Hardcore homebirth?

Bring Birth Home is a cool blog that I discovered when I was planning my homebirth. They published this article today. It's titled, "You're a Hardcore Home Birther When..." and I enjoyed it! Anyone who has ever homebirthed will surely get a laugh out of it. It also made me think.

I will start by saying I am not a hardcore homebirther. I didn't have my first baby at home. In fact, it wasn't until my third baby that I was to the point of homebirthing. I didn't eat my placenta. I thought about encapsulating it and taking it as a supplement, but I don't know how, and nobody here offers that service, so it became fertilizer for my squash plants. I didn't catch my own baby. In reality, I was nearly blacking out from the pain of birthing a 10 pound baby with shoulder dystocia, and needed every bit of help my midwives were able to give me. I didn't watch my own children while I labored. There is really nothing spectacular about my homebirth by homebirth standards. Even the fact that Chai was over 10 pounds and had shoulder dystocia and a nuchal hand (in English: his shoulders got stuck, and his hand was by his face) is not anything particularly noteworthy in the homebirth community. Women birth larger babies, with harder complications, and do it in finer form than I did, every single day.

By my standards, though, my homebirth was spectacular. It was a long road to get to that point, and I worked hard for it. It wasn't my easiest birth. It was probably my hardest. It was definitely my most painful and most complicated. My homebirth is a great example of how homebirth is safer than hospital birth for healthy women and full term babies. If we'd been in a hospital, I'd have been cut open, and Chai and I both would have faced 4x the odds of death that we would normally face. On the off chance that we avoided a c-section, they would have given me a massive episiotomy, pulled Chai out with forceps, and broken one of his shoulders to dislodge it. This is standard procedure in hospitals for shoulder dystocia. The safest environment for me and Chai was our own home. My homebirth taught me that the World Health Organization wrote their homebirth statistics based on people just like me, and that they were right. My homebirth also reaffirmed my belief that evolution refined us perfectly to do exactly what we need to do, and that nature is no fool. If we can grow it, we can birth it. After my homebirth, I have no question in my mind on that.

I may not be a hardcore homebirther. Homebirth, for me, was more a final stop on a nearly decade-long journey, than a long journey in and of itself. Never the less, Chai's birth is among my proudest accomplishments. I take any opportunity to tell people he was born at home, when they comment on how big and strong he is, or anything like that. I don't WANT people to assume he was a c-section baby just because he was 10 pounds at birth. No! I did it! I grew him big and strong, and I brought him earthside with the help of two good midwives and my husband, NOT some doctor with a scalpel. I want the world to know it can be done, and that it isn't scary. I was never once afraid during Chai's birth. I was in pain, yes. At times, I was tired. I definitely got frustrated for a while. I was never afraid, though. It wasn't scary. I don't know what to say when people tell me I'm brave for homebirthing, and for continuing at home through the complications we had. I don't feel brave. I followed my gut instinct on what I needed to do. I knew that home was the only place I could give Chai the birth he deserved. I knew it on some level going in. I knew I would have that baby at home. It was never a question. It wasn't brave. It wasn't hardcore. It was just... right. Homebirth is right, and amazing, and wonderful. It doesn't have to be hardcore to be awesome. I'm not a hardcore homebirther, and that's ok.