime. This Friday, though, the contractions didn’t stop. Elspeth had them throughout dinner, and as the night got a little later we started to wonder…
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Empowering VBAC from Mom’s POV
A beautiful VBAC birth story, as told by Elspeth Ridout McCormick. Like all VBAC stories, the story of my daughter’s birth really starts with her big brother’s birth. In 2012, we were expecting our first child. We took Bradley classes, practiced relaxation techniques, followed the Bradley diet, and took yoga classes and nightly walks to stay fit. My water broke…
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Natural VBAC Without Fear
Erin Murray tells the story of how she conquered childbirth through a life-changing natural VBAC delivery. My first pregnancy was uneventful and very “by the book.” My weight skyrocketed, but whose doesn’t? I got to 40 weeks on the dot, and my midwife started talking about induction, non-stress tests, and a host of other scary things. She did a membrane…