Stuff
I Know You’re Judging Me For Having A Home Birth
The moment you tell someone you’re having a home birth you can feel the judgement and disapproval seeping out of their eyeballs. There is a litany of responses you’ll get. There’s the usual uninformed response of “Isn’t that really dangerous?†and the guilt-laden “Wouldn’t you just feel awful if something went wrong?†But my favorite has got to be the TV-viewer response of, “Well I watch Call the Midwife and midwives are NOT doctors!â€Â How do I even respond to these? I obviously wouldn’t be doing anything that would put me or my baby at risk. All of these comments are actually thinly veiled ways of saying something that is very troubling: If things do go wrong, it’s the mother’s fault for choosing to have a home birth. Do we blame the mother who had a C-Section (planned or unplanned) when she has a complication like hemorrhaging or infection, both of which could end in death? Also, let’s please not compare my planned home birth in 2014 to a BBC series about nuns helping women in post-World War II London.
There are also the horror stories people want to tell you about their friend’s cousin’s sister’s friend that had a bad home birth experience. How do you argue with someone telling you a personal story about someone they know who had a bad experience? You don’t want to try and one-up them with a horror story that you heard about someone birthing in a hospital. What good is that going to do for anyone?