Why this blog began

When I had my first baby, I did a lot of reading about birth, true to my tendency to research things to death. I particularly loved "Ina May's Guide to Childbirth" and all the groovy birth stories. (The book contained plenty of talk about "cold, sterile" hospitals, too.)

I was in a crunchy state of mind and really wanted to have my son at home or, at the minimum, at a birth center. My husband wasn't on board, though, and neither was our insurance company. I agreed to a hospital birth ... but at that point, I had heard a lot about what "they" would do to me and our baby (or not "let" me do), and frankly, I was scared. As it turned out, my oldest son's birth (pictured) was a beautiful experience ... and so was my second son's ... and my daughter's.

Frankly, after my first birth, I like I'd been duped. What had I spent so much time being afraid of? The nurses were kind. The doctors were kind. When my oldest had trouble breastfeeding and the lactation consultant wasn't there (it was Easter), a helpful nurse worked with me again and again and again till we had things figured out. (One nurse even drove to our house to bring us some things we'd inadvertently left at the hospital after we went home!) No one pressured us to give him a bottle or pacifier, or made a big deal when we declined the hepatitis B vaccine (which we later gave him) or circumcision. And this wasn't some progressive big-city hospital, either -- it was just an average hospital in an average Midwestern city.

As time went by and I had more babies, and my friends had babies, I became disillusioned with the "trust birth" mantra I heard from so many in the natural childbirth community. I saw women who felt their bodies were "defective" because they hadn't had perfect labors. I read about babies born too far from help, or into the hands of unqualified attendants who didn't recognize problems. And yet I continued to hear how awful hospitals were -- chock-full of OBs who just want to make their tee times and are itching to cut you open.

So, when someone on a community of like-minded women -- who believe more in respecting birth than trusting it -- said, "Where are all the positive hospital birth stories online?", I thought that we needed a place to share them. This is that place.