This is Home Birth.
As hospitals started to change their policies in March to protect the spread of COVID-19, many birthing parents began looking into home birth options. Luckily for two of my clients with due dates in May and June, they had already done the research, hired midwives, and decided on birth at home. The pandemic only solidified their reasoning for giving birth outside of a hospital environment. They were able to stick to the plan they had before COVID-19.
According to the CDC’s Vital Statistics Report, fewer than 1 percent of births took place at home in 2018. I can only imagine those numbers will climb as we see more families bucking the trend and opting for home birth. As a doula and storyteller, I support these decisions and can attest that the births I’ve witnessed outside the hospital are peaceful, loving, and centered in the family’s experience. Risks are few.
A recent client described her experience at home so eloquently in a recent post to her new baby:
The water was warm, buoyant, soothing. Pushing halted. We needed more time. Hours had passed, the sun once shining, was now low in the sky; time a bitter construct. I was on another transcendent and energetic plane. The hands of your Dad, the hands of the wise powerful women supporting me, supporting us, squeezed to near oblivion.
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Soon it was time to push again. Back on the eternal firmness of earth we worked together as a team, positioning, turning, landing at long last on the comfort of our warm bed. I knew somewhere within the surges, the magnitude of my pushes, that indeed you were on the cusp of being born.
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Nearly 20 hour’s worth of laborious exhaustion, my endurance wavering, I channeled your very essence, and like a corkscrew uncorking you turned and emerged. A full head of hair, dark at first, lighter later. Eyes alight, alert and searching. Whole, beautiful, magnanimous.
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The relief that overcame me, the crippling collapse of my body, was coupled with the elation of you. My body trembling with the warmth of your body, so small and new; you encompassed me, and I you.
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Slick with sweat and humidity, ripe with an abundance of sheer blissful power, I had welcomed you home. On our family bed, your Dad beside me, with the darkness of night holding us close, at long last my sweet boy you were home.
According to Evidence Based Birth, good candidates for home birth include (not an exhaustive list):
A person who is pregnant with a single baby
Baby is head down at term
Between 37 and 41-42 weeks pregnant (researchers differ on the 41-42 weeks)
No serious medical conditions (heart disease, kidney disease, blood clotting disorders, type I diabetes, gestational diabetes managed with insulin, preeclampsia, or bleeding)
No placenta previa at beginning of labor
No active genital herpes
No thick meconium
*No prior C-section
*Spontaneous labor
*Some research study guidelines also included women with one prior C-section (low transverse incision) and women who were induced on an outpatient basis (Janssen, 2009). However, because of the lack of data on safety, ACOG considers prior C-section to be an “absolute contraindication to planned home birth.” (ACOG, 2011)
For those considering birth at home, I’m happy to be a resource to help you make such an important decision, such as finding the right midwife and other supports, and sharing more about the process itself.
Home birth is beautiful and should be available to everyone who falls into lower risk categories.
“Midwives provide all the prenatal care healthy women need. The midwifery ideal is to work with each woman and her family to identify her unique physical, social, and emotional needs. ”