Were talking 'bout an evolution...

So, I'm finally ACTIVELY pursuing my CBE certification. It's great to finally be headed in the right direction, though I am not entirely sure what direction that is. There will be copious amounts of reading and writing done as I try to sprint through this by the end of winter. Not that I haven't already done copious amounts of reading, but this is specific books instead of just scholarly journals and the like. I'm noticing changes in myself as I learn. I'm no longer 100% in the natural birth camp, but I'm still nowhere near ready to step into the medicalized camp.

As I move through the activities and the reading though, I find myself approaching more of a middle ground on the subject of birth. True, I'd never sign up for an elective caesarean or induction or epidural, I've never been to the birthing area of the hospital (something that I have to find a way to do without hyperventilating), and I'm not totally sold on modern medicine giving us the best outcomes available... I am rational enough to believe that it's not the end of the world if babies are born by these methods. I'm beginning to understand both culturally and individually why a woman might choose those things. I'm never going to be the woman who proclaims that home birth is the only way to go for every woman, every time... it's not. I'm not one of those "trust birth" folks who plays Monday Morning Quarterback over a woman's birth story, though I admit I did study some of those stories pretty hard before deciding what kind of birth I wanted and tried to imagine alternate possibilities- how the outcome or experience could have been altered by not choosing to do intervention A or B. I'm also not one of those people so swayed by the convenience and magic of modern medicine as to believe that the hospital is the only place for women to ever birth... because it's not, either.

I may drop helpful hints or post 'timely information' when I have friends or relatives due near a holiday, or gently counsel someone that they DO have options and they CAN say no if something doesn't feel right, but I cannot choose their birth for them. It's not my birth. The best I can do is offer education so all the choices really do exist for that woman. How bizarre is that? To exist in a middle ground?

My stance has gone through quite a change since I began reading about and talking about birth. Before I was ever pregnant, I believed that hospitals were where a woman had to go because there was NO option. A year before I became pregnant, I began to read- not only were there other options for birth, but all those options were local to me. I began to ask myself what I would want from a birth, research what felt most in line with what I would want, and decided home birth is what would best suit my needs for low intervention and privacy as long as I remained low-risk.

When I started immersing myself in the stories and culture of home birth, I became enamored with the idea that all women should have the option... heck, that it should be the first choice for every birth! Then I actually gave birth at home- and I rode the wave of good hormones and extra-awesomeness that comes from doing the 'impossible'-and I believe for awhile I was like a street-side Christian, crowing the good news for natural birth and homebirth everywhere for a year. Now I'm settling down.

I have talked to and read the stories of women of all walks of life... some have had crappy doctors and amazing midwives. Some have had crappy midwives and outstanding doctors. Some have had traumatic births at home, in birth centers, and at hospitals. Some have had mind-blowing, beautiful, peaceful births at any or all of those places. Medications have failed, or worked too well. It's led me to a grey area in my beliefs, an evolution of thought in which neither an absolute good nor an absolute evil can exist. What works for one woman is not necessarily the thing that will work for the rest of us.

I feel like I'm waking up from a long sleep, and that I've changed and grown. Growing hurts and takes lots of energy, and needs to be fed.

I need more input. I'm hungry.