Introduction

       I wanted to start this blog, because I've found that most people I know, don't have a good understanding of homebirth. There is much fear in the unknown. In order to help ease the fear, I want to educate everyone. Most people I know think that going the hospital route and doing everything the doctor tells you to do, is the best and safest way to give birth. I strongly disagree with this myth. OB/GYN's are not taught how to handle normal, healthy women with normal, healthy pregnancies. They are taught only to deal with the problems of it. While it's great that we have doctors to help those problems, applying the same procedures you would use on a sick person to a healthy person actually creates problems that would not have come up if left alone.
      When I first found out I was pregnant, I did what every other pregnant women does. I called and made an appointment with my OB. The morning I was to go see my OB and begin prenatal care, I got a called from his office saying that due to my army insurance, they could no longer see me while I was pregnant. BACH, the army hospital, had decided that they had room for me as prenatal patient, so I had no choice but to go there. I freaked! I spent the next several days screaming at insurance and army doctors to release me back to my doctor, but of course they did not oblige.
      I ended up going to BACH for my first prenatal visits and was horrified. The first visit, I spent 3 hours waiting in the waiting room until a nurse finally realized I had been there too long and went to find out why I hadn't been seen. It turns out, no one had a clue why I was there. I spent 2 mores hours explaining to everyone why I was there. Finally, one of the doctors who wasn't busy saw me and did an ultrasound to confirm my pregnancy and such. That's when it really started going downhill. After doing a ton of painful digging trying to locate the embryo, he told me that I could possibly have an ectopic pregnancy. He wanted me to come back in a few days to get another ultrasound to confirm. After 2 weeks of ultrasounds, bloodwork, and dealing with the possiblity of having to terminate the pregnancy I had been through hell to get, it turns out everything was just fine and I had gone through a bunch of bs for nothing.
      I quickly realized that this was not where and how I wanted to bring my child into the world. I started researching alternative birth methods. After alot of research, I decided upon a home water birth. I found an excellent midwife and immediately began seeing her. I love seeing a midwife. They take a wholistic approach to prenatal care. She talks to me, listens to me and really gets to know me and my needs. She doesn't run a bunch of stupid tests on me if I think something might wrong, she just listens and tells me how to treat the problem. If I get a yeast infection, she doesn't make me pee in a cup, and pump me full of drugs, she simply tell me how to rebalance my body and fix it naturally. And it works better than drugs.
      I continue to do alot of research and have alot of decisions still to make. I will continue to and to my blog and give information as I collect it. To avoid turning this into a full book, which I could easily do, I'll just put up the links to websites I've found to be very helpful in my research.
    

The Bradley Birthing Method- http://www.yourbirthingbody.com/    

Orgasmic Birth (documentary)- http://www.orgasmicbirth.com/

The Business of Being Born (documentary)- http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/

Kimberly Spencer, CPM- http://www.nashvillemidwife.com/

Unassisted Childbirth (book)- http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/