Some, I just can't even answer.

Obviously I'm no stranger to the comments about how I'm reckless for planning a homebirth, and people who've drank the ACOG Koolaid about how a choice to homebirth is a choice to place the baby's health at something other than top priority, and all that other garbage. I'm really pretty used to it (although it's always nasty. Stop it already. Seriously. I don't tell you I think you're dumb for putting yourself in a position of having nothing but inductions and c-sections all your reproductive years.)

The other day, though, someone said something that totally slayed me, and left me at kind of a loss for words. She said, "Surely you can find a hospital that will allow you to have the birth that you want. If you don't want the stuff you're so against, you just have to refuse it." It is notable that this person has never had anything remotely resembling a normal birth.

At first, I thought to myself, "My, this person is a great study in missing the point." because precisely the reason I have never in my life planned a hospital birth (yes, I was a transfer once, but it was unintended.) is because the US hospitals of today are really not safe places for healthy women to bring healthy babies into the world. I'm an information junkie, always have been. Even when I was 21 years old and expecting my first baby, otherwise completely clueless on the birth culture in the US, and reading mainstream pregnancy books by the dozen, I looked into a lot of stuff, and found a lot that was very disconcerting. There was a lot in the mainstream pregnancy books that scared me. Talk of epidurals, IV's, pitocin, internal monitors, forceps, vacuums, episiotomies, and really any of this other stuff literally made my skin crawl. (It still does, just more so now.) I researched a lot about it, because I figured this stuff couldn't possibly be very safe or beneficial. I learned that it actually is quite harmful in the vast majority of cases, and not the least bit indicated, yet very commonly used in US hospitals because hospitals are businesses, and they try to govern with policy, something that can only be governed by nature... the birth process. Arbitrary standards which really don't serve anyone, are slapped on everyone, and it results in the use of all these interventions, which carry a whole host of risks. Then the interventions cascade, and result in the worst of the worst, a c-section, in over 1/3 of cases.

With that in mind, I wondered how on earth I would even respond to someone who thought I could find a hospital which would allow me to have the birth that I want, when there's really not a hospital on the planet that's willing to let the majority of women have the birth their body is going to allow them to have.

Contrary to a recent accusation of homebirthers by a mainstream publication, I'm not a control freak. I'm actually the opposite of that. When I was pregnant with Orren, our midwife, Nancy, had to ask me 5 times for my birth plan because I really didn't want to make one. I said, "You know I'm going to have the baby here at the birth center, right?" She said that she did. I said, "And I trust that you won't transfer me for something frivolous." to which she affirmed that she wouldn't, and I said, "The problem, Nancy, is that I don't know what I'm going to want when I'm in labor. I want to just take it as it comes and do what seems like a good idea at the time." She laughed, and said that was fine, but to write down a few things on the birth plan anyhow. I did. It was probably the most minimal birth plan in the history of mankind, and Orren's birth was a million times better than I could ever have imagined because I did exactly what I told Nancy I was going to do. I took it as it came, and did whatever felt right at any exact moment. I'm not a control freak. I just want the birth that nature is going to give me at that time, not the birth that the medical establishment thinks I should have.

The bottom line, I guess, is twofold. The first portion being that there is absolutely no hospital in the United States that will allow me to have the birth I know that I, as a human being, am entitled to. (It goes beyond want. We are entitled to the type of birth we evolved to have.) That's because I learned from my previous births. They were both important and they taught me a lot. Erin's taught me that transfers aren't just what happens to other people, and that if your life isn't in order, your birth will be a real disaster. Orren's taught me that I am capable of a normal human birth experience, not to be scared of large babies (9 pound 9 ounces! I'm still proud of that!), and that I do my best work at home. I needed to be at the birth center for his birth, but it was the jumping off point for my homebirth this time. It is my last baby. I'm never going to do this again. It is the culmination of all that I have learned, and how far I have come, from transfer disaster, to awesome normal birth center birth, to hopefully awesome normal homebirth. No hospital can give me this. If I settled for a hospital birth at this point, I would have unfinished business with myself, because I know I can do better, that my baby deserves better, that I deserve better, than today's US hospitals.

The other prong of the bottom line is that I don't like the implication that the hospitals will do what I want them to do if I fight them. That is a comment that could only ever come from someone who has never had, nor dared to want, a normal birth. I can tell you from experience, if you're in the zone enough to labor well, you're unable to fight. If you're able to fight, you won't be able to labor well. The two are mutually exclusive, and you can actually do a really effective job stalling your labor if you get into a situation that's uncomfortable (ask me sometime about a stupid nursing student named Emily and how she stuck me at 7 cm for 4 hours). Coping successfully (and therefore progressing) is the opposite of fighting. You cannot walk to the right and to the left simultaneously, and you cannot fight for your right to a normal birth, while at the same time having that normal birth. Although I do find it a bit ironic that this person essentially suggested that I do something absolutely impossible, superhuman even. It is a common accusation that homebirth moms are trying to be superhuman. In reality, we know we can't be, and in general, we're pretty thrilled with the things being human gets us the chance to do.


I also will note that I have used the term "normal" birth to mean birth without interventions. That's for two reasons. First, "natural birth" has come, in recent years, to mean any birth that culminated in a baby exiting a vagina, and include births with all kinds of interventions which are decidedly not natural. Also, isn't normal a great way to describe the birth experience that our species was intended to have? An intervention-free birth is a very normal thing for a human female to have. It is biologically appropriate. It may not be very common these days, but it is definitely normal. I find the term more fitting than what natural has morphed into.