Having the baby in your home? Who does such things? Didn’t that only happen back in the early days of our country when doctor’s had to go out to the prairie and deliver babies?
Not so. There is a large group of women who are discovering the benefts of having a baby at home, or homebirth as it is sometimes called.
It is called midwifery the practice of having your baby at home. Although not doctors or nurses, people in this line of work called midwifery are professionally regulated. I myself have seen the steady rise of homebirths through my practice as a San Diego certified midwife.
The people, generally women, who perform this line of work are called homebirth midwives. Midwives is a more common term that people are familiar with and means a person who attends childbirth and provides support during labor and delivery.
Now why the midwife generally isn’t a doctor or nurse is because having your baby at home, or midwifery, is usually the belief that pregnancy and delivery are natural events. This is in stark contrast with the medical model which relies on medicine to assist and improve the pregnancy and delivery.
With that aside, lets look at why a lot of women are having babies at home rather than hospitals. What are the reasons why women are choosing homebirths?
First off, with the continued presence of the midwife, the length of labor can be reduced. Most women don’t realize that the use of pain medications although seemingly helpful in regards to pain, actually slows the labor down. This actually creates more pain and makes the labor last longer.
Second, midwifery practices actually causes a reduction in the need for forceps and other devices in a delivery. The process of allowing the birth and delivery to happen naturally is what reduces the need for those devices.
Third, the possiblity of c-section deliveries are actually reduced. Most c-sections happen when during labor, it was thought that a natural birth process was not possible. Either because of the safety of the baby was in mind or the safety of the mother. When in reality the complication was created because the natural birth process wasn’t allowed to happen.
These are 3 benefits when you have a natural homebirth. There are a lot more benefits, but I am positive most women who are pregnant would say these are 3 huge benefits.
So even though some might call it strange to have a child at home, recent studies indicate that allowing a natural birth to happen is much safer for the mom and the baby. With over 300 births attended as a homebirth midwife in San Diego, this has proven to be the case time and time again.