Supporting homebirth

Giving birth is hard.  But when you can avoid the hospital and its many interventions, it can be easier.
Not every woman can give birth naturally at home, and perhaps not every woman can breastfeed. But these are normal things to do, and what has become normal--giving birth hooked up to machines while paralyzed from the waist down--perhaps should not be.

Through her small midwifery practice in Tennessee, Ina May Gaskin, a self-taught midwife, has documented a 1% cesarean rate for her clients, so perhaps 1% of women actually do need a c-section.  But cesarean rates are 30% nationally.  That means 99% of sectioned women probably could have birthed naturally if they were in Tennessee.  Why?

Ina May Gaskin is a medicine woman.  She believes women can give birth, and she surrounds them with love, gentleness, and support.  She encourages them to make out with their partners, leaves them alone to get sexy in labor sometimes, makes jokes about their poop, and celebrates their gigantic vaginas!  Watch some footage of Ina May's commune, which shows birth the way it can be.

Ina May Gaskin also delivers the local Amish, who are not crazy hippies.  They may deliver silently, so that their older children are not awakened.  Some Amish women don't even know about sex until they are married, and know nothing about pregnancy until they themselves become pregnant.  But they still have the same rate of success.

It comes down to believing in it.  Believing in us.  Believing that our bodies--the way we were created by God or evolved cell by cell--are perfect.  If we give ourselves time, patience, love, and encouragement.

But what does believing look like?

Having your baby at home requires deep, transformative work; casting out doubt and fear; constant recommitment to impossible and frightening truths; opening to the unknown; and acceptance of the possibilities of life and death.

Birth is crossing over from one world to another.  From the inner to the outer.  It is a leap from dependence to independence, and that is precarious.  The crevasse is wide and some don't make it across.  Because we are afraid, we pretend that if we surround ourselves with walls and lights and machines in the hospital, the crevasse won't be as deep: but it is, it is always there waiting to return us to the next world.

Women love their babies, and they want to protect them.  But we built up a system that treats women and babies as if their lives were at stake in the labor room, when mortality rates no longer support that level of vigilance.  In fact our mortality rates have risen because of the system we've created.  Women and babies are suffering from the interventions we've come to believe are necessary.

Giving birth at home requires accepting that the fragility of life is beyond our control.  It requires realizing that babies do die in the hospital, in spite of the technology, and that a midwife is well qualified to deliver a healthy baby.  In fact she will know you better, longer, and keep you safer by trusting you and your instincts to give birth.

Giving birth at home requires a love and a power greater than fear.  It requires the urge to bring a baby into the world in a way that is loving and kind and beautiful even if it is scary.  It requires a commitment to welcome him or her into the bed that he or she was made in, feeling safe, held, and protected by the people that love them.  And it requires a firm disregard for what your insurance policy says!