The birth of Eden - part 2

(continuing...)

My search for a better birth started way before I got pregnant again.
It became clear soon that to give my babies the birth they deserve I would have to get the heck out of the hospital. But, was a home birth really for me? Never in a million years I thought I'd be one of those crazy, brave home-birth-moms.
Then one day I went to visit a friend who was about to have a baby (Hi, Lela!), and when she opened the door she wasn't pregnant anymore! She told me she'd just had the baby that morning, in the water, at a birth center, and that "it didn't hurt that much" (say what?). And she was already home with her family, looking great, as if she'd just run to the grocery store. And the best part? Baby was happily sleeping in her daddy's arms. No nurses to mess with her, she was where she belonged. She made it look so easy.

Then we moved to Dallas, a place blessed with a pretty good number of birth centers and midwives. But cursed with hospitals that have one the highest c-section rates in the country.
I had the chance to meet 3 different birth centers. Then I went to the birth center where I had Eden, and fell in love!! With the place and the Midwife (lets call her R). Just so you know, the birth center is NOT  a hospital setting, it looked like a little Bed and Breakfast, for moms who don't want to deliver at home but don't want to go to the hospital either. You can deliver there or the midwives can go to your house if you want a home birth.

When we went in for the "get to know you" visit, R was able to give me more information about Obstetrics Cholestasis (read part 1) than any other OB had before. While all the doctors would tell me "you have a 60-90% chance of developing cholestasis again, there's nothing you can do about it, and when that happens we'll just induce early", R said she would keep a close eye on my liver levels, run tests often, but as long as the results came back normal she'd treat it as a healthy pregnancy. Meanwhile, we would do everything we could to try to PREVENT IT! So we came up with a plan. She put me on Herbal supplements, I started doing accupuncture treatments, and I was on a special low fat, low sugar diet - disclaimer, low fat diets are NOT reccomended in pregnancy, mine was a special case. I was determined more than anything to beat the odds of having Cholestasis again. R also told me that in their practice, they focus on PREVENTING pregnancy complications, instead of simply treating them if they arise. Therefore, their patients have a much lower chance of ever needing medical interventions. Meeting R erased any doubts that a birth center birth was right for me.

I could have a chance to give my baby a gentle birth, and maybe I wasn't broken afterall...