FORETHOUGHTS

I wrote this response to a man who emailed me telling me that he and his wife were thinking about circumcising their soon-to-be-born son. I have strong beliefs about how important it is NOT to know the gender of the baby before it was born, but as they had already found out, this was beyond the point. I share my response to him here:

This baby is not mine, he is yours. You get to make the decisions about your son and his care. I will do my best to give facts and supply information whenever it seems appropriate or whenever you ask.  I will be honest with you at all times as to where I stand. It makes sense that you know who your midwife is ahead of time, in case we aren't the right fit all the way around. To that end, it seems important for you to know that I do everything I can to educate couples about the violence inherent in cutting babies. I hope that you will stay open to keeping your son intact.

Routine, non-therapeutic circumcision is painful, violent, medically unnecessary, presents ill long-term health effects, and is surrounded by cultural misinformation and bias.  I have facts, LOTS of them. You can start with the Circumcision Resource Center here in Boston. I can also give you several DVDs, one of which is by, of all people, Penn and Teller, about the subject (which is also available online - you can find it simply by searching “Penn and Teller circumcision”). There is another one entitled "Whose Body, Whose Rights" and an older one by a group of nurses who bonded together and decided they would no longer assist at circumcisions, began educating their pregnant couples, and changed the policy at their hospital to a 100 % "Circumcisions Not Performed Here" policy  within just a few months - there had been an almost 100 percent circumcision rate before they began.

I have a family who had their first four boys circumcised.  After that, as they put it, "they got smart" and left their last two (they have six!) full-bodied. One of my friends had her first two sons cut. She left her third intact. When he was six, he asked her why his penis looked different than his brothers. She explained to him that she had learned about the value of the foreskin and had left his just as it had been when he was born. He ran over to her, put his arms around her and said, " Oh, Mommy, THANK YOU!"

I do everything I can to help insure that the woman with whom I am working have the best chance NOT to have to be stitched after their babies are born. They pay attention to their nutrition and they do not do any perineal massage,  which I find breaks down the tissue and makes tearing more likely. I do my best at the actual delivery to either keep my hands off - or - when appropriate - to provide good perineal support, sometimes with warm, wet cloths. I mean, after all, what woman wants to have stitches in that area of her body?? I ask the partner/husband if he would like me to do my best to take care that there is no tearing, the answer is always, of course, "Yes."

But then, if that same woman whose perineum I have just treated with utmost respect  is going to cut off a part of her own baby's genitalia, I wonder why I am spending so much time protecting HER body? When you do the research, you will find that the foreskin was not a mistake.  The foreskin PROTECTS the penis - cutting it off would be like taking the eyelid and removing it from the eye. God/Goddess/Nature/The Universe/Spirit designed this covering for good reason. Are fingernails superfluous? What about the enamel on our teeth? There are good reasons for foreskins!  I remember a bumper sticker that said that if a man is circumcised, he is not dealing with a full dick.

The daddies who come here are almost all circumcised themselves, but, bless them, they do their research and say "no more of this." They become the guardians of their boys from that point on. They realize that their own cutting was violent - removing skin that is THAT sensitive without even anesthesia- and that they have to eliminate this barbaric practice. The doctors who do the cutting are all circumcised themselves - and proudly announce that THEIR penises work just fine, thank you very much. If they only knew. The daddies who allow it, or push it, want their sons to look like them. Or they want their sons to suck it up and be a man. Hey, what's a little cutting? 

Are they kidding?

A little boy doesn't look like his father, body-wise, for at least fifteen years or more. For quite some time, there is no hair on his chest, no pubic hair. The little one has no teeth to begin with and no facial hair. By the time the child looks like his dad, if ever he does, he is old enough to be informed as to why the foreskin is so important and why the decision was made not to surgically remove it ( just because there is no anesthesia does not mean it is not a surgical operation). One woman said she has five daughters and not one of them looks the same when they are getting dressed. One has dark pubic hair, one light. Two have large breasts, the others are small-busted. One of my mentor midwives used to ask the dads, "If you had a cleft lip, would you destroy your son's palate so that it would look like yours?"

The "little" "snip" that they think is done when a circumcision is performed is not little and not just a snip. We learn from NoCirc that eliminating the foreskin removes the most sensitive parts of the penis and diminishes sexual feelings for both the male and female and that complications from this surgery are frequent and under reported. The penis of a newborn is  - even if the dad is, um, well hung - very, very small and there are oftentimes very serious, long-term and even life-long consequences of circumcising. Female genital mutilation has been outlawed in the United States, but, as NoCirc reminds us, this law is unconstitutional because it denies equal protection to males.


I had my son cut - I was so uninformed at that time!  I have apologized to him and explained what I have come to know, and, on each anniversary of the circumcision, I apologize to him in my heart. I thought it was medically necessary and that an uncut penis looked, well, weird.  I have come to understand that we have had indoctrinated into our very beings long-held misconceptions and half-truths. Now, when I see a little boy who has been cut, I am so sad. The circumcised penis looks.... wrong, exposed.  I can still hear my son's cry in the next room as he was being cut. "Where is my mother? Why is this happening to me?" The little ones are strapped down and cannot move.  If they don't cry it is not because it didn't hurt - it is because they have gone into shock.

And where was my maternal instinct to protect my son?? Is there another mammal who would sit by - or sanction - the cutting off of their baby's body part? In the bookBonobo Handshake, we hear about the fingers of the little bonobo monkeys being cut, one at a time, to put into soup.  Their mothers have been killed in the name of science, otherwise, trust me, they would have been doing whatever they could to prevent such things from happening to their little ones. Foreskins are used for a variety of "interesting"  "projects" also....

Thank goodness that some of our cultural mores are changing.  A few years ago the circumcision rate shifted so that more boys are left whole than those who are cut - hooray! At some point in our lifetime, boys will no longer be maimed! I think of the little newborns who have to spend their first weeks with a sore, red, sometimes infected penis - with diapers that chafe the area and rub against the raw tissue... and the urine that stings every time he pees. This is no way for a baby to have to spend his first weeks on this earth. There is a book written a while back entitled " Sex As Nature Intended It" -- I think it's too painful (pun intended) for many cut men to read it... but if they did, they would make sure their little boys penises never came close to a knife.  And for the women who read it or one of many other books written to educate the public, they will wish that they had had the information before they allowed their babies to become sacrificial lambs. All the information about circumcision being "safer" and preventing cancer - check this out with Ron Goldman of the CRC or Laurie Evans or Miriam Pollack or Marilyn Milos  - people who have spent many years researching the subject.  There are many organizations now dedicated to information about not-circumcising, and their cumulative voices are being heard. 

Babies arrive here dependent, vulnerable and trusting. To pick them up one day, then put them down and cut off a part of their bodies  -- how can they ever trust again?  How will they know that the next time you pick them up you won't maim them again? Jodi McLauglin, editor of The Compleat Mother, states that when the cutting of the little boys stops, many of the wars among men may cease as well. Violence begets violence. A peaceful life begins, in part, at birth. A gentle birth lasts a lifetime. 

We will be discussing fear and birth and boys and babies and family pressure and retraction of the foreskin (don't!) and all kinds of other subjects in our appointments to come. The prenatal visits become more frequent and as you know, they are all at least an hour long - there is so much to talk abut and we don't rush through anything.  I want you both to leave here feeling heard, understood, and respected. I want to educate/inform people as best I can, to have them check out what I say on their own and to see where they fall in terms of their own choices.  If I continue to be the right midwife for you, I will do everything I can to help this be a healthy pregnancy and smooth, safe birth. If I am not the right midwife for a particular couple, due to my strong views, ("I am opinionated because I am educated" as the saying goes!,) then we can agree to disagree and you can select someone who finds it easier to work with couples who remove the foreskin of their babies.

To begin your thinking about circumcision, please also read the information on the following websites:
http://www.circumcision.org/

http://www.cutthefilm.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miriam-pollack/http://nocirc.org/
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/DOC/end.html
http://www.intactamerica.org
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/07/circumcision_male_genital_muti_1.html
http://www.jewishcircumcision.org/index.htm
http://mgmbill.org/

If you still have any doubt, please find a few videos of the procedure on YouTube.  If you feel you must subject your son to the procedure, you should at least see what you are about to do.  I am sorry that I cannot provide a link for you myself, but I just cannot stomach watching it happen when I know that it is violent, systemically shocking to the infant, overwhelmingly painful, and entirely unnecessary.

You knew when you chose me that this would be my response - we talked about this from the beginning. And so, I offer no apologies, but I do offer, as you also know, much caring and warmth!

Nancy

Recent Article: In the Last Days of Pregnancy

Here is a link to a recent article by Jana Studelska CPM/LM, and a bit to whet your whistle:

"She’s curled up on the couch, waiting, a ball of baby and emotions. A scrambled pile of books on pregnancy, labor, baby names, breastfeeding…not one more word can be absorbed. The birth supplies are loaded in a laundry basket, ready for action. The freezer is filled with meals, the car seat installed, the camera charged. It’s time to hurry up and wait. Not a comfortable place to be, but wholly necessary.

The last days of pregnancy— sometimes stretching to agonizing weeks—are a distinct place, time, event, stage. It is a time of in between. Neither here nor there. Your old self and your new self, balanced on the edge of a pregnancy. One foot in your old world, one foot in a new world.

Shouldn’t there be a word for this state of being, describing the time and place where mothers linger, waiting to be called forward? . . . " read the rest of the article here

featured on Mothering.com

A Moment in Transition - by Alison Groves

A moment in transition....

   The dull ache in my back subsides for a time, but it wont be long, I realize, until I will feel the increasing push and pull of that experience again.

   I place a hand on the window-ledge to steady myself and take a cleansing breath.  The air is suddenly fine and sharp and tastes of antiseptic.  I push myself away from the darkened window, not unlike a swimmer pushing underwater away from the pool edge, trying to gain the extra momentum for the long shuffle to the bathroom door.

   "I have to pee." A voice, fuzzy from inside my head, speaking to no one in particular.  I am beyond exhaustion, and the concept of shifting my weight from standing to sitting drains me more, even in thought.

   "It's just the pressure.", the tinny echo of reason from somewhere outside of me.  And for a moment, I am startled, frantic, but without time to do.  The depth of feeling plunges in around my girth, spreading from the center of my soul and enveloping me into myself.

   Arms embrace me and I slump willingly into them as the power of being surges through me.  My back is spreading outwards, my hips straining the bonds of my skin and the hands there hold me together.

   In.  Out.  In.  Out.  One, two, three....

I am frozen in time, in agony, in power, in fight, in flight , in creation.
Again, the determination of my body's control recedes and leaves me shaking and breathless.

   "You're doing awesome.  You can do this."

   I don't believe them, those voices.  but the sound of it rolls in my head like a resounding mantra and lends me the strength I need to lower the bands of my body, coiled and tight with the promise of exahltation and purpose to the toilet.

   A voice again, this time from the floor, and my focus shifts breifly to the gentle promise of it's words, to the outside of me, and a face swims into view.  I study it hard and resolve to hold my eyes with those in front of me as the heat of the growing pull and push, now familiar to me, brings forth the power again, surging like light, wrapping my body, white-hot and blinding.  I am set on those eyes, that voice, and I moan in bliss and release with the surge.  I hold the eyes, they hold me.

   In.  Out.  In.  Out.  One, two, three...

   The urine makes a slow, burning, drip-drip into the water, the open chasm below me.  There is more, a thickness that has left me, but I am beyond knowing what purpose, what inner meaning it holds.

   I fall forward, not far, stopped short and solid by the expanse of my power and the shoulder in front of me.  That shoulder, connected to the face, those eyes.  The eyes that were my savior a lifetime ago are now my bitterest enemy, my driver, relentless.

   "You can do this.  You are so strong."

   I shudder and brace myself.  A deep breath again and something shifts.  My head is heavy and my tongue is thick.  It's been a breath too many and I feel the power begin, off-beat.

   New, full, strange, starting now at the center of my thighs, driving downwards pulling all I have, all my breath, with it.  I feel the pull between my legs, but I am a being of light now, mastering and mastered by the egotism of my own body.  Unable, willing, able and unwilling.  I don't understand, I don't think, I just do.  All of me tells me to do. 

   My mind yells and fights, "I CAN'T! I CAN'T!" was that outside of me?  My body does. There is no reasoning, only purpose.  No flight, only resurgence and need.

   The moment leaves me.

   And I have sudden clarity.  It is here!  It is now.  I have come.  I have learned and lost, and now I am the power.

   I stand, a sudden movement and my Mind, my Heart and me Body converge in reality.  The power is a part of me, not over me and I am locked in my need.  I push past the voices, the faces of people I have known and now know again.  I have resurfaced and awakened and the farthest reaches of the room are now mine in detail.

   Another moment, frozen, this time as if in crystal.  The bed waits in front of me, blues and whites in contrast with the deep tan and washed-out pink of the walls.  A blue vynol chair with faux wood armrests butts up against the wall, and the lights in the room are diaphanous, lending a yellow-gold tint to it all.  It glows off my skin, behind my eyes.

   I am amazingly aware.  The warm roughness of the linen against my thigh as I move to my side on the bed with urgency and centered calmness.  I am confused and certain of my need as a whole.  I recline like a plump goddess in a 16th century painting, glowing and cherub-like, mysterious and powerful, knowing and needy.

   A woman steps forward to speak, but her words are lost to me in the surge of tidal urgency I now feel,

   "I need..."  is all I can express, and a cool hand slips between my knees.  In a brief opening, I see in detail the knowing in her eyes, mirroring my own.   The nod of her head.

   And I do.

   I be.  I give.  I take.  

   There is a bursting forth and the overwhelming moment of relief and release, warmth and wetness surrounding me.  I burn.  It's too much.  It is the moment when your lover is holding you in thrall and you yearn and despair with the need for the next touch, the next thrust, when the ache is felt in your throat and you raise your hips to force him deeper into you.  To feel the depth that is painful, passionate and powerful.

   It is the push over the edge.  I exist in the heartbeat between pulling away and pushing through, seeking ultimate need and release.  

   Again and again, I build, I need, I see, I am crystalline in knowledge, I am tortured.  I feel this, I can see the faces around me - the table at my bedside, shining with chrome and steel on dark green cloth, alien and understandable, but no less significant than the window open while making love: aware that the sound carries, but raising past the point of caring until it just is.

   I look once into the eyes of the man who stands with me, awed and smiling.

   "You are so beautiful." he mouths the words and I am sent again over the edge, this time to the point of no return.

   A collective breath is held, and un-held  and in a moment of desperate and exuberant need, I feel the pressure spread down my thighs, and I move to accomodate.  I move and I bear down into the depths of my soul.

   The worlds splits in two, in four, into a million, and I split with it.

   An undeniable and primal scream resounds in a great and powerful song from the bottom of the world and erupts in triumph from my throat.

   And in a instant, I am empty.

   I am inside out with anguish.  With relief.  With an emotion that cannot be expressed by any language, in any world beyond the one that is created in my soul at that exact moment.   The world created for the wet, hot, smooth weight of him that lies against my breast.
                    
                                                    I am alive.  I am power.
                                                       I am a mother.

- Alison Groves

Compleat Mother Magazine

Interventions Increase Risk

This article recently appeared in The Atlantic. Take a look!

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-most-scientific-birth-is-often-the-least-technological-birth/254420/

You Want to Give Birth Where? by Michael Robertson

Nancy suggests making printed copies of the following article and giving it to friends and family who express concern about your decision to birth at home!

You Want To Give Birth Where?

By Michael Robertson

Mothering Issue 140, January/February 2007

It was 1999 when my wife, Windy, told me that her pregnant friend Mirm planned to give birth at home. I responded with a rhetorical challenge that she justify this lunacy: "At home? Why? Why in the world?"

We had no children at the time, but we talked that night about our plans, and affirmed our intention that our own baby would someday be born in a hospital, of course. Having babies at home seemed nonsensical, a rebellion against hundreds of years of hard-earned medical experience and technological development, a rebellion that would put two lives and a family at risk for the sake of some crunchy, organic experience. Before modern obstetrics took charge, didn't women and babies regularly die in childbirth? No one can force you to accept an epidural, but you should at least be where a team of doctors can intervene immediately, if required. Otherwise, if something went wrong—if you were at home, the baby halfway out, waiting for an ambulance—how could you live with yourself? Who would take such a risk? For what? Mirm had clearly gone over the edge.

Four years later, I was in a car with my mom when I casually mentioned that Windy and I had decided to have our first child at home. "No, no doctors. Just a midwife and a birth assistant—and me." Her response was restrained, but echoed my own of four years prior.

In the intervening years, Windy and I had completely changed our perceptions of childbirth. For most of that time I hadn't given a second thought to where Windy would give birth—we'd bought a fixer-upper of a home in Washington, DC, and I was consumed with my efforts to make it habitable.

However, owning a home meant that most of our neighbors were no longer university students or single professionals. For the first time, we were surrounded by people our age and older, who either had children or soon would have. At potlucks and chance meetings, we learned that many of the families in our progressive neighborhood had begun with an out-of-hospital birth. It surprised us to see that none of these people seemed to have gone over the proverbial edge. These families included a lawyer, a World Bank manager, a political chief of staff, and a father with a PhD in physics from MIT. In each case we heard their stories firsthand, and in some cases we shared with them our prejudice against homebirth and asked for more information. Along the way we learned that the Washington, DC area has cesarean-section rates that are among the highest in the nation. Windy began reading.

My wife is one of the most independent-minded people I have known. She will latch on to an issue affecting her and study it relentlessly, with a scientist-like curiosity and impartiality, until she reaches a reasoned conclusion. At some point, it became clear to me that Windy was no longer comfortable with our assumption that a hospital birth was best.

Windy began learning about the midwife model of care available at home, at birthing centers, and at some hospitals. Knowing that any decisions to be made regarding pregnancy and delivery were largely hers, trusting her decision-making approach, and knowing that this approach was often circuitous, I tried to give her plenty of space. She did her best to relate what she was learning.

"You don't have to read the whole thing," she would say, "just the part I marked." Off I would go on my morning Metro commute with a book by Henci Goer in my work bag. And another week of "Did you read it?" and "No, not yet" had begun.

I soon sensed a shift in Windy's thinking and tried to head it off. "Our insurance probably won't cover an out-of-hospital birth."

"Yes, they do," she said. "I checked." It was time for me to start paying attention.

In a short time, I came to understand something important: All of my perceptions about childbirth were rooted in a commonly held belief that we could not know until after the birth whether the hospital emergency services we wanted to be close to would be required during the birth. This perception was the biggest obstacle I had to overcome in understanding and accepting out-of-hospital labor and delivery.

I learned that a normal pregnancy in a healthy woman is a reliable indicator of a birth that can be categorized as "a normal physiological event." A midwife would not consent to deliver our baby outside a hospital unless she was satisfied that Windy was healthy and that her pregnancy was progressing normally. If Windy's pregnancy exhibited any of the risk factors midwives screen for, she would give birth in a hospital. Those risk factors include heart disease, high blood pressure, polyhydramnios (too much amniotic fluid), prematurity (delivery before 37 weeks), postmaturity (delivery after 42 weeks), multiple births, baby not positioned to deliver head-first, and placenta problems such as previa (the placenta covers the cervix) or abruption (part of the placenta separates from the uterus). Statistically, both of the following are true: 1) If Windy's pregnancy proceeded without complication, the chance that she or our baby would encounter a difficulty during birth that required hospital care was extremely low; and 2) The likelihood that the hospital setting and routine hospital procedures and interventions might result in a C-section was relatively high.

About the time we were ready to conceive and our fixer-upper was nearly fixed up, we attended preconception information sessions at a reputable birthing center in Bethesda, Maryland, 20 minutes from our home. When Windy became pregnant, we stayed with this midwife practice through the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. We drove there for Windy's prenatal appointments and would often wander upstairs, wondering in which of the three home-like rooms our baby would be born. Everything seemed to be in place. I was happy and looking forward to meeting our first child. Meanwhile, Windy continued reading.

We were in the car. "We could have our baby at home."

"Why?"

"It would be more comfortable."

The homebirth thing still retained for me an association with the wacko fringe. Because birthing a child is an exceptional human experience—a rite of passage into parenthood—birthing a child at home is an exceptional departure from our societal norms. It's not the same as declaring yourself a vegetarian or leaving the barbershop with a Mohawk. Windy was preparing to birth another human being—one incapable of defending its own interests—not only our child, but the grandchild, great-grandchild, and niece of others. Our home did not seem suited to having a baby. "Wait—I thought they don't do homebirths."

"They don't. We'd have to switch to BirthCare in Alexandria."

"Why? No, wait. We know all of these midwives, and you're 20 weeks along. Why change now?"

Windy explained that it wasn't just the physical comfort of our home she anticipated; it was that, combined with the psychological comfort of being at home and not commuting during labor. It was about how being comfortable contributes to a labor that progresses steadily and naturally.

Still, it seemed too radical a change to make halfway through this thing.

"Our lives are going to be more complicated already, just having a kid. Have you thought through all of the . . . " I didn't continue.

She explained that the only practical difference between delivering in a birth center (detached from a hospital) and at home is the commute to and from the center, at a time she would least feel like getting into a car and driving someplace.

"What about the deep Jacuzzi tub you were looking forward to?"

"We can rent one for $200."

Once we'd decided on a homebirth, we had entered the fringe group I had derided. According to the Centers for Disease Control, from 1989 through 1999, only about one in 200 babies was born outside a hospital with a midwife attending. Because this number combines birth-center and homebirths, the number of babies born at home is likely much smaller.

While some family and close friends expressed concern and apprehension at our decision, the response of strangers or acquaintances was often neither concerned nor supportive, but some variation of "Oh my gosh, you/she must be brave; I/we could never do that." This response was maddening because it negated the only important reason for our decision to have a homebirth: We had decided that it was the safest approach for Windy and the baby. Our decision had nothing to do with bravely forgoing anesthesia or making a political statement. But it seemed that any response I might make, however polite, appeared to be a critique of the other person's choice of a hospital birth.

When it came time to sign up for a birthing class, we chose the Bradley Method on the strong recommendation of a trusted neighbor. The first Bradley class began with a graphic video of a natural childbirth. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it. Every subsequent class began this way, and what we'd first perceived as shocking and gory became interesting and clinical. By the fourth session we'd learned enough to watch for the fluid expelled from the baby's mouth as it emerged, squeezed, from the birth canal. We noted that no woman delivering outside of a hospital chose to give birth lying on her back. By class twelve, the birthing videos were anticipated and . . . beautiful. At some point during this class, out-of-hospital labor and delivery became, for us, conventional wisdom—our new reality.

Reading the anxious look on my mom's face, I recalled my own point of view four years earlier. I told her what I had learned about the risks of a hospital birth. I listed the all-too-common sequence of unnecessary medical interventions that lead to cesarean deliveries. I recalled statistics about the prevalence of homebirth in other developed countries. I spoke about the books Windy had read and the classes we had attended. I assured my mom that it wasn't about being at home as much as it was about being away from the hospital. I emphasized the trust we had in Eileen, our midwife-to-be—a calm, capable woman who had successfully delivered hundreds of healthy babies.

Like me four years earlier, my mom had no reference for this kind of thinking. She had not read Ina May Gaskin or Henci Goer. She had not seen numerous films of women giving birth outside of hospitals, or the accompanying pre-labor, in-labor, and postpartum interviews. She hadn't heard women relate firsthand how being on their backs, prohibited during labor from eating or drinking as they pleased, tethered to an IV, and subjected to incessant fetal monitoring, impeded their labor. She hadn't yet seen enough to question the use of medieval-like stirrups.

While she accepted our conclusions, I knew that she could not help but retain some apprehension. At the same time, I found an unexpected value in our conversation. It was not unlike dating a woman for a while, then bringing her home to meet the parents. Invariably, no matter how much time I might have spent with this person alone and in the company of friends, on that evening I would see her in an entirely new context that was often illuminating. In the case of presenting our homebirth decision to my mom, I felt for the first time the gravity of the matter and, despite the confidence I felt in our reasoned decision, I worried at first that at some point Windy and I had become biased and were giving undue weight to evidence that supported an appealing aesthetic over the conventional wisdom and reality I had embraced all of my life. I didn't come from a family of homebirthers.

I considered this for weeks, but ultimately affirmed and reinforced my convictions.

Months later, having labored all over the house, Windy delivered eight-pound, two-ounce Eleanor Lee in our bedroom. My mom was overjoyed and flew out to meet her granddaughter. She was relieved that everything had turned out OK despite our atypical choice. Our experience did not completely sell her on homebirthing, but it developed in her an awareness—and a degree of acceptance—she did not previously have.

Looking back, my transformation from homebirth skeptic to homebirth advocate seems unlikely. In most communities, we are taught from birth that babies are born in hospitals. And because nearly all American babies are born in hospitals, alternatives are marginalized.

Surprisingly, hospital-based obstetrics is a relatively recent concept, but one that has a stranglehold on our culture. Every pop-culture birthing reference I have ever been exposed to assumes—and celebrates—hospital births. Bill Cosby's Dr. Huxtable never woke tired after spending the night delivering babies in people's homes. The only TV show I can recall in which an out-of-hospital birth was successfully depicted is CHiPs, and then only because we knew the mother was in that car because she was en route to the hospital—or was it the episode in which labor came on suddenly, on the disco floor? Regardless, we knew that this character had not intended to give birth anywhere but in the hospital. Oh yeah—in Little House on the Prairie, Doc Baker delivered babies at home in Walnut Grove. But the inference was clear: that was how they did it back then, when they had only oil lamps and no cars. So prevalent is the culturally inculcated link between hospitals and childbirth that many healthy women with low-risk pregnancies are better suited to a hospital delivery because that is the only place they can feel comfortable.

Hospitals are essential places for addressing human physiological problems and damage. But this fact does not make the hospital environment ideal, preferable, or even adequate for a childbirth in which no physiological problems or damage are anticipated. An increased prevalence of out-of-hospital childbirth requires cultural awareness, acceptance, understanding—and, ultimately, cultural preference. Windy and I are fortunate to live in a neighborhood with a microculture that straddles the phases of acceptance and understanding, a neighborhood that has prompted us to learn more. There are surely other communities like ours across the country.

Windy homebirthed another member into our community this past spring. This time, undaunted by first-time trepidation, I took it all in much more carefully. Frances Ann's arrival was not radical or brave, and should not be so rare. On the night of her birthday, for the second time, I watched the miracle of human birth unfold unhindered.

Michael Robertson is a husband to one woman and father to two girls. At home in Washington, DC, he works on the house, writes, and dreams of sailing.