Only ten days until my due date.

I advocate birthing centers and home birth although I have never experienced these things. I admire midwives because I have felt their peaceful and empowering touch, their kind words. I do not like hospitals, in general, because my experiences there have been frigid and chemical. There is nothing calming about a hospital bed, machines, and an IV when you are a young and healthy mother pregnant with a ripe baby.

Circumstances have left me with another hospital birth but I will be bringing the healing advice and peaceful spirit of the midwives and doulas I know with me. One of these women told me that so much of my journey is mental. I am filling my mind with thoughts of a successful vaginal birth, of having my husband close as I bring her into the world, and of the final outcome- A sweet, pink wrinkly body in my arms that we created. My little Mila, so pure and clean.