Having your baby at home? Who would even think of such a thing? Didn’t that just happen when there weren’t many hospitals and doctor’s had to go to the home to deliver babies?
Not quite. There are a growing number of women who have discovered the benefits of having your baby at home, or a homebirth as it is commonly called.
This practice of having your baby at home is called midwifery. Although not doctors or nurses, people in this line of work called midwifery are professionally regulated. I myself have seen the steady rise of homebirths through my practice as a San Diego certified midwife.
The people, generally women, who perform this line of work are called homebirth midwives. Midwives is a more common term that people are familiar with and means a person who attends childbirth and provides support during labor and delivery.
Now a midwife is usually not a nurse or doctor because in general a midwife generally believes that pregnancy and births are natural events and should be allowed to proceed naturally without drugs. This is in stark contrast with the medical model which relies on medicine to assist and improve the pregnancy and delivery.
With that aside, lets look at why a lot of women are having babies at home rather than hospitals. What are the reasons why women are choosing homebirths?
First off, with the continued presence of the midwife, the length of labor can be reduced. Most women don’t realize that the use of pain medications although seemingly helpful in regards to pain, actually slows the labor down. This really causes more pain and the labor actuallly lasts longer.
Second, midwifery techniques in reality reduce the need for forceps or other intrusive devices during delivery. The technique of letting the birth and delivery to occur naturally is what reduces the need to use those devices.
Third, the possiblity of c-section deliveries are actually reduced. Most c-sections happen when during labor, it was thought that a natural birth process was not possible. Either the safety of the mother was in mind or the safety of the baby. When in reality the complication was created because the natural birth process wasn’t allowed to happen.
These are just 3 of the benefits of having a natural birth at home. There are many more, but I am sure most women in pregnancy would agree these are 3 huge benefits.
So although, most might consider it strange to want to have a child at home, studies have shown that allowing the natural birth process to happen is safer for the mother and the baby. With over 300 births attended as a homebirth midwife in San Diego, this has proven to be the case time and time again.
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