Why I Chose To Have a Home Birth
And I will choose it again
When I was five months pregnant I decided, to everyone’s shock, that I was going to give birth at home. Here’s why.
The idea of spending the first night together with my son in a hospital made me uncomfortable
This was the seed that got me thinking about giving birth at home in the first place.
I hate hospitals, I hate being drawn into conversations when I don’t feel like chatting, and I hate shared toilets. I imagined myself, open and vulnerable, with my firstborn in my arms, in awe at the perfection of his little face, sharing a room with a stranger, with visitors and hospital staff coming and going.
Nah, I wanted to be alone with him.
I feared I could be influenced by what someone could say and disconnect from my instinct
Although I don’t like to admit it, I am a pleaser when it comes to authoritative figures. I usually don’t shy away from conflict when I have to defend a choice, but I know that if a doctor disagreed with me or said something with a condescending tone I would have probably shut my inner voice and complied, especially given my vulnerability at that moment.
I didn’t want to risk that. I wanted to be in charge of my labor.
As a woman in labor, I knew I was the most authoritative figure on the matter and I didn’t want to give anyone the chance to derail me from my inner wisdom.
I needed intimacy in order to completely surrender to labor
I’ve read about the fear-tension-pain cycle and it made sense to me:
fear of labor can activate your body’s fight or flight response, which causes you to tense up your entire body in anticipation of pain. This tension will then cause resistance to the natural progression of labor, making it more painful. The pain resulting from that tension fuels your fear, which causes you to tense up even more and ultimately brings you more pain.
I had done my homework and knew that in order to be fully relaxed and avoid finding myself in a place of fear, I needed intimacy. I needed to feel safe with my vulnerability so I could completely surrender.
I wouldn’t have been at ease in a room with strangers.
I didn’t want to be asked questions during labor
I knew that during labor the reptilian part of our brain, the most ancient and instinctual one, takes over the logical part.
This is mother nature being awesome and giving us access to all the wisdom of the mothers that birthed before us.
Logic has nothing to do with labor. In fact, it’s not welcomed at all.
Our analytical brain can panic, causing us to fall into the fear-tension-pain cycle.
If someone asks you a question or engages in a conversation with you, though, the logical part of your brain gets activated and takes over, getting in the way of you tapping into your innate wisdom.
I wanted to avoid that.
I wanted to be driven by pure instinct.
I hated the idea of not knowing who would assist me
This has to do with intimacy, again, but not only.
What if the midwife on duty that day was grumpy and unable to make me feel at ease? What if it was someone that I instinctively didn’t like? How could I relax, open up and surrender if that was the case?
Giving birth at home allowed me to choose the midwives who assisted me and build a relationship with them in the months prior to my due date.
I wanted the father of my child to be involved, not just as a spectator
I wanted him by my side actively helping me through the whole thing.
I knew that there would have been times in which the pain seemed unendurable and panic could have kicked in. And I knew that in those moments it’s important that your birth partner brings you back to a state of relaxation.
It can be through words, massages, and breathwork. Most likely a combination of the three.
A birth partner is also in charge of keeping you hydrated and feeding you with small nutritious bits to help you keep going.
I gave birth during the pandemic, and hospitals didn’t allow anyone in the labor room. The father would be called in just at the end of it, to assist during delivery. Not good enough for me.
Home births are not very common where I live. In fact, the most common reaction people have is asking Is it legal?!
It saddens me to think that many women would have made this choice too if they knew it was an option.
I wonder how many women that felt like me have given birth at hospitals. How many of them got trapped in the FTP circle and had to be given medications to endure the suffering? How many were made feel incompetent and instructed to do things in a different way than what their instinct had suggested? How many women felt alone, in that moment of profound vulnerability?
Medical care is a great thing, and I’m grateful for the privilege of having had a plan B in case things went the wrong way. But I don’t believe birth is a medical matter by default.
If you never thought giving birth at home was possible, you now know that it is, and that, as explained by UK’s Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services it is proven to result in fewer labor interventions and a higher degree of maternal satisfaction.
If you are interested in this matter I recommend a beautiful reading by Ina May Gaskin called Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth.
