Before I was pregnant with my first child, I explored the idea of having my babies at home, or at the very least, with a midwife at a birthing center. It's a natural process, something women have been doing for thousands of years, and I wanted to experience it as much as possible.
In the end I did not have my babies at home because my husband was quite freaked out by the idea :-). But I did have wonderful nurse-midwives who worked with me and caught our babies in the hospital.
But the idea of home birth midwives was so wonderful to me and I was so honored to have witnessed the home-birth process of my sister and her husband. I knew I wanted to write about it somehow. But I also knew I wanted to write it for teens so it took me awhile to come up with a story that would work.
Kat came to me as I was swimming laps, training for the Danskin Triathlon in 2003 or so. I knew she'd be an athlete, and as I swam back and forth, she started telling me how hard it was to have a mother who was so good with the mothers-to-be but didn't seem to have the same instincts when it came to relating to her own daughter.
I had my story.
