Anyone just put your foot down with dhand insist on homebirth? - Page 2

[jessitron]

Originally Posted by Quirky

He can either join in or he can get out of the way but barring a medical complication there is no way in hell I'm going to a hospital to have my baby.

You go, Quirky!

[mezzaluna]

my DH is the one who's more for homebirth! his sister had her first at home, and his SIL had babies at home, too. i have several big risk factors for pre-eclampsia, so i'm personally more comfortable working with an OB and hiring a doula to assist at the birth in our fairly progressive hospital. (and he supports my choice about where i feel i will be comfortable!) but if all goes smoothly this time, we will definitely consider homebirth for #2.

[LadyWulf]

You definately don't want to convince DH the way i did. I tried to get him to agree with homebirth with our son. Considering there are NO homebirth midwives around here and it would have been unassisted he absolutely refused. I went to the hospital. Was treated like a piece of meat. Things were done to me with me saying NO the whole time. It was a horrible experience and i still have issues dealing with it. This time we are either going to TN for a homebirth type birth at a midwifes house up there or we will be homebirthing unassisted. He isn't 100% comfortable with either but he would rather do that than risk anything even near our sons birth happeneing again.

ETA: He kinda has to live with it though since unless my life or the babys life is in danger i am not stepping foot in a hospital even to visit anyone in the last trimester. I have a weird fear that they will keep me there against my will if i do. That is what the Dr did before.....well...he said he would call the police and childrens services if i left the hospital. Later i found out he couldn't do that.

[Gardeninginthefog]

Re: the scare tactic email the OB sent. I think that if your husband is going to base his opinion on fear, by all means, SCARE him. My aunt had three children (now 16, 22, and 26) at home unassisted (at that time and location she had no available home birth support option). While pregnant she read a book called “Immaculate Deception.” It had a lot of information on hospital procedures that are, in her words, “shockingly unsafe.” She said when she first read it she didn’t believe some of the things in it could be true. She started interviewing prospective doctors and asking them. She was quite surprised at the answers she got.

I say get DH some raw hard statistics in print. Facts supported by a paper binding are harder to ignore than an equally accurate Internet article. My guess is there is probably a modern version of that book in print, or certainly one like it.

A couple of the other things you wrote made my ears steam:

Quote: “She said that there were things in that book that were Yes, dh went with me the first time we met with our midwife in person. And then we fought in the car all the way home because he felt like I had already made up my mind and this wasn't really a joint decision. Well, yes and no...this is what I really want but I really want him to be on board too!”

It sounds as if he’s already made up his!

Quote: “So DH downplays my view of my experience there, and says "it wasn't so bad," and he thinks we should go back there.”

It sounds like he is in real denial about the whole experience. Perhaps at some level realizes the impact of his role (or lack there of) in the whole thing, and that may make it harder for him to acknowledge that there may be better choices out there. I still say educate him, and if it’s fear he responds to—there are plenty of facts.

I say turn the tables on all of the ultimatums he is giving you. Say “I will consider a birth at the birth center you are suggesting, but only after you have given my first choice full consideration before rejecting it, and that means reading X, Y, and Z, and then speaking to these experts (including at least one conservative OB so he can verify all he’s learned).”

He should expect to be fully informed if he is to be a “part of the decision making process.” It doesn’t sound like he’s done that. Why should you wish to consider his opinion when he hasn’t bothered to spend time on it himself?

And if he continues to minimize your experience at the last birthing center use it as an opportunity to point out that- ultimately it is your safety and your piece of mind that was and is still affected by the experience. And since the circumstance of the last birth did not affect him as dramatically as it did you he is in a better position to understand why you will be taking a more active role in how this one plays out. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Ermms.. there’s my two pennies
Whatever you tell him I hope it works out smoothly, but do what you need to do to keep yourself safe, and don't feel guilty about refusing to put yourself and your child in harms way.
Best Wishes,
Gardeninginthefog

[Silliest]

Argh!

Other ideas?
I did tell my DH that I didn't want him to "give in" just to shut me up. I needed him to *understand*.

It took several false starts with me coming in all-guns-blazing and pissing him off, but we finally got a good conversation in there where I asked him what he was afraid of. What was it that he didn't like about the idea of a homebirth.

He said he didn't want to get into it because I'd just jump down his throat again <LOL!>
So I went away and came back with 2 pads of paper and otld him to write down every objection, fear, worry or concern he could think of, (and wouldn't you know. "Who cleans up?" made number 5 on the list! <LOL!>) and I told him I would write down what *I* was afraid of if we went back into a hospital setting.

My list ended up about 3 pages longer than his (his was less than a page) and I think we left it for that night... then the next time we talked, I had just written comments alongside his fears. (tried to keep them short, but you know )

Like
"Who cleans up?" The midwife!
"What if something goes wrong?" Then we transfer. I *will* transfer if needed.
"What if you bleed again?" The midwife has the same shot the hospital gave me.
*But* she won't use it *unless* it's needed. The hospital uses it no matter what.

That sort of stuff.

When I started reeling off my list, complete with statistics and definitions of tough words like "iatrogenic" , It seeemed to start sinking in that I wasn't just trying to "have things my way".

Anyway. here's a good link :
http://www.gentlebirth.org/archives/...r.html#Partner

Anyway... good luck!

I did "put my foot down", and tell him "*I* will be at home for this birth, but *you* can go to anywhere you like!" but we *also* negotiated and discussed. . . It was a pretty convoluted path we took <LOL!>

Oh! One other thing that I wish I had thought of *earlier* was that I got all of my medical notes from the hospital-birth, and we went through them with our midwife! She explained the cryptic notations, and we had a good long talk about how we were both *there* and even though our versions of events difffer somewhat (I was *not* that loud!, no matter what he says)

Our version of events is *so* far away from the hospital version that it was hardly recognizable, even to him.
It wasn't just factual discrepancies, though there were many.

What got to him was that *WE* had birth-stories complete with emotions, motivations, sensations, etc.

*They* had numbers, charts, and impersonal, unemotional *gobbbledygook*.

Our midwife (who kept duplicate records, one set held by us, one held by her) didn't just write down BP/weight/and fundal height
She kept notes that *were* a story.

Obviously it's an individual style thing, but it was amazing the difference it made to him when he *really* realized that she saw us as PEOPLE and not just as "primigravida" and "partner".
I could actually see it in his eyes as some of the things I had said before clicked for him.

That I wanted to be at home, on *our* turf, giving birth to *our* baby, and i was just as concerned as he was about having good backup, but I had a different (and just maybe *better*) idea of what "good backup" was.

(sorry, I'm babbling again! )

[MamaGaia]

This article is something my husband came across. It is on an unassisted birth site but the info is all pretty relevant to any homebirth.

http://www.unassistedhomebirth.com/f...ntfathers.html

[magentamomma]

definately it is your body. you are the one who has to go through labor and interventions and any procedure the staff choose to put you through if you are not at home. it,s not his uterus, vagina perenium.( i know i sound hard coreCause I am) but i've known way too many moms to be bullied by dh or mom or mother in laws, and then regret it or feel powerless later Stay strong