Getting SO on board for a UC....

[crunchywannabe3]

Sorry if someone else started a thread of the like but I didn't see any...

I'm wondering if anyone else had a SO/DH who was not on board for a UC, but they successfully talked it through and had a planned UC?

I'm not sure how wordy I should be but (I enjoy reading the stories of others...) here I go...

I started this journey to wanting UC (though didn't know it at the time) when I went to my second OB appointment with my DC1.  The OB was so nasty and forced me to have a flu shot when I didn't want one, then got mad when DH and I didn't want Rhogam(sp) shots until after birth, didn't want to hear about a birth plan or not being in bed during labor......and I heard about someone's friend from work who had an awesome homebirth.  At first talking about homebirth, DH freaked and went on and on about how I was going to kill the baby....anyway long story short, he got on board and was really cool about it.  HB #1 was so smooth and wonderful... 

With DC#2 I started to find out about UC and that you can catch your own baby!  That was so interesting to me....I read more that pregnancy then I had with the first (When I read about something I read alot) I wanted a UC so bad, but DH freaked and I figured I shouldn't push it...maybe I was trying to be too "crunchy".   But I did decide that I wanted to catch the baby, even though DH said he wanted to...lol, I told him no, you had your chance with #1 and didn't want to do it (I didn't think I would be having anymore babies, I HAD to do it myself!).  So...DC#2 was a wonderful waterbirth and I caught her myself(the midwife just napped on the sofa until right before she was born, just like I wanted)...so so cool beyond words...

Well now fast forward to 4 1/2 years later I'm pregnant with DC#3 (surprise baby) and with a new SO...moved a few states away...going throught the divorce that will never end (2 years now), preparing pro se for my divorce trial coming up soon, filing bankruptcy, got fired for pregnancy discrimination and now have to pro se file complaint with eeoc then probably going to sue company for that, (plus other legal issues with soon to be ex-DH) looking for a house and now I can't find a midwife to save my life!... It's almost just too much to find out that I can't find a midwife (oh, and I had a little bit of a battle on my hands to convince SO about homebirth at all...he has no other children...and thinks hosptials are "safe"...etc, etc, etc, but once he realized that this is indeed one subject I know more about...he can know more about everything else, that's cool, lol ;-)...but homebirth is my expertise...lol).  So I have come so far, he's totally cool about a homebirth, so excited about the baby...NOW I can't find a midwife?

So if your still reading (LOL) your a kind soul, lol....so how do I now get him to see UC is ok?  I feel like I am too overloaded for this battle....I loved and hold so dear my other homebirths (DH was worthless during both...he's the kind that needs to be told just what to do and that's cool, turned out I liked it better that way) and UC is such a dream of mine and I just don't know what kind of emotional damage will be had if I went to the hospital...but I want SO to be comfortable...this is the last baby and I want to be left with the same magical feeling as the other two.  I feel so confident in my ability to birth without any help...my last was very hands off by the midwife...she just checked the baby out after...which is just what I wanted.  And I don't think that the other stresses will bother the UC, I feel very good about it.

Any suggestions to painlessly get SO on board for UC? 

Thanks Ladies!

[happynaturalmama]

I personally haven't been in your position, my Husband was all for UC, but have you let him know you can't find a midwife? What has his reaction been? Maybe he'll be more receptive than you think.

[IwannaBanRN]

Well I'm in the same boat as you, but my only advice is to educate him if he's the listening or reading type. Or even watching videos. Have lists of stuff that you'll need on hand, so that you can make sure you got it all. With DH, I made a compromise to him that if this baby is still breech by the time I'm due, I'll walk myself to the car for a hospital birth. My OB is okay and he wants to see how well I do naturally, but I'd rather be at home. I can't afford a midwife and none will take payments here, so I'm stuck with a UC. As soon as I found out I couldn't have a midwife, I calmly made the decision to UC and read up on it more. I knew before I peed on a stick that a homebirth was what I wanted. 2 years ago, an unattended birth would not have crossed my mind. lol And DH knows enough about the process to know what to do. He knows I have all the supplies and that *I* know what to do. DH is one of those that thinks epidurals are God's greatest gift to birthing women, so of course he thinks hospital is the best, but I trust my body and my baby to do what it was made to do. And that's what you need to tell your SO. That you trust your body to do what it needs to do. Do you have your first homebirth on tape at all? Or enough photos that show detail of what happens? Maybe you could show your SO that stuff.

[crunchywannabe3]

happynaturalmama  "have you let him know you can't find a midwife? What has his reaction been?" 

Yes and no...he know's I've been looking and haven't found anything yet...I think he just thinks I'll find one or oh well, we go to the hospital.  It took a bit to comfortably get him onboard for hb as it is...I just don't know how to ease someone into UC, when never in his wildest dreams would he be dealing with hb as it is.

IwannaBanRN 

I'm not sure what can be done about midwives being able to take insurance...I know what your saying about not being able to afford a midwife, I had found a few really far away and they would let me have the baby at their house, but the fee was crazy anyway.  I feel like when I get some of my bs off of my plate I really would like to look into all the legal mess with midwives in my state...There's hardly any hospitals and even less midwives... I just don't get it 

"DH is one of those that thinks epidurals are God's greatest gift to birthing women",  that made me laugh...I don't know if that's what SO thinks, but he did think that it is sillyness to not have all of the safety of a hospital....how else will we have the poor boys weewee chopped off?...another topic in of itself...

You are prob right I should just talk about it more...I guess I'm afraid of turning him off of the idea more than on and don't know what I'll do if that happened. 

I do have my 2nd homebirth on tape, but I need to have it converted into something I can watch...it's on a goofy little tape.  I did try showing him pictures and he was grossed that there was a little glimpse of bloody vag at the bottom of the pic, LOL...sorry if that's gross to anyone else, but it is what it is...it's not like it  was meant be in a pic, but I suppose I shouldn't have said don't look here, lol and try to make him not look...didn't work very well.

*****Update on the topic...  I pretty much have decided I'll keep talking about homebirth and keep looking for a midwife to make SO happy, but we are also looking for a house in the "sticks", there are few hospitals anyway, and SO works in construction so he can drive up to 2 hrs, 1 way to work, with it being winter when I have the baby I just decided that I may get a UC without even trying.  But as soon as I figured I would just chill out on the matter I got in touch with a midwife, who isn't too far away and reasonably priced, so maybe that will pan out....we'll see. 

[lilmamabrown]

It just takes time, be patient. I know there are those that never come around to the idea but if you are gently persistent in your sharing of information he may come to see how you feel about it. My dd1 (my husband's dd2) was a hospital birth with every intervention imaginable and my dh thought it was totally normal. My dd2 I talked to him about home birth and he told me he didn't even want to be there if I wasn't getting an epidural. I didn't get him onboard to meet a hb midwife until 28 weeks. I saw the midwife for prenatal care the entire time and had an awesome back up OB who really eased my husband's mind about homebirth. In the weeks before the birth of dd2 we joked more and more often about just "buying a catcher's mitt" and doing it ourselves (my hopes from the beginning). I think it took those weeks of joking around for him to feel like he wasn't losing face on having such a big change of heart. I gave him ridiculous amounts of articles, books, etc to read throughout the pregnancy (and he's EMT certified). We decided just to play it by ear and try to stay in tune with the pregnancy. If everything went smoothly we'd just keep it to ourselves. If he had genuinely had a feeling we needed the midwife to come because something seemed off I would have agreed. I felt very appreciative for the length of pregnancy when it came to that situation... I needed all the time I could get to work on him.