Wow, Trish...oh my god. How were you while you were delivering your baby? I mean what state of mind were you in?

As for your question...I was very firm about three things:

1. I wanted Annelies out and both of us healthy.
2. I wanted to avoid knives if at all possible.
3. I wanted no med students or first-year residents in the room. Don't mean to offend anyone here, but I've done my bit for medical education elsewhere.

I figured everything else was gravy. And I felt really exhilarated after Liesl was born...I'm sure lots of stuff was going on, but she and I were just looking at each other, and then the nurse helped me get her latched on. I was less than keen on the stitching-up afterwards, esp. since my midwife kept talking about how she was only making things worse...I kinda got the impression she wasn't the world's top seamstress. But compared with the little girl laying on my chest, that was very minor indeed. Official tests afterwards have concluded that she did quite an adequate job anyway . :p

No, I didn't love the room (small, full of machines that go ping); I don't think I'll ever fully recover my taste for popsicles; I'm slightly embarrassed about watching Seinfeld while I was getting my baby born; and the wake-up-the-parents nursing schedule is just shy of sadistic, I think. But then I wasn't looking for a "birthing experience" -- I was looking to get the baby out safely. And I had two midwives I trusted. The first nurse was also a treat.

I do think we could use more ceremony and ritual around the whole thing...but I think it'd require a whole lot more thought and talk, culturally, about what becoming a mother means. While there's part of me that's romantically sorry I didn't go through some transformative drug-free trial of labor, I'm very very grateful for all the pinging machines and drips. Everyone home safe and dry. I'd choose it again.

amy

hi there..i apologize if i killed this thread by mentioning my paper

amy - thanks for your reply! considering my labor..it was funny because it was almost as if I was on autopilot. my mind went blank. i did not think at all. my arms just went down there, caught the baby and that was it. to this day, i'm not sure how i did it..afterwards i was shock..i looked down andthere was this pink little person smacking his lips..it was amazing but i couldn't help but think of what could have happened.

Well, I suspect that I can bring a different perspective to this topic. I have been an OB in Canada for 8 years, am also Board Certified, and prior to medicine, I spent 8 years doing research in fetal physiology. I would have to say that I think I have tried almost everything that my profession has to offer.
I had my 2 children in a teaching center. For the most part, I thought my pregnancies were great. My first, however, stayed breech the entire time . Then, I went post-dates (41 wks). It was also near the end of my summer break between 1st and 2nd year medicine. I had to go back to classes, so I persuaded my OB to do an induction. (BTW, my daughter is 15 y.o., I trained in a center that was expert in vag breech deliveries. This predated the Term Breech Trial, and under the same circumstances, I would choose it again.) My cervix was "ripe", and I only needed oxytocin to get started.
Although I had extensively prepared for an 'unmedicated' labour and delivery, all was not to be the case. My labour was prolonged....progress was slow. I chose to have an epidural - but I would have to say, I felt like I had exchanged one pain for another. My legs burned like they were on fire! :twocents:

I had two very different birth experiences. I delivered both my sons at the hospital where I was a resident and am now an attending pediatrician. Initially I felt a little funny about this, however, when one is truly laboring one really does not care who sees you like that!
My first son truly was a natural birth. I had no IV, no epidural, and I begged the OB to remove the monitor as it was so uncomfortable. THANK GOODNESS my son did not suffer asphyxia. I guess I was real lucky! I now feel I was stupid for insisting on "natural birth". He lay on my belly after the delivery and he nursed immediately. My husband took pictures which are now very precious to me.
Of course, I assumed my second delivery would be just like my first! You never think you will be the one to have a complication. Again, I had only intermittent monitoring, no IV, no epidural. However, his heart rate dropped and I delivered him in the recovery area outside the OR by vacuum extraction as the anesthesiologist was frantically trying to get IV access and looking in my throat in preparation for intubating me for emergency CS. I was begging for general anesthesia to relieve me from my pain. Then he had shoulder dystocia! What a nightmare delivery. I was very relieved to see the entire NICU team was waiting for him including the attending! Very thankfully, he was fine (normal cord pH and Apgars). I feel very fortunate.
Believe me, If there ever is another time, I will definitely opt for all the interventions!

I have had very different birth experiences from a lot of women here. Please remember that these are my choices and I feel strongly about the choices I made with my children!

I had an OB for my first son. It was a large practice and I felt like just another one in the herd. By 36 weeks I had done a lot of reading (tons!) and no longer felt that birth was a disease that needed to be managed. I was 23 and in perfect health. I switched to a CNM at that point as she was more in align with my beliefs.

I went into labor at 38 weeks. The baby was posterior but my CNM helped me through the back labor through natural methods.

Although I got the natural birth I wanted, the nurses kept pushing me to take narcotics and an epidural (I was coping quite well though!). The CNM put me in a funny position that I believe contributed to my small tear (the tear repair was the worst part of the birth to me!). The nurses also pushed formula and I ended up supplementing. Which was too bad, because he would have been fine with just breastmilk.

It was a good birth but I knew I wouldn't want to birth in a hospital again. I wasn't sick! I was in perfect health! So the next time I planned to have the baby at home, which is exactly what I did. I had great prenatal care with a homebirth midwife. And again, I was in perfect health. I have a lot of faith in the human body and trusted my body to birth my son without interventions. I used "Hypnobirthing" and I ended up having a almost painless labor. I didn't call the midwife until quite late (I didn't feel that I needed the help!) and my dh caught my baby before the midwife arrived. The baby had a huge head but I instinctively got on a hands and knees position which allowed him to be born with ease and no tearing. He just basically slipped out - no pushing. I was able to nurse right away which helped the uterus shrink up quickly with minimal bleeding. Our breastfeeding was never interrupted so we had a very successful nursing relationship.

I have worked for years as a doula and childbirth educator. I certainly agree that some women need to birth in hospitals b/c of their health or the babies. And some women want to have the drugs so they need to be in a hospital. But I firmly feel that homebirth is very safe for healthy women. And studies back that up. The only study that showed that homebirth was not as safe was very flawed (long story).

I have had women in medicine harshly criticize my birth choices and I just don't understand why. Women have been having safe homebirths all over the world for centuries. Sure, sometimes babies die at home. But babies also die in hospitals. Most homebirth midwives can see a problem coming very early in labor and they won't think twice about sending a mom to a hospital if they need one. Shoulder dystocias happen all the time at home, but thankfully midwives have a great knowledge of birth and can deal with it using the Gaskin Manuever. Midwives today are also very skilled in monitoring (with a fetoscope!) and they are also trained to do resuscitations, though they are rarely needed at home.

Because there are no drugs or forced positions (such as mom lying flat on her back which we know is not good for the heart rate, and makes delivery very difficult) there are usually much less complications. And again, only healthy women birth at home.

I'm not trying to convince anyone to have a homebirth, just trying to say that us homebirthers aren't nuts! I know there are always docs that have seen "a homebirth gone bad" but I've also seen hospital births gone bad that didn't have to.

It just works both ways - both can be safe and happy places to birth depending on what mom wants.

I felt very safe at home and would do it again and again, so long as I'm in good health. I'm even considering going into OB to provide a "natural slant" for women who feel more comfortable in a hospital, but want a more holistic approach. And still be able to provide meds for moms that want them.

-Christy

I had to add my story...so true about Murphy's Law for medical folks!

I struggled to conceive and finally did so during my third year of medical school, using Clomid. Of course, we were elated and I remember saying to my husband that I "didn't care if I was sick every day for the duration" as long as I had a healthy baby. A day later I started gagging while brushing my teeth. I was moderately sick from 6-16 weeks and felt good after that until around 35-36 weeks. Even while doing my OB and Surgery rotations! My blood pressure started a slow rise during my last trimester and peaked at around 36 weeks, which bought me a quick trip to L & D (during which my BP remained stone-cold normal ). From then on was pretty miserable, uncomfortable, and frustrating. At 38.5 weeks my BP rose yet again and I was scheduled for induction three days later. I was also sick, sick, sick with a miserable URI. My OB stripped my membranes at that visit to help things along for the induction, which I will remember each and every time I have to do that to a patient . But I was so relieved to be getting the pregnancy over with that I stopped by Long John Silver's for some incredibly greasy chicken and fries. I felt vague cramps from the afternoon on and was vaguely ill (I thought it was the respiratory stuff plus the food). The cramps starting coming regularly around 10 PM as I was trying to get some sleep...I soon realized that they were contractions. I got up and cleaned the whole house, did laundry, and took a bath as my contractions got closer together. Around 2 AM they were 5 minutes apart and I got my husband up to go to the hospital, praying that the resident on call would be one that I liked (did my rotation at that hospital)!

I was only 2 cm when we arrived but was having nice regular contractions so they let me stay. The other OB in the practice stopped by around 7:30 AM and checked my cervix-4 cm, so he decided to rupture my membranes without really telling me that he was going to. And to beat it all there was meconium in the fluid. After that the contractions and my fear intensified and I wanted that epidural NOW. What a blessing! That nurse anesthetist was absolutely incredible. I was doing well and expecting an uncomplicated vaginal delivery and a baby by the afternoon. My friends from med school started dropping by to stay with me during labor. Life was good. My nurses were both wonderful. I had worked with them on the rotation and knew them pretty well.

I continued to progress but started coughing a lot and feeling awful because of the respiratory junk. My temperature crept up and my baby's heart rate did the same. I spiked at 101.5 and her heart rate shot up into the 180's and stayed there. Early afternoon, I really started to get frightened by the fetal monitor because I knew how to read the stupid thing. She started having little dips in her HR then started having late decels that I could see. My friends now tell me that they were trying to stand between me and the monitor so that I couldn't see what was going on.

I got to 9 cm and stayed there. My family arrived from out of town never thinking that they would beat baby by a couple of hours. The decels kept happening, I was on my side with oxygen, IV, a failing epidural and a Foley cath crying my eyes out because I just wanted a healthy baby. When I was offered a C/S at 5:30 I agreed IMMEDIATELY so long as I could have a subcuticular closure with no staples! She gave me the risks/benefits talk and I never thought about how that would affect my family. My husband and father were both crying, thinking that I or the baby might die, and there I was so relieved to be getting it done.

The C/S was a breeze compared to the rest of the day. My husband and 2 great friends were in the OR with me when my daughter was born. The hardest part of the section was not getting to see her for about 12 minutes while they suctioned her and checked her over very thoroughly due to the events of the day. I got to touch her briefly in the OR and was then whisked to recovery. I did see her around 3 hours later and was able to nurse at that time. She stayed with me for much of the time in the hospital. I was there for 3 days. I walked and got the Foley out the next morning. The worst struggle that I had during my hospital stay was just before discharge. Alisa discovered that she had an appetite and my milk had not come in yet, so we had an exhausting day of her trying to nurse every 30 minutes and crying when she couldn't get milk. I finally gave her half an ounce of formula by dropper and it satisfied her. My milk came in the next day and all was well again.

I tried to be open-minded going in as I had been through OB and knew that there were many things that could go wrong. Things didn't go as I expected but I can't say that I'm disappointed. In fact, I am inclined to go with elective C-section if I have more children. Labor was a terrible experience for me for reasons that could not have been predicted or controlled. My baby was occiput posterior, which was probably part of the reason why I couldn't dilate. Even if I had, the OB would most likely have had to use forceps, which can cause severe tears (saw a woman lose a ton of blood and get an almost 4th degree tear delivering an OP baby with forceps assistance) and which scare me more than surgery. I was still able to bond and to breastfeed (for almost 6 months) and my recovery was not bad. I was able to get out and about in less than a week and had recovered completely by 3-4 weeks postpartum. I even took the Internal Medicine shelf exam on what would have been my due date, 10 days postpartum, and did well ! The most important thing is that my child is beautiful and healthy, and that I am healthy as well. I'm even at the point where I am starting to think about getting pregnant again. We'll see about that in a year or so .