Despite the fact that it is illegal, we are currently planning a home birth for our 2nd child due in February. People ask "Why? With all the wonderful technology why would you want to deliver at your house?" even my husband said once, before he looked into things more, "our house is not sterile enough to give birth in". Yes hospitals do have wonderful technology that is very important and should be utilized when necessary but unfortunately it seems like now-a-days its routine to use all that equipment and therefore interfering with a very natural process. The thing with nature is that when you mess with it, it usually bites back. Yet with all this technology the united states has the SECOND worst newborn death rate in the developed world! The united states stands alone, almost everywhere else in the world midwives are attending the majority of births. It is almost an automatic thing now to give a women who comes into the hospitalpitocin to 'help' their labor along. Pitocin induced contractions are so much more intense then natural contractions, so the rate of requesting an epidural sky rockets! Epidurals slows the contractions down to where the doctor needs to administer morepitcocin . The women is in pain again, so what do they do? Up the dosage of the epidural. All these things are putting so much stress on this poor little baby whose trying on its own to find its way out. Eventually the baby is under so much stress that the doctors decide to do an emergency c-section and then in the end say "thank God we got your baby out in time!". Wait...how did this all start in the first place? Think about it for a minute... A Cesarean is extremely doctor friendly, because instead of having women in labor for an average of 12 hours, a C-section only lasts twenty minutes. Statistically, most C-sections happen at 4:00 PM and 10:00 PM. This way the doctor can be home in time for dinner, or in time to go to bed at a decent hour.
I think what a lot of women don't realize is that our Obstetrician are trained surgeons and trained to do procedures. Giving birth is not a procedure and it isn't anything that needs fixed.
“Unfortunately, the role of obstetrics has never been to help women give birth. There is a big difference between the medical discipline we call “obstetrics’ and something completely different, the art of midwifery. If we want to find safe alternatives to obstetrics, we must rediscover midwifery. To rediscover midwifery is the same as giving back childbirth to women. And imagine the future if surgical teams were at the service of the midwives and the women instead of controlling them.” — Michel Odent, MD
I think what a lot of women don't realize is that our Obstetrician are trained surgeons and trained to do procedures. Giving birth is not a procedure and it isn't anything that needs fixed.
“Unfortunately, the role of obstetrics has never been to help women give birth. There is a big difference between the medical discipline we call “obstetrics’ and something completely different, the art of midwifery. If we want to find safe alternatives to obstetrics, we must rediscover midwifery. To rediscover midwifery is the same as giving back childbirth to women. And imagine the future if surgical teams were at the service of the midwives and the women instead of controlling them.” — Michel Odent, MD
Birth is a miracle, a rite of passage, a natural part of life. But birth is also big
business, in fact it is a billion dollar business! Hospitals need to make money and hospital birth brings in HUGE revenue! So its no wonder doctors use all their technology....cha-ching!! They don't want women laying around their hospitals laboring for hours, they want you in and out so they can fill more beds.
Now of course if something starts to go wrong at our home during labor i will not hesitate at all to go to the hospital if that's what needs to be done. We do have a backup doctor that we are doing a fewprenatals and an ultrasound with so if something goes wrong that doctor will be the one delivering our baby instead of just an 'all call' obstetrician. We were actually in a prenatal visit with this doctor and one of the nurses came in to draw some blood and she says to me "your brave!". I wanted to tell her thati'm not the brave one, women who choose to deliver in a hospital are the brave ones. They are the ones who have to deal with interventions and scare tactics doctors use. Now the most important thing is my babies safety, and that is a huge reason we're doing it at home. I strongly believe that it is in my child's best interest to let our bodies work together do what they were made to do. I do not want someone offering me drugs that will hinder mother and babies natural process of working together. I do want a nurse telling me i need to lay on the bed when it feels better and helps the baby move down wheni'm up and moving. I do not want wires and IV's stuck to me everywhere. I will drink and eat just fine while in labor i do not need synthetic nutrients pumped in my veins. I do not want my child to be born in a chaotic mess with people in face masks running around, and bright lights shining in its poor little eyes that have never seen such horrible things. I want it to be a calm, relaxed, quiet, and dark environment to where it comes into this world. Being born is such a shocking experience in itself, i do not want it to be any more traumatic then it already is. I do not want a dirty look from the nurse when i decline the eye goop they put in their eyes, i want my baby to be able to see its mommy and daddy and know our faces. I don't want it whisked away to be put under a heat lamp. My bare breasts will do the job better then any synthetic light would. My heart beat and temperature will regulate the baby's. I don't need my baby to be put in a plastic tub and taken away to a nursery to bathe and to let me rest. I will bathe my own baby, my bed will do just fine for its crib, and i will be too high on my own endorphins to want to sleep anyways. But when i am tired, i will rest peacefully with my newborn right beside me. There will be no one coming in disturbing us every hour of the night. I will birth where i want, in the kitchen, in the bathtub, on the toilet, in the bed. I will have no one telling me what i should do because my body will instinctively know. At home i will enjoy my labor. "Birth is not an illness, it is not something that needs to be numbed"-Riki Lake, taken from the Documentary movie The Business of Being Born.
