I'd like to find some info for my DH about what other fathers feel about HB. DH is still somewhat skeptical about this, but will support me in whatever decisons I make. I'd like to have him fully on board & supportive of this. We're meeting with the midwife for the 1st time on Monday, and I'm sure she will answer all of his questions. But he still asks why I want to do this, and all the "what if's" that I can't answer, and I tell him that I feel that this is the right thing to do, and it's an experience that we will treasure for the rest of our lives.

TIA for any links or info anyone can give me.

I'd like to find some info for my DH about what other fathers feel about HB. DH is still somewhat skeptical about this, but will support me in whatever decisons I make. I'd like to have him fully on board & supportive of this. We're meeting with the midwife for the 1st time on Monday, and I'm sure she will answer all of his questions. But he still asks why I want to do this, and all the "what if's" that I can't answer, and I tell him that I feel that this is the right thing to do, and it's an experience that we will treasure for the rest of our lives.

TIA for any links or info anyone can give me.

Well Mine's still skeptical too. But he's like "happy wife happy life. And even more important, SANE wife happy life"

He knows I'd go literally bonkers if I get forced into a medicalized birth...

I wish DH would have written something.

His comments mostly consisted of "that was awesome!" afterwards.

He tells all his friends we all just went to sleep afterwards and when we woke up, the midwives were gone and the house was cleaner than it was before the birth. We slept in until noon in our very own bed.

He contrasts it to how uncomfortable the hospital was...for everyone. Nobody slept well and we spent a lot of time worrying about the hospital staff.

I've read some stuff that talks about how the father felt more involved and needed at a hb compared with previous hospital births.

I've read some stuff that talks about how the father felt more involved and needed at a hb compared with previous hospital births.

Ah yes, my DH talks about that too. Not so much in terms of labor support, because I didn't really need any, but he felt like there was nothing coming in between him and me (the hospital staff majorly impacted the 'together' feeling).

At the homebirth, I held the baby (I picked her up out of the water myself), and then he held the baby, and he never felt like there was anyone trying to get in between. This was really, really important to him because he had been very upset that at the birth of our first, everyone from the doctor to the nurses to my mother got to get a close look at our daughter before he did. He said he felt very forgotten and unimportant, like it didn't matter when he got around to seeing the baby. And as far as the hospital staff was concerned, that was TRUE.

Dh wasn't totally convinced about hb when I decided I wanted one. He went along with it, though b/c it I wanted it so much.

However, afterward, he became a HUGE advocate of hb. I think for some men, they just have to experience it (especially in contrast to a hospital birth) to truly appreciate it. He loves the privacy and the freedom of hb as much as I do.

Oh, thanks for the replies! Those are some points I haven't thought of, and I'll mention to him. He's more worried about something going wrong, and I feel he won't be relaxed until it's over & everyone is OK. But that's negative tension I really don't want hanging around me while I'm laboring.

I'm hoping the midwife can alleviate his fears so he can be a good support person.

When I first mentioned a home birth to my dh his reaction was, "have you lost your mind? No Way, it's not safe and I'd never forgive myself if something went wrong." So, I read everything I could get my hands on, presented lots of facts, had him meet with the midwife and basically converted him. I asked for this pregnancy (our third home birth) if he wanted to have the baby at home again or at the hospital and he said, "No Way, we've had two beautiful births at home why would we go to a hospital, you can do this!?"

A few months back I asked how I changed his mind and he said I presented a good argument and he couldn't find a logical reason to say no. Now he's a huge home birth advocate!! He loves to tell people about our birth and how he caught our last two babies.

Good luck!

He's more worried about something going wrong, and I feel he won't be relaxed until it's over & everyone is OK.

There are sources (try reading the Bradley book Husband Coached Childbirth) that indicate that the more relaxed a mother is and the less interference from the hospital staff, the quicker and easier the labour is on the mother and the less complications there are.

My husband is against hospital births. His first two were born in the hospital. I'm not up on the exact circumstances but both were C/S and "emergency" C/S at that. His feeling, and the feeling of others who were there, including my MIL who used to be a doula back in the day, was that had the doctors not interfered with the births they would have gone swimmingly and there would have been no C/S. The hospitals around here also push drugs and sections like they are giving out candy and DH and I wonder if the docs get a kickback from the drug companies.

DH was much like your DH when I told him I wanted a homebirth. I did what a pp mentioned, tons of research and presented him with facts. He had the same "what if something goes wrong" fears. Here's what alleviated his fear, straight from my midwife:

If something's goign to go wrong during a birth, there is warning. There are VERY few cases of serious life or death right NOW emergencies in labor, despite what hospitals might want you to believe. In case of an emergency, there are two hospitals within about 10/15 minutes from my house, and I know that set his mind at ease quite a bit, after he learned the actual incidents of TRUE emergencies.

When you go to your midwife, ask her what her hospital transfer rate is. Ask her to tell you and your DH about some of her hospital transfers and what the ultimate outcome was. I'm pretty sure she's not going to say, "I've got a 92% transfer rate and of those, 67% had a bad outcome" you know?

Facts and figures are what was necessary to sway my husband. Perhaps the same will be necessary for yours. :D

Good luck! :)

I don't have any real resources for you other than all the statistics that show that it is as safe or safer for low risk women to deliver at home, but my H was the same way. Up until the end. A week before we had our baby he admitted that he'd be nervous about the birth either way but was more nervous because we were at home. It made me sad that he felt that way, but he can't help it, and as long as he wasn't projecting crazy anxiety on the event (which he definitely wasn't) and was supportive of my desires, I'm ok with his feelings. You can get him to be ok with it analytically but the fact of the matter is that he has grown up in this society that says birth is scary his whole life and it's not easy to overcome that by readings some articles, KWIM? Even after witnessing both beautiful, healthy births of our daughters, I'm not sure that my DH would be a huge homebirth/birth center advocate. He just knows there's no other place I'll give birth barring emergency so he has gotten over it. :wink I also don't think they'll be negative energy surrounding your birth once he's in it. Especially in the presence of a competent midwife that you've built a relationship with over the last nine months.

ah, I read some of the other replies. I think in absence of experiencing a hospital birth, my DH doesn't understand exactly why HB is so great.

My husband was skeptical at first too -- all the "what if's" along with it being my first pregnancy and never experiencing birth before blah blah...

However, he trusts that I would not to anything to put our child at risk in any way, shape or form, and knows I am a huge researcher and researched every.single.statistic. and fact.

He came around and now is a staunch supporter of homebirth -- our birth went perfectly. It couldn't have gone better.

At the actual birth though, while my husband was supportive and loving and all that, I think he was totally fureeeeaked out. Not even because we were at home, but because I am usually the aggressive, "strong" one and to see me so vulnerable and in so much pain or something scared him. I thought he was going to pass out :lol He didn't thankfully, and like I said, is a staunch homebirth supporter now!

Mine became 100% behind it after meeting for the first time with the midwife. She answered every question and then some. But it was good that I had done enough research by then to ask good questions.
Once he felt the safety issues were answered well enough, he was able to see how healthy an experience this could (will) be for us as a family.

The funniest part is he tells anyone who'll listen at work and it strikes up really interesting conversations. And we've told all our friends and family too, deciding that they can deal with their issues if they have any. What has amazed me is the support we've gotton. No fights, no accusations, just amazement and questions or strong support.

Cool.
Hope you get the support you're looking for!

I'm glad to hear that other husbands are not 100% convinced. Baby #2 is due in 3 weeks and I know dh would rather go to the hospital. I know it is stressing him out right now, but I *need*to have a hb! I wanted one so badly with #1 and since this could be my last, I want to do it! I'm not worried or stressed, just excited.

I hope that he find the hb is more relaxed and restful as many of you have suggested.

However, if there is a problem, I'd never hear the end of it.

Some great advice I got from a fellow homebirther (kerikadi) was to challenge people to do the research themselves, tell them to find a study that says homebirth isn't safe in low risk women. They won't find one, in fact they will find just the opposite. Sometimes it won't matter what you say they have to read the research themselves.
As far as what my husband liked about our HB, he didn't have to drive me to the hospital in transition and he didn't have to come and visit me in the hospital after.

Oh, great advice!! Thanks for the replies!! This will definitely help!!

There is a great article written by a dad about hb titled "Let Your Monkey Do It". If ds will grant me a minute here I can find a link...


here you go -

http://www.missoulanews.com/News/News.asp?no=5083

W/ my first pregnancy, DH was 'hospital only' at first. Keep in mind, he was born in rural Turkey, w/ a midwife, w/o running water. BUT I had to go to a hospital! Lots of fights. So I found a midwife who did hospital, birth center or home births. He agreed to the MW. He met her, had all his questions answered, and really liked her and seemed to trust her. It took a few months of appointments, but he finally agreed on the birth center.

For this one, I asked him (truly not knowing the answer) about having a HB, and he was totally agreeable to it, the only thing he said is, 'isn't it going to make a mess all over the bedroom?' :lol . He sees it as preferable to driving me at 11:30pm, w/ baby's head crowning, to a BC 20 mins away. He pretty much assisted my MW in delivery because the helper MW in training couldn't get there fast enough.

I know in his mind he is considering the possibility of the MW not making it, but since he has experienced it once, hands on, he thinks he can handle it w/o too much difficulty. And I think he really enjoyed being part of it. I think if I ever suggested a hospital birth (i never would) he would look like I had 5 heads. He has heard all those stories from friends about their wives' births, and he realizes he got to experience something that they haven't.

Maybe share stuff with him about how homebirth is the default in "advanced" places like the Netherlands and Sweden and that their safety statistics are way better than ours in the USA.

Hmmm If DH has time i will ask him to post something short and simple for your DH :)


As for the rest of my family ( not that it matters) im sure they are not only lurking on here but also holding their breath until i have the HB. Its quite sad especially since my niece has Cerebral palsy from errors of the medical community from relying on machines and not someone actually checking on you, tending to you, to a OBGYN that apparently thought she was GOD!


michele

Michele - that would be great if your DH could do that. I want to thank everyone for replying, and all of this will help. We meet the midwife on Monday & I can't wait!

Hi im the DH equivalent and i enjoy reading the posts on this website. My baby mama and i have had one hospital birth and everything that went wrong that could have. We wanted at least a doula even at that birth but we were too intimidated and ignorant to do what we really wanted. I was afraid of having an unassisted hb. And thats how i imagined all Hb because i did not have an image of what birth with a midwife would be like. AFter doing a lot of research and seeing pictures i know it is just what i always wanted. before and during the hospital birth i felt the pressure to know everything a midwife should know because i knew that hospials did not. for example our baby need to turn around before she was born and a midwife would have told us this long before the birth. At the hospital however a nurse mentioned it in an offhand way a few hours before it was time. My thoughts were a little garbled but I want i just wanted to say to mothers and fathers out there that is okay to be scared but everything can work out fine if we use that energy to learn and understand the situation. in conclusion meet midwives even if u are not sure yet, and imagine yourselves bringing a baby into the world and think about how u want it to feel and how u want to remember it. as comforting as the thought of the "safety" of the hospital can be in preparing for it, the experience during birth at the hospital will be nerve racking, whereas the home birth prep might make you nervous about the ifs of what might happen, but the actual experience will be much more comforting the the alternative

I'd like to find some info for my DH about what other fathers feel about HB. (snip)

TIA for any links or info anyone can give me.

I have a blog called Home Birth Talk that is linked here in my signature. I have a video Podcast and three audio Podcasts, including one where I talked with my husband about gearing up for home birth. Maybe he'd like to listen to it? You can play it right on the webpage or even download it on iTunes in the Music Store. Click the link and the Podcasts will be listed on the left and direct you to the post with the Podcast.

I hope it helps! I've been getting some great feedback from visitors!

Kris, the media midwife ;)

So my dh had a REALLY hard time with it. He let me go and do it, mainly because he knew how deeply I felt about it, but when I ended up transfering the $h!t hit the fan! He lost it, had a total breakdown.

When we discussed it (a year later) he said that what it was, was that as a man, he felt do deeply and instintually that he needed to seek and distroy what was causing me pain and anguish. He couldn't handle the overwhelming protective instinct that came up when he saw me in pain.

It was difficult for me to have that kind of energy in my birth space, next time - we agreed to not have him there at all. I need the energy of powerful women, not muddled by a freaked out man!

I teach a HB only class with my husband in order to address this.

All men have some discomfort with birth. It isn't part of their experience. I also believe it has to do with trust (imagine someone else is carrying your baby and that baby depends 100% on them for life and that person's choices mean life or death for your baby) and some people do rush into babymaking before they really trsut eachther in the relationship!

My dh was the biggest skeptic on the planet. Three HBs and 1 UC later..he's a great source of security that what these guys are feeling is normal. Men are trained to be controlling and birth is completely female, a bit wild and the forces are uncontrollable. It's also one of the first times in a mans life where he takes on a nuturing role and someone depends largely on how great he is at it. This is so much more true at home then at the hospital where he can hope for drugs to get the pressure off him.

I am very grateful for all of this advice! We'll be having another discussion about this soon, and I want to have lots of info for him!

Mommyofmany,
How did your appt. with the MW go? That was/is today I think you said?

The first visit with MW was what convinced my DH. I gave hime so many statistics about how much safer HB in than hospital birth, fewer interventions=healthier mom & baby, best way to avoid these is to stay at home, etc, etc. Well, the thing that convinced him it was ok/safe to HB was meeting our MW. He also attended all our prenatal visits...

So...how'd it go?

Edited to say: Sorry, just saw your other post where you talk all about meeting the MW! doh!

Mommyofmany,
How did your appt. with the MW go? That was/is today I think you said?

The first visit with MW was what convinced my DH. I gave hime so many statistics about how much safer HB in than hospital birth, fewer interventions=healthier mom & baby, best way to avoid these is to stay at home, etc, etc. Well, the thing that convinced him it was ok/safe to HB was meeting our MW. He also attended all our prenatal visits...

So...how'd it go?

Edited to say: Sorry, just saw your other post where you talk all about meeting the MW! doh!
LOL, that's OK. I was hoping it would've went better, and that he'd be convinced, but he's not quite there yet. He's skeptical until proven otherwise. I just don't think he'll ever be 100% comfortable with the idea.