Ever notice how women who are planning to have a homebirth feel the need to justify it to the entire world?
There are literally hundreds of blog posts and web articles entitled “Why I’m having a homebirth” or some variation thereof. I’m not really sure why homebirth advocates think the rest of us care why they are having a homebirth, and for the life of me, I don’t understand why on earth they think their reasons are original. The posts and articles are always the same; indeed, I could write it for them.
Why you are having a homebirth:
1. For bragging rights.
You are inordinately proud of yourself as if you are planning to something that more than 90% of women who have ever existed haven’t already done, and are doing around the world every single day or dying in the attempt. Nonetheless, you feel the need to share this with the entire world as if you think we are going to be impressed.
You can save it for your crunchy friends who are competing with you for most risk-filled outlandish homebirth. To the extent that the rest of us care, it’s only to note that you are a fool.
2. To proclaim that you are “educated.”
This may come as a surprise to homebirth advocates, but most people who have real education do not refer to themselves as “educated.” In the world of the internet, that adjective is reserved for the ignorant who think they can actually do “research” online. Anyone with real education knows that it cannot be acquired by reading books and blogs written by lay people for other lay people.
3. You are ignorant of history.
Only a fool looks at the modern world and believes that childbirth is inherently safe. It’s like looking at the modern world and believing that highways are “natural” because you can’t remember a time when highways didn’t exist. Anyone with a modicum of historical knowledge knows that childbirth is and has always been, in every time, place and culture, one of the leading causes of death of young women and the leading cause of death of babies.
4. You are gullible.
You believe the racist, sexist claptrap made up by Grantly Dick-Read that “primitive” women don’t have pain in childbirth because they don’t have fear. In the first place, it’s not true; secondly, you seem to have confused correlation for causation. Fear doesn’t cause childbirth pain; the agonizing pain of childbirth causes fear.
5. You are selfish.
You seem to think that birth is about your experience instead of about your baby’s safety. You are dead wrong about that.
So the next time you are tempted to justify to the rest of the world your decision to have a homebirth, don’t bother. We already know why and we don’t care.
