Home births best

“LET’S say you want some advice that might help you give birth, whatever that might be. My shortest answer is: let your monkey do it.”

So says the world’s most famous midwife, Ina May Gaskin. These simple words of wisdom — which remind women that birth requires we get our thinking brains out of the way and let our mammalian instincts take over — had a huge impact on me as I prepared for my first birth at home.

Like hundreds of thousands of women around the world her two best-selling books Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth were my birth bibles.