We want to start this homebirth choice article by telling you why we have some authority on the topic. Birthing Better skills were developed by hundreds of fathers and mothers and used by tens of thousands of families since the early 1970s and became known via the Internet since 2000. This means the ‘we’ are families like yours. Sure some of those families chose a hospital birth or lacked choices. And, of course, Birthing Better families had previously chosen a homebirth and had success or not. Others were choosing a homebirth for the first time and wanted to increase their homebirth success. Please listen to all these Birthing Better families. They wanted a homebirth success and they want that for you.
Does choosing a homebirth guarantee you’ll have a home birth? The last thing you want to hear from us is that your chosen home birth might not be the birth you wanted or hoped for. In fact, you might end up transferring to that hated and dreaded hospital. It’s SOOOOO politically incorrect to talk about the lack of success of homebirths or even how to make home birth success more likely.
Most people assume that ‘choosing’ a home birth is all you need to do.
Birth Plan as wish list
After all, we are living in a world where: ‘I know my rights to choose’, ‘I want it now’, ‘If I fail someone else is to blame’ and ‘I’m the victim to the medical community.’
Home births are assumed to be the perfect, ideal and best birth. For those families where a homebirth has been absolutely ideal, they have extreme difficulty in imagining the huge sense of failure experienced by many families who had hoped for a homebirth and a great birth after transferring to the hospital.
Birth is much more than a choice
There is no way you can know what your birth will be like. What happens at all births is much more connected to how the woman takes the journey of this extraordinary activity. In fact, birth is less a ‘choice’ then an activity and that activity is often connected to the hard work of coping with the naturally occurring pain of labour.
But then it’s SOOOO politically incorrect to even talk about birth pain. Now the words: rush, wave, intensity etc are the preferred words. However, pain it is unless you are one of the very fortunate few who actually experience little or no pain. But homebirths can be as painful as those in hospital. A great deal of the woman’s job is to cope or manage the pain rather than get lost, feel out of control and overwhelmed.
Because you are choosing a homebirth you have a much greater responsibility in a political climate that may not support your choice. If you live in a country that does support your choice then you still have a higher responsibility to safely birth at home so that home births remain a viable option for other families.
The responsibility has to do with preparing our pregnant body for birth so this very large object (our baby) can come out easily and safely. Since birth is an activity, preparing our pregnant body for this activity is very real. Since there’s no way to know what your birth will be like, you need to prepare your body to stay open, mobile and relaxed.
Road to successful home birth
Birthing Better families will tell you it’s really quite simple.
- Prepare your pregnant body by using skills that teach your birthing body to open up, stay relaxed, soft and mobile so your baby can more easily navigate down, through and out.
- Learn birth and birth-coaching skills so you can cope, manage, deal with, handle, work through, stay on top of and in control during the natural occurring pain of contractions.
If there’s a real medical reason to transfer then continue to use your skills. You got pregnant to have a baby not a type of birth. It’s your choice whether you actively continue to birth your baby alongside all the medical care you’ll have if there’s a medical issue. When you are skilled you are more likely to prevent and reduce some medical reasons for transfer such as long, tiring labor or delayed 2nd stage! And if you or your baby is having another type of medical issue, birthing effectively can reduce stress on both you and your baby.
If you transfer because you are not coping then you won’t cope any better in hospital. When you are skilled you reduce or prevent the need to transfer from a home birth choice because you’re tired and behaving overwhelmed.
Birthing Better families were serious about achieving their homebirth choice AND they took responsibility to become highly skilled birthing mothers and birth-coaching fathers.
Birthing Better online birthing classes are now housed in Common Knowledge Trust that has a mission to grow a global self-learning skilled birthing population for all births without exception. That means YOU must use your skills to birth your baby in any circumstance. This is your baby’s birth! You are actively birthing your baby however that birth unfolds. Follow our lead … become highly skilled and birth with dignity and skill.