Natural Birth
botanicalbliss
member
Question re: Unassisted Homebirth
botanicalbliss
member
No, I'm not going to try it.
But, I'm curious as to how this works as far as prenatal care and getting all the necessary paperwork.
Do women who have unassisted home births get prenatal care throughout their pregnancy? How do you acquire all the paperwork (ssc, birth certificate, etc) for your LO?
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Re: Question re: Unassisted Homebirth
This girl I went to school was one of seven and her mom had I think her last 5 at home unassisted. I can only speak from her experience, I don't know how others do it. But basically the mother said she trusted her body to tell her if there was a problem, so she had no prenatal care. I know she said she read up on what to do if the baby was breech or other complications that might arise. After she had her first unassisted birth she had a heck of a time getting a birth certificate, because she said there was really no written proof that she had ever been pregnant. So every time after that she would have a MW come to her house once in the 7th month to check her and that made it much easier to get a birth certificate.
Not the best idea IMO, but thankfully she never had any problems.
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You have to go to the courthouse and register your kid if you have an unassisted birth (or a home birth with a MW who isn't registered). My BIL had to go to the hospital and the courthouse to get all the paperwork done (my sister had a CNM do prenatal care, and then she birthed with a CPM who wasn't licensed in our state).
I'm pretty sure most unassisted birthers do their own prenatal exams.
DS2 - Oct 2010 (my VBAC baby!)
I didn't have an unassisted birth, but after our homebirth we had to go to the county (can't remember which department) and fill out paperwork for the birth certificate. We had to go to a SS office to file for the social security number. So I imagine it would be the same for an unassisted birth. I needed one or two witnesses to the birth to sign off on the birth certificate form, but it didn't need to be a medical provider.
As for prenatal care, unassisted birthers either do their own prenatal care or they see a regular provider but just stay home and give birth unassisted when the time comes. If you want to read more details, check out the Unassisted Childbirth forum on Mothering.com.
And just FTR, I think UC is an unwise and potentially dangerous choice.
I'm in NZ so probably not easy to compare, but we had an accidental unassisted birth.
Even though my MW arrived shortly after baby arrived, and even though there were paramedics present as LO was born, the rule from our ministry of internal affairs (Who administer birth certs here) was that we had to have the birth centre or hospital we took baby to after she was born, sign off on there being a baby. Not sure who would have done it if we'd chosen to stay home.
It did turn into a bit of a hassle for the ministry to match up the paperwork we filed with the paperwork filed by the birth centre, but that was some kind of weird error that eventually got sorted.
Elizabeth 5yrs old Jane 3yrs old
Interesting! Thanks for the info.
Yeah, this is definitely not my plan, but it's interesting to hear how others do it.
I had never seen the Skeptical OB blog until today. Wow. What a nightmare that OB is. Talk about a God complex!
Before I had my DS I used to read the SOB to gain a perspective different then my own, and to see if I might learn something. However, I refuse to read it anymore. She will often seek out stories of mother's whose delivery went wrong, and use it to "prove" her point, often without their permission. If she has anything useful to say, it gets lost in her horrible bitterness. I would encourage everyone else to stay away as well.