Our Midwife and Homebirth Experience

Dear Brandon,

I thought I'd write a little bit about our experience with midwives and our homebirth. I knew I wanted to have a midwife from the beginning, but it was something I had to convince your Dad of! We talked a lot about it and did some research. Midwifery care is great because its a lot more personlized than care with a doctor. In the beginning of my pregnancy we saw one of our three midwives about every five weeks, and that gradually increased to weekly appointments once I was 36 weeks along. Each appointment was 30-45 minutes long, and we were given lots of information as well as the opportunity to ask questions. It was really nice to get to know them, and feel comfortable with each. Any one of them could be on call when it came time for your birth, so it was good to be able to see each of them equally during my pregnancy. Many people have asked whether we would use midwives again, and our answer is 100% yes! We couldn't have been happier with the care we received.

As for homebirths, this was something that I had always been open to, but Daddy had never even considered it. Around the beginning of my third trimester, we began to talk about it with our midwives. Daddy was quite worried that it wouldn't be safe, and felt like we should be in the hospital. We attended an information session, and were able to hear other peoples' experiences with giving birth at home. Daddy found it especially helpful to hear from other dads. We spent a lot of time talking it over with each other and asked questions of our midwives. We were told about studies that have shown that home birth is just as safe (if not safer) than hospital births, provided the pregnancy is progressing normally. There is very strict criteria that I had to meet in order to be eligible to give birth at home.
Eventually Daddy came around to the idea, and realized that it probably would be more comfortable to be able to labour at home, be in our own environment, and do things on our own terms. I liked the idea of being in my own bed after the birth, and having the ability to eat food from home!
We went ahead and purchased a homebirth kit which contained most of the supplies we'd need (things like garbage bags for dirty laundry, waterproof sheets to put on our mattress, and absorbent pads to catch any fluid. Many people think that a homebirth would be really messy, but once the midwives were gone there was very little evidence of what had just happened!
Midwives don't have the qualifications to administer pain relief like laughing gas or epidurals, so I knew that a homebirth meant going drug free. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to handle the pain, and would end up in the hospital begging for drugs! In reality, Daddy told me that I never once asked for drugs, and only said things like "ouch" and "it hurts" right at the very end. I guess subconsciously, I knew that if I decided I needed help with the pain, I'd have to go to the hospital which wasn't what I wanted at all. But I don't recall thinking about pain medication during labour at all.
Once you were born it was so nice to be able to start bonding with you in our bed right away. You weren't going to be whisked away from us to be examined. The midwives stuck around for about two hours after you were born to make sure you and I were both OK. One midwife comes to check on us everyday at home for the week after your birth, then we will go into their clinic for checkups up until about 6 weeks. They listen to your heart and lungs, take my blood pressure and pulse, help out with breastfeeding, and answer any questions we have. They've also given me lots of tips already about breastfeeding, to make sure you are getting what you need until my milk comes in.
We actually didn't tell many people that we were planning a homebirth; not because we felt the need to justify our decision, but rather because we weren't sure how our family and friends would feel about the idea. The last thing we wanted was to hear any negative or skeptical opinions. Daddy decided not to tell anyone in his family, but I told my parents and sister, who were all very supportive. Now many people are asking me if it was planned or not, and want to know all about it! They will all soon find out that it was a wonderful experience, and we'd definitely do it again!