Our Baby Was Born at Home
“DOES that statement surprise you? Perhaps it does, if you live in a part of the world like North America where almost all babies are born in hospitals. However, did you know that most of the world’s babies—about 98 percent of them—first see life at home?
Why have some of the so-called advanced countries departed from this custom? Is the North American practice of hospital deliveries truly an advantage for mothers and babies? If so, why would anyone choose to have a baby born at home?
Yet that is the decision of an increasing number of parents in lands where home childbirth runs against medical and social trends. Here in Canada, where most babies are delivered by masked medical teams under glaring hospital lights, our daughter was born at home.
Not by accident, but because we planned it that way!
Our Decision
Our previous three children were born in a hospital. My wife and I were together on each occasion until she was wheeled away into the hands of interns and nurses. At the exciting moment of birth, she was alone with strangers while I was out in the hall!
Something was missing. So when we learned that our fourth child was on her way, we decided to share her birth together.
Many hospitals respect, even encourage, such a desire of parents by allowing the father in the delivery room when a baby is born. Still, a hospital is an institution, not a home. We hoped to provide something more loving and personal for our new family member.
Also, in some hospital cases misguided or prejudiced officials have forced unwanted medical treatment on newborn infants. We did not favor taking such a risk.
We decided to have our baby born at home!
A rash decision?
Not according to the better survival records of countries where most births occur at home compared with those where excited fathers-to-be rush their wives to hospitals.
According to a recent issue of Scientific American, “The U.S. continues to rank poorly among industrialized nations when it comes to infant mortality. The latest statistics put this country 15th,” behind several countries in which most babies are born at home.
American author Mrs. Lester D. Hazell reports, in her book Commonsense Childbirth: “At this writing [1969] we lose twice as many mothers in childbirth as England does, four times as many as the Netherlands. . . . Rightfully American women fear having a baby. The way we do it is a fearful thing.”
Of Canadian losses in childbirth, a recent Science Council of Canada report states: “Canada has no grounds at all for being pleased with its performance.”
However, finding a doctor who will deliver a baby at home can be a difficult task in North America. Most of them prefer the convenience of hospitals. On the other hand, there are a few like the California physician who said, “There is a demand for [home deliveries]. It would be medically irresponsible not to respond to that demand.”
Our problem was solved by a friend who is a qualified nurse-midwife. Unlike many countries with better survival rates, Canada does not recognize midwifery as a profession. However, it is legal for babies to be born at home in Canada when reasonable care is provided for the health and safety of mother and child. A friend may act as midwife. Canadian law merely prohibits a midwife from charging for her services as a professional person.
Baby Arrives
On baby’s arrival day, our older children were at their grandparents’ home, awaiting news of their new brother or sister. My wife kept busy about the house, staying on her feet until shortly before baby was born. At 6:35 p.m. our daughter arrived with the usual vocal announcement of a newborn who expects to be made welcome.
After more than twelve hours of labor pains, my wife felt better than she had following any of the previous births. An incision to enlarge the birth outlet is standard procedure with hospital deliveries, but the skilled hands of our trained midwife made this unnecessary.
Our tiny daughter was our shared delight from the moment she was born. Less than an hour after the baby was born, we called home our three older children. They scurried up to the bedroom, paused, then respectfully tiptoed in to find mother sitting in bed with a radiant smile on her face and a bright-eyed bundle in her arms.
The wonder of our children added tender meaning to the psalmist’s words: “Look! Sons [and daughters] are an inheritance from Jehovah . . . a reward.”—Ps. 127:3.
That evening our older daughters, aged nine and four, and our six-year-old son knelt one by one over baby’s small bed and kissed their sleeping sister good night. Then we all settled down for a good night’s rest.
Benefits to Baby
From the beginning, our baby was part of the family. She ate when she was hungry, slept when she was sleepy, and quickly became familiar with the sound of our voices. She never experienced the isolation commonly forced upon hospital babies.
She responded well to the love that was always available when she needed it. At five days of age she weighed more than her birth weight. Our previous babies had all had a net loss in weight during their first week of life.
My wife was more relaxed at home than she had been in a hospital. She also escaped the “baby blues” a depressed feeling that often strikes mothers within a few days after giving birth. Other mothers report they too missed the “baby blues” following home childbirth in contrast with their hospital births.
There is food for thought in the words of Dr. John S. Miller, chief of obstetrics at a San Francisco hospital: “The habit of separating mother and baby at birth and for most of the next several days is almost criminally neglectful of the most fundamental needs of both.”
Recognizing these needs, some hospitals provide a “rooming-in” service to keep mother and baby together.
However, with home deliveries there are benefits that hospitals cannot match. Our older children accepted their new sister the day she was born. She never carried the stigma of having taken mother away for a week in the hospital.
Often older children and fathers must wait until a baby comes home before developing love for the little one. There was no waiting in our household!
Is It Safe?
In a part of the world where people depend almost entirely upon doctors and hospitals to supervise childbirth, some may think birth at home is risky, even dangerous.
But is it?
“Should babies be born at home?” asks author Dr. Ashley Montagu. “What a question! Where else should they be born, if not in the home? The hospital? But I had thought that the hospital was a place where one went for relief from sickness or injury. . . . Is pregnancy a sickness? Is the birth of a child a disease?”
Some countries with mostly home deliveries have better survival rates than North America with its majority of hospital births. Our nurse-midwife has delivered hundreds of babies without needing a doctor, not even for a tear in a mother!
Obviously, the popular concept of childbirth problems is greatly exaggerated in North America.
“There are indications in this country that home delivery, though not stylish, is, in fact, safer,” reports Mrs. Hazell in Commonsense Childbirth.
In the 1950’s when the United States was losing an average of one mother per 1,000 births, a maternity center delivered 8,339 babies at home in Chicago slums without losing a single mother!
For three years, from 1960 to 1963, when a nurse-midwife service operated in Madera County, California, the infant mortality rate was cut in half, to 10.3 per 1,000 live births from a previous level of 23.9. Within a year after childbirth cases were returned to a system centered around doctors and hospitals, infant mortality in the county tripled, to 32.1 per 1,000 births!
Home deliveries are less likely to involve medical fads, which are often confused with genuine advances. As an example, there was the boom of childbirth painkillers, which backfired with soaring rates of complications associated with lack of oxygen to the baby’s brain. Mothers and babies are not exposed to infections or illnesses present in hospitals.
When babies are born at home, the attending doctor or midwife is a guest in the home. Comfort and convenience for mother and baby are first concern. Fathers are not discarded like surplus furniture into vacant hallways but remain as the head and protector of the family.
As one doctor in the California public health department put it, “We see midwifery as a way to humanize childbirth.”
Added Considerations
Christian parents may have another serious consideration. They want doctors who will respect their wishes when popular medical treatment is unacceptable because it violates God’s law on blood.—Acts 15:28, 29.
In many hospitals, one doctor delivers a baby and another cares for it after birth. Judicious parents will want assurance from all doctors involved that their wishes will be respected.
At times, newborn infants have been subjected to blood transfusions against the request of their parents for medically sound and safer alternate treatments. Parents have transferred their children from uncooperative hospitals to avoid such tragedies. Others have arranged for childbirth at home.
People forget that it is not doctors, nurses and hospitals who give birth. Women do. And their ability was designed by an all-wise Creator. Good prenatal care of the mother can usually detect and reduce problems in the few childbirth cases that require special attention because of human imperfection.
More to Learn
Our baby was born at home, and we are convinced that this has brought special blessings to mother, baby and the entire family.
But we also know that our experience and others like it do not represent the final word on childbirth. There is much to be learned.
Yet what a privilege we enjoy. Not even the angels in heaven can procreate. With our privilege comes responsibility. Parents who share the experience of birth are reminded of their shared responsibility.
Are you expecting an addition to your family? Will father be there at the moment of birth? Will baby be born at home or in the hospital? The decision is yours.
Whatever your choice, may you find true reward in seeing your little one respond to the training you impart from the Word of Jehovah, ‘that it may go well with him and he may endure a long time on the earth.’ (Eph. 6:3)—Contributed.