Hilary Duff just gave birth, and the experience was very different in comparison to the first time she was in labor, People is reporting. Duff, who was already a mother to 6-year-old Luca Cruz, gave birth to a baby girl named Banks Violet on October 25. While Luca, her first child, was born in a hospital, Duff opted to have baby Banks at her home. Duff explained that she started considering this option during her first trimester.
“I just started thinking that I wanted a different experience,” Duff said.
“I’m older now — I love motherhood more than anything. I never thought it could be this way. I never thought I could be so happy and so fulfilled. And I thought to myself that I want to get the full experience of what it is to bring a baby into the world and how incredible our bodies are. My body gave me this incredible little boy and now I get to have this little girl and I want to experience it to the fullest.”
While she had an epidural when giving birth to her son, this time around Duff wanted the experience to be drug-free. She consulted her boyfriend, Matthew Koma, about the idea of a home birth after watching the documentary The Business of Being Born . Duff said Koma was supportive and even conducted research of his own. Duff also had to do a lot of prep work and watched tons of videos online of home births to get an idea of what it was like. She also had to make sure the house was suitable to give birth in and sterilized the home.
In addition, she enlisted three midwives and a doula to help with the home birth. She was, however, nervous about “enduring contractions” and things not going according to plan. If she did end up having to go to a hospital and not give birth at home, she admitted she would have felt like she “failed.” Koma once again gave her his support and helped reassure her.
“If we go to the hospital and you get an epidural, so what?” she recalled him saying. “You labored at home and then you’re going to the hospital to have your baby. There’s no failure here. We’re gonna end up with a baby at the end of this,” he said.
Much to Duff’s delight, she was able to have the child at home. The actress and singer has already uploaded plenty of pictures to her Instagram of what she says is a “magic” little girl.
