The following is a transcription of an interview that took place on NaturalMomsTalkRadio with Lynn Griesemer. You can listen to the interview or read below.
Carrie: Lynn you’re the mother of many, and also author of a book Unassisted Homebirth: An Act of Love. That’s what we’re talking about today, unassisted birth.
Probably many of our listeners have heard of unassisted birth or come across your site, but tell us briefly, what is unassisted childbirth?
Lynn: Unassisted homebirth is basically choosing to give birth without a Doctor or a Midwife, not paying anybody. We believed that we can do it on our own and that the best choice for us is to give birth on our own, outside the hospital, it usually happens at home.
To me it makes perfect sense.
C: It’s funny because as you were talking I thought how I used to collect stories about unintentional unassisted birth. I loved it – and I would publish them on my blog – oh here’s another baby born without anybody around, it was perfectly ok everything turned out great! Because that’s the way it is in the overwhelming number of cases.
But let’s talk about why a mom might consider not having a doctor or midwife present.
First of all, we’ve talked about homebirth before on this program and probably quite a few of the listeners know that I had 3 of my children at home. Probably some of the people listening to me right now have had home births. And we know some of the reasons why a mom might choose a home birth – having control over the experience, and not viewing birth as a medical event but rather a social one.
But why are moms choosing unassisted?
L: Probably two reasons. They end up on a journey to unassisted homebirth. Maybe they had a C section, then a natural birth, then a midwife at home, then they decide “We don’t need that midwife, we don’t want that midwife, we want ultimate privacy”. So they might gravitate towards an unassisted birth based on their history.
I’m seeing more and more that their first time births are unassisted home births. They are coming to the philosophy earlier. So with their first or second child, due to the philosophy of a birth that.. you know right now the media have going on the questioning of the high c section rate, terrible things going on at the hospital, the mishaps, the mistakes, the pressure to take drugs, we’re seeing negative things going on, and Ricki Lake’s Business of Being Born.
So there’s an awareness already being raised among many women that question what goes on in the hospital. But I think you want me to talk about why wouldn’t we choose a midwife?
And the reason I didn’t want to choose a midwife was because, first of all I had 6 children, 4 were born in the hospital, and 2 were born unassisted.
And in between that, after my 4th child I thought, gee maybe do I want a midwife?
I wanted to have the baby at home, I want privacy, I don’t need at the garbage that goes on in the hospital, I don’t want the drugs, I don’t wanted to be treated like very other patient, and by an assumption by a Doctor, or a midwife about how birth should unfold, what we need to do.
So there’s a lot of assumption… I could not truly make it a personal event with a midwife, because she is often bound by rules and regulations, or she brings her own philosophies to the birth. And philosophies could bring a little fear could bring a little – jut difference.
And I didn’t want a midwife because, in my area at the time, the midwives that I met had a business approach to birth. And they had a sort of directing – authoritative quality, whether it was subtle or whether it was blaring, there’s still some type of authority that is felt with many people when they have a midwife.
Other reasons why I wouldn’t want a midwife is because birth to me is very primal, and should be very uninhibited. I do not really want another woman at my birth. I either – I want my husband – since it’s such a truly intimate experience, I believe I only want those I am truly deeply intimate with at my birth. So that’s why I chose to invite my husband to be there at both of my last births playing a key role.
photo credit: madaiseA key participant, not somebody standing, watching, letting a midwife catch the baby, or letting sort of standing in the background. And I can understand why some women might want another woman at their birth, and that’s their choice. But for those of us who are choosing unassisted home birth, we’re choosing to skip that stage or forego a midwife.
C: Ok. Now the one question that comes up in my mind… because I’m not coming from the paradigm that birth is anymore dangerous than anything else in life… it has to be a medical event.
But have you ever talked to a mother who said “When I’m giving birth, my brains are all in my bottom, and having my midwife there, they were able to assist me to get into a better place, a slight adjustment of my position perhaps, or there were able to see an emotional current in the room that they could change...”
Because that was my experience with my third. She was my biggest baby, ten pounds, and my labor really stalled out for several hours, and she was able to make a suggestion and when I followed that, it immediately felt better and the labor started to really ramp up, and happen.
And because she was so big, it’s likely that if I had not been in that situation that – if I had been in the hospital there’s no doubt in my mind that it would have been a C section situation. But have you ever talked to a mother who said having a midwife there helped me to have a better birth?
And what’s your experience in terms of, what would have happened if the midwife wasn’t there in other words.L: Many women are happy with their midwives, because they know that they want another perspective there to help in situations like you said, another perspective, another idea.
As far as anticipating a problem or anticipating … I heard you say it was likely you would have had a C section, but maybe it’s possible… you don’t know if it was likely or probably, so it’s a very fine like that we walk.
I think I just have a lot of confidence that I don’t feel I need another perspective, I have my own, I’m trying to pay attention to what the baby’s doing, and some people think it’s taking too much chance.
There are a lot of midwives who are totally opposed to unassisted homebirth. They believe you should trust birth but that you should have a midwife there, just in case, to offer that little extra that might be needed … and granted, in some situations, there might be a little extra that might be needed.
But I think in most cases, we don’t really need that, so yes there are problems that can happen, but I just feel that if we completely trusted and we … I think it’s a leap of faith when we get into talking, whether a midwife or not a midwife, there’s just this extra leap of faith that maybe some of us who embrace unassisted home birth take that extra leap of faith.
Because sometimes I wonder, does someone hire a midwife because they have a little little little bit of fear, or I don’t know, did you have any fear at all, or you just really wanted a different – a woman’s perspective.
C: Hmmm…. Well, with my first I definitely had some fears and I wish that I had had him at home, but with my first I had him in a hospital. And I had a Certified Nurse Midwife, and I was very displeased with her! She might as well have been an OB. But I’m not sure – I probably had some fear anticipating the pain. I think every pregnant mother who has had a baby already and experienced childbirth has that freak out moment a few weeks before delivery hen they think, “Oh God, what have I signed up for?! It’s gonna hurt!”
photo credit: madaiseBecause we have this amnesia, probably biological in nature. But then it hits us and we’re like, oh my word, it’s really gonna hurt. And we have that little bit of fear. But in terms of worrying about the outcome, I really trust birth.
But let’s talk about what unassisted birthers do to prepare. Do they do anything special?
L: There’s many different things. With my first unassisted birth, I was seeing an OB for prenatal care as I was working up confidence. And I don’t see anything wrong with this I wasn’t totally convinced and ready to have an U/A birth so there are some people who see doctors, some occasionally might see a midwife for one appointment, there are some who are up front with their plans with family and with various care givers, a chiropractor.
So people reach out into the community to those people they think will support them and help them with whatever issue they may be having. As far as the birth itself, there’s really not a whole lot you need to do. Maybe boil scissors if you’re going to cut the umbilical cord. I think the most thing with preparation is to read the right resources, visit the right websites, and talk with the right people.
And some of the right people might not even be in your geographical physical location. You might need to find people online and one thing that is very difficult is when a woman wants an u/a home birth and the husband or the partner does not, and she either will sometimes have to compromise her heart’s desire and maybe hire a midwife – the right midwife who is very hands off, maybe standing off in the next room while the husband catches the baby, so some people have to make compromises and they’re working through this during the prenatal time, but there’s a lot of things you can do physically that you don’t need to go to an OB to make your appointments and have your blood and urine tested and have this test and that test.
When our country says that every woman needs prenatal care, it doesn’t mean we need prenatal care with a doctor. It just means we need to be eating the right foods, we need to try to eliminate stress in the workplaces or at home, e need to spend more time in solitude and quietly.
We need to spend time getting ready for this new baby that’s going to come into your life and it doesn’t mean rush rush rush with your others kids to this activity and that activity until your final moment of giving birth, and then you’re going to – this new person comes into your life and it’s going to kind of stop your life.
You have to maybe – have a mother in law that you might want to come visit after the baby’s a week old and stay for a week to help with meals, cleaning the house, there’s so much – those are the more important things to get ready prenatally than to go physically take care of yourself and get rested for this and that, and rule this out and rule that out.
I understand now there’s more tests going on to rule out whether the baby as Down’s Syndrome, and I’m seeing more women walk around in fear, afraid before they go in to take this test, afraid of waiting for the results, and going phew! My baby’s going to be perfect. And I think that is really missing the boat on accepting a child into your life, it’s really making everything so materialistic.
C: Yes, and I could never understand the – can’t remember what they call it – the test
L: AFP test?
C: yes that and
L: Amniocentesis?
C: Yes, and this is what I told my – I had one or two appointments with an OB who was kind of comfy with what I was doing. Sometimes it was “don’t ask, don’t tell”.
L: Right, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You have to do what’s going to protect you and your family.
C: Umhmm, what I told this Doctor was “look, I wouldn’t be aborting this child if it had two heads, so what’s the point of having this test”, and a high false positive and this and that, because it doesn’t matter if the child has Down’s Syndrome and it’s “well, maybe you should emotionally prepare for it.”
What does that mean? So I just don’t understand that and a lot of the other tests.
Tell us about your child birth success kit.
L: My kit was designed because I really want every woman in the childbearing years to have a great birth experience and not fail. And I believe it they go through all the materials in the kit they will reach success. It includes my book Unassisted Birth: An Act of Love, it includes my newly released CD called Your Body, Your Birth: Secrets for a Satisfying and Successful Birth.
I tried to produce a CD that’s 80 minutes long, because face it, oftentimes we don’t have a whole lot of time to read. And you know what? Our partners aren’t reading the child birth books that the women are. So this CD is kind of the subtle way to pop in and allow the husband to listen to, so that the woman can lead her partner into opening his eyes about.
It’s really rooted a lot in natural birth. So it talks about the problems of what’s going on in the hospital, some of the problems with drugs and technology, talks about safety and that just because you’re going into the hospital doesn’t mean it’s safer.
We home birthers get a lot of criticism that we’re doing something that puts us at risk, that is unsafe. So I talk a little bit about why it’s not unsafe to have a homebirth, and about the importance of goal setting and using your imagination and really something new about your body image.
Many women – I’m not going to say they’re shameful of their bodies, they’re afraid of birth – but we have to have a very strong body image.
I believe if we really know and feel comfortable with our bodies as they’re getting pregnant, and as we’re going to deal with the possible fear or pain or just feeling sexy and womanly, that we can have a good birth.
And that’s not really talked about a lot, among a lot of people. We just take it for granted some of those things, and um, and just anyways, so this CD is 80 minutes, and I also include a couple of other little things in the Kit along with a 30 minute phone conversation.
So I believe that as people read my book, listen to the Cd, read the other materials and then maybe call and chat with me – whatever’s on their minds, that they will have a renewed sense of giving birth with confidence and armed with – we need to be armed with more knowledge, and more confidence and just more information. So that’s my childbirth success kit for $59.95. And again, you can go to my website to look at some of these products if you’re interested, http://www.unassistedhomebirth.com
C: Ok. When I was looking at the site I noticed that you have some conferences that you coordinate. Tell us about those.
L: We have a conference coming up in July 2009. It’s going to be in Liberty, Missouri. Only July 4th so those dates and that place was picked for obvious reasons. July 4th commemorates the independence of our country and that commemorates our independence from our conventional child birth in the hospital.
We’re going to be very positive we’re working on getting speakers and topics right now and we’ll probably have a casual pot luck dinner the night before, we’re have the conference on a Saturday and we’ll have a lot of audience participation with topics of their choice on Sunday.
So it’s not just a conference where we lecture on topics that we choose, we actually want participants to come with what’s on their mind also. So it’s at the beginning stages of planning and you can see more on my website as time goes on. I plan on bringing in speakers to push the envelope of courage. Who are – let’s hear from some speakers who would be told you are high risk, you should not have an ua homebirth. You shouldn’t even be having a home birth.
We will have speakers for example, someone who has had one or two c sections and gone on to have a perfectly healthy baby, safe birth – an u/a home birth. And we’re focusing on husband and wife home birth, meaning we believe that it’s very important to the marriage relationship for the fathers to be involved. For the family. Now this doesn’t mean the father is taking a central role, I believe the woman is always in the central role of the pregnancy. It’s her body, it’s her decision.
But to invite your lover into your birth, whether he’s going to catch the baby, whether he’s just going to support you, and to be intimately involved, so some of the topics we talk about at this conference will be – we’re going to have a panel of Dads, now how many times do you see birth conferences, you see mostly women, mostly midwives. Where are the men?
When you see images of birth, you see a mother and a baby, maybe with the midwife. So we believe that the Dads are very important, because really Carrie when you think about it, if you make great love with your husband and you conceive a baby, doesn’t it make sense that the husband should be there at the beginning of that child’s life, involved in the birth, supporting this wonderful wife?
C: Yes it does make sense to me. It bothers me very much some of the stuff that I read in conventional parenting books and magazines. I was just reading one the other day, that was talking about a Dad’s perspective. And overall it was a great book but there were letters in there from men that made me want to vomit, it was just terrible. Talking about the difficulties that they had after seeing their wife give birth. Difficulties with intimacy, and viewing her differently, and that – I guess I don’t understand that.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be judgmental, but I wonder if some of that was because they felt that all the control and power was taken away form them because their wife had a hospital birth, and they were not the man in charge.
It is another man that comes in and sweeps in and has his hands all up inside of his wife! And I wonder if some of what they’re feeling is that effect.
At a home birth, the man – he’s not in charge but he’s certainly not a useless appendage. He’s busy, there’s plenty of work for him to do, there’s backs to rub and ice to get and lip balm and snacks and water to make sure is still warm in the tub and this and that. So there’s so much that he does, but I wonder if some of that isn’t due to that feeling.
L: I would agree with that, I think so and as you were talking, I support midwifes… and midwifery, and without good midwives and the field of midwifery, we might not be having unassisted homebirth because many women have had a midwife and then go on to have an u/a birth, and sometimes I do hear that the husband prefer their u/a birth because sometimes you have a midwife that sort of pushes the husband to the back. Maybe he’s rubbing the back but then the midwife is still in charge directing orchestrating the event.
Not all midwives – may be some, but this the presence of other women and women who invite – sometimes u/a births are not the greatest if the woman is inviting 3 or 4 people to her birth as if it’s some kind of community event.
So with those husbands who are complaining in the article you read, the ones thing that we can do in our culture is to just have people fear beforehand what might happen, what happens with a natural birth, with the woman might be really letting loose and moaning, and groaning, and maybe the husband could have some fear because he – mean don’t want to see their wives in pain, and many women experience pain for several hours.
And husbands want to protect women from this, but the way to do it is not to just walk into the hospital and allow your wife to have an epidural. So there’s so much education that needs to be done and I think there are many people in this country who are chipping away doing their piece and trying to bring information and raise courage. In a whole new paradigm of thinking, just a whole new thought process.
It’s just so assumed… almost 99% of the people hen a woman gets pregnant, on her mind is “gee what doctor and I going to pick and what hospital?” Its just assumed and how did we get to this point? We really have to go all the way back and that’s why I commend your show and all of your topics. Natural… if we really just think let’s go all the way back and think, what is birth?
Ok birth is a very primal, human event. We recreate, we procreate I mean. And let’s – we first should start everything in life with the least invasive, and then move on to the most invasive if needed. So a hospital should be our last resort in going to bring a baby into the world. Let’s see if we can try to do this, can we do this at a home alone naturally? If a woman honestly doesn’t care to work through pain or work through anything, maybe she needs to step it up and needs more. But the first step is not to run to the hospital, the first step with everything in life is to try to bring it at the natural level if possible.
C: Yeah, and it’s interesting how much fear that the hospital setting can bring up in a woman, especially a birthing woman, it’s a very unnatural thing for her to be in this brightly lit environment with strange milling about.
And for me personally, I had a lot of terror with my first birth in a hospital, worrying about my son being abducted. The changes of it happening are so very small, but I had no fear of that when I had a homebirth.
That’s something you don’t really think about but it plays into the whole entire experience. I didn’t even want anyone to put balloons on my mailbox, I forbid them to put something on the door or mailbox. I would’ve had that fear of advertising a newborn in the house. There was just another abduction of a newborn infant just a few weeks ago. It still happens. It still happens.
L: What about babies switched at birth? It still happens. They don’t let that information out and you’re right, woman just push these fears aside, push them aside. We have to start dealing with reality and with our real true feelings, and then dealing with them, not just pushing them aside. You’re right.
C: Those feelings serve a purpose, they serve a very important purpose to protect our infants when they’re at their most vulnerable stage of life.
With my 4th, if she had come an hour later it could have been unassisted because we – I was putting off calling, putting off calling because I was having such an easy time of it that the 4th was such an easy easy birth. And I just wasn’t having much pain at all but I was having very real regular contractions but I was totally handling it, and not losing my head. I mean in a good way that’s a good thing. And finally my water had long since broke, and the people are me were like “this is your 4th! We should probably call the midwife”, I was like no I don’t think this was it, I’m still talking to you, I can still sing the songs (I was listening to Patsy Cline.)
But then when I called her, there was a fire at the entrance of the neighborhood so she could not get in the neighborhood. My dad had to go pick her up at the entrance to the subdivision, so it took a long long time for her to actually get in the neighborhood. And by that point I as almost ready to push. So it as very very close to unassisted, but I’ll always have to wonder…. Because there won’t be another.
L: Let me say one thing. I think every woman who is pregnant should be prepared to birth unassisted. To not fear and panic. She gets in the car and goes to the hospital and the baby comes out, what are you gonna do? Don’t panic, just hold the baby close to you, keep warm you don’t need to cut the cord right away, you just really need to calm yourself down, put the baby on your chest, and put a little blanket over it. Look at it, see if the baby is responding, and pinking up… there’s this panic and this drama surrounding it, which scares people. Oh my gosh! Don’t wanna – make sure – we have to have the Dr. there! But, what are going to do if you don’t? We had an earthquake in California, 1989 a big one.. in San Francisco that took out some major roadways. There was a tornado about a year and a half ago in Kansas that leveled a whole town. There are natural disasters – what about Hurricane Katrina? There you had to be ready to birth unassisted, you cannot take for granted that you’ll be in the hospital, that everything’s going to be fine, so in the back of womens’ mind, they should know a backup plan. If I have to birth u/a and I going to panic?
C: Right, absolutely. Lynn this is one of my favorite topics in the world and I could talk with you for yours I’m sure. Thank you so much for being on the show and I’d love to have you back to talk about your Conference and other events that you’ve got going on.
L: Thank you I would be happy to come back and I just want to say the dignity of the human person is what we’re talking about, the dignity of women in birth, and birthing unassisted is the ultimate of that specialness of what it means tot be a human being. There’s nobody tampering with you telling you want to do, and I would highly recommend that people explore their options and listen to my CD or just consider unassisted homebirth if it might be right.
