Natural Birth
A37licia
member
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Other children at birth, yay or nay
A37licia
member
We're having another home birth (Lord willing) and have considered having our two children present at the end. I need to labor without them, but my mom will be coming and will care for them and I thought it would be special and memorable to have them all come in. My son will be 4.5, remembers his sister's birth when he came in soon after, and my daughter will be 2.5. Both have seen births on TV (of course not the same as mom being loud during labor). I have a feeling my mom will caution against it but we've already talked to her about not being bossy when she comes LOL.
Any thoughts? Anyone have kids there and regret it? Anyone not have kids there and wish they had?
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Re: Other children at birth, yay or nay
The plan is the same when LO3 arrives later this year. We will have someone here to watch J. and A. They can be in the room if they want. Or not.
I definitely would recommend having someone whose sole job is watching older LO(s). My midwife actually requires that you do have a designated caregiver for other kids.
I've caught babies where siblings have been present. I've had LO's laugh & smile, watch quietly, cry for their mom's, and one ran from the room screaming.
You may be loud, you never know. I say yay if you think you can prepare them as best you can for their age.
I've also seen mom's snap at LO's if they talk or get annoying, no judgies, it just happens sometimes.
BFP 7/2009 m/c
BFP 9/2009 m/c
Clomid IUI 12/2010, 1/2011, 2/2011 All BFN
IVF #1 6/2011 BFN, no frosties
IVF #2 2/2012 BFP
DD born 10/2012
IVF # 3 11/3/13 Canceled after retrieval d/t severe OHSS, 3 frosties
I agree with pp about having a support person there for the your children. My Aunt had her kids at home and one of my other Aunts came to be the support person for the older two. They couldn't handle listening to their mother toward the end, so my Aunt took them for a walk and when they returned they had a new little sister.
I also think it's all about knowing your kids. My hospital doesn't allow young children, so I know it wouldn't have been an option to have DD there. But even if it had, I wouldn't have wanted her there. She's far too sensitive. We actually requested that my parents not even bring her to the hospital after DS was born because she doesn't like to see us lying down if we are sick, much less see mommy in a hospital after having a baby.
We were open to our 19mo DS being at DS2's birth, but I ended up needing all of DH's attention on me and I needed all of my energy in relaxing, so we had him go with my parents off-site. Sweet DS1 did try to help me through my contractions my putting counter-pressure on my back, just like daddy.
Even when my parents came, we thought we might have him come back for the birth, but baby brother wasn't born too much longer after that point.
I will say that the plan if DS1 was present was that my dad was in charge of him. We picked my dad because he has been at several unmedicated births (he's a videographer) and is pretty chill about medical stuff. The sounds and realities of NB can be overwhleming for an adult not used to it because of the bad conditioning from media portrayals of birth. I actually suspect that kids are more chill about it!
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