Well, if I were offering advice to someone who was considering a home birth, I would say, unless there's a real medical reason not to, “Go for it”. I found it a really fulfilling experience and I really appreciated all the choices that I was offered. I didn't feel like I was part of a system that was grinding on regardless of me. I really felt like an individual person during the whole process, and that was really, that was just really great. I've spoken to some of the people with whom I was taking prenatal classes and they, they say things like, “Yes, I had a dreadfully long and difficult and painful labour. And is there really any other way?” And actually there is another way, and I experienced that way. I'm just really grateful for my experience, I just can't believe, it was, it was beyond my wildest dreams really. Having a birth at home allowed me to be in my own setting, where I felt comfortable, and to have the people around me that I wanted to have around me, in their own setting as well or a setting that they felt comfortable in. And, and it just allowed me to make those free choices. And that gave me exactly the kind of birth that I wanted. And as many things as I was worried about that could go wrong, none of them did.
Now I know that a home birth may not be for everyone, there may be reason, medical, real medical reasons why it's impossible. But, but I think that on reflection the, the number of medical reasons that are given for why people couldn't have home births may be larger than the actual real number of women who wouldn't physically be able to give birth at home. And it's a matter of, of deciding whether or not the reasons you may have been given that home birth is not the right option for you, are they valid reasons or are they not? |
