She was living in Freeport and was horrified by conditions in area hospitals. Natural births were virtually unknown. Fathers were discouraged from attending births and mothers were discouraged from breastfeeding.

Also, Feral adds, rooming in wasn’t permitted, so mothers stayed in their hospital rooms and babies were sent to the nursery.

Feral decided instead on a “do-it-yourself” birth. She couldn’t find a doctor or a midwife to attend the birth, or even any local Lamaze classes. She visited a family doctor for prenatal care, but otherwise, learned how to have a baby from books she received from the Association for Childbirth at Home, International, in California.

“I didn’t find that to be very helpful in labor,” Feral says. “I paced around the house and cussed. But he came out all pink and cute. I felt there had to be a better way.”

Feral talked to other women who wanted homebirths, away from rigid hospital protocols, and watched as a new movement began to take hold on the west coast. Feral says she was compelled to help mothers in Illinois.

“I was still nursing, and I spent three days and nights pacing the floors and praying and crying, because God was saying that someone ought to do this, and that someone is you,” she says.

“It was a felony to attend homebirths unless you were a doctor in Illinois. I didn’t go over the speed limit. I didn’t want to be a lawbreaker. I had a son. But after three days, I accepted that I had to do it.”

Feral began working with the Association for Childbirth at Home, and by the time her second son was born a year later, she was an active midwife and childbirth coach. She only knew two doctors, one in Chicago and one in southern Illinois, who would assist homebirths, she says, so at first, she drove north to deliver babies in Madison, Wis.

She first began illegally attending homebirths in southern Illinois, and later moved to Springfield to support the growing number of women who chose midwives over doctors. Sojourn Shelter and Services, Inc., hired her as a health counselor, she says, with the understanding that she would be “on call” to help pregnant women.

Mary O’Kiersey, who now lives in Chicago, was one of these women. She called on Feral, she says, because she didn’t trust hospitals. O’Kiersey was afraid of them

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