Ok, it’s over now. Home Birth Awareness Week has finished for 2018. I just wanted to write a quick post to thank everybody who took part. It was really exciting to see people joining in and sharing their home birth stories. If you search the hashtag #HomeBirthAW18 on social media, you can see some of the posts. It was lovely to see women joining in and telling their stories, as well as midwives getting involved to promote home birth. Oh, and Emma Willis’ Delivering Babies show just happened to cover home birth in that week’s episode which was pretty awesome timing (you can see a clip here).
The whole point of the week was simply to normalise home birth. The more people hear about home births, the better. Hearing your home birth story could prompt somebody to ask their midwife whether home birth is an option for them. My home birth in 2012 was amazing and I will always be thankful to the people who told me about their home births and planted that seed in my mind.
If you want to remind yourself of how the awareness week went, search the hashtag on social media. According to Keyhole, the hashtag was used over 100 times on Twitter and Instagram, and reached over 100,000 people. Those stats don’t include Facebook but there were plenty more posts to be found there so the actual reach is probably a lot higher. Hopefully we have shown people how home birth works for real families, and perhaps even inspired a few couples to have home births of their own.
And now, because this is pretty much my Oscar’s speech, I wanted to thank the lovely, lovely Hannah from Make Do & Push for getting involved and sharing her experiences of home birth. She’s currently pregnant and has only a few weeks left until she will hopefully be able to have her third home birth! Keep an eye on her Instagram to see how she gets on, I’m so excited for her. She posted lots during the week and helped to keep the momentum going which really helped to get the hashtag out there.
If you want some home birth inspiration, the following stories were shared as part of Home Birth Awareness Week. Please have a read to find out a little more about home birth and what it looks like for different families here in the UK. Here you go:
- Emma from Glass Half Full Of Gin shared her gorgeous home birth story
- Louise from Little Hearts Big Love wrote a post detailing her home births which you can read on my blog here
- Girl With The Blue Dress shared her experience of home birth
- The Ish Mother shared her home birth experience (she was transferred to the hospital shortly after giving birth to her 10 lb 12 baby at home)
Thanks again for taking part and helping to make Home Birth Awareness Week 2018 a success. See you next year!