Not planned, but not NOT planned. :D
We are now about 3 months along, and we've decided that we still want to do a home birth - we have the midwife and everything. Not everyone is going to be with me on this post and the idea of homebirth, but for those of you who are: ISNT HAVING A MIDWIFE AWESOME? Why didnt someone tell me?
Back in the beginning of this year we went to a screening of The Business Of Being Born, months before getting pregnant again, and I remember (after reading up on it and watching the preview a dozen times and reading reviews about it and interviews with Ricki Lake about it) as we were sitting in the parking lot, before the screening began, I was saying to my husband "I just want to warn you.. I think that after I see this documentary I might want to have a home birth for our next baby." At that moment I cant remember who looked more scared, him or me. At that screening is where I met the midwife we are going to use. And after we saw the movie, when we were back in the car, I asked him, "so if it was you, if you were the one who was going to give birth, where would you have it?" he said, "oh definitely at home." Well, me too!
The thing is that before we ever started having babies I totally thought homebirth was crazy - like in The Girlfriends Guide to pregnancy where she says that its crazy because its like having a pig slaughter in your bedroom and how would you ever clean up the mess - well a pair of sheets that you dont want anymore and a shower curtain liner to go under it, and all those giant chuck pads like they have in the hospital. They clean it up easy enough in the hospital when someone gives birth there, and then YOU give birth in the room that just had someone else's cleaned "pig slaughter" in it hours before. Which one is grosser? (But I should have known better since she says her first birth was a planned c-section and she says she loves hospitals and she gives the false impression that birth kind of messes you up "down there" unless your stitched up tight etc. Not much of a natural birth guide).
Well... after my own hospital experience, which was by average hospital experience standards: a "good" hospital experience, I realized that it was NOT what I thought it was going to be. And definitely not what it SHOULD be. The nurses are not there for YOU. And the Drs are not there AT ALL! The nurses are really there for the machines and the medications and the charts and to report to the doctors, not for you. They dont help you with your contractions, they measure them. If you really want someone there to be there for you to care for you and help you and encourage you then bring them in with you (seriously - a doula!).
And do you remember all those times that you may have been exposed to a hospital birth, like a sister or friend, and you see things that happen there that made this tiny voice inside you say "hmm that doesnt seem right. It seems cold and detached," like when they scrub the baby's head while it screams instead of letting the mother hold it right after its born, and they act like a screaming baby is normal, and the nurses treat the babies kind of rough ("they can handle it, babies wont break") and they throw them around like they're working the night shift at a UPS hub and these are just packages that need to be shuffled around from here to there, and they ignore the babies unless they're checking something or doing a proceedure while these new babies are laying lonely and ignored in these bassinets. But you kind of squelch the idea that you might be right, that this is wrong and not the way to treat babies because, well, you arent a "professional" so you dont really know. Well it turns out all those little things that we thought werent such a good idea really aren't a good idea! And we're not the only one who know that.
What really made me aware of it was after I gave birth. Looking back, it just did not seem like thats the place to be if youre going to have a natural birth. Its totally not set up for that. Hospitals are perfect if youre going to have a procedure. All they know how to do are procedures, like if you want to hook up to meds and machines. But not so much if you want to let birth just happen. Natural birth is not a procedure and cant be controlled. It just doesnt work in the hospital. Like one of the lines in the Business of Being Born said, "If you want a natural birth, get the heck out of a hospital." So yea, it just doesnt seem right.
Even though my nurse was really nice! and my Dr. was great! But it was a big clue when it seemed like they had to "bend the rules" to let me give birth naturally. like when my Dr. said that I would never have had this kind of birth (what kind.. no drugs? walking during labor? what was unusual?) at the other hospital that we were originally thinking of going to (the one closer to us). And like when my nurse was trying to make me leave where I was somewhat comfortably - well, tolerably - handling some major contractions to hook me up to the fetal monitor while i'm in transition! Transition= when youre dilating from 8 to 10 and its the most painful most intense time of labor and the mom needs everyone to not talk to her and leave her alone because she mentally needs to go into a zone! To be on another planet and not be aware of reality and what's going on around her because she has to listen to her body and just get through this for a few more minutes. Not the time to be saying "ONE LAST TIME.. ARE YOU GOING TO COME OUT OF THE BATHROOM AND LAY DOWN IN THE BED IN THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE POSITION FOR LABOR SO I CAN HOOK YOU UP TO THIS MONITOR? BECAUSE IT HAS A SHORT CORD SO YOU NEED TO COME TO IT. IF NOT THEN I HAVE TO HAVE YOU SIGN SOME LEGAL PAPERWORK THAT SAYS YOU CANT SUE US BECAUSE WE CANT COVER OUR BUTTS IF WE DONT HAVE A PAPER TRAIL. ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU REALLY SURE?" and i'm saying "are you serious? right now!?? dont you know i'm in transition!?!? cant someone make her go away? please not right now!! if you really care about my baby's heart rate you'll get a hand held and check it that way - um the way that is convenient for me since i'm a little busy right now having a baby." yea not so set up for natural birth.
wow that was a rant. but like i was saying. before all that, i thought hospital birth was suppose to be like what i later learned is really HOME birth! you know.. where people care for you and are aware of what youre going through moment to moment because theyre professionals and they know exactly what youre going through and how to treat you so they are the least intrusive when you need your space, they know when to back off and how to be quiet and low key.
HOME birth, where you dont have to have THREE labors. one at home before going to the hospital where youre all anxious because you dont know if youre going to leave too early or too late, one VERY HORRIBLE LABOR in the car driving there where you cant sit comfortably because youre in labor and you cant wear the seatbelt and you cant stand every turn and bump and each contraction is way way more painful.. especially if there are speedbumps in front of the maternity ward at the hospital (thank goodness not at mine!), and one very long labor in the hospital because now that youre here.. well.. you cant perform. you dont have to do any of that in a home birth. youre already there! and there's no rush. you can just take your time and relax. and this is the one time in your life that you do not want to go anywhere! kind of like if you have food poisoning and you need to keep your seat near a toilet. you dont want to go anywhere! only this is so much more so. have them come to you! then you dont have to be grossed out by scary hospital germs!
now i use to think it was nutty to not have a dr. with you during birth if you birth at home. until i found out that you dont even have a dr with you when you ARE in the hospital! they show up when youre pushing! and then they leave 15 minutes after the baby is born! You are still sprawled out bleeding like crazy, normal, but still! you're leaving NOW? all those prenatal visits to "get to know them" and they're not even there! when you show up you get nurses that you never met and you dont get a choice to who you have as your nurse. but in a home birth you DO have your midwife there and you DO chose her, and she stays for at least 2 hours after the birth to make sure you and baby are still doing great.
Yes the midwife is not a Dr. But that just means.. she's not a surgeon. and you really dont need a surgeon! Unless youre going to have ... surgery. So when hiring an OB, youre hiring a surgeon. i dont need a surgeon for giving birth, i need someone who knows things about pregnancy and knows things about ... BIRTH! like, the best way to prevent problems like tears and such. who knows things like what to eat for morning sickness (um 80 to 100 grams of protein a day! definitely not crackers like my first Dr. suggested). like how to reduce the extreme anxiety that i get when i get pregnant (my first clue that i was pregnant again) by taking Omega Fatty Acid vitamins and B-complex vitamins. How if you tested positive for group B strep before, well then you should make sure to take probiotics and eat fermented foods, then not only will you not test positive for Group B, but you will be actually preventing the potential dangerous infection to your baby in a healthy way and not by pumping your body full of bacteria-resistant antibiotics at birth. AND ALL OF IT TOTALLY WORKS!! its really nice because they help you work with your body not against it.
with the body - listening to what its saying it needs and taking care of it to make it work even better. obeying that quiet voice in your head that says "this isnt right" and then doing what IS right
against the body - things like being told to sleep only on your left side throughout your pregnancy even if its uncomfortable.. because we want you to practice ignoring your body's signals for months before you come to the hospital and we ignore it together. trying to force your body to do something it doesnt want to do (start labor) and then act like theres something wrong with your body when it doesnt work (because your body is trying desperately to protect your little baby from them!)
i'm not mad at hospitals. i just think that since they've been doing it -BIRTH- for so long they should really know how to do it right by now. giving birth isnt hard! the most difficult part was creating a human being inside you! it grew from 1 cell to a whole baby in 9/10 months and now you just have to push it out. that it! in fact YOU the mother dont really even do anything. you are just on the ride of what your body does, and you just have to let it do what it needs and respond to what it wants. like - move in this direction, or walk around or breath and sway or throw up or WHATEVER its telling you. you cant train for it except to listen to your body all the time anyway (like when its saying I'm tired dont push me) you dont make the contractions happen it does it on its own. and you dont even have to tell yourself to push.. you wait until your BODY (not Drs or nurses) tells you it wants to push and then you cant help yourself because your body just goes ahead and does it on its own! its really really simple! its not an emergency. its normal. why mess with it? why force unnecessary stuff on women who have nothing wrong? give them their space! not paperwork!! it doesnt help anything to interfere and to mess with it! it makes it worse. and it impedes what is working and causes major problems (pitocin - used on at least 1/3 of births to override the contractions and make them stronger can cause extremely heavy bleeding after birth because it wore out the uterus and now it cant contract to stop the bleeding after the placenta has been delivered. why use it so freely? thats scary!)
so one thing my midwife said was that the time when there are usually the most complications is actually after the birth, not before. that surprised me since i thought once the baby is out its all fine now. It turns out most deaths of the mothers related to birth occur in the first 10 days following the birth. Here on Ina May Gaskins Website I found an excellent article about Masking Maternal Mortality. She compares the United States with other countries who have far fewer maternal deaths. "Maternity care systems in countries with low maternal death rates (unfortunately, the US is not among these) plan for the certainty that some percentage of previously healthy women will be in danger of a late postpartum hemorrhage, uterine or perineal infection, breastfeeding problem, postpartum depression or some other post-birth complication requiring special attention. These countries— Australia, England, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Wales, Scotland, Sweden, and Northern Ireland, just to name a few —send specially trained nurses to make home visits for new mothers during the first ten days or so following birth."
Now this is the part I found amazing about how much safer you are by having a HomeBirth Midwife. Gaskin writes, "Inexcusably, such home visits during the postpartum week or ten days are rare in the US, even though most women here are discharged from hospital too early for some problems to be detected. The exceptions to this rule are those mothers who had planned homebirths, since post-birth visits are considered necessary by the attending midwives. But for women giving birth in hospitals, it seems fair to ask why most US maternity services fail to recognize that postpartum home visits by midwives, nurses, or physicians are not luxuries, but necessities for every new mother."
Its true! My midwife said something like she will visit 2, 4, 7, 10, 14, days after the birth and at 6 weeks (i think thats what she said, give or take a visit..) it seemed like a lot of visits, but now I know why she needs to do it! And she checks up not just on me but the baby too! Now that just seems Right! Like, YES thats how it should be done. Thats the right way to do things.
I'm really amazed at how much you really are getting when you have a midwife. Especially after seeing how little you get when you have a Doctor.
We are really looking forward to this birth. We are really excited about it. We were just mentioning to each other about how much different this time is for us with having a midwife and planning a homebirth. Much much less anxiety than we had last time. It just feels right.
I'm very very glad about the homebirth! And as time goes on and we get closer and closer we are more and more satisfied about it instead of more and more worried about what are "they"going to do to me when the time comes. Its a really good feeling to have while pregnant. It feels good to have it feel right.
