I had two natural hospital births. The first was empowering, a group of women cheering me on while I pushed. For the second, in the 10 whole minutes I was pushing, I was instructed to stop so they could get a read on his heart and prep the room. I can only imagine what fun we would have had if I’d been there longer.
For both, I thought I could run a marathon afterward, if I didn’t have to breastfeed immediately! I was strong and able.
But I’m one of the lucky ones. I was given a good birth legacy, a “Your body is capable. It can do this!” (Thanks, Mom.) Many are not so lucky. They are told that labor and delivery will be scary, painful, unmanageable without medications.
I think for most people birth is a nightmare
It hasn’t been what a baby would want.
In our births, is it only about us? When are we going to start asking, “What does baby want?”
Money and C-sections. They go together like, uh–well, they don’t really go together. Unless you notice that cesareans cost a lot more than vaginal births. Add to that recovery time in the hospital for mama and babe, medications, and follow-up care, and you can almost hear the cha-ching!
Washington state has a new cost-cutting program that may also dramatically lower the rate of C-sections.
They’re going to start paying the same amount for an uncomplicated C-section as they do for a vaginal birth.
And because C-sections in that state cost on average $5000 more than vaginal births, this will help make sure the motive for the surgery–the most common in the United States besides circumcision–are the best interests of the patient.
We are choosing to improve quality mostly by using carrots rather than sticks.
On April Fools Day, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named, Clark. I wrote a post on how to prepare for homebirthand 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.
The United States has a C-section rate of 31.8%. Yep, a third of babies born in the States are born through the belly.
But don’t worry. Because according to Dick Morris, if we somehow manage to pass a comprehensive health care reform bill, the government will force you to give birth naturally.
MORRIS: What controlling costs means is –
O’REILLY: – is competition.
MORRIS: No. It means denial of services…. And that’s what — just as right now the government is telling people, cut back on cesarean sections. Go through natural childbirth; it’s a lower cost.
Wait, the government is currently telling women they can’t have C-sections? Just where does Dick Morris live?
When I was 15 weeks pregnant, I left his father, my fiancé, and spent most of my pregnancy preparing to be a single mother.
I also readied for a natural birth.
Though I was nervous about the impending step into parenthood, I had a midwife I adored and a host of incredibly supportive friends.
In honor of my Little L, I thought I’d share his birth story with you. I believe in natural birth. And in sharing our stories, hopefully we can empower other women to trust in their ability to bring babies into the world peacefully and without unnecessary interventions.
The C-section is now the most common procedure performed in the United States. A third of American children are born through the belly instead of vaginally. Every year for the last decade, the States has set a new record for the number of C-sections.
Now that I have your attention, there is an increasing gap between the traditional Western medical community and that of midwife-delivered, woman-based care. A couple of recent articles, in Time and in the LA Times, explore this gap.
Here we are, discussing health care reform, and at the top of that discussion should be the way we bring babies into this world. One Oregonian midwife, Melissa Cheyney, has begun to examine the differences in care.
The U.S. has a limited idea of what it means to have a positive outcome at the end of a delivery. Basically it just means that everyone’s alive.
You’ve heard it, and I know I’ve said it, “You got the prize in the end!” Sure, you have the baby, but did you receive the care that was appropriate to your circumstances?
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!).
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.
