November 10 was a normal Friday for Myriam Sitterson. She got up, got her two young daughters ready for school, made their lunches and made her husband breakfast.

She was in labor the entire time.

No big deal. Sitterson simply went up to her bedroom with her midwives and husband in her handsome West McIntyre Street hacienda to have her baby.

"To me, labor is the most exciting, fantastic thing in the world. I'm not afraid of it. I look at it as the most exciting adventure of my life," Sitterson explained.

"It's the most powerful thing I've ever experienced," she added.

Setting the mood

Sitterson put a few good compact discs in her disc player, including the ethereal compilation "Angel Sleep" and Ottmar Liebert's primal "Euphoria." She burned soothing lavender and frankincense aromatherapy oils and a birthing candle--a blessing in one tradition--that her sister had sent from California. She put on a pretty white cotton nightgown. She ate whenever she was hungry.

Nadine Gutierrez, the student midwife and license massage therapist who assisted with Sitterson's birth, massaged the pressure points on Sitterson's feet, ankles and lower legs that accelerate labor. The massage also opened Sitterson's pelvis, preparing her body for birth.

Gutierrez, along with Sitterson's husband, Curtis, gave Sitterson a massage throughout about 90 percent of the birthing process, Sitterson said.

"The most important part about having a good labor is that massage and being able to do what you body is telling you to do, being able to follow your body's natural intuition," Sitterson explained.

As the contractions increased, Sitterson felt the need to move around, to dance. That's when licensed midwife Adina Andreau told her about the origins of bellydancing--to reduce the pain of labor. Sitterson danced and danced. Sometimes Curtis Sitterson danced with her. The dancing eased the pain.

"I've had pain in every labor," she said. "But this pain was manageable. Needless to say, I was exhausted. I danced for five hours."

As the contractions continued, Sitterson and her support system chanted, "Open," to encourage her body to expand for the baby. They also chanted, "I love you," to the yet unborn child. Sitterson's yoga teacher, Claire Amerena, stopped by and joined in the chanting. So did the girls when they came home from school.

Five-and-a-half-year-old Carolina Sitterson and three-and-a-half-year-old Sofia Sitterson were not alarmed by the birth. The family had watched several home birth videos, supplied by the midwives, so that everybody would know what to expect.

The midwives placed relaxing meditation oil on Sitterson's forehead and a sage, calendula, rose and olive oil blend in her birth canal. She bent over an upright futon, where her husband held her and stroked her back.

Little Myriam Sitterson was born at about 3 p.m. in her parents' bedroom, several hours sooner than Andreau had anticipated.

Her mother didn't have to push. She had no episiotomy, no medication and barely any bleeding. Their support system stayed with the couple and their newborn for several hours after the birth.

"The best thing was, delivering the baby and getting back into my own bed. It was the comfort of your own home," Sitterson recalled.

Custom made birth

Sitterson opted for a home birth after having two hospital births.

Carolina Sitterson was delivered by a doctor while her mother lay flat, hooked up to a variety of intravenous tubes that distributed nutrients and medicine.

"I left the whole labor up to the doctor, essentially," Sitterson said.

Sofia Sitterson was also born in the hospital. But that time, her mother called more of the shots. Sitterson went into labor in the shower and experienced a majority of the labor there, squatting with each contraction.

She wore a Victoria's Secret nightgown to have her second child, who was delivered by a nurse-midwife. She had no medicine and no episiotomy. Curtis Sitterson gave his wife a back and hip massage throughout the process.

But somehow even a midwife did not make the delivery room personal enough for Sitterson. An avid reader, she found out about home birthing from parenting magazines and books.

Sitterson decided that the "native approach to birth" was her calling for her third birth.

"Everyone thought I was crazy and they'd say, 'Why are you having a home birth?' and I'd say, 'Why are you going to a hospital?'" she explained.

Gutierrez called home births "custom made births...totally natural and spontaneous."

"Instead of having four or five nurses changing shifts, going in and out and the doctor coming in at the last minute, Adina [the midwife] and I were there the whole time and we served all those purposes," said Gutierrez, who is earning a degree from Miami-Dade Community College's three-year midwifery program.

"They're with you from the minute you go into labor through the birth and then they stay with you after to make sure you're okay," Sitterson explained, adding that the midwives visited her four times after the birth and called her on the phone every day.

It is this care that makes a home birth so special, supporters contend.

"In the end it doesn't matter who's there to catch the baby really," Gutierrez explained.

Sitterson said the midwifery team was also there to help educate her and her family before the birth.

She drove to Home Birth Associates anywhere from once a month to once a week, getting her hemoglobin levels tested in accordance with state law and gathering information and even spiritual and psychological guidance from the midwife team, who wear Birkenstock sandals and tie-dyed clothes.

They also gave her affirmations to repeat, such as, "Pregnancy is a normal state in a woman," "I can have the birth that I want exactly how I want" and "God and the Universe support me and my baby and my labor."

"It doesn't seem like a medical appointment at all," Sitterson said.

Sitterson also took four birthing classes there which covered topics ranging from the easiest body positions to give birth to post-natal intimacy with partners to immunizations for the baby.

"It was the most informative birth class I've ever been to," she said.

Safe and serene

Despite her husband's initial concern for her safety, Sitterson contends that having a child at home can be safer than having one at a hospital--that mortality and Caesarian section rates are in fact lower with midwife births.

"In your home, your immune system has been exposed to the germs. A hospital is full of germs from other people who've given birth there," said Sitterson, who wants to become a child birth educator to let women know about their birthing options.

Gutierrez and her colleagues from Home Birth Associates in Sunrise conducted three successful home deliveries that day. "All were very safe and serene," she said.

But, Gutierrez cautioned, home births are not for high-risk mothers, such as those with past gynecological complications or health problems.

While midwives do monitor the mother's and baby's vital signs during and after birth, "we do low-risk pregnancies," she explained.

Midwives, Gutierrez explained, are not magicians. They don't take the power of the birth away form the mother and father.

"I think our job is to facilitate the mother. When people have a home birth, they're taking responsibility for their bodies and their family and we're there to facilitate them so that it's done safely," she said.

Sitterson agreed. "The best thing about my home birth is they consider it mine and my husband's birth," she said. "It was the birth of my dreams. It was everything I had wanted."

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