The Benefits of Home Birth...and such.

So, I'm still discovering new things about the different kinds of birth you can have, but here's what I've got so far:

Hospitals tend to end up in cascading interventions that usually benefit the doctor, not the mother.  They will tell you all sorts of things to manipulate you into doing what they want, and you don't know whether these things they say are true. 
When they take your baby away "to run tests" the nurses could very well just be bottle feeding him/her regardless of your consent: you don't know what's happening once your baby is removed.
I'm of the opinion that they take your baby far too quickly, and most of the time they cut the chord too soon.
As a side note: everything the OB/GYN office gives me to take home has some advertisement for chord blood banking.  This seems like an expensive bonfire to me, although I could see the possible benefits.

I don't know anything about birthing centers as of yet.

Home birth seems to be the way to go if you are low-risk.  Natural birth is ideal, regardless of location, but at home you can at least be more comfortable with your surroundings, and you won't have a bunch of medical staff pressuring you about pitosin.
Additionally, your baby is not removed immediately so you can nurse as soon as baby is ready.
Home birth also opens up options for things like lotus birth (where you don't cut/tie the chord until the placenta falls off on it's own) and water birth.
It really just seems like being at home is the best way to go, if you can.

According to The Business of Being Born America has the highest infant/mother mortality rate during childbirth of all the industrialized countries.  Why?  Because midwives didn't integrate into hospitals.  In fact, the hospitals launched an intensive smear campaign against midwives claiming the method of birth was unsafe.  In reality, it was safer than the hospital.

Yes, things do go wrong during childbirth.  But things go wrong in every day life as well.

Hubby raises a good point when I complain about all the unsolicited advice/admonishments I receive at work:
Most of these people are likely to be pro-choice.  This translates to the saying, "it's my body," so what do they care what I do with my body?

That brings me to what people have said to me.

• A friend of mine sent me a URL to a site all about how dangerous home birth is.  I appreciate the concern; I'll take it with all the stories I read/hear about hospital shenanigans.
• The first thing that was said to me was, "I gotta fatten you up!" followed a bit later by, "oh, you're pregnant you can eat crap now."
• I shouldn't be lifting anything, regardless of weight.
• I shouldn't eat/drink unpasteurized stuff, or anything raw for that matter.
• Don't touch the litter box.
•  "You painted!?  You can't be painting!"  Sure I can, I have an enormous window in the room that needed paint on a total of two walls.  It's not like I shut myself into an unventilated room and sat in there with wet paint for five hours.
• Sit down, lay down, or otherwise be inactive.
• No alcohol, even just a sip is terrible for the baby.
• Co-sleeping is dangerous.  You could suffocate/crush your baby.  Your baby could fall off the bed and die.
• Home birth is dangerous.  You could die.
• "I have so many baby clothes!  Let me know what you're having."  We're not finding out, sorry.
• Dangle your wedding band over your belly: if it goes in circles, your baby is a girl; side to side, your baby is a boy.
  I did this out of sheer amusement.  The ring did nothing, so does that mean our baby is undecided?

I think that's it.


In regards to my last post:
It's interesting to see the great divide between modern mothers and natural mothers.  There is little to no middle ground and there's no possible way of having a decent discussion about it with a lot of people.  It's an emotional topic, so people tend to react emotionally which generally shuts down rational thinking.
I see this a lot, working in the HCA corporate building.  There are a few people into living naturally, but most of them are convinced that hospital birth is the only way to go because home birth is apparently for heathens who don't value life.  I call these people hypocrites because it's very likely they're fine with abortion.