I must admit, the thought crossed my mind, but I was too much of a chicken to go with an option like home birthing. It wasn't so much that I was worried about the safety of giving birth at home, after all, women have been doing this since time immemorial. It had more to do with the idea that I was already venturing into the unknown and not really knowing what to expect made me kind of nervous about the whole thing, to say the least.
My prenatal yoga teacher back in Miami was a huge proponent of giving birth as natural as possible, "the way it's always been intended to be," she used to say, and so she was an advocate of home birthing. She always made it sound so easy and would tell us beautiful stories of babies being brought into the world under the most comfortable circumstances and in the most familiar atmospheres. It sounded so perfect!
I've already written about how, at least with my first child, I wanted to go the natural route: no drugs, no Ob-gyns, no invasive procedures. Just me, my widwives and hypnosis. Sadly, things didn't really work out the way I'd plan them and I ended up giving birth exactly like I didn't want to: via a C-section. I've often wondered how different things would've been if I'd chosen to give birth at home.
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If you're pregnant and have been thinking about your birth plan and where you'd like to deliver your child, maybe homebirthing is something you'd like to consider. But first, you must know that this is only an option if you're having a normal, healthy pregnancy with no medical or obstetrical risk factors. You also have to agree to giving birth without drugs and be ready to cover all costs yourself since not all insurance companies do. Flexibility is also key in the event of complications, which means that you have to be willing to be transported to a hospital if things don't go as planned and be prepared to deal with the consequences.
I don't know a lot of women who've done it, but those who have rave about the experience and so have a bunch of celebrity moms who've gone the homebirth route including Gisele Bündchen, Nelly Furtado, Demi Moore, Cindy Crawford and, of course, Ricki Lake, who converted a lot of moms-to-be with her amazing documentary The Business of Being Born.
Sometimes I wish I'd be confident enough to go through with it because I can only imagine the feeling of intimacy, love and calmness of giving birth at home… the way it was always intended to be.
What do you think? Would you give birth at home? If you've done it, what was it like?
Image via theogeo/flickr
