Stuff Homebirthers Like #4: YouTube birth videos

When’s the last time one of your friends shared a video of her baby emerging from a caesarean incision? Probably never. But you’re almost guaranteed to get a video from your homebirthing pal. In fact, she posted her birth on YouTube and made it public so complete strangers can marvel at her expanding vagina.

Homebirthers love sharing videos of their births. Often these videos contain photo montages of moms slumped over birth pools as new age music plays in the background. Sometimes the videos have captions cut in – “almost there!” or “1 centimeter to go!” – sort of like a football play-by-play but with more sweat.

Put “birth video” into the search field on YouTube and the whole first page of results gives you homebirthers in action (okay, there are also some animal births and a Monty Python sketch). But what you won’t see, until you dig into the depths of YouTube, is video of a hospital-gowned woman delivering her baby with the aid of an epidural, a fetal heart monitor, and a small army of medical personnel. It's not that hospital-birthers don't film their births. I'm sure they do. They just don't broadcast them to the world.

So why do homebirthers feel compelled to publicize their births? Well, for one, home births are pretty fucking cool. If you've never seen a natural labor, watch a video. It's an amazing sight, sort of Marcus Welby meets Little House on the Prairie but with way more tarp. You can't help but feel impressed by the miracle of birth and how fabulous women can look even in the throes of labor.

And lest you think these videos are intended to educate close-minded rubes about the benefits of homebirth, let's clarify the second reason homebirthers post to YouTube - because other homebirthers consume homebirth videos like encapsulated placentas. Homebirthers watch birth videos so we can say, "Holy shit, I did that?" and then, "Holy shit, I did that!"

Stuff Homebirthers Like #3: Placentas

Most people consider it a bloody uteral organ that goes straight into a biohazard bin. Homebirthers call it a lifeforce, the tree of life, or an all nourishing source of energy and are more likely to stick it in a blender.

Homebirthers adore their placentas maybe even more than the babies themselves. We wouldn’t dream of throwing it out with the rest of the birth detritus. Homebirthers spend months thinking about what they’ll do with their placenta once it’s out. Freeze it? Encapsulate it? Slice it up and put it in a lasagna? Bury it beneath a tree? The possibilities are endless and include everything but throwing it in a dumpster, which is illegal in most states anyway.

We swap placenta recipes. We share referrals for people who dry it up so we can pop placenta pills for months after its emergence. Sometimes we take the bloody mass and make art prints from it. Then, when someone asks about the Jackson Pollock-esque painting on our living room wall, it gives us another chance to talk about our homebirth (see #2).

Stuff Homebirthers Like #2: Talking about homebirth

Homebirthers will never miss an opportunity to mention their homebirth. It will come up in a conversation like this: “Oh you need help lifting that box? Well if I birthed my baby at home I can certainly lift a silly old box…”

Or “Sure I can run a marathon, I had a homebirth, didn’t I?”

Or “Excuse me, sir, where can I find the organic granola? My homebirthed child is hungry.”

Look, we plugged through months of childbirth training, hours of natural labor and incessant amounts of fluid discharge to have that baby at home and we’re damn proud of it. Statistically speaking, in a roomful of 100 women, we’ll be the only one who had a homebirth. We plan to make sure the other 99 women know it.

If you find yourself confronted by a homebirther, you must indulge her. Ask questions about how she endured labor for 30 hours without an epidural. Marvel at her ability to withstand pushing for two hours. Prod her with questions like "Isn't it messy?" so she can laugh in a silly-you kind of way and prattle on for another 20 minutes about the amazingly empowering experience that she went through and chronicled in graphic detail on her blog, "[Insert name here]'s Amazing Home Birth."

If you're lucky, another homebirther will come along to rescue you because the only people who can stand to listen to yet another birth story are other homebirthers. Your best bet to avoid the sheer boredom of hearing another labor play-by-play is to avoid eye contact with a homebirther or better yet have a homebirth yourself.

Stuff Homebirthers Like #1: Affirmations

Homebirthers have never seen an inspirational quote or positive affirmation they didn’t like. The most popular inspirations describe motherhood and the act of natural childbirth as expressions of female empowerment, manifestations of pure feminine beauty, and sacred blessings/ birth rites/ treasures. We also love any words uttered by Ina May Gaskin. Affirmations remind us that we’re not crazy for birthing at home. In fact, we’re way more enlightened than you are. We’re strong and powerful, but you know, in a totally feminine way, not like sweaty truck drivers.

Sometimes homebirthers write positive affirmations on flashcards to review while we’re laboring. Other times, we listen to CDs that ply us with encouraging words. The inspirations keep us positive while our cervixes are contorting to inhuman proportions and our uteruses are swelling like balloons (sorry, think positive  – “blooming roses”). But mostly, these little nuggets of encouragement appear as Facebook posts so we can share them with friends and make comments like “so true!” and “brought tears to my eyes.”

It’s a bonus if the affirmation comes with an image, preferably a baby – or baby hand/baby foot – or a woman lightly resting her hands across her protruding belly. Black and white images are especially heartwarming as is anything that depicts a man supporting his homebirthing wife. That shit just makes us melt.