Giveaway is now closed. Shawna was the winner!

Talk Birth has reached 100,000 hits and I’m having a giveaway to celebrate this milestone! When I initially began this website in 2007, it was exclusively for the purpose of providing information about my birth classes to the local community. I never intended for anyone other than local, potential clients to read the information here, I was just using WordPress as a platform to host what I assumed would be a fairly static site—possibly just being updated with new class information and dates. Then, I decided I’d like to add a couple of posts/articles for my prospective clients to read. Before I knew it, the few posts I had made were receiving hits from locations other than my local area and so I started writing posts with a wider/more general audience in mind. Eventually, the class information portion of my site became very secondary to the birth-blog portion of my site. And, I find it somewhat amusing, that now I primarily reach women through my writing rather than through my classes. I have a new class beginning in June, but otherwise, I have been on leave from teaching any classes since my new baby was born and due to my other commitments, I have only had limited availability for classes for the past year or so.

When I first began my journey as a childbirth educator, some part of me envisioned reaching hundreds of couples through my classes. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be able to fill group classes in my small hometown and felt like I had an excess of birth-change energy that was being blocked/frustrated by only working with one couple every so often. I used to complain to my husband, “I just want to transform the birth culture in the U.S. Is that too much to ask?” I felt like my drive to change the birth world was just hitting up against a wall and I felt frustrated by living in an area that could not support that packed-to-the-brim, life-transforming classes I’d envisioned offering. Writing blog posts became my way of “discharging” this energy as well as being a birth educator to a wider audience—i.e., whomever stumbled across my blog! This has been a fulfilling way for me to use some of that activist energy and to feel like I have the ability to make some type of change within a large circle. As my classes became more well known, I did build enough of a practice to be working with new clients each and every month of the year and I felt personally satisfied with that—I need direct contact as well as virtual contact to feel like I am making a difference. I love that this website/blog helps me with each of those avenues for change.

In honor of 100,000 hits, I am giving away a copy of the book Mother Rising: The Blessingway Journey into Motherhood. Since my tagline is, “Celebrating Women, Transforming Birth,” I wanted to give away a book that exemplifies the idea. Mother Rising is perfect, because it is literally about celebrating women through blessingways. My friends and I have a long-standing tradition of hosting mother blessing ceremonies for each other during our pregnancies and Mother Rising is a helpful resource for planning them. It even includes recipes for snacks!

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment letting me know your favorite way to celebrate women.

You can earn bonus entries by doing any of the following and letting me know via another comment that you’ve done so:

• Tell me what post/idea you’ve read here on Talk Birth is your favorite!
• Become a fan of Talk Birth on Facebook
• Subscribe to this blog via email (link this way —>)
• Share the giveaway link on your own Facebook page or blog

Giveaway ends next Thursday at noon!