A Look at Home Births

Giving birth at home is once again gaining in popularity. Until the first part of the 20th century this is how women brought their newborns into the world, but as hospitals gained in popularity, especially in the 40's, home births went out the door for the more clinical style hospital birth.

I feel very blessed that we have an opportunity to have a home birth for our third child. I wish I could have done it with all three. Although, in all fairness, my daughter's birth was overall a good experience and one I would hope for again if I went the route of going to a hospital.

While home births are gaining in popularity, I think there is still a lot of confusion about them. I know I didn't fully understand how it worked when I first started looking into them several years ago. One benefit we have today is that now that home births are more popular there is more information easily available about them and finding an experienced midwife has also gotten easier.

Certainly there are many that would question why in the world you'd choose to have a child in your home. It doesn't take much searching to find passionate advocates for both hospital births and home births and both sides have a variety of statistics that they use to support their beliefs (see here and here for against home births and here and here for pro home births). For several generations now we have been trained to believe that hospitals are the only place to have a baby safely. There is a system that has been set up that we are to follow, starting with the beginning of pregnancy and one that continues forward through the life of a child. While I am not here to tell you that no one should have a hospital birth, that certainly isn't true in my opinion, I do think that home births should be considered as an option. Every woman should consider all of her options and educated herself to make the best decision for her baby and her. We were designed to have babies and have been doing so since humans first came into existence. Some people embrace the idea that our bodies can give birth without a lot of assistance and others feel lead to have as much help surrounding the birth as possible. Are either wrong? No. For me, the issue comes more about the freedom to decide what is best for my baby's and my body. Either route someone chooses to go, there are going to be not so perfect outcomes and even deaths. What would truly be fantastic is if the two styles of giving birth could more greatly overlap giving women a far greater advantage to delivering a healthy baby without the use of drugs or other unnecessary procedures.

When I first started looking into home births it was overwhelming to figure out how the whole process worked. If you follow the standard protocol, things are fairly simple and there doesn't need to be a lot of decision making. You find a doctor that is in your insurance plan and then follow what they tell you to do. Home births fall into a category of their own and depending on what state you live in, the laws that govern midwives and the freedom to have a birth at home varies.

Part 4: A look at how I believe my changing diet with each pregnancy has affected my children and the pregnancies themselves. (pregnancy #4, baby due in May)

Well, I certainly meant for this post to go up a couple of weeks ago. It turns out trying to buy a house, getting ready for a move, taking care of kiddos and everything else under the sun that is going on has kept me away from blogging. I do believe that my posts may be pretty intermittent for a while, so bear with me as my family and I make some pretty big transitions in our lives. All our awesome, but all take time and there is only so much energy and only so many hours in a day. 

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This is the fourth part of this series. To read about my other pregnancies check out the links below.

Pregnancy 1

Pregnancy 2

Pregnancy 3

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Pregnancy, birth and the life that is brought forth into this world is amazing, scary, empowering, difficult and in the end a true learning experience, that is, if you want it to be.

I am over halfway through my fourth pregnancy and this one has been a journey all of it's own. I chose the route of learning from past experiences and applied that knowledge to this pregnancy. I've known since having my daughter that I truly desired to have a natural birth, without any tests and ultrasounds. I didn't want to be back in a doctor or midwife office feeling pressured to do things I wasn't comfortable with, nor feeling supported by my view points and research. So this time around I've chosen to go the route of having a home birth and seeing a certified professional midwife (CPM). This child, thus far has had about the most natural life that anyone can have, seeing as how we haven't so much as taken a pregnancy test, although the ever expanding belly and the regular kicks tells us our little one is growing healthy and strong!

Part 3: A look at how I believe my changing diet with each pregnancy has affected my children and the pregnancies themselves. (pregnancy #3)

This is the third post in this series.  To read about my other pregnancies check out the links below.

Pregnancy 1

Pregnancy 2

Pregnancy 3

Pregnancy 4

Pregnancy #3

My daughter who is almost 2

After my son was born I made some drastic changes in my diet. Falling in love with a brand new baby and realizing that they completely rely on you for everything and you are essentially the starting block for their health for the rest of their lives, can do that to you!

I started on the road to making my food from scratch and began spending a great deal of time researching nutrition. The Weston A. Price Foundation was a huge help in the beginning part of that journey. At the time they were one of the only organizations who stepped away from typical Western medicine and diet to look at how much our eating habits have changed over time and whether those changes have actually benefited us. I'd highly recommend reading up on Dr. Price and his research. While I think it's important to state that I do not adhere to all of the WAPF beliefs, it has been a very helpful guide. I also learned quite a bit from the book The Maker's Diet by Jordan Rubin. An excellent read and to this day has caused me to evaluate my eating habits through the Word of God. The Bible has a lot to say about what is wise to eat and not. Some of the information involves the laws given to the Jews in the Old Testament. While in the New Testament Jesus did away with those laws, that doesn't mean there wasn't a truly good reason that God had the Jews eat in a certain way. They were known for their good health and strength. I don't believe God gives laws and rules just to make life difficult. Instead I think they are always because He knows what is best for us, as the truly perfect Father that He is. This pregnancy was the beginning of me recognizing that eating God's way, with food, made by Him and not altered by man through genetic modification, commercial processing, over planting causing for the need of pesticides, herbicides and so forth, was the way that would make my family and my body healthy and strong. It frankly came down to recognizing that God does know best and man doesn't.

Part 2: A look at how I believe my changing diet with each pregnancy has affected my children and the pregnancies themselves. (pregnancy #2)

Yesterday I shared part 1 of this little series. My first pregnancy was a miscarriage, but thankfully the pregnancies going forward have all been far better, but not without their bumps in the road. 

To read about my other pregnancies check out the links below.

Pregnancy 1

Pregnancy 2

Pregnancy 3

Pregnancy 4

Pregnancy #2

My son, who is now 4.

Feeling "huge" at about 4 months.

After having a miscarriage with my first pregnancy, I wasn't too concerned about getting pregnant again. If it happened, it happened. A part of me really wanted to be pregnant as I was trying to cope with the loss of our first child. Well surprise, surprise that little want was satisfied sooner than I would have thought... turns out about a month after miscarrying I found out I was pregnant again. I was pretty thrilled and headed back to the same doctors office that I had gone to for my first pregnancy. They were not quite as thrilled as I since I had been told to not get pregnant, but I didn't care.

This pregnancy turned out to be harder on me than I had thought it would be. I had a ton of cramping in my first trimester with my son and was overwhelmed with the feeling that I was going to lose him too. I remember sitting on the floor of where I worked bawling because the cramping was bad and knowing that there was nothing I could do. I was an emotional wreck and started wishing that I wasn't pregnant again because I was so stressed out about the whole thing. I was just coming back to walking with the Lord and was still not able to really put my trust and faith in Him to know that whatever happened I would be okay. Thankfully, since I now have a healthy four year old, the pregnancy progressed.

Around 10 - 12 weeks I went in to hear the heart beat. After about 10 minutes of trying the doctor couldn't find it. I tried to not panic. The doctor wanted me to have an ultrasound to make sure the baby was okay, but from the little I had heard about ultrasounds, I wanted to avoid having one if I could. So she grabbed another doctor and had her try and find the heart beat and low-and-behold after about a minute of trying we heard a healthy beat. Turns out the first doctor hadn't been pushing hard enough or searching in the right place (the second doctor showed the first what she was doing wrong). I'm glad another doctor had come in before I got sent to get an ultrasound. After hearing the heart beat I began to relax, especially as I headed into the second trimester.