Canal

Canal

Birth canal - that is what comes to my mind.
Birthing, having, and raising children has occupied many years of my life.
When I first got pregnant, I didn't think too much about birth and where I would go. I just assumed it would be the hospital. Then I started educating myself and found out how brutal hospitals are to moms. Wire them up to monitor, break the water early and on and on.
Then, I heard more than one horror story of a baby wanting to come out and the nurse making the mom push her legs together - or even worth, use a strap to bring the legs together because the doctor wasn't there yet.
I was horrified!
The drugs are given to moms with a spinal tap. In the spinal cord!!! People! The spinal cord!! Know what happens when something is a bit off?
My mind was blown and suddenly, it didn't seem such a good idea to have a baby.
But too late at that point.
Luckily I found and became friends with some people who had had a homebirth. Then, it was truly in the Hippie realm and there weren't birthing centers.
The midwives were lay-midwives and risked their liberty by helping women to have the birth they wanted and deserved.
Homebirth wasn't illegal per se but helping someone having one was considered practicing medicine without a license. And later, the midwife assistant at whose house I had my first babe (long story) ended up in jail for just that.
Ina Mae Gaskin had revived the art of midwifery. She helped women to take their power back and make birth a natural life event again - not a disease which needs to be treated.
Don't get me wrong. I am happy that we have hospitals and people trained to deal with emergencies. That is good to have if there is an emergency.
But throughout my years of being a home-birthing advocate and activist and a La Leche League Leader, I have heard many many birth stories.
I have seen women in mourning because they ended up with a cesarean. Often, when listening to their stories, you knew when the interference happened that resulted in their baby ending up emerging through a big incision instead of through the birth canal.
I was lucky enough to have had three homebirth with my children.
Having attended several home birth and also some hospital birth, I have no doubt about what I prefer.
I do have a video from my last birth which I made some ignorant men watch. But it is a VHS and I have no idea where it is now...
Don't worry - I won't post it here when I find it. LOL.