Midwife Care

This is a post about child-birth. So a lot of you might just want to plug your ears.

I'm planning a home-birth with a midwife. Saying that, makes a lot of people consider the possible risk of that, vs. a hospital birth almost immediately. Since most people here give birth in hospitals, my choice is quite 'alternative'.

My first son was born at a birthing center, with all my care done by midwives. Since then, they have had to shut down the birthing part, as too many mothers opted for the hospital birth. They work in a practice now that gives the option of either having a doctor or a midwife do your prenatal care. Since midwives are banned from practicing in hospitals in MD, it's required for doctors to call the shots. Since that was the case, I decided to have a midwife that did home births.

Each prenatal visit my midwife makes, (she comes to my home) I give her a scenario of the last 'bad birth story' I heard. When you're pregnant, you get to hear a lot of these. I ask her what she would do in a situation like that. Each time, her attitude toward the scenario is that there are 'normal' things you can do to solve the problem, or maybe it's not even a
problem, just a factor. At the very last resort, she would even consider sending you to the hospital.

An example. I met a mother who was disappointed that she could not give birth naturally, but had to have a C-Section. She said her water broke, but the labor failed to progress. The doctor said she had to deliver within 24 hours, to protect against infection and the baby won't get sick. Her midwife wanted her to wait it out. The doctor was nice enough to let her wait 36 hours, but then said they had to either induce or have a C-Section. So she ended up having surgery to extract the child out of her.

As asked my midwife what she would do in a situation where the water breaks, but labor fails to progress. Her assistant told me that the doctor's standard of care is actually that a woman must give birth within 24 hours of a vaginal exam after the water breaks. It's not the water breaking that causes infection. It's the opening everything up and checking if she's dilated. That's when she gets exposed to becoming infected. When people intervene.

So, what is the first thing they do at a hospital when a woman's water breaks? Of course, vaginal exam. Now the mother is at risk for infection.

Not to worry though, they're all set up with pictocin which induces your labor. However, it induces labor so quickly that the mother does not have time to learn to cope with the extreme pain that she would of slowly gotten used to naturally. Therefore, she has to get an epidural. This kills the pain, as well as much of the feeling on the bottom half of her body. So she can't give birth in a normal squatting position, she has to be flat on her back, pushing the baby uphill.
Many times, this is much too hard. A body traumatized by too much intervention, which is putting stress on the baby in the meantime, may not be up for the hard physical task of labor.

Because, labor is work. Are you allowed to show up to work on drugs? Only the ones given by a doctor. So I guess it's okay.

Anyway, my midwife said for a woman's water to break, but not going into labor is rare. If it happened to one of the mothers she cares for, she would not even visit her for 24 hours, so as not to be tempted to make an exam. Thus, protecting the mother from infection. There are precautions that the mother must take during this time. Also, there are natural remedies that can help a mother go into labor, but does not force it.

So my reason for choosing a home-birth with a midwife, is not necessarily because I think hospital care is lacking. If anything, it's quite the opposite. It's more because I agree with the logic process behind midwifery than 'conventional' methods.
A midwife views the mother as a person, who has the strength to go through this normal, biological process herself. That's what we're made for.
A doctor's view tends to take that strength away from the mother. He views it as his job (which he has nurses to attend the boring part for him) to extract the baby from it's human vessel.

Many people appreciate this, because a fully equipped hospital, full of 'experts' inspires confidence. Also, they have the solution to all the things that could go 'wrong'.

I think that many of these things that are 'wrong', may just be things that you just deal with, not necessarily intervene medically.
So I'm choosing to introduce my baby to the world right where it's going to live, home.