Birth Better with Meghan
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07/02/2026
We’ve been taught to think about birth in opposites.
Home birth or hospital.
Natural or medicated.
Trust your body or trust medicine.
Safety or autonomy.
But what if those aren’t the choices we should be making?
What if the real goal is creating a birth culture where both can exist?
✨ A planned home birth and a respectful hospital transfer.
✨ A hospital birth and support for physiologic labor.
✨ An induction and genuine informed consent.
✨ Evidence and intuition.
✨ Safety and autonomy.
These aren’t contradictions. They’re signs of a maternity care system that honors families, supports individualized care, and recognizes that birth isn’t one-size-fits-all.
The conversation shouldn’t be about picking a side.
It should be about building a birth culture where informed decisions are respected, physiologic birth is protected when appropriate, interventions are used thoughtfully when needed, and every family is treated with dignity.
That’s the future I’m working toward.
A culture of both/and.
What “both/and” would you add to this conversation?
Here’s the secret: birth isn’t just about bringing a baby into the world. It can change the way you see yourself.
We grow up taught to critique our bodies long before we’re taught how they actually work. We learn about calories before cycles. Beauty before biology.
Pregnancy and birth invite us to witness our bodies differently—not as something to perfect, but as something powerful.
My hope is that more girls grow up understanding their bodies, trusting them, and approaching birth with confidence instead of fear.
I think the #1 benefit of childbirth education is reducing fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of our bodies. Fear of birth.
Fear will always exist. It’s supposed to. It’s protective. But it shouldn’t be in control during birth.
Learning how our bodies work, and not just what can go wrong, can make a significant impact on how we think about and experience pregnancy and birth.
For me, childbirth education isn’t a nice to have. It’s a must have. Our culture fails us when it comes to learning about and understanding our female bodies. I was in my late 30s when I learned there were four phases of our menstrual cycle! Let alone how birth works and how I can support my body and baby to have a smooth, more confident experience.
If you took a childbirth education class, what did you find helpful? What do you wish you had learned?
06/16/2026
She looks pretty severe. And I’ve heard she was. Maybe that because she birthed 8 children at home in rural America and they all lived to adulthood.
Home birth wasn’t an atheistic. It was simply how most babies were born at that time.
When we talk about birth today, I think it’s important to hold two truths at once.
The past wasn’t perfect. Maternal and infant mortality were real and devastating realities. Modern medicine has saved countless mothers and babies.
And yet, women of previous generations also carried a deep cultural belief that birth was a normal part of life. They expected support. They expected to be capable. Birth belonged to families and communities, not just institutions.
I don’t think we should romanticize the past. I think it’s damaging and naive.
But I do think we can honor the strength, resilience, and wisdom of the women who came before us while embracing the advances that make birth safer today.
Looking at this photo, I’m grateful for both. And grateful to be the great-granddaughter of Emily Blum Wiley. Fun fact: I now own the house they were born in!
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