The ticker on the sidebar of Dr. Nancy’s Your Birth Coach website announces that there are just three days left until her expected due date of October 7. Nancy Salgueiro, a wellness chiropractor, birth coach, and childbirth educator plans to birth naturally at home and is inviting everyone to watch it live online.

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Celebrities are among the many new moms choosing to birth at home.

I admit I get a little giddy when I see homebirth in the news. Today Good Morning America featured an awesome video about Hollywood moms like Jennifer Connelly, Gisele Bundchen, and Alyson Hannigan taking part in the growing trend to have their babies at home rather than in the hospital. I’m not star struck, I’m just happy to see positive stories of moms birthing at home get good exposure. Continue reading »

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It’s been recently reported that homebirth is on the rise- increased by 20% between 2004-2008. I suppose I was a contributor to that, having a (technically illegal) home birth in 2008 after three hospital births.

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Going against doctors orders

This week, CNN Health profiled Aneka (last name withheld for confidentiality), a mom who refused to have a C-section after having three previously, instead holding strong for not just a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) — but a VBAC home birth.

Aneka had her first baby by unplanned c-section nine years ago. Afterwords, the doctor told her her hips were simply too narrow to deliver vaginally. Her next two children were delivered by c-section as well. When she got pregnant for the forth time, doctors orders were to follow course and schedule another c-section, which she did.

But the day of the surgery, Aneka didn’t show up. The doctor called, pleading with her that she was putting her baby and herself at risk. But Aneka had another plan, and it didn’t involve a hospital stay at all:

At some point during her pregnancy, she had watched the documentary “The Business of Being Born,” and it got her thinking that she had been unnecessarily roped into consecutive c-sections with her previous babies. Continue reading »

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New York City has only 13 home birth midwives, and 7 of them are in danger of losing their licenses.

State law requires all home birth midwives to have agreements with obstetricians at nearby hospitals who will back them up and handle medical emergencies with their patients. St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan was the official back-up hospital for more than half of New York City’s midwives until it closed this week.

Now the midwives are having trouble finding a new hospital that will take them in. Obstetricians, it seems, are not eager to sign on for back-up duty.

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Last Thursday, 32-year-old Kelly Bottom went to use the restroom and didn’t emerge alone.  She gave birth to a baby.  And she didn’t know that she was pregnant.

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Ever since Ricki Lake’s movie, “The Business of Being Born,” was released in 2008, home birth has been the subject of news stories and trend pieces, heated discussions and dire warnings from M.D.s. The film was influential to be sure. It brought home birth out from the fog of burning sage and into the clean-aired living rooms of Brooklyn apartment dwellers. It also influenced more than one woman to go the at-home route for childbirth.

But Lake’s movie can’t take all the credit (or blame, I suppose. Depends on your attitude). At the time the movie was released, home birth had already begun to reverse an almost 15-year steady decline, according to research coming out of the the Centers for Disease Control. Continue reading »

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