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Industrial Childbirth
“Revisiting my son’s birth has made me angry.”
by Shonagh Strachan

Celebrate Your Pregnancy

If pregnancy is just a drudgery you can't wait to end, birth will only be a sad means to an end.

Now if pregnancy is enjoyed and savored, birth can be like a closing celebration.

I understand that every ones pregnancy is different. Sometimes you feel far too crappy to relish the experience. But there are things you can do to make the experience better and thereby enter birth in a better frame of mind.

• Have a Pregnancy Journal. (Online or Hard copy)


• Get maternity portraits done. (I took the ones on this site)


• Take a babymoon with your sweetie. Check out babymoonguide.com & babymoonfinder.com


• Treat you self to a spa treatment. (Most spas even have maternity packages)


• Get yourself some maternity clothes you love.


• Do prenatal exercise. (I love using a yoga DVD, my friend did prenatal water aerobics.)


• Have a Mother's Blessing with close friends.


• Take time for meditation and connection with your unborn child.


• Do birth art.


• Make a Birth Bundle.


• Take a childbirth class that suits you.


• Make connections with other pregnant women and mothers, we all need a tribe.


• Eat healthy foods and savor your food.


• Take plenty of yummy naps.

What are some ways you have relished your pregnancy?

Happy Pregnancy = Happy Birth!

Make Mine a Party!

So my friend and I were talking jokingly about fun things to do with our next births.

I still like pretend and decorations, she suggested having a themed birth. Even though she was being silly, I'm so going to. I'm a very social birther. I love being surrounded by close friends during my birth. So my next birth may or may not have a midwife, but it will have a party theme. Maybe a luau or Beach party. It could even have a Holiday theme. I like birth. I want my next one to be quite the happy "birth" day party. Turning my next birth into themed party will be just ticket, food decorations the works. Also the birth photos will be awesome.

What will you do to make your next birth happy?

Having a Happy Birth is About:

Choosing The Location

I gave birth in water, in the living room of my apartment...
On purpose.
It was beautiful and sacred. In many ways it felt party like. I had 3 close girlfriends there, 2 midwives, and 1 fabulous husband. The first touch our sweet baby felt were her loving father's hands. The first place she landed was my chest. And when it was all over the first place she slept was the crook of my arm, in our family bed. We woke together to the most beautiful dawn Ihad ever seen.
Another way to birth at home is call Unassisted Childbirth or Freebirth. This sort of birth is about trusting your body and your inner wisdom. I know three woman personally who have birthed this way. Two had only their husbands and children present, one had only her husband... And me.
Birth is a beautiful, transformative, sacred and spiritual event. Home is a perfectly natural and safe place for it to occur.

You have many choices when it comes to birth location:

• At Home
• At a Hospital
• At a Birth Center
• In a Birthing Facility Suite

Where you choose to birth will have the biggest effect on the type of birth of you have. The location must be chosen by you, irregardless to popular opinion. It has to a be a place where you feel completely comfortable. Birth goes much better when your body isn't experiencing fight or flight.

Happy birth place selecting!

The AMA Says: No Happy Births.

Well sort of, they do want to illegalize homebirth, which is a very happy way to birth. Also by making it illegal they are definitely removing choice, which as I said in an earlier post is one of the ways to have a happy birth. Further more the majority of doctors and hospitals do not a happy birth make. Why are they doing this you may ask.....

(Google: Ricki Lake AMA)

Having a Happy Birth Means Fighting Off the AMA

The American Medical Association (AMA) has decided that the woman folk are getting too uppity and we must be put in our place. Place you may ask? The hospital. At the behest of the the American Collage of Gynecologists and Obstetrics (ACOG) the AMA has made a formal resolution against home birth and are now going to work at legislating away a woman's right to birth at home. Now you need to understand the AMA and the ACOG are representing the best interests of it's members, not you! Birth is where the big bucks are in the hospital industry. If you birth at home, they lose money. Thanks to a heightened awareness about home birth by films such as the Business of Being Born and celebrity homebirthers like Cindy Crawford, Ani Defranco, Charlotte Church, John McGinley and Dave Matthews, to name a few. Also while the number of woman choosing homebirth in America is about 1% on average, it is increasing. It's increasing because studies are showing that it is just as safe, if not safer to birth at home. And because the medical establishment wants birthing woman to be nice, quiet and compliant. This is a turf war, but the turf is your body. You may not want to birth at home, but are you OK with them taking that right away from you and your daughters? Do you really think your body should belong to the AMA?Here is a very thorough blog post on this important matter http://rixarixa.blogspot.com/Think about this if the AMA and ACOG have their way, as soon as you decide to keep a pregnancy your bodily rights end. Women it is time to stand up and fight for your rights and your body.