If you were a baby in utero, what birth choices would be important to you? What would the environment feel like? What would help your comfort? What would show you that you are loved? The modern gentle birth movement looks to answers these questions for all the babies being born. Here’s a list of what a baby might tell you if you asked. Coincidentally, this list pertains to home and birth center birth.
- My mommy can move around in labor as much as she wants
- My mommy can eat and drink in labor
- My daddy and family members, even my big brothers and sisters can be there when I am born
- My midwife will help my mommy handle the discomforts of labor without drugs so I will be awake and alert when I’m born
- My mommy can choose to give birth to me standing up, or squatting, or on her hands and knees, or in any position she wants
- I can be born in the water
- I can stay with my mommy after I am born
- My midwife will wait until I’m breathing on my own before she asks daddy to cut my cord
- I get to breastfeed as soon as I want to and for as long as I want to
- I won’t be taken care of by a lot of strangers and I won’t be exposed to a lot of foreign germs
- I will be sure who my parents are, no one will get me mixed up in the nursery with someone else’s baby
Here’s to the babies everywhere.
-MAF
