Exploring my inner hippie

You can't braid my armpit hair because there is none.  I don't make my own granola because I tend to eat sugary cereals and "field hand breakfast" (eggs, bacon, toast, grits, yum).  I don't recycle because there's not a recycling company that will pick up the recycling in my neighborhood, but there is a dump less than a mile away.  I use disposable diapers, disposable razors, paper towels, and I get plastic grocery bags at the store because (more often than not) I forget my re-usable grocery bags at home or in the back of the car.

However, I'm considering something even "hippier" than ever before: homebirth.  Okay, okay, it's only considered off the grid because so many women have been trained over the course of their lifetimes to view hospital births (or even birthing center births) as the only acceptable, clean, healthy way to have a baby.  Arguments on the pro side of hospitals and birthing centers are:

• You are close to (or co-located with) immediate emergency medical services, should the need arise
• You have access to medications and services that cannot be provided to you at home
• You don't have to get halfway through trying to push, only to realize that you need medical help to get that baby out (and then have to get in the car to go to the hospital)
• Hospitals are cleaner than your house (okay, well definitely cleaner than my house!)

But then there are the cons:

• "Sterile" environment still may cause exposure to germs from other sick people in the hospital
• Environment is not comfortable (even if they try to make the rooms more "homey" by adding soft colors and wood paneling)
• You don't get the rest you need because there is too much activity in the room/hallway
• Sometimes medical interventions happen because the on-call OB is too busy to wait for you to have your baby in the time it takes to have your baby (not because there is a medical need for it)

So I started exploring waterbirth last week, just because it seemed like a good idea and the hospital on base here has a birthing tub.  You are created in a womb full of water (or watery stuff) and there you grow until you emerge into the world, where it is shockingly cold and bright, and people take you away from the only person you've ever known (Mama!) to go get on a cold scale, get goop put in your eyes, get a shot of vitamin K, and have like a million people you don't know all fussing about in your immediate area (cleaning up, checking vital signs, taking pictures, etc.).  No WONDER babies cry when they are born!

On the flip side, you can be born into water that is the same temperature as Mom's body, pulled up into her arms and cuddled right away, where you can nurse and be happy and cozy for a few minutes at least before they have to do all that measuring and vital sign checking and junk.  Slightly less traumatic, right?

But we live in Alaska now.  And our baby is due to be born in early February.  It will still be cold (and that is an understatement), and my major concern is how quickly our firstborn arrived.  Second children come faster.  What if we don't make it to the hospital?

So that is when the idea of homebirth popped into my head.  And I can do a home waterbirth because tubs can be rented for about $350, I can have whoever I want in the room, I can be in my own familiar surroundings with my own familiar germs (and nobody else's!), and go crawl into MY bed (which is a sleep-number bed, by the way) after birthing my child.  No flustering of random nurses or attending physicians to come check out the damage done by putting in a fetal monitor that came out halfway through the birth, cutting me on the way out.  No blasts of cold air from the door being fanned at every opportunity with the in-and-out of all the random people.  No lights, sounds, machines, etc.  Just our home sounds, which our unborn child will be familiar with already after having lived there (muffled by the amniotic fluid) for the past several months.

It is a lot to think about, but after doing some checking up with my provider, I think homebirth is covered under our insurance.  How neat.