Did you know that a planned home birth is statistically safer?
Check out this report from the British Medical Journal on home birth safety
Home Birthing with a Midwife
Tina Rowe-Woodall, CPM, LM
Why Birth Outside of a Hospital?
1. Having a relaxed, peaceful atmosphere for labor and birth.
2. Feeling the security and comfort of a familiar environment.
3. Knowing that she is free to be herself throughout the whole process of giving birth, to do whatever she feels like doing, to move around as she wishes, to give birth in any position she chooses, and to make any noises that come spontaneously.
4. Having no interventions at all, either high-tech obstetric ones, or others that are often done routinely in hospitals, such as artificial rupture of the membranes.
5. Being able to labor without drugs of any kind, and to explore other ways of handling pain.
6. Knowing that those caring for her are her guests rather than managers, and that they make decisions together, instead of having decisions imposed on her.
7. Enjoying a relationship of equality with those caring for her.
8. Having a midwife birth rather than an obstetric delivery.
9. Sharing intimately with others who are close to her; enjoying the sense of loving community.
10. Keeping the family together; having the other children there or close by.
11. Avoiding an episiotomy and perhaps achieving an intact perineum.
12. Never being separated from the baby.
13. Having the kind nurturing after birth that is personal and intimate and very different from being in an institution.
What’s Wrong with Hospitals?
1. Hospital ritual
a. Waters broken when the cervix is 3-4 cm dilatedb. Having to conform to a pattern of 1cm dilation per hour in labor – otherwise having an intravenous drip inserted in the arm and a uterine stimulant dripped into the bloodstreamc. Regulations such as being allowed only two hours, or an hour and a half, or less to deliver following full dilation – before being given a forceps delivery or vacuum extraction because “the baby is at risk." 2. More subtle interventions
a. Hospital gownb. Being put to bed as if you were illc. Not able to eat or drink when you want tod. Constant pelvic exams by strangers who talk over you and about you rather than to you, being treated like an irresponsible child who is not given any controle. She is expected to be a “good patient”, and accept enemas, shaving, cutting, and drugs if she becomes a “nuisance” to the hospital staff My Services include:
1. Complete prenatal, birth, and postpartum care
2. Breastfeeding Support
3. Well woman Care
A Regular hospital birth can cost over $10,000
References taken from Sheila Kitzinger’s book “Home Birth” Copyright 1991
