Arguments regarding childbirth
My husband and I had a brief but fiery argument last night spurred by an episode of 20/20. (Which, by the way, feels like such an insanely ridiculous spark, but we'll set that aside.) He came home from work at the end of the episode, of which I'd seen most (you never see all of anything when you're watching a toddler). It was about "new" choices in motherhood, things like natural births and extended nursing. When the reporter mentioned the medical community's view (I'm not sure if they phrased it as the all-encompassing view, but that's really beside the point) that home births are "selfish" on behalf of the mother, as if she's placing her own desires before the health of her child, my husband announced his agreement. I countered with my disagreement, to which he replied, "Well then it's a good thing we'll never find out, because we're never doing it."
This was a bit shocking for me. Don't get me wrong, my husband can challenge the most pompous of assholes for their seat on the Grand Asshole throne. It's just that he's not normally a chauvenist, and hearing him tell me what I wasn't allowed to do with my own body was quite shocking. We threw off terse arguments at one another, until I finally calmed down enough to explain to him that I simply don't think he's in a place to judge. He admits to knowing nothing about homebirths or midwifery, and I'm a firm believer that you can't have an opinion about something without being educated about it. I threw off two facts that I know to be true (that the U.S. medicalizes pregnancy and childbirth more than any other nation, and that we also have one of the highest - if not the highest, it's been a few years since I looked into it - infant mortality rate among developed nations; I think that says something about how great over-medicalization of a natural experience is), and told him to do his own research before coming back to me with this "hospital or bust" line of thinking.
Now, before anyone starts wondering, no, I'm not pregnant. And I don't plan to be any time soon. But someday, and it would be nice to have things like this ironed out before I'm raging with hormones and can't have a disagreement without weeping uncontrollably.
When I had my daughter, it was a hospital birth. Really, there are a number of things I would have changed, had I been a bit less frightened during the whole experience. It was my first child, and everyone did a fantastic job of scaring me to death. I'm a small woman, with a very petite frame, and my husband is a hulking giant who was a whopping ten pounds at birth. Everyone had me convinced that I'd be lucky if I could fit an average-sized baby through my narrow pelvis, and that I'd be at death's door if she were large. They also had me convinced that she was oversized, and thus the hospital was the safest place to be. And when I came to term, suddenly I had nerve-wracking phone calls from my doctor insisting that he should have been called immediately after my last ultrasound because of my dangerously low levels of amniotic fluid. That's why my labor was induced, rather than waiting for it to occur naturally. Having later found out that my fluid levels were just on the low side of normal (that is, not dangerous at all), and after going through many, many tear-filled nights of the least pleasant side-effect of induced labor (I had immense trouble producing breast milk), I really wish I'd had a second opinion available, and someone to support me if I'd decided to wait for things to happen naturally.
Induced labor is hell. Even if I hadn't had the breast milk issues afterwards, the actual process of labor is made even worse than the standard hospital experience. You are not allowed out of bed, meaning no relaxing showers to relieve labor pains, and no getting up to stretch out cramps or use the bathroom. (Frankly, I tricked passing nurses into thinking I was having an average labor so I could use the bathroom. I felt perfectly capable of walking 10 feet to the toilet, and with all the other humbling messiness of labor, I didn't think I should be forced to use a bedpan.)
Epidurals really are pushed in hospitals, as well. I was fairly certain I wanted one (as my mom and every other mother I knew insisted it was absolutely necessary; again, I wish I had been surrounded by a more varied group of people) but I wanted to put it off as long as possible. Epidurals slow labor, and generally add slight risks that I just didn't want to introduce any earlier than necessary. My doctor finally came in and scolded me for not having one (at what ended up being about an hour before delivery), but I was pleased it managed to fly under his radar that long. I got the epidural, but it was an odd and uncomfortable experience in and of itself (not to mention the nurse who took 20 minutes threading my catheter, finally needing my doctor to show her how to do it, only to re-enter my room half an hour later and announce she used a latex cath in spite of the large neon orange "WARNING: PATIENT HAS LATEX ALLERGY" sign on my door). It was off-balance, and only numbed my left side most of the way. My right side had well over half-feeling leftover, so I got a relatively decent taste of what delivery pain is like. You know what? I think I could handle it.
In the end, my daughter was born a healthy 7 1/2 pounds, and had no trouble making her way into the world. But some of the experiences even after the delivery were just not what I wanted. I didn't understand why doctors and nurses insisted on still milling around for half an hour after her birth, well after post-birth medical issues were cared for. All I wanted was to be alone with my husband and daughter, and nurse. I wasn't comfortable having her first (or my first, for that matter) nursing experience surrounded by several strangers, and I dislike that the mother-child bonding process seems somewhat delayed in a hospital environment. Once she's out, she's mine. That's the way I see it. But the rest of the room seemed to disagree.
I would certainly consider a midwife instead of an OB for next pregnancy. Sadly, a lot of this depends on what sort of coverage my insurance would allow for alternative care, because pregnancy and delivery are expensive, regardless of which option you choose, and we are not wealthy people. And I'm sure there are many other circumstances that could sway my opinion in one way or another. But I very much believe that home births are a safe, healthy alternative to hospital births, and I don't like being told that I don't have a choice. Normally my husband is supportive of any decision I could make in regards to my own body, but I think his opinion shifts too drastically when his child would be involved. I firmly believe that fathers have the right to be involved in discussions of such matters, but in the end, they're not the ones pushing kids out of them. A mother has the right to birth her child as she sees fit, and I can only hope my husband does a bit more research on the subject before he tries to lay down the law again.