If fertility is a sign of health, why are pregnancy and labor treated as emergencies?
Why do we fight for choice over our bodies when deciding to keep or terminate a pregnancy, but give up our autonomy while pregnant, in labor, and post-partum?
Why doesn't "my body, my choice" extend to carrying and birthing our babies too?
Why do we think that an OB (or any MD for that matter), who we see for a couple minutes once a month, has better say in the direction of our care than our own intuition and experience of our bodies?
How many different decisions would we have made if we trusted that our bodies were not broken, but godly?
Are we not evolved to do this?
These are some questions that have been rising up while I've been baking-- while my mind is a blank slate and I can think clearly
The answer to many of these questions is fear [maybe our current obsession with pathologizing and outsourcing everything too 🤷♀️]
Aside from sharing about losing Callum at birth and my grief-journey, I don't write much about my pregnancies and labors
I've spent a lot of time thinking that it's not valuable enough to share
I've spent a lot of time in shame-land because I had two "failed" homebirths-- an option people in my life were conditioned to think of as risky
Many hearing my stories would think that going to the hospital SAVED me
But it fucking broke me
Kept me from ever wanting to birth again
My experience was medical abuse and we (me, Brandon, our midwife) had to fight like hell to not have me cut open, like the OB wanted to after I lost Callum (same OB who got to cut me open during my transfer with Bea)
I'm making the decision to claim my birthright with this pregnancy and birth safe, at home
I thought being a good girl and doing what everyone else does (medicalizing pregnancy) would get me the birth I wanted
But making that choice early on actually reunited me with the fire inside my heart-- the fire that made birthing at home feel so right so many years ago
There's a lot to unwind and own up to
I'm glad this baby is taking me on the journey to reclaim pieces of me that we're lost in my birth experiences
Happy Belly means so many things these days
