Why a birthing center?

As I've stated before on, we chose Rite of Passage (their website is kinda confusing for more information, I suggest you go in for a visit) as our place of birth.  We did this for several reasons.  Mainly because we wanted to maintain control and freedom over the birthing process.  Many people have healthy satisfying births at hospitals but as I relayed the news of our pregnancy, I heard several horror stories in the process.  Things that are advocated in the hospitals aren't always best for mother or child.  As I did more research on the following subjects, everything lead me to seek out an alternative.  Louis and I went into this with the belief that God created a mother's body to know what it's doing, after all it grows the baby without any 'help' from man.  If it's smart enough to know how to make millions of cells and give them all different functions and create something as complex as an eye or detailed as a toenail then surely, God programmed a woman's body to know how to deliver a baby.  Disclaimer- we live in a fallen world where things can go wrong and there's sickness and disease and our bodies don't always operate as it should.  If there is a problem, then we should do our best to correct it with the means and skills that God has given us.  I'm not against intervention, I'm just against unnecessary intervention; and the problems with hospitals is there's just too much of it. 

• Pitocin- medicine that will cause your contractions to kick start or make them stronger.  Sounds good in theory, but the problem with this is that it can cause your contractions to be so violent that it actually causes distress to the baby.  Pitocin causes such strong contractions that they are often more painful than they should be.  Pitocin is used to speed up a delivery when it actually, your body is taking its time for various reasons.  I believe it's because of this medicine that perpetuates more unnecessary intervention such as cesareans and epidurals. 
  
• Epidurals- pain medicine that's injected into your spine.  Epidurals causes essentially numbness to your nether regions so you don't feel the searing pain of the contractions.  Although good for the pain, it's counterproductive because it relaxes your muscles, the ones that are supposed to be pushing out the baby!  To counteract the epidural, they'll give you more pitocin to make you push and then it the pain is too much, they'll give you more medicine for your epidural.  It's a vicious cycle.  The medicine in the epidural is shown to affect the baby causing it to be really drowsy and 'out of it' at birth.  This is bad because it's important to breastfeed within the first two hours of birth and the baby is too sleepy to take the breasts. 
  
• Breastfeeding- breastfeeding is best for baby.  It has antibodies that cannot be duplicated in formula.  Proven to prevent many illnesses and strengthen a babies immune system.  Breastmilk cannot be beat.  Because of all the intervention, mothers are often unable to breastfeed right away and hospitals with start them off on a bottle immediately or give them a pacifier.  This wrecks havoc on breastfeeding.  Drinking at the breast and at the bottle are totally different for a baby.  It's important that the baby gets the breast first or else they get nipple confusion and never learn to latch on properly.  They will refuse the breasts and only want to take the bottle, many times discouraging the mother to stop breastfeeding completely.  Babies really get the short end of the stick here.  Although hospitals are supposed to be breastfeeding friendly, they really aren't.  They're so quick to give babies the bottle before even giving breastfeeding a chance.  They tell the mother to stop breastfeeding at the first sign of jaundice because they claim that breastmilk will make the jaundice worse and you will cause your baby BRAIN DAMAGE if they can't rid of the jaundice.  Who would want to breast feed after that?  According to my pediatrician, breast milk will only get rid of the jaundice faster because babies can digest breast milk more quickly than they can formula and they need the breast milk to flush the bilirubin out of their system. 
  
• Episiotomies- a cut to the vagina to make it bigger and easier on you and baby.  Episiotomies were once only done when necessary, when doctors see that the baby's head is too big, are now routine at births.  They're often done long before the baby's head starts to crown.  This is hard on mothers because when the doctor cuts, it takes longer to recovery adding to the mother's down time.  50% of the time, episiotomies aren't even necessary.  My midwife had me do stretches to my perineum to make things easier for my body and prevent tearing if possible.  If a mother does tear it is easier for her body to recover from a tear than than it does from a cut.  Cuts lead to scar tissue which do not stretch making future births more difficult and episiotomies more necessary.  See how cyclical this is becoming?! 
• Cesarean section-  a cut across your lower belly to surgically remove the baby.  The majority of c-sections are actually unnecessary.  C-sections usually occur when too much intervention has caused distress to the baby and an emergency c-section is necessary.  Recovery from a c-section is much more difficult and painful, it's also longer.  It takes about a year to get your abdomen into its former shape. 

Next up, my birth story!  I'm trying to get this done before Selah's 18th birthday.  Lol.