I will make my story short. My 1st child was born in a hospital - it was not a bad experience - in fact, it went so well, I could have had my son at home. However, I was uneducated about nursing a baby and ended up bottle feeding him. By the time I was ready to have my 2nd child, I had met a woman who had a home birth after 2 c-sections and totally turned me on to the whole idea and I had gotten involved in La Leche League, so I was more than prepared to nurse a new baby. I was referred to a midwife who I really liked.
The main complication in this pregnancy was my blood pressure which climbed up into the "borderline dangerous" range midway and remained there. I told my midwife "I will do whatever I have to to stay out of a hospital." She tried inducing early labor when I had about 3 weeks left to go to no avail. She assured me that my blood pressure problem was completely due to the the pregnancy and I had no symptoms of pre-eclampsia at all.
Finally, my labor began - it was the shortest of my 3 labors (6 and half hours). I did most of my laboring sitting in a rocking chair I had borrowed from my parents. I delivered sitting at the edge of my bed, gripping the mattress through each contraction. The midwife sat behind me rubbing my back and two assistants sat at my feet to prevent them from sliding on the carpet. My daughter shot out and I immediately asked what sex she was. The first comment out of the midwife was "It would have been such a shame to have this baby in the hospital!" because my blood pressure shot down immediately after the birth. Yael was born on a Friday night which was Labor Day weekend so I was able to stay home all weekend, learn how to nurse her and just relax.
The absolute best parts of the whole experience were not needing to leave the comfort of my own bed and not having the intrusion of the hospital nurses coming in to take my temperature, take the baby away for any reason and just being able to relax at home. Most of my friends still think I'm nuts.
Andrea Paley
andreapaley_abcde @ yahoo.com
(Remove _abcde to get the correct email address)
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