Homebirth can be safer - Our houses are a lot less likely to be a source of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and unlike a hospital, it’s not full of sick people.
Your chances of going through a cesarean are greatly reduced with a homebirth.
It’s easier on the pocketbook - The cost of a midwife is normally much less than a hospital stay or it can even cost you nothing if you do it all yourself.
You don’t have to go anywhere, the food is way better at home, plus you get to eat when you want and your home is always more comfortable than any hospital room.
You don’t have to have all those interrupters (CNMs, OBs, nurses), the beeping machines and best of all, no drugs at your birth. Everything you need is right there. You get to control the environment at home, which means if you want to dim all the lights or open a window, you can just do it.
Giving birth at home is an empowering event for all that are a part of it. We can all trust in birth.
Homebirth is also fun. Your children should and can be a part of the normal birth experience. The whole family can cut the umbilical cord when you are good and ready.
At hospital births we're always on our way to somewhere... either rushing to the hospital or rushing to be at home or to work!
There is no pressure to circumcise, vaccinate, or apply for a SSN for your baby right after a homebirth.
Your get to keep the placenta... it doesn't become a hospital's byproduct, to be sold or dropped in the trash as biowaste!
Hours of them telling her what she couldn't do!
Hours of different drugs!
Hours of nothing but lying on her back!
Hours of nothing proactive
I know how scary it is to just think about having a baby let alone have a homebirth! If by chance this is your first birth, you are both in for a wonderful time and if this is one of many then this experience is going to open up a whole new magical event that you find so much more sacred.
I had a hard time getting past the “are you nuts?” stage. In my mind, the hospital was the safest place to be, they knew what was best for the baby and my wife. Until our fourth birth, when the OBs at the practice Toni had picked, decided to fire all the CNMs just weeks before she was due to go into labor
There was no way Toni was going to stay with them after that. It was going to be hard to find to find another CNM, but I still wasn’t comfortable with the homebirth idea. I wish I could have found it in myself to trust Toni and the birthing process enough to avoid what was going to happen next.
To make it easier for us (that would be me), Toni decided to go with our family doctor. He had the right hospital privileges. We sort of knew him and we could stick with the hospital we wanted. We then found out that he wasn’t going to be there for the birth, but their other doctors with the practice would be on call. It was going to be a crap shoot as to who we might have!
Finally Toni went in to labor, and we stayed at home as long as we could. It had been a long day at work. I didn’t sleep to well the night before. My mother was having trouble watching our other children and kept waking me up; I was very tired by the time we headed off to the hospital in my parents RV.
We got there and were met by a friend of my wife’s who was going to be our doula. We got into our room, they hooked Toni up to the wireless monitors and we walked the halls. In the early hours the doctor showed up to introduce herself and check Toni's progress. She was the only doctor at the practice I never met.
Toni labored for some hours and then a nurse checked her dilation. She was at 5 cm. This always meant that she had a few more hours to go before the pushing stage. I decided to go down and check on the other children in the RV and get a little nap. Toni agreed that it would be a good idea before things really got started.
I was gone for only 45 minutes, but in those 45 minutes all hell broke loose!
Toni rapidly opened to 10 cm in dilation. She suddenly started pushing and our wee new one was quickly moving down the birth canal. The doula started to panic because she didn’t know what to do… there were no nurses nearby and no doctor, either. The doula yelled down the hall for help, and still no one came rushing in.
Toni had the presence of mind to get on her knees to help herself push the baby out and maybe into her own hands. The baby starts to crown, at which time the nurses and the doctor came to see what all the noise was about. They found themselves almost too late to help deliver the baby; they tried to get Toni to roll over onto her back to make it easier for them. She told them “no way, this baby is coming now!!!”
The doctor was so confused about how to catch the baby with Toni’s back to her. Toni just pushed the baby out onto the bed. The doctor and nurses quickly cut the cord and scooped the baby up and moved over to the warming light, leaving Toni to fend for herself. At which time I opened the door to this room, and saw all this pandemonium. I ran directly into the doctor and the nurses, who looked back at me like deer caught in the headlights. Thinking I’d walked into the wrong room, I excused myself and started to leave when out of the corner of my eyes I spied Toni in a daze over on the bed with the doula. It dawned on me that the baby is mine and that I’m in the right room. I quickly rushed in to see if the baby was okay and to check what sex we had. It was a girl! I told Toni we have Ostara, which let her know that it was a girl. I took some time to look over our new daughter. This made the doctor and the nurses really uncomfortable for some reason.
After checking to make sure that Ostara was healthy, had all her fingers and toes. I headed over to Toni to see how she was feeling and to find out what had happened during the last 45 minutes!
What I found were two women, both in shock and dazed by what just happened. It would take Toni hours to get to a point where she could finally tell me what she had been through. Our doula tried to explain how it all transpired but even she was too keyed-up about the whole thing.
One of the worst parts about all this was seeing my wife in shock and not being treated for it. Here we are in a hospital with medical professionals and no one was concerned about Toni. My wife has become a nonentity.
I suddenly realized that the medical profession had slowly over many decades turned birth into a medical procedure, where I believe that they have delusioned themselves into thinking that they are rescuing women from birth. They no longer trust birth! They no longer trust women, their bodies and the babies to naturally go through the wonderfully mystical process called BIRTH!
The medical business machine stopped looking at birth as women’s celebration of life.
Instead they look at birth as a celebration of man’s need to overcome nature, to conquer and subdue the birth process into a widget of an assembly line of efficiency.
At that moment I realized that we as parents need to take back birth. We need to stand up and yell “WE TRUST BIRTH, WE TRUST IN OURSELVES, WE TRUST IN OUR BABY AND WE TRUST IN THE BIRTH PROCESS!!!”
That is why we have homebirthed our last four children.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/pregnancy-articles/why-homebirth-936485.html
It's your birth, your magical event and you can make it as sacred as you need. What better setting could there be but at home? If you would like to learn more about homebirth please wander over to http://www.organic-birth.com
My wife, Toni, of 23 years and I have 8 wonderful children. We've had 4 homebirths and would love to help more families realize this dream!
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