Empowering Home Birth of one of my Hypnobabies Students

You may remember this mom.  G was one of my students, whose OB told her scary things which were all about the routines he did to EVERYONE (episiotomy, pitocin, etc), she changed to a homebirth midwife soon before her birth.  I got a phone message from her on a trip saying what a great birth she had.  

She has written out her whole story, here is some of it with a link to the complete story at the end. 

When I was 5 months pregnant and we started to talk about our choices.  Epidural or natural?  Bottle feeding or breastfeeding?  Episiotomy or natural tear?  Dry birth or water birth?  Most of these I already had a gut feeling like breastfeeding of course and absolutely no episiotomy.  I was still up in the air when it came to an epidural because honestly I was more afraid of having the epidural than the pain of labor but there was a lack of confidence that I could really do it on my own.  I also had hear some comments about how epidurals affect the baby so I decided to discuss the matter with my doctor who reassured me that epidurals do not pass to the baby and it’s perfectly safe. 

 

I decided to research natural child birth classes anyway and chose a Hynobabies class.  We met some great people and most importantly it was a great group for me to discuss all our options when it came to natural childbirth.  The class was six weeks long and it seemed that every time I went to class all I kept thinking was how these topics should be things that my doctor should be telling me and discussing with me and giving me options on.  Instead every time I went in for an appointment I would leave with information that I had to worry about like, when they checked me to make sure I wasn’t going to go into preterm labor.  I was told that my cervix was too short and how the doctor was concerned.  It turned out it was fine but I had to wait 4 weeks before finding that out in which I spent the whole time worried.

 

After some encouragement from the ladies in class, I decided to discuss birthing options with my doctor again and realized that even though he said he would support me in my decision, he really didn’t.  He was more concerned about how it was going to affect him.  When I told him that I didn’t want any drugs, the first thing he asked me was “what about an epidural?”  I told him no epidural, no pitocin and instead of saying something supportive, he told me how long my labor was going to be without those medications and how he might not end up delivering my baby at all if I didn’t take them because he has so many patients and usually women like to get in, get the drugs and get out.  This was the first time I wanted to give my doctor the finger.  I assured him I was fine with that and continued to tell him, NO DRUGS.  The more time went on the less I wanted this doctor to be the one who would deliver my baby our insurance didn’t cover any midwives and we didn’t have the cash.  In the end I figured it would all be okay even if I had this crappy doctor because I had started seeing a chiropractor who was helping me a lot and at least I knew my body would be ready for natural birth even if my doctor wasn’t.

 

Over Christmas vacation I sat Gabe down and discussed how uneasy I was feeling with our doctor and how much I wanted a beautiful birth not a stressful birth that I could see us having if were in a hospital with this doctor.  So we decided to interview and hire a midwife and plan for a home birth but keep out doctor just in case we ended up in the hospital.  My appointments with my midwife, Sue, were such a pleasure.  In comparison to my doctor, Sue spent close to 1 hour with me, asked me what I wanted to do every time she came over and there was a decision to be made and we always discussed the birth, how I was feeling, and the baby. 

 

Finally at what would be my last appointment with my OB I went over my birth plan and left the office feeling small and empty and completely stripped of any rights that I had as a soon to be mother.  My doctor told me that he couldn’t sign my birth plan because he didn’t agree with it.  He had a problem with waiting 3 minutes before cutting the cord, not giving me pitocin to get my placenta delivered and no episiotomy to name a few.  Looking back all I can think is ‘who does he think he is’ telling me what’s going to happen during my birth?’  Those choices were mine to make, not his and from that point on, this “doctor” was out of my life before he got the chance to ruin my birth which turned out to be one of the most beautiful and most powerful experiences of my life.

Here is her full story.  I am so glad that she said I could share it with everyone.