Home Town Home Birth

Another sweet baby was born in the wee hours of monday mornin' this week...mama worked hard and brought her forth! Lovely family! I am happy to have been invited to take part in their journey! Always such a blessing. And it was in my home town! (not the first but exciting nonetheless!)

I love attending home births in my own town! I live in a small town outside of Salem...and we are known in the area to have a pretty decent hospital birth center here. People prefer to come into our town to birth their babies. Many of the local folks I have had discussions with about home birth really tend to ask "Why? Our hospital is really good!"....In my opinion, we live in the perfect town to have home births....the hospital is never far away...We get accepted well in the need of a transport to our hospital and typically the recieving docs and nurses are respectful of our clients wishes and views surrounding birth....And there is rumor that some nurses who work in the birth center have had home births as well so the likelihood of the receiving nurse atleast having heard of home birth and treating clients well is good!

A while back, there was an article in our local paper about home birth. I was kind of upset at how it was portrayed to our little public...I wrote a letter to the editer...to hear nothing back. I wrote her again and again heard nothing back...I feel this town has its fair share of homebirths and a pretty high number in ratio to the size of the population I would think. (anyone know where I might find that specific of information?)...I wish this would have been represented well in the article. ALL sorts of people in this town have home births! Its not all one type of person or group of people that do it!

Right now, my main ad campaign for home birth is MY MOUTH. I think, especially in a small town, word of mouth is such a great thing! I just found out the other day that a gentleman's (that I ran into in the coffee shop and see about town) great grand mother was a "Granny Midwife" in the South....He told me a great story about her...and I am looking forward to learning more about her!

I am kinda rambling....but, I really love our little town here! And I am happy to have had clients/friends/relatives here that do have babies at home! I bet Homer Davenport was born at home! Ha! (I should find out!)

Ahhhh! Birth After Hiatus!

After a nearly three month hiatus, we had a birth yesterday! A sweet 9 lb 4oz baby boy was born in water to a lovely and strong mama and her sweet and oh so supportive husband yesterday afternoon! What a perfect day spent witnessing the growth of this family!

On my drive home last evening, I thought to myself about the day's events. I wondered if I am still too green to be SO relaxed about birth...if it will be an issue later? I feel like its because I trust the process of birth and fully believe that it can be done without hindrance by interference. I feel like "en guard" midwifery (by this I mean always expecting the unexpected or abnormal)could somehow change how a birth happens by projecting fears or what have you onto the birthing mother and her family? Im sure it can have a huge impact on how a birth might go...

Being trained initially in nursing school, I was taught to expect the worst...but I never bought into it...and I witnessed nurses and doctors not trusting that women can just have babies. That, I think, is why I am where I am at today....

In my heart I feel like it is a good thing to be relaxed and flow with the normal rhythms of birth...

So, what are your thoughts on it? Is it a bad thing to be so relaxed about it? Any advice from you lovely and seasoned midwives out there?