As a Nurse Midwife, I have worked in private hospital practice, AD military, and in a free-standing birth center. You are correct in saying that mindset is everything, and that mindset has to be surrender. You can't MAKE a beautiful, uncomplicated, unmedicated birth happen. You have to LET it happen. This is true, no matter the setting. I LOVE out if hospital birth, but I also am of the mind that the majority of hospital births need to be surrendered to midwifery. This is necessary to foster physiologic birth for those do are not good candidates for out of hospital settings. Unfortunately, the medical community actively works to keep midwives out of hospitals.
I had two hospital births and one home birth in the 80's. The hospital in those days was very different and it was actually a good experience. This was the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, Ireland which was the first maternity hospital in the world, opened in 1745 and still going strong!!!!
The home birth was in the US and that was a magical experience. I felt so absolutely cared for by the midwife and her assistant.
Later I had a miscarriage and the same midwife took such incredibly good care of me. I was six thousand miles from home and family so this was a true blessing.
The daughter I gave birth to at home had her first child in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin so it all circled back to home and family.
She had blood sugar issues during her pregnancy as i had when pregnant with her. Her experience was very different. She had to eat every four hours including during the night which left her utterly exhausted and the way she had to eat was a little crazy to me. I came out of it just as healthy as she did so it seemed unnecessary. I kept it to myself though, as she was so stressed. Which wouldn't have helped her blood sugar.
All this to say I do think in a lot of ways modern medicine has lost the plot. Not every situation needs extreme interventions.
Your experience sounds beautiful. There can be few joys to beat delivering your own child. My father had that too and it meant so much to him always 💗
I love this story. I am currently pregnant with Crohn’s and a diverting colostomy due to an inconveniently located fistula… I really wanted to be off Humira and have an ordinary home birth, but despite my best efforts I had to go back on it, and it looks like the fistula may still be there, so I may be in for another C-section. Glad you all got to do it, though!
Our first child was delivered in a small-town hospital, and came so quickly that the doctor barely got there in time. I was stuck in the hall, agonizing over my wife's cries. The second one, 4 years later, was in a large hospital. She asked the doctor if I could be in the delivery room. He was very skeptical, but agreed. Once he saw that I wasn't going to pass out, he became a showman, adjusting the mirror so I could see everything. It was a much better experience for both of us. The third, and final, was in a different hospital and was to include the two of us bathing the new baby after birth. Unfortunately complications prevented that, but it was still a far better experience than the first one.
A lovely story which completely echoes my own. It was my experience of a hospital birth that led me on a journey of questioning all medical practices and what is actually necessary. It felt so wrong after having a perfect pregnancy to be frightened into an induction and the whole shebang. Second pregnancy at home was so calm and quick. Onto the third now and I think I’d actually prefer like you to have a baby without even the disturbance of a midwife! Yours sounds like the perfect tale.
My babies were born over 30 years ago. I was about 30. Years old. What still bothers me are three things: 1) pre-birth pressure to do dangerous DNA testing via abdominal needle extraction of amniotic fluid, 2) immediate unforewarned afterbirth pressure to have tubes tied as I lay on birthing table ( The fricking nurse pushed a clipboard and pen with authorizing docs in my face. ) 3) and the vaccination of my newborn children.
5 “natural” births here. Like you and your wife, after the first traumatic experience in a hospital I realized that there was something not right about how they did things. Thankfully, a sister and a few friends helped me question and our next birth was at a private midwife’s birth center. There we realized we had just arbitrarily driven to some one else’s house to give birth and our third and fourth babies were born simply and safely at home with midwives.
My fifth baby was a planned homebirth transferred to hospital after 12+ hours of labor and ended up in a c-section for breech presentation (which can be potentially handled at home in a best case scenario - I was a natural breech birth myself - but in my case, baby was stuck).
Anyhow. After all our lovely midwife births the hospital was like a prison. It was dirty, dark where it shouldn’t be and bright where it shouldn’t be and every time we got a chance to try rest, another person came in to poke, prod and otherwise disturb us. And they were so hostile (starting as soon as we declined injections). We left there having had to threaten them with calling our lawyers.
Insane.
Like school, birth is best at home. If that’s not possible, go private with a midwife.
I didn't have a good experience at the hospital with my first child.
I hired a midwife for the 2nd and had a peaceful homebirth experience
One of the additional positives about homebirths is for the whole family to be together and sleeping in their own beds that night. My husband has a bad back so the hospital cot would have been painful for him. I do not sleep well at hospitals with all the activity at night there. I don't enjoy being at hospitals at all. We had also adopted a child before this 2nd birth and she and her older sister would have been displaced if I had left. So it was all so much more peaceful for the whole family.
I could feel furrowed brows and a grimace forming as I read the all-too-familiar account of yours/your wife's experience giving birth in a hospital and a wide smile spreading across my face as I read the description of your second child's birth at home. Bravo & many congratulations! I guess the only silver lining of doing it typical way is that you now value and appreciate even more the miraculous & empowering event that birth is without the inherent pathologizing that comes from allopathic med.
I *thought* I was being savvy by hiring a doula when my son was born, but in retrospect she offered little more than additional instruction in the birthing room & although I knew about the intervention domino effect & was determined to avoid a C-section, other labor/newborn-related interventions injured my son. At the time, I recall her talking about collaborating with an MD who was doing research in various maternal/newborn areas including the rise in milk allergies & inability of newborns to tolerate their own mother's milk.
If only I'd known then what I know now.
Many of us wish we had wised up & not succumbed to the pressure before our own children were born.
My wife and I have done all home births and glad it went so well for your wife and the new baby. My wife trained as a midwife before we got pregnant so she was well versed the in the hospital experience. I basically sat in the corner of the room, being quiet, sometimes holding her hand while she labored.
I love what you write, as a holistic healing practitioner I am loving your journey - home births again- empowerment all round and a wonderful start to your baby's life - love to you and your family x
I am happy for positive experience - it is a miracle in action (which is... natural). Both mine were born in our bedroom (inflatable pool). It was a privilege to witness the natural power, wisdom, intuition, reliance of truly human instincts and body, of a true woman and also truly be there for her. Happy for you! In the end the midwives were there only for over-watch in both cases.
People have already expressed a lot of my own thoughts/feelings, so I won't repeat them. But I will say I'm really impressed with your humility, I mean being an MD, and the way you gave the proper respect to the midwife.
As a Nurse Midwife, I have worked in private hospital practice, AD military, and in a free-standing birth center. You are correct in saying that mindset is everything, and that mindset has to be surrender. You can't MAKE a beautiful, uncomplicated, unmedicated birth happen. You have to LET it happen. This is true, no matter the setting. I LOVE out if hospital birth, but I also am of the mind that the majority of hospital births need to be surrendered to midwifery. This is necessary to foster physiologic birth for those do are not good candidates for out of hospital settings. Unfortunately, the medical community actively works to keep midwives out of hospitals.
I had two hospital births and one home birth in the 80's. The hospital in those days was very different and it was actually a good experience. This was the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, Ireland which was the first maternity hospital in the world, opened in 1745 and still going strong!!!!
The home birth was in the US and that was a magical experience. I felt so absolutely cared for by the midwife and her assistant.
Later I had a miscarriage and the same midwife took such incredibly good care of me. I was six thousand miles from home and family so this was a true blessing.
The daughter I gave birth to at home had her first child in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin so it all circled back to home and family.
She had blood sugar issues during her pregnancy as i had when pregnant with her. Her experience was very different. She had to eat every four hours including during the night which left her utterly exhausted and the way she had to eat was a little crazy to me. I came out of it just as healthy as she did so it seemed unnecessary. I kept it to myself though, as she was so stressed. Which wouldn't have helped her blood sugar.
All this to say I do think in a lot of ways modern medicine has lost the plot. Not every situation needs extreme interventions.
Your experience sounds beautiful. There can be few joys to beat delivering your own child. My father had that too and it meant so much to him always 💗
I love this story. I am currently pregnant with Crohn’s and a diverting colostomy due to an inconveniently located fistula… I really wanted to be off Humira and have an ordinary home birth, but despite my best efforts I had to go back on it, and it looks like the fistula may still be there, so I may be in for another C-section. Glad you all got to do it, though!
So very beautiful
Congratulations 😁🎉
May God bless you all 🙏
Cheers 🍻
Michael.
Our first child was delivered in a small-town hospital, and came so quickly that the doctor barely got there in time. I was stuck in the hall, agonizing over my wife's cries. The second one, 4 years later, was in a large hospital. She asked the doctor if I could be in the delivery room. He was very skeptical, but agreed. Once he saw that I wasn't going to pass out, he became a showman, adjusting the mirror so I could see everything. It was a much better experience for both of us. The third, and final, was in a different hospital and was to include the two of us bathing the new baby after birth. Unfortunately complications prevented that, but it was still a far better experience than the first one.
A lovely story which completely echoes my own. It was my experience of a hospital birth that led me on a journey of questioning all medical practices and what is actually necessary. It felt so wrong after having a perfect pregnancy to be frightened into an induction and the whole shebang. Second pregnancy at home was so calm and quick. Onto the third now and I think I’d actually prefer like you to have a baby without even the disturbance of a midwife! Yours sounds like the perfect tale.
My babies were born over 30 years ago. I was about 30. Years old. What still bothers me are three things: 1) pre-birth pressure to do dangerous DNA testing via abdominal needle extraction of amniotic fluid, 2) immediate unforewarned afterbirth pressure to have tubes tied as I lay on birthing table ( The fricking nurse pushed a clipboard and pen with authorizing docs in my face. ) 3) and the vaccination of my newborn children.
At least I resisted the first two.
5 “natural” births here. Like you and your wife, after the first traumatic experience in a hospital I realized that there was something not right about how they did things. Thankfully, a sister and a few friends helped me question and our next birth was at a private midwife’s birth center. There we realized we had just arbitrarily driven to some one else’s house to give birth and our third and fourth babies were born simply and safely at home with midwives.
My fifth baby was a planned homebirth transferred to hospital after 12+ hours of labor and ended up in a c-section for breech presentation (which can be potentially handled at home in a best case scenario - I was a natural breech birth myself - but in my case, baby was stuck).
Anyhow. After all our lovely midwife births the hospital was like a prison. It was dirty, dark where it shouldn’t be and bright where it shouldn’t be and every time we got a chance to try rest, another person came in to poke, prod and otherwise disturb us. And they were so hostile (starting as soon as we declined injections). We left there having had to threaten them with calling our lawyers.
Insane.
Like school, birth is best at home. If that’s not possible, go private with a midwife.
Thank you for sharing this story.
I didn't have a good experience at the hospital with my first child.
I hired a midwife for the 2nd and had a peaceful homebirth experience
One of the additional positives about homebirths is for the whole family to be together and sleeping in their own beds that night. My husband has a bad back so the hospital cot would have been painful for him. I do not sleep well at hospitals with all the activity at night there. I don't enjoy being at hospitals at all. We had also adopted a child before this 2nd birth and she and her older sister would have been displaced if I had left. So it was all so much more peaceful for the whole family.
I could feel furrowed brows and a grimace forming as I read the all-too-familiar account of yours/your wife's experience giving birth in a hospital and a wide smile spreading across my face as I read the description of your second child's birth at home. Bravo & many congratulations! I guess the only silver lining of doing it typical way is that you now value and appreciate even more the miraculous & empowering event that birth is without the inherent pathologizing that comes from allopathic med.
I *thought* I was being savvy by hiring a doula when my son was born, but in retrospect she offered little more than additional instruction in the birthing room & although I knew about the intervention domino effect & was determined to avoid a C-section, other labor/newborn-related interventions injured my son. At the time, I recall her talking about collaborating with an MD who was doing research in various maternal/newborn areas including the rise in milk allergies & inability of newborns to tolerate their own mother's milk.
If only I'd known then what I know now.
Many of us wish we had wised up & not succumbed to the pressure before our own children were born.
#OBYGNsaredangerous
#pediatriciansaredangerous
My wife and I have done all home births and glad it went so well for your wife and the new baby. My wife trained as a midwife before we got pregnant so she was well versed the in the hospital experience. I basically sat in the corner of the room, being quiet, sometimes holding her hand while she labored.
I love what you write, as a holistic healing practitioner I am loving your journey - home births again- empowerment all round and a wonderful start to your baby's life - love to you and your family x
Congratulations!
I am happy for positive experience - it is a miracle in action (which is... natural). Both mine were born in our bedroom (inflatable pool). It was a privilege to witness the natural power, wisdom, intuition, reliance of truly human instincts and body, of a true woman and also truly be there for her. Happy for you! In the end the midwives were there only for over-watch in both cases.
People have already expressed a lot of my own thoughts/feelings, so I won't repeat them. But I will say I'm really impressed with your humility, I mean being an MD, and the way you gave the proper respect to the midwife.
Amazing... beautiful!! Congrats 🍾💐