The act of having a baby without the assistance of a medical birth attendant goes by many names, including freebirth, DIY birth, unhindered birth, unassisted homebirth, autonomous birth, undisturbed birth, self-directed birth, unassisted birth, unassisted childbirth, and UC.

Sometimes different advocacy groups can be divisive and exclusive if you don’t meet their criteria of what “unassisted birth” means to them. It can be a heated debate. Someone might say your birth won’t “count” as unassisted if you have received medical care during pregnancy. Others will say having your partner present isn’t unassisted, but it’s called a “couples birth” – the list goes on and can be so confusing.

Personally, I prefer this definition of "unassisted birth":

any birth where the mother and baby are free to birth by instinct and are given the privacy and safety necessary for the body and baby to birth themselves, without interference, intervention, or being watched/measured/observed.

(This privacy can be as simple as a towel over one's face to tune out the room, or it can mean being completely alone.)

This definition allows so many wonderful interpretations. It allows us to retain the option of having someone present our birth and to still proceed with it in an undisturbed, unassisted, and self-directed manner – like having a midwife over who simply knits in the corner, or giving birth at a natural birth center where everyone has agreed to provide full privacy to the mother during labor.

In my research, I haven’t found that unassisted birth is exclusive to being “without a caregiver, at home” – although it often happens this way. For me, it was the lack of a hands-on, hired birth professional (an OB or a midwife) managing my labor that identified my births as “unassisted” – one birth included my husband and my friend, and one included just my husband.