When I was a little girl I used to dream about the day when I would be pregnant.  I always liked the way a woman looked with a beautiful round belly, full of life and waiting to have a baby in her arms.  I dreamed about nursing my babies because it’s what I remember my mom doing, and it seemed so right to me.  I loved the feeling of knowing I was made for this.  My body seemed so special and perfect and created for this amazing thing called being a mother.  I’m sure I could not have articulated that at 4, 5, 6 years old, but I remember feeling it.  I would shove a ballon under my shirt and feel like a woman.  I wanted a baby.

When I was a teenager, I hated being a “woman” This awful inconvenience of a period was just the pits.  And I felt I had the short end of that stick because I felt home-bound when I got my cycle.  There was nothing that could make me love this body and what it was doing.  I wished I was a boy, I wished I could remove my uterus…for real.  I hated the whole thing.  I grew out of that, but not without its struggles of big proportions, but that is for another time.

As a teenager, my amazing youth leader invited all the girls to come to the labor and birth of her fourth baby.  She was planning a home birth, which I thought was not for the modern age, and I was amazed at her bravery.  Having a baby was my biggest fear.  I couldn’t bear to even think of the pain.  All I knew of birth was what I saw on tv and it seemed all too horrible.

I went to her home when labor began, I watched her labor on her bed, on her floor, in her bathroom, and I felt so sick with worry.  She was wonder woman.  When it came time for her to give birth I think we all stepped out of the room, because I just don’t have a memory of it.  I do remember coming back into the room only minutes later, standing by her bedside, and seeing her beautiful face aglow as I had never sen anyone’s before.  I was awed.  I said “Lydia, you look beautiful!  I can’t believe you just had a baby!  Your face is glowing!”  She looked up at me with the most beautiful smile, and it is etched in my mind forever.  I remember vividly her round rosy cheeks, her blonde hair down around her face, her white teeth shining, and her blue eyes sparkling.  Talk about an impression.

Lydia and Jim Nimon after the birth of their son Micah

But I could never do that. I could never be so brave as to have my baby at home, away from a hospital and doctors to help me.  What if I couldn’t do it without medication?  I would be stuck!  What if something happened to the baby?  What if – What if-

I knew I could’t do that. I didn’t know how she did it, but I knew I couldn’t.  I was so impressed with her, and I had no idea that there would ever be a day I might not only think, but know, that yes, I could do that.  I was made to do that.  God wasn’t just there to help me get through while I did that, but he had called me to it, and if he called me to it, he also equipped me for it.

Three years after I was married I was blessed to conceive with my first child.  In the early years of my marriage I began exploring all things related to my health, my body, etc. and learned I had a passion for it.  I have lots to share with you about that journey, but for now, I’ll just tell you, I had come to a place of believing that medication was not the answer to everything, and that our bodies respond better to natural support rather than artificial coercion.  When I had thrown away the contents of my medicine cabinet and opted for alternative medicine, I knew that having drugs for birth was totally hypocritical and not at all what I wanted for my baby to be exposed to.  So I knew I wanted a natural birth.

I was terrified.

There was a woman at our church who had just had her second baby at a birth center.  She described having her baby, and being home after just a few hours and then calling her extended family to let them know it was over and they had their new baby, at home, for them to come and visit.  I was dumbfounded.  “Who does that?”  I thought my friend Lydia was an odd man out.  “Didn’t it hurt?” I asked her. “yeah, but then its over, and you feel great!”  she assured me.  And I distinctly remember her saying “you could do it too Kay!”  She was optimistic, she didn’t know I could barely handle a paper cut.  But I never forgot it.  So when I was pondering how I might endeavor to do the same, (in a hospital just in case I couldn’t) I stumbled across some info on birth classes while reading a blog I had begun to frequent.

I looked them up, and I knew that this was what I needed.  I called my husband and said, “Bran, I found the classes we’re going to take!  There is a teacher on Orange street just blocks from us!  That class changed the course of my life, and the life I would lead my family into.

I’ll give you a clue as to how ignorant of the natural community I was.  I was shocked that there were 5 other couples in our class that also wanted to have a natural birth!  After the second or third class, I remember saying to Brandon as we left, “wow!  this is exciting!  I’m learning so much more than I thought!”  I think what I expected was something like a meditation class that taught me how to zone out into space to avoid the pain of labor.  I expected labor rehearsals and “breathing” techniques.  Like I said, all I knew was what I saw on shows like Little House, or Dr. Quinn Medicine woman.  I was indoctrinated from a young age to believe that doctors were absolutely a necessity for any and all illness—-not to mention having a baby!

Just after the birth of our first son Michael James 2009

We had our son naturally in a hospital, we were fortunate to have been there, as I needed some major repair work, but I also knew what I felt contributed to sustaining those injuries, so for number 2 at 30 weeks along, we decided to switch to our local birth center, and that was a great decision.  We also decided to become natural birth educators ourselves since we could not keep it to ourselves!  There was only one teacher in our area and she had just moved out of town, so we wanted to fill that void.  So at 30 weeks pregnant with number 2 I boarded a plane to Phoenix AZ and became certified.

After teaching 6 years with only 3 breaks the thing that keeps me going, keeps me teaching, keeps me sharing, is this passion that has grown and grown.  Let me tell you why I am so passionate about it.  It could be because it is about empowering women; it could be about sticking it to the medical community who has taken the joy and power of birth away from women; it could be because it makes perfect sense; it could be because it is inherently safer; it could be because it is easier, it could be because it gives women a dignity and respect that has been stolen through medicalizing this life-giving process; it could be because it brings husbands and wives together as a family unit, a team, to accomplish something huge, something sacred; it could be because we train husbands to be leaders for their wives in one of the most real, tangible things she needs him for, depends on him for.  It could be any or all of those things because they are all true.  But the reason I have grown more passionate about it, is because just like most everything in life, the more we learn about it, the more we study it,—the more it points to our creator.  I love talking about how a woman’s body works, how it was designed, and how we can embrace that.  I love how when we know that there is a way that it is meant to work, we see a master engineer’s handiwork.  I love enabling women to look to our loving creator in moments of despair of labor, instead of loving their anesthesiologist.  I am passionate about finding parallels to spiritual truths that God himself hid in the beauty of labor and birth.  He hid them there for us, as women, to uncover, to experience, to know.  I am passionate about bringing this to the light so that we can say “it is a beautiful thing”, so that we can redeem it as all things have been and are being redeemed by the one who made them.