Comments received after the midwifery care and gentle homebirth of our baby:
You must be nuts
Whatever floats your boat
You're braver than I am
You're lucky it all went ok
Why would you do that?
Yikes
Were just so glad everything went ok,
You really had us worried having no doctor
Don't they let you even see one doctor?
I wouldn't go around telling the world that you did that.
I couldn't have done that, too scary
I couldn't have done that, too risky
My husband would never have let me consider that, too risky/scary/dangerous.
* * * * * * *
Comments received after my three other births, with epidural anesthesia, internal fetal monitors, urethral cathterization, intravenous pitocin, Magnesium Sulfate, Nubain, Stadol, Phenergan, complete immobilization, 2, 4, and 11 piercings to the spinal column at each birth respectively, preventative antibiotics, 2 open abdominal surgeries, a scissors to my vagina, (then whoopsie they sewed it almost shut and made me threaten lawsuit before I could get in for a repair)teams of strangers with knives and soldering irons and sucking tubes and needles and masks and --oh yeah-- the crochet hooks to tear open my babies' water sacs:
Thank goodness you were at ___name of big impressive hospital.
So glad it all went so well!
Sounds like everything worked out.
Aren't you glad you ended up going to the hospital?
Good thing you didn't end up trying to do that homebirth thing again, huh?
My neighbor had a c section and she loved it
My neighbor's daughter had a c section and was completely recovered in about 5 days
Your babies are just too big, I guess.
Good thing
Good thing
Good thing
Good thing
8 comments:
I am so sorry you had to go through that!
So typical, though. I sometimes forget that not everyone thinks like my friends and I do. How unfortunate!
Funny you should write this, I was just thinking something similar recently.
I think my first home birth really opened my mom's eyes to what birth could be. She was surprised at how calm and peaceful it was compared with my hospital births.
Course now I am a **crazy** UCer, so they've all given up on talking sense into me. My babies are obviously all going to turn blue and die while I bleed out on the bathroom floor.
Still haven't tested yet! ;-)
Damn! Did you slap every single one of them? My heart goes out to you, just shows how effed up this society is about normal birth.
There are some retroactive slaps to be administered, yes sirree. But it wouldn't matter.
I thought with all of my heart that my homebirth would have blown the minds of everyone we knew wide open. A part of me really thought a round of "Proud to be the granny/uncle/grampie of a homeborn baby" t-shirts and mugs and hey, maybe a skywriting airplane was gonna happen. Thats how great I felt, and thats how great birth really can and should be.
But, um, no.
It was ignored, dissaproved of, and mostly, completely hushed.
The society, both on a small scale and a large one, doesn't know anything about normal birth. I didnt until I was 28 years old, having my third child. So in a way, am I pissed that every Tom Dick and Harry doesnt while away their time chugging down birth stories like I do for fun? No, how can I be? But it still sucked to really absorb how ecstatic and relieved everyone was when I was chopped and diced in the hospital. Actually glad, it seeemed! Because it fit their comfort zone, maybe?
Another quicke that never ceases to mamaze me are the folks who did give me the time of day long enough to sniff around the odd little homebirth questions "they" alwasy seem to want to fixate on, such as, "Was there a lot of blood?", or "Did it hurt?"
WHY WAS THIS NOT THE Q AND A WHEN I WAS UNDER THE SMOLDERING ELECTRIC CARVING KNIFE? WHY WAS THIS NOT THE BIG OBSESSION WHEN I WAS PARALYZED FOR WEEKS, AND THEN HOBBLED FOR A F$%&NG YEAR?
sigh, lemme tell ya
I can totally relate with this. The least enjoyable birth I had was in the hospital with all the gadgets and doodads, but everyone was very comfortable and happy with it. Everyone, but me.
My home birth was fabulous, though intensely painful (I was induced with Cytotech), and yet illicited all the "Oh, you are just so lucky" garbage.
The most "exciting" birth of all was the one where my son was practically born in the car after a hair-raising ride to the hospital. It would have been even better if we had just stayed home, but everyone seemed to think that driving 80 mph and giving birth in a wheelchair being pulled backwards down the hall was vastly preferable and "safer" to giving birth gently, at home, in a safe, quiet environment. Never again. Never. Never. Never. The next baby WILL be born at home if I have to do it by myself!
People (read: in-laws) can say whatever they want, but I know where it is best. Why do their fears have to color my, and my baby's, life?
Right on, Joy. You are absolutely right on.
It's so hard to talk to people who can only hear their own fear, isn't it? It's one thing if they're just skeptical...wanting to know the stats and procedures and safety issues. I can deal with that, at least. But hospitals have owned birth for so long that people are literally unable to picture it anywhere else, unless they think of women delivering accidentally in their cars with a policeman.
Some people will never change their minds, but we're at the very beginning of reclaiming birth--which is why ACOG is so worried. I think it will get better, slowly.
your writing is so amazing. thank you, thank you, thank you.
You make such excellent points; I agree wholeheartedly.
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