If I had a dollar for every woman I have heard say “I want a home birth, but the first one is going to be in the hospital, JUST IN CASE” I’d be a midwife with a lot more dollars.
If only that is how it really worked. You march in to a hospital, have an amazing natural first birth and prove the whole staff wrong. Whoa, what a powerful and usually unobtainable image. With fear implanted into their heads these first time parents are under the illusion that 1) They are safer in a hospital (but apparently only for the first baby). 2) That they are the exception to the rule and will get EXACTLY what they want in a hospital setting. I am under no illusion that we will see a great change in my lifetime where 98% of women will birth at home and 2% in the hospital. While that would be just dreamy to this home birth midwife, I am speaking to those moms who want a home birth…next time.
What will next time look like? Why is it different?
The reality is it will most likely be different but not in the way these mamas think or would like. In the USA there is a 30% plus chance you will be a post cesarean mom. In my hometown of Miami make that 51%. You will have to find a provider to agree to “allow” you to attempt a vaginal birth after cesarean. Your family will say things like “You can’t do that at home, you had a c-section, it’s dangerous” and “Thank G-d you had an operating room waiting for you there, you needed it last time, you’re going to need it again” You will be considered high risk. (Don’t get me started on the fact that THAT is bull) You will be put on time tables, subjected to extra ultrasounds, and at the mercy of an OB to tell you what you can do and where.
My advice: Avoid the high section rates. Stay home this time. Home birth is just as safe on a first birth as a second. Trust your body, it was built to birth. Trust your instinct and research and find a midwife that has experience and the knowledge to recognize signs and symptoms early that intervention is needed. Don’t fear birth, fear the practice of obstetrics.
You are 3 times more likely to have a c-section if you choose a hospital birth than a home birth. And with all this surgery and technology we have 42 countries that have better outcomes than we do.
I’ll stay home….just in case!
With #2, I said exactly that. My first was a planned cesarean due to a birth defect, & I planned a natural hospital VBAC with #2. I wanted a homebirth, but I wasn’t ready to jump into it yet. I said “NEXT time after I get this VBAC & know what to expect, I will have a homebirth.” Well, I did have a homebirth next time with #3. . . but certainly not because the hospital experience showed me I could do it. Instead, the hospital experience left me traumatized & with another scar on my uterus. So yes, I did have a homebirth NEXT time, but if I had just gone for it in the first place, I would have saved myself a lot of trauma.
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I used to say this! bear with me, because I did change my mind. I was 11 when I first heard of home birth, and decided I would do that when I grew up/had kids. but I was afraid of not being able to go without pain meds, so I figured I’d do one in the hospital, see how it goes…
I was 17 when I changed my mind. I didn’t have my first child until 6 years later! I guess I’m lucky in that I knew people who had home births. what changed my mind at age 17? an older mom talking about having had her 4th baby at home–with no episiotomy. no episiotomy? SIGN ME UP!
…ohhhhh, and if I had a dollar for every beautiful first-time Mom I admitted to a hospital bed accompanied by her support person(s) and her doula(s) and her education and desires and accoutrement for a peaceful, natural birth and thought, “why oh why did you NOT do this at home??!” (sigh) – I’d be an OB Nurse that didn’t need to be at work so much. (wink)
Great post! May I include it in my first ever blog carnival?
This IS a powerful “myth” and one that is very prevalent!
I’ve tried to turn this around some when I hear it, and mention the risks (like you write, about section rates, etc.) and how the choices you make for your first birth will affect all the rest as well. Sometimes it makes a difference, sometimes it doesn’t. :/
My son is now 7 months old. Somewhere during my pregnancy, the seed got planted in my head that maybe a hospital birth wasn’t the right thing… and 2 weeks from my due date, I changed my mind & decided I had to have a home birth. He was born only days later, 10 days early! I call that fate. And I’m so grateful that I did it with my first instead of saying, “I wish I’d…”
This is spot on. I was totally that mom. I showed up at the hospital 10cm and pushing (not intentionally, but by a fateful twist of labor) and really should have just stayed home. I got to L&D where I was the center of this blinding hurricane of nurses, staff, doctors. My memories of those moments are all a blur. It was an unmedicated birth, but to me it was far from natural. Baby #2 was a peaceful birth center birth, and #3 was a beautiful home birth.
I have often said the same thing! I have heard so many moms say they want a homebirth “next time,” and invariably, they have iatrogenic complications. Either they or their husbands or both are convinced that modern technology SAVED THEIR LIVES and, like you said, “Thank G-d that we were in the hospital or we would have both died!” A few mothers I know have since learned that their situations were preventable and they want a different result the next time, but they could not convince their husbands that homebirths are safer for low-risk, healthy mothers with a skilled midwife.
I was almost that mom. I started out thinking that I didn’t know what birth would be like for me, so maybe I should start out in the hospital. But I grew closer to friends who had home births, did more research on interventive birth, and realized that my husband and I would be fighting constantly just to get a physiologically normal birth at any area hospital. At some point I also realized that if birth without medication was truly what I wanted for my and my baby’s sake, then I needed to stop doubting my body and start putting myself in the situation in which I was most likely to achieve my goals.
I think that going to the hospital despite wanting a home birth comes from unaddressed, often unconscious fears. When we address a fear, we see where it’s coming from and whether it’s worth listening to. But sometimes we have to dig through layers of media influence and social influence to realize that many of our fears about birth are not even our own, and that the fears others want us to have are not based on any rationality or evidence.
Oh, wow. That was me. I wanted a homebirth, but my husband said, “Maybe next time.”
I had a train-wreck induction turned emergency c-section.
My next baby *was* a homebirth. So was the next. I’ll never give birth in a hospital again, unless there is a *real* medical need for it.
Planning my third HBAC for November!
So true. My daughter said that she wants to go to hosp first time too. She is only 10 mind you. Knowing what I know its a worry she will labour ‘too long’ end up with the cascade which leads to a c/s and make the next time a HBAC?
I know I learned the long hard way – having 3 hospital births before I finally decided I needed to stay home. Saved only by short labours in hosp I had minimal interventions but I still had to deal with trauma that I didn’t experience in my hb.
I chose to stay home, and it was the most perfect day of my life. Surrounded by everyone who loves me I have my baby girl in our tub. A year and 17 days later our youngest was welcomed right into daddy’s arms. =)
I want a home birth next time! We planned a home birth this time, but found out about a birth defect at 28 weeks and had a high-risk (albeit vaginal) hospital birth. But barring anything like that happening again, our next baby WILL be a home birth!
I desperately want to have my first baby at home (I am not pregnant right now, but we are hoping to be soon!) but I am nearly positive that I will end up at the hospital. Not because of any feeling that I need to be, but I would most likely end up in the hospital simply because I can’t afford a home birth. My insurance (and unfortunantly most insurance companies around here) refuse to cover homebirths. So unfortunantly a hospital birth would be free, and a homebirth would need to be payed in full out of pocket
I wish insurance companies would become more open to other options!!
I did try for home birth the first time and sadly ended up in a transport and a c-section. I simply didn’t dilate.
Second and third babies were born at home!
I’m that mom that said ‘I’ll have a home birth for the next one’ and had a most wonderful, unmedicated birth after 12 hours of labour (incl 6 at home – I learnt that beforehand) and I wish I’d had the homebirth first time around! Although, on the other hand, I’m kind of glad I did to remind the doctor and nurses that it is still *possible* to give birth without intervention… I’m almost tempted to go to the hospital again for that reason, but I almost think it won’t have as much impact the second time. So I do try and convince as many moms as I can to do homebirths or at least a midwife assisted hospital birth (possible at one hospital in the town I live in in South Africa through the ONE private midwife here) to avoid that first caesar. Caesar rates at private hospitals here: 70% upward… sickening!
Stephanie, my insurance doesn’t cover home birth, either. Homebirths are sooo much less expensive than hospital births, especially if you consider that you are more likely to have expensive interventions at the hospital.
If I could trade the $1800 I would have paid for the homebirth to not have this permanent c-section scar, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
I made an appointment at a birth center at the start of my pregnancy (i had no idea how else to find a midwife even!). I was so devastated to learn that medicare/medicaid don’t cover out of hospital births in my state. My budget is stretched to its ends. I know that home births are cheaper, and I wish someone would explain that logic to the people in charge of such things (I hear there is a bill headed toward congress, but who knows when or if it will pass.
I sobbed for the first three days after that appointment. And sporadically over the 4 months since. This is my 3rd birth (though its been 14years!) I so desperately didn’t want another hospital birth. I even considered unassisted, but I’m single now & I’d have no one for back-up & I feel like I should have some kind of back-up, just in case I were to be come incapacitated. (highly unlikely, but worse case scenario)
My hospital has nurse-midwives, which wasn’t my goal at all, but I feel a little better than I would w/ an OB.
When will people realize that the “life-saving” interventions are sometimes made necessary by the non-neccesary interventions used? Would there have been fetal distress without the epidural? Would that cord have prolapsed without the AROM with a -3 station baby? Would that labor have stalled if the mom was in the comfortable environment of her own home? Granted there are times when intervention is necessary, but it should be used judiciously.
I’m an L&D RN and I had my first (and only, so far) baby at home. If I *had* to birth in the hospital, I would feel much more comfortable doing so being a multip with a proven pelvis.
I was the freak who went to an ICAN email list and said “Who *better* to tell me how to avoid that first cesarean than you guys???”. Of course, it also helps that I’d trained as a doula during college.
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Great post! So true. Hedging bets always means that there is doubt bigger than self belief.
You know, this is a generalization. I did want a homebirth, but circumstances had it that we were living 45 min away from the nearest hospital (rural state of Maine) and no midwife would cover us unless we were within 30 min of a hospital. Luckily, we chose a great Baby Friendly certifed hospital, where I birthed the way I wanted after a 7 hour labor and it ended up both cheaper ($1770) and covered by our insurance. It’s a disservice to women to overlook certain barriers, like lack of health insurance. Yes homebirth is realtively inexspensive, assuming one can fork over nearly $3k over 10 months. Not everyone can do that. I can think of other barriers that may prompt a woman to choose a birth center or hospital, like a physical disability or mental health issues. Many states, especially rural ones, are underserved by midwives (and hospitals, for that matter). I don’t think it’s okay to paint all women who birth outside of home with the same brush.
I just got married a year ago and am still in college so we are waiting a few years and I kept saying the same thing. I always heard my mother in law (x-pre natal nurse) say that homebirths are horible and you and/or your baby WILL die but yet my sister (midwife) on the other side advocating homebirths. I said I’ll just have the first in the hospital cuz they are probably safer… Then I did a huge scholarly research paper for a college class on it and was shocked with the results! I decided that after that it was home all the way! I love being well informed!!
My mom had 8 home births, one was a bit complicated but everything turned out fine. No ambulences or hospitals needed. I always said I wouldn’t do that. But I have long ago changed my mind. Here I am, 23 and pregnant with our first. Unfortunately I am stuck in Brazil, due to the fact that they won’t grant my husband a tourist visa and we don’t meet the requirements to apply for a green card here (I have to be a resident in Brazil to apply for a US Green card for my husband???). Anyways, Brazil’s medical system is basically social medicine, so I wouldn’t have to pay anything – and don’t to see a doctor about my pregnancy.
I am how ever mortified and already traumatized from a previous hospital esperience abroad gone wrong. You’d think a simple appendectomy wouldn’t be hard to obtain in one of the world’s top ranking countries, medically speaking. I think Spain ranks 7. Anyways, basically after that trauma I don’t trust doctors. They’ve been trained to rely on their equipment, needles, and knives, but I’m really not comfortable with that one. Not again, especially not when I can hardly communicate with them Sorry but I need my own country with my family who supports me in this decision, and with my mom’s two time midwife. My mom and her midwife I would trust with my life, not to mention the life of my baby. Praying hard to God that we can get some type of visa for my husband before three more months are up. With 6 hopefully they’ll let me fly, and it’ll be a killer 15 hour flight. Until then I just have to stay strong and not let people telling me what I have to do get to me.
BTW, anyone know of any midwive’s in the Sao Paulo area, preferably in or near Guaruja or Santos, since we live in Guaruja…
HI Maia, I am moving to guaruja next year and want a home birth. Do you still live there?
Email me at beck1m@hotmail.com
my mother had 6 homebirths with grandmother attending as midwife. I want and believe in homebirth, but my husband isn’t supportive. At age 21 I was diagnosed with PID (not caused by any STD which I always feel obligated to mention) and lost my right fallopian tube and ovary. Now my husband is scared that I will have complications that require intervention. On the contrary, if I’ve learned anything, its that I can and should trust my body. The kicker is, we live less than 10 minutes from the hospital that my ob/gyn contracts out of. How do I convince hubby that homebirth is perfectly safe and exactly the experience I want for us and baby??