Green Options

On April Fools Day, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named, Clark. I wrote a post on how to prepare for homebirth and so when the day arrived things fell into place just as planned. The day before I gave birth I’d been experiencing a little cramping. Nothing unusual but the sense a woman gets when her monthly cycle is going to begin. I had a feeling that it was the onset of labor so I told my husband to be prepared to come home (he commutes an hour away). Just after I called him he left work because he too had a feeling. I called him in the early morning before 10AM and we spent the rest of the day taking it easy.

The cramping had subsided by late afternoon. I was 38 weeks and 4 days and ready to have a baby! I didn’t realize that he’d really come on April Fool’s day as some had predicted. That evening I went to bed at 8:30pm and woke up with surprise to what I thought was my water breaking. It turns out that I had a high leak which means that baby Clark only tore my bag of waters rather than rupture it. With my first my water broke and that was that! This time around it was a gradual process.

Having a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) could help you have an empowering birth experience. No, they won’t make your birth beautiful. But most CPMs believe in the ability of women’s bodies instead of the medicalization of childbirth.

That’s why you should join The Big Push. This consortium of birth activists and midwives is fighting for a voice in the health care debate. From the press release,

All women deserve access to midwives no matter what their economic status, and adding Certified Professional Midwives to the Medicaid Providers list will help expand access to those who otherwise could not afford it.

A key member of Congress has said that 10,000 signatures for their petition would make a big difference. We’re about halfway there. Read on to find out the particulars of the campaign and pass it on!

Annmarie Schulte and her husband Matthew had planned on a natural birth for their fourth daughter. They had also planned the perfect name for the babe. What they didn’t plan on was Annmarie reaching down and delivering the baby while stuck in rush hour traffic on the I-43 near Milwaukee.

Annmarie shouted to Matthew at 7:48 a.m. after she felt her baby crowning,

She’s here!

As we all know ad nauseam, OBs generally warn against a vaginal birth after C-section, or VBAC.  And in this case, it would be a VBA3C; all 3 of the Schultes’ daughters were born by cesarean. This time, to ensure they’d get the natural birth they wanted, the couple worked with two doulas, a midwife, and a physician throughout the pregnancy.

And whoa boy. They got a natural birth; an unassisted natural birth.

For women of Afghanistan, pregnancy and delivery are dangerous.  The war torn country has the “world’s second-highest death rate in women during pregnancy and childbirth”, second only to another war torn country Sierra Leone. The medical journal Lancet reports that 78% of these maternal deaths could be avoided. The New York Times reports:

For every 100,000 births, 1,600 mothers die; in wealthy countries the rates range from 1 to 12. In one remote northeastern province, Badakhshan, 6,507 mothers die for every 100,000 births, according to a 2005 report in the medical journal Lancet. In all, 26,000 Afghan women a year die while pregnant or giving birth. The main causes of these deaths are hemorrhage and obstructed labor, which can be fatal if a woman cannot obtain a Caesarean section. Even if the mother survives, obstructed labor without a Caesarean usually kills the baby.

There has been a bit of controversy about unassisted childbirth after Janet Fraser, the birth activist who coined the term “birth rape“, gave birth to a baby girl who died. Afterward, the was a lot of finger-pointing, some support and sorrow.

In my traversing this natural parenting bloggy world, I’ve been lucky enough to encounter a handful of amazing, brave women who have had incredible unassisted birth experiences.

I thought I’d share one with you. Introducing Sheryl, who writes at A Much Better Way, the bloggy site for her store. After enduring a bad, bad experience with a “medwife“, she chose an unassisted birth for her second daughter. She was kind enough to enlighten me (and you, too, I hope!).

… at least in Spain:

This great video has been circulating around the birth-activist regions of the blogosphere recently, since it first aired a few days ago.  It’s a television commercial for a bed, and the characters in the commercial are no actors.  It’s actual scenes from an actual family, giving birth at home while a peaceful soundtrack plays, and voiceovers talk about the miracle, the specialness, the joy of birth, and the tradition of birthing at home.

There is no fretting about whether or not home birth is safe.  There is no screaming and panicking.  There is a secure and confident woman with her family by her side, bringing her baby into the world in front of our very eyes.

Those crazy Europeans. They think that–gaffaw–home birthing is safe! Haven’t they heard about home birth activist Janet Fraser and her very personal tragedy? You know the story: an unassisted childbirth ended with her baby’s death, for reasons that have not yet been determined. And now some are calling for her head, while others are criticizing at home births in general (though not the same as freebirthing).

A large-scale study in the Netherlands has found no difference in death rates of either mothers or babies in 530,000 births. Whether you give birth in the hospital or in the comforts of your own home, the stats are the same.

Remind me again how home birthing is a crime?

Guest Contributing Writer Philip Proefrock is more frequently found writing about green building and design issues at our sister blog Green Building Elements. His wife, Stacia Proefrock is a homebirth midwife, doula, and fertility consultant and is a member of the Michigan Midwives Association organizing committee for the MANA conference.

The Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) annual conference will be held in Traverse City, Michigan later this October. MANA is a professional organization for midwives throughout North America. “MANA’s goal is to unify and strengthen the profession of midwifery, thereby improving the quality of health care for women, babies, and communities.”

You can help support the work of midwives.  MANA is working to push legislation in a number of states where the practice of midwifery and homebirth is not fully legal.  While some states have laws that support and encourage the practice of midwifery, many other states are less supportive.  MANA is also advocating for insurance companies to allow homebirth options as a safe, less-expensive and less resource consuming alternative to standard hospital births.

The birth of our second daughter was a lesson in patience, teaching me the lesson that all things in life happen in their in their own good time. And that we, for the most part, have little control over many facets in our lives. Waiting, relaxing, and letting things happen naturally are not things I am generally very good at.

You see, Elly was late. True to form of what would be her later personality, Elly just wasn’t ready to come into the world yet. And when I explain that she was one week late, people react that it was only one week. Even my midwife told me to relax and enjoy the last of my pregnancy.

But that was impossible. I was in labor for a week solid. Now don’t go calling it false labor, because if you would have said that during this time your life would have been in severe danger. There was nothing false about this labor.

Editor’s Note:  This VBAC birth story is from guest writer Heather Garvet. Heather blogs at A Mama’s Blog, where she has written other posts on C-sections, VBACs, breastfeeding, pregnancy, and birth issues, as well as her two boys.

I had a C-section with the birth of my first son, Ryan, in 2004, only because he was a breech baby, and refused to turn.  I wasn’t very informed on other alternatives for turning breech babies at the time, other than the external version, and accepted having a C-section was the only way to give birth to my baby.

I was thrilled of course, to have my new baby after the C-section.  The hospital was very baby friendly and I was “allowed” to nurse Ryan while I was in the recovery room.  As soon as I was out of recovery though, the problems started for me.  I had a bad reaction to the anesthesia, and stared vomiting.  That was the worse pain I have ever experienced.  The nurses were trying to get me out of bed to walk around, but I was too weak, vomiting, and almost fainted every time I sat up.  That evening, I started itching like crazy- another reaction to pain medication.  On top of that, the pain from the C-section was intense as well.

Without going into all the other details, my recovery from the C-section was very long.  After twelve weeks post-partum, I was still sore and having pain occasionally.  I had a sixteen week maternity leave, and it killed me that most of my leave was spent recovering from the C-section.

After having such a negative experience from the surgery, I decided with our next baby, I was going to have a vaginal birth, or VBAC for short.  I started researching everything I could about VBAC’s, and found out that in most cases, VBAC’s are very safe for the majority of women.  I was troubled to learn though, that the majority of hospitals and doctors don’t “allow” VBAC’s, because of the small chance of uterine rupture.

What never was said though, that just being pregnant again increases the chances for uterine rupture after a C-section, because of the baby growing and stretching the uterus.  However, the chances  for uterine rupture was 0.05% higher than having a repeat C-section.  I was still convinced I was going to have a VBAC.

Editor’s note:  Here’s our first birth story of the week from a guest writer! Amy Gates writes about attachment parenting, activism, green living and photography at Crunchy Domestic Goddess.  Thank you Amy for sharing your story!

Julian Emerson’s birth story

Recorded on Nov. 29 and Dec. 11, 2006

My labor began around 1:30 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 23, 2006, (41 weeks to the day) when I woke up to a real contraction, not the typical toning contractions I’d been having for the past several months. This was the night after I went in for some serious acupuncture (with electronic stimulation) at the acupuncture college to bring on labor. I was excited when I had another and yet another contraction and it started to sink in that I was in early labor.

I mentioned that I thought I was in early labor to Jody when he came to bed around 2 a.m. He got me my HypnoBirthing Rainbow Relaxation c.d. sometime during the night and I listened to it with my headphones on to help me stay focused and relaxed. I went through most of the night sleeping in between contractions. When I did have one, I breathed through it and reflected on something I’d read on a Mothering.com message board. One mama said that each time she had a contraction, she thought of her body giving the baby a big hug. That thought made me smile when I read it and so I focused on all the hugs my body was giving my baby for the last time while he was in utero.

I woke up a bit before 9 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 23). Jody and Ava were still sleeping. I continued to have contractions though they weren’t really regularly spaced. I decided to go have some breakfast and watch TV. I had some yogurt, peanut butter toast and Pregnancy Tea and watched a bit of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade while I breathed through contractions. I found the TV to be a bit distracting so I turned it off and mostly lay on the couch. When I got up and moved around, my contractions picked up, but while I laid on the couch, they slowed down a bit. I was feeling pretty tired so I decided that hanging out on the couch was a good thing for now, to save up my energy for when I really needed it.