Having A Baby Is About Trust
- Trusting your body to grow it and release it when the time is right.
- Trusting your heart to love that squalling, slippery little being when it comes out.
- Trusting your care provider – that they will do what’s best for you and your baby.
- Trusting yourself to make the right decision for birthing the baby.
For many people the decision to give birth is an easy one. They go to the hospital, have the baby … and that’s that.
One of the major things I used to comfort myself is that the financial aspects of homebirth were far more reasonable than having a baby in a hospital paying cash. There were other factors involved, of course, my very first baby was going to be a homebirth until my husband lost his job and we didn’t have insurance and would have had to pay cash (this stuff isn’t cheap, people) so I had to take my awesometastic public aid card and rock out at the free clinic. (Not the super nice free clinic we found recently. The one where you wait four hours in a small room packed with too many people and even more kids.)
Fast-forward to yesterday. At about 5pm I get the mail and there’s a letter from Illinois Public Aid. It seems that they reversed their denial on my benefits. No reason for the reversal (the reason for the original denial was how much money we make, which is a hell of a lot more than poverty level) So now I have my better than nothing super-spiffy insurance card and suddenly….homebirth isn’t the least expensive option.
Plus my OB already said they would take the public aid card, so no problems with the insurance and my current provider.
Most of my night consisted of totally obsessing over if I made the right decision and should I go back to the OB. That is what happens when you make money a bigger reason than it should be to make a decision.
I went to sleep, still unsure.
Then the nightmares started (I have had nightmares for the last week, I’m getting used to it) but this nightmare was a little different. It was like this awful montage of every bad experience I’ve had with my OBs with both babies. Each time something went wrong there was this weird, floating, big-ass-text hovering in the air saying what the doctor did that caused the complication that needed to be fixed. I woke up in a totally old-school cold-sweat.
Because the money may have convinced me to hunt down my midwife, but it’s not money that’s keeping me there.
Having an OB that has never, not once, asked me about my family history and how my mother, her mother, and her mother gave birth gives me great pause. She wants me to be a statistic, to fit into the boxes she believes I belong in. Just like everyone else that cringes when I say homebirth. Even that crazy-ass NYC midwife all the fuss was made about in NY Magazine and the Huffington Post (rebuttal) only has a 10% hospital rate.
I mean, really, what’s more important – that my mother (three children) and my grandmother (three children) and my great-grandmother (two children) all think that I’m perfect for a homebirth and that everything will go fine. It’s because of how my family has babies. My first two babies are testament to our family history – short labors, fast babies. Did one of my daughters almost have shoulder distosia? Yep! After I had to HOLD HER IN with my LEGS CROSSED for fifteen minutes. Yeah, that’s REAL good for the baby.
My current OB promised me with tears in her eyes after my delivery, “I promise I’ll be here next time” because (you guessed it) I had to hold her in too till the dr. got there and once she did she broke my water and when that happened there was a cord issue and she had to stick. her. hand. into. my. uterus. to fix it or I would have had to have had a C-section.
But when I went back in with this pregnancy she started singing the same tune about induction, big babies, my weight, shoulder distosia, and potentially long labor. After I reminded her who I was it got a little better, but not much.
She seemed genuinely dissapointed I was against induction.
Of course, because that puts things on the baby’s schedule, not the doctors.
I woke up perfectly happy with my decision, and will hold onto my little public aid card for dear life…just in case hospital transport happens.
Prepare for the backup plan, and you’ll be less likely to need it.
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3 Responses to “Having A Baby Is About Trust”
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Yep – I’m a Joiner!
If it helps at all, i think you’ve made the right decision. Should the need arise for me again, I plan to push harder to have a midwife instead of an OB. I love my OB, but the hospital experience isn’t great, and even the best OB looks at everything from a surgeon’s perspective.
Have you joined the Illinois Midwifery group on Facebook?
I homebirthed my middle one, hospital birthed the last one………it’s not how I wish I was leaving my child bearing, that’s for sure. I too have a history of short fast labors with big babies………it happens. And it happened for the 3rd and I will forever regret going to the hospital.
C Los last blog post..not cool
I had to have a hospital birth because I was high risk for both of my pregnancies- I wanted to home birth so I was bummed. The hospital wasn’t bad, the only thing I don’t like about it is everything is so overdone- this does not make you feel at ease – this makes it hard for you to trust yourself as a mom. I remember the nurse coming in to say I was nursing wrong (I had nursed my first while I was pregnant with my son so it hadn’t been that long) Luckily I was able to look past this, but I couldn’t help but think how a first time mom would feel.
Angie Goodloes last blog post..The Shift- Learning to trust yourself as a mom