thoughts on homebirth

I love the smell of bleach. I bleached our unlucky couch cushion covers. Stone is a week old yesterday and we’re finally decompressing from his birth and getting a chance to relax and reflect. We made our first trip outside our building with him today and it went well. The old moving car trick worked like a charm with putting him down while we drove around town. We got his hearing tested and made a visit to the pediatrician. His baby skin is peeling and his face is blotchy and irritated. Besides looking like a mini-toxic avenger, the kid checks out in the health dept. I’m taking off one more week after this to help Natalie out while she recovers and for baby-bonding, then it’s back to work.

After all said and done, I’m happy with our decision to have a homebirth. Natalie’s labor was long and when she hit hour 30 of contractions, she was ready to be knocked out with some heavy medication. If we were in a hospital, this would have happened. But somewhere deep down it clicked for her that leaving our place at that point would be just as daunting (if not more) than toughing it out at home. So she stopped thinking and just rocked out the rest of her contractions until she was fully dilated and ready for pushing. When the kid finally squirted out, so did the tears out of my face. Seriously, I’ve never had such an involuntary quick-burst of liquid shoot from my eyes like that. We were ecstatic when the boy came out balling, and we couldn’t be happier with midwife Tenaya, a tremendous support and comfort. Never did she make us feel like we had to stay put if we wanted to go to the hospital. She was just a great balance of practical and natural.

I suppose there’s a homebirth forum somewhere I could rant more about this, but the main thing I wanted to get out was— if you’re having a baby, you should consider homebirth. Do some research. Watch some movies. This one is really good. Or even this one (despite the ridiculous title). Giving birth doesn’t have to be an emergency. I have nothing against hospitals, but the intimate experience we had in our domicile was very much worth staying home for.