Home Sweet Home Birth

Who doesn't love calling their insurance company? After only 10 minutes hitting random numbers directing me in various directions, eventually I happened upon a real live person! Portia did a fantastic job explaining how crappy our excellent insurance is. I quickly realized that I have made a huge mistake. For several months, I have been pretty cavalier about our options for my birth. I assumed that because we pay so much for our insurance we could pretty much have a baby at a resort in Tahiti and they would say, "Sure, no problem!"

After doing tons and tons of research over the last five months, I settled on a home birth as my ideal birthing situation. I did not really expect our insurance to fully cover home birth. While quite common in Europe and other countries, home birth is still controversial in the U.S.. I figured that, since I have been interviewing Certified Nurse Midwives who also have privileges to deliver at Bay Area hospitals, some percentage of their fee would be covered. Nope. Nothing. Zero.

A report by Amnesty International, titled "Deadly Delivery," notes that "the likelihood of a woman's dying in childbirth in the U.S. is five times as great as in Greece, four times as great as in Germany and three times as great as in Spain. Every day in the U.S., more than two women die of pregnancy-related causes, with the maternal mortality ratio doubling from 6.6 deaths per 100,000 births in 1987 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006... Overuse of obstetrical intervention and barriers to access to more woman-centered, physiologic care provided by family-practice physicians and midwives" is cited as a major factor in the rise in maternal mortality. [Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1971633,00.html#ixzz0ozO5GeZT]

While definitely scared away from hospitals due to the 33% national c-section rate and the doctor, rather than woman-centered approach, I was also looking forward to a home birth for more positive reasons. As a designer, I work to create comfortable home environments. I love the idea of being in my own home, where I know where everything is and will be more at ease while I'm laboring; I love that there would be no time limits placed upon my labor; I love that I could have a birth tub and float and float and float! I love that I would not be confined to my back to deliver, that there would be no nurse shift changes, that I would not automatically have an IV or be strapped to a table for fetal monitoring. I love that after I delivered the baby, I could take a bath in my own bath tub, sleep in my own bed, and eat my own food. The concept of delivering at home just feels more gentle and natural.

Of course, I am not completely opposed to medical intervention, and therein lies my problem. If there was some way to guarantee that I would be having a home birth, I may consider shelling out the $5,000 for the midwife, on top of the $2,000 for the labor doula. So far, my pregnancy seems pretty uneventful, but that could change. If I get high blood pressure, have meconium in the water, am group B strep positive, etc., I will definitely be delivering in a hospital.

As I have never been through labor, I don't know whether or not paying $5,000 to have a baby at home is worth it. If I end up going to the hospital anyway, it would be like throwing $5,000 into the air. On the other hand, this is a major life event that I would like to be done my way - is there a price tag for that? If only Portia could have answered this question.