Why I love Conferences

I have a very strange job. I honestly believe that women who are totally out of control and submerged in an incredibly painful experience are the funnest people to hang out with. I admit, I am addicted to crowning and I love watching women's faces when the placenta comes out. I am happy to leave my warm bed with a gorgeous man in it at 3.00am to go hold a woman who is throwing up.

I spend countless hours discussing pain, body fluids, bone mechanics and change. I spend a lot of my free time reading more books about how to approach these. I love listening to women making decisions and watching men's eyes get bigger than the room as their watch their women stretch and stretch and stretch.

My hours are really strange, I spend most weekends at a birth and I rarely take vacation. I am an average homebirth midwife. And once or twice a year I am lucky enough to join 3 or 4 hundred other women that honestly believe it is normal to live like this. Not just normal, thrilling amazing and orgasmic. We love our lives.

I remember when this clicked in my mind, I was standing in a hall with about 500 other midwives singing our hearts out, having spent all night talking about births, and positions and juicy, fluid filled moments. We were dancing through a red tube that was supposed to represent a very large yoni. It is my sacred, special time where I'm not an expert, where I don't have to explain why homebirth is actually SAFER than other kinds of birth, where women don't look at me and say, "but I'm really scared of some fantasy I have created in my mind". It is a time where I am honored and my tradition is honored. Where I can look around and thing, wow, we all do the same thing. This is incredible. It is a time to know that I'm not the only nutter who is addicted to crowning, there are actually thousands of us across the world and we are watching a LOT of babies crown every day.

I love conferences because they are my pilgrimage. They are where I understand deeply that I am part of something huge that is changing the world, making it safer and more peaceful. One birth at a Time. All over the World.