Inspiration

Birth Stories

The instant of birth is exquisite.
Pain and joy are one at this moment.
Ever after, the dim recollection is
so sweet that we speak to our children
with a gratitude they never understand.

— Madeline Tiger

At OmMama, we believe that birth is transformative, an everyday act that requires extraordinary courage, grace, and care. Over the years, our students have taught us repeatedly that pregnancy, birth, and becoming a parent are experiences that empower us to become more than we thought we could be. For many women, telling the story of their birth is an important part of this transformation.

This page is a place for our students to share their birth stories. Writing down the story of your child’s birth will create a treasured memoir for your family. Sharing that story with others helps remove some of the mystery surrounding birth, and shines light on the many ways birth takes place in our culture. Sharing our stories can help us transcend our fears and perceived limitations, and learn a range of ways of working with the birth process. It can also strengthen women’s trust in the ability to do the hard physical, emotional, and spiritual work of birth. This is a profound form of service.

So we invite you to share your story with us. Stories of home births, hospital births, water births, parking lot births, cesarean births, singleton, twin, and triplet births, births of healthy babies, births of challenged babies, and births of stillborn babies are all welcome. We are especially interested in the moments during your birth when you faced a fear or learned something significant about yourself or about life. What helped you move through the experience? What made you laugh, what made you cry? What did you learn that might help the next woman walking the path toward motherhood?

Please email your story (or poem or commentary) to inspiration@ommama.com. We will publish as many as we can each month on this page and in future newsletters.