I swear those horns were around here somewhere...

crap.

Dr. Amy Tuteur, the Skeptical OB, is making more sense to me all of a sudden. How did this happen to me? She's a monster. A hateful, ignorant, self-righteous monster.

I'm reading through her blog, listening to her interviews with a more open mind and finding a whole community of people who are not fans of homebirth, but who still (inexplicably) love their children. There are other people who feel let down or deceived or embarrassed or angry by this beautiful mythology of peaceful birth...

I so wanted to be a poster child of a successful home water birth. It didn't happen. For the longest time I didn't want to talk about it. I felt so depressed about it. But I do need to talk about it. I think the homebirth movement has more red-headed stepchildren like me than anyone wants to admit. I didn't see them when I was pregnant. Or if I did, I could quickly analyze exactly what they did wrong so I wouldn't repeat their mistakes.

I wouldn't have believed it unless I experienced it for myself. I did everything right. So did my midwives. We still ended up with a csection.

Dr Amy talks about the MANA (Midwives Association of North America) research data on homebirth that they won't release to anyone unless they sign something swearing they will only use the data to further the cause of midwifery, and also a confidentiality agreement. And they have to be well-vetted. She sounds like she might be right in that if this data said something good for homebirth, they'd be crowing about it everywhere. There would be press releases, not confidentiality agreements.

...what does it say, I wonder...

That there are a lot more women like me? Or worse... I was lucky. I am healthy, I have a healthy baby. This is a good outcome. Maybe there are a lot more bad outcomes that we haven't been hearing about... Scary to think about...