I am not fond of labels, so I hesitate to write about this, as I don’t want you to think I am talking about this because I am on a mission to change the birthing world we live in. I know that my choice to home birth my children was for me and not against your choice.

Around 1990, I returned from a vacation in Hawaii and just didn’t feel well. I thought it might be the let down from a wonderful trip, but I was excited about being home. I thought it might be the change in food, climate, flying, any number of things, but I didn’t expect that I would be in a hospital room barely able to move because the headaches were so intense from the meningitis I was diagnosed with having. Those two weeks were miserable. I mean, if I had access to a gun, I seriously think I would have used it to end my life. Turns out that I was not only experiencing the affects of the meningitis, but I had also developed a spinal headache caused by spinal fluid leaking out of the injection site in my spine that was made to perform the spinal tap to determine the meningitis. In order to correct this, the doctor performed a blood patch that sealed the leak with my own blood and stopped the spinal fluid from leaking, which almost immediately stopped the headaches. Thank God.

So why am I telling you my meningitis story and not my home birth story? The answer is that this is what led me to find an alternative way to birth my children. You see, I was fully awake during the blood patch procedure (it was actually done right in my hospital bed), and the doctor was talking to me and sharing his thoughts about the cause of the spinal headache. He advised me to seriously consider avoiding any procedures that involved injections into my spinal cord, as it could lead to another spinal headache. Hmmm…that is how an epidural is administered. I was pretty sure that someday I would want to have kids, so I tucked this little piece of information into my mind.

After marrying Dan in 1993, we started trying to have children. Once pregnant with our first child, that piece of information came forward, along with the horrible memory of those headaches and the overwhelming assumptions that the only way to give birth is medicated. Luckily, I had the memory of the pain to push me into thinking differently, to question what is considered normal. Epidurals weren’t commonly used until the 1970’s. As there are many opinions about how long humans have been around, let’s take the least amount of time offered up (6,000 years), which means that for less than 1% of our existence, epidurals have been the norm in childbirth. Expand that further and include other sources of western medicine pain relief offered, and we would have a hard time going past 2%. So less than 2% of the time humans have been around we have needed western medicine pain relief, or 98% of the time we haven’t needed it and we survived and grew to over 7 billion.

I went with the 98% and studied how women managed childbirth before western medicine. I surrounded myself with people that would support me, I used a free standing birth center for our first (the next 2 were in my own home), and, most importantly, I removed any and all people and things that did not align with my goal of avoiding an epidural. The funny thing is that although my goal was simply to avoid a potential spinal headache, I learned so much about what I am capable of doing. My body didn’t need me to do anything accept flow with the labor and remove resistance. I learned to trust “my team” and accept support. I learned to meditate and surrender to the process. At the point I didn’t think I could take anymore, transition happened and I was able to work with the labor. I got to grunt and yell and push and basically let it all go (anyone who has witnessed a birth knows that a lot of things let go down there when pushing;-), and everyone encouraged me to do so. I was so alert and aware that I “caught” all 3 of my kids. I was the first person to touch and hold them. I cut each of their cords (Dan was offered, but declined). My babies and I were awake and able to move directly into bonding and connecting without either of us being in a drug coma. It was hard. It was work. It was exhausting. And everyday I am thankful for the meningitis, the spinal headache, the non existent gun, and the opinion of that doctor, because without all of these things, I would never have been given the opportunity to “see” that I had a choice. I didn’t have to go with the norm, which is actually far from the norm, if you really think about it.

Oh, and I would do it all again and I wouldn’t change a thing.