PREFACE

I was twenty-six when I gave birth to my first child, a son. And to prepare for his birth, I read books, attended classes, spoke to mothers, and asked questions of doctors and midwives. But I wasn’t prepared. Nothing I’d learned equipped me for the intensity of the experience—or for the strength I’d need to get through twenty-six hours of labor and delivery. In fact, I felt betrayed by the many women with whom I’d spoken; no one had told me what real birth was like.

Two years later in graduate school, while I was talking to a counselor about some personal issues, my birthing experience came up, and she asked, “Do women bond over birth like men bond over war?” Part of her practice involved helping war veterans process their experiences by telling their stories and listening to the stories of others.

“Yes,” I told her, and the idea for Real Birth, Women Share Their Stories was born. It took me, though, another six years, a miscarriage, two graduate degrees, a move from New York to North Carolina, and the birth of my second child, another son, to begin the book.

Stories, I realized then—and ever more deeply over the years—offer us connection and agency. They promote wellbeing, mitigate isolation. Stories are the lifeblood of human culture.

Our ancestors knew this. Even before they could write, they told stories and understood that truth is rooted in the narratives we share.

For this third edition of Real Birth, Women Share Their Stories, I had the privilege of again listening to women speak their truth about childbirth—offering their intimate and sometimes gritty stories to other women—so that these accounts, with all their iterations and complexities, might offer strength and empowerment.

The narratives in this collection emerged from interviews with women who’d recently given birth. For the first edition, I found these women through an ad placed in a national publication for new mothers. I received over two hundred responses, conducted seventy-six interviews, and selected thirty-six stories that represented a diversity of voices—ethnic, socioeconomic, racial, cultural, and geographic—as well as a diversity of childbirth choices and experiences.

For the second edition, I placed a shoutout to new moms on my Facebook page and asked friends and colleagues to do the same. I received many responses and selected to interview those women whose stories represented a similar diversity.

For the third edition, I connected with internet groups and again placed a shoutout to my now extensive network of women. Again, I looked for diverse and compelling stories.

In all three editions, readers will find stories from women who are financially well-off and from those who struggle to make ends meet. They’ll find stories from women of various ages and ethnic and racial backgrounds. Some describe a first birth, others a second, third, or fourth birth, or the birth of multiples. Some bring a strong religious faith to their stories; others do not. And while not all fifty states are represented, most geographical regions are.

Nearly all the women I interviewed spoke to me by phone. Due to the expense of travel, there were only a few women with whom I could meet in person. Often begun as conversations between strangers, these interviews almost always evolved into intimate sharing.

The interview process was organic; I didn’t ask preset questions but rather allowed each woman to take the lead. For the third edition, I relied on AI transcription rather than on an analog recorder and a transcriptionist. In all editions, I had to condense stories, eliminate redundancies, and create clear chronologies, as oral narratives are seldom linear. I also edited out my own voice so that all the stories read as first-person narratives without interviewer intrusions.

In places, I worked to correct grammar and to remove some linguistical fillers, such as “likes” or “you knows,” but I did my best to stay true to the diction and speech patterns of the participants. For the first two editions, I crafted the stories without participants’ involvement in the editing process, but for the third edition, I opened up that process, inviting participants to edit or revise their own stories. Many did; some did not.

Each narrative is prefaced by a brief introduction, but I’ve intentionally omitted information on race, ethnicity, and religious identity to allow each woman’s story to unfold naturally. Some names, locations, and identifying details were changed at the request of participants who wished to be anonymous.

I also think it’s important to note that the veracity of the stories remains the subjective reality of the participants. These women, like all of us, recollect details and specifics through the filters of their psyches. What they remember as true becomes their truth.

The first edition of Real Birth, published in 2000, contained thirty-six birthing stories gathered in the 1990s; the second edition included an additional nine stories gathered from the 2010s; this third edition includes another nine stories gathered from 2021 to 2025. And to keep this third edition compact and readable, I’ve eliminated a few stories from the first and second editions.

From Nelly’s Story, “Planned Homebirth, Hospital Delivery”

Labor started, I’m thinking, on a Tuesday night—about 2:00 in the morning. We were home in Nebraska. We’d had everything packed up for about a week, and my labor started right on my due date at the end of May. I remember we went on a walk the previous night. For the whole pregnancy, I was very conscientious about walking and keeping my body healthy. Every day I’d go for a walk. But that last night there was a huge full moon. Every full moon has its own name for each month. I think May is called the Flower Moon because of the abundance of flowers. It was beautiful. I got my belly out and showed it the moon. That night, I went into labor.

From Jenna’s Story, “Long Labor, Long Delivery, Redhead Complications”

I had a rough start into motherhood. My labor had lasted about thirty-eight hours, and then with these interventions, a difficult birth, hemorrhaging, and a rough time nursing—it was all hard.

After the delivery—life continued to get difficult. Harper had a tongue-tie, so we had to have a minor surgical procedure to correct that. Then I had terrible gallstones and had to have surgery to remove my gallbladder. And a couple of days before the surgery, my dog BoJack, who’d developed crippling back issues, needed to be euthanized.

All these things put me a bad place emotionally, and I ended up with postpartum depression. I was dealing with a newborn, sleeplessness, breastfeeding issues, out-of-whack hormones, emotions about my pregnancy, long labor with interventions, prolonged delivery, surgery, and the loss of my dog. It took me months to process all this and heal.

That said, I had a healthy baby—and that helped me. I was grateful for that. And I’m grateful still. Harper is a wonderful little girl. But birth is a sacred thing, and I’m not sure I got to feel its sacredness in the way I’d always wanted.

From Sandra’s story, “Birth in the Honeymoon Suite”

I remember Kathleen saying, “Are you ready to hold your baby? Get ready. He’s going to be born!” I had my eyes closed and was so numb down there that I couldn’t feel anything. He slipped out, and when I opened my eyes, the baby was on my lap. In the split second after the birth, Mike had helped me back on the stool—and there he was, so slippery that I was afraid I’d drop him.

He was incredibly clean, with little blood or that white cheesy stuff. I held him by his bottom—the only part I could hang on to. Kathleen put a warm blanket over us, and we just hung around for fifteen minutes until the placenta was out. Then they cut the cord.

I asked Kathleen if it was a boy or a girl—it didn’t occur to me to look. She said, “Find out yourself.” So, I looked and was surprised to find it was a boy. My husband and I wanted a girl, but the minute we looked, it was like, Oh yeah, this is what we want—a boy!

His eyes and nose were clear. He was eight pounds, three ounces, and twenty-one inches long with a fifteen-inch head—the size for an eleven-pound baby, Kathleen said. Lying there, looking at him, I thought, He’s so pink and perfect; he’ll never be this perfect again. In fact, everything was perfect, and I imagined that I was Queen Victoria—I felt like the queen of the whole world, the most important person on the planet.

Writing an honest birthing story starts with making yourself the primary audience, free from the expectations of others. You can always edit a private draft into a public version later. Focus on capturing your raw truth and personal history first.

Steps to Write Your Birthing Story

Preparation

• Gather artifacts: Look at birth photos, notes, and medical materials to trigger memories and emotions.
• Find examples: Read model stories to see what elements you might want to use.
• Set the scene: Choose a quiet, private space with enough time to write without rushing.

Writing the Draft

• Pick a starting point: Begin before conception, at conception, during pregnancy, or at the onset of labor.
• Include context: Write about relationships and the complex background of your journey.
• Write freely: Let thoughts flow without worrying about the timeline, chronology, or exact details.
• Use sensory details: Add small moments like sights, smells, and touches that hold strong emotional power.
• Skip around: Leave space or jump through time if the narrative demands it; fix the timeline later.
• Drop judgment: Write your absolute truth without holding back or censoring yourself.
• Embrace vulnerability: Include mixed emotions and honest reflections from key moments.

Revision

• Refine slowly: Read your draft aloud over several weeks to guide your revisions.
• Correct grammar and mechanical errors: Again, read your draft aloud slowly, observing errors and inaccuracies; fix these.
• Fill in details or correct timeline: Stop at the end of each paragraph and think about including details that will add to your story.
• Add a reflection: Conclude with a paragraph on what the experience meant then and what it means to you now.
• Make a public version: Keep your original raw draft safe, then create a separate edited version if you want to share it with family or friends.

Coming Soon . . .

About Robin Greene

Robin Greene is the author of five books: The Shelf Life of Fire (novel, 2019), Augustus: Narrative of a Slave Woman (novel, 2011), Real Birth, Women Share Their Stories (nonfiction, 2015), Lateral Drift (poetry, 2002), Memories of Light (poetry, 1991), and she regularly publishes essays, poems, and fiction in journals. Her new novel A Grammar of Unspeakable Things will be released next year.

A former award-winning English and Writing professor and director of a university writing center, Greene held an endowed chair and is a past recipient of a NEA/NC Arts Council fellowship in writing.

Greene served as a board member of the NC Writer’s Network and for years taught writing workshops in Mexico. She now writes fulltime, teaches yoga in western NC, hosts an annual women’s writing and yoga retreat, and serves as a writing mentor and editor. Additionally, Greene conducts workshops in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, grammar, and memoir.

Greene is a cofounder and former board member of Longleaf Press (longleafpress.org) and founder and editor of Ley Lines Literary Review (leylinesliteraryreview.net), a new online literary journal.