Preparing to birth at home might be overwhelming, especially if you have never birthed at home before. As a home birth mom and birth photographer I compiled this list on 10 ways to prepare for your home birth, I hope this list helps you feel as prepared for your home birth as possible!

1. Read Childbirth Education Books

Books that are especially centered around a natural birth are really great. A Favorite book I read while pregnant that got me in the right headspace and mentality for childbirth was Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth. Birth is incredible but it is hard, and you need to prepare yourself.

2. Focus on Nutrition

Overall wellness during your pregnancy is so important. Healthy mom usually means healthy baby, give yourself the best chance at a smooth, complication free delivery and make sure you are getting enough protein and iron in your daily diet. Also STAY HYDRATED. I know that one seems like a given but really the amount of water you need while pregnant is insane.

3. The Mental Game

Practice some mental tests on how you handle pain, a great one is hold an ice cube in your hand for 90 seconds at a time, breath through it while you clench your fist around the ice cube, this should be fairly difficult to do for 90 seconds straight! Another one is a wall sit, its a killer leg workout and doing a minute of wall sits can feel like an eternity! Again, try to get through 90 seconds, which is usually how long the longest contractions will be.

4. Seek Wisdom

Talk to other moms who have given birth, no matter the birth, whether it be a natural hospital birth, medicated birth, or home birth, they all have a level of wisdom to share. The truth is theres never any way to fully prepare for labor because every labor is so different. Even different labors in the same woman can vary drastically. What you can do is listen to other women share their stories so you can understand many different outcomes.

5. A Doula

Now I’m sure if you are having a home birth you have hired a midwife, but have you hired a doula? Doulas are essential in keeping you calm, and comfortable in labor, sometimes that’s a lot of pressure to put on your partner, so a doula can take some weight off their back. Doulas can also offer a lot of advice, wisdom and support during the pregnancy and postpartum period. These are people you can contact with questions or concerns and they will support you to the best of their ability. You can also hire a doula during your labor to take care of your older children so you don’t have to worry about childcare.

6. More Mental Prep…

This mental prep involves a little less physical activity. Think of affirmations that mean a lot to you, write them down, study them, something that motivates you, you can then hang up these affirmations in your birth space to remind you that you are strong. Words carry so much power. If you are rooted in faith, find bible verses that speak to you, that calm you and motivate you. Hang those up as well so you can read them to yourself when you are feeling like giving up.

7. We Love Some Good Comfort Measures

Find an essential oil you really like, use the essential oil through your pregnancy when you are feeling calm and happy. This will make your brain associate the oil with calm feelings and relaxation and could help ease your mind in labor. Also grab a wooden comb, studies show that you can re-route pain from your uterus to other parts of your body so squeezing a comb really hard during contractions can make you feel like you are controlling where you pain goes, and relieve some of the contraction pain.

8. Your Birth Space

Prepare your birth space, figure out where you want to birth and make sure you have readily available supplies like chux pads, towels, trash bags, nursing bras, hair ties, rags, snacks etc (I’ll make another blog post on all the supplies I recommend you have for a home birth).

9. The Aesthetics

Make your space an environment that is calming and aesthetic to you. Hang lights if that’s your thing, hang photos of times in your life you were happy or of family, make an altar of keepsakes and momentos that take you to a place of happiness. When you are in labor you are going to want to hone in on a zone, and your environment plays a vital role in that.

10. Hire a Birth Photographer

Okay okay this one might be a little biased but think about it. You go through the effort of breaking out of the system, you mentally prepare yourself for this huge right of passage, you decorate your space in a way you feel makes you most comfortable, what better way to honor the effort you put in, than to have the most powerful thing you will ever do, photographed. So you can look back on it as many times as you want, and see how much of a super human you were, or if you are really daring, show others how much of a super human you are. At Womb to World Photography we are dedicated and passionate about telling your story through beautiful documentation.

Conclusion

I feel like I could definitely list more than 10 ways to prepare for your home birth but for the sake of giving you information you need, without taking too much of your time, we will keep it to these really important 10. Depending on the type of person you are, you may not feel like you need to prepare at all, you are just going to wing it, and that’s okay! For the people who have committed to the home birth but are getting closer to their due date and are thinking “well now what?”, hopefully this blog puts you on the right track!