It’s been almost two years since I took a leap of faith and opened my homebirth practice and today, I’m reflecting on how much homebirth has changed the way I practice midwifery. As a former Labor & Delivery nurse and later as a hospital-based midwife practicing in the dominant paradigm of the patriarchy, I witnessed how women were encouraged to be fearful, to get numb and trust technology rather than themselves, how they were having their power taken away from them under the guise of fear masquerading as safety. Now as a homebirth midwife, my perspective on birth and women has changed dramatically, there is a lot more going on than I had previously thought.
My role as a midwife is to support women to trust their body and trust birth, but for them to do so, I myself have to trust this process even more than my clients do. I’ve had to learned to deeply trust the process of giving birth naturally, the way we are genetically designed to and to trust in the perfection of everything and every moment, and how much easier life is if you do trust. I learned about giving the space and time for the natural way of whatever is in process to unfold, about getting myself out of the way and simply holding the space for the woman and her partner to support each other.
