Anecdotes are not the plural of data.
Yes @roethlisburger that has been acknowledged upthread.
I was lucky in the doctor I chose to deliver my kids. He was more expensive than other doctors, but the kicker was he didn’t take insurance. I had to pay him out of pocket by the time I was 6 months pregnant. He only took patients who were due between Oct and Jul because he was on vacation the month of Aug.
He showed up at the hospital as soon as I checked in and stayed with me the whole time I was in labor. He didn’t let other doctors examine me. I still remember when the morning came and I was still in labor, he asked my then husband to get breakfast. I said, “Sit down. No one leaves until this F baby is out.”
D1 is thinking about getting pregnant soon. I told her to start looking for a doctor. I would prefer if she were to get a private doctor rather than a clinic, someone who would know her through out her pregnancy.
@oldfort, that type of treatment during your first month after delivering sounds wonderful. S1 was six weeks early, and I had no one to help me – my mother was dying, my sister was 6,000 miles away, and my MIL was useless – and it was very, very difficult for me. DH was there, of course, but he went back to work after a few days. I’m envious. I could have bonded so much better with S1, and recuperated so much faster.
When a thousand or so years of home births have brought humankind to its present numbers, both with incredible numbers of successes as well as those complications and mortalities we have at times elected to file under ‘nature’s way,’ it seems the larger question of how and where women are giving birth lies in ‘How did this whole thing become medicalized’ in the first place?
I hope the miracles of modern medicine can help my daughters and grandkids not be casualties of “nature’s way”. Some are unavoidable, of course, but that is little consolation if it is your D or grandkid, and I’d think would feel much worse if it WAS avoidable and I’d encouraged a path that meant they didn’t get the timely medical care they needed.
I can’t tell whether this is sarcastic or supposed to be a joke. Up until about 1950, there was a high rate of deaths during childbirth.
Not a joke.
There is still a high rate of death - even in the hospital setting - for babies born to certain groups in this country. The medical setting does not eliminate that, oddly.
Childbirth is something women have done for thousands of years. Yes, it can be dangerous. Yes, medicine and its advances have greatly - perhaps exponentially - improved the chances of mothers and children surviving the experience.
It is certainly a way to deliver. It is certainly a first choice for many, an only choice for many. Not for everyone.
I was fortunate to have support from both my mom and MIL. Mom came every day for a month and brought me lunch. My MIL cooked a lot of great food for H to pick up to help me recover.
When I went back to work for 6 weeks (when S was 3 months old), mom watched the baby on Wednesdays and brought him to the office to nurse while she and I ate lunch. After those 6 weeks, I quit to stay home full-time for several years.
Massmomm, I can share my positive home birth experience, 24+ years ago with my first. I had a healthy pregnancy but after going on the hospital birth tour about 6 weeks before my due date, I started to think about a home birth. I have always been quite uncomfortable with the medical establishment. I feel that birth is a natural process and that my job was to relax enough to let my body do what it needed to do. I didn’t see that happening in a hospital settings. So I began to explore home birth as an alternative. I consulted a physician friend who framed it for me as not being a choice between no risk (hospital) and risk (home), but different kinds of risk for each. For the home birth, she said, the biggest risk was a failure to progress, so access to a nearby hospital was important (as other posters have mentioned).
For me, the home birth was a wonderful experience and I was so much more comfortable than I could have been in a hospital. Nothing like hanging out in your own favorite spots at home as you wait for those contractions to get organized! The midwives were incredibly skilled and experienced and I felt that I was in very good hands. And my son slept for many years in the room in which he was born.
Maybe this has already been discussed, but has your daughter found someone who is willing to give her prenatal care in the Boston area, although she plans to deliver in Maine?
Spend some time in an NICU and you’ll quickly realize that ‘nature’s way’ isn’t always the best.
Of course there can be successful home births. My niece was born in a truck as they were racing to the hospital and she was just fine, but her birth was not as planned.
You can’t compare outcomes for hospital births vs planned home births in developed countries because the planned home deliveries are a small subset, composed mostly of the lowest risk patients. The hospitals do also provide care for low risk deliveries, but they also serve all the high risk cases, as well as emergencies, including some that would have been home births but for the unexpected development that results in a trip to the hospital instead.
@fendrock yes, she has an OB in the Boston area that she is about to fire. She travels to Maine once a week for work and can see her midwife then.
I don’t need to spend time in a NICU to realize that nature’s way is not always the best.
@Massmomm how are you getting along with preparing? The best thing I had after my first were these maxipads soaked in witch hazel and arnica, and then frozen. They saved me! My next two were born in water and I had no after effects but I had some bruising with the first and I remember how great those were.
I’m confused about her plan to get to your house when labor starts. How long is the drive? Does she plan to just move in a few weeks before her delivery date? What about her husband, will he just stay home and race there when labor starts? What if it all starts during rush hour or a Friday afternoon when traffic is bad? Some labors move pretty quickly, even first ones. My first was less than 5 hours (6 weeks early). Second pretty close to due date, but took under an hour from start to finish. I’d hate to have to get in the car for a couple hour drive at the start of labor.
@CCtoAlaska: The “maxipads soaked in witch hazel and arnica” sound interesting, and useful. I remember researching some things to avoid doing if one were sore after a delivery and giving them to a friend who was having some difficulty.(Avoid those ‘donut hole’ squishy things which people used to encourage one to use if there is soreness or hemorrhoids.)
Wish I had known that all those years ago. She would have been one woman in my life to certainly give it a try.
I agree that it can be hard to know when baby will arrive. For my 1st child, I saw the OB for a check-up on my due date. He said that S hadn’t even dropped and would likely be very late, so he scheduled a stress test a week later.
That weekend, I had very intense and prolonged contractions but it wasn’t “labor” exactly. By Tuesday morning, I was having regular labor with contractions 4 minutes apart in early morning so we caught the elevator and literally walked across the street and about a block to the hospital. They immediately put me in a wheelchair, and then we waited and waited — S was born in the early afternoon.
With D, she was born less than an hour after we got to the hospital (a 5 minute drive from our place)! I wouldn’t want to have been in heavy traffic and wondering if she was going to be born in the car.
I also recommend the giant hospital pads to go under her. The midwife will bring some for the birth day but you will want more on hand for the heavy bleeding that follows delivery. You can have fun making a birthday cake if she doesn’t mind the smell during labor.