I Had A Baby Today

It’s a boy!

Nels Hogaboom (no middle name as of yet)

born 8 lbs, 7 oz

21 inches long

home birth in the tub — water baby

The birth experience was really, really nice. I couldn’t imagine wanting to have a baby in a hospital again. Now that I’ve been all the way through the home birth, I can appreciate how — mundate — it is. It’s not some crazy, we-need-professionals-in-sterile-rooms Serious Operation. It’s a thing the woman’s body was meant to do, the body excels at doing. DLR said it best: might as well jump.

"Geeg, Get This Guy A Waffle Iron."

On Sunday mornings, early, we go to a place called Waffles. It’s this house in Uptown; Gary has been doing Waffles for 30 years. Every Sunday morning, it’s like open house; you show up, he feeds you waffles.

That’s the deal.

There’s between, oh, 10 and 40 people total coming and going between 8 am and noon. It’s a very Port Townsend thing, although I think Gary did it at his old house in Seattle four+ years ago before he moved here.

I’ve been trying to get a good batch of waffles ever since I lost my groove for it back in ‘02. So I asked Gary for his recipe. He has a stack of them at the ready, and he quickly equipped me with the information.

“You need to play with the recipe to get what you want, though,” Gary said.

“I’ve been playing with waffle recipes for two years now. My recipes always suck,” I said.

“You have a waffle iron?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said quickly. “Well … it’s a plastic thingy, you know, …”

He just looked at me.

“That’s not a waffle iron,” he said. Then he called out over his shoulder to G.G.:”Geeg, get this guy a waffle iron.”

“You have a spare?” I asked, surprised at the thought that I was just going to get a free waffle iron.

“Christ, I have 30!” he said. And he wasn’t kidding. G.G. picked a good one out and now it’s sitting in my truck. I’m a bit intimidated by it, and it might be some time before I can bring myself to plug it in.

Typical Isn’t Normal, Man

Okay, so here’s the skinny on the home birth. This is a touchy subject, so first off my disclaimer is that this is how I feel about the subject for my family. I’m talking about my family only — I’m not telling you how to have your baby. Okay, got that off my chest.

There’s nothing wrong with hospitals. They’re functional places to have a baby. But a woman’s body was designed to give birth. Unless there are uncommon circumstances with the woman’s health, she has the potential to give birth. Furthermore, I’m a believer that interventions like (here goes my spelling problem) pitocin, epidural / intrathecal, etc often interfere with the birth. They also lead to cesarian deliveries.

Cesarian deliveries are major abdominal surgery.

If there’s a problem that requires medical intervention, we’ll go to the hospital, simple as that. Childbirth isn’t a medical problem, it’s the Lord loaning us his ability to create. If it’s normal for a woman’s body to give birth, then let’s put the control back into the woman’s body. Like any normal body function, if something goes wrong, we’ll see a doctor. Until otherwise, we’ll know that normal delivery*, i.e. home birth, is okay.

In 95% of woman, a vaginal birth is possible. Why does the US have a 27% rate of cesarian? Interventions are part of it. A bigger part is that we don’t really help woman to have a baby.

To put it another way, home birth means taking more responsibility. Kelly’s not just going to get knocked out by some drugs and have the baby surgically removed. She’s educating herself, learning techniques to cope with pain au naturale, and excersizing. She’s making sure that her muscles and body are going to be in a good position when the time comes. We’ve interviewed and found our midwife team, and our doula. We’re preparing in ways we didn’t even think of with our first kid.

Back to the US not helping women have babies. I think about my perception of childbirth before Sophie, and I really knew nothing. It was an eye-opener to see how it’s done. In retrospect, it makes sense to me that there would be a passing of the knowledge, what to expect, like how memes are passed down. Not quite mentor/apprentice style, but serving a similar function. I’m continually surprised I don’t see this.

* I refer to normal birth, not typical birth. In the US, a typical birth is in the hospital. That doesn’t make it normal.