becoming a mother: life breath present

Remember a few weeks ago I mentioned starting a series “becoming a mother?” Well I’m excited to have my first guest post, Life Breath Present .

Life Breath Present is on a journey to learning how to put all the parts of herself together and making the journey public. She's learning more about herself and discovering what parts fit where. She talks about all of this - being a mom, wife, friend, sister, daughter, aunt, Social Worker, advocator, crafter, and photographer. She shares what she's learned, what she is learning, and what she wants to learn on her blog.  Life Breath Present can be found on several social media sites: facebook , bloglovin , twitter , pinterest and google+

Here she tells us the journey of how she became a mother.

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My belief is not that motherhood starts when a child is born, rather it's a truly active process once you're pregnant . In the same token, motherhood can start even before becoming pregnant. Thoughts of motherhood can start long before becoming pregnant and thereby entering into motherhood.

For me, becoming a mother started when I was still so young. Actually, before I really even understood what having children meant. When I was young, my mother worked or volunteer with the preschool I attended and later my first elementary school. Later, when she did start working more (and as more children came), she sometimes chose work that allowed her to be home when we returned from school. These observations set in motion my desire, again without the understanding, that to be a stay-at-home-mother might just be the route to take. These thoughts I had took quite the backseat in my life, until I was an adult. Eventually, after thinking maybe I wouldn't have that relationship, I met Hun . And now my journey into motherhood really started moving forward!

Hun and I talked about the type of family we'd like to raise - our goals, wishes, dreams, and ideas for both our family structure and how we'd raise our children. We had similar ideas and agreed on so much, it was a no-brainer to begin the process of expanding our family from 2 to 3 people, especially after Hun pointed out that "we weren't getting any younger", as we were both in our 30s already. For many years, I'd thought that I wanted to "birth naturally", though I didn't really know what that meant or how to make it happen. The first book I ever bought was Active Birth and later a few others. I figured Active Birth would at least give me a starting point in understanding the concept of natural birth was all about.

I read these books from cover to cover, and quickly! I wanted to know so much and knew I had a ton to learn. Somehow, I knew I didn't really want to birth in a hospital. These thoughts were fueled in part by this notion of a natural birth and also from a documentary I'd come across years prior . One day, while I was working overnight, Hun came across that same documentary on his own. He was both shocked and interested and excited to learn more and couldn't wait to let me know. That's when starting to look at birth attendants and what their differences were became an activity we pursued together. Where we lived, at the time, we even attended an open house/information session at a local birthing facility.

Once we actually became pregnant, we also discovered the birthing laws in the state we were moving to, were quite different. So, again we began looking at alternative birthing options. Outside of a hospital, only two choices existed and those weren't our most comfortable choices. There were two freestanding birth facilities, both hours away, but under state law were operated from a more medical model with CNMs and OB/GYNs.

We kept looking.

Finally, we found a completely freestanding birthing facility completely operated by CPMs and LPMs, but it was out of state. We toured anyway, despite it being a few hours away.

Thankfully, this birthing facility was incredible. The atmosphere when we entered for the tour, the beauty of the space, the energy of the space, the midwives we met, and the policies in place surrounding continuous prenatal care and labor/birth were such a fit for us. So, we went ahead and booked our first appointment, a few weeks away, that same day! The midwife we met was just awesome! (She's our midwife for our newest pregnancy , as well.)

Oh, but the journey wasn't over! (Is it ever?) This birthing facility had a great library with quite the collection of books, especially covering the topics of natural labor and birth.

Each time we traveled all those miles in the wee hours of the morning, I brought back another couple of books. When I wasn't working, I was reading and researching. Hun did his own share of research, as well. We both watched different YouTube videos on labor, birth, and breastfeeding. We learned about difficulties in labor, problems that could arise and how they might be managed, yes, even breech birth. Hun learned about the changes I was going through physically and ways to help me stay as comfortable as possible. Hun coupled this new research with research he knew about vitamins and supplements, as well.

I researched all manner of topics from co-sleeping, to breastfeeding, to postpartum, to infant sleeping. You name it, I've probably done a bit of research on it. Through that process, I started to find what fit with our goals and desires for our family and ways to implement what we wanted.

Despite feeling both prepared and ill-prepared for labor, birth, and parenting, Baby Boy was born into a wonderful environment at that birthing facility!

What was your journey to motherhood like? Did you encounter any struggles? What topics did you research before birth?

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Interested in joining the series "becoming a mother?" Contact me by using the form above, or click here .

Each week a new guest post would on the blog. You would introduce yourself and your blog, include the photo below as well as photo of yourself (and your children) and talk about some of the challenges you've faced becoming a mother.  Because your post is the guest post, the full post would be on the host's (sundays with sophie) blog, and a quick blurb would be on yours to say you're posting over at sundays with sophie.

Make sure to included the photo below in your blurb.

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