During the course of this pregnancy, I have talked with many people who are terrified by my plans to give birth at home. Each of them, very helpfully, try to list the dangers of having babies, how many women and children have died in the past from having babies, and how painful it is; all in a hope to dissuade me from my reckless and foolish quest.

First, please let me point out that this is not a random whim of the moment. This is the culmination of years of research. I know very well all the things that they have told me, and probably a great deal more than they have thought to mention. To suggest that I would endeavor to hurt my children through selfishness and neglect is insulting to say the least. I have studied and calmed my fears with facts, but since others persist in sharing their fears, I will undertake to share some facts.

Many generalities are presented, most having to do with the mortality rate connected to birth before hospitals. People love to say this. It is just something that everyone “knows.” No one can give any references for their data for the simple fact that it is false. Verifiably false. The mortality rate for infants and mothers went down in two stages. It began to descend with the increase of maternal nutrition and the understanding that brought that about. Perfectly logical. We are what we eat. If we eat well and get nutrition, we will grow a better, more healthy baby. Isn't that what the March Of Dimes has been telling us for years?

Second, the “mortality” rate dropped when modern records began to be kept. Before that anyone who died within five days of birth was considered a death BECAUSE of birth. In some places I have read numbers much larger than five (i.e. Months) for counting mortality rates. This was because we had no records other than birth and death dates. It is not counted that way now, therefore the numbers are smaller.

The third thing is connected to this. Many of those deaths were due to infections, or child-birth fever as they called it. Infections were the leading cause of death before sanitation was understood. Just think about it, the midwife comes, she doesn't wash her hands before sticking them inside the mother... And the rest is history. Once sanitation was understood, there was a sharp drop in the mortality rates. With the advent of birthing in the hospitals as a matter of course, the mortality rate rose! (That is a statistical fact.)

American hospitals are not the safest place to give birth. The American mortality rate is one of the worst in all first world countries, as of 2006 it is no longer even in the top 40 countries (#42 which is down from #29 in 2002.) We rank just above Croatia, and far below Cuba . With C-sections also on the rise, close to one third of all births, interventions skyrocketing, and the use of many drugs on laboring women that have never been approved for labor (i.e. pitocen, cytotec) and all of the risks that accompany those things, American hospitals have become a rather dangerous places to give birth. For a country that spends nearly three times as much as any other country per birth, you'd think we could do better: unless it isn't the money and the hospitals that make a better birth.... In Europe, where home births are becoming much more accepted, and interventions including C-sections, considered less necessary, the mortality rate has dropped.

In Europe doctors are still taught to deliver a breech baby. In America, where hospital policy is entirely driven by fear of lawsuits, Americans are told that breech babies are dangerous, life threatening, and heroic doctors will save a woman from her broken body. It would be just as simple to tell her to stand up and keep their own hands off. Breech babies will come out as babies are wont to do, as long as the woman is allowed off her back (known to be the most dangerous position to birth in as it reduces the pelvic capacity by 30% and forces the coccyx or tail bone into the path of the birthing baby) and allowed to move as her body dictates. A woman will automatically move into the most comfortable and optimal birthing position for her and her baby. The facts are quite clear, and ignored by American obstetrical tradition.

“Why?” one asks. If doctors know the science, have read the literature about the risks of C-sections, about the risks and dangers of cytotec and pitocin, if they know the lithotomy position reduces pelvic capacity, why do they continue to foist these practices on overly trusting American women? The answer is simple. Lawsuits. You see, the definition of malpractice in America is not doing something that would hurt the patient. No, the definition is doing something different than other doctors do. That means, that no matter the science, no matter the American Academy of Pediatrics plea to avoid cytotec in labor (because of the risk of fetal and maternal death) no matter any of the other overwhelming pieces of evidence, doctors will continue to behave as they have behaved since they first began to tell us that the human body is broken, that women are incapable of having a child, that women will not know how to tend their children, that doctors are the heroes who will rush in and save them with science. Too bad that science now contraindicates their every action. They are bound by tradition, and not a good tradition, if it flies in the face of fact, if it condemns new mothers and their children to actions that are not designed to treat the individuals, but the masses-- faceless, broken, desperate, brainwashed masses.

That is where my difficulty comes in. You see, I am not the masses. I am one, and though I am only one, I happen to be important to myself, to my husband, to my children. I do not have a venereal disease, nor do I need to be treated for one. I am not broken. I am not starving. I am actually quite careful with my nutrition most of the time. I have always resented being compartmentalized, institutionalized, minimized. I am an intelligent, rational, thinking creature, capable of studying, learning and making my own decisions. Hospitals do not like that. They want complete control. The do not listen to my desires or concerns. They dismiss and ridicule any research that flies in the face of their tradition. It is sacred to them. It protects them. They will not abandon it for any reason.

Therefore, there are two choices. Conform. Ignore your own intelligence, leave your decisions to another, revoke your agency and bow to the dictates of hospital policy and obstetrical tradition, or rebel. It has always been easier to conform. It is by far the path of least resistance. To rebel takes incredible effort. You must be willing to face each of the fears that have been so carefully cultivated in our minds to bring us to subjugation. (Birth is hospitals number one money maker, grossing more than 750 billion dollars annually. You can bet that they do not want to let us take control.) I have had to examine myself and my beliefs, test my courage to face the hostility. You see, once my fears about birth were examined, and myself educated on correct procedure and the truth behind them, I found that I no longer feared birth.

No, my courage was not needed to face my children. I could never fear them, only love and give myself to them. My courage was needed to face family and friends, people who care, yet cannot see me as a capable individual, as a woman who has searched for answers and found them. They cannot accept the frightening loss of the doctor authority figure in charge of their births. They fear taking the ultimate responsibility for their own births. These caring people seek to re-flood my mind with the debris of years of carefully indoctrinated fears that I have already rejected.

For me, dealing with fears was a series of very logical steps. First I identified them concretely. No more nebulous something might happen. I went into detail about what might indeed happen. Once I had a list of my fears, I started researching each one. To my surprise, these horrible things that had always been shrouded in a cloak of terror became relatively easy to handle. Footling breech, nuchal cords, shoulder dystocia, placenta previa, placenta abrupta, cord prolapse, resuscitation, meconium in the waters... each became something with which I was familiar. I have learned how to handle each of these emergencies that were once so terrifying and now are variations on a theme. Each one is now known. They no longer control me. Knowledge is my defense and my power.