I am fascinated by homebirth. In the first issue of The Attached Family Magazine – which you should be receiving in the next couple of weeks – there is a wonderful story from API Co-founder Barbara Nicholson about the homebirth of her fourth son. Her account makes homebirth seem so comfortable and natural. At home, where things are familiar and surrounded by people you love and who you are comfortable in sharing this most intimate part of your and your baby’s life.
Having had two hospital births, I try to imagine myself giving birth at home, nestled in a pile of goose-down pillows on my queen-size bed, in my bedroom kept dark just the way I like it, with my pick of soft rock music, with only my husband and a midwife sharing in my most intimate moments. But my thoughts are clouded with the reality of my children’s births – an unfamiliar room on a hard bed, bright and exposing lights, surrounded by strangers pushing drugs into my I.V., confusion, fear, helplessness.
It’s difficult to imagine a homebirth when you’ve never had one, which is one of the major reasons why I enjoyed reading a new-release book by an Australian API member Sarah Buckley, MD, Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices. This book has all the cited research that parents want to know as they’re exploring homebirth, from the view of a medical doctor who studied conventional obstetrics but whose perspective shifted once she had children – she in fact having homebirths with all four of her children, despite the first coming a month early, the second facing up, the third born three weeks overdue, and the fourth who came breech and with a compressed cord.
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Read the entire article to learn more about how Buckley’s birth explores childbirth interventions and advocates for “undisturbed” birth and attachment-promoting early parenting practices. Login to this site using the details from the Winter issue of the Journal of API, or if you joined recently, contact Editor Rita Brhel for access.
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