How We Get Here

There are some things in the news lately that have had me thinking about birth in America. This is a touchy subject for me. Actually, it's usually a "no touch" subject for me. It's like a splinter too excruciating to touch. The reason for this, I suppose, is the stark contrast between the birth of my daughter and the birth of my son. You see, Quinn was born by cesarean section and Nichola was born, naturally, in my own bed.
With Quinn I was strapped, cruciform, to a board and sliced open to the core. I was given seconds to see (not touch) my crying baby before he was taken away to be heated by a machine while I cried, silently, listening to the nurses gush about how speedy was the doctor's technique. Then I was wheeled to a room to sit by myself, numb, and wondering about my tiny baby for nearly an hour. The time passed at the speed of an eternity and when he finally arrived that eternity was felt. The critical period of connection between mom and baby, where we should have been gazing into each others eyes and knowing one another... it had passed... separated by miles of florescent lights and beeping machines.

When Quinn did not want to nurse on the predetermined hospital schedule they threatened me with drawing blood from his head and "more tests if we have to, or you can just give him formula." I wanted to breastfeed my baby, but I was not allowed, and as it turned out all of the excruciating screaming that he was doing was a result of an allergy to the formula they had forced. All the sleeping he was doing, which determined for them that he could not be exclusively breastfed, was a known side-effect of the epidural, pitocin and morphine I was given. The best recovery for him would have been... should have been... immediate skin to skin contact with his mother, sleep and breastfeeding.

They denied me a way to clean myself for four days, they denied me a meeting with a doctor, and after four days of asking, I was finally granted a visit from a lactation consultant... on my way out the door.

I was sent home with an infection in the giant incision through my abdomen, a baby sick with formula allergy, and a bill for more that thirty thousand dollars.

This book crushed my heart and then rebuilt it, and my soul, stronger than ever before.

After my experience, and the promise from the doctor of a repeat cesarean, I did not think that I would have another baby.

However, three and a half years later, with the pain deeply buried and armed with the knowledge of this and many other books, doctoral theses, and research reports, we conceived Nichola and began planning our homebirth.

Nichola's birth was the single most healing, empowering event of my entire life.
After five days of prodromal labor, in the careful and supportive arms of my husband and midwife, I went into active labor and delivered Nichola in three hours. No incisions, no trauma, no tears, no memorable pain... physical or psychic.
She was perfect.
And so was I.
We had a warm bath and our midwives stayed, keeping an eye, offering wisdom and generally taking care as we prepared for our first sleep... separately, together.
Through the night I woke to nurse my new little girl, feel her breath and watch her sleep, soundly next to the heartbeat she had been hearing all along. In the morning we woke up, a new family, and I walked myself the 10 feet to my own shower. With this shower I washed away the ripping, raping, disempowering pain of my hospital experience and felt the greatest sense of power and being I have ever felt.

When we speak about the right to choose in this country, we fail to understand that the right to choose how to have and raise our children is in serious jeopardy.

The World Health Organization states that no region in the world is justified in having a cesarean rate higher than 10-15%. The cesarean rate in the US has increased five fold in the last 20 years. Cesarean rates are higher for women who have private medical insurance, are private rather than public clinic patients, are older, are married, have higher levels of education and are in a higher socio-economic bracket. Why??

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
(ACOG) has ranked getting rid of home birth midwives as #2 on their list of
State Legislative Issues for 2008! You can see the whole list at:
www.acog.org/departments/dept_web.cfm?recno=15

The more you know.