In the natural childbirth class I am taking, there is a lot of talk about how we aren’t familiar with birth in our modern world. It’s true that I haven’t witnessed any births, but thanks to bloggers who somehow find the time to write about their experiences giving birth even though they now have babies to take care of, I have read a lot of birth stories: everything from home births to emergency c-sections. The strange thing is that, although a lot of my friends have had kids in the past few years, I know less about the details of their birth experiences than I do of the ones linked below.
In case it is helpful to anyone else, I’ve made a list of links below to some of the birth stories from blogs I read. Some I read when they were posted, some I read in people’s archives, and a couple I came across via links from other blogs while I was doing this post.
I want to note that I haven’t linked to stories in which the babies did not survive. I honor those mothers and their labors and their children, but it didn’t feel right to me to just put their stories on a list of mine, subsection tragedy.
Julie: Charlie arrives, away from home
Jo: Sophia’s birth in four parts, plus discussion
Emma Jane: short and long versions of Tabitha’s birth
Special bonus, from One Good Thing: Instructions for mothers who gave birth in an Army hospital in 1956.
I am also very moved by adoption stories (most recently AmFam and Johnny), but at the moment I am, due to my own circumstances, most obsessed with reading about birth.
April 12, 2007 at 10:21 am
Do you watch all those Baby Stories on TLC? Those feed that whole nesting, wow this is huge, time too.
April 12, 2007 at 11:30 pm
I don’t have cable, so I’ve missed those stories. (Instead we’ve got the weekly videos in childbirth class