Whenever I meet with parents for a postpartum visit, I ask them what they liked about their birth. The first response is usually, “Oh, I loved the hot rocks!” Sometimes, it is the second response, so it goes: “When you rubbed my back…and oh, I loved the hot rocks!” These aren’t just regular rocks. They are large basalt massage stones that are shiny, and smooth, and oh-so-special. They go in a tiny crock pot of hot water and oils that greet everyone with a warm welcome whenever they enter the room. As a contraction begins, I place two of them on the mom’s sacrum with some nice massage oil. Her pelvis instantly relaxes and opens up. When they cool off, I swap them out for the other two that have been standing by. After they are done, they get bathed with chlorhexidine and humbly go to bed until the next time.

I would never know about hot rocks if it were not for an amazing massage doula named Shea who took me under her wings when I was a baby doula. She is seriously the best doula I have ever seen in action. I want to have another baby JUST so we can do her magic together. She has this crazy love and joy that just shoots through her body and out of her fingertips into the deepest parts of your being. And she was the one who showed me how to do it, but I’ll never be as cool as she is. I can only try.

Hot rocks are on my list of things that make a birth special. Obviously, a woman can give birth without them. But they help to make the experience more….more than it would be otherwise. The day you give birth is kind of like your wedding day, or the day you graduated, or the day you turned 16, but it’s even more important than any of those days. The occasion calls for details that frame the day in roses and pearls. Life is in the details, right?

And that is why I carry rocks to a birth.