(5) The adrenalin rush you get from participating in the Ironman Triathlon is no longer such a buzz.
(4) The sight of white coats causes you to hyperventilate like a 2-year-old who knows that a shot is coming.
(3) The sight of white coats is only mildly irritating; after all, you don’t believe in vaccines — what can the white coats do to you?
(2) You remember with extreme fondness coming home from a family vacation to find that your cat had given birth, seemingly painlessly and bloodlessly, in your sock drawer.
And the number one reason to give birth at home alone:
(1) You realize, as you take your daughter to go potty in a stinky, warm Wal-Mart restroom on a busy Saturday afternoon, that there are much, much worse places to give birth.
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Are you trying to start a war? Ok, that was pretty good!
Just think of all the other things we do unassisted. I take my showers with a 4 year old and a 21 month old. I sit on the edge of the tub for hours trying to get Max to poop, without making the horrible noises that accompany his bowel movements. I navigate Super-Walmart with a 4 year old and 21-month old. All WITHOUT MEDICATION!
Not only are we anti-vacine, neither of our kids got vitamin K shots or antibacterial eye ointment or any of that stuff that hospitals do routinely at birth. Birth is traumatic enough without all that crap. And I had one medicated birth and one water birth, so I know what I’m talking about.
Hi Marie,
as i understand it, unassisted (UC as a way of childbirth) doesn’t mean unmedicated, it means alone, without a midwife, at your own home. unassisted by other humans (at the time; proponents advocate tons of education and preparation which, of course, involves other people), not unassisted by medication. i think it’s an important distinction.
i’m glad you enjoyed your water birth. i am certainly rethinking many of my assumptions about birth, esp the common u.s. birthing (lithiotomy?) position. but, it probably doesn’t matter for me, at this point: i only had to push twice with my third kid (it’s gotten exponentially easier with each birth). i think the next one will just shoot out.
A-ha! So can you be medicated yet unassisted? LOL j/k. Having no-one there would be scary to me. I wouldn’t want a crowd of people, but at least one person who knows about childbirth to be there.
What do you mean “the next one????”
Want to hear something funny? In all of the last-minute-baby’s-crowning-right-now-rush during my natural birth, it was all I could do do get from the hallway to my bed, and I ended up giving birth in the one position I had said I wouldn’t. Lithotomy, w/ no pillow under my head or anything!
[...] views on childbirth have since first starting to read her. Here are three posts I wrote ridiculing unassisted/home/natural birth before I knew any better (just to give you an idea of how much my thinking has [...]