by Ron Brooks
Earlier this year my wife Lisa and I brought our first child, a beautiful baby girl named Kacie Leandra, into the world. As of this writing, Kacie is about eight weeks old. She’s very healthy, generally happy and quite the charmer. Giving birth is not an unusual story, but because we’re both blind, planning and preparing for the birth of our first child did require Lisa and me to approach some things a bit differently from the average first-time parents. Lisa and I elected to have our baby at home with a midwife, something which only about one percent of couples in the United States do.
From the very beginning, we got lots of questions from friends and family, who felt that by having our baby at home, we might incur a great deal of risk. People questioned Lisa’s decision to have an unmedicated birth without an obstetrician present. They wondered how we would handle an emergency with the delivery. They couldn’t imagine how we as blind people would be able to manage without the help of well-trained hospital personnel. In short, they wondered if we might not be making a huge mistake.
In looking back on this experience and on how people felt about our decision, I decided to write this article because our daughter’s birth went smoothly, and in fact, I would posit that our daughter’s home birth was probably easier and more satisfying than it could ever have been within the safe confines of a hospital, and this despite our blindness.
Let me begin by sharing the reasons Lisa and I chose to deliver Kacie at home. First, we believed that the care we would receive from a midwife would be at least as good as the care we would otherwise receive from an obstetrician. Second, it seemed to us that as blind people, giving birth at home would eliminate several logistical challenges, including getting to the hospital and back, and explaining our blindness and capabilities to skeptical hospital personnel. Third, we felt that we would have more freedom to have the birth experience we wanted if we did so at home. Fourth, and most important, we believed that the birth of our child should be a life experience rather than a medical event. Let me address each of these issues in turn.
When we found out that we would be parents, we immediately opted for a home birth, and we began the search for a midwife. Here in our home state of New Mexico, home births are more common than in other areas of the country, so finding a midwife wasn’t difficult. In our case, we were led to Hillary (our midwife) and Dusty (her assistant) by another blind woman who had given birth at home. Even without this referral, we could have found a midwife through any number of sources, ranging from word-of-mouth referrals to midwife locater services, available on several midwifery and home birth web sites, two of which I'll list at the end of this article.
From the beginning, Lisa and I were in favor of home birth because we believed that we would get care from our midwife which would be at least as good as the care we would be able to expect from an obstetrician, and as long as there were no problems with the pregnancy or delivery, we wouldn’t be sacrificing anything. As it turns out, the care and support we received from our midwife far surpassed our wildest expectations. We saw our midwife every month until Lisa was six months pregnant. Thereafter, we saw her every other week, and at the end, we saw her on a weekly basis. Most of these appointments were at our midwife’s office, but at the end, many were at our home, which was very convenient. These prenatal appointments generally lasted about an hour and consisted of a short check-up for Lisa and baby and lots of time just talking. Our midwife was not just interested in Lisa’s and the baby’s prenatal health. She was interested in our family backgrounds (especially as they pertained to the baby’s possible health), our plans and philosophies for raising our baby, once she arrived, and our feelings and fears about becoming parents. Besides answering questions, sharing her experiences and giving support, Hillary also shared her library of books and videos with us. One other planning task, with which our midwife assisted us, was contingency planning in the event of a last-minute medical emergency. Home birth is generally as safe as giving birth in a hospital, but if an unforeseen medical emergency had arisen, our midwife would have accompanied us to the hospital, and she would have served as our liaison with the hospital’s personnel. All of our midwife’s support, coupled with a birthing class which Lisa and I took prior to Kacie’s birth, gave us a very good grounding in what to expect from the pregnancy and during the birthing process; thus, when Lisa went into labor, neither of us went into shock.
A second advantage for home birth was in the area of logistics. We’ve all seen the movies and TV shows where the mother to be goes into labor at two in the morning, and dad (who has packed the suitcase weeks in advance) fumbles for his clothes, the car keys and the suitcase, only to realize that he forgot to help his wife into the car before pulling out of the driveway. As blind people, this scenario would have been preferable to our own particular reality had we elected to have our baby at the hospital. Not only would we have had to arrange for transportation to the hospital, but we would have had to arrange for a return ride home, and we would have had to make plans for the baby’s return trip as well. In addition, we would have had to make plans for our guide dogs, not to mention our other pets. Finally, I would have had to make plans to go back and forth between home and the hospital and to be independent and mobile while there. Because we had our birth at home, we did not have to make any travel arrangements at all. Further, by inviting a close friend to spend time at our home during the birth, we had someone taking care of our needs (including cooking and cleaning), who also watched out for all of our guide dogs and pets, while being available for any issues that arose. Best of all, because we were in our own familiar home, Lisa and I could move about at will and without worrying about having to get help or guidance. If Lisa wanted to sit in the living room, she did. If she wanted to take a bath, she did. If she needed something, I could get it without having to ask for help from someone else, and if I needed help, my aforementioned friend was available to do whatever I asked.
From the earliest weeks of Lisa’s pregnancy, she and I spent huge amounts of time trying to plan and imagine our daughter’s birth. We imagined ourselves taking walks and swimming in our pool prior to the onset of labor. We imagined the music we would play on our stereo, the smells of the candles we would light, and we thought about whom we would invite to be present. In a hospital setting, we would have had some flexibility over the birth experience, but at home, we had more. For example: at home, Lisa could decide whether to have the baby in water or not, on a bed or not, sitting or lying. Additionally, whereas I might have been asked to stand aside in a hospital (because of the concerns of hospital personnel about my abilities as a blind man), I was able to determine my own level of involvement in the birth. I could either be very involved or not, help with delivery or not, catch the baby when she came out or not. Ultimately, Lisa had a long labor, and we spent portions of this time all over our home and backyard. We listened to music; we swam; we sat around and read; we even danced to jazz music at two in the morning when Lisa couldn’t get comfortable doing anything else. As for the birth itself, Lisa spent the last few hours of her labor in water but decided at the last minute to give birth on our bedroom floor. I participated in her entire delivery, but at the last minute, I decided to let someone else cut the umbilical cord.
One of the reasons we decided against a hospital birth was our disagreement with the medical model of childbirth which views birth as a medical process rather than a life experience. This largely philosophical viewpoint may seem remote to the practical reality of labor and delivery, but in fact, it is not. Because hospitals view birth as a medical event with clear and serious risks to mother and baby, they tend to do anything in their power to minimize risk. This includes electronic fetal monitoring (which limits a mother’s freedom to move around while subjecting the baby to an invasive monitoring system) and procedures designed to keep the mother as “safe” as possible. In a hospital, Lisa wouldn’t be likely to be able to ingest anything more than water or juice, and she would be encouraged to stay still and preferably in bed. These precautions are fine, especially if there is a risk to mother or baby, but in most births (including our daughter’s), there are no risk factors; thus these precautions are excessive. In contrast, we viewed our daughter’s birth as a life event, and in our home, we were able to treat it as such. We spent this incredible and unforgettable time together and largely alone, and once our daughter was born, Lisa and I spent time with little Kacie, just being together. In fact, within three hours of Kacie’s birth, the midwives were gone, and the three of us were catching up on much-needed sleep while the friend staying in our guest room cleaned our house and washed the breakfast dishes. This is not to say that we were left alone as new parents. On the contrary, our midwife and her assistant made several follow-up visits to our home to check Lisa’s recuperation and Kacie’s development, to make sure nursing was going well, and to answer any questions we had about our new baby girl.
Having our little girl at home was not only safe for Kacie and convenient for us. It was also empowering. As most blind people know, society spends a lot of time telling us what we can’t do, and what we need help doing, and all the ways we need others to be there to take care of us. Having our baby at home contradicted these notions by putting us in charge. We decided who would be there, how long they would stay, and how they would assist us.
Home birth is not for everyone, and anyone considering a home birth should take care to plan for as many contingencies as possible. Additionally, each state’s laws differ slightly regarding who can act as a midwife and on giving birth at home. If you are interested in obtaining more information about home birth or midwifery, I recommend the following resources:
- HTTP://WWW.MIDWIFERYTODAY.COM — Midwifery Today is a publication geared for midwives, but there are good resources available from the Midwifery Today home page, including a summary of state laws and regulations on home birth and midwives, and a midwife locater service.
- HTTP://WWW.CFMIDWIFERY.ORG — This is the home page of an organization called Citizens for Midwifery. It’s a good general site with lots of information, including comparisons of home and hospital births. For those people who are not Net surfers, the resources are more limited. By conducting an NLS book search, we found one book, “Having Your Baby with a Midwife.” This book deals mostly with midwife-attended hospital births, but there is one chapter on home birth.
Caption
Ron and Lisa Brooks, holding three-week-old Kacie Leandra, gather in front of their home in Albuquerque, N.M. for a family photo.