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There is great potential for conflict in desiring a natural birth in a hospital. How do you avail yourself of medicine without allowing it to turn your birth into a medical event?

Q: I’m pregnant with my second baby and want to breastfeed this time. I wanted to breastfeed with my first, but we had problems right away. My daughter didn’t latch on within 12 hours, so they gave her some formula. I feel like that was a mistake that led us…

Sometimes hospitals do birth right and manage to be what expectant parents want: safe and supportive of her physiology. I was recently privileged to be a labor companion to a childhood friend who gave birth in just such a hospital.

Like everyone else who has access to any form of media, I was taught the story that birth is grueling, painful, and dangerous. While I believed it one level, my parents gave me two particular experiences in childhood that helped me to overcome that programming and have great births.

When you get the context right, it’s possible for birth to take care of itself: it can unfold organically, not mechanically; the more loved and supported we feel during labor, the more physically comfortable and actually safe we are.

It is a joy to watch these betwixt-and-between fathers uncoil during our first session. The skeptics open their mind. The over-protective soften. The disconnected engage. The couple begins to have a shared experience, rather than a his-and-hers.