13/08/2025
A truly inspired voice.
I'm honoured to know you, my darling friend Maria Block. Your Doula Anywhere.
I’m often asked: “Which birth should we fear more – the one at home or in the hospital?”
I wish I had a simple answer.
Years ago, I was radical – I believed the hospital was the place to fear.
Today, after more than 11 years working as a doula, after supporting countless births – both in delivery rooms and in the quiet intimacy of home – I know one thing for sure:
Birth is an extreme event.
In birth, our entire history as women comes to the surface – our relationship with our own womanhood, with other women and men, with the children who have crossed our paths. Our beliefs about sexuality, our place in the world – all of it can rise to the surface at the most unexpected moment during labor.
But the real question is: what are we truly afraid of?
I believe the fear is of the untamed, wild, immensely powerful force of a woman – a force that has been buried deep and silenced for generations.
We don’t talk about the fact that women are the keepers of life and death.
We don’t talk about how we can carry absolutely anything that touches our motherhood, our childhood, our children, and our care for them.
And yet, that is exactly the truth.
We don’t need permission or approval to do it our own way.
This truth is deeply uncomfortable for many.
Because what we fear most… is our own power – something that has gone without reverence or protection for thousands of years, and when unleashed upon the world as it is today, might take a form that is not so easily accepted.
And here’s another truth: every woman already holds within herself the answer to what kind of birth is most optimal for her and her baby.
That’s why I am a fierce and unapologetic advocate for choice.
Women should have access to elective cesarean sections.
They should have access to unassisted births.
They should have easy, judgment-free access to hospital births with pain relief, as well as to home births with a midwife present.
The entire spectrum of perinatal care should be accessible, affordable, and free from shame – so that regardless of what a woman chooses, she is never met with judgment from people who have no idea what she has been through, or the lifelong weight of growing up in a society that, as I’ve already said, does not truly support women, their bodies, or the way they wish – and sometimes need – to live.
I am convinced that if true freedom in choosing perinatal care existed, that element of fear surrounding birth – whether in a hospital or at home – would disappear entirely.
And with it, the quality of life for us and for our children would rise to unimaginable heights.