Thanks for sharing, I wouldn’t have found this if not for you!

1) As a woman who has yet to give birth: The power of a woman giving birth the way nature intended (regardless of the setting) takes my breathe away every time. This was a beautiful, inspiring, empowering montage. I hope to some day be empowered by my own strength and beautiful birth.

2) As a labor and delivery nurse: My inspirational theme song is Ben Harper’s With my own two hands …”I can change the world, with our own two hands. Make a better place, with out own two hands…make a kinder place….I can make peace on earth…I can reach out to you….gonna make it a brighter place, gonna make it a safer place, gonna help the human race… with my own two hands…I can hold you…I can comfort you…but you got to use, use your own two hands…” Empowering women to search inside themselves and tap into their deep well of intuitive knowledge and strength is what keeps me coming back for more despite how tired, burned out, and sick of the politics I might be. Forgetting the hustle and bustle outside in the hallways, my job is to delicately plant the seed that they can do this, they are strong, they are capable. Bearing witness to the strength and power that women are capable of is an honor. I am an advocate of normal birth, an advocate of women, an advocate babies and daddies and doulas and new families. I am a labor and delivery nurse because I love supporting women with my own two hands, occasionally being lucky enough to be the first human to hold new life in my own two hands, but especially helping to break the cycle of doubt and fear in order to inspire women to understand that they can birth with their own two hands (or on their own two hands and knees.

3) As a labor and delivery nurse who has yet to experience birth: It seems to me that because Lindsey is a home birth midwife she had the distinct advantage of seeing mostly normal, natural, beautiful births to inspire her. And yet she still had that little seed of doubt threatening to take over her mind. Like a weed in a garden, we have to pull up those seeds of doubt so they don’t take over our beautiful gardens. We must lovingly attend to our gardens (growing baby, growing minds) nurturing the beauty, inspiration and trust. Sometimes we pull up a weed, but we don’t get the entire root, and it comes back, even stronger and with a vengeance. Threatening all the beauty and strength we have worked so hard to grow. Pregnant and birthing women need to surround themselves with people who want to help tend to the garden, and avoid people whose defeatist attitudes are apparent in their neglected gardens full of weeds.

Working in the hospital we do see a lot of “failure”. Failure to progress, arrest of decent, fetal growth restriction etc, etc, etc. The weeds (negative thoughts) in the hospital birth culture are rampant. It takes even more hard work and dedication for those of us immersed in it to remember that the majority of birth could be normal and natural and beautiful if we nurtured and support physiologic birth and weeded out unnecessary intervention. I am confident in my body, in my strength and in my capabilities. I actually feel so blessed to have been a labor and delivery nurse for so many years before I have children. I am well educated and well informed about how my choices. I have seen powerful births, and tragic births. And through all I have seen I have learned so much. I truly understand how my mindset, my choices and the people I choose to surround myself with when my time comes to give birth can impact how my birth plays out. I am not denying the potential for an outcome I would love to avoid, or the potential need for medical interventions. But I know what I need to do and what I need to avoid to put myself in the best possible position for an outcome that will make me proud to be a woman and confident in my capability to be a awesome mom. I will not let the nurses who believe in the “The curse of the nurse” destroy my dream of an empowering birth. We have the power to create magic with our words, I choose to surround myself with people what to bless me no ones who wish to put a curse on me.

4) As a nurse with dreams of becoming a midwife: When one has been called to something in life, you can only ignore that calling for so long. I too feel that pull to empower women and touch their lives in an even deeper and more meaningful way. As an LD nurse we often meet women for the first time when they walk in the door in active labor, and after they deliver, we may never see them again. We don’t know if they felt empowered or deeply wounded by their birth experience. I dream of working with women throughout pregnancy, birth and postpartum to help guide them to experience birth as the wonderful, life changing right of passage that it can be. The time is not right now. So I will give what I can and continue to pour love into my current role in birth, but not let go of that dream that someday I will be a midwife too.

Thank you NursingBirth for inspiring me to write about my experiences with birth and providing the forum for sharing my love of the work that I do.