My midwife made a comment this week that made me laugh but got me thinking. I reminded her of my mother’s birth story (my grandmother planning an unassisted homebirth and not telling her husband until she was too far along to go to the hospital) and my midwife laughed and said, “So that’s where you got your defiant spirit.”

I hadn’t thought of it as defiant. I just know I grew up realizing there were alternatives to the hospital and knowing my grandmother disliked the hospital enough to plot to avoid it during a time when babies were born at hospitals. And then to be old enough to remember my mother giving birth to my youngest three sisters and hearing her express how she wished she could have a different birth experience (she was in military hospitals and fighting their protocols when stirrups and wrist straps were standard.) I grew up hearing these stories and thinking the hospital was clearly NOT the ideal. Though I’m sure my grandmother and mother had no idea how much I would be influenced by their stories.

When I was 17 I had a friend get married & pregnant and our youth leader at church had just delivered her first at a birth center. I’m not sure why she was comfortable with it but she showed the two of us (my pregnant friend and me) her birth video - this leader was literally three years older than us, not yet 21. Seeing her give birth in this beautiful poster bed, laboring in the shower with her husband and nursing her baby all in a birth center (right outside Washington DC) - I was hooked! I asked her a ton of questions about it and she told us about her midwife and why she wanted to deliver out of the hospital. I was 17 and I thought it was amazing!

In college I remember ditching the OBGYN for my regular exams in favor of the CNM at the health department - my insurance covered the OBGYN but the CNM was suggested by a good friend that said she was WONDERFUL and she was! And I realized there was an alternative to an doctor? Someone that could write prescriptions and do all the same stuff?? How cool was that??

I mistakenly believed that seeing a CNM in a hospital/OB practice while pregnant with Moira would mean I was going to get the midwife experience. NO. I’m sure there are exceptions but a CNM in a hospital is like an OB Jr. They still leave when their shift changes (unless they have some special relationship with a specific laboring mom) and they’re NOT hanging out in your room providing any sort of emotional or labor support - they’re monitoring all their different laboring moms. It’s still a hospital, you still fight the protocols and once that baby is out the pediatrician takes over and the nurses and the dumb, dumb, DUMB rules about monitoring the baby’s pee and amount of time the baby nursed and getting your vitals and baby’s vitals around the clock the entire time you are there and arguing with you about letting the baby sleep in your arms in the bed if you doze off and the hospital is just not the same. At all. By any stretch.

I grew up knowing that for a normal, uncomplicated pregnancy, there were better options than an OB/hospital birth. That there are options and it makes me sad that so many women have not only NOT been told about the risks associated with an OB/hospital birth but they are not aware of the wonderful alternatives available. And now those options are being threatened and there aren’t enough people out there to fight to keep them. It makes me really, really sad.

And I keep thinking that just as my grandmother and mother have influenced my views of birth, I know my choices right now are impacting my kids. When we tried to share with Christopher and Moira that the new ACOG policies may alter our birth plans, both of them were far more upset than I anticipated. Christopher cried when he heard… I know, I absolutely know that he’s going to grow up and remember these experiences and it will shape his views of birth and when he marries, it will impact the support he provides to his wife. You can bet he’s going to make sure she’s aware of her options so that she can birth where she feels is best…

When Mo came with me to the birth center and I showed her where Emy was born and she said it was, “So, so pretty!” and I said maybe someday she’ll have her babies there. She said, “No, I want to have my babies at home.” I almost cried, I was smiling so hard and so happy to hear not that she wants a home birth, but that she KNOWS SHE HAS OPTIONS. Wherever she decides to birth, I don’t want her to make the same choices as me - I just want her to know that she has choices.

Emy is going to see her birth book, she’s going to see those beautiful pictures of her arrival and being in our arms immediately and seeing us all cuddled up in bed at home when she’s just 4 hours old. That will influence her…

Bennett will see his books, his pictures, read his story. And he’ll read my letters to him as I describe how incredibly thankful we are for medical technology - for our specialists, for the NICU team standing by with arms outstretched to take him and help him fight for his life. He’ll know, they will all know, that we absolutely believe the medical advances were necessary for him to have a chance.

But I hope, I hope so very much, that they will realize as much as we have faith in the use of medicine when necessary to save lives we also believe in our bodies and we have faith that birth can be a beautiful and peaceful and sacred experience. That we had to let our faith be stronger than our fear and that with Bennett’s pregnancy we finally started to get it - that from that point on we became very, VERY prayerful about what medical providers we chose and where we would birth. With these last few pregnancies we have spent literally months researching and praying and pondering about what level of care we needed and where we would birth and with which care giver. We’ve not made these decisions lightly…

Christopher, Moira, Bennett, Emiline, Mojo - you have options. I hope you’ll be able to explore them and welcome your babies into this world where you feel is best.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 9:59 am and is filed under Bennett, Christopher, Emy, Joseph, Kids, Moira. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.