I had the pleasure of seeing Ina May Gaskin speak last year. She was inspirational and living proof how doing what you love and believe in makes you glow from the inside out. Gaskin is a midwife, arguably the most famous one, and her life's work has educated and empowered so many women on the beauty of natural birth.

Cue the anger of the women who had c-sections. Let's not get angry though; let's discuss. I had an emergency c-section. This isn't about when a cesarean is needed. This is about trusting our ability. This is about how we are misled because information out there is wrong. This is about taking back birth. And a midwife like Ina May can help us. Gaskin was given the Right Livelihood Award and is the first midwife to receive what is called the alternative Nobel Prize. Her acceptance speech was eye-opening as she talks about the rising numbers of c-sections and along with it the rising maternal death rates. This is why the topic of birth matters -- because we can die.

I love being black. I do. I thank God for all of my cultural idiosyncrasies and inherent Africanisms. I’m proud of who I am and the people I come from. It’s an honor to be born into a race of folks whose creativity and intellect and power helped shape the world as we know it.

But that being said, I can’t hop on this bandwagon that homebirth brings black women closer to our African heritage. I’ll immerse myself in a native language, I’ll shell out a few grand to fly to the mother continent and trace my Guinean roots. Heck, I’ve already dedicated thousands of dollars and thousands more hours studying our history for a master’s degree in African-American studies.

But if and when I ever find myself pregnant again, I’ll have my baby in a hospital, thank you very much. If something goes haywire — Lord forbid — I want all the bells and whistles of modern science by my side to save me or my child.

So many of us think of birth as something that absolutely must take place in a hospital with a team of doctors around for intervention and to administer pain medication. Sometimes this is definitely the case, and medical intervention is needed. But there are times when birth, which is a natural and beautiful thing women can do, can be performed unassisted. Yes, you have to have a healthy pregnancy. But mama-to-be must also have absolute faith in her body and her ability to birth.

Which we should all have. You have faith in yourself for being able to use the bathroom, right? You pee and poo without any help most of the time. Birth is just another function our bodies can perform. Which is why I'm not too shocked when learning that a midwife delivered her own baby at home with the help of a makeup mirror. This wasn't in her birth plan -- she had her own midwife, but her baby came sooner than she expected. 

Here in the US, while rates of homebirth are constantly rising, there's still a large stigma attached that suggests that it's unsafe, even for normal, low-risk pregnancies. Heck, there are some people who have said (very wrongly) that elective c-sections are safer than home births. Eek!

So I'm crushing a little on the University of Oxford Dr. Peter Brocklehurst. He said, "Birth isn't an abnormal process, it's a physiological process. And if your pregnancy and labor is not complicated, then you don't need a high level of specific expertise."

His study showed that 50 percent of women were in no more danger when having a home birth than if they gave birth at a hospital.

For every amazing, transcendent, love-filled story of home birth, there almost inevitably seems to be at least one horror story. There are tales of being transported screaming to the hospital, or worse still -- mothers losing babies, babies losing mothers. Margarita Sheikh is one mother in Oregon who will always regret her decision to have her baby at home with two unlicensed midwives.

Her baby boy died and that would be heartbreaking enough. But the worst part is that she screamed and screamed for her midwives to take her to the hospital after laboring for eight days alone without her husband (he was stuck in India with visa issues), and no one took her.

Isn't the whole point of home birth that someone will be listening more to the mom? At home, aren't you supposed to be less of a cog in the wheel? Perhaps if she had been transported, her baby would be alive today.

As far as the mainstream media is concerned, unplanned births are big, scary emergencies. Very often on TV we see people doing ridiculous things at all costs just to get a laboring mom to the hospital or emergency teams to her. Why? Because most women aren't prepared whatsoever to birth without professionals. But an unplanned home birth doesn't have to be such a big, scary emergency. In fact, according to Marye Audet, who wrote the online guide, "How to Deliver a Baby at Home (Emergency Situation)," it can have happy results.

Remember that story about the pregnant performance artist in Brooklyn who was planning to give birth in a gallery in front of a live audience and call it art?

Well, she did it. Yes, she did. She actually pulled it off.

Both mother (Marni Kotak) and baby (a boy, who was not, ultimately, called "art," but given the moniker Ajax) are apparently happy and healthy and probably quite pleased with themselves. The birth occurred, yup, in a gallery, in front of a crowd of onlookers at the appropriately named Microscope Gallery, reportedly with the baby's father on hand, at 10:17 on Tuesday morning.

And you know what? As distasteful as this birth scenario is to me personally (a baby is not a 'work of art,' a baby is a person, albeit a very small one), I bet those people in the audience ("family, friends, and select spectators") learned a hell of a lot.

Celebrities were once notorious for being "too posh to push" and going for planned C-sections. In recent months it seems all that has changed and now celebs like Evangeline Lilly are going for natural, epidural free births. Some are even skipping the hospital altogether. It's a huge step for natural birth advocates. 

Over the years, the way we birth has changed significantly and it seems most women just do whatever is in vogue. My mom had two drug-free natural births because in the late 1970's and early 1980's, that was what all of her friends did. Meanwhile my grandmother had "twilight sleep" births where she was put to sleep and woke up with the baby. Most recently, most women opted for he epidural, which sometimes brings with it a string of interventions that lead to C-sections.

Obviously, it is not the only cause of the higher C-section rate, but it certainly plays a role. So celebrities are really setting the bar and I am so glad they are going back to basics.