Birth is Awesome!

One of the best childbirth books I have read and recently finished is called "Adventures in Natural Childbirth." - Edited by Janet Schwegel
It is a book with four sections, all of which have a short intro of the type of birth stories that follow. And the bulk of the book is childbirth stories - those that had natural births with a physician, midwife, doula, or unassisted (hence the four sections). So there is a huge range in the type of women and type of births - though all of them are natural births.
It is a wonderful book because, not only are the experiences of other women really the most educational thing for a pregnant woman, but I really think hearing other stories is the best way to prepare ourselves for our own births. You can read all the statistics and medical proof etc. to explain the harm of unnecessary interventions in normal, healthy deliveries. But hearing experiences like these makes you want to have a natural birth for much more important, 'higher level' reasons than those of just the safety of yourself and your baby. It is hard to explain until you read some of these stories. Natural birth or not - this book really brings out the amazing, exciting, wonderful miracle of birth. Really it is an amazing opportunity that every pregnant woman should look forward to with awe and excitement, not fear or anxiety. A lot of the books out there are about 'what is wrong with non-natural births'. Whereas this one is more about 'what is right with natural births'. Birth can really be a life-changing, mind-altering, transcending, spiritual, awe-inspiring experience. And it should be!
Obviously any kind of birth is awesome because the outcome is a darling, precious gift from God. But it is natural births where the labor and delivery themselves are actually amazing experiences that the women love to talk about and share with their loved ones - not just get it over with (such as most hospital births).

At the beginning of one woman's birth story she said the following so concisely and eloquently that I had to write it down. It's great when other people put your thoughts into words better than you ever could have:
"I thought natural childbirth was for granola-bar hippie types at best or fanatical masochists at worst. It was most certainly not for me, a modern woman of the 21st century... Why not take advantage of the wonderful tools available to us now through the miracle of modern medicine?
"It soon became clear to me that the medical establishment in which I had placed such blind faith was not necessarily treating my pregnant self with my own and my baby's best interests in mind. I am not saying that the medical establishment intended me any harm per se; rather, I think the traditional obstetrical model has become so burdened by the threat of costly litigation and so hamstrung by the insurance industry that it has been forced to manage childbirth and mold it to serve the needs of the medical establishment, not the needs of the women.
"If I could shout to the rooftops so all pregnant women could hear, I would tell them, 'You are stronger than you think, you can have your birth your way, and birth is something to anticipate with joy, not something to dread and fear." (Valerie Larenne's Story, p. 200)

Here are few ditty's from "Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering" (Buckley):
"Birth is as safe as life gets."
"To be consciously present at birth is equivalent to seven years of meditation."
"We diminish our own authority in birthing and in mothering - we dis-empower ourselves - when we put more faith in information from the outside (tests, scans, others' opinions) than our own internal knowing of our bodies and our babies." p. 31
" I want my babies to do more than merely survive the birth; I want them to be as whole in brain and body as possible." - p. 44

Is the goal just a physically healthy mom and baby, just avoiding death in each case? Or is it more? I'm a shoot-for-the-stars type - if I'm going to do anything at all, I want to do it great, exceptional, in fact. It is pretty amazing how many things in life have prepared me for childbirth - and now particularly for having a home birth. A few things about Janis: loves physical challenges, kind of a dare devil, values the right way more than the common way, and has always had a yearning for an old-fashioned, less complicated way of life...
I am so excited to have this baby! Is it September yet? :)