My journey - Pt 1

I don't know of anyone in homebirth who came to it by sudden, conscious decision - whether midwife or parents. At least no one I can think of woke up one morning and said, "I am going to have my baby at home!" or "I am going to be a midwife." For almost everyone I know, it was a process that brought them to that choice, or to that place.

For me it was a long process that started with my first pregnancy - age 23 - and a discussion with my brother-in-law and his wife, who had had a baby at home. They had tried it the hospital way, as I was about to do, and had found a better way at home. I remember the conversation and how they challenged my knowledge, which was nill, and my decision. They might not have been the most tactful, but they started me on my journey. I knew that natural birth was the best way and I wanted to have my baby without medication, but by golly, I was going to be just fine in the hospital.

I had taken the doctor's office childbirth "education" class and nothing else. Looking back on it I realized that it was a course about how to handle labor until you get your epidural, but at the time I thought I could handle it and do just fine - that my desire was enough.

Of course it was not enough and I had an epidural - as the baby was moving down the birth canal. I told them that I felt like I wanted to push, but they did not bother to check my before the epidural was placed. They did a check after and wheeled me directly into the delivery room. My doctor did not make it and my baby was delivered by a resident. No problem, it didn't change anything. I got my episiotomy and the baby was taken to the corner of the room not to be seen until I was safely in my room.

Even then, I felt like it took an act of Congress to get her brought to me and when I saw her for the first time I felt like I didn't have permission to unwrap her and count toes. I was a submissive young woman, I guess, because I didn't see her until we were dressing her for her ride home a couple of days later. Then they loaded me into a wheel chair to go home, they carried my baby to my car and we left, not knowing the first thing about being parents, nor having any trust in our abilities.

That was the beginning of my road. I knew at that time that birth could be better, that nature and mothers and fathers could be trusted with the process, that babies could - and should - be born in a place where everyone involved is more than a number, but a woman, a man, a baby - a family. That mothers could be trusted to have the best interest of their child at heart and to know what they need to do to give birth. That fathers could be trusted to love their wife and their baby and to move heaven and earth to protect and support them. That babies could be trusted to know what they need to do to help the process as long as they are not medicated. That the process could be trusted to work the vast majority of the time.

Is medical intervention a good thing? Sometimes. And when it is indicated I am grateful for it. But we have turned birth into a mechanized, fearful game of numbers and outcomes. The sweet experience of the birth of a child has been squeezed out of the birth process. It is time to get it back. It is time to TAKE it back.

Historically it was midwives who preserved the sanctity of the bringing forth new life. It has been midwives who have wrested it from the impersonal experience that birth has become in this country. It will be midwives who continue to protect the birth of babies and mothers and fathers - families - into the future. At least I hope that is true, but that is a subject for another post.

Midwifery is the ideal model of care - hospital, birth center, home. But for most women and babies, home is the best, safest, most natural place to give birth.

Why this blog?

Birth is the most miraculous event that happens on the earth. The bringing forth of a new human being, with all the potential that that child carries from Heaven is the most important thing that can happen in the course of the development of the family.

I started this blog to celebrate that joyous event and to broaden the understanding of birth generally and homebirth specifically.

For most women, home is the safest place to bring a new child into the world - into the welcoming arms of the people who love it before it is born, into the arms of it's family. The woman is embraced, comforted and encouraged by the people who love her and her child, and care the most for the well-being of both of them.