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GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — When Valerie Stow first told people she was planning a home birth with a midwife, she was often asked, “Is that even legal?”
“People don't know it's even an option,” said Stow, who's baby is due in June.
Only about 1 percent of women in the United States choose to give birth at home. For most healthy women, giving birth at home with a trained midwife is as safe or safer than a hospital birth, say many childbirth professionals.
Birth at home is also less expensive than hospital births, although not all insurance companies cover home births.
It's not the cost, however, that is most often mentioned when people say they want a home birth.
The desire to avoid drugs and other medical interventions are reasons often cited by women who choose home births.
A peaceful home atmosphere is also mentioned as a factor for birthing at home.
That family-centered atmosphere has a lot to do with why many local Mennonite women give birth at home, said Lydia Rohrer, a certified professional midwife in the Grand Valley with a small practice serving primarily the Mennonite community.
Married, with a baby of her own, Rohrer is as busy as she wants to be.
“I try not to do more than one birth a month,” Rohrer said.
“Midwifery is very time consuming, it's an intimate sort of job with other people,” Rohrer said. “I'm available to my clients 24/7. That's why I limit my practice.”
Pain medication is not an option at home births. Rohrer helps her clients cope with labor naturally.
“I'm a strong believer in building relationships during prenatal time,” Rohrer said. “I teach childbirth classes as needed. When you know what's going on you're much more comfortable. It's the unknown that makes people fearful.
“Labor is hard work, but it's natural, it's normal. Millions of women have gone through it and I'm there to help her through it.”
‘AMAZING' BIRTH
Three years ago Sara Beckner volunteered as an acupuncturist at a Bali birthing clinic where she witnessed women giving birth with the help of midwives. There were no doctors; no ultrasounds.
“I realized as long as there's no pathology, women are made to give birth,” Beckner said.
Yet when she announced to friends and family she intended to have a home birth, most were skeptical — except her father who was born at home overseas.
“I don't think people acknowledge how skilled midwives really are,” said Beckner.
Beckner, 33, gave birth to a healthy son in August at her Grand Junction home with the help of her husband and midwife Julianne Guy who has offices in both Paonia and Carbondale.
“I gave birth at home in my bedroom. I didn't leave the house for a week. I got to focus on what's important — bonding with the baby, recuperating, eating good food.”
Beckner's friend Sarah Shrader is the mother of three boys, ages 7, 5, and 3 — the first born in a hospital, the second two at home.
“The second birth was everything I wanted. It was amazing,” Shrader said. “It was just my husband and I and two midwives — one had been catching babies for 30 years. She was with me for the whole labor.”
“They cleaned up everything, cooked me dinner, then left about 9,” three hours after the birth, Shrader said.
The Shraders moved from Prescott, Ariz., to Grand Junction a few years ago. For their third child Shrader hired Julianne Guy.
“It was great. He was a big baby, almost 9 pounds, and five days late,” Shrader said. “And there was no rush.”
Shrader dealt with the pain of contractions by taking walks in her Redlands neighborhood.
“I like to be standing up, or on hands and knees,” Shrader said. She also took baths and showers.
“You should birth where you feel safe. I personally feel safer with a midwife at home.”
A good midwife will know if there's a need to go to the hospital, she said. Home birth midwives are often present during a large part of a woman's labor.
Home birth is the subject of ongoing controversy in the U.S., according to a National Vital Statistics Report dated March 2010.
“In 2007, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, citing concerns about the safety of home birth for mothers and infants, issued a policy statement opposing home birth,” the report stated.
In contrast, the World Health Organization, the American College of Nurse Midwives, and the American Public Health Association all support home and out-of-hospital birth options for low-risk women, according to the report.
“I'm supportive of women giving birth wherever they choose as long as they know the risks,” said certified nurse-midwife Cindy Busker, one of the four Mesa Midwives who deliver babies only at St. Mary's Hospital.
An integrative approach where home birth midwives, certified nurse-midwives and physicians all work together would be the best option, Busker said.
Like home birth midwives, certified-nurse midwives who work in the hospital are often present during much of the labor, Busker said.
“Doctors in general are busier, dealing with surgeries and emergencies,” Busker said. “We have the leisure to labor-sit. Physicians may not.”
HOME BIRTH MOVEMENT
It was not until the 1950s that the majority of American women began going to hospitals to have their babies.
The home birth movement was born during the 1960s and '70s after women began questioning routine obstetric practices such as not allowing fathers in the delivery room, asking women to lay flat on their backs with feet raised in stirrups, and cutting the opening of the vagina to enlarge the birth opening. Routine hospital procedures have changed since the 1970s.
Midwife and author Ina May Gaskin attributes those changes to home birth pioneers.
She wrote in an essay titled, “Home Birth — Why it's Necessary,” that a “long list of techniques and practices common to home birth midwifery, have made their way into progressive hospital maternity care practice.”
Those practices include sitting in water tubs for alleviating pain, using the all-fours position to encourage a baby to move into a more favorable position for birth, encouraging upright positions for labor and birth, and allowing women to sleep, eat and drink during labor.
Jan Lapetino is a certified professional midwife who worked many years as a licensed practical nurse at Denver General Hospital during the 1970s. She became interested in obstetrics there.
“There were usually no family members present. Monitoring devices (strapped to laboring women) limited mobility — that's still true,” Lapetino said. “There was lots of intervention. It looked like to me like a completely out-of-control experience for a mom.”
Strangers walked in and out of the birthing rooms. “It really gave me pause,” Lapetino said.
Lapetino joined a childbirth study group — a group of women who also attended home births as coaches. Lapetino gave birth twice at home, in 1980 and 1986.
Lapetino helped found the Colorado Midwives Association in 1979. Colorado midwives set out to further their own education and educate the public about home birth with a midwife. They also worked to change and maintain their legal status.
“Anybody who attended births without a medical license was charged with practicing medicine without a license,” Lapetino said.
The midwives association became politically organized, and developed standards for training and testing of direct-entry midwives.
Registered direct-entry midwifery became legal in Colorado in 1993.
As of 2007, 24 states regulate the practice of home birth midwifery through either licensure, certification or registration with the state.
Home births are attended by what's called direct-entry midwives — independent practitioners educated in the practice of midwifery through self-study, apprenticeship, a midwifery school, or a college- or university-based program distinct from the discipline of nursing.
Direct-entry midwives include certified professional midwives who have met national standards for certification set by the North American Registry of Midwives.
Lay midwives, also called traditional or granny midwives, refer to uncertified or unlicensed midwives who are educated through informal routes such as self-study or apprenticeship.
Certified nurse-midwives differ from direct-entry midwives in that they work primarily in hospitals, and are educated in the disciplines of both midwifery and nursing. The two groups of certified nurse-midwives who practice in Grand Junction attend only hospital births.
MALE MIDWIFE
Bill Dwelley, 60, is a registered midwife who's been delivering babies in western Colorado for 27 years. Dwelley was already First-Aid certified and an emergency medical technician when he met a home birth midwife three decades ago and felt called to midwifery.
Dwelley has also volunteered for 25 years with the Ouray Mountain Rescue Team.
His home birth practice covers a 100-mile radius from his home near Montrose.
Dwelley attends about half of the 30-40 home births he estimates take place each year in the Grand Valley.
He holds weekly clinics in Grand Junction at a local chiropractor's office on Foresight Circle. Clients also come to his home south of Montrose for prenatal visits.
Wednesday he paid a home visit to a Fruita woman who is due to give birth any day.
Christina Frei and her husband Eric, hired Dwelley to deliver their fifth child. It will be her first home birth. The first three were born vaginally, and the fourth was delivered by cesarean.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cesarean deliveries increased more than 70 percent in Colorado from 1996 to 2007. Nationally, the cesarean rate sits at 32 percent.
St. Mary's Hospital cesarean rate is 23.6 percent, said St. Mary's spokeswoman Samantha Moe. The hospital's vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) rate is 76.4 percent, she said.
Frei decided on a home birth after attending a friend's home birth in 2008.
“Being at her home birth — it was so peaceful. Everyone there was there because the mother and father wanted them there.”
‘DESIGN OF A WOMAN'S BODY'
Rohrer said she uses aromatherapy, massage, and controlled breathing and relaxation techniques to help her clients deal with labor pain.
“If they practice basic breathing techniques, it's fine. It's all a matter of preparing the mind.”
Because midwifery is time-consuming, Rohrer said she'd love to be a granny midwife someday after her children are grown.
“Every time I'm at a birth I'm amazed at the miracle of new life, and the beauty of creation and His design of a woman's body.
“It is really something.”
“People don't know it's even an option,” said Stow, who's baby is due in June.
Only about 1 percent of women in the United States choose to give birth at home. For most healthy women, giving birth at home with a trained midwife is as safe or safer than a hospital birth, say many childbirth professionals.
Birth at home is also less expensive than hospital births, although not all insurance companies cover home births.
It's not the cost, however, that is most often mentioned when people say they want a home birth.
The desire to avoid drugs and other medical interventions are reasons often cited by women who choose home births.
A peaceful home atmosphere is also mentioned as a factor for birthing at home.
That family-centered atmosphere has a lot to do with why many local Mennonite women give birth at home, said Lydia Rohrer, a certified professional midwife in the Grand Valley with a small practice serving primarily the Mennonite community.
Married, with a baby of her own, Rohrer is as busy as she wants to be.
“I try not to do more than one birth a month,” Rohrer said.
“Midwifery is very time consuming, it's an intimate sort of job with other people,” Rohrer said. “I'm available to my clients 24/7. That's why I limit my practice.”
Pain medication is not an option at home births. Rohrer helps her clients cope with labor naturally.
“I'm a strong believer in building relationships during prenatal time,” Rohrer said. “I teach childbirth classes as needed. When you know what's going on you're much more comfortable. It's the unknown that makes people fearful.
“Labor is hard work, but it's natural, it's normal. Millions of women have gone through it and I'm there to help her through it.”
‘AMAZING' BIRTH
Three years ago Sara Beckner volunteered as an acupuncturist at a Bali birthing clinic where she witnessed women giving birth with the help of midwives. There were no doctors; no ultrasounds.
“I realized as long as there's no pathology, women are made to give birth,” Beckner said.
Yet when she announced to friends and family she intended to have a home birth, most were skeptical — except her father who was born at home overseas.
“I don't think people acknowledge how skilled midwives really are,” said Beckner.
Beckner, 33, gave birth to a healthy son in August at her Grand Junction home with the help of her husband and midwife Julianne Guy who has offices in both Paonia and Carbondale.
“I gave birth at home in my bedroom. I didn't leave the house for a week. I got to focus on what's important — bonding with the baby, recuperating, eating good food.”
Beckner's friend Sarah Shrader is the mother of three boys, ages 7, 5, and 3 — the first born in a hospital, the second two at home.
“The second birth was everything I wanted. It was amazing,” Shrader said. “It was just my husband and I and two midwives — one had been catching babies for 30 years. She was with me for the whole labor.”
“They cleaned up everything, cooked me dinner, then left about 9,” three hours after the birth, Shrader said.
The Shraders moved from Prescott, Ariz., to Grand Junction a few years ago. For their third child Shrader hired Julianne Guy.
“It was great. He was a big baby, almost 9 pounds, and five days late,” Shrader said. “And there was no rush.”
Shrader dealt with the pain of contractions by taking walks in her Redlands neighborhood.
“I like to be standing up, or on hands and knees,” Shrader said. She also took baths and showers.
“You should birth where you feel safe. I personally feel safer with a midwife at home.”
A good midwife will know if there's a need to go to the hospital, she said. Home birth midwives are often present during a large part of a woman's labor.
Home birth is the subject of ongoing controversy in the U.S., according to a National Vital Statistics Report dated March 2010.
“In 2007, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, citing concerns about the safety of home birth for mothers and infants, issued a policy statement opposing home birth,” the report stated.
In contrast, the World Health Organization, the American College of Nurse Midwives, and the American Public Health Association all support home and out-of-hospital birth options for low-risk women, according to the report.
“I'm supportive of women giving birth wherever they choose as long as they know the risks,” said certified nurse-midwife Cindy Busker, one of the four Mesa Midwives who deliver babies only at St. Mary's Hospital.
An integrative approach where home birth midwives, certified nurse-midwives and physicians all work together would be the best option, Busker said.
Like home birth midwives, certified-nurse midwives who work in the hospital are often present during much of the labor, Busker said.
“Doctors in general are busier, dealing with surgeries and emergencies,” Busker said. “We have the leisure to labor-sit. Physicians may not.”
HOME BIRTH MOVEMENT
It was not until the 1950s that the majority of American women began going to hospitals to have their babies.
The home birth movement was born during the 1960s and '70s after women began questioning routine obstetric practices such as not allowing fathers in the delivery room, asking women to lay flat on their backs with feet raised in stirrups, and cutting the opening of the vagina to enlarge the birth opening. Routine hospital procedures have changed since the 1970s.
Midwife and author Ina May Gaskin attributes those changes to home birth pioneers.
She wrote in an essay titled, “Home Birth — Why it's Necessary,” that a “long list of techniques and practices common to home birth midwifery, have made their way into progressive hospital maternity care practice.”
Those practices include sitting in water tubs for alleviating pain, using the all-fours position to encourage a baby to move into a more favorable position for birth, encouraging upright positions for labor and birth, and allowing women to sleep, eat and drink during labor.
Jan Lapetino is a certified professional midwife who worked many years as a licensed practical nurse at Denver General Hospital during the 1970s. She became interested in obstetrics there.
“There were usually no family members present. Monitoring devices (strapped to laboring women) limited mobility — that's still true,” Lapetino said. “There was lots of intervention. It looked like to me like a completely out-of-control experience for a mom.”
Strangers walked in and out of the birthing rooms. “It really gave me pause,” Lapetino said.
Lapetino joined a childbirth study group — a group of women who also attended home births as coaches. Lapetino gave birth twice at home, in 1980 and 1986.
Lapetino helped found the Colorado Midwives Association in 1979. Colorado midwives set out to further their own education and educate the public about home birth with a midwife. They also worked to change and maintain their legal status.
“Anybody who attended births without a medical license was charged with practicing medicine without a license,” Lapetino said.
The midwives association became politically organized, and developed standards for training and testing of direct-entry midwives.
Registered direct-entry midwifery became legal in Colorado in 1993.
As of 2007, 24 states regulate the practice of home birth midwifery through either licensure, certification or registration with the state.
Home births are attended by what's called direct-entry midwives — independent practitioners educated in the practice of midwifery through self-study, apprenticeship, a midwifery school, or a college- or university-based program distinct from the discipline of nursing.
Direct-entry midwives include certified professional midwives who have met national standards for certification set by the North American Registry of Midwives.
Lay midwives, also called traditional or granny midwives, refer to uncertified or unlicensed midwives who are educated through informal routes such as self-study or apprenticeship.
Certified nurse-midwives differ from direct-entry midwives in that they work primarily in hospitals, and are educated in the disciplines of both midwifery and nursing. The two groups of certified nurse-midwives who practice in Grand Junction attend only hospital births.
MALE MIDWIFE
Bill Dwelley, 60, is a registered midwife who's been delivering babies in western Colorado for 27 years. Dwelley was already First-Aid certified and an emergency medical technician when he met a home birth midwife three decades ago and felt called to midwifery.
Dwelley has also volunteered for 25 years with the Ouray Mountain Rescue Team.
His home birth practice covers a 100-mile radius from his home near Montrose.
Dwelley attends about half of the 30-40 home births he estimates take place each year in the Grand Valley.
He holds weekly clinics in Grand Junction at a local chiropractor's office on Foresight Circle. Clients also come to his home south of Montrose for prenatal visits.
Wednesday he paid a home visit to a Fruita woman who is due to give birth any day.
Christina Frei and her husband Eric, hired Dwelley to deliver their fifth child. It will be her first home birth. The first three were born vaginally, and the fourth was delivered by cesarean.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cesarean deliveries increased more than 70 percent in Colorado from 1996 to 2007. Nationally, the cesarean rate sits at 32 percent.
St. Mary's Hospital cesarean rate is 23.6 percent, said St. Mary's spokeswoman Samantha Moe. The hospital's vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) rate is 76.4 percent, she said.
Frei decided on a home birth after attending a friend's home birth in 2008.
“Being at her home birth — it was so peaceful. Everyone there was there because the mother and father wanted them there.”
‘DESIGN OF A WOMAN'S BODY'
Rohrer said she uses aromatherapy, massage, and controlled breathing and relaxation techniques to help her clients deal with labor pain.
“If they practice basic breathing techniques, it's fine. It's all a matter of preparing the mind.”
Because midwifery is time-consuming, Rohrer said she'd love to be a granny midwife someday after her children are grown.
“Every time I'm at a birth I'm amazed at the miracle of new life, and the beauty of creation and His design of a woman's body.
“It is really something.”
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Cindy Crawford
Lisa Bonet Demi Moore Meryl Streep Gisele Bundchen Pamela Anderson Ricki Lake Lucy Lawless Kelly Preston |
