Letters to the Editor
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2 home births, first 26 years ago
I delivered my first child at home back in 1981 at the ripe old age of 20 and my second in 1986. The birth IS all about the mother. The less stress the mother feels, the better the birth will go for mother and baby. I was deathly afraid of hospitals, deathly afraid of stiches, never had one, hope I never will. Pain does not bother me, holes where they are not suppose to be bother me immensely. Therefore my choice for home birth, with excellent prenatal care and doctors available if necessary. Where and how a birth occurs should be up to the mother and should be whatever makes her most comfortable. There is enough judging and second guessing going on, let's not add to it.
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Hard to describe what I'm feeling..
Closest I can come to it is to think of reading a high school paper where the student/journalist has just discovered that they can use 'naughty' words in a clinical context and get away with it.
Other that this, I cannot for the life of me understand what this article is doing here. It's not that childbirth isn't a valid subject. It's the ridiculous immaturity of the writer and the subject that make me shake my head.
Oh well ... you are what you worship, I guess.
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Doula, pronounced 'dew-la'
What on earth is a doula? -- Anonymous
A doula is a birthing coach, usually an older woman experienced in everything that's going to happen. People who work as doulas can be nurses, or midwives as well. Their role is something akin to a patient advocate, seeing to the mother's physical and emotional comfort when the medical professionals are more concerned with her and the babies' health.
Our birthing class was taught by one. My snarky opinion from our one time through the whole deal was that a doula is a stand-in for a woman whose partner and mother are both either uninterested or not competent to hold her hand during labor. They are not to be confused with a doulie, which is a pickup truck with double tires on the rear axle for hauling heaving loads.
They say the baby has to go to the nursery now, or the mom has to rest, or the baby has to go to NICU [neonatal intensive care unit]. And the baby doesn't have to go to the nursery."
When they sent our daughter off to the NICU immediately after she was born, my wife propelled me out of the room to follow, which was *not* where I wanted to be. My top two choices at that point were 'be with my wife for the first moment of peace in 48 hours' and 'sleep in that really uncomfortable chair-thing'. 'Follow the thing was expelled' was not something I had contemplated.
One of the memories I'll keep forever of that day is of walking the little tupperware cart with the baby in it down the hall and thinking, "I didn't follow her appendix when they took that out. Why am I walking away now?"
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Choice
Personally, I'm skeeved out by the idea of homebirth. Lying naked in a bathtub filled with your own personal recipe of primordial goo into which your new baby slides is not my idea of a 'peaceful' or serene experience prime for child-bonding. However, I think that the bigger point to take home on this piece, and of Ms. Lake and Ms. Epstein's film journey is that we are presented with data, personal experiences, medical advice, etc...and offered a choice, one that was not always available to women.
Whether you choose to have that intimate experience in a hospital, lying up in stirrups with the possibility of caesarian lurking but with all medical technology available should there be complications; or at home surrounded by family with the frightening prospect of problems occurring...you still got to choose. No one should be bullied into either choice, by the medical community, the association of midwives, or the catty comments of other judgmental women.
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Doulas
My snarky opinion from our one time through the whole deal was that a doula is a stand-in for a woman whose partner and mother are both either uninterested or not competent to hold her hand during labor.
I've heard more positive things about doulas; they sort of act as the "project manager" for the birth, so while mama is busy pushing a child out of her body, papa is busy being panicked and frantic and exicted and shocked and close to fainting, and the midwife is busy actually delivering the baby, the doula can be employed to do more practical and helpful things like give massages (my aunt's was a massage therapist in her non-doula time, I believe) to mama, make sure all necessary objectss are available and close at hand, and keeping busybody friends and relatives out of the room even though they insist they have a 'right' to be there (father-in-law? HELLS NO!)
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The In-Between Option
I'm glad I'm not a woman not only because I don't have to give birth, but because I don't have anyone telling me how I should do so. I guess it's an evolutionary thing, where the females are somehow collectively vested in the well-being of the offspring, and the men could scarcely give a shit -- watch how disapproving and unsolicited-advice-giving mommies are with each other at a playground compared to daddies. Of course, I'm just pulling this evolutionary theory out of my ass (the only place I have to pull anything out of, and scarcely a blessed event at that).
That being said, there is an in-between option. Our child was birthed naturally, by the midwife who had worked with us through the pregnancy, but at a hospital. The room provided wasn't quite home, but it was just like a suite hotel -- nothing like a hospital. The bed he finally plopped out on was just that: a bed. My wife was allowed to walk around, grunt, squat, curse, etc. There was no medical staff in sight, but we were comforted to know they were very nearby, to say the least, should they be needed.
This is an option I recommend, particularly for trepidatious first-time parents. We live in a major city with top-flight medical care, but it's hardly known as a progressive city. I'm sure this option is available widely, though not universally, throughout the U.S. I think the hospital called it a "birthing center" or something like that.