Can I handle the pain?

Since I have several friends who are pregnant or have recently had a baby, they too are blogging and asking questions to the on-line community. It is interesting to read the responses that they get. There are actually a couple of other pregos out there that want to do the natural thing. I'm surprised that there is actually not that much support out there for going natural. Many people have expressed the need to let the doctors takes over and just trust your doctor. Some people have the idea that there is pain medication for a reason and you should take it.
I'm beginning to wonder if I am missing something. Haven't women been doing this for hundreds of years without pain medication? If the pain was too much to handle I don't think the human race would still be here. Surely my body can handle the pain. How long can it last? Five days at most? The pain won't be forever. But I think the whole idea of giving all of my trust over to my doctor is the most disturbing idea. I trust my doctor but questions need to be asked at each step and with each intervention. Besides, my doctor is limited by the hospital. The hospital sets rules and the doctor has to follow them. Martha is not obligated to follow anything the hospital wants so Martha better be paying attention and asking questions.
I'm scared of the hospital. People go in healthy and come out dead. All I want to do is have a healthy baby so the hospital seems like a super scary place. I'm due in the dead of winter and the height of flu season. There will be lots of sick people all over the hospital. I guess I just don't want to leave with something besides my baby, you know like the flu.
So anyways, we are meeting with a midwife on Thursday. This one is local! I'm excited. I like the first midwife we interviewed but she is two hours away. Again being due at the end of December, I'm thinking weather might be a factor. We'll see who we like best and move forward from there. The doula search is not moving forward very quickly but I'm hoping the local midwife might have some names for me. So much to do and think about.

Homebirth hiccup

Well in talking about planning a homebirth, I have hit a bit of a snag. It has to do with my backup hospital. The hospital is like a 5 min walk from our house. So it's not a worry about making it to the hospital on time but I am worried about the level of care I would receive. That was the reason we chose to go to North Carolina for our Ob/Gyn, to avoid DRMC.
This weekend there was a huge write up in the newspaper about how horrible DRMC really is. People discussed 8-hour waits in the ER. If something were to go wrong, DRMC is the hospital we would run too. I don't know that I would have time to wait. There is part of me that is very worried that DRMC would be the reason that either I or the baby didn't make it. Long before I got pregnant, people warned me about labor and delivery at DRMC. We were told to go elsewhere if we had a choice. Now with the idea of a homebirth, I wonder if we would be better off just planning a hospital birth. To hire a doula to help me labor at home as much as possible and then just run to Eden to have the baby.
I am not against hospital births. I know doctors save lives but they cause c-sections and try to force drugs to make it easy on themselves. Right now as it stands, I'm doing well. My baby and I are good candidates for a nice normal birth so why take time away from women who need to have a c-section or need medical intervention? I believe my body can do this and I believe that I can birth my child without drugs, without an IV, eating a cheeseburger, while watching Love Actually.

freebirthing?

This morning I watched an hour-long special on FreeBirthing. I know that people think my decision to have my baby at home is crazy but at least I'm going to have help. Freebirthers go it completely alone or at least without any trained professionals at all! Am I crazy or does that sound crazy to anyone else? I believe that my body can give birth to Baby Bud just fine. I believe that I can do that at home safely but I still want someone who has been professionally trained to be around. I've never had a baby before and even if I had, I don't know nothing about birthin' no babies!
Some of the women in the special also didn't have any professional prenatal care. That is also crazy to me. I mean I don't want to sound like a judgmental ass about the whole thing but that just doesn't sound safe to me. It just sounds crazy. All of the woman in the special had had a bad hospital birth so they were going to the extreme of freebirthing. Why not have a midwife there? Why not get prenatal care? I know those women were doing what they felt was right for them and their babies. But I don't think I would be supportive of such a decision. I would hope that someone would sit me down and try to talk me out of freebirthing.