It's funny that with all the crap that's going on in my life, the one thing that keeps popping into my head, the one thing that's really bothering me, is that I never wrote my 3rd baby's birth story. I mean, she's 8 months old today and it's only bothering me now. I was over on cbirth at yahoogroups reading all the birth stories and I really wanted to share! This one was most likely my last birth and it was my 2nd unassisted birth. Birthing in an of itself is a powerful force of nature. When a woman is allowed to birth how she sees fit, it is awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, birth has been co-opted by the medical profession and is often seen/managed as a disease that needs to be constantly monitored and "cured" via medically managed birth. So many women I know are either pregnant or have recently had a baby. All of them in a hospital and a good chunk of them via cesarean. It makes me so sad that these women could not experience the beauty of birth. And then I just get pissed because it seems like most women don't give a shit about birthing, they don't have any confidence in their bodies or in the natural birth forces. They hand over their bodies, their autonomy to strangers who, at best, corrupt the birthing process, making a natural birth more difficult, and, at worst, confuse and belittle them, using their power by violently ripping babies from holes cut in their mother's wombs. I know, in some cases a c-section is the safest way for a baby to get out, but c-section rates in the US, the last time I checked, were over than 25%. In Japan, they're closer to 7%. Why such a big difference? It seems that Japanese respect the birth process a bit more than Americans do. Anyway, I can't think of a more perfect way for a woman to birth and for a baby to enter this world than in the privacy of the home, between the couple that created the life and the family that supports them. I have not found the need (and I am speaking from my own personal experience) for an outsider to be a part of my births. I only need my husband there to catch the baby, and having my older girls present at my youngest's birth just they way it was. Birth is a natural, normal, every day, cosmic, magical, miraculous happening that needs to be treated with respect. Woman and families who choose to birth outside the box are not braver or crazier that those that choose a medical/medicated birth. They just have a better understanding about what birth is and what it should be.