Why I Chose to Have My Babies at Home

Home birth is one of those things people tend to have strong feelings about. Tell someone you had your babies at home and you will usually get one of two reactions: they think it sounds wonderful, or they look at you like you just told them you gave birth alone in the woods.

For me, choosing home birth was never about proving anything. I did not choose it because I think every mother should give birth at home, and I certainly do not believe there is one right place or one right way to have a baby. I have spent enough years around birth to know that mothers are different, pregnancies are different, babies are different, and what makes one woman feel completely safe might make another deeply uncomfortable. I believe women should give birth where they feel safe, supported, respected, and comfortable with the care available to them. For me, that place was home.

I Wanted Birth to Happen Around Me, Not the Other Way Around

There was something about being able to stay in my own space that mattered deeply to me. I did not want to leave my house in labor, get into a car, walk into an unfamiliar room, change clothes, answer questions, and settle into a completely different environment while my body was trying to do something that required me to turn inward. I wanted to labor where I already felt comfortable.

At home, I could move wherever I wanted. I could get into my own shower, lie in my own bed, eat from my own kitchen, walk outside, turn the lights down, make noise, be completely quiet, or change my mind twenty times without feeling like I was inconveniencing anyone. There was no transition from home to the place where I was going to give birth. Birth simply happened within the life already going on around me.

That sense of familiarity mattered more to me than I realized it would. Labor asks a lot of you. Being surrounded by my own things, my own smells, my own bed, and the people I had deliberately chosen to be there allowed me to focus on what my body was doing instead of adjusting to a new environment.

I Wanted to Be an Active Participant in My Own Birth

One of the things that has always mattered to me is understanding my options and being involved in decisions about my own care. I did not want to feel as though birth was something happening to me while everyone else made decisions around me. I wanted conversations. I wanted to understand what was being recommended and why. I wanted the freedom to listen to my body and make choices as labor unfolded.

That did not mean I wanted to give birth without qualified care or that I believed nothing unexpected could happen. Quite the opposite. Choosing home birth made me think very carefully about who I trusted to care for me. I wanted a midwife who understood normal physiologic birth, recognized when something was moving outside of normal, and would tell me when the safest choice was no longer the one we originally planned.

For me, feeling safe did not mean pretending there were no risks. It meant understanding them, asking questions, having a plan for what we would do if circumstances changed, and trusting the people around me enough to know that they would speak up when I needed them to.

I Wanted My Family to Be Part of It

As our family grew, home birth became about more than simply where I felt comfortable laboring. Birth was happening in the middle of our family, and being at home allowed our children to exist around it in a way that felt very natural to us.

They did not have to become spectators unless they wanted to. They could come into the room, leave again, ask questions, eat snacks, play, sleep, and eventually meet their new sibling in the same place where they had gone to bed the night before. Birth did not require our entire family to relocate somewhere else. A baby simply joined us at home.

Some children are fascinated by birth. Some want absolutely nothing to do with it. Both are fine. I never needed my children to witness a sibling being born for the experience to be meaningful. What mattered to me was that home gave us the option to let their involvement happen naturally instead of forcing it into a particular shape.

And there is something I will always love about the memories of those first hours afterward. There was nowhere else we needed to go. Eventually the birth team packed their things, the house became quieter again, and we were simply home with another baby.

Home Birth Wasn’t About Being Tough

I think sometimes home birth gets wrapped up in this strange idea of toughness. As if giving birth without an epidural earns some kind of medal, or choosing to birth outside of a hospital means you have something to prove.

I have never viewed it that way.

Birth can humble you very quickly. I have seen incredibly strong women choose epidurals. I have seen incredibly strong women have cesareans. I have seen incredibly strong women birth babies at home, in hospitals, in operating rooms, and everywhere in between. How much pain someone experiences or what interventions they use tells me very little about their strength.

I chose home because it was where I personally felt most capable of surrendering to labor. I could move, vocalize, get into whatever position felt right, and follow what my body was telling me without feeling observed. That was important to me. Someone else may feel safer knowing an operating room is immediately down the hallway, and I understand that too.

The goal was never to have the hardest birth possible. The goal was to have the support and environment that made birth feel safest for me.

Working in Birth Has Made Me Respect Choice Even More

Being a mother shaped the way I entered birth work, but birth work has also changed the way I think about my own experiences.

After attending more than 100 births, I have seen enough to know there is no perfect way to give birth. I have witnessed beautiful home births and beautiful hospital births. I have watched carefully made plans change completely. I have watched mothers make decisions they never expected to make and then discover strength in a version of birth they had never imagined.

I have also learned how personal the feeling of safety really is.

I can tell someone why I loved giving birth at home, but I cannot tell another woman where she will feel safest. I can share information, experience, and the things I have learned, but ultimately she is the person who has to live inside her birth.

That perspective is also important to me as a birth photographer and doula. I am not entering someone’s birth space hoping they will give birth the way I did. I am entering their birth. My own experiences do not get to become expectations for someone else’s body.

Why I Kept Choosing Home

I chose home because I wanted familiarity. I wanted autonomy. I wanted to be surrounded by people I trusted and cared for by providers I had intentionally chosen. I wanted my children nearby. I wanted to climb into my own bed afterward with my baby against my chest and hear the ordinary sounds of our house continuing around us.

And once I experienced birth that way, home continued to feel right for me.

That does not mean every moment was peaceful or beautiful. Birth is still birth. It is intense, unpredictable, physical, emotional, messy, and sometimes very different from what you pictured while you were pregnant. Giving birth at home does not turn it into some perfectly curated experience.

It was simply where I wanted to be while doing it.

When I look back at my own births now, that is probably what I am most grateful for. They happened in a space that felt like mine, surrounded by people I trusted, while our family carried on around us. Eventually each time, the work of labor ended, another little person was placed into my arms, and our home became theirs too.

Home birth was the right choice for me.

It does not have to be the right choice for everyone.