[JennieV.]

I was wondering if any of you had had your babies at home to avoid medical bills due to hospital stays and all?
How did you prepare your place and yourself for having a baby at home? Did you have a mid-wife?

What pros and cons do you see in having your baby at home instead of in a hospital? (Besides the obvious.)

 

[CVORNurse]

Pro:
manage your own birth at your own pace. No doctor pushing interventions on you just for convenience to him/her.
you can have any one you wish to observe the birth
you can labor/push in any position you desire, not just what is allowed ( I wanted to squat to push and wasn't allowed to)
Immediate bonding with the baby, they aren't rushed off to the nursery to be checked out

Con:
Doctors have been known to grow impatient and try to force interventions on you- pitocin drip, breaking your water, c-section for failure to progress after only a few hours of labor.
Many hospitals have rules about who can watch a birth. Mine didn't allow anyone under 18 at the time I had my youngest, unless it was the mother or father themselves.
The biggest con I can think of is if anything goes wrong, your baby, and possibly yourself, have almost no chance of survival without the skilled staff available to do those medical interventions. As an operating room nurse, I can tell you this doesn't happen very often at all ( like once in a blue moon), but when it does, you don't have time to call an ambulance and wait for them to arrive to transport you to the hospital.

I would not look at a home birth just to save money,the price you could end up paying just isn't worth it, IMNSHO. And I for sure wouldn't have a home birth without planning to have a skilled Certified Nurse Midwife present. I would look into a birthing center staffed by CNMs, with medical (doctor) backup readily available if you desire to have a baby without a lot of medical interventions pushed on you. This would be cheaper than hospital birth and lower intervention prone.

 

[desert_tom]

i dont know from a mothers standpoint, but i was born in a house!!! i dont remember it but from what i hear everything went great.

 

[Laddyboy]

Why don't they allow you to squat and push?
So birthing centers are less expensive and there is still a doctor near by to monitor and if anything were to happen?

 

[CVORNurse]

Why don't they allow you to squat and push?
So birthing centers are less expensive and there is still a doctor near by to monitor and if anything were to happen?

My hospital only allows first time mothers to squat and push. It is probably because they are all terrified to have a baby born without a doctor present. Probably a ton of paperwork and incident reports.
I do not know for a fact that the birthing center would be cheaper but it would be worth looking into if you have one near you. I do know that they have to either have md staff available to come, or willing to accept the woman if something goes wrong and they need to transport to hospital

I realize some of you probably think from my first post that I am anti home birth. Not the case at all. What I am against is having a baby at home purely to save money. I would love to have had my second baby at home. If I were not medical I might have considered it. But because I am a nurse and realize all the things that can go wrong with a birth, I was not willing to risk it. My community has no nurse midwife available, no birthing center. Only the hospital or winging it on your own with no help. I could not make that choice to be at home with no support. I wanted that baby too badly.
I fully support a woman's right to have a child in any setting she choses, but she also needs to be fully informed of the risks and benefits of the choice she is making for herself and her unborn child.

 

[TechAdmin]

We have have had two friends try at-home births. One friend had no issues at all, worked great. The other had an absolutely horrible time that ended with a rush to the Hospital and c-section.

I will say when our children were born it was very rugged at the Hospital. They were real strict and ended up doing things that were not necessary and only made the birthing experience a little more difficult for my wife.

 

[Taylor335G]

My wife and I have always been interested in water births but we haven't done much research on it. She thinks she would be more comfortable in a warm bath. Does anybody have any information that they would like to share with me about water births? Anybody have a personal experience with water birthing? Do birthing centers offer water births or is that just something you can do on your own?

 

[resqdoc]

I have delivered babies in the hospital, at home, in vehicles, in the driveway, in hallways, in the CAT scanner eek, in tents, squatting in the corner, doggie style, in tubs, etc.

When it goes well it is great, a no-brainer. When the poop hits the fan, it is a nightmare. I have never lost a baby or a mom, yet, but have had DOA babies brought in from planned and unplanned home deliveries.

Review of a large number of cases from all over the world shows two patterns:
- pregnancies that had mid-wive or greater level care throughout the pregnancy had a much lower rate of complications from home deliveries & those problems that occurred tended to be un-discoverable before hand, or there was no resuscitation capacity for the baby or mom; and
- pregnancies that had no skilled pre-delivery care and were delivered planned or unplanned by untrained and prepared persons who of course had no resuscitation capability

Bottom line upfront: low risk home deliveries by skilled providers who expect the best but plan for the worst will probably do well... the same as deliveries in the hospital. High risk pregnancies and deliveries by well meaning fruit cakes who lack knowledge-skills-experiences and depend on the good graces of the spirits of the crystals, moon phase, or medical dogma rather than assessment of each individual set of circumstances may not do so well... just like in the hospital.

You can screw things up mightily and still have things turn out OK. You can also do everything right and still have a tragedy. Don't confuse luck for skill and don't confuse bad luck for incompetence.

 

[Lester_7]

In a CAT scanner?? Yikes! That must have been fun! lol

And doggie style? I've never heard of someone delivering a baby doggie stye....?

 

[ALICIA21]

I was wondering if any of you had had your babies at home to avoid medical bills due to hospital stays and all?
How did you prepare your place and yourself for having a baby at home? Did you have a mid-wife?

What pros and cons do you see in having your baby at home instead of in a hospital? (Besides the obvious.)

great tips. I enjoyed reading this

 

[gamom]

Yes!! I have have my babies at home By the last one, I didn't do anything special to prepare at all and delivered unassisted. I had some herbs on hand and toweling to go under me (though I never got to get it!). I waited for the cord to quit pulsing and tied off the umbilical cord, I delivered the placenta into a bowl, and other than that the only other things I needed were the blankets to wrap baby, etc. I always hear of women getting these elaborate supply lists together, but I just found it wasn't necessary. I could go on and on and on and on about this so I'm gonna stop before I scare people off from reading my posts lol!

 

[OldFashionedMama]

I had two of my three children at home with a midwife. She was NOT, however, a CNM-or as some call them "Med-Wives". Their training is much too similar to OB-GYN's and too many of them are bound by hospital rules and all kinds of other red tape that prevent them from performing home births anyway. Most of my experiences with CNM's were not good, so I purposely hired a midwife that was NOT a CNM.

My first child was born in a hospital and without going into explicit details I can just say that it was a hideous experience, I was treated like a laboratory animal, hooked up to machines and injected with medications that I did not consent to recieve. It was THE single most painful and humiliating experience of my entire life. They discharged me after the standard 48 hours for vaginal delivery, while I was still semi-conscious from all the narcotics. On top of that I had sustained a pelvic injury during pushing because at the hospital you're not allowed to give birth in a position that is normal and appropriate to HUMANS and was unable to walk. So there I was, 20 years old with a beautiful new baby boy, a time that was supposed to be a joyous one for me and my husband, but instead I was bed-ridden, unable to take care of my own child and laying awake fantasizing about strangling my husband in his sleep because I HATED him for not having to suffer like I was and being able to take care of our son when I could not.

My home births were beautiful and empowering. They were not easy...meaning hell yeah it hurts without drugs, HOWEVER in my experience it hurts even more when you DO have the drugs, so it was worth the pain.
My midwife had over 30 years of experience helping women, including many Amish women, birth their babies at home. She was patient, she was soft-spoken, and she allowed my babies to be born in their own way and in their own time. Finally after a long career, she retired almost 2 years ago.

Bad things can and do happen, but statistics work against hospital births as far as mother/baby outcomes go. And now with "superbugs" and crowded, understaffed maternity wards there is no way that a hospital birthing room is a clean environment. I've read WAY too many stories in the news about new moms coming home with MRSA or their babies come home with it and die a week later. You can be ASSURED that such things will not happen in a home birth. Aside from that, I know that mothers who deliver at home have much more confidence in their own ability to mother the new baby, and feel more satisfaction with the birth experience overall.

And PLEASE, I don't want to be nitpicky but PLEASE do not use the words "deliver" or "delivery" when discussing the birth of a human being. It degrades the status of the newborn to a package from FedEx and perpetuates the assumption that the doctor who "delivered" the baby is the only one who did any work. Mothers do the amazing work of GIVING BIRTH, and anyone who helps is merely assisting.

(can we have a smiley with a little guy stepping off his soapbox? )

 

[NaeKid]

(can we have a smiley with a little guy stepping off his soapbox? )

Ask and ye shall receive

:soapbox2: :soapbox1: :soapboxrant: :soapboxzipper:

 

[OldFashionedMama]

Sweet thanks!!!! :kiss:

 

[sailaway]

My oldest daughter is a family practicioner in Mi. who makes house calls.

 

[OldFashionedMama]

That's awesome, Sailaway! I've heard MI is a good place for midwives and people like that. Florida is another excellent place for women's birth choices. Home birth midwives in FL are fully covered by Medicaid. Go just a few hours north to Georgia and the situation is dire. Home birth midwives are "illegal" in GA, and many women there have to cross state lines or try to find an underground practitioner. Still others give up on finding a practitioner and go unassisted.

 

[horseman09]

My wife and I decided to use a midwife for home birth for our 3rd daughter
(25 years ago) because we lived 45 minutes from the hospital in good weather, and because the first 2 kids came reeaaal fast. Good thing we made that decision or I would have had to deliver little Amanda on the car seat. The little stinker gave us about 30 minutes warning! I was raised on a farm, so birthing wasn't anything new to me and at the risk of sounding crude, a cow freshening or a woman giving birth -- the plumbing and the process is pretty much the same. The midwife was kind enough to let me deliver the baby and cut the cord. Before my wife whacks me upside the head, I'd better make it clear that she did all the work. lol

 

[faithmarie]

My daughter and son in law had 6 home births. Everyone was different. But Everyone was wonderful. They would only go to the hospital if it were an emergence.