Birth Thoughts
I posted some fabulous links on Baby Blogorama about birth that you really do need to go check out. I really really want to go see The Business of Being Born (unless of course reading about birth and delivery would put you in tears, then please avoid). I really, really hope they get it to show on movie theaters. I would drag Den to it.
I’ve been trying to explain to Den how important the labor and birth process is to me, and what my vision of it is. I don’t want to give birth here at home, unless we somehow miraculously finish updating the entire house by then. And then I’d still have to deal with the dogs and cats, and I quite frankly don’t want that – or the fur. But I want a home-like setting. I say this again and again – but I do not want to be hooked up to monitors and be laying in a hospital birth. I’ve come to accept the fact that that is how I’m going to MAKE the baby. But I’ll be damned if that’s how the baby is going to come OUT. So what if most people do it the other way around.
The (huge) stumbling block in my fantasies of giving birth in a dark room on a bed with a midwife and a doula is… my husband. Now I certainly can’t fault him for being protective of me and any future baby. The man is downright terrified of something going wrong. Just me mentioning looking for some other birthing centers – other options – near here had him whipping his head around and saying, “But that wouldn’t be in the hospital!!” He is fine with me doing whatever I need to do to get through the birth, but he wants me within 10 feet of a team of doctors – and no I am not joking about that. He knows a major bigwig at the hospital’s L&D department and he has visions of him summoning this bigwig to my bedside to deliver my baby – despite the fact that I seriously doubt a major bigwig would be doing anything of the sort.
I really hope that by sharing stories and statistics (when I get around to actually reading books about birth – which won’t be until after I’m pregnant) and by talking to him about how important this is to me, that he’ll come to understand my viewpoint. I would feel completely safe giving birth with a midwife in a birthing center. I just hope he can feel safe about it.
(The more I think about what my current midwife told me, the less I’m thinking it’s going to work for me. I’m not even guaranteed to give birth with her, I might get stuck with the OBGYN in the practice, and they only give birth at the hospital. I like her a lot – a point Den keeps reminding me of – but it’s just not what I am really hoping for. I would hate to change to someone new, but I don’t want to feel restricted just because I started with her and didn’t want to change.)
Then again, there’s still that women’s and infants center at the hospital that may provide what I’m looking for.
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Tonight my legs and feet are very crampy. Luckily I’ve been catching them and stretching them out before they hit full-blown cramp mode. Not really sure what’s causing this, and not really sure what to do about it, either. Oh, I think I know… dancing all yesterday evening at the club… in high heels. Yep, that’ll do it. (A day late is unusual, though.)
Now, I’m obviously not the expert on this subject (lol) but from what I’ve been told the best thing you can do is go around and visit all the hospitals and birthing centers in your area… There’s two reasons to do this… One, you find out which hospitals and centers have practices that fit your needs. Two, it might possibly make Den more comfortable with the idea of a natural birth.
I know SIL was telling me that she’d originally had wanted to do the whole not in a hospital birthing center thing, but BIL was totally uncomfortable with it… They went and visited some of the hospitals, and the one they chose was really good about allowing people to do natural births.
I am like you, I want things to be as natural as possible. From all I’ve read, laying in stirrups is possibly the worst way to give birth, and medical intervention is helpful in an emergency, but in a normal birth, it’s the cause of more issues than not.
Our county just closed the last birthing center (the center closed due to finances, not anything bad), and so I’ll end up in a hospital, but I’m hoping for as serene a room as possible with as little monitoring as possible.
Thanks for stopping by my blog.
I think the key will be having a doula with you, so that even if you give birth in a hospital with an OB, you’ll have a strong advocate to keep things going the way you want them to.
I feel the same way about birth that you do. After being in a cold sterile office in stirrups for conception, I want to go as natural as possible on the other end of things.
My only birth plan was that we all end up alive, and that very, very nearly didn’t happen despite delivering in the OR. I hope you can work out a plan that you are both comfortable with.
i agree with furrow — definitely get a doula. also, have you read naomi wolfe’s book, Misconceptions? not really a pregnancy book in the traditional sense (though it does go through her pregnancy), but is more about the experience as a whole in america. when you’re knocked up i have another amazing recommendation for you….i can’t even tell you now though because i have thrown all of my pregnancy books in a corner of my closet and am not allowed to go near them right now…
i too want things to be kind-of natural. i want to be in a hospital because i’m such a worry-wort but will definitely have both a mid-wife and a doula so things don’t get too medicalized.
Megan, I haven’t read that one, thanks for the recommendation! I’ll have to get it. I’m definitely eager to hear your other amazing recommendation. (And to be knocked up. But that’s another matter!)