This is a long post. People have a lot of strong feelings about home birth and I think the majority of the American population does not support it, especially obstetricians. Nonetheless, I have done my research. I have been in the natural/home birth community for a while now. I can say that it is truly a beautiful and safe practice, and women who do it will tell you that they’ll never walk into a hospital for a birth if they can help it.
What I’ve been hearing from a lot of people recently, upon discovering that we are planning a home birth, is how “brave” I must be for doing this. I don’t think of myself as brave at all. Rather, I would consider myself brave for going into a hospital. I used to think all babies were born in a hospital and for those women who didn’t have hospitals.. well, they managed somehow but I had no clue. I actually remember thinking that before hospitals, babies had to survive otherwise we would not have a world full of people today. The truth is, most women don’t need hospitals in the world. The female body was made to birth babies, along with processing all the complex hormonal changes that occur when a woman is in labor.
You might read a statistic that says 1 in 4 babies are born via c-section. The most recent statistic, however, is that 1 in 3 babies are born via c-section. 33% of babies. Among the 4 women I know besides myself who are pregnant, the chances are that at least one of us will deliver by c-section. I am definitely terrified of having a c-section. It is major surgery, and although doctors do it all the time, it is not without major consequences. One of my reasons for wanting a home birth is so that I am able to labor in the water, move around, and receive constant support and medical expertise from my midwife, who will be there by my side 100% of the time. This reduces the need for intervention and decreases the chance that I will need a transfer or emergency c-section. If I do have to have a c-section, I’ll probably cry, but I’ll get over it. What’s important is the safety of me and my little girl.
The medical community can easily scare us into thinking that birth is so dangerous. There are so many “what ifs” that you can be easily overwhelmed into thinking that a hospital is the only safe place to have a baby. Well, statistically for healthy mothers and babies, that is plain wrong. If you choose to have your baby in a birth center or at home you are a bad mother and risking your baby’s life, according to some people. Plain and simple, most hospital staff like to control your labor and birth. They like to put you on a clock and get you out, so the next mom can get in. The more babies delivered in one day means more money and more surgeries. Hospitals make more money off c-sections than any other procedure. And due to the fact that families will quickly sue a doctor if there is a bad outcome, too many doctors now believe that the safest way to take care of any problem is to cut the baby out of the mother’s womb. They can’t get sued if they “did everything they could.” What is REALLY in question here is whether or not they did the right things to begin with. Did they start pain medications too early and it stressed the baby out? Did they not allow the mother to move around, so she experienced extreme pain while having to just lay in bed? Gravity makes babies come out. Did they prevent the woman from feeling like she was the one who could make decisions, or did they guilt her into taking medications that would make for a faster labor, not a necessarily safer one? Did they break her water too early and now she is at a high risk of infection? There are so many possible outcomes when you go into the hospital, and I’m trying to avoid unnecessary intervention more than anything.
Yes, you can have a natural, non-intervention birth in the hospital, it is just very difficult unless you have spoken with your doctor at great length. Seeing a midwife in the hospital, which Dave and I already considered, is also a great option. A free-standing birth center detached from a hospital might be a great place for you to have a calm and relaxing birth, as well. It has all the comforts of home with medical technology available, although they have all the supplies that a midwife would bring to a home birth, as well. A birth center might be a better option if your home is far away from a hospital, since many birth centers are a short distance from a hospital.
Yes, there are emergencies. True high risk women should be in a hospital. Sometimes there is a problem and the best thing to do is a c-section. Not all nurses and obstetricians are bad. Something that is so alarming to me is how the higher the cesarean rate goes, the higher the infant mortality goes. That means that the more c-sections we perform, the more babies die between birth and one year. Granted c-sections do not cause infant death directly, there are many problems associated with c-sections that can contribute to poorer infant health, like longer times in the NICU therefore less contact with mom, and lower rate of breastfeeding success due to the difficulty and pain in recovering from a c-section.
I am happy to be giving birth at home. I will be around supportive people, I will have almost complete attention from my midwife who is not only a nurse, but has received special training in birth. She has been doing home birth for over 20 years and has seen just about every scenario. I trust her completely and I know that if there is a problem, she will be able to assess it ahead of time and decide how to proceed. Something that is important to remember is that just because I’m at home does not mean that if there is an emergency I won’t go to the hospital. The hospital is less than 10 minutes away and my midwife or I will decide if I need to transfer.
Midwives don’t show up to a birth with a towel and scissors. My midwife is a Certified Nurse Midwife. She brings with her many of the tools they would use in a hospital, besides an operating room. She has oxygen for me or the baby if we need it. She has IV fluids in case I get dehydrated. She has tools to cut the umbilical cord and knows how to properly stitch tears. She knows how to perform CPR on an infant. She knows how to diagnose hemorrhaging and can give me pitocin to stop it entirely or until an ambulance arrives. Basically, she knows what she’s doing and is prepared for emergencies. The emergencies that could arise without us knowing are real, but occur rarely in healthy women and babies. She has been a midwife for so long that she can catch on early to problems that need attention or would require a transfer to a hospital. She is not just there to catch a baby. A huge part of her life has been dedicated to the safe passage of babies into the world and she would not be doing midwifery today if she wasn’t good at it.
I have an idea of what I’d like my birth to be like. I’m at home. I call my midwife and she comes over. I try to rest in whatever position feels best for me. The midwife checks my blood pressure every half hour or so, maybe takes my temperature, and uses the doppler to check the baby’s heart beat. I am then free to lay down on my own bed, kneel on my own couch, and take a shower or bath without having to detach 4 cords and try to keep my IV site from getting wet like I would in a hospital. My midwife is there the entire time so when I are scared or in pain I can talk to her and she will comfort me, along with Dave and the other women at my birth. I can listen to my own music, adjust the temperature in the room, drink water or juice, eat food. I can wear my own clothes. I can get into the birth tub when my pain is intense and I need the relief. When I am ready to push the baby out, no one is grabbing my legs and counting to 10, making me hold my breath and strain my body. I am in less pain because I’m not on my back, which is the worst position to give birth in. Being on your back requires pushing the baby sort of uphill, whereas being upright greatly assists the baby in moving down and coming out easier. I am weightless in the water and I feel more relaxed. The water helps loosen my birth canal to make an easier path for the baby. When the baby is born I get to bring her immediately to my chest and hold her in a towel, while allowing the placenta to continue delivering oxygen as she is transitioning to the outside world. After cleaning her up and somewhat getting over the shock of having my first baby, we can do what feels natural and relax.
Birth is normal. Women have been doing it since the beginning of human existence. Having your baby at home is not something that is horrible and dangerous, as long as you and your health provider determine that you are at a low risk of complications and someone is there to assist if there is a problem. If we always focus on what can go wrong, women will lose more trust than they have already lost in their body’s ability to birth a baby. I trust my body and my mind to go through this experience. I know just believing in my body and birth won’t magically make my birth happen without any problems, but I at least know that our baby girl is in perfect health so far, and to bring her gently and safely into this would is to birth her at home.
Here are various links to give you more info:
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/labornbirth/homebirth.html
http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/homebirthissues.asp (cites specific research studies)
http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/technologyinbirth.asp
http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/whyhomebirth.asp
http://www.changesurfer.com/Hlth/homebirth.html (a huge list of journal article abstracts listing the method and results)
~Christine
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