Letter to a Baby Not Yet Conceived - Anonymous Post

The following piece was submitted anonymously as my family and friends do not know that my husband and I would like to try for another child. More controversially, they do not know that we intend to deliver said baby in our home with a midwife. I’m not sure how this will go over with my family and do not want to find out just yet. 

Dear Baby #4:

Last night, Daddy and I watched “The Business of Being Born” and our minds were blown away. We had heard of people having homebirths or water births or using midwives instead of OBs but honestly, it all seemed like hippy stuff to us.

I’m almost ashamed to admit it but I often looked at women who did these things as crazy for risking their baby’s life. For all I could tell it was just for a power trip. But last night it clicked. The realization of just how broken our maternity system is was shocking to me. I sat nearly in tears as I thought over my births in a new light. Our experiences would have been exponentially different if we would have been one of these freaks.

#4, I never thought we’d have you. With three big sisters, (and really only planning on two of them) you’d think we were done. And we thought we were. We really did. But you are in our hearts so deeply right now, no matter how crazy it would be. You are the hope we still hang on to. We have to make sure life works out to fit you into it. Finances and space are two big factors. Your sisters are still too young for us to even think of expanding yet. But this gives us time; important time to research everything we want for you.

I’m sorry I didn’t know more when I was pregnant with #1. I took a few basic classes. I wanted to try delivering naturally but it wasn't an overwhelming passion. I had no idea what the body was capable of and I didn't give mine a chance. I made it to 7 cm (which was further than I really thought I’d make on my own but I progressed quickly and reached this point after only a couple hours of labor.) For whatever reason, I gave up; thinking I still had hours to go. The epidural was placed but within minutes your sister was ready to come out. The nurse insisted I hold her in as the doctor wasn’t near. I hadn’t even seen a doctor yet. Heck, I was just getting settled. A few minutes later, an on-call doctor rushed into the room and out came your sister. She was delivered by the hands of a stranger. I tore even though there was no real reason for it. Looking back, I see it was resisting pushing that caused the extra strain.

I had an epiphany this morning as I dreamed of you becoming a real part of our lives. The doctors treated #1 as preterm. I had an early ultrasound with your sister that dated her as being younger than we thought. I had regular cycles and knew when the exact date of conception. The due date shouldn’t have really been negotiable by that much. But for whatever reason, the ultrasound tech moved the due date back by five days. It was no surprise that I measured ahead the entire pregnancy. And when your sister arrived late in the 36th week, she was treated as a preemie even though she very much came on her own time.

She was healthy but the doctors were scared. I should have stuck up for her but I didn't know I could. I didn't know that as a mom, her rights were up to me before she was even born. I wasn't given the chance to nurse her right away nor do kangaroo care. Her apgars were in healthy range. She had good color though and was breathing just fine. But that’s not how they treated us. With no nourishment, they stripped her down and took her from me for several hours. It was no wonder that she then showed low glucose levels and colder than average temps. Without even giving me a chance to help her, she was whisked away to the NICU.

The experience wasn't what we planned but we got home a few days later and settled into a very comfortable routine. I was lucky that after the separation, she still learned to nurse like a champ. I wore her often. The natural side of me came through and I soon forgot about the emotional pain and what if’s from her delivery. The time came a few years later that we decided to try again. The second time around, I knew I wanted things differently. I had it all planned out. 

And then the egg split.

I know now that this shouldn't have ruined my plans. I had more options but I didn't take them. I didn't know then that I even could take them. Instead I laid in a hospital bed for months on bedrest, was cut open without so much as a try for a vaginal birth. I was ripped away from my family and faced with a threat of endangering my babies at my weakest moment. I was limited in my interactions with my tiny newborns born too early.

In those moments I failed your sisters. Yes, they were born early and I am grateful to the NICU for giving them the extra assistance they needed. Yes, I needed to be off my feet and resting to keep my uterus calm but the constant monitoring just lead to more scares, more internal checks, more irritability, more contractions; it was a vicious and stressful cycle. The c-section was possibly preventable. I know this now. Sister #2 was head down and ready to go. My body could have done it. My doctor didn't trust my body. Since Sister #3 was breech, there’s no way to know what would have happened. I’d like to think she would have happily changed positions and come out head first like nature intended but I know maybe that wouldn't have been the case. 

I wish I would have thought ahead and consulted a doctor who was willing to do a breech extraction. Mine was not. I think I have a good doctor but she likes to play it safe. And while I always leaned towards safe equaling better now I realize there’s a wide variety of “safe.” I was afraid of the idea of having a split delivery with my twins but I never considered the emotional aspect of what would happen after the c-section and after not getting a chance to try.

So baby #4, if there is a you at all, I’m going to do it right this time. I want to know all my options and face all my fears. It won’t be easy. Daddy supports me as well as a wide community of online supporters but the ones closest to us don’t seem to understand. They see you as a risk they don’t think I should take. They think the things I want are kooky. I wish they could read my mind, feel my pain and my emotions, and understand the excitement that you bring to Daddy and I even as just a plan or a thought and not even as a conceived baby yet. 

I often think of you as a rainbow baby. Rainbow babies are created after a loss and most often referred to as a baby after an infant is loss, a stillborn or a late miscarriage of a little one. I didn't lose your sisters. I don’t intend for my pain to take away from that type of pain because I do not know it but I lost part of me during their births, part of me that I’ll physically heal from but emotionally will always be with me. So even though we never thought of having another baby, you were put in our minds and hearts as our rainbow baby.
Midwives like to say that homebirths are 90% excitement and 10% fear. So this is me facing that 10%, going outside of the normal.

Love,

Mommy 

Mommy is an upper twenty something freelance writer and parenting blogger that stays home with her girls in their Midwest home. Her passions are breastfeeding, babywearing, cloth diapering and holistic medicine. She has three beautiful daughters age 4 years and 18 months x 2.

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Welcome to the Olive Garden...

In case you missed it, the American Association of Birth Centers released The National Birth Study II this week.  You can read the article here.  The findings are HUGE!  I want to give you the condensed highlights and then we'll chat....

The study included 15,574 women at 79 birth centers across the U.S. between the years of 2007 and 2010.  This is a respectable sized study.  About 80% of the women were married and about 3/4 of them had at least some college education.  Half of them were having their first baby, while the other 50% had given birth previously.

Here's the awesome part of the study - 94% of the women planning a birth center birth had a vaginal birth!  This means that only 6% of these women had a cesarean section.  It's true, they were all low-risk.  But in the hospital, the rate of cesarean section for low-risk women is 27%!  Read this paragraph again.  I'll give you a minute...

There were no maternal deaths ("I would have died if I would have had my baby out of a hospital!") and the stillborn/newborn death rate was very consistent with other birth places.  In other words, these babies likely would have died regardless of where they were born.

Interestingly, the rate of cesarean birth in the hospitals has dramatically increased over the decades, while it has remained stable - and low - in the birth centers between 4.4%-6%.  The women in this study saved more than $30 million simply by birthing in a birth center instead of a hospital.

According to Rebecca Dekker, "The National Birth Center Study II shows that when women receive midwifery-led care in birth centers, preventable C-sections are prevented...  Legislation is needed to align payment methods and regulations so that we can better promote the proliferation of birth centers."  In other words, if you are low-risk, hire a midwife, birth out of hospital, and demand that insurance cover midwifery care at a birth center!

For years I have said that birthing in the hospital is like eating at the Olive Garden.  Before I go any further, let me just say that I worked for Darden Restaurants at the Olive Garden for nearly 4 years.  They are a fabulous company to work for.  Seriously.  I got vacation, insurance, incentives.  Sometimes I still miss it.  It's also still one of my favorite places to eat.  With that being said....

When you walk in, you are welcomed by the hostess.  Hopefully you don't have to wait too long for a table.  You have a lovely meal, but if you camp out, your server starts getting nervous.  Because of all the refillable items, the server's section only consists of 3 tables in order to give great service.  If he/she is going to make any money, they've got to turn those tables.  When one table hangs out, it hurts the profits of both the server and the restaurant, and the lobby starts filling and backing up, especially if several tables are "camping out."

When you are birthing at the hospital, you simply cannot labor in a room for hours upon hours, or sometimes days.  The lobby (triage) is filling up and your table (room) is needed.  Even the best care providers working in the hospital will tell you to "come in pushing" because they know that women are much more likely to have things done to them to speed things along once they are in the hospital - things that interfere with and interrupt the natural process.

One of the most significant points worth repeating from the study is that low-risk women have a 6% c-section rate at a birth center, but in the hospital, they are more than 4 times as likely to have a c-section, at 27%!  Some of the reasons for higher c-section rates when mom plans a hospital birth include:

* We need your table - i.e. Failure to Progress - Mom has "failed" to progress within her time limit imposed by the hospital.

*  High rate of induction and not allowing labor to start on its own - A first-time mom is twice as likely to have a c-section when her labor is induced.

*  The use of epidurals and IV drugs do affect the course of a woman's labor.  These are not options in a birth center.

*  Baby is more likely to have heart decelerations with pitocin and other drugs in mom's system, causing care providers to worry more - not just about the baby but also about lawsuits.  The what-if factor is huge and a lot of cesareans are performed as a direct result.

*  We cannot ignore the money factor.  C-sections make more money.

*  We cannot ignore the time factor.  The more time the OB is in the hospital, often, his lobby is full over at his office.  Ever wonder why you wait for 3 hours at your OB appointment?  He/she is aware they are getting further behind the longer you are taking to have your baby.  They don't have time to wait around.  (I actually get this one.  I am super selfish with my time.  I can't stand to wait - on anything - and know I'm getting behind with other things.  I would make a terrible midwife for this reason.)

Personally, I believe at the root of choosing hospital birth is the desire for an epidural.  I believe that if women (and men) weren't so afraid, they wouldn't ignore this evidence about the safety of out-of-hospital birth.  Education takes the fear away.

 "You CAN have an amazing birth!"  -  Birth Boot Camp

Now, go enjoy a delicious meal at the Olive Garden and tell them Banned From Baby Showers sent you!

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