Regional Notes.

PENNSYLVANIA

Four years ago, I was pregnant with our third child and was without health insurance. At my first prenatal, I discovered the base cost of this delivery and one-day hospital stay would be $8,000. How could this be possible? I was shocked and overwhelmed, but soon my feelings turned to determination and conviction: I will have this baby at home if I have to! It became a mission.

After many phone calls and inquiries, I connected with a lay midwife in a nearby community. My husband and I instantly admired her knowledge, passion, experience, and energy about birth, and trusted her to attend our delivery.

Through her and her assistants, we learned to fully appreciate the entire process of birth--spiritual, emotional, and physical--much of which our culture has stripped away. I knew in my soul that I had to share this feeling of empowerment with other women having babies.

That feeling continued and blossomed as I went on to take the ALACE labor assistant training the following spring. That weekend, with those wonderful women, confirmed and strengthened my trust and hope for this work. I was blessed to gain experience at home and at hospital births of families willing to have me.

I have now been practicing labor support for over three years. With the help of midwives, childbirth educators, chiropractors, friends, and precious, expecting families, we now have built a network of labor assistants and programs reaching into the mainstream and becoming accepted by the hospitals. It is still a pioneering effort, but it makes so much sense and is so positive that it's hard to resist!

I love this profession! Of course, being a mom of three little boys keeps me from getting too busy with births at this time. To calm the "birth junkie" in me, I opened a small shop in my home providing supplies for labor assistants (birth balls, fetoscopes, books, etc.) and also handmade giftware, herbs, and literature for expecting families. Honestly, as a business, it has been more fun than profitable, but it has become a great networking and resource center.

Ilana Stein, the instructor at my first workshop, stressed many times that our main focus, commitment, and most important thing we do as labor assistants is to "listen to the mother." That statement has engrained itself in my heart and inspired the name of the shop. I hung my shingle reading "Listen to the Mother ... Natural Childbirth Shop."

Much love.

--Lara Kinney lives, educates, and listens in Mill Village, PA. Her shop can be reached at 814-796-3277.