• Do you have to be “crunchy” to have an unassisted homebirth?

    Date: 2011.10.25 | Category: Unassisted Childbirth | Tags: ,,

    Take a quick look at the unassisted birth online “community”, and it is all too easy to get the impression that families who decide to give birth at home without medical professionals also have many other things in common. They’re things that make you “crunchy”, or a hippie, if you like. Do you have to be a crunchy hippie to have an unassisted birth, though? Do all UC families eat vegetarian diets, knit their own socks, war tie-dye t-shirts, go to homeopathic doctors, and decide not to vaccinate their children? Of course not!

    Unassisted childbirth is simply a personal decision, that most women who make it come to only after considering it for a long time. There are many reasons to decide to have a UC, and it’s fair to say that most of those who actually end up birthing alone have more than one compelling (to them) driving factor behind their choice. Among the reasons to choose unassisted homebirth are:

    • Not being able to find a homebirth midwife (that the woman is comfortable with).
    • Having a traumatic hospital experience.
    • Seeing birth as a natural, normal and healthy event that does not require medical assistance.
    • Being a private person, who functions better when not feeling watched.
    • For financial reasons.
    • For religious or spiritual reasons.
    • For practical reasons, like living far away from a hospital.
    I chose to give birth unassisted to my second child for a few of the above reasons. The homebirth midwife I chose for my first child’s birth turned out to be less competent than I’d hoped for: she intervened when not needed, and refrained from doing things that would have made the birth safer. In short, she brought no skills to the table that I did not already have myself. The hospital system in our country of residence is stuck in 1950s America, and also struggles with bad corruption.
    I’m also a private person with a DIY kind of spirit. Essentially, the decision to have an unassisted birth came because I concluded it to be less dangerous than the other options I had available (not risk-free, but safer than the alternatives – which were second-world hospital “care” or mercenary, no-skills midwifery).
    The decision to have a UC is sometimes connected to other life choices, which are sometimes “crunchy”, but it does not have to be that way. Anyone facing a certain set of circumstances can end up making the decision to have an unassisted birth. You don’t have to rate highly on the “hippie scale”, but I think it is safe to conclude that you do have to be big on personal responsibility and autonomy to give birth alone.