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About The Positive Birthing Chronicles

The Positive Birthing Chronicles is a book in progress and a project to change our cultural narrative of birthing. I am a mother of one who believes that changing our cultural narrative about birthing will create a more positive experience for mothers giving birth. Stories are powerful as they can shift our minds, change our perspectives, and thus create a different outcome. Many mothers go into childbirth having heard primarily negative stories about birthing and this affects their expectations and their outcomes. Conversely, there is a growing “natural” birthing movement that is full of positive stories, but this movement often has a negative backlash if a woman needs a hospital transfer or a medical intervention that prevents her from having her birth exactly how she originally envisioned it. These two parallel narratives have resulted in a third narrative of mothers that believe the only desirable outcome of a birth is a healthy baby and a healthy mother and that it is unwise to expect more. In the Positive Birthing Chronicles, we believe there is a better story out there: birthing can be a very positive experience beyond a healthy baby a healthy mother AND this positive birthing experience is possible both with and without medical interventions, both in a hospital and out of one, both with external pain relief or without. Each mother and each birth is different and birthing can be a positive experience, regardless of the manner in which the baby is birthed.

When I was pregnant with my son, I was lucky to have a group of mom friends that all shared their birthing stories with me. Despite a variety of birthing styles, the stories were positive. This influenced my mind frame prior to giving birth and influenced me to see birthing as something to look forward to. When I was pregnant, I read many books, including a popular one that emphasized how empowering “natural” births could be and included many fantastic positive stories, but the issue with this book is that it also featured many negative stories about births that took place with other non-famous practitioners. The narrative of this book was that the positive experience came from having a highly skilled midwife, particularly this famous one, rather than the positive experience coming from within the women. I was planning a low intervention birth at a hospital with a midwife and the book seemed to be telling me that I was doomed to a negative experience. I read a couple of other books that also emphasized that a positive birth was possible, but only if done at home without external pain relief or other interventions. For me, the stories that my friends told me were a powerful contrast to the books that I was reading; yes, my birth could be positive, even if it was not attended by a world famous midwife or at home without interventions. When I actually gave birth, it ended up being a complicated birth. While I did deliver vaginally, I ended up experiencing several medical interventions. And you know what? It was an amazing experience! I am so grateful for my son’s birth. It was life changing in a very good way.

The more I talked to other mothers, the more I realized that many of us were having positive experiences, even with challenging births. Many of us were proud and amazed at what we did, what our babies did, and what our bodies were capable of. So, why were we still being told that giving birth was a horrifying ordeal? Thus, the idea of The Positive Birthing Chronicles was born. I wanted to write a book of positive birthing experiences featuring diverse births. It would include all styles of births from no intervention home births to cesarian births and everything in between. This is the book that I wished I had been able to read when I was pregnant. I want to shift our cultural narrative of birthing as something negative and scary to one of empowered positivity. And that this can be true no matter what kind of birth you plan because we know that you can plan for a zero intervention home birth and end up with a cesarian birth or you can plan for a highly medicalized hospital birth and accidentally end up giving birth before you reach the hospital. And each of these experiences can be a positive one. Now, of course, there is much work to be done within our medical communities to support and empower women to have a positive birthing experience. Birthing trauma is sadly real and too common. There are too many unnecessary birthing interventions leading to medically unnecessary cesarian births and increased risks to the health of mothers. The statistics are unsettling and there are significant situations involving uninformed consent and doctors that are practicing non-evidence based medicine. However, the emphasis on positive birthing stories is not meant to minimize the real traumas of many women, nor is it meant to turn a blind eye to what needs to shift in our medical communities to help make birthing safer and more normalized. The shifting of our perspective, attitude, and mainframe about birthing into one that acknowledges and emphasizes the positive outcomes can help lead to more positive outcomes and this shift must happen in tandem with the necessary medical changes in labor and delivery.

The Positive Birthing Chronicles is a work in progress. I am currently editing dozens of stories of women that have had positive experiences to put together into one book. I am also beginning an online presence in this website and social media so that more women can share and read the stories in a format that is more flexible. Please, reach out to me if you would like to share or join our reading list if you would like to read our upcoming content. Email me at Editor@PositiveBirthingChronicles.com for instructions on sharing your story or to be notified on updates. Thank you!