Have you watched the show Call the Midwife? I hadn’t till a few days ago and it is an addictive show. I had no idea about this show before a bit ago and goodness I have been missing out. With the lull in good television shows this time of year (I know this happens every year because looking at the Timehop App tells me so for the last 4 years I grumble about it.) I am glad to have a new show to watch.
It is about a Nunnery and Nurse midwives who help an impoverished community birth their babies in the 1950’s. It is true to the times from everything I have read and has such compelling stories. It has made me tear up on more than one episode.
My Home birth
Episode 6 in Season 2 had me tear up remembering my first homebirth. The mother is squatting near the bed, not on the bed. All my other births had been hard, in beds on my back. That one though was different and I was in water, a birthing pool in kitchen. I labored quietly, no screaming. I remember when I did talk it was to whisper during transition to my doula, that I wasn’t sure I could do it. She told me I could, that I was, and it was just what I needed to hear. I was so quiet from then on the baby was coming out before the midwife even knew I was really pushing. It was such a different birth from the hospital ones on my back. It was so easy compared to them. I knew I would never have another hospital birth unless I had to. Studies show in healthy pregnancies that home births are just as safe as hospital births! Natural birth isn’t always screaming and pain and terror. For me it is intense and quiet and powerful and life changing. I think home births made me a better mother than I was before because I finally started to trust myself and what I was capable of. Hospital births always make it seem like mothers are not capable of giving birth without all these interventions and all the fear. I wish I had known before I had babies what I know now.
Is a home birth Mom better than a hospital Mom?
I wish I didn’t even have to write this but I feel I must to be clear. No kind of birth makes a mother than any other. Yes I said that my home births made me a better mother but that is me, my path. I can’t and will not compare it to anyone’s but my own. Your experience might well be different. I learned though that I shouldn’t base my choices on blind fears. Do the research and sometimes trust yourself!
I haven’t seen this show before but I was disappointed when I had to have a c-section with my third baby. I was planning on laboring in the water at the hospital and going all natural. So much for my plans, my baby had his own. I would have loved to have a water birth but I won’t have that opportunity any more, had my tubes tied during my c-section.
Sometimes things just do not go as planned but there was nothing you could have done. Sometimes it helps knowing that regrets or disappointed are beyond our control. It helps me anyway.