Hi, Amber here. I hardly ever post personal stories on here, but a friend and fellow blogger, Chelsea Johnson at Life With My Littles, has an Honest Birth Series, and she asked me to share my natural birth story.

As a little intro… I now have two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, who are my pride and joy. With both of my children, I had wonderful birthing experiences. But, for reasons explained in the story, I chose to have a natural birth the second time around.

I willingly accepted Chelsea’s invitation because one way I prepared for giving birth naturally was to read other people’s positive birth stories. They were informative and empowering. Giving birth is beautiful and incredible, and I loved hearing about their experiences.

So if you’re interested in hearing mine, here’s a sneak peek of my daughter CM’s natural birth story…

CM’s Natural Birth Story

“Eat 6 dates. Drink 8 glasses of water. Do Spinning Babies prenatal yoga. Read positive natural birth stories. Those were four things on my to-do list every day. Preparing for the big birth day seemed like a part-time job. But I had my head in the game and I was determined to “go natural” (epidural and drug free).

Before you get the wrong idea, I’m not super passionate about natural birthing or think it definitely makes for a superior birthing experience. I used an epidural with my first baby and had an absolutely wonderful birth experience.

So why would I want to go natural the second time around? Well, because for whatever reason my body decided to have a very difficult postpartum recovery with my first. Aside from the regular stuff, I got hit with what seemed like an endless string of postpartum complications: horridly itchy rash all over my body, an extremely painful and debilitating anal fissure, mastitis that turned into a breast abscess and an ER visit, a surgery procedure to fix the anal fissure which got infected so I had to get put under for a follow-up surgery…

Needless to say, I had some fear about going through a second postpartum and wanted to do anything I could to prevent my issues from happening again. I kept hearing that going natural could make recovery easier. So, I hired a doula, applied some general philosophies from the book Hypno Babies, and started prepping my body and mind for an intense experience.”

…If you want to read the rest of the birth story that was featured on Life With My Littles, click HERE!