anyone have homebirth & wish you didn't?

[shantivibes]

i am so sorry to even be putting this out there but i feel it would be good to talk about.i really am glad i went through with it,but if i had to do it again i would not make it!and i was sure i would never do it again,but now with the love i feel with my DD who is six months i cant dream that would stop with just her,but if i had to do it natural again,well i am afraid i would have no more!

my labor was really intense and went on for 23 hrs. with contractions coming about every two minites for at least a minite long.and in the end my midwife had to go up inside of me and work my curvex over her head!that i think was the most painful part,and after that i only pushed for a total of 15min. but i just could and would never do that again! i am really thankful i was able to for the sake of my DD to birth her gentle and in water,and i will proably feel gulity for my next one but which is better,no more babies or babies born in the hospital on drugs?

and one last thing i am six months PP and i still cant even begin to have sex with DH. needless to say he supports a drug birth next time around.has anyone else shared my experience?

holly :bf wife to my uttam and lucky mama to raya lotus

[RBinTEX]

I have not shared your experience, but my heart goes out to you! Don't let anyone else tell you what the ideal birth experience should be. You are the one giving birth, and there is no need to feel guilty about making choices that are best for you. My first labor was very long and hard, but my next two labors were short and easy. I know that is true for a lot of people, and I hope that makes you a little more at ease when thinking about birthing again. When you plan your next birth, plan for yourself and your family, not some "ideal" held by other people. Find a doctor you trust and who is sympathetic to your story, and get yourself checked out so you and your husband can be intimate again! Good luck to you and congratulations on your baby!

[Breathless Wonder]

I didn't see anything in your post, so I'm going to ask- did your midwive help you try different positions?

I had a cervical lip with my first homebirth. The attempts to manually hold it back were excruciating. I pushed for 3 hours. what finally did it? A position change. I got on my hands and knees, my baby rotated, and was out in 2 pushes.

With my second homebirth, it was an ENTIRELY different birth.

Quite honestly, I wouldn't chalk it up to the homebirth, but to that specific labor, that specific child, and that specific positioning.

Next time might be ENTIRELY different for you. In fact, I'd count on it!

I know right now you are probably really doubting your decision. It's normal after a traumatic experience.

I know that based on MY experiences, you couldn't pay me to go back to a hospital. My hospital births weren't horrible, but they were NOT what I wanted, and not what I felt was best for myself or my baby.

For myself, I did a lot of research, a lot of reading, and a lot of soul searching. The change in the way I thought about birth, and my introspection really affected the outcome of my second homebirth. I found that my fears, both conscious and unconscious, tremendously impacted me physically.

Sorry to ramble. I know my post isn't quite what you asked for, but I felt I needed to share.

[Vixenmama]

Maybe it's too soon to be thinking about this? (I'm editing this to clarify: not too soon to process what happended--maybe too soon to make decisions on your next birth...)

Right after I gave birth (at home, first baby) I thought "there is no way I'll ever be able to do this again". Our labor was fine, about 10 hours of manageable contractions that dh and I went through together with no midwife. I only called her when I knew the baby was imminent. However, pushing was my challenge and went on for 5 hours!!!! I was spent, discouraged, personally mortified and very disappointed with how my midwife was handling things. Actually, I'm still angry about some things she did.

All this to say that the one thing you can predict about birth is that it's unpredictable, and what you might be trying to avoid by planning a drugs birth might not even be an issue in your next birth, but something else could be...kwim? Maybe before planning your next birth you could take some time to process this one really thoroughly with someone who will be very sympathetic and help you sort out exactly how you feel. Then you could make a list of what you would
like to get out of your next birth. Knowing what you are trying to avoid AND what you are trying to achieve should help you decide what the
best birth option will be.

Also, maybe it's not an all or nothing thing? Perhaps you could plan to
give birth in a hospital that supports natural childbirth, but you'll know
that meds will always be an option should you have the same kind of
labor again. This way, you'll be prepared for an easy labor/birth and a
challenging one.

Sorry to ramble on and on, but I think your story is really interesting as I'm interested in the phenomenon of homebirths that end up being a bit disappointing. A lot of my negative feelings about my homebirth didn't emerge until almost a year after my birth. Have you posted your birth story anywhere? I'd love to read it! Also, did you take any childbirth classes? Did your midwife prepare you in any way for a hard labor? Did she discuss comfort measures with you and your dh? I have a ton of questions! LOL!

I'm currently pregnant and planning another homebirth, but boy has my outlook, opinions and expectations changed--I don't want to hijack your post though so I won't go into it here! Let's just say that it wasn't a foregone conclusion that I would do it at home again.


support and respect,

[josie&baby]

I didn't have a HB, but I was planning a birth center birth with a MW and made it through about 18+ hrs of labor before I decided to transfer to the hospital. I had been at 8-9 cm. for many hours and was EXHAUSTED after days of prodomal labor and the many hours of hard, active labor. I was very scared I was just stuck. My cervix was swelling a little too. I decided to transfer and thought I would need pit. to get things going again and was even open to an epidural because I was so exhausted.

Well, things with my transfer were disappointing and I am still processing it. My main MW did not come with me to the hospital even though she had been with me all through labor. Her assoc. came with me instead. That was fine at the time, I LOVE her assoc., but in retrospect I think that was not a good move on her part. Then there was my 2 wk. PP check where I was almost made to feel bad about "giving up," and was told how it was hard for them to see me decide to transfer.

I love my MW's and respect them greatly- but, I wasn't having a natural birth to prove anything about my womanhood or how tough I can be! I was having a natural birth because I felt most comfortable with that and knew it would be best for me & my son (unless there was an emergency of course).

When I got to the hospital I didn't need any pit. or an epidural after all! I got there and was at 10 cm's and had to wait for the hospital MW to get there to push!! In the end I am happy I transfered because I had a lot of bleeding and my DS needed some extra help with breathing clearly.

I was just shocked that my MW said what she did at my PP check up. I don't know if maybe I misinterpreted what she was saying or what. But, sometimes I think people get so caught up in having a "natural birth," or "home birth," and loose sight that this is NOT THEIR BIRTH! : It's the woman's birth experience and it's about making sure she feels safe & secure not about proving anything to anyone else.

Just my two cents...

--Josie

[CJ 5]

I planned a total natural birth. We took bradley classes and did every thing to prepare including getting the best midwife on this planet.

I ended up with an incredibly huge cervical lip and a compound presentation baby that was 9lbs 3 oz. I loved the epidural and was grateful for it. I was in so much pain in labor I even forgot I was having a baby because for some reason she had wedged her knee in my intestine or something and I was having shooting pains down my left side. After I got the epidural ( 12 hours in and totally for it) I slept for 4 hours.

My midwife was spectacular and I had a GREAT hospital birth. It was better than I ever imagined. I don't regret it at all and would go with the same decision.

My midwife was totally on board with the whole thing and told me it was one of the hardest births she had ever been to other than a military presentation that she delivered at home. She assured me that in the future if I wanted to do a homebirth she would do it and that she was confident that I could have a great experience.

My bradley instructor acted like I was a cop out .. Whatever!!! I had a great birth experience ..

I believe a woman should birth in the way that she feels at peace.

My plan is to go the same route I did this time. Midwife in a hospital setting. My midwife says I would have been a transfer anyway for my first birth either from home or from the birth center because of that weird pain in my side. Next time I will do a birth center Or maybe I will do a homebirth with an OB back up.

Your next birth will be totally different. I personally would not avoid having children just because you want to have an epidural next time. You could always just go natural in the hospital with a great midwife. I love the idea of a home birth but I believe that for some women it is just too much pressure.

FWIW I am probably now one of those women.

[cinnamonamon]

s mama, for your difficult experience. I just wanted to add one or two things. First I wanted to reiterate that every birth is VERY different, and second I wanted to point out that having an epidural or a hospital birth (unless it was a c-section) would not have changed the intimacy problems you are having -- unless your midwife is to blame for that? Remember also that all midwives are different as well! Good luck in your decisions, in the end you have to do what you feel is right.

[shantivibes]

thank you all for the love and support you have put into words here.all of you have helped me to go deeper into my thoughts and feelings over raya's birth experience.

just a few things i wanted to expand on,

the reason i am not feeling comfortable being intimate with DH is due to the fact htat i experienced so much intense pain,feeling as if i was pushing the world out of pin hole along with my yoni ripping open to reviel my DD.and praying that i would die the intire time!and if i had some pain reliever to help me cope with this ,i know i would feel more comfortable with something going back into that place.i am affraid of the pain i will experience.and i am done with experienceing any more pain in this part of my body!!! i beleive if i had experienced less pain in my birth experience i would be able to feel less affraid of this.

and my mw and i worked together in many different positions trying to change her postion and she did move but this did not help with the lip.i feel she did what she could have and i work with all the paths to reduse pain i had learned.hypno birthing, breathing teq,danceing.all to no avail....i do feel thought that maybe it will be easier next time and i might try it at home again with a back up plan that i feel good about!

thanks again for all your support mamas....

holly

[valeria_vi]

Originally Posted by Vixenmama

and very disappointed with how my midwife was handling things

may I ask who you had for your midwife? (may be you can PM me if you do not want to put it up in public).

[katja]

I was also very disappointed with my homebirth. Everything was fine until the midwife got there. Suddenly she turned into Nurse Ratchett, having me push on my back, holding breath, etc. DD's heart rate got scary, and I don't think the breath-holding helped anything. I don't know why I complied. I guess I thought that something must be very wrong if a midwife was encouraging purple pushing! I had a cervical lip too. This seems to be a common theme here. The funny thing is, I would definitely do another home birth. I think that it could have been a lot worse at the hospital. Hopefully I won't have the same midwife. They're in pretty short supply around here. However, I've had a lot of bitterness about the experience, and I hardly remember anything about it, except the feeling of humiliation being on my back w/my knees pushed to my ears, pushing for hours, getting berated for not doing it right...well I guess I would probably take hospital over that midwife. good luck to you. Do what you feel is good for you.

[darsmama]

Man I am near for all of you women who had bad experiances with your midwives and or births.
I really hope that next time you are able to have already worked through the traumas, & can have a satisfying, happy outcome. One you can look back on and go "Holy crap. I did that!"
Hospital or home, I don't think it matters. Whatever you feel most comfortable with is what matters.
I definetly do know that the last thing I would want on my mind after the whole birth celebrations is guilt trips, sadness, anger or trauma like what you all are expressing. 's to you all, and prayers for an easier time when you go down that road again!

[onlyboys]

First off, hugs all around. I've been there with the birth trauma thing and while it does get better, hearing that doesn't make things much better, I understand.

If you feel traumatized, you were. Period. And, with this trauma comes all the normal aspects of recovery. You need to make peace with your experience and that takes time and perspective that you can only get through processing it all, slowly or quickly, however you do it.

Mine took me 5 years to process and I was still retraumatized by my second birth. My third birth was lovely and everything I imagined it would be...

I'd heartily recommend the book Rebounding from Childbirth with the warning that if you are not ready to confront these issues, don't read it. It's very intense.

All childbirth, even those that are healthy and normal, has the potential to be traumatic. It's the nature of it. It also has the potential to be healing and beautiful. Perhaps it is this tenuous and mystical aspect of birthing that makes it so important to us--and it is very important; these memories will be carried with us for the rest of our lives... Just ask your grandmother where she was/what she was doing when her labor started. I'll be she remembers even tiny details about it all.

But, we cannot dictate how our experiences are going to go. And, honestly, knowing how they might go wouldn't help prepare us for the eventuality; indeed, it might make it worse.

We can do our best to come up with a birthing philosophy, choose careproviders who mesh well with that and move on from there, accepting that we may not get what we want, but that things will be as they need to be.

Your next birth will be different. That I can assure you. But less traumatizing? more beautiful? I cannot tell you. Would anesthesia have helped? I don't know. The butterfly effect is at its most present in childbirth. You change one little thing and a slew of other consequences slide into place. For better or for worse...

In the meantime, talk about it. Discuss with your midwife, if you feel comfortable. She's trained to help you figure all this out. Talk to people who know you well. Try to wrap your mind around it all and then just *be* for a while.

Much love and light to you.

[applejuice]

I had four home births.

The first two were posterior. Very painful.

I exercised every day, stretches, aerobics, biking, jogging, and still long labors with extreme pain. My Father was a Chiropractor, so I had help in that department also.

The second, besides being posterior, had a deflexed head with an asynclytism. I had a terrible lower back/hip pain during the entire pregnancy. The only reason I knew I was in labor was because I laid down to rest after a day of chasing my two year old around. My back pain was peaking every five minutes.

He was born after hours of pushing. I tried every position known to mankind. He was finally born and my back finally did not hurt after months of chronic pain. I went to the gym within twelve hours. I never had a even a tear.

I did have some PPD after both births because I was trying to process the extreme pain emotionally and the difficulty I had despite the fact that I exercised, took care of myself, and ate very well.

During the second pregnancy, I could barely walk, so I would bicycle on my tenspeed with my two year old on a seat everywhere. This got the baby and my weight off my hip. It gave some relief.

Also, I am not a very big woman. I am five feet tall, and at the time 110-115 pre-pregnancy weight.

My third and fourth pregnancy were easy and so was labor. I guess I had earned them. I did not work out so much during my fourth pregnancy since I was working and had not the time.

I think you need time to process the event. Remember, I think you are mourning the loss of a perfect birth. No birth is perfect, but each is unique in its own way.

G-d bless you

[Victorian]

s mamas! I too have had a traumatizing birth (in a hospital) and went on to have a lovely homebirth. May I suggest that you look into a workshop that Birthing From Within teachers do on processing birth experiences? It might be a good way to express your feelings and work through them. It took me a couple of years to get through my birth issues. The love and support of the midwives that I choose for my second birth went a long ways to heal me. I hope that you find what you need (whether you choose a medicalized hospital birth or not).

V.

[Mami]

I wanted to comment on the intimacy issue. 6 months pp I was not interested in sex either, in fact 14 months pp my sex drive is nowhere what it was before... It's also very normal that sex reminds you of your birth experience after all it involves the same region of your body. Time will change that perception too. It might help you to talk with your doc(or mw) about physical therapy to help heal the pain(physical and emotional). There are physical therapists who specialize in post partum and improving sexual function(for lack of a better word..) One thing my PT told me was that orgasm actually helps us heal down there.

I would caution you to pinpoint your dissatisfaction on your birth having been at home as well, it seems like there were several factors at play. Keep in mind too that epidurals are not foolproof, sometimes they don't work or it's too quick of a labor to even be an option. All in all I agree with the other posters that whether hospital or home or BC(which I had), there is always room for trauma, in fact I had a fantastic birth and yet I experienced a long ppd and managed to find lots to be unhappy about, it's just in our nature. Don't get me wrong though, I in no way mean to minimize your feelings or make them sound unfounded Hope things get better for you

[JanetF]

I'm just sending some support and validation to you. If you feel traumatised, you are. Only you can decide.

Six months or more is quite normal to go without sex after even a fulfilling birth experience. I second the thoughts on processing your birth experience. Perhaps there are some underlying factors for you which make your yoni a more emotionally sensitive area than you first thought?

There is a lovely meditation called "Healing the Temple Door" which I often suggest to women who've had traumatic births. It's at www.yoni.com - I have no ties to them, I just love the site

Best wishes, feel free to PM me. I run a group online for women recovering from traumatic birth.

J

[cottonwood]

I too had a traumatic first birth at home. It was really, truly awful, and took me a LONG time to process. I think because it was so traumatic, I could not consciously bring myself to analyze it and invite further pain to myself, so I didn't look at cause and effect at all, which is very out of character for me. I just wanted it to be over, to forget about it. Which I did so well at first that about a month after the birth I wrote the midwife a note thanking her "for all she does for women." I wanted to be thankful. But it fell flat and eventually I had to be honest with myself, and the more I learned about birth the more I realized that what I experienced wasn't normal and wasn't necessary and that a good part of it had to do with choices I made, and the midwife's actions (which, FWIW, were mostly standard in the modern midwifery model of care.) I chalked it up to ignorance on both our parts and made choices the next time around that were more appropriate for me, so while the next birth was just as difficult and painful, it was an empowering, uplifting experience.

Anyway, to go back to that first experience, I certainly did not want to repeat it again, and really felt that it was likely that we wouldn't have more children because of it (and the resulting difficult postpartum.) So I understand where you're at. I want to echo what another poster said -- that it is too soon to be worrying about what choices you'll make in the future, because it is entirely possible that time and perspective will lead you in a direction that you can't conceive of right now.

As for sex trouble, something to consider is that plenty of women who do have drugs also have sexual issues after birth. Sometimes this is because the drugs necessitated an episiotomy or forceps or cesarean or create a feeling of powerlessness that carries over into sexual life (because birth is a sexual event,) sometimes because it's just a postpartum hormonal thing -- different women's bodies seem to respond to the hormones differently (although this is probably partly an environmental thing as well.) I've heard women say they had their perfect birth, and still have no interest in sex for a long time after birth. I'm not saying that having a good birth won't make a difference in your sex life, just that you may be setting yourself up for disappointment and unfair pressure on yourself if it doesn't.