Update...

Thank you all for your patience as my blog as been very quiet as we adjust to life with a newborn and three year old!  It's a precious time, but exhausting!

I am so grateful that I was able to have another natural birth.  This birth was amazingly fast.  I had mild cramping for a few hours and then only 50 minutes of intense labor pains.  Our little girl was almost born on the side of the road.  Thankfully, my husband was amazing and kept cool and we made it to the birth center and I had her on a stretcher as I was wheeled into the room!  So, obviously, no pain meds and no interventions!  Yay!

Me with our precious daughter

My labor with my son had been much different, lasting 11 hours, with 3 hours of pushing.  I had a completely natural birth with him, as well.

I was very blessed to have the world's best doula with both my births.  Kayti actually is the reason that our little girl was not born on the side of the road.  I highly recommend hiring a doula to be present at your birth.  It was the best decision I have ever made.  My doula was amazing with both births and having her support really helped me have the natural birth experiences that I wanted and was also very helpful for my husband, as she was able to give him lots of tips before and during the births about how to best help me.

You can read more about doulas HERE.

I love hearing about natural, positive birth stories and hope that my story is an encouragement to any woman out there who is seeking to have a natural birth experience.

I find it sad that the US has a C-section rate of about 33%.  This is unacceptable and dangerous; the World Health Organization stating that a rate of 5-10% is acceptable.

There are so many things that you can do to help prevent C-sections and I hope to blog about these things in the coming months.

Thanks again for sticking with me through this "quiet" time!  Hope to be back to more regular blogging in the next weeks.