Home Birth

This is that post about having the baby at home. Warning, it's a long one!

When I was twelve, I spent a summer nannying for a family who had had both of their children at home. Both the parents were nurses and the mom was fairly involved in the homebirth community. That was the first time the idea of having a homebirth occurred to me.

When I was sixteen, my dad and stepmom had my sister at home. I was asked to photograph her birth, which was an awesome, magical experience. That was the first time the idea of having a homebirth appealed to me.

When I was twenty-one, I lived in an apartment building above Carla and Charlie, a couple whose two year old son I babysat. Carla had her second child in the apartment below mine while I watched her son and then brought him down immediately afterwards to introduce him to his sister. That was the first time the idea of having a homebirth started really forming in my mind - with thoughts of what my own child's birth might look like some day.

When I was pregnant with Sophia, I never considered a homebirth. My mother's labors were complicated - shortly after my birth, she actually coded and had to be brought back to life. Although I was low risk, it was my first pregnancy, and I had no idea what to expect. I assumed everything would go perfectly, and mostly it did... I thought, at the time. I certainly didn't have any hard feelings about the experience.

Same thing with Amelia, really. I did consider a homebirth, but it didn't seem practically possible. We had a 19 month old, Sophia was undergoing surgeries and tissue expansions up until the month before Amelia's birth, our insurance at that time was not great and wouldn't have covered a homebirth, and just mentally and emotionally we weren't in a good place to really think about it - we were so focused on Sophia and my new job at the firm, that my pregnancy just kind of went by. I do regret that. But, again, I don't regret out hospital birth. It was fine.

The thing was, though, my births were just that - fine. They were awesome because they resulted in Sophia and Amelia, and for that they will always be two of the most amazing experiences of my life. But laying flat on my back during contractions hurt too much, so I got epidurals (and if I had another hospital birth where I was forced to lay on my back, you can bet I'd have an epidural again!). My labors were 16 and 19 hours long. I was starving and thirsty, but wasn't allowed to eat or drink. My doctor did an episiotomy without asking or even telling me what he was doing, and I subsequently had a third degree tear. Immediately upon their birth, my babies were rushed away from me and I had to wait to hold them while they were cleaned and examined and weighed, which seemed to take forever. And then I paced a hole in the floor until the next morning when the doctors would finally let me go home. I hated being in the hospital after birth - I felt fine and hospitals are for sick people, I wanted to take my baby HOME!

So, when I became pregnant with Henry, we began to look into the option of having the baby at home. We watched The Business of Being Born, which pretty much single-handedly convinced Davis (who didn't have the personal experience with homebirth that I had) that it was the way to go. I read every natural childbirth book I could get my hands on. And, because at heart I'm still a scientist, I read every study I could find about the safety of homebirth - the conclusion being that in low risk pregnancies, homebirths had the same safety outcomes as hospital births, with vastly lower numbers of c-sections and other interventions ultimately used. I discovered that the midwife who delivered my sister fifteen years ago had her office literally one block from our house. And I called Carla. And I lobbied, lost, appealed, and won full in-network coverage for my homebirth by my insurance company.

And, truly, it was so worth it.

I'm not one of those people who thinks homebirth is for everyone. It's clearly not. But I wish more women knew that it's an option, one that through most of time and still in most of the world, is common. Midwives carry all the equipment (oxygen, pitocin, etc.) and knowledge necessary to handle common emergencies, and their maternal and infant outcomes are the same as doctors for low risk pregnancies. In most European countries, midwives do deliver most of the babies, leaving only the high risk deliveries to the doctors. And, most of all, childbirth isn't a disease - it really doesn't need to be managed and treated by doctors the way it is in hospitals... all that pitocin and the vast majority of those c-sections, simply aren't necessary. I wish women trusted their bodies to do what they have done since the time of Eve. Truly, God made our bodies to deliver babies, and they're way, way better at it than our culture and modern medicine would have us believe. Birth isn't nearly as painful or scary or traumatic or life-or-death as it is in the movies or on TV. Whether they chose to have their baby in a hospital, or a birth center, or at home - I wish every woman could go into the experience with that knowledge and confidence.

If Henry had been born any earlier than he was, if my asthma had not been well controlled, or if there had been any other complications, I would have had another hospital birth without hesitation (which is why I was followed by an OB as well). And it would have been fine, the way the girls' births were fine.

But there were so many things that made Henry's birth better than just fine. Being able to freely move around during my entire labor, to find positions that were comfortable, and to let gravity do it's thing was the number one thing that made the pain absolutely tolerable (I honestly never asked for or even wanted drugs). Here I am sleeping less than an hour before Henry's birth



Y'all, I do NOT have a super high pain tolerance. I took no birth classes. When labor hit, I literally forgot everything I read in those books. I didn't do Bradley or Lamaze of Hypnobirthing or anything. I just did what was comfortable, and it was amazing how listening to my body just...worked. I knew what to do - when to move, when to stay still, when to push, when to stop pushing.

AND I firmly believe that being able to move around and work with gravity is the reason I had a five hour labor instead of a sixteen or nineteen hour labor (despite the fact that I got pitocin in the hospital).

But most of all, I cherished the fact that once Henry was born, he was MINE. He was placed on my chest immediately and stayed there. The midwives examined him while I held him. He was born into a dark and quiet room, into loving warm arms. He heard only softly spoken familiar voices. Can you imagine what it's like for a baby to go from inside the womb to suddenly being born into glaring lights, whisked through the air across a loud room onto a hard table? I thought about that too. Henry never screamed, he was so relaxed from the minute he was born. He still is. The girls woke up shortly after his birth, and we were together as a family celebrating Henry's birth - no waiting on visiting hours, no restrictions about children on the floor. I never had to ask for permission to do anything, because I was in my own home and I was in charge. No one came to take Henry away, or to tell me I had to use the bathroom before I could leave, or to ask me to sign 500 forms. Henry's birth day was just that - a day (well, night) to celebrate and cherish his birth. And then carry on. I got up and made breakfast the next day, I showered in my shower, I napped in my bed. I was home.