12 Mistakes From My First Birth

Exploring and Learning From Common Birth Mistakes

When I look back on my first birth, the moments that led to us transferring to the hospital for a perfectly healthy birth, stand out pretty clearly. At the time it felt blurry, intense, and out of control. I was left feeling confused and angry. How birth unfolds is largely uncontrollable, but the way we prepare for birth and how we build ourselves up for this huge rite-of-passage is up to us. I wish I’d gone into my first birth feeling like, “I’ve got this! I’m a powerhouse and I have all the skills and intuition I need inside of me to birth this baby.” Instead I entered with our culture’s usual trepidation, fear, and sense that I would need a lot of help from the outside (even with lots of “natural birth” training). My preparation largely, was making sure I would be surrounded by all the people and things I thought I would need.

As you’ll see below, the “help” from the outside was distracting and caused a lot of unnecessary intervention, making my birth experience more challengi…