When my mother recounts my birth story, she says she remembers very little about the experience. She entered the hospital with labor pains, received a medication whose name she can no longer recall, and woke up having birthed a baby. She remembers nothing of the long hours in between or the push and pull of her womb contracting. She remembers holding me, her firstborn, hours later, but even this memory lies shrouded in fog—a result of the lingering effects of the medicine.
My own three birth experiences varied—and though I had a plan each time, I quickly came to realize that there isn’t necessarily a “right way” to give birth. Each birth is its own experience, and adjustments made along the way are normal—and the options we have to choose from are even liberating.
When I became pregnant with my first child, I remembered the mystery of my own birth story and I knew I wanted to choose a different path. Doctors no longer medicate laboring women to the point of unconsciousness, but I wanted more control over the story the little girl growing in my belly would hear about her own beginning. As a nurse, I had experienced my share of medicalized births on the maternity ward, and while I fully supported and appreciated this choice, I felt it wasn’t the best option for me.
I found a wonderful, holistic midwife to deliver my first baby, but she only delivered in hospitals, so I went to the hospital too. My labor was surprisingly slow and arduous, and I grew exhausted after many hours of contractions with no sign of an actual baby. I had planned for the least invasive, most natural birth possible, but my first birth became a hybrid of medical care and alternative medicine, eventually ending in an induction with a complete epidural. My midwife supported every decision this inexperienced mother made out of fear, pain, and an extended labor. Although it was necessary at the time, in retrospect I felt disappointed that my attempt at natural birth had become a medical procedure.
My second child, born three years later, drew his first breath from my bedroom floor. A breeze blew back the curtain from the open window, filling the bedroom with light as my son entered the world. We lived in England at the time, and home births via midwife were considered normal and a very popular birthing option. When I first told family and friends in the United States that we were planning a home birth, I could feel their collective anxiety radiate across the phone lines. This was risky in their eyes: Why wasn’t I giving birth in the hospital where all laboring mothers belonged?
But I wanted a more natural experience than my first. I remembered the strange and sterile environment of my first birth, the shaking and vomiting after the epidural, the elusive nature of sleep in the hospital. With no complications and a low-risk pregnancy, I felt grateful for a home birth option. Not every mother has the opportunity to choose how she wants to birth their child. I ended my son’s birthday in the bathtub sipping a cup of strong, milky tea while the midwife weighed and measured him beside me.
My youngest daughter, our third child, laughs about her older brother’s birth on the bedroom floor, although it remains my favorite birth story. Like her older sister, she slipped into the hands of a midwife in an American hospital. Our family had returned Stateside the year before, and I wanted another home birth but was unable to find a midwife who would do so. Instead, I decided on a midwife-led hospital birth without medication, just like the first time, but this time everything progressed just as I planned it—which is rarely the case when it comes to having a baby.
After my girl’s birth, the attending nurse sat with me and chatted as I breastfed my newborn daughter. She told me of the day she brought home her adopted daughter and the unbelievable connection she made when she realized she’d been the nurse attending her daughter’s birth in the same hospital months earlier. I shook my head, incredulous at such serendipity.
My nurse’s story, as well as the experiences of the many women I’ve seen give birth in my own days as a nurse, reminded me of the many ways there are to birth and bring home a baby. While I had a particular vision for my own experiences, it didn’t always connect with the vision my family and friends had for me. However, I trusted my instincts regarding the welfare of my body and my children’s birthdays. There is no one-size-fits-all birth option. I find this incredibly liberating. There is no shame in choosing pain medication or natural birth, choosing a midwife or a doctor, choosing one birth option and then an entirely different one years later. There is no shame in changing one’s mind at the last minute, or scheduling a cesarean section, or bringing home a baby through adoption rather than through one’s belly. We are women living in an age where we are spoiled for choice and options. It’s a gift to choose, and it’s a gift to receive medical intervention if the need arises.
I’m grateful for my complication-free birthing experiences, for the midwives, and for the freedom to decide how I would like to give birth to my children. Looking back, I believe I would have been happy no matter how my children arrived here, regardless of how contrary the experience may have been to my own vision. And after seeing many women successfully navigate unexpected birth stories, I recognize that while planning is healthy and wise, it’s how we nurture our children inside and outside the womb that matters.