We made it to Los Angeles. The flight was pretty easy. I guess a lot of people wouldn’t have called an 8 hour trip with two kids easy, but they’ve probably never flown over the North Pole. And now we’re in an easy sublet with an oh so convenient location of four blocks to the beach and one block to the promenade. This was certainly not the way our Asia adventure started out. But, I guess we take less risks as we’re pulled out of our twenties.

Last week, instead of flying to Hong Kong as Jenny and I had expected to, I found myself driving a 22 foot truck across the continental United States. The destination? Los Angeles.

Now that we’re officially moving from Lamma Island, we have a few things to sell. All prices are in Hong Kong Dollars. Let us know if you’re interested!

Now that we have the little matter of a home birth safely behind us, the next logical step is clearly moving across the globe (again). In this case, it’s more a matter of moving back across the globe, but regardless, it involves taking a 4-month-old on a 15 hour intercontinental flight.

I’ve dreamt of a home birth since before having children was even a reality for me. Because of who I am and what ideals I hold dear, home birth is the most appealing option. Other women divine their own preferences and home birth could never properly fit in their world. I’m glad that, at least, we all have a choice.

Because home birth has recently fallen out of fashion, most people are mystified by the whole idea. I’ve had mothers of several children ask me, “Well, what do you do at a home birth?”

Home birthing isn’t rocket science. After all, hospital birthing has become the norm only in the last 60 years when anesthesia became widespread practice. It’s fascinating to me that in a short 60 years, our society has lost touch with something that was considered “normal” since time immemorial.

Of course, home birthing isn’t for everyone. Only about 10% of US women home birth today. Most women feel more comfortable in a hospital, and so those women shouldn’t attempt a homebirth. Other women trust that birthing is a natural event and do not want modern intervention to stall or disrupt their empowering transition into motherhood. Hospitals have a lot of fancy tools, and they are encouraged to use them. Things like fetal monitoring, inducement drugs, and pain relief are all interventions that home birthing mothers are quite happy to go without, and in fact, home birthing mothers see those tools as a threat to having a healthy birth. And quite frankly, the evidence in on their side.

If a woman is planning a home birth, she has a lot more to prepare than if she were to have a hospital birth.