The Wonder of Midwifery

When I tell people that Mooster was a homebirth, the reaction I get most often (spoken or not) puzzles, "...on purpose?"

This suggests to me that modern medicine has convinced women that birthing a baby into the world is somehow less natural than the means by which that child was conceived and now requires the aid of doctors and nurses to find its way out. O, ye of little faith!

I was also reluctant (at first) to consider a homebirth, but that was before I had my first two babies, both of which were midwife-assisted waterbirths. Let me explain...

I began my first pregnancy with a conventional OB/Gyn. Like most first-time expectant women, I devoured as much information as I could about pregnancy and birth. I wondered why there were so many women retelling their birth stories like war stories as if they barely made it out in one piece? This was not the experience I wanted. A friend loaned me a copy of Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way by Susan McCutcheon-Rosegg, and the rest is history.

To avoid the interventions imposed on laboring women (most of them unnecessary), I would have to rethink the impending hospital birth. We decided to switch to a midwife at 34 weeks! Our son was born at 39 weeks, and I wouldn't have changed a thing. Except perhaps to have had the entire pregnancy under my midwife's care.

Do your own research, read up on the statistics, talk to women who have done it, and read that book! For the vast majority of healthy women, birthing with a midwife is not only safe, but a sweet and wonderfully memorable experience.