Jennifer Margulis

Mothering Outside the Lines

America’s C-Section Rates Out of Control, but ACOG Refuses to Take Action

April 6th, 2011

You may have noticed the press release with the winking ACOG eyeball can no longer be found on this Website.

As reported by Babble.com, the press release first appeared on CNN.com’s iReport but was pulled after it was discovered to be a prank.

As this post from another Babble.com blogger indicates, the subject of the press release–America’s skyrocketing C-section rate which is in violation of women’s fundamental rights–is anything but funny.

As the press release circulated via email and Twitter, bloggers have been writing about it:

*the Deranged Housewife “It’s clear to me that when it comes to the birthing choices of women, ACOG doesn’t really give a crap.”
*C-section Recovery Kit blog, and
*Owning Pink.

Yes, the press release was a prank.

I know because I wrote it.

Is it really a surprise that ACOG didn’t suddenly decide to advocate that women have their babies in the safest way possible?

Here’s how the real press release should have read:

For Immediate Release: ACCORDING TO BIRTH ADVOCATE JENNIFER MARGULIS, PH.D., ACOG HAS NO PLANS TO STOP ELECTIVE C-SECTIONS

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has made no announcement that it is devising a comprehensive plan to lower C-section rates in the United States. Instead, Greg Phillips, Associate Director, Office of Communications, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, has said that the April 1 press release indicating the organization would be spearheading a campaign to end elective C-sections “did not come from us and is clearly an April Fool’s joke.”

C-sections in the U.S. have gone up 700% since they were first measured in 1965, when the C-section rate was only 4.5 percent.

The nation’s C-section rate has been rising steadily for the last eleven years. It’s now over 31 percent. This is a deplorable situation that harms women and their newborns, but one that ACOG has continually downplayed or ignored.

Advertising itself as an organization that advocates for quality healthcare for women, ACOG has no plans to ask obstetricians to halt elective C-sections.

Though many birth advocates, obstetricians, gynecologists, nurse practitioners, midwives, and women’s rights advocates believe that C-sections should only be a last resort and should never be performed for the convenience of the doctor or for financial or liability reasons, C-sections are routinely done in this country when there is no medical necessity for them, often for the convenience of doctors or for fear of lawsuits.

Though the use of electronic fetal monitoring has been shown to increase unnecessary C-section rate without any proven benefit to the mother or infant, ACOG also has no plans to call on American hospitals to stop the routine use of electronic monitoring during labor.

ACOG has no new guidelines to encourage women to have freedom of movement during labor, labor standing up or squatting, and to eat and drink at will. In fact, given the organization’s repeated negative stance on out-of-hospital births, it can be inferred that ACOG actively opposes freedom of movement during labor.

Cesarean can save lives. But doctors and consumers have to remember that this is major surgery that carries major risk. Some examples: 29-year-old Abbie Dorn, suffered severe hemorrhaging and brain damage after her uterus was nicked during a Cesarean section at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (2006), 32-year-old Diane Rizk McCabe died following complications from a Caesarean section at Albany Medical Center Hospital (2007), and Karen Vasques, 27, died during a C-section at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (2008).

Maternal mortality has risen every year in the United States for the past 25 years, while over the same period the rate of C-sections has gone up 33 percent.

The skyrocketing rate of C-section in America has had devastating consequences but ACOG, the most highly respected organization of obstetricians and gynecologists in the United States, refuses to lead the fight to stop it.

Many people took offense at the original satire that I wrote to highlight how serious the problem is.

I had no intention of duping or disappointing those who really are leading the fight to stop a systemic problem in our medical system that has spiraled out of control.

I know that OBs who do not rush to C-section breech births, twins, and women who have had prior cesareans are often under tremendous pressure from the hospitals where they work, and from their colleagues, to do more surgery. There are many wonderful OBs who do not overuse the C-section operation, and they, too, advocate returning to a healthier balance and letting a woman’s body do what it evolved to do.

My dear friend who is having a baby on Friday via C-section was told by her OB that he forbids trial of labor. She is young and healthy. She has big bones and wide hips. But since she had an unnecessary C-section in her twenties, her doctor will not allow her to go into labor naturally.

A new mom recently posted her birth experience on a baby message board. Unfortunately, the only atypical aspect of her experience is that the doctor pretended to allow her to try for a VBAC. Here’s part of her story:

“After switching doctors several times during the course of my pregnancy, at the time I delivered I was under the care of an OB & Midwives group. I was told that I was a good candidate for VBAC, was offered water birth if things went well, and believed that I was in the best possible circumstances to avoid surgery & any un-needed medical intervention.

I arrived at the hospital dialated to 4. An hour & a half later, my water had broken on its own and I was dialated to 6.

Since I was laboring on a birthing ball, the midwife wasn’t confident about the fetal heartrate monitor, it was showing decels, so I was asked to consent to an internal monitor (screws into the baby’s scalp during labor). I refused the first time I was asked, then consented the second time. I consented because I thought my husband was beginning to panic and hoped that it would ease his stress. When I consented to it, I looked at my husband & said “That is medical intervention #1.”

Before the monitor was even plugged in, we were told that we were going to be moved to the OR “just in case” while being monitored more closely. The midwife had called an OB to consult & we expected to meet him in the OR.

On the way to the OR, my husband was sent to a dressing area to change into scrubs & I was sent straight into the OR. My husband & I were separated.

As soon as I reached the OR, the staff began prepping me for surgery. I stated that I did NOT want a c-section. I demanded to see my husband and stated that IF I was to receive a c-section my DH & I would make that decision together. I was told that my husband was on his way. I was also told that my baby needed more oxygen & I was told to breathe deeply in a new mask because it had a better seal on my face (the oxygen I was breathing before was thru a smaller mask).

The new mask wasn’t oxygen, I was gassed against my will.

I am unaware of what was done to me from the time I was gassed up until I awoke in recovery. I am assuming that I only had a C-section. Any further details have not been shared with me.

When my husband exited the dressing area & went to go to the OR, he was told that he couldn’t go in because I was already being anesthetized for surgery. He was not asked to consent on my behalf. He was not told that I had refused consent. He was not told that I had requested his presence. He was not told WHY I was having surgery.

I found out that my son had been born, and that I had been operated on, when I woke up in recovery. No medical professional came to me and spoke to me about my surgery. I have never been told WHY I required a c-section. I only know the name of the delivering physician because it’s on my son’s birth certificate. I never met him. He never came to talk to me before or after surgery. I also never saw the midwife again after I was wheeled into the OR…

I’m having an extremely hard time coming to grips with having been lied to and operated on against my will. I love my son, but I did not give birth to him. I was not present at his birth. That moment in my life has been taken from me … I don’t know if I’ll ever again be capable of trusting a medical professional to respect me as a whole person, instead of just a slab of meat ready for their whim. I thought that it was required of medical professionals to obtain informed consent whenever possible prior to performing surgery.”

Can we agree that what’s really cruel are experiences like these, not my April Fools joke?

Tags: ACOG, April Fools Day prank explained, C-section, forced C-sections, intervention during labor, press release, unnecessary intervention

[ 11 comments ]

Don’t Take a Childbirth Class Unless You Know Who’s Really Paying the Instructor

December 29th, 2010

In the last post here at Mothering Outside the Lines we were talking about how to have an empowered labor and delivery.

You might have noticed that I did not suggest taking a childbirth class to prepare.

In her book, Misconceptions, Naomi Wolf writes about how many childbirth instructors are actually employed by hospitals. If they aren’t being paid directly (as many of them are), they are getting their clients through hospital referrals.

Instead of giving true information and really empowering first-time moms, these instructors are often regurgitating hospital policy, showing videos of women being docile and obedient in labor instead of teaching real pain management techniques.

Hint: breathing and panting and staring soulfully into your partner’s eyes all fly out the window when contractions slam your body. Primal noises, animal sounds, shrieks, cussing (”You f——g a—–e WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?”), and deep moans like the ones you made while you were enjoying yourself getting the baby in there in the first place all tend to work much better.

But, as Wolf points out in her book, these fierce and empowering screams to get you through contractions are not “socially acceptable” or “publicly acceptable.”

When you’re in hospital you’re in a quasi public place. The nurses on staff, the other laboring moms and their partners and families, the doctors, the janitors, and everyone else at the hospital (like expectant couples touring the ward) will hear you if you’re managing your pain loudly.

Loud pain management = good for mom to release tension and enjoy labor.

Loud pain management = social embarrassment for all the non-laboring people who would be much happier if you would just. shut. up.

More to the point, a hospital makes much less money if you manage your own pain.

I will write that sentence again in case you were sipping your coffee and skimming: A hospital makes much less money if you manage your own pain.

Almost everyone in the hospital has a vested interest in shooting you and your emerging baby up with pain medication in the form of narcotics or an epidural. What’s wrong with that? Once you’re doped up, you’re tied down, tethered by an IV or an epidural. Which means you can’t walk around anymore, or squat, or get on all fours, or hug your helpers, or hang from their arms. But movement during labor not only helps you open up and birth your baby, it helps you manage what can otherwise feel unbearable.

Once you’re quiet and docile, chatting with your partner instead of working with your body, your baby, and your hormones, the deck is stacked against you. You’re so wired to the bed that you might as well be tethered there, as women of my mother’s generation were. Gravity is no longer on your side. A baby needs to slip under your pelvic bone but the space is now constricted because you’re lying on your back or are semi-recumbent in bed.

Some well-meaning friends gifted us a childbirth class when we were pregnant for the first time eleven years ago.

I remember the instructor’s voice often caught when she talked about her oldest child’s birth.

Since her labor wasn’t “progressing fast enough,” the hospital midwives made her stimulate her own nipples.

Rub-rub-rub. Stop. Rub-rub-rub. Stop.

But the instructor never honestly explained how she felt about that birth. Instead, she presented all the “options” that the hospital presents to laboring women. Hanging off the doctor for dear life during transition is not one of those options.

Now that I’m reading Wolf’s book as part of my larger research on how corporations and private interests are skewing the way we treat babies in utero and through the first year of life, I’m beginning to understand better why our childbirth instructor wasn’t being honest. In the hospitals in Atlanta, which is where we lived at the time, there is very little room for women to have the births they want. Instead of psychological support, I was treated with impatience and scorn during labor (Nurse who checked my dilation after more than 12 hours of excruciating active labor: “Nothing. Not even a dimple.”)

Suzanne Arms, writing in her now classic 1975 book Immaculate Deception (a book which launched a home birth movement in the United States), talks about how childbirth instructors are often part of the problem, part of a complicity of silence that keeps women transitioning into motherhood literally flat on their backs.

Unfortunately, I fear that Arms’ insight is still true today.

There are exceptions, of course. But most childbirth instructors have to be aware that they are navigating a political and financial minefield and they have to be very careful about what they say and how they say it. (This is true for midwives as well. Especially hospital midwives. Sadly, many of the midwives quoted in Naomi Wolf’s book would only talk to her off the record because they didn’t want their names to be used for fear of losing their jobs or angering their colleagues by telling the truth of how laboring women are being treated in hospitals today.)

In the community in southern Oregon where I live people pride themselves on being progressive and forward thinking. When a public panel was being put together to inform pregnant women about birthing options, one of the panel organizers wanted to invite me to speak about my unassisted childbirth. The panel included women telling the stories of Cesarean hospital births, medicated hospital births, natural hospital births, and home births with certified midwives present. I was one of three women who had unassisted births in our city in less than a year. But the committee balked. “We would not want to be seen as presenting that as an option,” a committee member said to my friend when her proposal to invite me was rejected.

One of the reasons I recommended some of the more radical books in my post on how to have an empowered birth is because if you read those books a simple home birth with trained midwives starts to seem like a straight and narrow option. It’s certainly much less radical than an unassisted home birth VBAC after three hospital C-sections (which is one of the amazing stories told in Simply Give Birth.)

You don’t need an childbirth “expert” or a panel to tell you how to have your first baby. You may get more honest answers and be better off in the long run if you do your own research.

Tags: childbirth classes, corporate greed, hospital culture, managing pain in labor, unnecessary intervention

[ 10 comments ]

How to Have an Empowered Birth; or the Second Longest Post in the History of this Blog

December 28th, 2010

In December I visited a labor and delivery ward at a prominent hospital in Boston. There were four women in active labor while I was there. They were all young and healthy with no risk factors of any kind.

Three were having their first baby.

One was having her second.

One was a vaginal forceps delivery after the woman was given an epidural and pitocin (a synthetic hormone that mimics oxytocin and is used to intensify contractions) and had spent most of the labor and two hours pushing flat on her back, one was a vaginal delivery with a second degree tear by a woman who was also given an epidural and pitocin and who also delivered flat on her back, and two were Cesarean sections.

The doctor I was shadowing wasn’t sure why the two women—both of whom had wanted natural births—were sectioned. But she did know that neither of the C-sections were emergencies. “I think it was for failure to progress.”

I can’t stop thinking about one of those women. She was laboring happily, walking the halls with a smile on her face, her partner shuffling along behind her, stopping to buttress herself against the wall when a contraction washed over her. She looked so healthy and alive. She was so present in herself. She looked to my inexperienced eye like the last person on earth who would need to have a C-section.

With the epidemic of Cesarean operations in America today, how do you avoid an unnecessary C-section? How do you have the kind of birth you want? How can you own your own labor and delivery and trust your body and your baby so that you feel euphoric when you remember your birth experience instead of depressed and disappointed?

1. Read the right books

If you don’t want to know anything about labor and delivery until it’s your turn, it will be very hard for you to be empowered when the time comes. It’s a good idea to read up on the process.

But what you read makes a huge difference.

I recommend you, your partner, and anyone who you want to be with you while you’re in labor, read the following books, in this order:

• Simply Give Birth by Heather Cushman Dowdee. This is a little known collection of very empowering birth stories where the focus is on the woman and her baby and not on the birth attendant or the intervention. Many of these are stories of women who chose to have unassisted births though Cushman Dowdee did not set out to collect unassisted birth stories per se. Though some of the writing is uneven and some of the narrators might be a bit too woo-woo for you, every story is empowering.

• Unassisted Childbirth by Laura Shanley. Even if you just read around in this book, you will learn so much from it. Shanley tells her own incredible birth stories (she had all of her babies unassisted. The first with four of her partner’s male friends watching!), shares birth stories by other women, and also tells about her philosophy that birth is a natural process and that laboring women should trust themselves. She talks, too, about the importance of mind over matter and of teaching yourself to think positively about the birth process instead of dwelling on fear or pain.

• Childbirth Without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth by Grantly Dick-Read. Though this book was written in the 1930s, it is tremendously empowering and affirming (and the book that inspired Shanley and her partner to think outside the birthing box.)

• Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin. This book is for both midwives and pregnant women. It includes many of the birth stories in Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery, as well as all of the technical details about childbirth. Though I don’t agree some of Gaskin’s approach (she and her midwives tend to interfere more than I would have been comfortable with when I was in labor), the book is a tremendously helpful, detailed, and well-written resource.

2. Mediate every day, say positive affirmations, and tell yourself that you will have a peaceful, fun, sexy labor

Next I’ll be telling you to hug trees. Thinking (if you prefer that word to the more woo-woo one) about the kind of birth you want, imagining yourself in labor, and psychologically preparing yourself to be the calm center in the eye of the storm can help tremendously. You can simply practice breathing. Breathe slowly and count each breath up to ten and then start over again. As you breathe and count imagine your body opening up, imagine the baby coming down the birth canal, imagine that you and your baby are a team working together in a dance that will change both of your lives.

3. Eat well and exercise, you’re preparing for a marathon

You wouldn’t try to complete a marathon without training first.

Being pregnant is a fantastic excuse to spend a lot of time exercising without feeling guilty that you should be _________ (fill in the blank: working more, spending time with your spouse, cleaning the house.)

Do the exercise that works for you: biking, hiking, pre-natal yoga, swimming, running, walking, dancing. You know this already but exercise really helps prepare your body for labor.

Yes, of course, you should eat well and exercise to prepare for an empowered labor. But even if you're in excellent shape, does that insure that you will not have unnecessary intervention during labor? Unfortunately, no. The best way to insure no unnecessary intervention is to have a home birth

4. Think carefully about WHO you want at the birth

This is not a very popular opinion but honestly if your partner or your mom faint at the sight of blood and are totally panicking about you having a baby, maybe you don’t want either of them there.

Sometimes men can interfere with the labor process, especially when they bring their own fear and baggage into your space.

If you think your mother is going to miraculously morph into the attentive person you always wanted her to be while you were growing up, don’t be surprised when she’s reading a manuscript in the labor room and ignoring you completely, that’s what she’s done your whole life and it’s not going to change now just because you want it to.

Women in labor are very vulnerable to suggestion and they need to have supportive, kind, loving people to help them through every step of the birth. The father of your child can be an amazing source of strength and comfort. But in some cases he can be a hindrance. He isn’t doing you any favors if his energy is negative. Choose loving, supportive, kind, patient, experienced people to be with you. It’s also a good idea to have a friend who isn’t afraid of being your advocate if you butt heads with hospital staff.

If you don’t have close friends or relatives who have been through labor and who you want with you, hire a doula.

5. Stay out of the hospital for as long as you can (or have your baby at home)

The best way to have a safe and empowering birth is to have your baby at home. If you don’t believe me, ask Aneka, who had a safe and wonderful home birth after three hospital C-sections.

If you still don’t believe me, watch “The Business of Being Born,” the movie by Rickie Lake that made the ACOG so upset that they issued a hostile, anti-home birth statement in response.

If you’re lucky to have a birthing center nearby, have your baby there.

If a hospital is your choice:

• Forget about timing contractions and going to the hospital when they are less than five minutes apart. Don’t go to the hospital until you feel like you can’t stay on top of the contractions for one more second.

• Forget about going to the hospital if your water breaks. Stay home and watch a movie. Stay home and watch two movies. Conveniently forget when your water broke and don’t tell the hospital staff how long its been. They’ll want to put you on an unnecessary timeline and also might start you on unnecessary medications and unnecessary intervention.

First time labors can last a long time, much longer than the doctor has patience for. As a first-time mother what you feel is overwhelming may actually just be early labor. The longer you labor at home the better the outcome for you and your baby.

For most women having a baby is pretty intense.

Maybe you’ll be crying out during the contractions but laughing at yourself during the lulls.

Maybe you’ll enjoy being the center of attention or be mortified by the fact that you’re defecating in front of several people (to say nothing of losing all sorts of other bodily fluids in a public forum—it happens to all of us.)

Maybe you’ll keep your romantic sentiments and tell your partner you love him or her or maybe you’ll scream, “THIS IS YOUR FAULT, YOU DID THIS TO ME AND I’LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!”

In a rush of body fluids, a baby girl was born. The doctor put her right up on her mother’s chest. “She’s so small,” the new mom said quietly, patting the floppy baby who was lying on her tummy, her voice full of awe and exhaustion. “I’ve never seen a newborn before.”

The whole world changes the moment your baby is born. When you first look into the baby’s eyes you meet someone you’ve never seen before but have somehow known your whole life. You have a lifetime to get to know each other better. What better way to get started than owning your labor and delivery and having the birth experience you want?

The longest post (in case you’re wondering): A Daughter with Special Needs

If you have children, what kind of birth experience did you have? If you are expecting, what kind of birth experience do you hope to have? Experienced moms and dads, what advice do you have for pregnant parents preparing for labor and delivery?

Tags: books to read about birth, empowered birth, empowered birthing, home birth, how to avoid a C-section, meditation during pregnancy, staying home in labor

[ 32 comments ]

How to Excrete a Watermelon; or, 7 Ways to Have Fun During Labor

April 4th, 2010

When I was 17 my friend John told me that his mother said having a baby was like trying to push a watermelon out your rear end.

Sound like fun? Not really. “Fun” and “labor” aren’t two words you usually read in the same sentence.

But labor actually can be fun. Really and truly. Here’s how:

1) Keep a sense of humor and have someone tell you dumb jokes: Laughter is better than valium when it comes to relaxing and when a woman in labor laughs her body loosens up and opens up. In my third labor I remember telling the homebirth midwife, “Okay, I’m ready for an epidural.” She smiled at me. “I’ve got it out in my truck,” she said. We both cracked up and pretty soon after I was in transition. My husband has sort of a sadistic sense of humor and his jokes were so un-funny during my fourth labor (and all at my expense) that they became hilarious (granted, I was a little hysterical by that point anyway).

2) Get in warm water: A lot of women swear by birthing pools, but the idea of sharing my bath with unsightly bodily fluids and maybe a placenta has never exactly appealed to me. But labor is the one time in your life when you can take a shower for as long as you want without feeling guilty about wasting water. In real life I take care of shower business in about three minutes and spend the next two minutes feeling overindulgent (we have a little hourglass in the shower that indicates when five minutes is up and it’s time to get out. My best friend works for the Department of Environmental Quality and spent years on water issues…) A no-guilt shower is such a luxury, I think I’ll have another baby just to get a chance to take another.

3) Remember the women who have gone before you: At some point when you’re in labor you decide you’re going to explode. Then you remember the experience you’re having connects you to all the women in the world who have gone before you, including your mom and your grandmothers. During my last birth I found myself thinking with great awe about some of the women whose stories I had read on the Internet, like Heather Cushman Dowdee’s, and about women in my family, and the amazing woman I met in person who had birthed six children unassisted (and one totally by herself with no one else even there). Labor lets you get all mushy-gushy touchy-feely about stuff like that. And takes you to a Zen place that gives you endorphins. Okay so Thich Nhat Hahn feels that every day but he never got to s–t a watermelon.

4) Smooch with your husband: That’s right. Kiss him. If you relax the lips on your face, the lips on your you-know-where relax also. There’s something counterintuitive about making out in labor. Which is funny. Which brings us back to #1. And kissing (or in this case not kissing) is always fun.

5) Don’t look at the clock: Though your birth attendants may not agree, there’s a timelessness to being in labor. Time gets suspended. Time stops. You don’t actually age (that’s why that reality TV show lady with the 19 kids looks so young). You can have fun with this timelessness by unplugging all the clocks and hiding your watch under the bed (like insomnia, it’s better not to know how long it’s taking).

6) Be curious about what’s happening in your body: You can float outside your body, like Annie Hall, while you’re in labor and use your mind to be interested in all of the sensations you’re feeling. The more intense it gets, the more your body is opening up to make space for the baby. You can think of it as good pain. Or even not as pain at all but as a curious sensation you have the privilege of experiencing. James kept saying, “You have a finite number of contractions. You’re getting through it.” That distracted me into wondering if it were true, did I really have a finite number of contractions? Was I really getting through them? Paying attention to how each contraction (or rush or power surge or wave or whatever you want to call them) feels, and how different they are from each other, is an amazing (okay so maybe it’s not “fun”) experience.

7) You get to have a baby at the end: When I was in labor with Leone the fact that there was a baby in there was actually no comfort at all during the labor. But then all of a sudden, in a rush of fluid, a human baby, a real live bona fide tiny human person, came into the world who had not been there a moment before. James and I both caught her. She cried and spluttered and coughed. You are having a baby (unless you’re actually pregnant with an elephant), and that’s the most fun of all.

What about you? If you have children, what strategies did you use to get through labor? If you’re pregnant, how do you plan to have fun at the birth?

Tags: childbirth, fun during labor, humor during labor, kissing during labor, labor, Thich Nhat Hahn, Zen

[ 18 comments ]

Adventures in Lotus Birth

November 16th, 2009

Our newborn daughter with the cord and placenta still attached

When I first read about lotus birth—which is the term people use for not cutting the cord but instead letting the placenta detach naturally from the baby—I thought it sounded … kind of gross.

I was dismayed with myself for having such a close-minded reaction. I decided I should challenge my own assumptions and find out more about why some people choose to do it.

One local midwife’s said it’s done for “spiritual reasons.” She mentioned that people usually salt the placenta and put herbs like lavender and rosemary on it to speed the drying process and keep it from smelling.

As I read more, I came to understand that one idea behind lotus birth is to help you slow down during the baby’s first days of life.

There’s no real reason to hurry to cut the cord. In fact, the longer you wait, the more likely the baby is to get back all its valuable blood and nutrients from the placenta.

It’s hard for me to do anything slowly. I’m from Boston where people talk fast, walk fast, eat fast, and live fast. We took our firstborn out when she was two days old (to buy a changing table and a crib) and I was bicycling to the bagel shop a day later (“baby and stitches be damned,” my friend Sue said.) Then my body forced me to slow down when I got a bad breast infection.

I know it’s better to be in a quieter space and I strive to find that space, so the more I read about lotus birth, the more the idea appealed to me.

Most mammals (even ruminants) eat the placenta but, apparently, some chimpanzees practice lotus birth, carrying the placenta with the baby chimp until it falls off naturally.

James and I agreed we’d try it. We wouldn’t cut the cord. Instead, we would clean the placenta, wrap it, and keep it with the baby. Maybe until it naturally severed (another name for lotus birth is nonseverance) or maybe just for awhile.

the placenta just after delivery: look how thick and white the umbilical cord is

It wasn’t until more than an hour after the baby was born that I delivered the placenta. I sat up, holding the baby, and squatted by the side of the bed over a bowl. The placenta slithered out with a gushing plopping noise.

I was surprised how big the placenta was! And how interesting it looked!

The cord surprised me too—it was so thick and white, it felt cool and gel-like to touch. I’d never given much thought to an umbilical cord before but I found it fascinating, all twisted and white with dots of clotted blood that looked like brown beans inside it. Who knew that’s what the shriveled black stumps actually looked like once?!

James brought a bowl of warm salt water to soak the placenta, then we wrapped it in two cloth diapers and put it in a plastic bag and then inside a pillow case. The plastic bag part didn’t seem right somehow but we weren’t sure what else to do: Sue had promised to bring a cloth bag for it but she couldn’t come down for the birth so this makeshift contraption was the best we could do.

The only problem with all this was I felt worried about hurting the baby by accidentally pulling on the cord. But everything else about it felt right.

Doing it this way made me wonder why in the hospital and even at most home births there’s this almost urgent rush to separate the baby from the placenta. Keeping the cord and the placenta attached made me feel like the baby and I were still connected in a visceral way, since the organ that had grown inside my body was still attached to her.

We left the placenta on until the next afternoon. It had started to smell like roasted coffee (we forgot to actually salt and put herbs on it) and the long twisty white cord had started to blacken and dry up. Though I stopped worrying so much about it, I did find it a bit cumbersome. I tucked the pillow-cased placenta under or over the baby when I was holding her but it felt a bit awkward.

James and I were both glad we left it on for so long, and we also both felt ready to cut it off when we did.

We cut the cord with a sterile razor. We didn’t need to tie it because it was already dry and almost brittle. Then we cut it close to the placenta so we’d have a nice long piece of cord as a … keepsake?

“It’s mine,” my 6-year-old son shouted. “I want it! I want it! I call it!!”

The cut length of umbilical cord is still on the dresser. It looks like something from a different planet and in a way it is—it’s from a time when the baby and I were still living in the same body, sharing oxygen and nutrients, growing together and keeping each other company. Looking at the dried cord fills me with a strange nostalgia.

In the meantime, the placenta’s in our freezer. We’ll plant it in the spring. Maybe under the raspberry bushes.

Our new baby just after she was born, with her placenta and cord wrapped up with her

Tags: childbirth, lotus birth, newborn, nonseverance, placenta, umbilical cord

[ 9 comments ]

A Baby Born on Wednesday: The Story of the Unassisted Birth

November 12th, 2009

Author’s note: Our new baby was born at home in our bedroom a week ago this Wednesday without a birth attendant present. This is the last installment of the story of how we came to choose an unassisted birth. If you’re visiting the blog for the first time, the story begins here.

When you’re expecting your fourth child and you’re past the due date, you become convinced that the baby will be a full-grown adult before coming into the world, which is why I pretended I wasn’t in labor for about 12 hours of regular but light contractions.

My uterus had been twitchy for days, and since the tightenings on Tuesday night were mild enough that I could sleep between them, I didn’t really think James and I would have a baby anytime soon. Besides, the squeezing feeling that woke me up was almost pleasurable.

Me: I wish I were in labor.

Myself: Maybe you are.

Me: This is way too easy. I wish real labor could be like this.

Myself: Maybe it can. Maybe labor can feel good. Maybe this is real labor.

Me: I hope I can get back to sle—

Myself: ZZZZZZZZZZZ…

I slept better Tuesday night than I had in a long time.

Wednesday morning James bustled the kids off to school. Before they left I felt my uterus tightening so hard I had to lean against the kitchen counter to catch my breath.

“Mommy! Are you having a contraction? Wait, let me get my joke sheet,” my 8-year-old, Athena, cried.

I’d been reading about how humor can really help a woman along in labor and Athena had secretly compiled jokes for me.

“Where did seaweed go to find a job?”

My mind couldn’t focus. Seaweed? Job?

“The kelp-wanted ads!” We both cackled with laughter as the contraction subsided, mine a tad hysterical.

“Maybe you’ll be coming home from school early,” I said, kissing the three kids goodbye. “Or maybe not…”

Then they were gone. I was restless and puttered around the house doing breakfast dishes, folding laundry, tidying the bathroom. I think I even vacuumed. Then I set my camera on a tripod and took some photographs. A couple of times while I was fighting with the self-timer I felt something crampy and jagged going on in my uterus but I ignored it.

I had no inkling that in a little more than three hours I would no longer be pregnant.

James came home.

“I’m not sure what to do…” I said. “I have an article to finish…”

“We could go for a walk,” he suggested. “Or watch the romantic comedy I rented?”

I sat down by the computer and realized I couldn’t sit down.

“Do you think I’m in labor or am I just being wimpy?”

James smiled at me. “Well … I’m inclined to think you’re just being wimpy…”

Nonetheless, I emailed my editor and told her I was in early labor, maybe, and might need an extension.

That was around 8:50 a.m. I put Sadé on the stereo and took a shower, then a bath, then a shower. By now it was obvious, even to a denialist like me, that I was in full-blown labor. I oohed and aahed and breathed through contractions.

Me: This isn’t so bad, see? Mind over matter really works.

Myself: Aaahhh. Ooohhh. That was a good one.

Arms straight, I propped my hands on my knees, which allowed my belly to feel suspended, and I kept the warm water pounding on my back.

Pretty soon, though, the tightenings got really intense.

Me: This is what I wanted. This is what I wanted. This is what I wanted.

Myself: Careful what you wish for.

James made juice with garlic, ginger, kale, beets, carrots, lime, and orange. He brought me some in the shower.

“I can’t,” I sobbed. “I’m sorry.” All the sorrow in the world seemed to enter my body because I couldn’t drink the juice my husband had so kindly prepared.

By then I was starting to lose it. I could no longer ooh and aah through contractions. They weren’t coming in waves with a peak building slowly but instead slamming into my body like a truck crashing into a cement wall.

Me: If you relax your eyebrows and your mouth, your vagina will relax.

Myself: F**k off. I can’t do this. It hurts too much.

Me: What about mind over matter? This isn’t pain. These are interesting sensations you need to pay attention to.

Myself: Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

Me: Breathe in and expand your belly, everything is opening up.

Myself: Shut the f**k up already, will you?

James stayed in the bathroom with me. I wasn’t breathing anymore. I wasn’t groaning. I was screaming, rocking my weight onto the balls of my feet, making loud animal noises that came from some primitive place.

“Help me,” I begged him. “Help me, help me, help me.”

“There are a finite number of contractions,” he said. “You’re getting there.”

I turned off the shower.

“Should we get the kids?”

“I don’t think I want them to see me like this,” I whined, utterly miserable, during a lucid moment between contractions.

We put a pillow on the back of the toilet and I made it through a couple of contractions, gripping James’s hands for dear life.

I stood up from the toilet and a flood of fluid flecked with blood gushed down my legs onto the bathroom floor.

“I think my water broke,” I moaned.

“Oh good!” James sounded chipper.

All of a sudden I felt like bearing down. By this time I was talking to myself in an almost schizophrenic way. “You’re okay Jennifer. You’re okay. You can do this. You’re doing a good job.” I didn’t really believe it but the reassuring words helped me anyway. I was also chanting in a tight and whiney voice, “Honey, honey, honey. I don’t think I can doooo this.”

Everything felt like elbows and hard angles and cramps and my body seemed to be taking on a life of its own. But it—I mean we—were going so fast I could barely hold on.

During another lucid pause, I looked at James. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“You’re not worried?”

“Not at all.”

He was so focused and centered, completely unfazed by how miserable I was. Though reluctant about doing this birth by ourselves, once in the moment James was totally there, totally present, and totally calm.

After my water broke I somehow managed to walk the 10,000 miles between the bathroom and our bedroom though I’m not sure how. We put down a cloth pad and some disposable chux. I leaned against the dresser. I leaned on James. I squatted. I stood. I went on all fours. My legs were shaking. I was sweating. I was dying of thirst. I wanted to be touched. I couldn’t bear to be touched. Nothing felt right. I was pushing now with my eyes squeezed shut and the most animal-like groans coming out of me.

Pushing during my last three labors was easy and pleasurable almost—I only had to push two or three times before each baby came right out. This time felt different. I felt like I was tearing in half. The pressure was unbearable. Everything felt stuck. I was pushing so hard I felt sure the baby would emerge from my rectum. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and by far the hardest stage of this labor.

But in between the knee-weakening, body-shaking Mack truck pushes, time stopped. I was completely lucid and pain free. I could have talked about the weather, the stock market, or Obama’s health care proposal. I felt strong, healthy, in my body. It was so surreal that I wasn’t sure I was really in the bedroom squatting on chux, moaning for water (which my husband gave me sips of through a straw), trying to birth a baby.

James grabbed the flashlight. “I see the baby!” He cried, full of joy. “I see the head!! There’s tons of black hair! I’m the first one to see the baby!!!!” He sounded as happy as Etani, my 6-year-old, trick-or-treating on Halloween. His glee was contagious. I started to laugh.

After the next overwhelming, body-numbing, elephant-pressure need to push, a tuft of hair stayed out even as I felt the head retreat. On the next push the head was out. James told me later the baby, eyes closed, was frowning, moving its head from side to side disapprovingly, as if to say, “Where is this place anyway? Do I want to be here?”

“I don’t think I can do this,” I cried after the head was out and there was a lull between pushes.

“You can. It’s happening.” James was so matter-of-fact and logical. “Here comes a shoulder!”

In a slippery gush after the first shoulder, the baby came out. James caught it. I was on all fours as the baby was being born and with the relief of the baby coming out, I sat down backwards. He handed the baby to me. I was laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh my god, we did it, we did it.” The baby–it was a girl–started bawling lustily, coughing amniotic fluid and spluttering with discontent. I cried with her and so did James. We were so happy—finally—to meet the tiny being who had been growing inside me for nine and a half months. The whole world had changed now that this new life was in it.

I was such a baby during the contractions—crying and pleading and screaming, “help me”–but birthing this little person by ourselves was the most empowering experience of my life.

Human women have been having babies unassisted for more than 200,000 years. I’m not strong or brave or exceptional. If I can do it, you can too.

Jennifer_baby_Etani
Baby_and_siblings
P1020960

Coming up next week: 10 Things No One Tells You About Pregnancy; Experiments in Lotus Birth; When a Baby Spits Up Blood; Nervous Nellie 4th Time Parents, and more.

Tags: home birth, labor, unassisted birth

[ 46 comments ]

A Baby Born on Wednesday, post 4

November 11th, 2009

Author’s note: Our new baby was born at home in our bedroom this past Wednesday without a birth attendant present. This week’s posts are the story of how we came to choose an unassisted birth and about the birth itself. The first installment is here. The second installment is here. The third installment is here. The final installment, about the labor itself, will be posted on Friday.
bathtowels

“So, who’s your midwife?” A friend asked.

“Oh, someone from out of town,” I heard myself lying into the phone.

“Have you chosen a midwife?” A mom from my daughters’ school wanted to know.

“Um, well, sure, yeah,” I hedged. “Hey, have you signed up to volunteer at the Winter Faire?”

It was my mother who asked the most urgent questions. She called James on the sly and told him to make sure we picked someone—anyone—as soon as possible. Away on a business trip close to my due date, she phoned from Puerto Rico to be sure we had a birth attendant.

“We found a midwife Mom,” I said. “A young woman who’s very competent. You have nothing to worry about. She’s great.”

“I’m. Just. So. Relieved.”

I hung up the phone and went into the kitchen.

“I think I just lied to my mother,” I said to James.

“You told her we had a midwife,” he laughed. “But you didn’t tell her the midwife was going to be at the birth.”

It had taken him a good four months but James had come around and actually seemed to be looking forward to the birth. He was as excited and impatient for us to be in labor as I was. And we really had identified a midwife in the Valley who supported our choice to have an unassisted birth and offered to be our “knowledgeable family friend,” willing to come over if we needed her, though not technically as a midwife (for which she could lose her certification) but just as a friend.

I told fewer than half a dozen people our plan for an unassisted birth. I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t want people sending negative or fearful energy in our direction. I also found it trying to allay other people’s irrational fears.

“I’m not a hero,” I heard myself say several times, “I have nothing to prove … if something goes wrong or if there’s any reason that we need to, the hospital is a 2-minute drive from our house. I trust my body. I trust myself. I trust that I will know if something is wrong…”

I spent an hour on the phone reassuring my best friend that unassisted childbirth was safe. Sue wanted me to talk her through everything that could go wrong, so I did.

I told her what most people don’t know: that taking a shower is more dangerous and results in more deaths than having a baby, that driving in a car to the hospital is the most dangerous part of labor—besides what can go wrong because of hospital intervention—that large scientific studies most recently in Canada, but also in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia have all shown very clearly that homebirth is safer than hospital birth, and that there are women all over the United States having unassisted births, but because they fear social disapprobation and people’s irrational rage, they mostly keep it to themselves.

I suggested she read Heather Cushman Dowdee’s incredible cartoon about the unassisted birth of her son and look at Shauna Mama’s unbelievably moving and amazing photographs of herself catching her own baby during an unassisted birth.

I told her about Sarah J. Buckley, the Australian family physician, whose husband is also a doctor, who decided on an unassisted birth at age 40 with their fourth, a daughter who surprised them all by coming out breech (with no complications).

I also spent a lot of time preparing for the birth. I bought two kinds of “chux’s”: one package of disposable absorbent pads and one single chux made of cloth; I also bought ultra thick sanitary napkins and witch hazel (you put witch hazel on the napkins and put them in the freezer for after the birth); we had a handy man install a metal bar in our bathroom shower so I could lean against it during labor if I needed to; I drank loads of red raspberry tea, which is supposed to tone your uterus; I exercised every day; washed our cloth baby diapers; cooked and froze a huge batch of burritos; and started being obsessive about keeping the bathroom—where I expected I’d be laboring a lot of the time—clean and tidy. My friend Jenny leant me an herbal tonic to stop post partum hemorrhage and I asked friends to be on stand by to drive the kids home from school (Athena and Etani both wanted to see the birth) or pick them up from after school activities.

But most importantly I spent quiet time every day imaging the kind of birth I wanted us to have, relaxing, and meditating. If you know me in real life, you know that I’m not much for relaxing and I tend to dismiss the hooey-wooey stuff that people in Ashland like so much. I usually don’t have the patience for baths or the concentration for meditation but I’m trying to change that. To prepare for this birth I made myself slow down. I lit candles and sat in the tub and practiced making “aahh” and “oohh” noises, thinking about the baby moving through my body, being gently squeezed by contractions.

“I will have an easy, gentle birth,” I told myself every day. “I can do this.”

“My body is strong,” “The birth will be fun,” “I will keep a sense of humor,” “James and I will catch our baby,” “Contractions are an interesting sensation to pay attention to,” “This will be an easy, gentle birth.”

I said these things over and over to myself and made myself believe them. But here’s the truth: I wanted to have an unassisted birth more than anything and I couldn’t wait to go into labor but there was a small person in the back of my mind who thought I was asking for too much and was secretly terrified that something would go wrong.

Cartoon courtesy of Heather Cushman-Dowdee.

Tags: childbirth, home birth, unassisted birth

[ 8 comments ]

A Baby Born on Wednesday, post 3

November 10th, 2009

Author’s note: Our new baby was born at home in our bedroom this past Wednesday without a birth attendant present. No name (yet). No weight (we don’t own a scale). No midwives. This week’s posts are the story of how we came to choose an unassisted birth and about the birth itself. The first installment is here. The second installment is here. To read the rest of the story, please check back daily.

The not-yet-certified midwife we chose for our second home birth, M., had dreadlocks down to her ankles. She didn’t have an office. Instead, she brought her 4-year-old daughter with her when she visited our house for prenatal appointments.

Mostly we just talked.

She told me about how everything always got broken in her house but she didn’t get angry at her ten children because there was no point. She told me about how one of her daughters was autistic and would walk in circles for hours, a smile on her face. And how her second oldest wanted to be a midwife too.

I told her how I tore during Athena’s birth.

“You won’t tear this time,” she said. “You didn’t need to tear.”

“I didn’t?” I knew instantly that she was right.

But the birth process with my son started inauspiciously. My water broke at 11:00 p.m. and catapulted me into active labor. With my oldest daughter my water had broken at 11:00 p.m. as well, though she wasn’t born for another 22 hours.

I sobbed as amniotic fluid went into the toilet. I didn’t want to have another birth like Hesperus’s and I felt scared and tired. I didn’t wake James because I was afraid that everything would happen like the first time and that he would get exhausted. Instead I sat on the office couch and sewed up his robe, inside out, until the contractions were too intense to stay still. By then M. was there, though James was still sleeping.

M. was right, of course. I didn’t tear. The labor lasted only about four hours and was not nearly as bad as I had feared when it started. My friend Kathleen, a medical doctor who came as a friend not a doctor, showed up about twenty minutes before the birth.

When our son’s head crowned, I started walking away and Kathleen panicked, “Jennifer! Where are you going?!”

“JUST DON’T DROP THE BABY,” I cried, and twisted my body onto the bed as he slid out. M., who was crouching behind me, caught him.

My son's birth, attended by a midwife-in-training and a friend, had the least intervention

That’s when Kathleen flew into a frenzy of action, grabbing a towel and vigorously rubbing the baby, directing James on how to cut the cord, whipping out a tape measure to measure his tiny perfect head. (“Can you leave him alone, please?” I said, annoyed. “It’s better to have a baseline, Jennifer,” she answered, clicking her pen closed as she finished writing on the chart.)

Our bedroom was small and it felt like there were a lot of people present. M. had essentially done exactly what we needed her to do: nothing. She checked the heartbeat five times while I was in labor but she did it so unobtrusively and gently that I did not even notice. Kathleen, who later told me that sitting on her hands and watching—this was the first and only home birth she had ever attended—was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, had done too much.

M. and Kathleen being there made James’s presence that much less important.

They were the authority we were deferring to, directing a natural process that could have unfolded on its own.

As much as I love and appreciate both of them to this day, their presence made the birthing that much less intimate, that much less about our family, that much less about our love for each other and our trust in the process.

We still weren’t at the same place about unassisted birth, but James agreed that our best birth had been Athena’s BEFORE the midwives arrived, when it was just the two of us, James and me, working as a team to ride out the contractions and help my body open up.

Maybe, just maybe, this birth could be like that one. But sans midwives.

Talking about our previous births, reading about unhindered childbirth, and thinking more about it, James started to believe that an unassisted birth might actually be a good idea.

Maybe, just maybe, our next birth could be without midwives

Interested in reading more? Post 4 tells the story of our unassisted birth.

Tags: home birth, prenatal care, prenatal intervention, unassisted birth

[ 11 comments ]

A Baby Born on Wednesday, post 2

November 9th, 2009

Author’s note: Our new baby was born at home in our bedroom this past Wednesday without a birth attendant present. No name (yet). No weight (we don’t own a scale). No midwives. This week’s posts are the story of how we came to choose an unassisted birth and about the birth itself. This is the second installment. The first installment is here. To read the whole story, please check back daily.

When Athena was born I got an unnecessary tear

“We both started at the same place,” James explained during another “conversation” about unassisted birth. He put his hands side by side to show me what he meant. “And we both moved away from that place together.”

He kept his left hand in place and moved his right hand to show how we had both changed together: We started off as children of divorce who grew up in the 1970s playing soccer, eating Fruit Loops and Ding Dongs, watching TV every day after school, and participating in the mainstream without question, and together we became young parents who had a traumatizing hospital birth with almost every unnecessary intervention possible (except a C-section) who decided after months of research not to follow the CDC vaccination schedule, to make our own organic baby food, to hold our baby when she cried despite doctors telling us we would “spoil” her, to use cloth diapers even though everyone we knew said it was too much work, and to question the assumptions of our childhood.

After educating ourselves about it, reading everything we could, and meeting people who were more progressive than the limousine liberals I grew up around and the right-wing conservative business people from James’s side of the family, we left the world of medical hospital births behind and decided to have our second and third babies at home.

“But then,” James continued. “You made this even bigger leap,” he put his right hand as far from the left hand as he could. “Now you’re over here,” he bobbed his right hand up and down. “It’s taking me a lot longer to catch up, but I’m trying. I’m almost there.”

Our friend Nik was sympathetic. “I think it’s amazing what you want to do,” he told me. “But I understand it from James’s point of view, too. He has a lot to lose.”

Most people in America believe what Nik was implying: to have a home birth without midwives present is dangerous.

I could die.

The baby could die.

Maybe that’s what James was really afraid of.

But when James and I talked about our two home births, we realized that the only things that went wrong during Athena’s birth were midwife-induced.

Because it was February in New England during a snowstorm, the midwives did not come until the last 20 minutes of the labor. Even though I was in full-blown transition, I still remember Jharna barreling into the room.

“Have you checked her?!” she asked loudly to Kristen, who had arrived a few minutes before and had just enough time to set up her equipment. Jharna’s tone of urgency broke into my concentration—I was standing by the edge of the bed having a toe-curling contraction and my water was breaking.

“No need to,” Kristen replied. “I know she’s in transition.”

Though Kristen was calm and centered, Jharna started ordering all of us around. “You need to get on the bed,” she told me. “YOU NEED TO GET ON THE BED RIGHT NOW!”

James and I had not considered where I would birth the baby (other than at home) and this sounded reasonable at the time. I clambered onto the bed, gave three terrific pushes, and the baby practically flew across the room. During the minutes this took to happen Jarna managed to yell at me again to say that if she didn’t call my friend and toddler they would miss the birth. Then she bellowed down the stairs for Sue and Hesperus to come up.

Hesperus watched Athena being born

At the same time, Kristen looked at the baby’s head when it came out and said, “Oh good, no cord.”

James pointed to the white serpentine thing wrapped around the baby’s neck and said, “What’s that?”

“The cord,” Kristen conceded, gently pulling it up and away from the baby’s neck.

Because I had pushed from a supine position, as ordered by a midwife, I ended up with a second-degree tear in my perineum that needed stitches.

Athena was a small baby and I am a wide-hipped woman.

It took years for me to realize that the tearing was completely unnecessary, the result of Jharna’s arbitrary idea that the baby needed to be born on the bed.

Or perhaps the idea was not that arbitrary and was actually for their convenience: if a woman is lying down and still (instead of moving, alternating between standing, squatting, and being on all fours), it makes it easier for the midwives to see what’s going on and to catch the baby.

After the birth, Jharna and Kristen disappeared into our guest room because Jharna’s back and neck were tight and she needed a massage. I’d like to think now that they were trying to be considerate and to give us some space, but even at the time I remember feeling slightly put out: they had been in our house for less than an hour and were already thinking more about themselves than about us and our new baby.

When I got pregnant for the third time, I called Kristen and told her I’d like to hire her but I did not want Jarna—who had no children of her own—at the birth. Kristen and I had become friends and I told her frankly that Jharna’s energy felt really negative. Though she initially agreed, she changed her mind. “You’re asking me to go behind my partner’s back,” she said. “I can’t do that.”

The birth attendant we chose this time, Megan Hill, was not yet certified as a midwife. But she had ten children of her own, all born at home. Five of her ten had been born without any outside assistance.

Photo of Athena, 3, taken by Hesperus

Interested in reading more? Post 3 tells the story of our second home birth, attended by a midwife-in-training and a doctor.

Tags: home birth, midwives, unnecessary intervention

[ 13 comments ]

A Baby Born on Wednesday, post 1

November 7th, 2009

Author’s note: Our new baby was born at home in our bedroom this past Wednesday without a birth attendant present. No name (yet). No weight (we don’t own a scale). No midwives. This week’s posts from Monday to Friday will be the story of how we came to choose an unassisted birth and about the birth itself. To read the whole story, please check back daily.

CoupleAtOdds
“The thing is, I don’t know if I really want a midwife,” I said to James when I was nearly five months pregnant and still had not chosen anyone.

“Oh God.” He furrowed his brow and looked unhappy.

We’d been having “conversations” like this one for months. Every time we interviewed a midwife, James would say, “Great! She seems great,” and I would hesitate.

The midwives were great—I liked every one I talked to on the phone and the three I met in person. They all seemed smart and knowledgeable and compassionate and interested, definitely women I’d like to have as friends.

The problem wasn’t with the midwives.

It was with me.

Though I liked all these women, I didn’t want them touching my belly or sticking their fingers up my yaya or telling me what to eat or to have blood work done.

No one had been in the room when James and I conceived our baby. I was beginning to feel like childbirth is as private and intimate as making love and I had trouble imagining having anyone else present.

“I don’t think I want anyone at the birth,” I tried to explain to my worried husband. “I think I want to do it by myself. With you.”

There’s a term for this: Unassisted childbirth. Some people call it “unhindered birth” or “free birth.” There’s a forum on Mothering.com dedicated to it. And some incredible Websites about it.

I started reading everything I could about childbirth—hippie books from the 1970s about home births, manuals written for emergency medical professionals in case they unexpectedly have to deliver a baby, unassisted birth stories on the Internet and in magazines, classics like Spiritual Midwifery, and a book by Laura Shanley called Unassisted Childbirth—and talking to women who had had successful unassisted births.

The more I read, the more convinced I became that we could have the birth we wanted, by ourselves, without anyone guiding us, interfering, or telling us what to do. And the more I read, the more I thought about my three previous birth experiences, and how I wanted this one to be different.

But James wasn’t completely on board. I knew what I wanted, but how could I convince my husband?

Interested in reading more? Post 2 tells the story of our first home birth attended by midwives.

Tags: birth story, childbirth, unassisted birth

[ 18 comments ]

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Jennifer Margulis

Mothering Outside the Lines

America’s C-Section Rates Out of Control, but ACOG Refuses to Take Action

Don’t Take a Childbirth Class Unless You Know Who’s Really Paying the Instructor

How to Have an Empowered Birth; or the Second Longest Post in the History of this Blog

How to Excrete a Watermelon; or, 7 Ways to Have Fun During Labor

Adventures in Lotus Birth

A Baby Born on Wednesday: The Story of the Unassisted Birth

A Baby Born on Wednesday, post 4

A Baby Born on Wednesday, post 3

A Baby Born on Wednesday, post 2

A Baby Born on Wednesday, post 1

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