The Attached Mother

There is a great post up at API Speaks from Amy about her choice to have a homebirth. The post was originally written before her son was born. Amy has been a loud voice in birth options for women, giving information and insight into the home birth option. You can find many of her well researched and thoughtful articles at BlogHer where she shares her perspective on midwives and home birth. Also check out her blog where she dishes on parenting and life as a Crunchy Domestic Goddess.

When I was pregnant with my second son we decided on a home birth. My first was born in a free standing birth center with a midwife that I loved, but the center was an hour away from my home. After enduring that long drive in the throes of labor once I was certain that I did not want to do it again. Unfortunately living in a rural area there are not many birth options available. It was either drive an hour or more in any direction or hand myself over to the local OBs, none of whom were open to anything other than medicalized births. At 20 weeks the home birth decision was made.

Of course many people assumed that choice was made out of ignorance or some idea of birth being a fuzzy, soft affair. Most people tended to ignore the mountain of research I had in front of me, the hours each day spent questioning everything birth related that lead me to the home birth option. Though it wasn’t such a giant leap for me after already researching my birth options with my first child.

Though my home birth ended up not happening the research I did led me to fully support women who want to go that route. It is a wonderful option, one that more women should know the facts of and have available to them. Childbirth can be a huge industry and many who profit from it aren’t willing to share the stage, which can lead to home birth and free standing birth centers not being given equal availability. Luckily there are women like Amy out there who educates and inspires women on this great birth option.

birth, childbirth, home birth