Before we conceived, and in the first few weeks of our pregnancy I started to read library books about pregnancy and birth. Several books caught my attention: Gentle Birth, Active Birth and Water Birth Handbook. The birth experiences described in these books appealed to us, me in particular. The general philosophies described in these books were that birth is a natural, normal process that the female body is designed for, and does not necessarily need to be a medical event.
I was starting to think that we would use one of the birthing centres rather than the hospital. Upon future research, and talking with Debbie (our midwife) we discovered that the only essential difference between birthing at home and at a birthing centre was the 48 post-natal care provided at the birthing centre Debbie would bring with her to the birth everything that is available in the birthing centre as far as caring for the baby and me. The major difference for us was that birthing centres were minutes away from the hospital, whereas the hospital is 15 minutes away from home off-peak or up to 25 minutes at rush hour.
When we first got pregnant and were looking for a midwife to care for us, one of the criteria was that she had access to one of Hamilton's two birthing centres, and not just the hospital.
I came across the Waikato Home Birth Association web page (www.homebirth.org.nz) while doing a google search 'home birth Zealand'. I had first heard of the Association after seeing a display in the city library. I phoned the contact person and was told that there was a Home Birth Association Awareness week coming up in a few weeks. We enrolled in the Home Birth Association Ante-natal classes, and attended several of their Awareness week seminars and a video night.
Our decision to plan a home birth was not made on a whim we spent several months of our pregnancy reading, researching, talking to other couples who have birthed at home, attended home birth ante-natal classes. Our midwife Debbie had lots of experience with home births. We knew that we would only be able to birth at home if there were no complications in the pregnancy, and we would have to transfer to the hospital during labour if complications arose.
