I'm Already Planning a Home Birth

I've thought about this for a long time.  I wasn't unhappy with my first birth, but it wasn't quite what I wanted.  I really wanted a home birth, but was afraid and had little support for it and knew very few people who had had them.  I also had never witnessed a birth and went into the whole thing not completely informed (sometimes very confused during the actual labor).  Though I think I was perhaps more informed than average.  I had a natural hospital birth, which is what we planned.  But I'm not going to plan my next one to be in a hospital. 

Plans can change.  I know that.  Even with my first birth I told people, "we are planning a water birth with the midwives at HCMC for now."  Because I knew that my pregnancy could turn high risk and I'd have to switch to an OB, I also knew that I could go into labor early, I also knew that I basically had to have NOTHING go wrong to be allowed in the tub, and I also knew that if HCMC was full they would send me somewhere else.  In the end I never saw an OB and I had a natural birth at HCMC, but I didn't get to use the water tub. 

I don't want to go back to the hospital to give birth.  It's been solidified in my mind now.  I will if I have to, but it will not be the initial plan.  I didn't really need the hospital the first time, but it was there.  It was intrusively there sometimes.  I wrote about the problems I had there in a previous blog.  And the research is showing that home births are as safe as hospital births for low-risk pregnancies who plan a home birth. 

I have also since this met several women who have had successful home births.  I have people I can talk to about it, who can point me in the right direction.  And I've already done it once, without complications, without drugs, even without the pain-reducing effects of warm water.  I feel triumphant in my decision.  I don't think I will change my mind again and this feels very empowering to me.  Just to feel like I've made an informed choice without doubts.  I had so many doubts the last time around, times when I cried that I was "NOT going to that damn hospital, you can't make me." Times when I was in the hospital and felt a lack of control and knowledge.  Times where I felt my decisions were questioned over and over again. 

No, I'm not pregnant, or at least I shouldn't be.  But we plan on having another one in a couple years and I'm already thinking about it.  I've already got a plan for a midwife, possibly an apprenticing midwife, a birth doula, and a post partum doula.  A warm tub and a lot of interviews.  I kind of wish I had planned a home birth the first time around, but I do not regret my decision, because given my knowledge and experience I think I made the best decision for me at the time, even if the outcome wasn't perfect. 

So maybe you can read about my home birth sometime in 2014.