Last summer, when Attachment Mama was in its early conception, I had a team of wonderful, smart college and recent college-grad interns assisting me in creating the content. During their summer internship, they also learned a bit about marketing and PR, helping Mark and I promote our Hideout Studios to local artists and media.
One of our interns, Nicole Mundy, now a recent Tulane grad, was particularly talented at research and writing. Over the previous year, I had collected email posts about midwives from my local Attachment Parenting support group with the vision of distilling the information into something meaningful for the community. I sent the messy collection of information to Nicole, and within a few weeks, she put together a solid article that I’m going to split into a series together with my still unpublished home V-BAC story which I’ll post later this week.
Most of the people I grew up with can’t comprehend the choice to have a baby outside of a hospital with a midwife — and no drugs. To them and many others, it seems dangerous and irresponsible. For those of us that consciously chose the option, it certainly wasn’t about a masochistic desire to suffer more or to put ourselves or our unborn child at risk. Quite the opposite! We made the choice because the philosophy of midwifery care appealed to us, including the emotional and physical benefits to both mother and child that are present with natural childbirth, free from unnecessary interventions that can lead to unnecessary cesarean births – a definite risk to both mother and child and yet the most common form of surgery performed in the United States today. I recently read that 50 percent of c-sections performed now are unnecessary!
I personally made the choice after reading Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth which I highly recommend for anyone curious to learn more about the empowering, feminist nature of natural childbirth with a midwife and what many women seek to avoid that commonly occurs in hospitals.
According to the American Pregnancy Association, the Midwives Model of Care is based on the fact that pregnancy and birth are normal life processes. The midwives model of care includes:
Monitoring the physical, psychological, and social well-being of the mother throughout the childbearing cycle
Providing the mother with individualized education, counseling, and prenatal care, continuous hands-on assistance during labor and delivery, and postpartum support
Minimizing technological interventions
Identifying and referring women who require obstetrical attention
Having experienced both a hospital, c-section birth and a natural birth at home, I’ve got full appreciation for both the advances of western medicine that can intervene with childbirth when it’s necessary and the empowering, spiritual nature of having your child at home under the care of midwives. Read More »
Warning Label: This story contains all kinds of foul language that I’m usually careful about excluding from my articles. But my VBAC story just wouldn’t be the same without it. Also, this post will, for sure, be my longest post on Attachment Mama as it compares the c-section birth experience with the H-BAC. So grab your tea and a comfy chair and settle in for this one!
