Home Birth As Safe As Hospital Birth??

I found an interesting article on USA Today about home birth being as safe as a hospital birth. Check it out for yourself here. My husband and I LOVED our home birth, if you want to read about our experience you can here.

Easier Labor

First, I want to point out that I didn't say easy labor, I said easier labor. And yes there is such a thing :). I was 5 weeks away from having my baby and my friend asked, "Have you been taking Dr. Christopher's Birth Prep?" Uh...what? I had no idea what she was talking about. She highly recommended them to me so I went and read about them online and everyone had very positive things to say about them. I figured what the heck, anything to make labor easier. You are supposed to start taking them when you are 34 weeks along.

Now one of my fears of a natural child birth was having this long drawn out labor. With my other 5 children I went to the hospital every time only being dilated to a 3. My labors ranged from 9 hours to 27 hours. Everyone I have talked to that has used Birth Prep all commented on how much faster their labors went. I only had about 1 hour of hard labor, and I almost didn't call my midwife because I figured it would be a lot longer before I even got close to my delivery.

Other things I did that I feel helped me to have an easier labor and fast recovery are: eat a lot of greens, continued to exercise (even if it was waddling around the track), and I also used Primrose Oil.

He's Here!!

OK, this post post is LONG over due, but cut me some slack I just had a baby :). Apparently my husband and I like to do everything at home, I home school, he works from home, so why not have our baby at home too?

I have no personal beef with hospitals or with Dr.'s, I have just always wanted my birth to be something different, more than a Dr. or hospital could offer me. I've wanted to go natural on all my other births but being hooked up to IV's laying flat on your back in a bed made it too much for me to go natural and I would always end up getting an epidural.

We found a midwife very highly recommended from a close friend of ours who had used her for two of her births. She was AMAZING!!! Every visit was just calm and relaxing, it made me excited when I realized that my birth was going to be that way too.

So, here is my story...
I was 38 weeks along, I had gone in for a routine check up and had her strip my membranes. On the way home from my appointment I started having random contractions. My contractions were still pretty random until about 5pm. They started coming regularly, but were very mild. I made dinner, we ate, and cleaned up the kitchen. We let the kids go and watch movies so I wouldn't have a million questions at that moment. I kept myself busy around the house until about 8:00pm. I had called my sister and she came and got me and we went walking at the track at the Rec. Center. We did that until 9:30pm, then she took me home. I had sent my husband to get me some ice, some juice drinks, and a sub. Random I know, but I am always hungry after having a baby so I wanted to be prepared.

Then, I went and got into our little tub and tried to just relax, I watched a movie and listened to music until 1am. I then came out and told my husband it was time to call my midwife. She asked if she needed to hurry and get down or if she could take her time. We told her to take her time, I figured I still had a ways to go so what was the rush? She had come to our home when I was 36 weeks and had left the tub and birthing supplies at our home. My husband was starting to inflate the tub and getting things ready. My midwife got to our home at 1:45am. I let her know my contractions were really close together and had become a lot more intense. She let me know that that meant it was almost time to have this baby!!

Very shortly after her arrival my midwife and my husband had the tub filled up and I hopped in. It was heavenly!! That hot water felt so good, and helped me to relax. I had a couple of contractions then a really mild one, which ended up being the calm before the storm. I could feel the next one coming and let them know that this was going to be a big one, and so it was...the contraction started and I just started pushing. First my water broke, completely freaked me out, but my body was still pushing and within seconds my baby was here!! My sweet little boy was born at 2:18am.

It was amazing!! It was truly a beautiful experience that I will never forget. My midwife got me all comfortable on the couch and I got to just cuddle up with my sweet baby. While I got to relax she cleaned up everything. Then she did an exam on our sweet guy, he weighed 7lbs. 1 oz. and was 20" long. After making sure everyone was great she went home. She came back a couple days later and checked on us again.The kids slept through the whole thing. When they got up the next morning they were excited to find out that they had a new brother. Here is the lovely birthing tub.Very excited daddy!!Here we are relaxing on the couch, I am feeling good, tired, but good!