Home Birth in North Carolina

After our wonderful birthing experience at Women's Birth & Wellness Center, I began thinking about what our next birth will be like. Obviously its great that the birth center is an option for us here, however it was so much like birthing at home, my husband and I wouldn't mind leaving out the 30 minute+ drive each way.

*insert - I must say I'm BLESSED to have a husband that TRULY wants me to birth however I want, and has never once fought me or debated me on our out-of-hospital first birth. EVER.*

Well, I started looking into it a little. Of course we want to purchase a home first, especially since I DEFINITELY want another water birth...and I think they frown on full-sized blow up pools in apartments haha. I also know a few people that had home births after hospital and birth center births and they, like me, successfully avoided interventions (I probably would have been termed "failure to progress" since Jayden was born about 4 hours after I hit 9.5 cm dilated - had a lip - and most hospitals give you a 2 hour window at that point. Ironically I only pushed for 45 minutes once I started feeling "pushy".) Well, I'd been listening to the homebirth conversations around me since one of my friends is again pregnant and planning one, when I realized what I was hearing...there are TWO OPTIONS for midwives here. That's right, you counted it. TWO. FOUR, if you count the ENTIRE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA. And of course no physician will even attend an out-of-hospital birth, much less one at home.

Well wow. Talk about limited choices. Of the certified nurse-midwives who can legally attend home births in NC there's Deb O'Connell of Carrboro Midwifery, though her site seems to be down at the moment, so I'm not certain she's available in the Cary/Raleigh/Morrisville area that I'm in. There's also Nancy Harman (nwharman@gmail.com) in Bear Creek near Sanford and Siler City; Donna Galati of Monarch Midwifery in Fayetteville; and Olivia Marshburn of Midwifery Services in Hampstead in Pender County (nowhere near me). Let's recount: Deb, Nancy, Donna, Olivia. FOUR. And I think my only options are Deb & Nancy, unless I can get Donna here (who mentions on her website that she serves Fayetteville & Raleigh, probably since there is a huge natural parenting community here).

Which got me thinking...I've been trying to pinpoint what to do once my nurslings are older, what to study next. I've got an undergraduate degree in Boichemistry, which I loved...but I've been slowly feeling that tug back to the medical world, and especially towards the breastfeeding and natural parenting communities that are so alive here. Hmmm...what better way that to go against my years-old anti-passion and get my nursing degree...so that I can then get an advanced degree in midwifery! I also want to get the IBCLC certification (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant) so that I can help other nursing Mommas the way I was helped so much in our early days..and help empower them to avoid those nasty pitfalls of false/misleading/uninformed/inaccurate information like we were given.

So, to recap again - I want to become a homebirth midwife in NC and an IBCLC that does house calls. MAYBE works part time for an institution, to instill some true understanding into the help given to brand new moms, instead of handing out nipple shields every five minutes. Now, I've figured out where to begin for each, just haven't figured out which to do first. I also know that both will take years...which is perfect really, because I don't really want any more full-time leave the house work until all our nurslings are no longer nursing, or at least not as often and can go hours in between/eat solids. So. What do YOU think?  Fighting the good fight for informed parenting and breastfeeding as a mother is one thing, but its so much more potent as a provider. I've been called to childbirth my entire life, and of all the things I've wanted to do/be, this finally sounds and feels right. Oh yeah, and throw in a little photography (pregnancy/family/birth/breastfeeding) in there :-) I even helped my Barbies "give birth" as a little girl, and start their families, all with lots of Barbie babies haha. 

I obviously got a bit off topic in the middle there, but the bottom line here is that we NEED more homebirth midwives in North Carolina, and I want to be one of them. It's a shame that as I look forward to my second birth (NO, we ARE NOT pregnant yet lol) I have maybe 2-3 options for a safe assisted home birth in my area, and only 4 in the entire state. And while I commend the women that have unassisted births, that's not quite right for us right now.

What options are in YOUR area?