Unassisted Childbirth Ramblings and Questions

[normajean]

Hi! My name is Jen and I'm new to this site.

I came upon Laura Shanley's site on unassisted Childbirth, and I am convinced this is what I want to do.

I have a 2 and a half year old son who was born in the hospital, with an epidural, episiotomy, etc. I always thought I had a good birth experience, until I read about what it COULD be.

We live in rural Nevada where the closest Midwifes are over 2 hours away. I had a fast labor with my son, so I don't think that is enough time for someone to get here. I want to do it unassisted. Its one of those "trust your instinct things" and my gut feeling right now is that this is what I'm supposed to do, and everything will be fine.

My mom lives in Oregon and has invited me to come do it at her house, but I want to do it in my own home, that is where I feel secure and relaxed. Nevermind that my mom is not a relaxing person for me to be around.

My husband says I can do a homebirth as long as I have someone else there who "knows what they are doing." I think he's worried about safety for me and the baby. We live less than a minute from the hospital, where it would be faster for DH to drive me in the event of an emergency than it would be to have an ambulance.

I'm not even pregnant yet--hoping to be soon.

I welcome any thoughts and comments.

Thanks in advance.

[cottonwood]

Hi Jen, welcome to the forum.

I'd first suggest doing a search here for "unassisted". There have been quite a few threads on it in the past. Also check out the CBirth e-list at yahoogroups.

As for your husband, there is a good webpage about talking to husbands about homebirth and UC at www.birthlove.com. It is a subscription site, but has tons of great articles, birth stories, advice, and other info. My husband was fine with the idea of homebirth, but it took a while for him to understand the benefits of a UC. Rather than sit him down and say, "hey, I want to do this without a midwife, what do you think of that," instead for the first few months of the pregnancy I showed him videos, read relevant excerpts from books and articles to him, and talked about my feelings about birth so that by the time I actually said the word "unassisted" he already had an understanding of what is important in birth and it wasn't that much of a leap for him to make.

[Mama2Kimmy]

Ditto blueviolet, I am in the same boat, but my husband is a little more comfy with the fact that I do have extensive doula & midwifery training myself, plus our midwife just moved closer to us a couple years ago, and this past summer we moved even closer to her, so we only live about 5 min from her if we need her, plus my midwife & I also have a midwife in hospital in case something goes very wrong. All I can really advise is educate, educate, educate.

[crayon]

My DP was the total 360 of yours! He wanted a UC from day one and told me there were no need to midwives or any of the hipe! But we ended up at the hospial after a very very long labor (3 days- strong!) It was just a bit more then I was willing to do and I was having cx so much I could not feel the baby move- she was born 1 hour after we got there- the thing I learned was I WAS ready to PUSH but didnt have the urge yet! Or maybe I was just to scared. I think if I would have had a baby before I would have known how to push and I would not have been so scared to push that hard. I say go for it and see if you can find ayone in you area that has done a UC or is a doula- go to the find your tribe board and ask there- it may calm your DP down if he can talk to anther dad that had wife that UC'ed and he may feel better.

Also WELCOME!