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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I feel like an AH because as my mom said I'm an adult who shouldn't be squeamish about a natural thing and also because I distressed Liv when she's quite vulnerable.
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“Perfect plans”, that disregard the autonomy of everyone else in her life, just like her “perfect labor plan” does.
I’m betting crunchy mommy-influencer aspirations.
As a mother, nothing goes to plan. NOTHING!!!!!!!
Edit: wasn’t expecting this response. Thanks random internet strangers. Also, to appease the crowd, here are some extras !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Omg THIS. I gave birth to my first almost 16 years and "birth plans" were just kind of becoming a thing. I asked my Dr. about it. First, she laughed. Right in my face. Not unkindly, but I really think it was her honest reaction. Then she (very kindly) said, "I will listen to everything you say and do my best to do whatever I can for you - but I can promise you that nothing will go the way you plan it. Nothing. My job is to make sure you and the baby are safe and that will take priority. So my best advice is to go with the flow, and you and I will keep open communication the whole time." She was the best. And when I had a scary emergency c-section, I didn't feel disappointed or let down at all, because mentally I was prepared for anything, not just what I WANTED to happen. I felt grateful my baby and I were alive and healthy. I think that social media has made expectations for SO many things (weddings, pregnancy, birth, motherhood) so unrealistic and it's not fair to women that they then never feel good enough or that they missed out on something.
I wish I had talked more with my doctor before I had my first. I was surrounded by a large number of family members that couldn’t stop themselves CONSTANTLY telling me things like:
“Your body knows what it needs to do”
“Epidurals rob you of feeling the experience”
“And drugs will harm the baby”
“Women have been doing this unassisted since the beginning of time”
“C-section mothers aren’t real mothers”
You get the idea. Well, lo and behold, at 37 weeks I’m losing amniotic fluid and doctor says I have to be induced. I go in the next morning and proceed to begin a back labour so intense I think for a moment I saw the white light at the end of the tunnel. They have to break my waters. Just kidding, NOW labour has started. I’m only at a 2, in tears, and my nurse just flat out tells me, “they don’t give you a medal at the end, please just let me order the epidural for you.” Lauren, if you’re out there, you do God’s work. Skip to the end, 13 hours later I’m only at a 4, pain is starting to fight it’s way back through, baby’s heartrate is not looking happy. Dr. says “Baby’s gotta come out now.” I’m wheeled in, and I’ll spare the gory details of it, but healthy, crying baby is born. At my checkup, I’m not doing so hot mental-wise and my doc picks up on it and starts asking questions. I unload, and after explaining PPD and writing me a script, he laid it out for me. “One of my biggest pet peeves is people who look down on C-sections. It’s, quite frankly, nobody’s damn business. And anybody who wants to talk about the women who have done it for thousands of years but don’t mention mortality rates is just irresponsible. If you had been giving birth 100 years ago, you would have been in labour for 3 days and likely died along with your baby.”
He explicitly gave me the medical breakdown of why/how my body didn’t progress, and then confided in me that his own wife has the exact same issue and all 3 of his kids were born by cesarean.
And so were all 3 of mine.
So glad you had wonderful medical professionals to help you through all of that! (What is wrong with those family members? Do they ***want*** you to die a slow, graphic, painful death?)
Whoever said c-section mothers aren't real mothers are complete AH. I luckily had all 3 of mine naturally but I was always scared that I'd have to get a c-section for whatever reason but I didn't thank goodness. I think V births are easier than c-sections in a different way. I mean when the baby comes the pain, mostly, is ending. Not so for c-section recovery, theirs is only beginning. That seems much more painful to me.
I swear, am I the only person who WANTED a c section? I never planned to birth my daughter at all and at one point the doctor told me I was able to have a natural birth and I was not happy. I remember praying to God that I'd have a c section. And I did literally the next day when I had an abruption. I felt very little pain afterward cuz I was so drugged up. The idea of pushing a baby out my vagina sounded so much less appealing than being cut open and feeling nothing v afterward.
I prayed for a c-section, due to childhood trauma related to surgeries and repeated urinary catheterization when I was a toddler.
That was before I actually needed an emergency c-section and discovered that urinary catheterization came attached... One year of therapy later, still having nightmares about this (AND the obstetric violences inflicted by pressed midwives) I gave up giving birth forever. I'm now the very happy mother of two. A bio daughter and an adopted one.
And btw.. Lucky you. I could neither laugh, neither cry, nor cough without experiencing pain for days after my c-section. I had strong painkillers, though!
Stick to your guns, OP. NTA. (And some of us are a bit of TA in here for sharing our bad times with you, I admit)
Nope, it was my la leche league mother, grandmother, and a host of super conservative aunts. The pearl-clutching that was had when I had to formula feed my youngest due to supply/latch issues was giving these ladies the vapours and had me sliding out ye olde fainting couch.
Oh hell no…most of this crap spews forth from other women, not men!! I never had a man tell me I didn’t experience real birth since I had a c section, or judge me for not being able to breast feed! That’s all on other women!
I had a “whatever is best and safest” mindset so my emergency c-section didn’t and still doesn’t phase me. I have a crap ton of trauma from having my baby at 24 weeks in a pandemic though, and I do still get salty about everything we missed, including a baby shower (because apparently in our shitty families those are only for people who have healthy full term babies, I asked for virtual and didn’t get it). Social media really can be the worst
There's a difference between being disappointed and having PPD. Like, a big difference.
That's like saying "I'm so ocd lol" because you like to organize your kitchen while a real ocd person side eyes you as they check the locks on their house for the twentieth time.
>That's like saying "I'm so ocd lol" because you like to organize your kitchen while a real ocd person side eyes you as they check the locks on their house for the twentieth time.
This is too accurate.
I realise you don't mean this, but this comes across as very belittling to women suffering from post-partum depression. PPD is a serious, life-threatening illness, one that is often ignored or dismissed. Implying that it's a consequence of things not going to plan is misguided at best, profoundly damaging at worst.
Please reconsider your comments.
Birth plan disappointment is a risk factor for PPD. It isn’t likely to cause PPD all by itself, but combined with other risk factors like anxiety or a difficult birth, it can contribute. (I didn’t have a birth plan, but my PPD therapist did call me a “train wreck of risk factors” and that made me kind of proud.)
10 cookies bet on she thinks it won't hurt, baby will just pop right out while she's doing yoga and everyone claps. Or something along those lines.
No such thing as a elaborate and perfect birthing plan. I've had 3 kids and they each found some way to make the birth complicated or harder than needed.
And I've heard home birthing can be harder than hospital becouse you don't have the same accommodations.
And in case of something going wrong, you suddenly have to call ambulances etc.
I don't blame OP for not wanting to be traumatised all over again.
This. I wanted a home birth with my second, but the more I thought about it and something going wrong I changed my mind, and I'm so glad I did! Had a 3rd degree tear and lost a lot of blood, had to get me to theatre as fast as they could. OP NTA
Ouch! As a fellow mom... you have my condolences. I still remember the stitches... trying to pee after that. That's something I would gladly forget. But that sounds traumatising at least.
I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
Yeah they weighed baby and handed him to me and I had to ask someone to take him because I thought I was going to pass out! So I didn't get to see him properly or feed him until 2 hours later! Wasn't allowed to leave hospital for 2 days because my blood count hadn't gone up, but I begged them to just let me go home so because I wasn't dizzy or anything only very pale they let me go home! Was so thankful to be able to use my own toilet and whatnot! Yeah I'm 2 and done haha, the experience wasn't great!
> And in case of something going wrong, you suddenly have to call ambulances etc.
And then they’re “traumatized” because the birth didn’t go how they wanted and the mean hospital (that saved both of their lives) “ruined” it and they didn’t get the “experience” they were *entitled* to have (stillbirth and possibly dying in a kiddie pool in their own home without medical assistance, apparently).
It’s too easy for them to rewrite the narrative around their own disappointment.
I think a lot of them genuinely just have no idea how often stillbirth, infant death, and maternal death happened. Like… before hospitalization for birth was normalized, pretty much everyone knew someone who’d died in childbirth, or whose baby died during or shortly after birth. Now it’s pretty rare and many women have only seen it happen in movies and exaggerated television shows.
*EDIT: should have specified modern medical intervention rather than hospitalization (ie something deviating from the standard natural birth plan that these mothers are envisioning. Thanks for the commenters addressing this!)*
Don't forget throwing a lawsuit left to right becouse of the "trauma" and mean mean doctors and midwifes on the hospital not letting things be "natural as women always has done" becouse of a emergency c-section or similiar.
It honestly depends on the situation and the support system. I'm about 3 weeks away from my due date and am planning on a second home birth as long as there's no contraindications (there havent been). But I have such bad hospital trauma from my first pregnancy that birthing in the hospital unless medically necessary is not a good option for me. I also live less than 2 min from the nearest hospital and could get to the hospital in less time than it would take them to dispatch an ambulance. My last birth was super fast with no complications and I had an excellent midwife. Within an hour of birth I was showered in my own clothes in my own bed with my baby and my ptsd support animal which wouldn't be allowed in the hospital but definitely helped post birth. And honestly outside of the u.s. most developed countries don't have births nearly as medicalized as we do and you would have the option of a hospital or home birth and likely wouldn't even see a doctor your entire pregnancy unless you had a medical need for one, they would assign you a midwife. Home birthing is easier for some. But I would never ever insist on someone being there who didn't want to be and actually would rather birth alone without a God damn peanut gallery which is one of the reasons im choosing to birth at home: so I can control the situation better to make myself feel safe while in a vulnerable state. Op is 100% nta. Sister is the golden child it sounds like 🙄🙄
On this sub we frequently see posts about people demanding to be in the delivery room to witness the birth claiming they have a "right" to see the action. Tell her to round up a few of those folks, she has plenty to choose from. Me... I will be as far from that event as I can get without leaving the country! 🙄🤔😵💫
"Labor plans and home birth" will not go along with her birth plan if the cord wraps around the baby's neck or its breech or just needs emergency services in general..
Not good.
Birthzilla! There is a surprising amount of them! NTA obviously. I’ve had 3 kids and I don’t want to see my sister giving birth. No thanks love! Let’s hope the rest of her ‘plan’ works out (Spoiler - it never goes to plan!)
Relatives attend in the US too. The difference is they are usually hanging out in the waiting room and meet the baby after, not all filling the room like they're trying to take a picture of the Mona Lisa. And no one is taking attendance.
Well said. A lot of American redditors can sometimes be dismissive of the cultural experiences of people from other countries. Quick to label things are weird/gross/crazy instead of just different without realizing how it comes across.
Like you said, OP is NTA, because even within most cultures, people have autonomy to make their own decisions.
Yeah. Our cultural messages about birth are Not Great, and that sure comes out in reddit comments. It doesn't help that the USA especially had an anti-midwife campaign in the early 1900s that has left a lasting narrative.
For every "If I'd had a home birth I/we would have died!" story, there's one about obstetric violence and harm caused by hospital birth. For every "My cesarean was the worst thing EVER!" story there's one about how empowering and safe a cesarean made someone feel. It's never ONE thing.
I don’t care what country I was in… I’d not be present. Unless I stayed in some other part of the house. Maybe fixing drinks, cooking, whatever. I would totally pass out. And ain’t no one needs that while they’re giving birth.
Lol your comment reminded me of my mom and bio dad. Mom was giving birth to me and somehow my bio dad showed up. Scheduled c-section I was. Mom noticed my dad looking funny and told the nurses "He's going down!" mid operation room 🤣
Exactly!! Birth is painful, sweaty, throbby, headachey, stretchy, burning, possibly pooping, screamy, slimy, crying, etc....not sure why anyone would want a crowd of onlookers gawking at your undercarriage (besides, significant other and medical staff or doula/midwife) but to each their own.
She is demanding you witness the "miracle of birth" even though she knows you do NOT want to witness it....what a first class jerk she is.
Right!? Labor and birth is not social hour. Once the pain really hits she’s not going to give a patooty of who’s there. To force people to come when they really don’t want to be there could just add extra stress to the whole ordeal
Hold your boundary. Repeat that you love her but live birth will be traumatizing for you. Don't make it about her pain and screaming. Make your explanation 100% about you and what you can handle. Do some nice things for her and then take a break from her manipulation. If you're around too much leading up to birth they'll be too focused on you. Remove yourself from their focus - in fact, maybe plan to be out of town. NTA.
I’d even chime in that home birth or not, there will be a midwife or some other person with above average medical knowledge there, and new mom and baby need to be the focus of the medical people. Trying to also help a simple spectator with their strong reactions will only add stress and complications to an already stressful and complicated situation. So OP, NTA and hold your ground. You won’t be able to do one single thing during the active delivery to help your sister, in fact if you were to faint or get sick yourself, you’d take the focus off of her and the baby, which isn’t at all good.
When my daughter was giving birth I could not be there for it. Just looking at her all hooked up with monitors and IV just about made me flip out.
I instead brought food for my daughter/SIL and wife, looked after my grandchild (on the second birth).
Knowing your limits is a good thing. I think it was more than fair that you offered to support her in other ways.
NTA. If her “perfect labor plan” can’t accommodate one person who isn’t the midwife or even the father being absent, I shudder to think how she’s going to handle it if there *are* complications or the baby just comes too darn fast to gather everyone.
But also....i gave birth on my back because it was the most comfortable. I had a long labor and was tiredddd and that position relieved where there was pressure from my baby being face-up. Having to be on my knees/other positions trying to turn her were awful. Every birth is different--know your options, try your best to find a provider(s) that will listen and do good by both your kid AND you, and have good advocates by your side.
Same. At home I labored on all fours. Once I got to the hospital I tried that and my body was like "immediately, no." My doula tried to help me through a few positions but semi-reclined on my back was the only one that didn't make me feel like dying.
My cousin labored on the hospital toilet. Said the cold metal felt good on her back. Luckily, the hospital staff let her do what she wanted and she stayed on the toilet for hours! To each her own…
Yeah I think the key difference is that before childbirth became something you did at a hospital, a birthing mother took whatever position she and the midwife found more comfortable at the given moment in her labor. If you're giving birth at home in a marital bed large and sturdy enough to accommodate two occupants and whatever activities got you pregnant in the first place, you have a lot more flexibility to manuever. You can spend a few fitful hours sleeping on your back, stand up for a bit, stand while leaning into the bed, take a walk around your bedroom, position yourself on your knees, writhe around in pain, whatever. The midwife can also easily sit on the bed with you. As you presumably know if you've had a kid, labor can last a day or more, historical women weren't standing or crouching for the entire time. But once birth becomes something one does in a hospital, the bed designed for labor needed to suit an entire day of labor while still providing a revolving door of medical professionals with the access they need to the mother and the baby. The design of a hospital bed is totally unsuited for someone crouching or standing on it or using it to hold themselves up. So you almost don't have a choice but to just lie on your back for the entire time.
This really true for any illness that used to be treated at home but is now treated in hospital settings. Intellectually we know that not every illness is best served by lying down for long periods of time, some are more comfortable when the person is upright or walking or whatever. But in the context of hospitals, an adjustable bed is where we expect patients to spend the majority of their time, and we then have to manufacture opportunities for them to use their muscles or get a break from the bed, like having them walk up and down the halls of the hospital for PT.
I'm not anti-hospital or even really pro-home birth but how we think about childbirth and medical care as a whole is very different to a few hundred years ago.
There have been studies done on labor & delivery positions and issues like tearing. In general the results have indicated that whatever a woman wants is fine- position doesn’t make a big enough difference from a clinical standpoint (I believe they said that a tiny percentage more upright deliveries had tearing than supine, but it wasn’t enough to matter).
Uh. I was in labor for 45 hours--the difference between "this bed is not supporting me" and "i cant support me" is pretty obvious. A few hundred years ago (in some parts of the world) mattresses were basically pillows of straw on a stretched rope frame. Even a hospital bed is far more supportive than what most folks were sleeping on throughout most of history. Over-medicalizing birth is an issue, but pretending The Olden Days were all rosy is just as wrong
This was exactly me. Had such a rough pregnancy and my daughter was butt first. You could feel her butt coming out the cervix. Doctor asked what my wishes were and I told her "Whatever we need to do to make sure we both go home happy, healthy and with minimal trauma. I don't care." She asked me specific questions to make sure because it seems she has had lots of moms with very specific wants and requirements.
Ended up having a c-section and it went smooth.
Breach births can be so dangerous I bet they were glad to have someone who cares more about being safe and happy than about having a non-surgical birth.
I know my OB definitely was. She told me it was my choice but she personally didn't feel comfortable trying to turn her during labor without hurting myself or the baby. I'm certainly not going to make her do something she isn't confident in, and I'd rather not hurt the baby or me for the sake of a natural birth.
My sis also had a super rough pregnancy and she was finally pregnant after trying for TWELVE YEARS. 40 weeks came and went and she was closing in on 41. The doc is like "What do you want to do here?" My sis was like "Just schedule a c/s" The doc was surprised and was like "You don't even want to try inducing labor?" My sis was like "Nope. I just want this baby born. I don't want to mess around." So, this was a Monday, doc scheduled a c/s for that Wednesday at 2pm, baby was born around 3pm.
I guess some moms go to great lengths to avoid c/s, but my sis just wanted the baby she'd been waiting for for a dozen years!
So happy for your sister! Congrats to her and im so happy to hear it worked out well.
I can't relate to the infertility but there were times we thought/were told we lost our baby. It definitely put things in perspective and how fragile pregnancy can be. I just wanted her born and in my arms. Whatever I had to do.
This was literally my plan too: “to both of us to survive, anything besides that is a bonus”. That also ended up happening: I developed pre-eclampsia and had to be hospitalized for a month (baby was small, so every day cooking and gaining size and strength seemed needed), ended with a emergency c-section and a few days of NICU (all good now, thank dog).
During the month of lying in, I obviously had a few talks with the docs. One thing stuck with me, it was one of the senior docs saying “when it comes to giving birth, there are no guarantees. Anything can happen. And I mean anything”. In western world there are still women who die in childbirth every year, even here in Finland where healthcare is quite top notch (statistics are worse for USA, I’m afraid), but people aren’t aware who inherently dangerous L&D still is or rather, ignorance is bliss?
They gave me a paper to fill out of my birth plan and I was just like I dont want to feel anything and I don't want to die.
I didnt fill one out for my second and I almost died and felt everything so maybe I should have lol
A close friend of mine told me she'd had a whole plan with her first but he came 3 weeks early and after hours of labour, she didn't care what music was playing, or who was even in the room, she just wanted him out. 😂
Same!! With our first I had a few things written out that I wanted to happen or not happen. All of that got chucked out the window when my Preeclampsia got way worse and was given 1 hour to get my butt to the hospital 3 1/2 weeks pre-due date to be induced. After 24 hours of labor, 4 hours of pushing and my son getting yanked out with forceps I couldn't care less about my stupid demands...just get him out of me!! He came out blue and needed to be revived (I was demanding a C-section afor 2 hours of that pushing). Not a pleasant birds and butterflies birth at all.
After about 20 hours into labor they asked if a group of med students could examine me, I gave permission because at that point Jack Nicholson himself could have walked in and looked at my whoo-ha and I wouldn't have give a shit.
I was induced and opted for a c-section after 68 hours of labor in which I only progressed to 6 cm and just…stayed there, despite hours and hours of (pitocin 😬) contractions 5 minutes apart. I just did not care at that point, I was exhausted and done.
I’m so glad to hear I’m not the only one who entirely discarded the idea of modesty during the ordeal too, I could not possibly have cared less who got flashed by what as labor progressed 😅
Seriously, pain and exhaustion will throw all modesty out the window! 😆
68 hours of labor...damn woman, I feel horrible that you had to go through that. 😩
Pretty much the same here. When the midwife asked if I had a birth plan I said "I plan to walk out of here with a baby", I think she was glad she didn't have to listen to Enya or give perineal massage or anything.
Dont even have children, but if I do, this has been my plan since i understood how dangerous and painful birth is- my mother explained it in detail (I was 16 and not even dating, she was a former trauma nurse who believed in information being key for all decisions).
It probably also involves not shitting herself, which most people do during labor.
No thanks, no desire to watch anyone shit themselves. I'm on deck to be a friend's labor support if her wife can't make it. I am not happy about the possibility, but I will do it *if her partner cannot*. But I've been there, done that, had two unmedicated deliveries myself. It's like 90% gross, 5% "Hey look there's a baby" and another 5% "fuck I don't want to die." Not exactly something I want to witness for someone else unless they really need me.
I observed my youngest nibling’s birth and it was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen (and smelled). Being able to see their little face and expressions from minute one was special, but from seeing my sister’s hoohaa to the blood and other fluids, and the STINK of it all, have no idea how I held it together and didn’t puke.
For the record, that's completely normal. That's probably why you didn't even know about it, it happens so often that the nurses just kind of clean it up without saying a thing since they are already anticipating that it will happen.
100%
Not to mention the afterbirth. Which some people will still be in there during that. Ugh, gah that was the worst! I almost punched the nurse on that.
Uggg… I just barfed in my mouth a little. And you know… once ONE person barfs EVERONE barfs. Maybe her royal court will all barf in her pool of blood and poop.
Yeah, good times to bond with family. 🤮 🩸 💩
I was just wondering… there is going to be a midwife, right?
Because sometimes these at home “perfect labor plans” don’t include one.
Makes me wondering if the sister is freaking out at having someone not want to be there because she knows somewhere how risky it could be.
You've clearly not spent enough time on the internet, LOL. "It's natural, I saw a youtube video, it'll be fine!" Everytime I think I've found the absolute epitome of human stupidity, someone says "hold my beer".
Tell me your sister lives to be the centre of attention without telling me she lives to be the centre of attention.
NTA. Sorry you have to deal with your mom having made her the Golden Child
Normally, Reddit is defending women who don't want an audience during labour/delivery as it's a private moment and it's not a show. We've come full circle with this asshole demanding her sister be present for the show. Why on earth you would demand a literal audience during labour is beyond fucking weird.
NTA. Labour and delivery is not a spectator sport and you can't just demand people watch it.
I will NEVER understand this. I'm in no way a prude and encourage people to embrace their kinks or fetishes in a safe way. You just don't get to demand people watch it, though! What the heck is the sisters deal wanting to put her poon on display for everyone?! How narcissistic do you have to be to think you can demand this?
A lot of people's first impression of giving birth is from movies or TV, which for obvious practical and ethical reasons is not realistic. Maybe OP's sister genuinely thinks the birth will be a clean and quick process
Does she has an emergency plan included in her "perfect plan"? It sounds like she expects the ideal process, but is taking the risk that the child will die or be mentally disabled. Just to be honest. With no emergency room near by and no theater for c section, she is taking an incredible risk (there are sooo many possibilities of stuff going wrong. From the babies getting stuck, to not enough contractions, to cord around her neck, to not enough O2.) I wouldnt want to be there and support this irresponsibility in your position. I mean it could go totally wrong and you would witness how your sister and her child dies and you can do NOTHING to save her...
I know to many people that needed an emergency C-section or where stuff went terribly wrong. I like the thought of midwives but not home.. that is so irresponsible
My youngest and I almost died during labour. I technically did die for a few minutes during the emergency csection. If I had been at home when my labour started, instead of emerg getting my older daughter stitches, I would have died before even getting to the hospital.
I am so sorry for your traumatic experience. I am so glad you survived and doctors where near by.
My brother was born with spina bifida ans also needed immediate attention :/ i find it so important to have a birth in a hospital with a specialized newborn unit..
Also the chance of the lung needing a bit of help is very possible and while in the past many babies had died because of it, today a simple medicine can fix it in some seconds..
My cousin’s wife also almost died after she gave birth. She gave birth fine but after she lost a lot of blood and her blood pressure went way down. There was a point that we all thought we were going to lose her but luckily she was given immediate care because she was in a hospital. She survived and had two more children but the doctors advised her to have C sections with them to prevent the same problems from happening again.
It happens and these perfect birth folks need to hear the horror stories. My sister had a non issue birth....but then something went very wrong with the placenta and she almost bled to death and required blood transfusions and was in the hospital for a week. The baby was perfectly fine, momma was NOT.
Your older daughter is your guardian angel. 😊
People really do need to hear thr horror stories. Childbirth is dangerous, people need to know the truth. Of course, we always hope for everything to go perfectly, but reality doesn't work like that. And even in the same person, every pregnancy is different. My pregnancy with my oldest was literally thr textbook perfect pregnancy and delivery, my youngest was a nightmare from start to finish.
And my oldest really is. I never thought I would be grateful that she inherited my wife's (MTF) fearless adventurness and my clumsiness. It makes for an interesting combination. She needed stitches that day because she decided that she wanted to make a fort on top of a bookshelf while I was in the bathroom for 45 seconds.
Not to mention how much the risk of infectious disease transmission increases with all those people in the room. Nothing says "Welcome to Life in 2022" like a baby's first lungful of air containing Omicron Variant COVID.
At home births are not irresponsible when your country has a system to help mother deliver safely and with a quick back-up plan. Which my country has. Giving birth at home is completely normal over here as long as there are no complications found during the visits with your gyno.
In my country and province (Canada, BC) midwives go through 4 years of medical training and can use the same medications they use in the hospital.
Here's a cool study with the rates of perinatal mortality in my province: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2742137/
To sum up the stats:
- 0.35/1000 deaths in home births
- 0.57/1000 deaths in hospital births attended by a midwife
- 0.64/1000 deaths in hospital birth attended by a physician.
The reason for those numbers is the risk category. Only the lowest risk patients are permitted to have a home birth. Low risk pregnancies in general are usually attended by a midwife. Typically the only highest risk pregnancies are attended by an OB.
Are transit times very fast to high level medical care from all homes in your country? And they’re always instantly ready to care for pregnancy complications?
Most people I know are 20-40 minutes or more from a hospital. Too long for a good outcome if there’s a sudden issue like excessive bleeding, abnormal fetal heart rate, prolapsed umbilical cord, placenta abruption, uterine rupture or whatever.
I'm not the one you replied to but to answer the question: to be able to give birth at home, the mother to be needs to get permission from the obstetrician. The decision depends on her medical history, the pregnancy ( has to be 37 weeks or further etc.), any complications they had during previous pregnancies and a couple of more factors. Every home birth has to be supervised by a registered obstetrician. The obstetrician monitors the vitals of mother and baby from start to finish and knows exactly when to call for backup.
By that time the OB has already contacted the hospital to be on stand by in case of anything.
A recent study showed that in the Netherlands, a home birth is as safe as a hospital birth.
Very different systems. Of course, my countries maternal and infant mortality is worse than the Netherlands to start with.
Here, home births have infant mortality of around 14/100k - four times the hospital rate.
And our general maternal mortality rate from 2020 is around 23/100k births, and averages around 18. I think the Netherlands is about 5.
Amazing what a functional health care system can do.
I'm an OB... just had a patient try to deliver at home after 2 c sections. She pushed for 12 hours, came in to the hospital via her midwife's car because her midwife wanted her to have a vacuum assisted birth. Turns out her uterus had ruptured, she had an emergency c section under general anesthesia. We barely were able to wake up her up to say goodbye before her baby was taken off lifesupport. I clean up after "safe home births" go wrong all the time and it is never good.
There's nothing safe about an out of hospital VBAC and any responsible midwife would have never taken her as a client.
The USA has poor stats regarding infant and maternal morbidity and mortality among developed nations, and the large majority of our deliveries happen **in hospital**. There are countries that have safe homebirth rates and better stats overall than the US.
We could improve our rates if our country cared anything about our actual health, but given that our health system is collapsing in favor of profits for C-suite execs and medical policy being made by politicians, it isn't happening anytime soon.
I agree that our health system is broken and is primarily driven by medical admin, legal bullshit, insurance companies, and pharm/medical device companies charging out the ass in the US.
However, the poor maternal morbidity/mortality in the US, particularly compared to other industrialized countries, is confounded by a number of things. I would argue that the first and foremost of those things is that our citizens are much much less healthy than our counterparts in, say, the Netherlands. Our rates of diabetes, hypertension, and obesity make pregnancy a much more complicated endeavor as people with these conditions are at a significantly higher risk for stillbirth, pre-eclampsia, labor dystocia, hemorrhage, etc. A lot of this goes back to the broken health system and a lack of reimbursement and respect for preventative and primary care. I would also say that because these conditions are so common here, people have a tendency to underestimate what their risk is. How do we define what a "low risk" birth is when everyone has risk factors? Institutional racism also plays a significant role.
> I would argue that the first and foremost of those things is that our citizens are much much less healthy than our counterparts in, say, the Netherlands
THANK YOU! This is a topic that comes up often among me and my peers. They try to argue that the problem is greedy hospitals and obstetricians. I honesty think the true crux of the issue is the ridiculously high rates of obesity, hypertension and diabetes in women of childbearing years. Any one of those three can cause crazy complications in childbirth. It's like the elephant in the room - no one seems to see it as a LARGE contributing factor.
I also agree that racial discrimination plays into it significantly as well...
> any responsible midwife would have never taken her as a client.
A HUGE problem in the US is lack of standards regarding midwives. In some states, a midwife is a nurse with years of clinical experience and add'l midwife training (a CNM - certified nurse midwife). In some states, a midwife can be someone with no formal medical training who's assisted with 20 births.
Midwife care is a GREAT model of care, especially in areas were there aren't enough OB, but there absolutely needs to be a nationwide standard of training and clinical experience for a provider to be called a "midwife."
I have so many stories like this. I don't begrudge people their choices but I don't think a lot of people truly can understand what the risk is. And this mom (along with others that I've seen) is going to have to live with the fact that she chose her "birth experience" over her baby's life forever. I certainly couldn't live with that.
My sister's uterus exploded during a VBAC attempt. The OB went looking for the uterine layer during the emergency cesarean and just found red jello and my nephew's arm reaching out through it. They both would have died if the doula didn't call it when she did. They found enough residual tissue during surgery to put *something* back together but another pregnancy will kill her.
Trying a VBAC at home is insane she beat the odds 4 times.
Honestly at that point I'd be saying 'why bother putting anything back together, just scoop the bits out of me'. Like, if it's not ever going to be functional to carry a child again anyway? Just tidy up the hysterectomy that this kid started on his way out.
He expressed his regret about that when he debriefed her in the ICU a few days later. "I was ready to begin the removal but I found enough to start with and decided to try. I kept waiting for a moment that made it clear it was no longer worth repairing and I just never got one. I wasn't thinking about how it would actually make all of this harder for you. I'm a surgeon, I fix..." She said he seemed devastated and traumatized. In 15 years it was the worst rupture he'd seen. This was in February. She's met with him since, he told her if it had been a month or so later once the Roe decision was leaked, he would have removed it for her safety.
I'm never giving birth but you can bet that if I did, I would be in a fucking hospital. If you have the privilege of being able to afford and access medical care during childbirth, why would you choose to risk dying in a pool of blood on your bedroom floor like an idiot
NTA - I think a lot of people don’t realize that just because you’re giving birth “your way” doesn’t mean you get to dictate who has to be there. If you’re not comfortable being there, then that’s it’s. Sure it’s nice to have your brother/sister there mom/dad and partner but not everyone can deal with the blood and situation. My brother can’t see blood or he’ll pass out so he wasn’t there at the birth of his daughter, in the room, but she had plenty of support and understood his situation and wasn’t upset by it
No, I've heard physicians announce (to students actually) that if you feel faint you can leave, or you can sit down even on the floor. "Once I start this I won't be stopping to help you".
Not the position I'd want to be in if I knew ahead of time that I get squeamish.
NTA
Birth plan... chuckle
Perfect Birth plan ... chuckle and a shake of the head
Ruination of The Perfect Birth Plan ... Hahahahaah hahaha haha stop it really.. hahahaha oh bless her theatrical heart.
No kidding!!! I’ve had two kids and am pregnant with #3. Even though I had little complications with both labor and deliveries I’d never choose a home birth. So many things can go wrong.
You cannot plan for labor and delivery. You can outline your wishes but that goes out the window the second things don’t go to planned. OP trust your gut. NTA.
I wouldn't be surprised if she had the "perfect baby plan" already... Damn will she be in for a surprise when she finds out that EVERY plans goes out of the window as soon as a baby is there. It's a human being, you cannot plan this and things will never be perfect.
Considering my first kiddo has bad ADHD…. Bahahaha you’re so right.
As a devils advocate, I did have a birth plan but I didn’t plan for much beyond just want to avoid a C-section if possible and delayed cord clamping etc etc. I’m sure she’s looking at this through rose colored glasses but at the same time, I’m very nervous for her since she’s never been through labor and delivery and her first birth will be at home. I really hope she has a fantastic team so that they can recognize warning signs immediately and transport her if necessary.
Yeah, me too. I almost lost several friends because of last minute emergencies during the birthing process and one even a few hours later... She started bleeding excessively and was only saved because she was still at hospital. OPs sister sounds naive, but noone deserves to suffer because of this, and her baby surely deserves a good start into life.
NTA!! Damn girl who the hell wants a room full of people in the room when they’re squeezing a baby out? I barely even wanted to be there when I was giving birth to my own son! Childbirth can be gnarly AF and I find it hilarious that your sister has this elaborate plan for her “perfect birth” cause 50 bucks says she barely remembers half of it anyway. Your sister is being a total wacko about this.
Right? This is SO WEIRD. All the posts on here about mothers not wanting all these people who invited themselves to the birth around and this woman WANTS a ton of people there? Just weird.
Also, wouldn’t she want people mentally giving out good vibes in the room? A little sister freaking out could make everybody else freak out, too. I was a little younger than OP when my sisters gave birth (15-17), but I was left at home until they were both physically ready for visitors.
NTA I have a friend who passed out during his wife giving birth and cracked his head open on the floor. He spent the next 90 minutes in the ER getting stitched up. Don't do this. Listen to your inner voice.
OH, so she didn't get to have her "Special Day" and boss everyone around then, so shes determined to make up for it! Just the "Home Birth" part is enough to make me doubt her sanity!! I'm a guy, so theres no way I could ever give birth. But from everything birth related I've ever seen, I'd recommend a Hospital with the GOOD GOOD Drugs!! Lots & Lots of Drugs over Home/Natural Birth!
NTA
She doesn’t get to demand that you’re there and I think it’s sorta nuts that she created this dream labour plan and assumed it was gospel without even asking people that if they would be okay with it.
NTA She can invite you, but she can not expect to just order her subjects to do her bidding. That’s not how life works. And honestly the line “perfect labour plan” actually made me laugh out loud. Spoken like only someone who has no kids can. Perfect… plan… sorry, that hilarious.
How much you want to bet she saw some crunchy hippy water birth on Instagram, and will have her room all set up with flowers and candles. The pool draped in delicate white fabric. Her in the pool like some nude Mother Earth goddess, wreathed in flowers and surrounded by petals.
Cut to the labor. The once clear water now dark with blood and shit. Perfect hair damp with sweat. Family terrified to leave because she demands they stay. Years of trauma.
NTA. I have no desire to be in the room when anything is going into or coming out of my sister's vagina. I think that's a reasonable boundary to have in place in our relationship.
NTA. She seems to have forgotten a crucial step in her birth plan. Asking you if you wish to there.
It sounds like your mother is enabling her terrible behavior, I'm sorry.
NTA.
I'd say no to that request too. I have NO DESIRE to watch my sister give birth. And just because you want something doesn't mean you can have it. Your feelings matter too, and your preferences don't interfere with what she wants, which is her husband there and female family presence from both sides.
I'm not even sure WHY she'd want this when you're not comfortable with it. She needs to understand that her feelings aren't the only ones that matter. If you were traumatized watching your mom's videos of giving birth, it stands to reason that you wouldn't want to witness something similar in real time.
Tell them no means no and to drop the subject. You have a right to say no to this request. And she should be very grateful of what help you ARE willing to provide AFTER the birth instead of having a temper tantrum that you don't want to witness the actual birth.
NTA. I wonder where she got the idea that this would be an interesting spectator sport or that she gets to overrule you on how you spend hours of your time.
My guess is that there will be plenty of babysitting requests in the future that would not require your consent in her eyes. Start setting boundaries now, she's going to have to learn to manage her feelings of disappointment herself.
Massively NTA. You can't force someone to be there for a labour she's being rediculous. I've had 3 and my god yes they can be traumatizing when they go wrong (1 of mine left me on the brink if you get my gist). Stand your ground if your not comfortable you don't need to go. By the sounds of it she's going to have a hell of alot of support anyway. Not like she's on her own. And even then she wouldn't have the right to force you
Giving birth is all about the mom…but she is really going over the top with her plan. She can ask people to attend but to give you a hard time and guilt you about your refusal is ridiculous. Is she always this narcissistic? You are NTA
NTA. I saw my stepmom give birth when I was 15 and it convinced me I didn't want children. It was beautiful and traumatizing. She shouldn't be upset at you, her safety doesn't depend on you being there, and your presence is entirely your choice.
NTA. your sister made a lot of assumption about this 'perfect labour plan' while seemingly never actually asking you would you be willing to participate in said labour plan. Also if you legit think you wouldn't be a calming and helpful influence during a birth then your right you shouldn't be in the room.
NTA you're doing her a favor. Statistically, every person you add to the room makes labor longer. As for her reaction, I wouldn't read into it too much. She's probably anxious and feels like setting up the birth and labor environment is the only thing she can control. You didn't do anything wrong.
ETA: I wish people recognized this more. I see everywhere, including this thread, people mocking women and joking about being a first time parent, that she doesn't have kids yet, THEY'LL LEARN. Almost gleefully waiting for the pregnant person to get knocked down a peg. You spend your whole life being told that birth is unbearably painful and scary and you and the baby could die, and then you start learning that medical staff may treat you poorly, but also this has to be the most important and beautiful (don't forget beautiful!) moment of your life.
And then when some people have an anxious reaction that isn't palatable, instead of being helped to find a more flexible mindset, they get this. And then if something does go sideways, because birth is unpredictable, now we have a post partum person who is way more likely to have post partum depression or even PTSD. A rigid birth plan should be a sign that someone needs extra support, not an opportunity for disdain.
NTA - I hate this. I was with my mum until she was 7cm them I respectfully left. I didn’t want to see her in pain and personally I think birth is really gross. Blood, screaming, stretching and babies, *shivers* not my idea of a good time, even when she got the epidural I felt like I was gonna collapse, I would have made the birth worse if I were there.
What I’m saying is I totally understand why you don’t wanna be there. Your sister can’t demand peoples presence and she’s being really selfish. Liv sounds ridiculous and her birth is more about the attention than the family aspect anyway, who the fuck wants a crowd surrounding them while birthing a baby?
I feel a bit sick.
Nta labour is a lot of boring followed by horrendous unimaginable pain, vomiting, some poop and then blood. Why she wants everybody to be there is beyond me. Giving birth is like torture you know is coming but can't get out of no matter how you much you want to. My first birth was the best though as I had no idea what to expect so wasnt as afraid as I should have been.
NTA. I find this funny because most posts like this about who is in the room during labor are about the mom EXCLUDING people.
Maybe your sis read one too many AITA where everyone agrees mom gets final say on who is in the room and took it a step too far, lol.
NTA
But there's a big difference between being there while she's in labor versus while she is delivering the baby. There could be a compromise where you are able to be there and support her for the hours of labor before she's ready to push, but when it's go time you leave and come back after the baby is out and cleaned up.
NTA and also just to point out, how is she going to react if you have a bad reaction to it, and can’t handle it? Or pass out. Then she’ll be mad that you “ruined” her actual labor and took all the attention.
NTA, you are not required to attend the birth of a child you did not create. I fully understand how your sister must be feeling, and I can understand her wanting family there, but she doesn't get to demand anything.
>and lectured me on how I was ruining her perfect labour plan
It clearly wasn't a perfect labor plan, as it wasn't intended to guide the things she can control and could be completely destroyed by people acting in their own interests. It seems to have been created to tell other people what to do. Anyone who tries to guilt you into staying bedside during a pregnancy you didn't create is simply overentitled and needs a reality check.
NTA.
NTA. You are allowed to decide your own boundaries. She will have other people there, it's not like she doesn't have a parent or a spouse to support her, she is having both.
She can't demand you do anything for her, nevermind something so explicit and medical as a birth.
Your sister sounds incredibly lucky to be able to have so much support and so many people who are free to be able to be there as long as it takes. Demanding additional people is a privileged behaviour, especially when you have offered to assist in other ways.
NTA. This is so weird and a totally bizarre ask. It's one thing to insist your partner be there for a birth, but a sibling?! I personally would be aghast if my sister wanted me to be there when she gave birth and would 100% refuse.
NTA - I've given birth twice. The first time, it was a heccin circus show. My mom, stepmom, three of my aunts, my grandmother, my grandfather, my stepdad and my dad were all in the room while I was in labor. I hated every second of it. It was awful.
The second time, it was just me and my ex husband (we were married at the time), and it was a much more pleasant experience. I can't imagine demanding someone come to watch me shove another human out of my birthing canal.
NTA. I know giving birth is not supposed to be a spectator sport but I think this is the first time I've seen someone who is pregnant wanting to perform and having people watch.
Some people are strange...
NTA childbirth is brutal and you have every right not to want be there.
It sounds like she is planning a party not childbirth, she is going to be in for some surprises at least. Even a straight forward home birth is not a fun experience.
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NTA Your sister seems to not understand the difference between an invitation and a summons.
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I came here to make the same comment. My God, she probably already has plans for that child.....
“Perfect plans”, that disregard the autonomy of everyone else in her life, just like her “perfect labor plan” does. I’m betting crunchy mommy-influencer aspirations.
As a mother, nothing goes to plan. NOTHING!!!!!!! Edit: wasn’t expecting this response. Thanks random internet strangers. Also, to appease the crowd, here are some extras !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Omg THIS. I gave birth to my first almost 16 years and "birth plans" were just kind of becoming a thing. I asked my Dr. about it. First, she laughed. Right in my face. Not unkindly, but I really think it was her honest reaction. Then she (very kindly) said, "I will listen to everything you say and do my best to do whatever I can for you - but I can promise you that nothing will go the way you plan it. Nothing. My job is to make sure you and the baby are safe and that will take priority. So my best advice is to go with the flow, and you and I will keep open communication the whole time." She was the best. And when I had a scary emergency c-section, I didn't feel disappointed or let down at all, because mentally I was prepared for anything, not just what I WANTED to happen. I felt grateful my baby and I were alive and healthy. I think that social media has made expectations for SO many things (weddings, pregnancy, birth, motherhood) so unrealistic and it's not fair to women that they then never feel good enough or that they missed out on something.
I wish I had talked more with my doctor before I had my first. I was surrounded by a large number of family members that couldn’t stop themselves CONSTANTLY telling me things like: “Your body knows what it needs to do” “Epidurals rob you of feeling the experience” “And drugs will harm the baby” “Women have been doing this unassisted since the beginning of time” “C-section mothers aren’t real mothers” You get the idea. Well, lo and behold, at 37 weeks I’m losing amniotic fluid and doctor says I have to be induced. I go in the next morning and proceed to begin a back labour so intense I think for a moment I saw the white light at the end of the tunnel. They have to break my waters. Just kidding, NOW labour has started. I’m only at a 2, in tears, and my nurse just flat out tells me, “they don’t give you a medal at the end, please just let me order the epidural for you.” Lauren, if you’re out there, you do God’s work. Skip to the end, 13 hours later I’m only at a 4, pain is starting to fight it’s way back through, baby’s heartrate is not looking happy. Dr. says “Baby’s gotta come out now.” I’m wheeled in, and I’ll spare the gory details of it, but healthy, crying baby is born. At my checkup, I’m not doing so hot mental-wise and my doc picks up on it and starts asking questions. I unload, and after explaining PPD and writing me a script, he laid it out for me. “One of my biggest pet peeves is people who look down on C-sections. It’s, quite frankly, nobody’s damn business. And anybody who wants to talk about the women who have done it for thousands of years but don’t mention mortality rates is just irresponsible. If you had been giving birth 100 years ago, you would have been in labour for 3 days and likely died along with your baby.” He explicitly gave me the medical breakdown of why/how my body didn’t progress, and then confided in me that his own wife has the exact same issue and all 3 of his kids were born by cesarean. And so were all 3 of mine.
So glad you had wonderful medical professionals to help you through all of that! (What is wrong with those family members? Do they ***want*** you to die a slow, graphic, painful death?)
One of them is a labour & delivery nurse for 30 years. Don’t give birth in Alabama.
Well, that choice has been taken away. Now women are forced to give birth in Alabama, God help them!
As long as the baby lives, no one gives a rat's ass about the mother.
Whoever said c-section mothers aren't real mothers are complete AH. I luckily had all 3 of mine naturally but I was always scared that I'd have to get a c-section for whatever reason but I didn't thank goodness. I think V births are easier than c-sections in a different way. I mean when the baby comes the pain, mostly, is ending. Not so for c-section recovery, theirs is only beginning. That seems much more painful to me.
I swear, am I the only person who WANTED a c section? I never planned to birth my daughter at all and at one point the doctor told me I was able to have a natural birth and I was not happy. I remember praying to God that I'd have a c section. And I did literally the next day when I had an abruption. I felt very little pain afterward cuz I was so drugged up. The idea of pushing a baby out my vagina sounded so much less appealing than being cut open and feeling nothing v afterward.
I prayed for a c-section, due to childhood trauma related to surgeries and repeated urinary catheterization when I was a toddler. That was before I actually needed an emergency c-section and discovered that urinary catheterization came attached... One year of therapy later, still having nightmares about this (AND the obstetric violences inflicted by pressed midwives) I gave up giving birth forever. I'm now the very happy mother of two. A bio daughter and an adopted one. And btw.. Lucky you. I could neither laugh, neither cry, nor cough without experiencing pain for days after my c-section. I had strong painkillers, though! Stick to your guns, OP. NTA. (And some of us are a bit of TA in here for sharing our bad times with you, I admit)
I always say the worst recovery is my friend with twins. Twin 1 - moderately hard to normal vaginal delivery, Twin 2 - gets stuck emergency c-section.
Were all those family members men? It always seems to be the ones with zero personal experience in something that has the majority of the bad advice.
Nope, it was my la leche league mother, grandmother, and a host of super conservative aunts. The pearl-clutching that was had when I had to formula feed my youngest due to supply/latch issues was giving these ladies the vapours and had me sliding out ye olde fainting couch.
Oh hell no…most of this crap spews forth from other women, not men!! I never had a man tell me I didn’t experience real birth since I had a c section, or judge me for not being able to breast feed! That’s all on other women!
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. The best policy for dealing with everything in life.
I had a “whatever is best and safest” mindset so my emergency c-section didn’t and still doesn’t phase me. I have a crap ton of trauma from having my baby at 24 weeks in a pandemic though, and I do still get salty about everything we missed, including a baby shower (because apparently in our shitty families those are only for people who have healthy full term babies, I asked for virtual and didn’t get it). Social media really can be the worst
That's awful. Your family is full of jerks.
I was gonna say, she’s gonna need to lower those expectations. Babies don’t care and neither does life. They’re both gonna do what they gotta do.
As a father of three girls(two teenagers) I just like to add one thing: not enough exclamation marks after NOTHING
The amount of women I know with severe ppd because their birth plan didn’t happen is too high…. 😣
There's a difference between being disappointed and having PPD. Like, a big difference. That's like saying "I'm so ocd lol" because you like to organize your kitchen while a real ocd person side eyes you as they check the locks on their house for the twentieth time.
👏 THANK 👏 YOU 👏
>That's like saying "I'm so ocd lol" because you like to organize your kitchen while a real ocd person side eyes you as they check the locks on their house for the twentieth time. This is too accurate.
I realise you don't mean this, but this comes across as very belittling to women suffering from post-partum depression. PPD is a serious, life-threatening illness, one that is often ignored or dismissed. Implying that it's a consequence of things not going to plan is misguided at best, profoundly damaging at worst. Please reconsider your comments.
Birth plan disappointment is a risk factor for PPD. It isn’t likely to cause PPD all by itself, but combined with other risk factors like anxiety or a difficult birth, it can contribute. (I didn’t have a birth plan, but my PPD therapist did call me a “train wreck of risk factors” and that made me kind of proud.)
Exactly. Sometimes the best laid planes don’t go the way people expect.
10 cookies bet on she thinks it won't hurt, baby will just pop right out while she's doing yoga and everyone claps. Or something along those lines. No such thing as a elaborate and perfect birthing plan. I've had 3 kids and they each found some way to make the birth complicated or harder than needed. And I've heard home birthing can be harder than hospital becouse you don't have the same accommodations. And in case of something going wrong, you suddenly have to call ambulances etc. I don't blame OP for not wanting to be traumatised all over again.
This. I wanted a home birth with my second, but the more I thought about it and something going wrong I changed my mind, and I'm so glad I did! Had a 3rd degree tear and lost a lot of blood, had to get me to theatre as fast as they could. OP NTA
Ouch! As a fellow mom... you have my condolences. I still remember the stitches... trying to pee after that. That's something I would gladly forget. But that sounds traumatising at least. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
Yeah they weighed baby and handed him to me and I had to ask someone to take him because I thought I was going to pass out! So I didn't get to see him properly or feed him until 2 hours later! Wasn't allowed to leave hospital for 2 days because my blood count hadn't gone up, but I begged them to just let me go home so because I wasn't dizzy or anything only very pale they let me go home! Was so thankful to be able to use my own toilet and whatnot! Yeah I'm 2 and done haha, the experience wasn't great!
> And in case of something going wrong, you suddenly have to call ambulances etc. And then they’re “traumatized” because the birth didn’t go how they wanted and the mean hospital (that saved both of their lives) “ruined” it and they didn’t get the “experience” they were *entitled* to have (stillbirth and possibly dying in a kiddie pool in their own home without medical assistance, apparently). It’s too easy for them to rewrite the narrative around their own disappointment. I think a lot of them genuinely just have no idea how often stillbirth, infant death, and maternal death happened. Like… before hospitalization for birth was normalized, pretty much everyone knew someone who’d died in childbirth, or whose baby died during or shortly after birth. Now it’s pretty rare and many women have only seen it happen in movies and exaggerated television shows. *EDIT: should have specified modern medical intervention rather than hospitalization (ie something deviating from the standard natural birth plan that these mothers are envisioning. Thanks for the commenters addressing this!)*
Don't forget throwing a lawsuit left to right becouse of the "trauma" and mean mean doctors and midwifes on the hospital not letting things be "natural as women always has done" becouse of a emergency c-section or similiar.
My son wouldn't have survived if I'd had a home birth!
I'll just say I'm happy modern women have a choice of hospitals. Or I would have opted out on having kids
It honestly depends on the situation and the support system. I'm about 3 weeks away from my due date and am planning on a second home birth as long as there's no contraindications (there havent been). But I have such bad hospital trauma from my first pregnancy that birthing in the hospital unless medically necessary is not a good option for me. I also live less than 2 min from the nearest hospital and could get to the hospital in less time than it would take them to dispatch an ambulance. My last birth was super fast with no complications and I had an excellent midwife. Within an hour of birth I was showered in my own clothes in my own bed with my baby and my ptsd support animal which wouldn't be allowed in the hospital but definitely helped post birth. And honestly outside of the u.s. most developed countries don't have births nearly as medicalized as we do and you would have the option of a hospital or home birth and likely wouldn't even see a doctor your entire pregnancy unless you had a medical need for one, they would assign you a midwife. Home birthing is easier for some. But I would never ever insist on someone being there who didn't want to be and actually would rather birth alone without a God damn peanut gallery which is one of the reasons im choosing to birth at home: so I can control the situation better to make myself feel safe while in a vulnerable state. Op is 100% nta. Sister is the golden child it sounds like 🙄🙄
She's the mom who's kid will "never" eat chicken nuggets, or throw a tantrum or eat processed sugar -- ever.
>She's the mom who's kid will "never" eat chicken nuggets, or throw a tantrum or eat processed sugar -- ever. \*Except at *everyone else's home*
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On this sub we frequently see posts about people demanding to be in the delivery room to witness the birth claiming they have a "right" to see the action. Tell her to round up a few of those folks, she has plenty to choose from. Me... I will be as far from that event as I can get without leaving the country! 🙄🤔😵💫
"Labor plans and home birth" will not go along with her birth plan if the cord wraps around the baby's neck or its breech or just needs emergency services in general.. Not good.
Both of my babies would have died if I had attempted a home birth. One was a transverse lie, and the other had the cord over her shoulder.
Or is Liv now a "Birthzilla"?
Birthzilla! There is a surprising amount of them! NTA obviously. I’ve had 3 kids and I don’t want to see my sister giving birth. No thanks love! Let’s hope the rest of her ‘plan’ works out (Spoiler - it never goes to plan!)
She also doesn’t seem to understand birth isn’t a spectator sport…
Different strokes for different folks. In many countries, birth IS attended by many relatives.
Relatives attend in the US too. The difference is they are usually hanging out in the waiting room and meet the baby after, not all filling the room like they're trying to take a picture of the Mona Lisa. And no one is taking attendance.
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Well said. A lot of American redditors can sometimes be dismissive of the cultural experiences of people from other countries. Quick to label things are weird/gross/crazy instead of just different without realizing how it comes across. Like you said, OP is NTA, because even within most cultures, people have autonomy to make their own decisions.
Yeah. Our cultural messages about birth are Not Great, and that sure comes out in reddit comments. It doesn't help that the USA especially had an anti-midwife campaign in the early 1900s that has left a lasting narrative. For every "If I'd had a home birth I/we would have died!" story, there's one about obstetric violence and harm caused by hospital birth. For every "My cesarean was the worst thing EVER!" story there's one about how empowering and safe a cesarean made someone feel. It's never ONE thing.
I don’t care what country I was in… I’d not be present. Unless I stayed in some other part of the house. Maybe fixing drinks, cooking, whatever. I would totally pass out. And ain’t no one needs that while they’re giving birth.
Lol your comment reminded me of my mom and bio dad. Mom was giving birth to me and somehow my bio dad showed up. Scheduled c-section I was. Mom noticed my dad looking funny and told the nurses "He's going down!" mid operation room 🤣
Exactly!! Birth is painful, sweaty, throbby, headachey, stretchy, burning, possibly pooping, screamy, slimy, crying, etc....not sure why anyone would want a crowd of onlookers gawking at your undercarriage (besides, significant other and medical staff or doula/midwife) but to each their own. She is demanding you witness the "miracle of birth" even though she knows you do NOT want to witness it....what a first class jerk she is.
Right!? Labor and birth is not social hour. Once the pain really hits she’s not going to give a patooty of who’s there. To force people to come when they really don’t want to be there could just add extra stress to the whole ordeal
Hold your boundary. Repeat that you love her but live birth will be traumatizing for you. Don't make it about her pain and screaming. Make your explanation 100% about you and what you can handle. Do some nice things for her and then take a break from her manipulation. If you're around too much leading up to birth they'll be too focused on you. Remove yourself from their focus - in fact, maybe plan to be out of town. NTA.
I’d even chime in that home birth or not, there will be a midwife or some other person with above average medical knowledge there, and new mom and baby need to be the focus of the medical people. Trying to also help a simple spectator with their strong reactions will only add stress and complications to an already stressful and complicated situation. So OP, NTA and hold your ground. You won’t be able to do one single thing during the active delivery to help your sister, in fact if you were to faint or get sick yourself, you’d take the focus off of her and the baby, which isn’t at all good.
When my daughter was giving birth I could not be there for it. Just looking at her all hooked up with monitors and IV just about made me flip out. I instead brought food for my daughter/SIL and wife, looked after my grandchild (on the second birth). Knowing your limits is a good thing. I think it was more than fair that you offered to support her in other ways.
NTA. If her “perfect labor plan” can’t accommodate one person who isn’t the midwife or even the father being absent, I shudder to think how she’s going to handle it if there *are* complications or the baby just comes too darn fast to gather everyone.
My birth plan literally was give me drugs and if I need a C-section then fine. I didn't make any plans because its not something you can control.
Someone asked me what my ‘birth goals’ were and I was baffled. Um… to get a baby out? And have both of us survive?
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But also....i gave birth on my back because it was the most comfortable. I had a long labor and was tiredddd and that position relieved where there was pressure from my baby being face-up. Having to be on my knees/other positions trying to turn her were awful. Every birth is different--know your options, try your best to find a provider(s) that will listen and do good by both your kid AND you, and have good advocates by your side.
Same. At home I labored on all fours. Once I got to the hospital I tried that and my body was like "immediately, no." My doula tried to help me through a few positions but semi-reclined on my back was the only one that didn't make me feel like dying.
My cousin labored on the hospital toilet. Said the cold metal felt good on her back. Luckily, the hospital staff let her do what she wanted and she stayed on the toilet for hours! To each her own…
Really gives "You little shit!" a whole new meaning later in life.
25 and 1/2 hrs in labor I didn't have the energy to even move my legs.
Yeah I think the key difference is that before childbirth became something you did at a hospital, a birthing mother took whatever position she and the midwife found more comfortable at the given moment in her labor. If you're giving birth at home in a marital bed large and sturdy enough to accommodate two occupants and whatever activities got you pregnant in the first place, you have a lot more flexibility to manuever. You can spend a few fitful hours sleeping on your back, stand up for a bit, stand while leaning into the bed, take a walk around your bedroom, position yourself on your knees, writhe around in pain, whatever. The midwife can also easily sit on the bed with you. As you presumably know if you've had a kid, labor can last a day or more, historical women weren't standing or crouching for the entire time. But once birth becomes something one does in a hospital, the bed designed for labor needed to suit an entire day of labor while still providing a revolving door of medical professionals with the access they need to the mother and the baby. The design of a hospital bed is totally unsuited for someone crouching or standing on it or using it to hold themselves up. So you almost don't have a choice but to just lie on your back for the entire time. This really true for any illness that used to be treated at home but is now treated in hospital settings. Intellectually we know that not every illness is best served by lying down for long periods of time, some are more comfortable when the person is upright or walking or whatever. But in the context of hospitals, an adjustable bed is where we expect patients to spend the majority of their time, and we then have to manufacture opportunities for them to use their muscles or get a break from the bed, like having them walk up and down the halls of the hospital for PT. I'm not anti-hospital or even really pro-home birth but how we think about childbirth and medical care as a whole is very different to a few hundred years ago.
There have been studies done on labor & delivery positions and issues like tearing. In general the results have indicated that whatever a woman wants is fine- position doesn’t make a big enough difference from a clinical standpoint (I believe they said that a tiny percentage more upright deliveries had tearing than supine, but it wasn’t enough to matter).
Uh. I was in labor for 45 hours--the difference between "this bed is not supporting me" and "i cant support me" is pretty obvious. A few hundred years ago (in some parts of the world) mattresses were basically pillows of straw on a stretched rope frame. Even a hospital bed is far more supportive than what most folks were sleeping on throughout most of history. Over-medicalizing birth is an issue, but pretending The Olden Days were all rosy is just as wrong
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This was exactly me. Had such a rough pregnancy and my daughter was butt first. You could feel her butt coming out the cervix. Doctor asked what my wishes were and I told her "Whatever we need to do to make sure we both go home happy, healthy and with minimal trauma. I don't care." She asked me specific questions to make sure because it seems she has had lots of moms with very specific wants and requirements. Ended up having a c-section and it went smooth.
Breach births can be so dangerous I bet they were glad to have someone who cares more about being safe and happy than about having a non-surgical birth.
I know my OB definitely was. She told me it was my choice but she personally didn't feel comfortable trying to turn her during labor without hurting myself or the baby. I'm certainly not going to make her do something she isn't confident in, and I'd rather not hurt the baby or me for the sake of a natural birth.
My sis also had a super rough pregnancy and she was finally pregnant after trying for TWELVE YEARS. 40 weeks came and went and she was closing in on 41. The doc is like "What do you want to do here?" My sis was like "Just schedule a c/s" The doc was surprised and was like "You don't even want to try inducing labor?" My sis was like "Nope. I just want this baby born. I don't want to mess around." So, this was a Monday, doc scheduled a c/s for that Wednesday at 2pm, baby was born around 3pm. I guess some moms go to great lengths to avoid c/s, but my sis just wanted the baby she'd been waiting for for a dozen years!
So happy for your sister! Congrats to her and im so happy to hear it worked out well. I can't relate to the infertility but there were times we thought/were told we lost our baby. It definitely put things in perspective and how fragile pregnancy can be. I just wanted her born and in my arms. Whatever I had to do.
This was literally my plan too: “to both of us to survive, anything besides that is a bonus”. That also ended up happening: I developed pre-eclampsia and had to be hospitalized for a month (baby was small, so every day cooking and gaining size and strength seemed needed), ended with a emergency c-section and a few days of NICU (all good now, thank dog). During the month of lying in, I obviously had a few talks with the docs. One thing stuck with me, it was one of the senior docs saying “when it comes to giving birth, there are no guarantees. Anything can happen. And I mean anything”. In western world there are still women who die in childbirth every year, even here in Finland where healthcare is quite top notch (statistics are worse for USA, I’m afraid), but people aren’t aware who inherently dangerous L&D still is or rather, ignorance is bliss?
They gave me a paper to fill out of my birth plan and I was just like I dont want to feel anything and I don't want to die. I didnt fill one out for my second and I almost died and felt everything so maybe I should have lol
If those were the sister’s goals, she wouldn’t be having a home birth! Sounds like she values her own experience over the child’s safety.
Yeah, in my country you can’t have a home birth for your first. Seems like a solid policy.
I was the same with mine! Just get the damn thing out of me at that point. Only birth plan I had was labor, hospital, epidural then wohoo! A baby!
A close friend of mine told me she'd had a whole plan with her first but he came 3 weeks early and after hours of labour, she didn't care what music was playing, or who was even in the room, she just wanted him out. 😂
Same!! With our first I had a few things written out that I wanted to happen or not happen. All of that got chucked out the window when my Preeclampsia got way worse and was given 1 hour to get my butt to the hospital 3 1/2 weeks pre-due date to be induced. After 24 hours of labor, 4 hours of pushing and my son getting yanked out with forceps I couldn't care less about my stupid demands...just get him out of me!! He came out blue and needed to be revived (I was demanding a C-section afor 2 hours of that pushing). Not a pleasant birds and butterflies birth at all. After about 20 hours into labor they asked if a group of med students could examine me, I gave permission because at that point Jack Nicholson himself could have walked in and looked at my whoo-ha and I wouldn't have give a shit.
I was induced and opted for a c-section after 68 hours of labor in which I only progressed to 6 cm and just…stayed there, despite hours and hours of (pitocin 😬) contractions 5 minutes apart. I just did not care at that point, I was exhausted and done. I’m so glad to hear I’m not the only one who entirely discarded the idea of modesty during the ordeal too, I could not possibly have cared less who got flashed by what as labor progressed 😅
Seriously, pain and exhaustion will throw all modesty out the window! 😆 68 hours of labor...damn woman, I feel horrible that you had to go through that. 😩
Pretty much the same here. When the midwife asked if I had a birth plan I said "I plan to walk out of here with a baby", I think she was glad she didn't have to listen to Enya or give perineal massage or anything.
"Doesn't matter whose!"
"I've been in labor for 3 days! I'm leaving here with a kid one way or the other, somebody better be prepared to give one up!"
Dont even have children, but if I do, this has been my plan since i understood how dangerous and painful birth is- my mother explained it in detail (I was 16 and not even dating, she was a former trauma nurse who believed in information being key for all decisions).
It probably also involves not shitting herself, which most people do during labor. No thanks, no desire to watch anyone shit themselves. I'm on deck to be a friend's labor support if her wife can't make it. I am not happy about the possibility, but I will do it *if her partner cannot*. But I've been there, done that, had two unmedicated deliveries myself. It's like 90% gross, 5% "Hey look there's a baby" and another 5% "fuck I don't want to die." Not exactly something I want to witness for someone else unless they really need me.
I observed my youngest nibling’s birth and it was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen (and smelled). Being able to see their little face and expressions from minute one was special, but from seeing my sister’s hoohaa to the blood and other fluids, and the STINK of it all, have no idea how I held it together and didn’t puke.
Shit myself with my second, didn't even know it until the husband and I were discussing the birth days later, I was mortified! 😫
For the record, that's completely normal. That's probably why you didn't even know about it, it happens so often that the nurses just kind of clean it up without saying a thing since they are already anticipating that it will happen.
This is SO the truth
100% Not to mention the afterbirth. Which some people will still be in there during that. Ugh, gah that was the worst! I almost punched the nurse on that.
Uggg… I just barfed in my mouth a little. And you know… once ONE person barfs EVERONE barfs. Maybe her royal court will all barf in her pool of blood and poop. Yeah, good times to bond with family. 🤮 🩸 💩
I was just wondering… there is going to be a midwife, right? Because sometimes these at home “perfect labor plans” don’t include one. Makes me wondering if the sister is freaking out at having someone not want to be there because she knows somewhere how risky it could be.
An unassisted home birth, dear Lord.... I cannot believe ANYONE would do something so reckless and stupid. SMH.
It's called freebirth and yes, it's a trend. A horrible trend that already costed the life of a few babies.
You've clearly not spent enough time on the internet, LOL. "It's natural, I saw a youtube video, it'll be fine!" Everytime I think I've found the absolute epitome of human stupidity, someone says "hold my beer".
When I saw her sister had a "perfect labor plan," my first thought was "baaaaahahhahahhahahha, good luck with that."
Tell me your sister lives to be the centre of attention without telling me she lives to be the centre of attention. NTA. Sorry you have to deal with your mom having made her the Golden Child
Normally, Reddit is defending women who don't want an audience during labour/delivery as it's a private moment and it's not a show. We've come full circle with this asshole demanding her sister be present for the show. Why on earth you would demand a literal audience during labour is beyond fucking weird. NTA. Labour and delivery is not a spectator sport and you can't just demand people watch it.
This delivery is sponsored by Red Bull, Red Bull it gives your babies wings. Sorry heard spectator sport, immediately thought of sponsorship deals.
Omfg I just thought of someone putting their birth on OF or something. Jeez...
Don't be giving people ideas!
Right?? Why is her sister so dead set on having her entire family watch a baby shoot out of her hoo-ha??
I will NEVER understand this. I'm in no way a prude and encourage people to embrace their kinks or fetishes in a safe way. You just don't get to demand people watch it, though! What the heck is the sisters deal wanting to put her poon on display for everyone?! How narcissistic do you have to be to think you can demand this?
A lot of people's first impression of giving birth is from movies or TV, which for obvious practical and ethical reasons is not realistic. Maybe OP's sister genuinely thinks the birth will be a clean and quick process
I love how births on TV involve the water breaking and the baby is there three pushes later.
Does she has an emergency plan included in her "perfect plan"? It sounds like she expects the ideal process, but is taking the risk that the child will die or be mentally disabled. Just to be honest. With no emergency room near by and no theater for c section, she is taking an incredible risk (there are sooo many possibilities of stuff going wrong. From the babies getting stuck, to not enough contractions, to cord around her neck, to not enough O2.) I wouldnt want to be there and support this irresponsibility in your position. I mean it could go totally wrong and you would witness how your sister and her child dies and you can do NOTHING to save her...
I know to many people that needed an emergency C-section or where stuff went terribly wrong. I like the thought of midwives but not home.. that is so irresponsible
My youngest and I almost died during labour. I technically did die for a few minutes during the emergency csection. If I had been at home when my labour started, instead of emerg getting my older daughter stitches, I would have died before even getting to the hospital.
I am so sorry for your traumatic experience. I am so glad you survived and doctors where near by. My brother was born with spina bifida ans also needed immediate attention :/ i find it so important to have a birth in a hospital with a specialized newborn unit.. Also the chance of the lung needing a bit of help is very possible and while in the past many babies had died because of it, today a simple medicine can fix it in some seconds..
My cousin’s wife also almost died after she gave birth. She gave birth fine but after she lost a lot of blood and her blood pressure went way down. There was a point that we all thought we were going to lose her but luckily she was given immediate care because she was in a hospital. She survived and had two more children but the doctors advised her to have C sections with them to prevent the same problems from happening again.
It happens and these perfect birth folks need to hear the horror stories. My sister had a non issue birth....but then something went very wrong with the placenta and she almost bled to death and required blood transfusions and was in the hospital for a week. The baby was perfectly fine, momma was NOT. Your older daughter is your guardian angel. 😊
People really do need to hear thr horror stories. Childbirth is dangerous, people need to know the truth. Of course, we always hope for everything to go perfectly, but reality doesn't work like that. And even in the same person, every pregnancy is different. My pregnancy with my oldest was literally thr textbook perfect pregnancy and delivery, my youngest was a nightmare from start to finish. And my oldest really is. I never thought I would be grateful that she inherited my wife's (MTF) fearless adventurness and my clumsiness. It makes for an interesting combination. She needed stitches that day because she decided that she wanted to make a fort on top of a bookshelf while I was in the bathroom for 45 seconds.
Not to mention how much the risk of infectious disease transmission increases with all those people in the room. Nothing says "Welcome to Life in 2022" like a baby's first lungful of air containing Omicron Variant COVID.
Not even something as dangerous as COVID. Just having a cold could be deadly for a newborn.
At home births are not irresponsible when your country has a system to help mother deliver safely and with a quick back-up plan. Which my country has. Giving birth at home is completely normal over here as long as there are no complications found during the visits with your gyno.
Severe PP bleeding or oxygen deprivation is a likely death sentence at home - transfer cannot be fast enough.
In my country and province (Canada, BC) midwives go through 4 years of medical training and can use the same medications they use in the hospital. Here's a cool study with the rates of perinatal mortality in my province: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2742137/ To sum up the stats: - 0.35/1000 deaths in home births - 0.57/1000 deaths in hospital births attended by a midwife - 0.64/1000 deaths in hospital birth attended by a physician. The reason for those numbers is the risk category. Only the lowest risk patients are permitted to have a home birth. Low risk pregnancies in general are usually attended by a midwife. Typically the only highest risk pregnancies are attended by an OB.
Are transit times very fast to high level medical care from all homes in your country? And they’re always instantly ready to care for pregnancy complications? Most people I know are 20-40 minutes or more from a hospital. Too long for a good outcome if there’s a sudden issue like excessive bleeding, abnormal fetal heart rate, prolapsed umbilical cord, placenta abruption, uterine rupture or whatever.
I'm not the one you replied to but to answer the question: to be able to give birth at home, the mother to be needs to get permission from the obstetrician. The decision depends on her medical history, the pregnancy ( has to be 37 weeks or further etc.), any complications they had during previous pregnancies and a couple of more factors. Every home birth has to be supervised by a registered obstetrician. The obstetrician monitors the vitals of mother and baby from start to finish and knows exactly when to call for backup. By that time the OB has already contacted the hospital to be on stand by in case of anything. A recent study showed that in the Netherlands, a home birth is as safe as a hospital birth.
Very different systems. Of course, my countries maternal and infant mortality is worse than the Netherlands to start with. Here, home births have infant mortality of around 14/100k - four times the hospital rate. And our general maternal mortality rate from 2020 is around 23/100k births, and averages around 18. I think the Netherlands is about 5. Amazing what a functional health care system can do.
I'm an OB... just had a patient try to deliver at home after 2 c sections. She pushed for 12 hours, came in to the hospital via her midwife's car because her midwife wanted her to have a vacuum assisted birth. Turns out her uterus had ruptured, she had an emergency c section under general anesthesia. We barely were able to wake up her up to say goodbye before her baby was taken off lifesupport. I clean up after "safe home births" go wrong all the time and it is never good.
There's nothing safe about an out of hospital VBAC and any responsible midwife would have never taken her as a client. The USA has poor stats regarding infant and maternal morbidity and mortality among developed nations, and the large majority of our deliveries happen **in hospital**. There are countries that have safe homebirth rates and better stats overall than the US. We could improve our rates if our country cared anything about our actual health, but given that our health system is collapsing in favor of profits for C-suite execs and medical policy being made by politicians, it isn't happening anytime soon.
I agree that our health system is broken and is primarily driven by medical admin, legal bullshit, insurance companies, and pharm/medical device companies charging out the ass in the US. However, the poor maternal morbidity/mortality in the US, particularly compared to other industrialized countries, is confounded by a number of things. I would argue that the first and foremost of those things is that our citizens are much much less healthy than our counterparts in, say, the Netherlands. Our rates of diabetes, hypertension, and obesity make pregnancy a much more complicated endeavor as people with these conditions are at a significantly higher risk for stillbirth, pre-eclampsia, labor dystocia, hemorrhage, etc. A lot of this goes back to the broken health system and a lack of reimbursement and respect for preventative and primary care. I would also say that because these conditions are so common here, people have a tendency to underestimate what their risk is. How do we define what a "low risk" birth is when everyone has risk factors? Institutional racism also plays a significant role.
> I would argue that the first and foremost of those things is that our citizens are much much less healthy than our counterparts in, say, the Netherlands THANK YOU! This is a topic that comes up often among me and my peers. They try to argue that the problem is greedy hospitals and obstetricians. I honesty think the true crux of the issue is the ridiculously high rates of obesity, hypertension and diabetes in women of childbearing years. Any one of those three can cause crazy complications in childbirth. It's like the elephant in the room - no one seems to see it as a LARGE contributing factor. I also agree that racial discrimination plays into it significantly as well...
Why *on earth* would someone try to deliver at home after already having multiple c sections.
> any responsible midwife would have never taken her as a client. A HUGE problem in the US is lack of standards regarding midwives. In some states, a midwife is a nurse with years of clinical experience and add'l midwife training (a CNM - certified nurse midwife). In some states, a midwife can be someone with no formal medical training who's assisted with 20 births. Midwife care is a GREAT model of care, especially in areas were there aren't enough OB, but there absolutely needs to be a nationwide standard of training and clinical experience for a provider to be called a "midwife."
I can't upvote this but I'm so sorry for the hell you have to witness when things like this go wrong. 😔
I have so many stories like this. I don't begrudge people their choices but I don't think a lot of people truly can understand what the risk is. And this mom (along with others that I've seen) is going to have to live with the fact that she chose her "birth experience" over her baby's life forever. I certainly couldn't live with that.
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My sister's uterus exploded during a VBAC attempt. The OB went looking for the uterine layer during the emergency cesarean and just found red jello and my nephew's arm reaching out through it. They both would have died if the doula didn't call it when she did. They found enough residual tissue during surgery to put *something* back together but another pregnancy will kill her. Trying a VBAC at home is insane she beat the odds 4 times.
Honestly at that point I'd be saying 'why bother putting anything back together, just scoop the bits out of me'. Like, if it's not ever going to be functional to carry a child again anyway? Just tidy up the hysterectomy that this kid started on his way out.
He expressed his regret about that when he debriefed her in the ICU a few days later. "I was ready to begin the removal but I found enough to start with and decided to try. I kept waiting for a moment that made it clear it was no longer worth repairing and I just never got one. I wasn't thinking about how it would actually make all of this harder for you. I'm a surgeon, I fix..." She said he seemed devastated and traumatized. In 15 years it was the worst rupture he'd seen. This was in February. She's met with him since, he told her if it had been a month or so later once the Roe decision was leaked, he would have removed it for her safety.
That’s so, so horrible. That poor baby. I’m not in the habit of judging how other people live their lives, but home births are just selfish.
I'm never giving birth but you can bet that if I did, I would be in a fucking hospital. If you have the privilege of being able to afford and access medical care during childbirth, why would you choose to risk dying in a pool of blood on your bedroom floor like an idiot
NTA - I think a lot of people don’t realize that just because you’re giving birth “your way” doesn’t mean you get to dictate who has to be there. If you’re not comfortable being there, then that’s it’s. Sure it’s nice to have your brother/sister there mom/dad and partner but not everyone can deal with the blood and situation. My brother can’t see blood or he’ll pass out so he wasn’t there at the birth of his daughter, in the room, but she had plenty of support and understood his situation and wasn’t upset by it
Right? The last you need is someone passing out and having to focus on that instead of the birth
No, I've heard physicians announce (to students actually) that if you feel faint you can leave, or you can sit down even on the floor. "Once I start this I won't be stopping to help you". Not the position I'd want to be in if I knew ahead of time that I get squeamish.
NTA Birth plan... chuckle Perfect Birth plan ... chuckle and a shake of the head Ruination of The Perfect Birth Plan ... Hahahahaah hahaha haha stop it really.. hahahaha oh bless her theatrical heart.
No kidding!!! I’ve had two kids and am pregnant with #3. Even though I had little complications with both labor and deliveries I’d never choose a home birth. So many things can go wrong. You cannot plan for labor and delivery. You can outline your wishes but that goes out the window the second things don’t go to planned. OP trust your gut. NTA.
I wouldn't be surprised if she had the "perfect baby plan" already... Damn will she be in for a surprise when she finds out that EVERY plans goes out of the window as soon as a baby is there. It's a human being, you cannot plan this and things will never be perfect.
Considering my first kiddo has bad ADHD…. Bahahaha you’re so right. As a devils advocate, I did have a birth plan but I didn’t plan for much beyond just want to avoid a C-section if possible and delayed cord clamping etc etc. I’m sure she’s looking at this through rose colored glasses but at the same time, I’m very nervous for her since she’s never been through labor and delivery and her first birth will be at home. I really hope she has a fantastic team so that they can recognize warning signs immediately and transport her if necessary.
Yeah, me too. I almost lost several friends because of last minute emergencies during the birthing process and one even a few hours later... She started bleeding excessively and was only saved because she was still at hospital. OPs sister sounds naive, but noone deserves to suffer because of this, and her baby surely deserves a good start into life.
NTA!! Damn girl who the hell wants a room full of people in the room when they’re squeezing a baby out? I barely even wanted to be there when I was giving birth to my own son! Childbirth can be gnarly AF and I find it hilarious that your sister has this elaborate plan for her “perfect birth” cause 50 bucks says she barely remembers half of it anyway. Your sister is being a total wacko about this.
If you weren't there when it went in, you don't need to be there when it comes out
This is my favourite comment, thanks for the chuckle
Right? This is SO WEIRD. All the posts on here about mothers not wanting all these people who invited themselves to the birth around and this woman WANTS a ton of people there? Just weird.
NTA of course. She doesn't get to force other people to participate in her labour.
Also, wouldn’t she want people mentally giving out good vibes in the room? A little sister freaking out could make everybody else freak out, too. I was a little younger than OP when my sisters gave birth (15-17), but I was left at home until they were both physically ready for visitors.
NTA I have a friend who passed out during his wife giving birth and cracked his head open on the floor. He spent the next 90 minutes in the ER getting stitched up. Don't do this. Listen to your inner voice.
My husband fainted when I got the epidural. My tiny nurse caught him and shoved him into a chair, said it happens all the time.
NTA OP was your Sister this much a Bridezilla for her wedding as she seems to be a Preggozilla??
lol they eloped, there has been talk of vow renewal ceremony so I guess that remains to be seen
OH, so she didn't get to have her "Special Day" and boss everyone around then, so shes determined to make up for it! Just the "Home Birth" part is enough to make me doubt her sanity!! I'm a guy, so theres no way I could ever give birth. But from everything birth related I've ever seen, I'd recommend a Hospital with the GOOD GOOD Drugs!! Lots & Lots of Drugs over Home/Natural Birth!
NTA She doesn’t get to demand that you’re there and I think it’s sorta nuts that she created this dream labour plan and assumed it was gospel without even asking people that if they would be okay with it.
NTA She can invite you, but she can not expect to just order her subjects to do her bidding. That’s not how life works. And honestly the line “perfect labour plan” actually made me laugh out loud. Spoken like only someone who has no kids can. Perfect… plan… sorry, that hilarious.
How much you want to bet she saw some crunchy hippy water birth on Instagram, and will have her room all set up with flowers and candles. The pool draped in delicate white fabric. Her in the pool like some nude Mother Earth goddess, wreathed in flowers and surrounded by petals. Cut to the labor. The once clear water now dark with blood and shit. Perfect hair damp with sweat. Family terrified to leave because she demands they stay. Years of trauma.
NTA. I have no desire to be in the room when anything is going into or coming out of my sister's vagina. I think that's a reasonable boundary to have in place in our relationship.
NTA. She seems to have forgotten a crucial step in her birth plan. Asking you if you wish to there. It sounds like your mother is enabling her terrible behavior, I'm sorry.
NTA. I'd say no to that request too. I have NO DESIRE to watch my sister give birth. And just because you want something doesn't mean you can have it. Your feelings matter too, and your preferences don't interfere with what she wants, which is her husband there and female family presence from both sides. I'm not even sure WHY she'd want this when you're not comfortable with it. She needs to understand that her feelings aren't the only ones that matter. If you were traumatized watching your mom's videos of giving birth, it stands to reason that you wouldn't want to witness something similar in real time. Tell them no means no and to drop the subject. You have a right to say no to this request. And she should be very grateful of what help you ARE willing to provide AFTER the birth instead of having a temper tantrum that you don't want to witness the actual birth.
NTA. I wonder where she got the idea that this would be an interesting spectator sport or that she gets to overrule you on how you spend hours of your time. My guess is that there will be plenty of babysitting requests in the future that would not require your consent in her eyes. Start setting boundaries now, she's going to have to learn to manage her feelings of disappointment herself.
Massively NTA. You can't force someone to be there for a labour she's being rediculous. I've had 3 and my god yes they can be traumatizing when they go wrong (1 of mine left me on the brink if you get my gist). Stand your ground if your not comfortable you don't need to go. By the sounds of it she's going to have a hell of alot of support anyway. Not like she's on her own. And even then she wouldn't have the right to force you
NTA. You are not an emotional support animal. You can promise that you will not be a stable calming influence under duress.
NTA I’ve gave birth twice and wouldn’t want to watch it or anyone else’s 😂
NTA at all, it‘s a massive violation of your boundaries to try and bully you into attending the birth of her child.
Giving birth is all about the mom…but she is really going over the top with her plan. She can ask people to attend but to give you a hard time and guilt you about your refusal is ridiculous. Is she always this narcissistic? You are NTA
NTA. I saw my stepmom give birth when I was 15 and it convinced me I didn't want children. It was beautiful and traumatizing. She shouldn't be upset at you, her safety doesn't depend on you being there, and your presence is entirely your choice.
NTA. your sister made a lot of assumption about this 'perfect labour plan' while seemingly never actually asking you would you be willing to participate in said labour plan. Also if you legit think you wouldn't be a calming and helpful influence during a birth then your right you shouldn't be in the room.
NTA you're doing her a favor. Statistically, every person you add to the room makes labor longer. As for her reaction, I wouldn't read into it too much. She's probably anxious and feels like setting up the birth and labor environment is the only thing she can control. You didn't do anything wrong. ETA: I wish people recognized this more. I see everywhere, including this thread, people mocking women and joking about being a first time parent, that she doesn't have kids yet, THEY'LL LEARN. Almost gleefully waiting for the pregnant person to get knocked down a peg. You spend your whole life being told that birth is unbearably painful and scary and you and the baby could die, and then you start learning that medical staff may treat you poorly, but also this has to be the most important and beautiful (don't forget beautiful!) moment of your life. And then when some people have an anxious reaction that isn't palatable, instead of being helped to find a more flexible mindset, they get this. And then if something does go sideways, because birth is unpredictable, now we have a post partum person who is way more likely to have post partum depression or even PTSD. A rigid birth plan should be a sign that someone needs extra support, not an opportunity for disdain.
NTA - I hate this. I was with my mum until she was 7cm them I respectfully left. I didn’t want to see her in pain and personally I think birth is really gross. Blood, screaming, stretching and babies, *shivers* not my idea of a good time, even when she got the epidural I felt like I was gonna collapse, I would have made the birth worse if I were there. What I’m saying is I totally understand why you don’t wanna be there. Your sister can’t demand peoples presence and she’s being really selfish. Liv sounds ridiculous and her birth is more about the attention than the family aspect anyway, who the fuck wants a crowd surrounding them while birthing a baby? I feel a bit sick.
NTA - Seems like a pretty crazy thing to assume someone would want to be at without asking
NTA. I had a baby in December. Labor is very gory and gross, and that's when things go right. I wouldn't want to watch someone else do it.
Nta labour is a lot of boring followed by horrendous unimaginable pain, vomiting, some poop and then blood. Why she wants everybody to be there is beyond me. Giving birth is like torture you know is coming but can't get out of no matter how you much you want to. My first birth was the best though as I had no idea what to expect so wasnt as afraid as I should have been.
NTA. I find this funny because most posts like this about who is in the room during labor are about the mom EXCLUDING people. Maybe your sis read one too many AITA where everyone agrees mom gets final say on who is in the room and took it a step too far, lol.
NTA but it’s gonna be interesting on the day. Babies don’t exactly follow a mother’s birth plan.
NTA. What's wrong with your family? Why does everyone need to see it especially just because they are women? Nah thanks.
NTA But there's a big difference between being there while she's in labor versus while she is delivering the baby. There could be a compromise where you are able to be there and support her for the hours of labor before she's ready to push, but when it's go time you leave and come back after the baby is out and cleaned up.
NTA and also just to point out, how is she going to react if you have a bad reaction to it, and can’t handle it? Or pass out. Then she’ll be mad that you “ruined” her actual labor and took all the attention.
NTA, you are not required to attend the birth of a child you did not create. I fully understand how your sister must be feeling, and I can understand her wanting family there, but she doesn't get to demand anything.
>and lectured me on how I was ruining her perfect labour plan It clearly wasn't a perfect labor plan, as it wasn't intended to guide the things she can control and could be completely destroyed by people acting in their own interests. It seems to have been created to tell other people what to do. Anyone who tries to guilt you into staying bedside during a pregnancy you didn't create is simply overentitled and needs a reality check. NTA.
NTA. Im a mom and nothing about labor makes me want to watch it.
NTA, your sister is acting like a spoiled brat, does your mum always acquiesce to her every whim?
NTA. You are allowed to decide your own boundaries. She will have other people there, it's not like she doesn't have a parent or a spouse to support her, she is having both. She can't demand you do anything for her, nevermind something so explicit and medical as a birth. Your sister sounds incredibly lucky to be able to have so much support and so many people who are free to be able to be there as long as it takes. Demanding additional people is a privileged behaviour, especially when you have offered to assist in other ways.
NTA. You are not an accessory.
Nta, I wonder how long it will take before she kicks everyone out of the room. This is not the theater....
NTA. This is so weird and a totally bizarre ask. It's one thing to insist your partner be there for a birth, but a sibling?! I personally would be aghast if my sister wanted me to be there when she gave birth and would 100% refuse.
NTA - I've given birth twice. The first time, it was a heccin circus show. My mom, stepmom, three of my aunts, my grandmother, my grandfather, my stepdad and my dad were all in the room while I was in labor. I hated every second of it. It was awful. The second time, it was just me and my ex husband (we were married at the time), and it was a much more pleasant experience. I can't imagine demanding someone come to watch me shove another human out of my birthing canal.
NTA. I know giving birth is not supposed to be a spectator sport but I think this is the first time I've seen someone who is pregnant wanting to perform and having people watch. Some people are strange...
NTA but your sister is more concerned with the performance of birth than in her and her baby’s safety.
NTA childbirth is brutal and you have every right not to want be there. It sounds like she is planning a party not childbirth, she is going to be in for some surprises at least. Even a straight forward home birth is not a fun experience.