One of my students had a wonderful homebirth today.
I know their doula, Hannah, that attended their birth and I spoke with her this morning. She was on such a "birth high." She actually works for an adoption agency attending births with the birth mothers. As you can imagine, nearly all these women want the drugs. Hannah really believes in natural birth though. She offered her services for free (I can only picture Adam Sandler in "Bedtime Stories" when I say "for free") to 3 couples in my current class, hoping to get more experience with natural birth.
What a great birth to be at! Hannah had a hard time explaining how different the homebirth felt in comparison to the medicated hospital births she has attended. It really is a spiritual experience to birth your baby in the privacy and intimacy of your own home. To welcome this new person into your family. Not to be separated. I truly wish all women trusted themselves to birth their babies in this way. You have no idea what you are missing unless you have attended or birthed your babies at home.
I have another couple right now wrestling with their insurance over this issue. They are halfway through my classes on DVD and have been asking their doctor a lot of questions, mainly about fetal monitoring and skin-to-skin contact with the baby after the birth. While his answers were actually decent, he said his hands were tied due to hospital policy.
It is a tough thing to change your birth plans at 33 weeks, but I am so proud of couples that understand the significance of that move. It is taking your healthcare into your own hands. Birth is a life experience, not a medical event. Midwives generally acknowledge this with sensitivity, but doctors/surgeons rarely do. Their focus is solely on getting the baby out, no matter what the method.
This couple is doing their best to get covered to see a midwife, preferably in an out-of-hospital birthing center, but I don't know if their insurance will cover that. (Another topic for another day.)
If you have experienced the differences in hospital birth and homebirth, please feel free to put your experience in words.
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