I;ve found that worry/paranoia is the undoing of intuition when it comes to our health and safety,in birthing and anything else.

just like we have to get our diet fairly together for our cravings to tell us what we really need, we need to get past all the high-anxiety "what ifs" to be in tune with a real intuitive message about needing help.

as regards pregnancy: I'd advise seeking out, reading, talking to people who have had low-drama, natural births, or who have had problems come up and were able to resolve them. I'm not sure just WHY there is such a culture of telling pregnancy and labor horror stories...not enough rites of passage in this society?

I chose to bail out of it,myself. I listen politely when someone starrts telling me about all the awful things that happened during her pregnancy and how she would have died without bla bla bla...


Itink working with someone you trust or a process you trust abou what you are really most afraid of helps allay fears about remote possibilities of other problems.there are lots of means for this...hypnotherapy, co-counseling, traditional psychotherapies, dreamwork, somatic approaches,pastorla counseling if you are part of a spiritual or religious path that provids that.

birth was just not something I was ever really afraid of...my fears have more to do with socia li solation, being fundamentally unlovable and/or unloved.

if you really know that you can't get past your fears about birth, a natural home birth is probably not for you. I think it's really worthwhile to find the time and space to see what youfear the most and then find a way to address it.

there's a book called Pregnant Feelings, by Rahima Baldwin Dancy and Terra Palmarini Richardson (I think that's her new name) that has a lot of writing exercises aimed at just this.

I think a lot of the question is what do you really want out of a birth? some women areonlygoing to be comfortable enough at home,some only in a hospital,some with a lotof emotional support,some need private space. soem want it tobe a moving spiritual experience,some jsut want to have a healthy baby and don;tcare that mch about the process.

it;s worth some self-inventory...