Part One: Background

 I’ve had a few requests (the most motivating coming from myself) for more details about the homebirth/waterbirth experience.  Inwriting it up I was faced with a dilema.  I hate to just jump into Baby #4’s story without giving you the background behind it.  And then there’s the fact that I have hard time writing anything brief.  (Why use 10 words when you can use 1oo?)  Nobody likes to read a 10-page post – I mean, I know you all love me and my long-winded-ness, but you do have lives to live.  So I found a compromise.

You get it in bits and pieces.  Probably 4 or 5 parts in all, coming every other day or so.  Here’s the first one — Enjoy!!!!

Part One: The background

Here’s the thumbnail version of my first three births. 
Baby 1) Don’t know what I’m getting into, so with the help of a kind neighbor I prepare thoroughly and get exactly the text-book, beautiful, amazing, relaxed natural-childbirth experience I was hoping for.
  
(Highly, highly recommend Hypnobirthing, for those at all interested in “going natural” or preparing for it just in case, which by the way is a GREAT idea.)   Labor was a total of 10 hours, but I was almost sleeping through the first 3 or 4 hours.   It was exhilarating and I loved it.  The next day I was looking forward to the next time, no joke!

Baby 2) Thinking, “Been there, done that” I didn’t put much work into preparing.    It went alright, but not the perfect dream labor I’d had with #1.  I spent the morning walking around Costco through contractions, then got home just in time to have my water break.  Doodle was born an hour or so after that, so it seemed like a pretty fast labor, even though technically I’d been at it for 6+ hours.  
 
Between having to check in to triage first (HATE THAT!!!! I know I’m in labor you big ninny, just let me get to my room for crying out loud!!!), the nurses trying to get me to sign papers while I’m going through transitions (thanks a lot), and then both of them running out to grab a doctor (“Uh oh, she’s at a 10!  I don’t want to catch a baby, do you want to catch a baby?”  “No way!”  cue exit.)  who arrives just in time to catch the baby… Yeah.  Not exactly the relaxed experience I had with Baby1.

 Baby 3) Water breaks at midnight, 10 minutes later contractions start, 1:45am baby’s here. 

Just for the record, I REALLY don’t recommend fast labors like that.  I don’t have any experience with Pitocin, but my guess is that this was similar.  Contractions were pretty intense and close together right from the start.  Once again we weren’t in the hospital long enough for me to get into a groove, but at least the nurse-midwifes gave me a “get out of triage free” card.  And there was a minor (not dangerous) complication that made it *very* difficult to achieve anything remotely like a relaxed state of mind… so yeah.  Again, not my ideal childbirthing experience — BUT! — at least it was over quickly, right?  Riiiiight.

All three were born in the hospital because that’s where babies  are born.  With Baby3 I had a midwife instead of a regular OB/GYN, and I LOVED it.  They are so much more relaxed about everything during pregnancy and their bedside manner was so much kinder and personal at delivery than the other doctors I went to.  Well, that and my first two babies were delivered by doctors I didn’t know anyway, so what did it matter which doctor I saw during pregnancy?… But seriously.  I highly recommend midwives for non-high-risk-pregnancies.

Coming soon… Part Two:  Why a homebirth?