Now had you asked me “what emotional preparation have I done for a home birth?” in the beginning of choosing a home birth I might have answered the most I needed to do emotionally was change my perception of birth. I am a joyful 33 weeks along and I have come to realize that supplies are the lesser importance of things to prepare. My emotions are up and down as the usual pregnant women experiences but I have realized there were some major hiccups emotionally that I needed healed before I would be able to have a home birth. The first time I heard about emotional preparation of home birth was from Ina May Gaskin’s book. When I read over the idea to clear out my emotions and make sure I had nothing on my emotional plate, I thought it was silly and didn’t apply to me since I’ve given birth before. These more recent weeks have proven much different for me. So I would love to share with you what emotional precautions I have taken to ensure a clean emotional plate!

Speaking My Truth

I had a lot of unresolved issues about my relationship with my father. Each time we spoke those unresolved issues ate and ate at me and really caused me a lot of pain. During the holiday season I decided enough was enough and I spoke my truth to him. I aired out every feeling exactly as I needed to say it and explained my current actions that resulted because of that pain. This was such a huge healing process for me. I stood up for myself, my own feelings and my boundaries. Clearing this feast of emotions off from my plate released so much pent-up hurt, self-doubt and unworthiness that I had been carrying around. I truly felt strong, confident and so sure of my true self. I am so grateful I dealt with this before going into labor as I now know that even the biggest and most avoided hurdle is something I CAN cross.

Speaking My Fears

I knew that with all the stress of birth, and baby preparation I was feeling a bit overwhelmed but I’m not a person who is able to cry easily. I need to cry more than I do but find it hard to give myself the ok to do so. I always feel like I need a really good reason like my feelings being hurt etc. When we found out our baby was breech at 32 weeks I went into a pretty legit panic mode. I had a hard time not being upside down trying to flip baby or researching other ways on how to flip baby. Everyone told me it was no big deal this early on but I just couldn’t let it go. I could not just let things be. So while I exhausted myself physically and mentally trying to flip the baby, one day it just hit me that perhaps there were some fears that I was holding inside that I needed to actually say out loud so I wasn’t so alone with them. So I sat my husband down, curled up in his neck and told him about my fears, and I cried a really good cry. I let myself feel the depth of those things I wasn’t saying out loud and washed them with tears.

Releasing My Fears

In the past, my husband and I have gone to a spiritual retreat, during which we practiced some awesome meditation, some healing meditation, and some release. During a release ceremony, we would write down anything that was no longer serving us and then burn it during a full moon. We hadn’t done a release ceremony since the retreat and while at times I felt I could use one I felt a little silly asking my husband to do one with me out of the context of the retreat. I knew that speaking my fears to my husband did have a healing effect as now I could face them, face the fact that I was actually feeling them. I really felt that I needed to release in a more tangible way for myself besides the crying, so I got up the nerve and told my husband that I wanted to do our own little release ceremony and he was fully supportive. I wrote things down that I had feared about home birth, about getting too attached to baby and something horrible happening, about having a third child, about finances, literally anything I could think of and then I burned it. Now whether you believe in this sort of thing or not is entirely up to you, but for me writing things down helps me process and burning it was the perfect way to see those fears just turn into nothing. (By the way baby has turned back to head down, for those wondering)

Connecting With Baby 

Despite this sounding incredibly obvious, I’ve never really done it with any of my children. I wasn’t the type of person who read the baby in utero books, or sang to them. Doing these things just felt awkward to me and I couldn’t get over that feeling. I always told myself our bonding will begin when we meet. I did bond with the babies in utero in other ways like making things for the baby room as I’m a very artsy type person, rearranging and just general nesting. I think something that changed things with this pregnancy was my first two were planned, very very planned out pregnancies. This third pregnancy, however, was a surprise. My husband and I had initially planned a third pregnancy but after failed months and a lot of stress and sadness I needed to make a choice and decide that I really was no longer trying for a baby and find positive things about having only two children, or having my body back to myself. So it was only after putting myself in the no more baby mindset that we fell pregnant. With a really rough first trimester I found myself wondering what the heck I was thinking being pregnant a third time, these thoughts only continued and then multiplied with more fears about how a baby would change the current set up and flow of my family. I realized that I had also feared the change of sibling order, everyone talks about the middle child syndrome and made it sound so horrible I felt guilty doing that to my daughter. So I felt I had yet even more emotional waste that I needed to face and clear off my plate. I’m going to write my baby a letter! I want to verbally and intentionally welcome this baby into our lives for the absolute joyous bundle that it is. I want to explain how excited its siblings are to meet it and how excited we are for the new adventure we are about to take on. How I can’t wait to nurse again, and can’t wait to see my two current children love and care for this baby.

Stop Procrastinating 

I’ve never picked out baby names early on because I’m indecisive. I know that if I chose something early on I’d change my mind a million times before the baby was actually born. So I told my husband things needed to feel more real for me and I needed to do the things I had been putting off just because there was time to do so. We sat down and we chose our girl name and our boy name, we struggled for quite a while on a middle name but as of a couple days ago that portion is also complete. We aren’t sharing the name until baby is born but if you want a hint it starts with an “L” just like the rest of our family! We also put up the crib, rearranged bedroom furniture to fit said crib and got the changing table ready. Now there are a few other things that need to be done, bought and arranged but I am feeling much better and prepared.

So that’s my list of emotional preparations I’ve done and am doing for the home birth of our newest bundle of joy! These things weren’t easy as generally I am a very upfront and blunt type of person that deals with most emotions as they happen and move on but these held me in a different sort of grip that was scary and new to face. It wasn’t easy but each and every little bit has paid off more than I could have ever imagined! I can’t wait to update you all more with the pregnancy and how things go!

Lakota

I am a stay at home mother of two, who loves to create in every form, from cooking, to henna, to painting or sculpting, creating with my hands is my passion! I love to dance and let loose when the music flows right. Being outside is a special kind of therapy I think humans need more of as well as mindfulness! I love all things new and adventurous and am always looking to experience more of life 🙂