When my husband Danny and I learned that we were pregnant with our first child in 2011, we did what a lot of soon-to-be parents do: we called an obstetrician. Over the subsequent nine months, we did everything how we were “suppose to”. We went to our prenatal appointments, ultrasounds, and rushed off to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning after my water broke. Everything about our first pregnancy and birth was something you’ve seen in any depiction of modern birth. Although everything had gone “textbook”, I felt as if my wishes and I hadn’t been honored and respected in the way I thought they should. I walked away from the experience of my first birth as just another woman through the revolving hospital door and it took me a long time before I could remember back to my beautiful daughter’s birth and not have that twinge of disappointment. I knew when we took her home that our next birth would be different. It would be on my terms.
