Jessica, Marcus, and brother Jonas holding newborn Elaina

Husband, Marcus and Jessica with newborn on her chest immediately after birth at home

I never considered that I might give birth outside of a hospital–until I got pregnant.

I grew up hearing the story of the doctor and the surgical procedure that saved my life and my mother’s (I was breech, delivered by cesarean section). I never considered that I might give birth outside of a hospital–until I got pregnant.

At that time I had been a nurse for five years and a nurse practitioner for three. Home birth wasn’t part of my culture and wasn’t something my training had directly ad- dressed. Prompted by a colleague’s experience, I started researching, asking questions, and considering my options in and out of the hospital. It was based on that research that I decided I wanted to pursue a home birth. As a low risk mom, it seemed I had the best chance of a safe and uncomplicated natural birth in my own home surrounded by people I knew and trusted. Some of my family and colleagues disagreed.

The decision wasn’t easy to talk about. It’s such an emotionally charged topic. Everyone has an opinion and a story to tell.

Since then I’ve met more health care providers, doctors, nurses, and midwives, who chose to give birth at home. These are not the women most Americans picture when they imagine a home birth mom. These professionals have direct and sometimes daily experience with the risks inherent in birth. Like all women, they wanted a safe birth, yet unlike 99% of women in the US, they chose to give birth at home. This is their story.

Too often polarization occurs on the topic of home birth. By focusing on hospital birth providers who choose home birth, I hope to bring a voice of moderation to the discussion. Together, we can move toward real improvements to maternity care in hospitals and at home.

What if the choice of where to give birth wasn’t limited by cost or insurance coverage, fear or misinformation? What would change if families had access to the care provider of their choice in the setting that best fits their unique needs and values? It’s worth at least asking, “Why not home?”

Director’s Statement

Meet the Characters

Denise Cobb, RN

LABOR & DELIVERY
Denise has been attending birth in the hospital for over 18 years. A single mom by choice, Denise does things her own way and isn’t afraid to tell it like it is. When she was in nursing school a classmate decided she wasn’t going to the hospital when it was time to deliver her baby. That experience became Denise’s introduction to home birth.
Michelle Minikel, MD

FAMILY PRACTICE & OBSTETRICS
Michelle thought home birth was crazy--until she got pregnant. Her training taught her that home birth wasn’t appropriate for anybody. Keeping her home birth plans a secret from her own parents (one of whom is also a physician) the first time around, Michelle allows us to journey with her during her second pregnancy, but this time it isn’t quite as straightforward as the first.
Robyn Lamar, MD

OBSTETRICS & GYNECOLOGY
Robyn isn’t your average OB/GYN. The daughter of a pediatrician, she witnessed the home birth of her younger sister when she was 5 years old. That experience stayed with her in a powerful way. Though she attends birth in the hospital, including cesarean deliveries, for her own births, she knew she wanted midwifery care at home.
Grace Hochstoeger

FNP, FAMILY PRACTICE
Grace had seen birth in the hospital as a nurse and wasn’t crazy about the thought of that experience for herself. Her husband, Mike however was pretty confident that the hospital was the best place to have a baby. Less than 2 months from her due date, Mike became convinced that maybe Grace was right and they didn’t need to go to the hospital. They found a midwife who supported them at home and Mike became a home birth advocate. Now pregnant with her second, we share what will be a transformational experience with both Grace and Mike.
Alexandra Johnson, MD

FAMILY PRACTICE & OBSTETRICS
Alexandra loves maternity care so much she did an additional fellowship so that she could attend not only low risk pregnancies, but could also perform c-sections if needed. Still, for her own births, she chose midwifery care at home. It wasn’t until her son experienced some distress following birth that she experienced the dysfunctional side of home to hospital transfer. Learn how that experience has shaped her practice and her outlook on maternity care.
Tanashia Huff, RN

LABOR & DELIVERY, STUDENT MIDWIFE
Tanashia’s whole reason for going to nursing school was to become a midwife. As a labor and delivery nurse she was familiar with the standard hospital delivery, and with her first two children that’s just what she got. She felt like she had missed something, so with her third daughter she decided to seek out a licensed midwife who could attend her at home. Despite criticism and questions from her colleagues, she followed through with her plans and had, “the best experience.” See how Tanashia hopes to expand the diversity of women currently seeking home birth services.
Heidi Hartsough, RN

LABOR & DELIVERY
Heidi’s first experiences with birth were as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa--it was a far cry from the high risk hospital in San Francisco where she currently attends women. Both of these experiences strengthened her belief that birth happens in all kinds of places and informed her personal decision about place of birth.
LeAnn James, CNM

LeAnn has attended women in hospitals for over 30 years. She has seen a lot change in that time. She loves her work and wouldn’t want to practice any other way. Still, when it was time to have her own children, she planned to have them at home.
Nancy Myrick, CNM & Ami Burnham, LM

RITES OF PASSAGE MIDWIFERY
Nancy and Ami have a home birth practice together in San Francisco. They also happened to attended Robyn and Heidi’s births. With different training backgrounds and complementary practice styles, they instantly became a powerful duo. Ami is expecting her first baby and is not surprisingly, planning a home birth. She knows that things don’t always go as planned in birth, but even she is surprised by the outcome of her birth.

Meet the Experts

Melissa Cheyney, PhD, LM, CPM,

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
As an anthropologist and a midwife, Dr. Cheyney is interested in US maternity care system and the way in which we utilize midwifery. Since 2007, she has been working with the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) to collect and analyze data about planned home birth. The largest registry of its kind in the US, MANA stats data serves as a valuable source of information about the outcomes of planned home birth.
Eugene Declercq

PHD, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC HEALTH, BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Dr. Declercq started his career as a childbirth educator. He has published numerous articles on childbirth practice and policy in the US and abroad. He has particular interest in maternal and infant mortality and the rising cesarean section rates in the US. His 20 minute video, Birth by the Numbers, is an excellent resource for those curious about how maternal and child health outcomes in the US rate compared to other countries. (Link to birthbythenumbers.org)
Saraswathi Vedam, RM, CNM, SciD (hc)

PROFESSOR OF MIDWIFERY UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
Saraswathi did something no one had done before when she first brought together all the stakeholders in maternity care for the Home Birth Consensus Summit. In it’s third year, she invites us to participate in the summit, to capture and share the challenges and real accomplishments that come when you bring people with different views and backgrounds together around something as polarizing and political as home birth in the US.
Jennie Joseph, LM, CPM,

FOUNDER, COMMONSENSE CHILDBIRTH
Jennie never met a challenge she didn’t face head on. As an immigrant from the UK, she assumed she would be able to work as a midwife in hospitals as she had back home. She soon found out that if she wanted to practice as a direct entry midwife in the US, she would have to learn to do home or birth center birth--so that’s what she did. In the course of her practice she became more and more concerned with the disparities she was seeing among racial and socioeconomic lines. Not satisfied with the systems currently in place, she found a way to work creatively within the system to expand services and remove any barrier to maternity care.
Judith Pence Rooks, CNM, Author

MIDWIFERY AND CHILDBIRTH IN AMERICA
Judith was the first midwife to publish in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1989. Her study about birth center outcomes was the first of it’s kind. With nearly 50 years in public health and maternity care her voice is at the same time historical and relevant.

Meet the Team

Jessicca Moore

PRODUCER/DIRECTOR
Jessica is a family nurse practitioner and filmmaker in Petaluma, CA. A graduate of the UCLA School of Nursing, she has always been drawn to people and their stories and is passionate about empowering women and families through information sharing. She became interested in filmmaking when the intersection of her personal and professional worlds gave her a story she had to tell.Her path to motherhood started with a high tech conception through IVF and culminated in a low tech birth at home. She tells the previously untold story of hospital birth providers who chose to give birth at home in her first film, "Why not Home?"
Kelly Collins Geiser

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER
Kelly studied cinematography at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. She spent several years editing at Fast Forward in San Francisco before she had her children and changed careers. She has returned to filmmaking for a project very close to her heart, "Why not Home?" Both of Kelly's children were born at home. Her birth experience was empowering and transformative, a feeling she wishes for all women regardless of where they choose to give birth. Kelly’s artistic vision and training in cinematography, experience in editing, as well as her personal knowledge of the subject matter, make her a valuable member of the creative team.
Erin Wrightsman

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER
Erin brings her own exploration of the intimate and expansive spaces that exist in relationship into her work. She credits her love of community and wild spaces to her big family and her small town. Erin is a highly naturalistic, passionate photographer who specializes in creating warm, authentic portraits of people and families expressing themselves, their love, their connections with one another and their relationships to themselves and the world(s) they inhabit. Erin is especially passionate about birth and documenting a woman's transition from woman to mother. She describes her own birth experience as, "home birth at the hospital."
Victoria Toth

EDITOR
Victoria studied at University of Stirling, Scotland and UC San Diego. She spent 7 years in Prague, Czech Republic working on feature films, commercials and running a theatre company, Misery Loves Company with her husband. Together they staged the Eastern European premiere of Angels in America. Since leaving Prague she has worked mostly as an editor in non-fiction TV and documentary: In New York, the critically acclaimed Brooklyn North Homicide Squad, also First 48, Dallas Swat, Flip This House, Flipping Boston, Be Good Johnny Weir, Swamp People and many more. Feature documentaries include The Federation of Black Cowboys and Gordon Parks - American Masters. And for light relief - two seasons of Emmy winning comedy series, Children's Hospital. She is married to Richard Toth. Their son Gus was born at home 11 years ago. Victoria is the team's East Coast representative. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY.
Michael Lindemuth

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Michael studied cinematography at San Francisco State University and has been working in the film industry for the past 12 years. He has expanded from production assistant to camera assistant and is now filming more of his own work while continuing to shoot for larger commercial clients such as Lagunitas and Bank of Marin. Personally, he one daughter born in October 2014. Born at home himself, Michael and his wife experienced first hand the choices and challenges that come with pregnancy and delivery that he explores in his current project "Why not Home?"
Chris Vibberts

SOUND DESIGN & COMPOSER
Chris is passionate about music and sound. His unique compositions and sound design can be heard in a number of award winning short, animated, documentary, non-profit, and feature length films, as well as on TV. His work includes campaigns for Subway, NBC, ESPN, Honda, Bay Alarm, JW Marriott, AAA, SpeeDee Oil Change, and Sector 9. Playing instruments including the guitar, drums, keyboards, sitar, sax, banjo, accordion, and flutes from around the world, his music has been heard in projects spanning the globe from USA to Korea, Mexico to India. He and his wife planned a home birth, but ultimately delivered a healthy baby girl in the hospital.