The next piece of our homeward puzzle and journey is childbirth. Truth be told, we are 3 out of 4 for hospital births. My first three children were born in hospitals, but our last child was intentionally born at home. (Though I have some images from the births of our children, I'll just include some of me with the kids as images for this post instead.)

We had actually started out with that goal, because mama-pepper likes to do a lot of research on things. When we first got pregnant, she got to researching. After looking around a bit, she found out that we had options!!

Hospitals may be a popular and common choice, but that is a newer phenomenon. When hospitals were first created they were mostly for people who were sick or dying. A pregnant woman is not sick (though the Centers for Disease Control seem to have an interest in abortion) and, most of the time, a pregnant woman is not dying either.

With our first child, my wife had a shortened, V-shaped cervix and was considered to be “high risk.” This meant some restrictions and ruled out the possibility of a home birth. She suffered through her bed rest and when the time came, we had an amazing natural, drug-free birth in the hospital. It certainly wasn’t all it could have been and she had no option of trying things like the squatting position or a birthing pool, but overall it was a success.

Our first daughter made it out just fine and we kept the drugs out of mama-pepper in the process!

For a while, the babies kept coming and we just got used to the hospital way of dealing with the pregnancies and deliveries. We may have opted out of some tests and ultrasounds, and we passed on all the drugs that they offered, but the hospital is still where we went and where the little ones were delivered.

Since we had our first three children one at a time in less than a three year period, getting distracted and falling into a routine was easy.

• We’re pregnant.

• Go to the Hospital.

• Baby delivered.

• Baby home.

• We’re pregnant.

• Go to the Hospital.

• Baby delivered.

• Baby home.

• We’re pregnant.

• Go to the Hospital.

• Baby delivered.

• Baby home.

Yeah, that cycle repeated itself for a while…

However, when we got pregnant for the fourth time (we are still looking into what causes that) my wife refreshed herself with some of the information that she had already been exposed to some years before. We knew that having a woman lie on her back with her legs up in the air may be convenient for getting babies out of women if a doctor is going to pretend to be doing most of the work, but it kind of takes the woman out of the picture as far as actually being really helpful is concerned.

Not all that long ago women would often use birthing stools or have their babies in the squatting position. I know that it is a totally different picture and a different situation using some different muscles, but no one takes a dump upside down. It just wouldn’t be comfortable or helpful. Likewise, it’s not all that comfortable or reasonable for a woman to lie down to give birth.

The doctor can comfortably stand and watch… and wait… and comfortably stand… and watch… and wait. However, we realized a few things.

---

1) It is not his baby (I say his not to be sexist or offensive, but because we are talking about the baby that my wife is giving birth to, so the doctor would need to be a male if the baby was to be his… I’ll cover that in another post some other time if I need to.)

2) It is not the doctor’s pregnancy.

3) It is not the doctor’s birth.

4) The doctor is not doing most of the work.

---

Once we realized these things, we began to think again about what would be best for my wife, since it was her baby that she was giving birth to and she was going to be doing most of the work. What would work best for her?

She had already watched THE BUSINESS OF BEING BORN movie put out by Ricki Lake, but she watched it again. If you may give birth, or have given birth, or have been born, I’d recommend it. It shows a lot about how being born is now a business and how much the whole hospital birthing process is geared to best serve the doctors and the hospitals, not the mothers or the babies.

The evidence is included in the film, but they went so far as showing how when a doctor gets tired of waiting, Pitocin is recommended which increases the strength of the contractions. This puts the baby in more stress and causes more pain for the mother. Then, to help with the pain of the mother, often the doctor will recommend an epidural, which is when a doctor injects a pain blocking drug into the spine. Then, when the woman can no longer feel the pain, she also has trouble pushing with the contractions because she can no longer feel them. This causes further complications and often a doctor will then recommend an emergency C-section to help “save” the baby. Most of the C-sections were said to also occur in time for the doctors to make it home for dinner.

This is not my research but it is what was shared in the film. I am not a woman and have never been pregnant or given birth. I haven’t even done a make-up tutorial. I’m not a doctor and have not done any research myself. Yet, the film was convincing, and it seemed like the ladies making the film had.

Refreshing ourselves with this perspective lead to us looking back into having a home birth. If we had a home birth, we could have a professional midwife and my wife would be free to try some different birthing positions. Also, we would have the option of doing a water birth, which also interested my wife. At that point we already had three successful drug-free births, so my wife certainly had some experience with the process now herself as well.

We got in contact with a local midwife team and enjoyed the pregnancy checkups a great deal. It was different, but refreshing at the same time.

Prior to the actual birth, we had a "false labor" day. We had never experienced "false labor" before, so it was a little disappointing to think that the day had come, without having it actually come. Two midwives from the team we were working with showed up, one at a time, and just hung out to see what would happen. When the first one was done being able to wait with us, the second one showed up to take her place. Eventually, nothing happened and she left as well.

We felt a little embarrassed calling them over, but we all knew that it was the right thing to do, and they were very understanding.

The next time was for real though. My wife woke me up at 4 am one morning, and a midwife was already on the couch. My wife had been laboring for a while and had made the call already. She let me sleep in to get my rest for the big day, as if I would really need my energy anyway. I already knew what my job was.

1) Tell her she could do it and it would be over soon.

2) Repeat until instructed to be quiet.

3) Be quiet.

Yep, my job was simple.

Soon, my parents came and picked up the first three children and I was hard at work using all the hot water in the hot water heater to fill up the inflatable birthing pool in our living room. After a while of pacing around in labor, my wife said she wanted to try the birthing pool. Soon, we was embraced by the warm water.

Though it was really hot compared to the cold, winter porch she had been pacing on, it was very relaxing for her. She just propped herself up on her hands and knees and let her giant belly hang under her in the water, swaying slowly from side to side. I was feeding her ice cubes and rubbing her lower back, periodically offering words of encouragement.

Eventually the time came, and the midwife checked her dilation. Her cervix was fully dilated and the baby was in the proper position. Receiving a green light from the midwife, my wife held her position (on her hands and knees in the birthing pool) and began to push with the contractions. She only pushed with the first two contractions and our newest daughter was born.

Yeah, the midwife said that she could push, and she pushed twice.

BABY BORN... in the living room.

It is also interesting to consider that she was born in the amniotic sac. Often a doctor will rupture that just to try to speed things up, but the midwife knew that it would not stop that baby from coming out.

The time was about one minute before 6 am. My wife simply rolled over in the pool and the midwife placed our newborn daughter on her chest. Soon, everyone was cleaned up, the placenta was passed, and our daughter was breastfeeding for the first time.

Later that day, about 2 pm, mama-pepper asked me if I wanted to walk to Aldi. I figured that she wanted me to run and get her something to eat. However, she wanted me to go for a walk with her to the store, about eight blocks round trip. My parents were back with the kids and the midwives were gone, so we took a stroll.

The cashier at the store asked me how I was doing. I looked her dead in the eye and asked, "Do you really want to know?

She replied, "Let me have it," and I responded with something like, "Well, my wife woke me up at 4 am, at 6 am we had a baby in our living room, and now she wanted to come for a walk over here."

The cashier was blown away by how tough my wife is. I think if she could be any vehicle, she'd be a tank! Another customer overhead the conversation and asked if we were scared to have the baby at home. I told her that it was a planned, midwife assisted, home water-birth and that all went well, adding that hospitals were for sick and dying people, and that my wife was neither. The other customer looked bewildered and we left for our stroll back home.

Overall, it was an incredible experience and it was also successful. A lot of people may have concerns about home birth, but many also have concerns about hospitals. Thankfully, we are free to choose as we see fit. We will have to see what will happen with this next delivery (since we are currently pregnant with our fifth).

Are we free to go to a hospital the next time? Of course! Would we consider having another home birth or water birth? Absolutely!

Yeah, this long, strange journey home is getting longer and stranger. Stay tuned for what tomorrow will bring.

Here are the links to the previous posts in this series:

PART 1 - INTRODUCTION

PART 2 - THE FOOD SUPPLY

PART 3 - EDUCATION

---

Other than the linked YouTube video,

---

FOLLOW

---

Awesome Handcrafted @papa-pepper logo kindly donated by @vlad - Thank you!!

---

OPERATION TRANSLATION logo provided by @oecp85.

(click link above for more info on Operation Translation.)