Giving birth

When my Daily Diigolet comes out tonight, I will have a few articles with highlights regarding the new movie The Business of Being Born and also ACOG’s apparent response to the film.

Helping women avoid unnecessary cesarean sections and promoting home births are two topics that I am passionate about, but I feel that I need to explain myself a little bit for the sake of clarity.

Long-time readers might remember that I have had three Cesarean sections, one hospital VBAC, two wonderful homebirths, and a home delivery of a child we knew had already expired.

That said, my last birth was one of my Cesareans and it was planned that way, although it was not chosen that way. The birth of my daughter occurred 2 1/2 years after the stillbirth of her brother. The grief and emotional issues surrounding my son’s death were still very real and tender during my subsequent pregnancy with my daughter. While I wanted with all my heart to have another homebirth for my baby girl, or even a regular delivery in a hospital, I could not find a caregiver who would allow that. The doctor I had in the first part of my pregnancy was very kind and understanding. She also worked with me as an older mom and monitored my progesterone levels so that we could avoid another fetal death. At the time, that is what I felt was the most important for the good of my daughter. However, that doctor absolutely did not support VBAC for me and I felt that I was absolutely going to be guided into the operating room despite any well-thought out and documented argumentation from me. So if I was going to be railroaded into a Cesarean, I was going to have the best surgeon that I knew, which is what I eventually opted for.

Please understand that I simply did not feel that I could deal with my issues of grief and concern from my stillbirth experience AND fight the powers that be for a VBAC. I knew what fighting for a natural birth was like and I just didn’t have it in me at that time. In 1999 I was a failed homebirth for a cord prolapse. I remember how I was treated with disdain by the nursing staff and in retrospect I think the care I received there was the bare minimum. I felt that I was being punished for being the renegade homebirther. (Recently I received confirmation from a trusted source that my suspicions on that were correct.) I bit my lip and soldiered on. Bucking the system comes with a price. For my little girl’s birth I needed everyone’s support and not animosity or disdain.

If I had to face that situation now, with a total of 5 years to process it all, I could probably do it, but I knew I couldn’t do it then. As scheduled C-sections go, I felt mine was a good one. Doctors and nurses were being good to me, because I was being a good patient.

This is an issue that’s going to affect my daughters, my nieces, god daughters and my future daughters-in-law. It’s so sad to me that in the almost 19 years since I had my first baby, the atmosphere for birthing mothers HAS DETERIORATED instead of getting better. And it’s systemically nation wide. One only has to watch the afternoon birth shows to know the usual hospital drill. The best thing I can do for my girls is give them all the information that they need to make an informed choice.

To that end, I’ll probably be blogging a lot about this in the next week or so.

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