Quote:
| Wombat - why might a Homebirth be your only chance at a "normal" birth? She can't deliver at a hospital? Is there a birthing center near you? |
I'm in a curious "bind" due to my status as a VBAC mama and the insurance I have for this birth. My insurance does not cover any midwives. None. Independent or in a joint OB/midwife practice. And they have made it clear that there is no appeal to this decision. So if I did want a midwife attended hospital birth it would be entirely out of pocket.
The flip side of this is that the midwives (and family practice drs) who deliver at our hospital cannot attend VBAC mamas due to recent changes to the hospital insurance policy. So once a VBAC, always an OB in my town/at my hospital.
The homebirth midwives who accept vbac mamas all use the same backup OB... however, he practices at a hospital with a complete VBAC-ban so any vbac mama who transfers due to labor complications goes directly to the OR and he will not accept vbac mamas into his regular practice unless they are planning a repeat c/s.
There are no birth centers that allow VBAC mamas within a 4 hour radius of my home. In fact, it is getting harder and harder to find a birth center anywhere that will accept vbac mothers since the birth center accrediting association came out against vbac. There is some retraction of this stance (a lot of outcry) but right now the trend isn't reversing quickly.
My options at present are:
--go with the local OB practice that allows vbac and takes my insurance. Those are the 50% primary c/s guys and it is very unlikely that they would agree to my intervention free birth demands... which would mean my basically agreeing with everything pre-birth and then refusing everything at the birth. Meaning I'd probably avoid interventions but I also wouldn't get the "special stuff" like being in the tub (since that requires your care provider's ok). I do have a pro-birth nurse who would special me there however.
-- a homebirth with this midwife (she has actually spoken publically about the growing crisis of women "forced" into homebirth due to the lack of birth options)
--travel ~1.5 hours to the next nearest hospital that allows vbac. There is a dr there who supports vbac and takes my insurance. I've been told he's a bit hard to get along with, and very pro-intervention, but he takes the vbac mamas no one else will and he often provides backup for homebirth midwives. He delivers at a high intervention hospital however and there is no "opting out" of interventions without a big fight. And I wouldn't have "my" nurse.
--travel ~3 hours to a pro natural birth, pro vbac, low intervention hospital. The OBs there take my insurance and are very supportive of natural birth and AP style bonding (rooming in, breastfeeding, etc). However it's a 3 hour trip on a good day. Getting to prenatals would be tough (and an all day trip assuming 3 hours out, an hour there, and three hours home) And we'd probably need to rent a hotel down there for a week or so before the due date, and we'd need to arrange some sort of funky child care for the girls since we don't know anyone there and dd2 has special needs meaning we couldn't just get a child care person at the hospital. And of course there is no reimbursement for gas/hotel from my insurance so that could get costly if gas prices went back up to the 5 dollar a gallon they were not long ago.
Sigh. I knew all this before geting pregnant (our local ICAN group and BirthNet group have been up in arms for a while) but now it's personal and I'm blazing mad and scared at the same time. Bleh.
We had cereal instead. The girls thought it was fun, so I'm just going to collect the "cool mama" points.
...really weird...
:
Follow Mothering