Educational Resources for Home Birthing
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Please note: I am not a doctor and I am not giving medical advice. Information on this website is not intended to diagnose or treat any form of any disease or medical condition. This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only.
(This article will be updated as I find more resources that I consider worthwhile for home birthing mamas.)
In order to have a successful home birth (or any birth, really), you must accept full responsibility for the whole process and all possible outcomes. This, to me, is just a fact of life. In any field of endeavor, if you want success, you must have knowledge and prepare.
A lot of super smart people say so:
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."
– Benjamin Franklin
"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."
– Proverbs 22:3 (The Bible)
"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success."
– Alexander Graham Bell
"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation, there is sure to be failure.”
– Confucius
"Fortune favors the prepared mind."
– Louis Pasteur
"The more you prepare, the luckier you appear."
– Terry Pratchett
"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven."
– William Shakespeare
You get the idea.
It's an unfortunate fact about society nowadays that many people have relinquished responsibility for their own health (among other things) to doctors, insurance companies, corporations and governments. This is a sure way to lose control of your health.
Get yourself armed with knowledge. Read books, watch videos, talk to mamas, ask your midwife lots of questions, write down concerns and worries and fears, then conquer them with massive amounts of research and knowledge.
The harsh truth is that if you’re not willing to do this, and you'd rather hand over control of your birthing outcome to a “professional”, perhaps home birthing is not right for you.
While I believe it's wise to have a midwife attend your home birth, you need to also become a professional. A professional baby birther, if you will.
One more thing I'd like to note, then I'll get into the list of recommended resources and that is this:
Don't treat every word in these books as the final say. I definitely don't.
There are things with which I disagree in almost all of them. But they are mostly correct, so I consider them of value.
Get lots of information. If it doesn't make sense, do further research until it does. Ask lots of questions. Come to your own conclusions. Become an expert in the subject of baby-having. Get your husband educated, too, and anybody else you plan to have on your birth team.
Here's my list (so far) of resources I recommend for home birthing mamas:
The Birth Book
By Heather Moll
This is an amazing, visual guide to everything having to do with childbirth. I highly recommend getting this as it really helps to understand the anatomy and mechanics of what's happening with your body. You can even use it as a reference when reading or listening to the other books on this list. Sometimes the author gets into explaining anatomical functions and I think a visual reference can help make the information stick.
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth
By Ina May Gaskin
(Available in paperback or audiobook)
I consider this a must-read for all expecting mamas.
This book contains an abundance of practical advice as well as a collection of birth stories that will get you well prepared for your home birth journey.
Ina May might have been a hippie, but she's done some amazing work in the field of home births and is an authority in this area for good reason.
Sometimes (in my opinion) she gets a bit too woo-woo, hippie in her writing. Other times she swings too far in the medical directions. But overall she is mostly correct and her books are absolutely worth the read.
Home Birth On Your Own Terms
By Heather Baker
(Available in paperback or audiobook)
This book is written by a midwife who really knows her stuff. She wrote it with the intention of helping an expecting mama who plans to birth unassisted (meaning without even a midwife). Regardless of whether you plan to have a midwife in attendance or not, I recommend reading this book. It will help you feel more at ease, prepared, and confident about birthing at home.
Spiritual Midwifery
By Ina May Gaskin
(Available in paperback or audiobook)
This book is more geared toward midwives, rather than expecting mothers. There is far more medical information contained in this one than in Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, and if you have a tendency toward hypochondria (lots of anxiety around your health and constantly worrying about having diseases) I would advise against it.
However, if you're like me and feel that more knowledge gives you more control and power to influence outcomes, then dive on in.
As with her first book, Ina May provides multiple birth stories in this one that will give you an idea of the wide range of things you can experience during the course of labor.
![Business of Being Born, The [DVD]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41AQmobqyyL._SL160_.jpg)
The Business of Being Born (documentary)
By Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein
(Available on DVD or Prime Video)
This is a fantastic documentary that explains how the medical industry normalized hospital birthing, the incentives behind this movement (spoiler alert, it was profits) and why this was not in the best interest of expecting mamas.
Shocking statistics, crazy history and debunked myths will be found in this film and I recommend all expecting mamas check it out.
What were your favorite resources for home birth education? Let me know. If I haven't already, I'll check them out and possibly add them to this list!