Why Your Birth Matters

My first born baby (pictured above) recently turned 19 and as we reflected on her birthdays throughout the years it struck me...wow, she has a childhood! She will always be my baby, but she isn't a baby anymore. All the years and things we did together are our story, and now we are two women, looking back on the ups and downs, the joys and pains, the beautiful most gracious gift of our connection as mother and child and the different ways we have lived that, together. It is just mind blowing sometimes.

I remember when she was born, how her entry into the world was not at all how I thought it would be. I felt so many things, all at once and even today I feel this enormous swelling of my heart remembering it.

I have written about it, published about it, talked about it, lectured about it, held hands with other women going through the motions and cried about it, and not a day goes by that I do not give thanks for her birth and all that it has given to me.

Staying connected to these moments, to your children, and to yourself even when it hurts you, even when its hard is a gift that is yours for the taking.

Nothing like motherhood to teach us that we are capable of experiencing such a complexity of things as parents. A parent's great contribution to the survival of our species is profound.

In hypnosis-birthing I teach you to reframe the way you view the "pains" of labor. Is it "pain"? Is it really? Or is it power, your body's own life-giving force that births your baby into the world? And this is important because I am telling you, it doesn't stop there. After 19 years of parenting I choose to see power. In my daughter, in myself, and in what and who we are.

Birth matters. I cannot say that enough. This is why we do what we do as birth workers, because birth matters-- to them and it matters to YOU.