Birthing at Home
(Page 2 of 4)
You won't need great tubs of boiling water although a good
potful is handy to wash mother with after the birth and
some doctors and midwives used to apply warm wet towels to
the perineum (where baby's head emerges) to soften the
muscles and help stretching.
RELATED CONTENT
Gather together a large batch of clean rags, old towels,
etc. during the pregnancy. Launder them well, dry them in
the sun and wrap them to keep them clean. You'll find these
cloths useful as pads to catch leaking fluids under mother.
Have some baby clothes ready, where your assistant can find
them easily . . . and be sure your room, igloo, tipi or
whatever is WARM. One couple I heard of recently had a cold
wind sweeping into the birthing room through cracks and
broken windows. The mother-to-be was in great
discomfort—not from labor—but from COLD. And
remember: that little baby will experience a drop of about
twenty degrees when born, even if the room is over 70°
F. So don't cool it, warm it.
I'm not going into all the training information here. I
don't think you should attempt to learn how to have a baby
at home from a magazine article—or even a complete
book or books, for that matter—anyway. Make every
attempt to find a good instructor: first-rate training is
worth going some distance for. And once you know what
you're doing, practice and practice and practice what
you'll actually do during your delivery. If you want to
reap the rewards of "going it on your own", in other words,
you must expect to pay the proper dues.
We've found that boiled shoestring makes a good,
unbreakable tie for the cord once the baby is born. This
tying is not the Great Mystery the medical profession would
have you believe. You simply boil the shoestring and
scissors a half hour, cover and leave until needed. Then
you tie a knot tightly around the cord a few inches from
baby and make another tie—again, very tightly—a
few inches from that and cut between.*
Putting the baby to the breast soon after birth helps
prevent excessive bleeding from the mother. If the placenta
(afterbirth) doesn't come spontaneously soon after the
birth get a doctor. I've heard of Indian mothers
who expelled afterbirth by getting on their knees, crossing
their arms over their tummys and bending over. Maybe it
works . . . I don't know. If you have any trouble, my
advice remains: get a doctor.
If you're planning to have a baby at home you're sure to
get a lot of "Think of the risk . . . you're jeopardizing
your baby. . . what if you die!?" etc., etc. ad nauseaum.
Of course, there is some justification for this talk . . .
but did you know that—in countries where home
delivery is the usual procedure for normal births—the
infant and maternal mortality rate is actually LOWER than
it is in this country.
