6. The Benefits of Home Birth
The narrative is shifting. The question used to be “Why would you birth at home?” If you can have the safety of the hospital in case something goes wrong, why would you birth anywhere else? Around 1900, almost every birth occurred in a home. By 1938, when Twilight Sleep was available to pregnant women, almost half of births happened in the hospital. By 1955, less than 1% of babies were being delivered at home. That’s how fast the medicalized birth industry coopted births. Thinking that the hospital is the safest place to give birth has led us to a time where maternal death rates have absolutely skyrocketed in the United States and our average cesarean rate is 33%.
Now women are beginning to question the “safety” narrative of low risk mothers with uncomplicated pregnancies going into the hospital system for a nonmedical event. For a natural process. The question being asked by more and more mothers is: Why not birth at home? Hospital births only became commonplace during the early 20th century when women were clamoring for anesthesia during the barbaric Twilight Sleep Era and while there was an assault on midwives by hospitals who viewed the birth industry as a cash cow. When women, especially those in poorer communities, were unaware of basic sanitation processes and were putting their newborn babies in dirty linens. We now know the benefits of having an undisturbed physiological birth as opposed to a medically managed birth. The statistics are there that prove it. We just have to change how we view birth.
Today, in the 21st century, the more information we see, the greater the shift toward home birth. This shift is calling women back to birthing in a calm, comfortable environment. And for good reason. Hospitals may have provided poorer women with unsanitary conditions a clean place to birth their babies, but we don’t have to worry about those issues now. Hospitals may have been a place to go for anesthesia and pain relief, but more and more women are leaning into their births with awe and wonderment as more of us respect the process instead of looking at it as an event to numb and disconnect from.
Now we’re seeing that low-risk women who birth in the hospital are coming out with higher adverse events and lower satisfaction rates due to most obstetricians' absolute lack of knowledge about physiological birth and their inability to be patient and let birth happen on its own timeline instead of theirs. And to let birth happen in its own way instead of theirs, when their way has proved to cause more problems. If there was ever more proof of the unwillingness to change or to enact evidence-based policies and procedures, even though we have mounds and mounds of data blatantly showing that allowing mothers to birth in the position that they choose, letting the mothers eat and drink as they feel they need to, OBs are STILL unwilling to change THEIR way and that has caused many women to lose faith in the medicalized birth industry. The hospitals have made their priorities clear, and it is not the mother or the baby that they care most about. It’s profits and covering their ass from lawsuits.
If you’ve read through my previous blog posts, I’ve spoken about the inherent dangers that come along with birthing in the hospital, including the induction methods and interventions that are used and the possibility of obstetric violence that is perpetrated daily in the hospital system, by people who do not respect women or their right to choose how their births unfold. So, what are some of the benefits that come from birthing your baby at home? Let’s dig right in.
One of the primary reasons would be that you are able to birth in a calm, comfortable, familiar environment. Have you or have you heard stories of women who seem to be in active labor going to the hospital just for labor to significantly slow down or stop altogether? That can happen when our oxytocin levels drop and our adrenaline rises, halting labor in its tracks. We are mammals and if we feel fear or sense insecurity, our bodies will shut the birth process down in order to give us time to find a safer place to give birth. This is not new information. Doctors have been documenting the phenomena of cervixes closing up during a cervical check even back in the 1800s. The hospital is just one big foreign environment associated with the sick and dying. The bright lights, the unfamiliar faces, the incessant, annoying beeping, the touching and poking and prodding by people you’ve never met before. All of that takes us out of our primal brain where we go to labor and brings us back to reality, slowing the flow of oxytocin and slowing labor. In the hospital, this can give the OB a reason to start you on Pitocin which begins the cascade of interventions and it's just downhill from there.
Having control over your birth not only leads to better outcomes but empowers women to take their births into their own hands and accept that radical responsibility that we have to take. Women will walk into the hospital with their birth plans and think that’s all they need. They think every line will be adhered to and every preference will be respected when that is rarely what happens. There are good OBs and RNs out there that will do whatever they can to stick to your birth plan, but they’re more the bug than the feature. The hospital birth industry has a way of doing things and they will rarely deviate from their plan to make your birth how you want it, and they’ll use lines like, “your baby could die” to get you to do what they want. Imagine staying at home and being able to control every aspect of your birth, from what and when you eat, to the position you labor in, who can be with you, and where you give birth. Instead of being told that you can only labor in the tub and you have to push on the bed on your back, you can have a water birth and all of the benefits that come with it. Instead of a room full of strangers, you can be surrounded by your hand-selected birth team, all people who love and care about you and your birth.
By staying out of the hospital, you avoid the push for unneeded and unwanted interventions. Once you are in the hospital system, you are placed on their timeline and they want you out of that bed within 24 hours. If you can stay at home and away from the OB, you avoid time constraints on your birth and possible labor augmentation like Pitocin and Cytotec and all of the inherent risks in those medications which you can read about in my previous blog post about the risks of labor induction here. These induction or augmentation methods often lead to contractions that are too long and too strong, not only putting the baby at risk, but many women have problems getting through the unnaturally intense pain caused by these medications, often leading to an unwanted epidural. When you stay away from opioid pain relief like an epidural, you can tune into your body and your baby which allows you to labor in intuitive ways that help the baby descend in the most efficient way leading to a safer, faster birth.
Along with these interventions mentioned above comes the huge risk of a cesarean section. Your risk of a cesarean goes up with planned hospital births due to the introduction of medical intervention techniques used to hurry the birth along. If you have your heart set on a vaginal birth, staying at home gives you the best chance at doing so.
As I mentioned before, the hospital has a way that they like to do things. They don’t take into consideration your specific pregnancy. You are a number to them and you are given the same care plan as every other pregnant woman that comes in there. The same time constraints, the same solutions to their perceived “problems” with your labor. If you birth at home, you can choose a midwife who aligns with your values around birth. Prenatal appointments with midwives typically last an hour compared to the average appointment time of 7 minutes with an obstetrician who delivers in the hospital setting. Your treatment and care are individualized based on how you want your birth to go and how you want to labor. These longer appointments also allow you and your midwife to get to know each other in a way that is impossible to do in the 7 minute time frame that your OB gives you. This relationship that is built between you and your midwife is based on trust and caring and having her by your side during your birth will not lower your oxytocin like it would with your OB, but it can raise it when you feel like you are surrounded by loving people who you trust. If you want to free birth, you are even more FREE dare I say😆 to do whatever you want during your labor and birth because there are absolutely zero constraints on anything.
Although it has gotten better in recent years, in a hospital setting, after the baby comes out, there is a rush to take the baby’s vitals, do a newborn exam, get the vaccines in, and get a weight and length, and head circumference. At home births, the mother and baby dyad are allowed to meet each other and have unlimited undisturbed time together which is essential for the bonding process. Your natural oxytocin levels are highest right after delivery, just in time for you to imprint that new baby’s face onto your brain. That “Golden Hour” is when the two of you are able to get to know each other and have that skin-to-skin contact which is essential for regulating your newborn’s body temperature and for bonding. This is that precious quiet time when you get to count your baby’s fingers and toes and maybe you’re just finding out if he’s a boy or she’s a girl. At the hospital, this time feels like more of a whirlwind. The doctor is pulling out your placenta before it’s ready to be delivered, and the nurse is doing a painful fundal massage. They are almost violently rubbing down the baby and getting blood pressures every 15 minutes on you. You do not get a moment’s peace. Neither of you needs any of that. You can have that undisturbed time together at home.
Whether it’s because home birth mothers know that breastmilk is the best food for their baby or because hospitals tend to push formula on the parents as a quick fix to a fussy baby, breastfeeding rates are higher in home birth babies than planned hospital birth babies. I worked on a postpartum unit and I know that it is much easier for the RN to give your baby a bottle than it is for her to make time to give you some breastfeeding advice and there are nurses out there that do not care about your life once you leave the hospital. Your nurse just wants your baby fed so that they can get their charting done. Their indifference toward your long-term breastfeeding journey can have a huge impact on nursing because all it takes is a bottle or two of formula to upend your milk supply. Babies need to be able to feed on demand whenever they need it. It is always good to look up lactation services in your area before delivery so you have someone to talk to if you end up needing a little bit of extra help to get you both started.
I myself had been called to home birth, free birth actually, after having 3 hospital births, so I know what it feels like to want something more than what the hospital offers you. Thankfully, the conversation is changing from “why would you birth at home?” to “why would you birth in a hospital if you don’t need to?” The benefits of birthing at home have more and more pregnant women reclaiming their right to have their babies in a calm, safe environment surrounded by people who love them and trust them and their bodies. Let’s start planning to birth at home and then go to the hospital if it's needed. Let’s encourage home birth and with that will come the encouragement of more women to go into the midwifery model of care.
As always, this is NOT medical advice. I suggest that you do the research and look at the numbers yourself. ALWAYS tune into your intuition and ask yourself what is best for you and your baby.
