30 Celebrity Moms Who Got Real About Home Birth

Nikki Reed & Ian Somerhalder

Actress Nikki Reed shared two sets of gorgeous and intimate photos from her home birth in Aug. 2023. The birth stood in stark contrast to the “chaotic” experience she had giving birth to her and her husband Ian Somerhalder’s daughter in a hospital.

“This was one of the most transformative nights of my life,” she wrote on Instagram. “…When I think back at my birth, I cannot help but feel an almost indescribable love for the care I was given.”

“[My midwives] quite literally held me up when my body needed support, and have held me in every moment of uncertainty since,” she continued. “My goodness, birth is just so damn beautiful, and I am eternally grateful for the incredible birth workers out there who hold the hands and hearts of women as they bring their babies into the world.”

In her second post, the Twilight alum talked about how she is naturally inclined to guard her “sacred moments” but felt the need to share her birth story in the hopes of starting honest conversations about home birth, midwifery care, and how women “deserve better care, mothers deserve to be seen and heard, [and] our mental and physical health deserves to be valued.”

“[In an episode of The Mother Daze podcast] we talk about feeling safe, and why quiet can feel so big when we are used to chaos, and how laughing through contractions and fast labor made this evening so surreal,” she said.

Rumer Willis & Derek Thomas

Rumer Willis welcomed her daughter with Derek Thomas, Louetta, at home with the help of mom Demi Moore.

“…Thank you for holding the most beautiful space for me as I made the transition from maiden to mother,” Willis wrote on Instagram, alongside stunning photos from her home birth. “Thank you for helping me walk through and rise to the occasion to have the birth I dreamed of…”

She shared more breathtaking photos from Lou’s birth later that day, this time including shots where Thomas is holding her hand and kissing her forehead.

“Every moment and contraction and every bit of the pain of birth was worth it and I would do it a thousand times over if it means getting to spend one sec with you,” she said to her daughter. “@derekrichardthomas my partner in crime in this uncharted journey into parenthood thank you for giving me the gift of this beautiful soul and for catching our girl as she came into the world and for holding such beautiful space for me as I brought her into the world.”

Zara Tindall

Zara Tindall, daughter of Princess Anne, shares three children — Mia, Lena, and Lucas — with husband Mike Tindall. Lucas was famously born at home with the help of Zara’s best friend, Dolly Maude who happens to be a midwife.

Mike recounted on his podcast that they were at home and Maude realized they wouldn’t have time to get Zara to the hospital.

“So, it was run into the gym, get a mat, get into the bathroom, get a mat on the floor, towels down, ‘brace-brace-brace,'” he said.

Maude is now set to become Princess Anne’s new Lady-in-waiting. A pretty fitting honor given the importance of Maude in Princess Anne and the Tindall family’s life.

Janai Norman

Good Morning America anchor Janai Norman told Santa in Dec. 2023 that her family “already got more than we could’ve ever imagined to wish for.”

“We welcomed baby boy Earthside last month,” she wrote on Instagram. “Born safely at home with daddy, big brother and sister nearby. The five of us. Our family is complete and blessed beyond our wildest dreams. Eternally grateful to [my midwife] for again empowering me to trust my body and birth new life comfortably on my terms.”

Yvonne Strahovski

The Handmaid’s Tale actress Yvonne Strahovski welcomed her third baby with husband Tim Loden at home in Dec. 2023. She described her son’s birth as an “unreal, intense, amazing experience” she’ll never forget.

“Our third little (big!) boy thundered into the world at lightning speed, thank goodness Tim was there to catch our boy jussstttt as our amazing team made it into our home to help ♥️,” she wrote on Instagram.

Teyana Taylor

Taylor wrote on Instagram in 2015 that she didn’t even realize she was in labor with her daughter Junie until she started crowning, so her surprise birth took place in her bathroom, with her estranged husband Iman Shumpert giving the assist. “It took two 10 count pushes with my fiancé playing Dr and she entered this world into his bare hands!”

Taylor and Shumpert’s second daughter, Rue, was also an unexpected home birth. “Now…when we buy homes, we always find a bathroom with great energy… but not in a million years would you be able to tell me we’d deliver both of our daughters in a bathroom without the assistance of a hospital!” Shumpert said in his birth announcement. “…A healthy child. A little sister. Another daughter. Black love wins….again. Welcome baby girl…we love you!”

Ashley Graham

In January 2022, Ashley Graham and husband Justin Ervin welcomed twin boys at home, the model announced on social media. “Justin and I are so excited to share that our baby boys are here,” Graham tweeted. “They were born early this morning at home and are happy and healthy. I’m taking some time to heal up and connect with my husband and three boys, but I truly can not wait to share more with you all. Much love, AG.” Graham also gave birth to her first son Isaac at home in a birthing pool in 2020.

Gigi Hadid

“I had to dig deep,” Gigi Hadid told Vogue of her 14-hour labor with Khai in 2020. “I knew it was going to be the craziest pain in my life, but you have to surrender to it and be like, ‘This is what it is.’ I loved that. … There definitely was a point where I was like, I wonder what it would be like with an epidural, how it would be different. My midwife looked at me and was like, ‘You’re doing it. No one can help you. You’re past the point of the epidural anyway, so you’d be pushing exactly the same way in a hospital bed.’”

Thandiwe Newton

“I’d never been in a hospital as a child or an adult really, and I just associated hospital with being ill,” Newton said of why she had all three of her children at home. “And I felt beautiful and healthy and wonderful when I was pregnant, and being at home was the place I felt most relaxed and comfortable.”

Jamie Otis

Married at First Sight star Jamie Otis welcomed her son Hayes Douglas Hehner — shortly after issuing him an “eviction notice” via Instagram — in her New Jersey home in May 2020. Her home birth was assisted by a midwife and a doula, and her husband Doug Hehner.

“Doug instantly cried tears of joy,” Otis told People. “Our first baby was a boy, but we lost him at 17 weeks. Of course he loves our daughter, but he’s wanted a baby boy so badly for so long. This is truly an answered prayer for us.”

Erykah Badu

Not only did the singer give birth to three babies at home, but she also live-tweeted one of her births. “I can’t believe it’s over,” she wrote on Twitter right afterward. “Home birth, no painkillers, about five hours, she was a little past due date, but I didn’t mind waiting. Breath.”

Eva Amurri

“It changed my life because it was molecule-splicing, sea-parting, tornado-blowing, hands-down the absolute hardest, most intense, most surreal, and most challenging thing I have ever done in my life,” Eva Amurri, who is Susan Sarandon’s daughter, wrote on her blog of her first home birth. “And it taught me so much about myself, about my relationship with my partner, and most of all about my baby. It transformed me, and at that time in my life I was needing that kind of transformation.”

Hilary Duff

“It was so absolutely lovely and rewarding (and shocking) that after giving birth to my baby girl we hugged … for the first time,” Hilary Duff said on Instagram sharing a video from when she gave birth to Banks. “In my mind I like to believe that she was saying good job mom. Go team go. We did it. Together.”

Kehlani

“This weekend our angel arrived healthy & perfect in every way in our bathroom at home,” the singer wrote after giving birth to her daughter Adeya. “Unmedicated home birth was the absolute hardest yet most powerful thing I’ve ever done.”

Lake Bell

The Bless This Mess star’s second home birth was rather traumatic, because her son’s umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. “I took it on because I insisted on having a home birth,” she said on the Armchair Expert podcast. “I’ve dealt with that since. You could blame the midwife, you could blame yourself, but ultimately the result is the only thing that matters.”

Maria Bello

Actress Maria Bello said that she did feel tempted to say, “Get the ambulance — I’m done,” while giving birth to her son at home. Still, she managed to get through her 22 hours of labor in a thunderstorm “with nothing more than an aspirin.”

Alyson Hannigan

“It’s definitely not the right choice for everyone,” Hannigan said. “I don’t like hospitals and the idea of being in labor somewhere I don’t like at all wasn’t how I wanted to bring my kids into the world. I thought, ‘Where am I most comfortable?’ For me, the choice [to give birth at home] was phenomenal.”

Emilie de Ravin

“It was so nice to be able to just feel what your body is doing and what it can do and going through it with him, even though I know I was going through it with [Vera],” the Once Upon a Time star said of the birth of her second child at home. “Just being able to have … the physical and emotional connection at the same time. As opposed to just looking in a mirror, like I was with her.”

Evan Rachel Wood

“It was a psychedelic experience,” the actor told People of giving birth to her son in 2013. “I felt like I was hitting every corner of the room. Everything was vibrating.”

Ricki Lake

“We are not sick when we’re pregnant, and birthing women should not be treated like ‘patients’ if they are low risk and healthy,” the actor, talk show host, and maker of the influential documentary The Business of Being Borntells SheKnows. “So I think my own experience was so enlightening and transformative on so many levels — it seemed like I had a responsibility to share that with other women.”

Maya Rudolph

The SNL alumna had an accidental home birth with the second of her three children. “[A home birth] was not my plan, but that’s what happened … because the baby came out really fast,” she said on Chelsea Lately. “Luckily, she just kind of glided into her father’s arms.”

Erika Christensen

The Parenthood star also experienced a very fast home birth with her second. “It happened this morning,” she wrote on Instagram in 2018. “And it will go down in family history because babygirl’s own, incredible Dad delivered her all by himself. My fault, as I didn’t know she would come so quickly and didn’t call the doc until far too late. He came straight over and arrived about one minute after she joined us in the world.”

Evangeline Lily

“We decided to have the baby at home because we wanted it to be a natural birth, and it turns out that it was 30 hours of natural,” Lily said on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 2011, adding that five hours into her pushing, her midwife offered suggestions. “‘Really? After five hours of pushing you have a few suggestions? You couldn’t have told me five minutes in?’”

Gabby Hoffman

“I had a very long home birth,” the Transparent star told Stephen Colbert of her 2014 home birth. “She was almost 10 pounds, and did not want to come out. We needed a team of doulas at my birth. Which I had, luckily.”

Gisele Bündchen

“At that moment, I felt like I could conquer the world,” the model said in the doc More Business of Being Born. “I felt like ‘Give it to me. I can take it.’ Like, I just felt so empowered, you know. I felt so ready. You can throw anything at me. And I can take it. I can do it. Just tell me what.”

Lisa Bonet

We don’t know too many details about Bonet’s home births with her three children (including Zoë Kravitz), but we do know that now ex-husband Jason Momoa almost missed the birth of daughter Lola because he was sleeping. 

Pamela Anderson

“It amazes me that I chose natural childbirth. It wasn’t the way I was raised,” Anderson once told Bamboo Family magazine. “…I loved the idea of having a water birth. Natural and at home was the best way to go! I convinced my family that this was a far better choice than a hospital birth and they supported me.”

Mayim Bialik

“Home birth is right for people who want to take natural birth to the next level,” the Big Bang Theory star wrote on Today in 2011.

“Let me birth in the place this baby was created,” she created. “Let me labor on the floors I paced in anticipation, let me labor in the rooms of the house where I mused on sleepless nights what this moment would be like. Let me birth with the smells of the kitchen and the faint giggles of the boy who will be this child’s buddy. Let me birth with music playing, with my grandfather’s prayer books looking down on me, with my hair flowing, my inhibitions gone, the doors of my home flung wide open as if to say: I am open to this process, World. I was made to birth this baby!”

Cindy Crawford

“[I love that] you are in your own environment,” Crawford previously told SheKnows of her home births with Presley and Kaia. “You’re not hearing another person down the hall screaming or ambulances or people rushing about around you. You chose who to have with you. Within an hour, there was no one in my house. I was there with my baby and my husband. I sat and had dinner with my husband, on a doughnut.”

Alanis Morissette

“I think once people know it’s quite possible to have a really amazing home birth — and in my case I have no regrets and would do it again and in the same breath it wasn’t the easiest experience of my life,” the singer told Today. “I think having it be an option is really exciting.”