I went in to see my OB-GYN yesterday to tell her that I really like her, but I want to give birth at home, not in a hospital.

It starts out as a normal appointment. She listens to the baby's heart, my blood pressure is taken, she tells me I will probably gain about 35-40 pounds total the way I am going (dammit!).

She asks me about birth classes and pediatricians, do I have any in mind? I ask her for pediatrician references.

While she is giving me pediatrician references, she starts telling me about how she an her husband did "attachment parenting" with their first son, and she thinks it was a mistake...he can't entertain himself and wants to be the center of attention all the time.

I am still trying to bring up the home birth matter, but she is going on about her son, has picked up her papers and now she is edging towards the door.

She opens the door, says goodbye, and I have to interrupt her to say, "Wait! There's something that I really want to talk to you about."

She comes back in reluctantly, and I spit it out. "Dan and I are thinking that we would prefer to do a home birth."

Immediately she becomes stone-faced and says coldly, "I can't continue to see you then. I don't even have anyone I can refer you to."

I tell her that I don't need a referral, I already have a nurse-midwife lined up, but I *do* want her opinion...after all, I think she is a good doctor, and I will continue to see her after the baby is born for my gynecological checkups, etc.

"Well, if you still WANT to, that is," she says, still ice-cold.

Then she continues on about how she would never do a home birth, she won't attend one, she wouldn't choose one for herself. She has worked in county hospitals and seen disasters resulting from home births. Oh sure, there's only 1% chance of that happening to ME, but do I really want to run that risk?

She is really upset, and seemingly very angry with me. If I had suddenly taken a crap in the exam room, I don't think I could have unpleasantly shocked her more than I have. *I* am shocked by how coldly and angrily she is reacting to this!

"Well, what kinds of disasters? What is the most common problem that you have seen with home births?" I ask her.

"I saw a beautiful 9-pound baby boy. Brain-dead. Totally preventable."

This is totally vague. I ask her what happened during the home birth to cause this. "Bleeding," she responds mysteriously.

I want to ask her for more info...after all, I'm not going to have my next-door neighbor or Dan delivering the baby, or try to do it on my own. My midwife is a registered nurse with 30 years experience of delivering babies in this area under her belt, she will have two trained doulas with her, and the hospital is about 2-3 minutes away at most.

Instead I say, "The biggest reason that I am considering this is that so many of my friends have had bad birth experiences in hospitals. They arrive at the hospital and then the change makes them stress out, stops or slows down their labors. They end up being induced or given Pitocin, which creates a horrendously painful labor. Then they end up getting an epidural becasue they can't take the pain of the Pitocin labor. They feel out of control of the whole process, and like there is too much intervention. I trust *you*, and I think you wouldn't intervene unnecessarily, but you don't come until the very end, I don't know the maternity nurses there, and who knows, maybe you are unavailable when I go into labor and I get another doctor completely."

She replies, "I *do* make it to 90% of my deliveries. And I know that you are thinking that you just want this warm, fuzzy, *comfortable* birth experience, but to me, the risk is not worth it. The *disasters* that I have seen, totally preventable. If you want my opinion, I would absolutely not do it. You might come down with florid preeclampsia and need a C-section at 36 weeks, anything could happen."

Sure, but my nurse-midwife would certainly catch something like preeclampsia, it's something she carefully screens for at all later visits. Still no real details on the 'disasters', and I am now thinking...I would have a TEN percent chance of being in the hands of a total stranger? Yikes.

I still want to be on good terms with her, so I say, "I really would like to see *both* of you throughout the pregnancy, but insurance will only pay for one provider."

She hands me a record transfer form! Then she says, "I would seriously think about this if I were you. If you change your mind, then I'll neeed to see you in 4 weeks." And walks out!

I hear her in the hall saying to her nurse somewhat frantically, "I know, I'm WAY behind schedule. Can you check on Room 3 and tell her I'll be late."

What the fuck! Sorry to take up FIVE minutes of your time discussing the birth of my CHILD with you!

I am still floored that she reacted the way she did. I am certainly open-minded, I was looking for her opinion, and if she had calmly given me some good reasons or statistics or *some* kind of valid reasons to forget about home birth and have the baby in the hospital, I would consider those reasons.

You know, I just wanted her to listen to *why* I wanted a home birth. She could have addressed my issues with the hospital, maybe promised to work out a birth plan with me in advance. Instead, she acted like I was suddenly insane and totally irresponsible, and I had better not ever darken the doorstep of her practice again.

So last night I woke up to pee and then started thinking about all this. What if something *did* go wrong? I will have to ask my midwife what her plan is, what does she do in that case? And what are the most common things that *could* go wrong?

She has told me that breech babies aren't a problem for her to deliver, she has delivered many in the past without problems, but now insurance liability forces her to assign breech babies to be delivered in the hospital, where you get an automatic C-section.

So what if the kid is breech? Am I on my own, looking for a doctor? And at what point is that decided..."he is breech and won't turn around after this point"?

Arrgh. I spent several hours tossing and turning, with the baby moving around inside me, giving me little tiny kicks, and the dog kicking my feet in his sleep at the end of the bed.

One the one hand, I feel freaked out by the possibility of something going wrong at home, though I think the chances are tiny and remote. That pushes me to think maybe I should change my mind. But I don't have any real stories of bad home births done by a trained midwife.

I *do*, on the other hand, have *many* firsthand acounts of bad birth experiences in hospitals, horrible Pitocin labors, unnecessary C-sections, mean/evil maternity nurses, painful episiotomies that took forever to heal, etc.

And then my own BAD experience with this seemingly nice and cool woman doctor, who can't even talk to me for five minutes!

Just by contrast, my midwife gives me an HOUR appointment when I see her, chats with me about all kinds of things, makes sure all my questions are answered, lends me books and magazines to read. It's a much more personal experience.

So I am still planning on the home birth, but now I need to ask her for more details on all the what-if scenarios so I know what the contingency plan is.

When I told Dan about this experience yesterday after I got home, I thought maybe he would question the home birth as well. But instead he asked me who we could complain to about my doctor's behavior! I told him that I didn't want to complain about her to anyone, I just was having doubts about my decision purely based on her reaction.

He reminded me of all the research I have done, and how I shouldn't let one doctor's inappropriate angry reaction sway me. If she had some facts for me, that would be one thing, but just having her flip out wasn't reason to change my mind. In fact, it was a confirmation that I shouldn't want someone so unpredictable in charge of the birth! *Why* should she be so MAD at me?

True, true. But ick, what a mind fuck!

Anyways, back to enjoying my 3 days of comp time off this week (we just finished up our most recent software release at work).

Yesterday I took the dog for a long walk, made a nice salad and grilled a tri-tip steak for lunch with Dan on the patio, took a nap, read magazines, had the doctor's appt :-(, and then went for an hour-long sunset swim. A very relaxing day, except for the doctor part of it.

Today won't be quite as chilled-out...I have to do some freelance web design stuff for a few hours, research how to refinish our wooden deck for this weekend, sell two computers on eBay, and some other stuff. But I'll still fit in a dog walk and another long swim, so how bad can life be?

If I have time to walk the dog *and* take a long swim, it's a pretty good day. Simple pleasures, you know. ;-)