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| 33 weeks |
h it and let my body recover. Let's just say I did a lot of yoga and napping this week. Here I am at 33 weeks and growing! Avery has been moving a lot lately, and although the sciatic hip pain still lingers around from time to time, I’ll take it over being sick any day! Also, check out this funny pic we tried below it shows just how far out my belly has been sticking out nowadays...watch out for this belly coming through! |
| Starting to really stick out now... |
Now since home birthing is such a unique way to have a baby, let me fill you in on the nuts and bolts of how it works. The first and most important step of turning my homebirth dream into a reality was to hire a midwife. Midwives view pregnancy and birth as a normal process of life, not as though there is something wrong with you that they need to “fix”. They simply support and monitor women during their pregnancy, labors, and births among other things! Our midwife’s name is Lisa and here is a link to her website. Now although there are midwives in hospitals and birthing centers, my drive to have a homebirth was pretty strong, so I made sure to find a midwife who does homebirths. Although I could write a whole post on why I chose a midwife over an obstetrician, one of my favorite features is that she comes to our house for all our prenatal visits.
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| During a prenatal visit with my midwife. |
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| Showing me how to feel where Avery is positioned. |
Now that you know some of the basics of using a midwife, here’s my Top 5 Reasons Why I’m Having a Homebirth with a Midwife:
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| Using the doppler to hear Avery's heartbeat. |
1. Less stress. Hospitals and doctor offices stress me out. Maybe it’s the sounds, smells, and formal-ness of it all, but all I know is that I don’t like it. Even back before I was pregnant, I would stress out about going to the doctor, even if it was just for my annual checkup. So when it came time to think about my prenatal care and my baby’s birth, I knew I’d be most comfortable outside of the hospital. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a more relaxing place than my own house. How about being in your living room for your prenatal appointments...can't be beat! Now after reading this book, Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth, I had a whole new reason to feel relaxed during my labor and birth, and it’s because of something called “Sphincter Law”- which is the idea that your cervix is like a sphincter, the same kind that you use when you urinate or have a bowel movement. Can you imagine doing either of those things in a setting other than a private room where you feel at ease and stress-free? I know I couldn’t! Here’s a video of Ina May Gaskin explaining the concept.
Don’t have time to watch this video…then here’s my favorite thing she says, “If you can’t poop and ha
ve a whole group of people watching you, it might be a bit difficult to have a baby in that same atmosphere.” I can’t even imagine being spread eagle and naked on a hospital bed with various doctors, nurses, and interns filtering in and out… there’s no way this sphincter of mine would open one bit! Ina May says that sphincter’s are shy, and if the owner is scared, they will close right up…exactly the thing you don’t want your cervix to do when you are trying to have a baby! So how do you avoid that? Go where you’re comfortable, relaxed, and your sphincter feels safe. For me, that place is at home.
2. Choices- For a long time I thought that when you have a baby you just have to go with the system in place and hope it works out for you. Little did I know… you can take control of your birth and choose exactly what it is you want. After watching dozens of birth videos on YouTube and reading several birth books, I started developing several strong preferences for the kind of birth I wanted to have. Some being: to try birthing in water (check out this birthing tub I will be purchasing soon to have at the house for my birth), have dim lights, qui
et voices, relaxing music, as few people present as possible, to wear my own clothes and not a hospital gown, the freedom to move around wherever I wanted…whenever I wanted, and uninterrupted bonding time right after birth, just to name a few. Pretty lofty goals and ideas right? Yes, maybe if I wanted all this to take place at a hospital, but change the setting to my house and it all becomes a little bit more realistic.
3. Having my choices honored. Just a few weeks ago, I remember sitting in my HypnoBirthing class as we went through some “Birth Preference Sheets” first, so that we could decide what type of birth we wanted and second, so that we could give them to our birth providers at the time of our labor to ensure that we could have the kind of birth we wanted. At that moment, I remember thinking how I lucky I was to be having a home birth, where I knew that most, if not all of my birth preferences would listened to and supported by my midwife. I am not so confident this would be the case at a hospital.
Don’t have time to watch this video…then here’s my favorite thing she says, “If you can’t poop and ha
ve a whole group of people watching you, it might be a bit difficult to have a baby in that same atmosphere.” I can’t even imagine being spread eagle and naked on a hospital bed with various doctors, nurses, and interns filtering in and out… there’s no way this sphincter of mine would open one bit! Ina May says that sphincter’s are shy, and if the owner is scared, they will close right up…exactly the thing you don’t want your cervix to do when you are trying to have a baby! So how do you avoid that? Go where you’re comfortable, relaxed, and your sphincter feels safe. For me, that place is at home.2. Choices- For a long time I thought that when you have a baby you just have to go with the system in place and hope it works out for you. Little did I know… you can take control of your birth and choose exactly what it is you want. After watching dozens of birth videos on YouTube and reading several birth books, I started developing several strong preferences for the kind of birth I wanted to have. Some being: to try birthing in water (check out this birthing tub I will be purchasing soon to have at the house for my birth), have dim lights, qui
et voices, relaxing music, as few people present as possible, to wear my own clothes and not a hospital gown, the freedom to move around wherever I wanted…whenever I wanted, and uninterrupted bonding time right after birth, just to name a few. Pretty lofty goals and ideas right? Yes, maybe if I wanted all this to take place at a hospital, but change the setting to my house and it all becomes a little bit more realistic.3. Having my choices honored. Just a few weeks ago, I remember sitting in my HypnoBirthing class as we went through some “Birth Preference Sheets” first, so that we could decide what type of birth we wanted and second, so that we could give them to our birth providers at the time of our labor to ensure that we could have the kind of birth we wanted. At that moment, I remember thinking how I lucky I was to be having a home birth, where I knew that most, if not all of my birth preferences would listened to and supported by my midwife. I am not so confident this would be the case at a hospital.
Here’s an analogy I’ve found to help me explain hospital/homebirth scenario. Having a hospital birth to me if kind of like someone with all my dietary needs (gluten-free and vegan) trying to eat at Bob Evans or Smokehouse BBQ… I could go in there and say, “Yeah I’d like something gluten-free, vegan, and preferably organic, low in sugar, and minimally processed, do you have anything like that?” What do you think they would say? Probably nothing…they’d probably just laugh. That’s what I think it would be like for me to go to a hospital. I could go with my “Birth Preference Sheets” of this nice, calm, relaxing, quiet, private, water birth I would like to have and their response would probably be about the same…"Oh okay, that’s nice lady…now lay down and lets’ get you hooked up to the electronic fetal monitor, start an IV, and this nurse is going to check your progress…by the way, put down that green smoothie! There’s no food allowed while you’re in labor.”
Let’s change the scenario and go eat at my one of my favorite restaurants…Genghis Khan (ha! I think this is like post # 5 in a row where I’ve mentioned this restaurant!) . As I’ve blogged about many times before, I love Genghis Khan Mongolian BBQ because, despite all my food restrictions, I can go there and happily eat a delicious gluten-free, vegan, healthy meal because I am the one who picks out the food that goes on my plate! I pick out the veggies, the noodles, and the kind of sauce or spices I like…and better yet, I stand there and watch them cook it for me. This to me is kind of like a homebirth, in how I can choose the lighting, the sounds, what I’m wearing, and who will be there, what I want done or not done to me, etc. I kind of see my midwife as the chef who will “cook” my food for me, honoring my requests if need be, not doing anything secretly or changing things behind my back. Not sure if this analogy will make sense to everyone, but it works for me!
4. Safer. While most people may think a hospital is the safest place to have a baby, I disagree because my home is cleaner than a hospital, not because I am a super-green cleaner, lol, but because my baby and I have already been exposed to all the germs currently present in my home, thus decreasing the risk of infection. Put me in the hospital where there are diseases, viruses, parasites, you name it…and no matter how many chemicals they use to kill all those germs, there’s no telling if they got them all. I just feel better staying out there in the first place. Even better, I can be as green as I want- no toxic cleaners, soaps, lotions, and other products I use.
5. Avoiding the Cascade of Interventions. This ties right into the “safety discussion” I had above, in how I also feel safer having my baby at home because the chances of me being given common labor drugs like Pitocin, having an epidural, or having c-section are greatly reduced. Granted if those are all things that you want to have, by all means…go to the hospital. But, for me personally, I want to have my baby as naturally as possible, so drugs and major abdominal surgery are out of the question for me. Now if an emergency were to come up and I have to have these things for my health, or to help Baby Avery, I would do it in a heartbeat, but I prefer to go into the labor as optimistically as possible and not seeing these things as an inevitable part of the process.
One of the main reasons, I have higher chances of avoiding this cascade of interventions is that there is much less pressure to “make progress” when I’m at home, as compared to being at a hospital on their time schedule. “What! You’re only at 4 centimeters dilated?! It’s been 7 hours…we better start you on some Pitocin to speed things along!” That is a conversation that will not be taking place at my birth! Say I am at 4 centimeters and it’s been 7 hours, if I’m at home that might be a good time for my midwife to head home for a bit and for me to rest. I would then call her to come back when things pick back up again. Oh and it probably helps to not have the anesthesiologist popping by every hour, seeing if I am ready for my epidural yet! Now if I’m at home and it’s been 48 hours since my water broke and still no sign of Baby Avery’s arrival, I would probably take some antibiotics and my midwife would keep a close watch on me. But if everything was alright with me and Avery, there would be no need for the interventions that would have been started a long time ago if I was at a hospital. Here’s an interesting discussion of the increased time restrictions, pressure on birthing moms, and chances of interventions that take place at a hospital from “The Business of Being Born.”
Now I’m going to leave you with one last quote that sums up my choice to have homebirth with a midwife, as opposed to a hospital birth with an OB…“I am the hero of my birth, not the doctor.” I feel that giving birth can be a transformative experience for the positive or negative, and by putting myself in a situation where I am treated as the “hero” of my birth, not just a victim to be “fixed” I feel it will increase my odds of having a birth that will leave me feeling strong, empowered, and proud. Have any questions about the use of a midwife or how to prepare for a homebirth? Post them below and I’d be happy to answer them!
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| Mmmm....my favorite Genghis Khan! |
4. Safer. While most people may think a hospital is the safest place to have a baby, I disagree because my home is cleaner than a hospital, not because I am a super-green cleaner, lol, but because my baby and I have already been exposed to all the germs currently present in my home, thus decreasing the risk of infection. Put me in the hospital where there are diseases, viruses, parasites, you name it…and no matter how many chemicals they use to kill all those germs, there’s no telling if they got them all. I just feel better staying out there in the first place. Even better, I can be as green as I want- no toxic cleaners, soaps, lotions, and other products I use.
5. Avoiding the Cascade of Interventions. This ties right into the “safety discussion” I had above, in how I also feel safer having my baby at home because the chances of me being given common labor drugs like Pitocin, having an epidural, or having c-section are greatly reduced. Granted if those are all things that you want to have, by all means…go to the hospital. But, for me personally, I want to have my baby as naturally as possible, so drugs and major abdominal surgery are out of the question for me. Now if an emergency were to come up and I have to have these things for my health, or to help Baby Avery, I would do it in a heartbeat, but I prefer to go into the labor as optimistically as possible and not seeing these things as an inevitable part of the process.
One of the main reasons, I have higher chances of avoiding this cascade of interventions is that there is much less pressure to “make progress” when I’m at home, as compared to being at a hospital on their time schedule. “What! You’re only at 4 centimeters dilated?! It’s been 7 hours…we better start you on some Pitocin to speed things along!” That is a conversation that will not be taking place at my birth! Say I am at 4 centimeters and it’s been 7 hours, if I’m at home that might be a good time for my midwife to head home for a bit and for me to rest. I would then call her to come back when things pick back up again. Oh and it probably helps to not have the anesthesiologist popping by every hour, seeing if I am ready for my epidural yet! Now if I’m at home and it’s been 48 hours since my water broke and still no sign of Baby Avery’s arrival, I would probably take some antibiotics and my midwife would keep a close watch on me. But if everything was alright with me and Avery, there would be no need for the interventions that would have been started a long time ago if I was at a hospital. Here’s an interesting discussion of the increased time restrictions, pressure on birthing moms, and chances of interventions that take place at a hospital from “The Business of Being Born.”
Now I’m going to leave you with one last quote that sums up my choice to have homebirth with a midwife, as opposed to a hospital birth with an OB…“I am the hero of my birth, not the doctor.” I feel that giving birth can be a transformative experience for the positive or negative, and by putting myself in a situation where I am treated as the “hero” of my birth, not just a victim to be “fixed” I feel it will increase my odds of having a birth that will leave me feeling strong, empowered, and proud. Have any questions about the use of a midwife or how to prepare for a homebirth? Post them below and I’d be happy to answer them!