Stacy Keibler describes natural-birth experience

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"I feel like we went to war together," Keibler said. "I kept saying, 'Ava's a warrior. I'm a warrior.'"

Keibler, a Rosedale native, said Lake's film

" opened husband Jared Pobre's and her eyes to options beyond a traditional hospital birth. They went through a long process assembling a "birthing team" of a midwife and doula, she told Lake, and compiled a two-page-long birth plan.

"If I had to go to the hospital, they pretty much couldn't do anything unless it was an emergency situation," Keibler said with a laugh.

The actress and model, who was overdue (though said she never considered being induced), was in labor for 19 hours, she said. Keibler, 35, got through the process by visualizing her baby in her arms and with mantras like "This will pass."

"I had my strongest and my weakest moments in those 19 hours of my life," she told Lake.

Though natural births don't work for everyone, Keibler said, when possible, she thinks they are "the way birthing was intended to be."

"I just want to help educate other women out there because there's so many choices out there that I didn't realize that I can make, even if I had to go to the hospital," she said.

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