Talk to me about unassisted pregnancy/birth

[sattygirl99]

Long and short... I'm a VBA2C and I can't afford to pay for a home birth MW. DH and I have toyed about with the idea of an unassisted birth. It's not the birth part that makes me jumpy , but that I'm not sure how to do my prenatal care 'the right way' and if I transferred for any reason, I wouldn't have 'real' records and would end up getting investigated by CPS.

So here's where I'm at right now... Going completely unassisted and just keeping my own records and if transfer happens then I would say I had been seeing a homebirth midwife for prenatal care and refuse to give a name OR seeing a midwifery practice strictly for prenatal care with (quietly kept) intentions of birthing at home with my husband.

Trying to make a choice as to how to handle it from this point... Of course now I regret selling my doppler because wouldn't it be helpful to have going unassisted? LOL.

Thanks ladies!

[zapzipzee]

I'm doing my own prenatal care and planning a UC at home.

I do weekly urinalisis and my dh takes my blood pressure for my own piece of mind. I can send you a blank copy of my "Records" if you want.... they're all on the computer. I figured it wouldn't hurt to write things down since we were doing them.

[BirthWithFaith]

Going unassisted requires many things. It first requires you accept responsibility - good or bad - for the outcome of your birth. Can you live with a baby that might have issues or even die if you don't know how to get the baby out if the shoulders are stuck for instance? You really need to spend weeks/months pouring over books on unassisted birth and having your husband as equally trained as usually it takes a 2nd person to help catch if there is a problem. I believe in normal natural birth and that it rarely needs any such assistance, but I've also seen when it does require that and not everyone knows how to facilitate a situation like that in the moment. What would you do for postpartum hemorrhage? What would you do if baby wasn't breathing? You'd need to take this role very seriously and be as educated as possible to deal with these potential situations. You may find the following links helpful:

http://trustbirth.com/
http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/

Good luck!

[mataji4]

My family doctor does deliveries as well and she agreed to see me for some prenatal care since I'm already a patient of her family practice. She made it really clear that she wasn't responsible for my baby/pregnancy. It's been great. And if I need to go to the hospital, she said that I should call her first and if she can come then she will, otherwise she'll transfer my records so I'm not a nobody to the staff. Granted, I only saw her three times. She was also covered by my insurance, which was a bonus. I'm glad I chose to do some bloodwork this pregnancy though because for the first time ever I am pretty anemic, which I wouldn't have guessed based on how I'm feeling.

There is a midwife here as well who has worked similarly with parents planning an unassisted birth, doing general check-in's a few times or full prenatal care.

Good luck!

[SublimeBirthGirl]

I did my own prenatal care. It was in a very loose sense though. I never heard her heartbeat until the fetoscope could pick it up. I checked my BP occasionally at the grocery store but I have absolutely no history of BP issues so I didn't check it often. I didn't do urine checks. I had already had one baby and I just wasn't worried about GD or, well, pretty much anything. Once I could pick it up I listened to her heartbeat regularly but I didn't time it, just listened. Around 34 weeks I ordered a home test for anemia because i was soooooooooo tired all the time but it turned out that was just the toddler's fault :P I did what counts as prenatal care to me, which is not testing, but eating well and taking care of myself. It was so incredibly low-stress for me. I just got to enjoy being pregnant without worrying about tests and deadlines and due dates and clocks.

My plan if I had to transfer was to say I had a MW but refuse to name her. UCers are often treated even more poorly than regular homebirthers when there's a transfer. I just knew I wouldn't transfer and I didn't. I never gave it very much thought, beyond where I would go and whether I'd drive or call 911.

IMO *all* couples should go through a personal responsibility thought process. The thing is, when you give birth with an attendant, you have someone else to blame. And especially if you're in a hospital, nobody's going to hold it against you if something goes wrong. All families who lose a child or have complications deserve sympathy and support, but if this happens in a UC often there's none of that, just blame and accusations. The odds are excellent that everything will go perfectly but you do need to look inside yourself and see how you'll feel if there is truly no one else to "blame." Often things go wrong *because* a woman is in the hospital, but nobody really thinks about that.

[Happiestever]

Prenatal care is very individual. You can either get all the tests and do urine analysis, bp monitoring or you can listen to your intuition and eat a healthy diet. Doing your self checks by really listening to your body. It all really depends. I went in for 2 prenatal check ups purely for insurance and birth cert purposes, thank goodness since we had to go to probate court (specific to our location - not the norm I believe).

I would recommend focusing all your energy into really learning about the risks and benefits to each scenario and go from there. Just because you think your options are limited doesn't mean there aren't more out there. I know it wasn't until I started asking around that I found one midwife who brought her fees down from 4000 to 1700 for people that needed the help. Good Luck and wishing you a healthy pregnancy.