Between Births
Following a truly traumatizing experience at a local hospital in Austin at the hands of a thoughtless midwifery group, I knew I wanted to birth my second child at home. To be honest, I felt I wanted this with my first baby too but I was too scared to do it. Years and years of indoctrination had lead me to believe that I always have to plan for the worst possible outcome, regardless of how small of a chance it had of happening. I was also taught by the media and other people that birth was too painful to be done on its own and, even worse, that it was a medical emergency.
With my first labor, I fully trusted my body to give birth to my baby and it did. My first birth was a grueling 17 hours of unmedicated back labor that I endured in the worst of scenarios with an unsupportive hospital staff that at every turn tried to make my natural birth experience into one needing medical intervention. Which is why, this second time, I knew that if I could birth without pain medication or any intervention under those circumstances, I could surely do it at home.
And I did. And it was magical.
Now, that does not mean that it wasn’t painful because I’d be lying if I said that. It was a much quicker labor than my first, about 7 hours total, and I don’t even know how I pushed Lidia out. She kinda just came out. But the entire experience was brutal. The intensity of this shorter labor was something I did not know if I could overcome during it. It has been the most challenging physical experience of I’ve ever gone through. But I did it because in the moments when I doubted my capacity to endure one more second, my body heard me and came through.
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I’m not saying that everyone should choose to birth at home. There are so many legitimate reasons not to do so. Not everyone can. If you have specific health concerns, the best place for you is most likely the hospital. Just like if you have real reasons for why you can’t breastfeed, then don’t (but that’s another story). Most importantly if you WANT pain medication or don’t want to breastfeed (per my example above), then don’t. That’s your prerogative and that’s all I want for you!
My goal with sharing about my home birth is to elevate a woman’s choice. So often women are scared into making decisions. Not just about how we birth but about everything: what jobs we take, what dates we say yes to, and even what we should eat. It’s disgusting.
What I do think is important for every woman to know is that there is nothing to fear about your body. Why, do we as women, trust other people blindly but hesitate to trust ourselves? Why do we fear and shut down our intuition and are rarely skeptical of the “knowledge” of others? How have we allowed this society to condition us into believing that OTHER people know better than WE do about our own selves?
Let me be clear, this is also true for women who are harassed and ridiculed for choosing to have an elective c section (as yet another example) when there is no medical necessity. This is wrong!! Stop doing this. Women especially need to stop doing this to other women. Both choices, home birth on one end and an elective c section on the other, are two different sides of the same coin and face a high level of unnecessary and ridiculous scrutiny.
And these are just the extremes, right? It feels as though no matter what decision a woman makes about her health, she can please no one. At the end of the day, birthing choices are decisions made by women about their own bodies that oftentimes society has decided is not the right way or the best way to do it. Well, you know what I have to say to that? Fuck it.
