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"How much midwifery did you and your husband study beforehand?

Mrs VS"

We worked as Bradley Childbirth educators for eight years and I had my first three in the hospital. It was after tons of research, prayer, and putting our faith on the line that we attempted it with our fourth baby at home alone and we both almost died. As stated in the article:

"Jenny Hatch, who runs a website devoted to unassisted childbirth, blames the medical community for pushing mothers to the fringe. As a Mormon, she hoped to have a big family with as many as twelve children -- but had a C-section for her second child. "It left me feeling very demoralized and afraid and concerned about having any more vaginal babies," Jenny says. Since most hospitals have policies against allowing VBACs -- sticking to the adage "once a Cesarean, always a Cesarean" -- she was looking at ten more surgeries.

"For those women who were not very educated with their first births, they kind of got railroaded into surgery with their first, and with their next baby, they are hitting this wall of opposition," she explains. "Unless you're highly educated and willing to take on the risk of an unassisted birth, you have no choice."

After fighting with doctors and nurses to allow her third child to be born vaginally, Jenny vowed that she would never deliver in the hospital again. Her husband, Paul, wasn't against the idea of a home birth, but his wife's insistence that they do it without even a doula or a midwife made him very uncomfortable.

"And that debate almost killed my marriage," Jenny says. "The birth issue has really taken us to the depths of our relationship. What Paul eventually came to was that it was my body and I was the one who had to give birth, and he supports my rights of self-determination to give birth how, where and when I feel comfortable."

So in 1996, they chose the upstairs bedroom of their townhome in Louisville as the site for the birth of their fourth child. The three-hour labor was so quick, and the eleven-pound boy arrived with such force, that the umbilical cord snapped and the baby wasn't breathing. Jenny was also hemorrhaging deep in her uterus. Emergency personnel were called, and baby and mother were taken away in separate ambulances. Both survived, but the family was shaken.

Still, that experience didn't stop the stay-at-home mom from continuing her freebirth activism. In 2001, she organized the second International Husband/Wife Homebirth Conference, with Shanley as the keynote speaker. The event drew about thirty families from as far away as Utah and California to Louisville, where they attended workshops and exchanged tips on unassisted birth. Having another freebirth themselves was still a tender subject for Jenny and Paul, but by the time Jenny got pregnant in 2002, her heart was settled.

"I decided I would rather die than go back to the hospital," she says. "If I end up dying during home birth, great, then it's my time to go. But I will not cave."

Their fifth child, Ben, was born at home successfully. Instead of lying on her back, Hatch chose to give birth standing in the yoga Goddess position, a kind of warrior squat with her arms raised at right angles."

One of the biggest struggles for my husband was that if the baby or I died everyone would be pointing the finger of scorn at him, like, you idiot, what were you thinking? etc etc and perhaps hold him responsible. Fact is I gave him an ultimatum after our third hospital birth where I clawed my way to a VBAC. I told him that if he wanted to have any more children with me we were going to do it at home and alone.

This almost ruined our marriage.

I felt like I had given birth in the hospital three times because of HIS fear, and even though I was the one who had to be in that "flat on your back, doctors digging around my cervix" position, which like it or not leaves many women feeling violated, it was unfair to expect me to continue to cave to medical dogma just because he was afraid.

He tucked his fear away to a place where I could not see it as much, and we proceeded to give birth to our next two sons at home alone after doing our own prenatals. As stated the first required transfer after the birth. But I don't regret the education that resulted from that experience. I spent the next six years researching bleeding issues and how to resuscitate a baby, and we gave birth triumphantly to Ben in 2002 with no problems.

I am not advocating an ignorance is bliss attitude. Many practical skills can be mastered by the mother and father, and my feeling is that NOW is the time to begin to learn them, not when society is on the brink and momma goes into labor in an emergency situation.

Jenny