Nicolle Littrell

In December of 2004, I had a homebirth with my son Leo in Montville, Maine. It was a powerful, life-changing transformative experience. Through my birth experience and the support of the professional midwives who attended me, I developed a faith in myself–and birth–that I had never known before. It changed not only my relationship with myself but how I saw the world. Through reading, storytelling and the media, I also became acutely aware that my birth experience was not the one most women in the United States had.

As I learned more about the mainstream maternity system, I came to know that it was under-serving women and their children. The US ranks 29th in the world for infant mortality and 34th for maternal mortality. In March, the Center for Disease Control reported the national rate of Cesarean Section at almost 33% in 2007, following a trend of a steady increase in this procedure.

Prior to the birth of my son, I had been working as a filmmaker and educator for ten years; after my homebirth experience, I knew I wanted to create a film that would help educate women and their partners about the choice to have a homebirth; that would challenge marginalizing perceptions about this choice and perhaps, be a part of a reproductive justice movement aimed at creating change.

The project was first conceived as producing one “conventional” documentary film about homebirth in Maine. However, as I delved deeper into the project, I saw that one film would simply not adequately represent the diversity of the people choosing homebirth, the midwives attending these families and the different issues surrounding homebirth. Over three years time, I had produced six short films about homebirth in Maine. With this realization, I shifted the project vision to building on and adding to this body of work and organizing and distributing the films as an educational/advocacy/community-building website/web channel.

In addition to this project, I am a graduate student finishing up my Master’s at the University of Maine. I live in Belfast, which boasts two thriving homebirth midwifery practices in the downtown area. In my free time I garden, swim, cook, do yoga and romp around with my 6-year old son Leo and my partner, Jim.