Most people have been supportive of our plan for homebirth and we appreciate all of the support we are getting.  As I’m sure you can imagine, we still get some interesting responses and reactions to the news that we are going to have our baby at home.   Here are two of my favorites:

• “Oh great. Will you have your teeth pulled without Novocaine, too?” I thought it was obvious that getting teeth pulled and giving birth to a baby are two TOTALLY DIFFERENT things.  First of all, a woman’s body is uniquely designed to give birth.  No human body was designed to have one of their permanent, adult teeth yanked out of their jaw.  Women are blessed with a unique concoction of hormones that facilitate the birth process.  There is no such hormone concoction that readies you for and helps you recover from pulling a tooth.
• In response to my comment on how affordable homebirth is compared to a hospital birth, I get this reaction: “Yeah, until you are in the hospital for 3 months because your liver came out with the baby.”  So here, the speaker assumes that a homebirth is not as good or safe as a hospital birth.  I’ve never heard of a woman’s liver coming out with the baby (uterus yes, liver no), but if that is a possibility, I am confident that my midwife will know how to handle the situation because she will have either (1) foreseen potential complications and had me deliver in a hospital, or (2) transfer me to hospital as soon as safely possible.  But the main point here is that for the vast majority of healthy women, birth is a normal process — one that does NOT involve livers popping out with the baby — and, in these cases, homebirth is just as safe if not safer than a hospital birth.

As with most things of this nature, responses such as these are clearly motivated by a lack of understanding.  I generally don’t get upset by these statements but instead take it as a message that the person making these statements has no concept of the potential for safe birth outside a hospital.  Here is my translation of these statements: “Wow, homebirth sounds like crazy talk and I don’t understand it so I will respond with a ridiculous and illogical statement because I cannot begin to process such foreign information.”

After hearing those statements, we’re playing a new game whereby we get to try and figure out whether this person wants to learn about the concept or just criticize it.  Fortunately for us, we’re getting more and more experience at this game.  We’re happy to talk with people that want to learn and will answer questions all day long, so please do ask away (in person, on the phone, by commenting on this blog).