Our daughter is named Yemaya. It means Goddess of the Ocean, and she was born on a huge sand dune next to the ocean, in the little cottage we call home. I'm not quite sure when I decided to have a home birth. I think it was before I even became pregnant. Once I knew home birth was an option, I knew it was the right thing to do, for myself and my child. I was very sure about this, even thought the family tut-tutted and clucked their tongues. Even though they tried to convince me it was a mistake, that the only safe way to birth was in hospital. "Every woman I know who has given birth would have lost their child if they hadn't given birth in hospital" someone said to me. But we ignored the comments and followed our instincts. It's something we'll never regret.

I remember sitting on the verandah of our beach cottage with our two midwives, five months into my pregnancy. We lived right on the edge of the limits they could travel to for a home birth, and it suddenly dawned on me that I was fortunate to have found these two special people. I didn't realise that not all women in this 'lucky country' of ours have the choice to birth at home. Many women couldn't choose home birth because they didn't know it was a safe option, or they didn't have home birth midwives in their area, or they couldn't afford the fees. I remembered hearing on the radio about the Indigenous women in Northern Australia who had to travel hundreds of kilometres away from their families, away from their homeland, and away from their customs, to give birth in someone else's hospital. I suddenly wanted to say something to these two women on my verandah to ensure they would be at my home birth. All I could think of was something that I innately felt to be true. "If it means anything, I feel like I'm going to have a good birth". I have since wondered if every woman felt this way.

I have always felt that my body was made for giving birth. Always felt that it was going to happen naturally. Although that first twinge of a contraction felt decidedly foreign. Maybe it was because I felt it at 2am and couldn't quite tell what it was. I rose from the bed and lay on the couch in the dark, with a doona pulled up over me, waiting to feel it again and give it my best assessment. At 2.30am it arrived again, like a fist clenching in my lower belly, tightening up my insides. At 3am my partner Mick came out to the lounge rubbing sleep from his eyes and asked me what was wrong. I couldn't decide if it was contractions or not, and told him to go back to bed, get some rest. He was up five minutes later putting the kettle on. He must have sensed that this was the day, the nine months were finally coming to an end.

At 4am, with my contractions now coming quite regularly, and with me duly noting the time and length of each on an old envelope (which I've kept, and mull over occasionally), we phoned our midwives. I continued to breathe deeply during each contraction, while chatting and eating toast and tea with Mick in the vacant spaces in between. The windows soon began to show a faint glow and dawn broke. We decided to go up to the lookout near our house to see the sunrise over the ocean. It was spectacular, and we marveled at the beautiful body of water laid out below us, and the creamy pink rays creeping across the sky. Even though we saw this sight every day that we lived in our little cottage near the sea, our appreciation seemed magnified this time. I leaned over the rail at the lookout as each contraction washed over me, pulling me deeper and deeper into a space I had never been before. It was like a door was opening to somewhere new. I wasn't scared of this door, just curious.

One Midwife arrived at 5.30am and popped down her birth bag and the little oxygen thing in the corner of our lounge room, the reality set in. We would be meeting our new baby today. The contractions were getting rather strong now, and were coming consistently every three minutes. I tried to breathe deeply through them and wondered what lay ahead. Mick went to rummage through the cupboard and find a hot water bottle to hold over my abdomen. I wandered through the rooms of our house looking for some relief, and found that our old sunken lounge with the fading cover became a rock, as I leaned heavily on it during the clenching ache of a contraction, boring my eyes into the old wooden floorboards (with a look that Mick later told me could have exploded ants). Mick was busy doing things, making toast in the kitchen, filling the bath tub, and starting to fill the birth pool. I was glad of his presence.

I decided that having a bath might help me through the contractions. The bathroom and studio were separate buildings to the cottage, a few metres from the house. I stumbled down the worn stone steps outside, catching a glimpse of the lettuce and radishes in the garden going to seed. I was glad of the familiarity of it all. Wallowing in the warm water of the old claw footed bath I focussed on the ocean which I could see through the bathroom window. As each contraction started I stared intently at the sun glinting off the waves, reflecting the colour of the sky that day – a perfect blue. After ten minutes I changed my mind and decided to opt for the shower instead. I was getting fidgety, restless. That's when I knew that the hour was getting near, and I told Mick to get the birth pool in the studio ready.

After an hour in the birth pool, incense and relaxing music sitting aside forgotten, I stood up and pushed, releasing the baby from her watery womb. It was 10.10am and a perfect creature with ten fingers and ten toes looked up at us, her dark curly locks glistening with waxy vernix. She grabbed her delighted father's finger and squeezed, they connected. Days later he told me he had dreamt of this little girl, exactly as she looked at that moment.

I simply have no gory details or harsh realities in this story of birth. No stories for the tut-tutting relatives. It was simply a beautiful birth. Although it is funny how, 18 months on, I can look back and think how perfect it all was. Why have I forgotten the fear and uncertainty I felt in that hour of the transition? Why have I forgotten that I told Mick I didn't know if I wanted to do it anymore, as tears squeezed out of my eyes and I cried out with the shock of it all. Why have I forgetten that feeling of intense pressure pushing low down in my pelvis, then the searing, pinching stretch of squeezing a child out of my body. Why are all those details just words I wrote on a piece of paper, a week after the birth, to remind myself what it was like. Why have I forgotten all that?

My perfect biological body of course. My body that was made for birth, and made to give only gentle reminders afterwards. Of course I must give some credit to the beautiful surroundings. Having birth at home meant no break in the flow, no car trip, no stop and go, no strange faces. And I must give some credit to the wonderful encouraging words of my midwives and their presence and absence all perfectly timed. I must give much credit to my partner in life, love and all things, whose support was tangible and real – a cool cloth on my neck, a loving word and timely caress. And with all that, I must give credit to my wonderful, female, perfect-for-childbirth body. My body just set to work and did what it was created to do. On a sand dune next to the ocean, the Goddess within me brought out the Goddess inside me.