Home water birth. Toddlers catch baby.

Dear children of mine,
I want you to know…

Giving birth to all three of you was, well how should I put it…absolutely and completely amazing.

All three times I held you in my arms, my sweet new baby, I said out loud, “I want to do that again.”
And the third birth has finally taken me over an edge, an edge like standing at the cliffs of the Grand Canyon, not exactly over the edge with my body, but ready to go over the edge with my voice. To call out to anyone and everyone that will listen. To fill that Canyon with my sound and my truth; that all who are willing to hear will take heed: I love giving birth. I want to call out a birth story and a truth I know deeply in my being, in my Yale educated Certified Nurse Midwifery brain, and in my household. Birth is to be trusted, to be raw and exposed and in its own timing. For me, birth is naked and like a dance. We danced beautiful children of mine, we danced on the day you were born, and we all sing: “I am so glad you have come”.

In wanting my voice to be heard, I am sharing the video of my most recent birth with you. With humbleness and trepidation exposing my naked body and naked voice, I share this hoping you will watch and listen. I hope you will see love and beauty, trust and grace and most of all… love, unconditional flowing love. Love of my two children and their loving father (my husband, my rock, my best friend). Love of our midwives and family and friends that were there together. You will see birth, in our home, out on a walk, in the tub, and you will see burning the cord. Everyone was in a space of trust and love, EVERYONE.

I expose myself in hopes that all who watch this birth video start the process of self-evaluation and choose to shed their ideas of birth. Have we been taught birth is ecstatic and to be trusted and honored and part of natural procreation? Have we been taught fear and speed and medicalization? I hope this will perpetuate an acceptance that with love and self-respect and honesty with our intuition, with a strong nutritional foundation and a support system that also trusts….birth can be perfect, perfect in that it can be exactly what we want it to be.

So, I hope you open your hearts to possibilities, open your minds to seeing my journey of childbirth as intense (not painful), miraculous (not medicalized), and most of all open yourself up to see the love the is illuminated throughout all the footage I am choosing to share…..