[name]Happy[/name] to help. I’m glad you had a great operative experience and more importantly a mutually respectful, constructive relationship with your OB. If you think of any specific questions and you think I could help answer them, feel free.
tintri-
It looks like you have a bit of time to do the research in your area to seek out your best birth options. It’s great that you already have an idea of what you are looking for so you can take your time finding your best pregnancy healthcare team possible. I feel like we may have similar philosophies on child birth so I just wanted to share my experiences so far. It’s a little bit long, but I do have a point to express, I promise.
I am part of a community that supports natural labor. I am moderately well-educated in the home birth model of delivery. My closest girlfriend spent 4 years training as a home birth midwife. A large number of my friends have had or planned on having home births. I work professionally with home birth midwives and doulas. My community is very much about empowering women and mothers throughout pregnancy and childbirth. Many of us feel that despite all of the best intentions of hospitals and OB’s, the power can be systematically stripped away from women throughout the entirety of the journey. Instead of acknowledging and supporting the power of a pregnant women, the medical system tends to instill fear. Before I was pregnant, I had always assumed that I would have a water birth at home.
Fast-forward to about 9 months ago. When I found out that I was pregnant, I wanted to begin receiving medical care as soon as possible. I was referred to an OB by my best girlfriend (the trained home birth midwife). I began my prenatal care with him and planned on transferring care over to a midwife down the line. I found my OB to be caring, attentive, thorough, kind, incredibly positive, and very respectful of my position on child birth. About 20 weeks into my pregnancy, despite my love for my doctor, I chose to change my care over to a birthing center run by 5 certified nurse midwives. My reason was simply that I absolutely did NOT want a hospital birth, and I wanted to give birth to my child in the water. However, my experience at the birth center was awful, unprofessional, impersonal, disorganized, traumatic, and simply unpleasant. I kept telling myself, I just want to use the facility to birth my baby, I just want to use their birthing tubs. I convinced myself for 2 months that I could deal with their subpar care. There were a few instances where I felt very, very judged by the midwives as well, but I am not going to go into that right now.
Anyway, my best friend URGED me to return to my OB (even though she is a huge proponent of home and birth center births). I asked my OB to take me back around 30 weeks. Because I was healthy and had no complications, he was more than happy to have me back. It was so strange to me, but the only person in my healthcare team to make me feel empowered during the entire pregnancy was my male OB. The female midwives made me feel fearful, judged, and completely unsupported. It is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I had anticipated.
So, now I will be delivering in a hospital. My hospital has tubs for laboring, but I have to deliver out of the water. We’ll have a private room, I can labor in whatever positions I want, I can eat, I can have any number of family and friends in the room, and I will be doing hypnobirthing. I have my wishes spelled out pretty clearly. My baby will be put directly on me as long as he/she is healthy. We are automatically given 2 hours of skin to skin contact and I can direct the staff that I want more, if I chose. My OB will do delayed cord clamping. My baby will never, ever leave my room (again as long as baby is healthy). I can opt out of any medical procedures to my baby. My OB is giving me the choice to create the birth that I hope to have.
So, we’ll see how it goes…I liked what jemama said though, “Sign up for a hospital birth, get the hospital ride”. I do still have anxiety about delivering in a hospital, but I weighed all of my options, and I chose the best one for me and my baby.
Here is the main point to my incredibly long and rambling post: Not all midwives are fantastic and empowering and respectful of the pregnancy process. Not all OB’s are cold, uncaring and anti-natural labor. I think blade did a great job describing that point. But, because I am not a doctor, I don’t have the same trust in the medical system, and I do think a lot of the fears women have pertaining to child birth have some very valid origins. We’ve all heard the horror stories, and not just from documentaries, but from friends, and family, and neighbors.
My advice is to find someone to manage your care that you trust and who respects you and your individual wishes. There are all types of CNM’s and OB’s with all kinds of philosophies. Ask around and find someone who will honor your process and your vision of pregnancy and birth. Keep an open mind because it may not look like how you think it will look. Make informed decisions and be clear about what you want.
I wanted to share, because I really love, love my doctor, and my pregnancy wouldn’t have been the same without his support and care. And I am even willing to deliver in a hospital to remain in his care.
Thanks sdsurferma! I really enjoyed reading your post. Someone else mentioned a negative experience they had with a midwife, so you are right. Disrespect can happen anywhere! I’m so glad you found a great doctor and it sounds like you will have a great birth experience. I hope you can let us know how it went, after the the fact!
Thanks again for your input. I completely related to everything you said, and its nice to know I’m not alone!
I didn’t read all the responses, so forgive me if this has been stated. Empower yourself with knowledge! Take a [name]Bradley[/name] or Informed Beginnings class. [name]Read[/name], read, read. My favorite book about birth options is The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer. Hire a doula!!! I cannot emphasize that enough.
I am a chiropractor and my practice focuses on natural fertility, pregnancy, and birth. It’s a passion of mine. I have connections all over the country, so PM me if you want help finding a doula or provider.
Nthing what blade and some others have said. BoBB is a very one-sided doc (also, do some research on the main midwife profiled in it… you’ll find out some interesting things about her record.) [name]Both[/name] midwives and OBs can rub you the wrong way, depending on their personality.
That being said, often the set up at your individual hospital and the demographics they serve will dictate a lot of their practice. For example, a high-risk OB is going to have a higher CS rate than a GP who also delivers babies (because they’ll have transferred out any high-risk patients.) Similarly, a hospital with a level 3 NICU (not sure of the American equivalent), will have a higher CS/ “intervention” rate for the same reasons. I had a CS at a women’s hospital which does over 7000 births a year, and did immediate skin to skin and was never separated from my baby, however, my cousin works as an OB nurse in a smaller general hospital. There I would have been separated because their ORs are on a different floor, and the surgical recovery nurses don’t “do” babies or have any training in lactation, so they aren’t set up for it. They also see a ton of unmedicated vaginal births (even my friend who recently graduated med school saw about 50 in 2 weeks - this was just during his stint in OBGYN, which he isn’t specializing in.)
I’d also recommend a doula if you are birthing in the US. Also a midwife as a primary maternity care provider and a birth centre birth if you are interested in having a natural (unmedicated vaginal) birth. Personally, my belief that natural birth is the best option for the majority of women is not based on any concept of “proving” anything, but because the evidence supports best health outcomes for the majority of mothers and baby that way.
On a related note to natural birth, you may also be interested in looking into the benefits of delayed cord clamping. I highly recommend the book “Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering” by Dr [name]Sarah[/name] [name]Buckley[/name]. Well researched and referenced book that looks into several different pregnancy and birth interventions.
I’m glad you found a doula. I hope she can help put some of your fears to rest. My doula was a great support for my natural birth.
My doula said the #1 way to have the birth experience you want is to choose the right doctor for you. Some doctors and mamas just aren’t a good fit. There are some doctors who may prefer working with women who want an epidural. Other doctors are great working with women who desire a natural birth, and of course many are great at both. Keep talking to your doctor about your concerns, and if you feel you’re going to have to “fight” with your doctor on everything, you’re probably not a good fit. [name]Don[/name]'t think all doctors are like that. You just haven’t found the right doctor for you.
I used to sound very like you. When I became pregnant and started doing all this reading on natural childbirth, I became very concerned about this “cascade of interventions.” I thought, they’re going to push things on me I don’t want, and I don’t want to fight to get the experience I want. But after talking to my doctor, my doula, and going through my two experiences in the hospital, I found that my fears were totally unfounded.
In the end, I found that ironically, natural birth advocates pushed their own ideas on me far more than my doctor or nurses did. According to the natural birthers, I should eat and drink in labor, I needed to fight against a hep-lock, I needed to fight for all these particular things and there was only one right way to do it. They said they wanted to “empower” me, but they made me feel much more fearful than the “evil medical establishment” they claimed to protect me against.
My doctor was very encouraging of a natural birth. He said he wanted me to do whatever I was most comfortable with, and if I was really into natural pain relief methods, go for it. He didn’t require an IV, but he did want me to have a hep-lock. That’s not because he wanted it to be easier for him to “push interventions” on me, but to have just in case of an emergency. In a sudden emergency situation, it can be difficult to get an IV in quickly. I could refuse it, but I realized that the hep-lock was a minor inconvenience that made things safer for me and my baby. I, too, was worried it would be painful, but when I was in labor, I barely noticed the nurse putting it in. If it is extremely painful for you, it might be against a nerve or something and you could ask the nurse to re-do it.
My labor went so quickly that I didn’t even have time to do all the nice natural pain relief methods I wanted to try, like the labor tub. Everything went smoothly, and all the worrying I did about interventions was without cause.