It's Easy Being Green

After several weeks I’m trying to climb back in the saddle when it comes to the blog bandwagon.  I’ve been out of commission for the last several weeks because my wife and I were getting ready to welcome our first child into the world.  She arrived on June 23rd at The Farm Midwifery Center in Summertown, Tennessee.

My wife really wanted a natural child birth for her first birthing experience.  When we figured out we were expecting she did a lot of reserach on local hospital birthing options and that’s when we realized that she wasn’t going to get the natural experience she wanted in a hospital.  Intervention rates in our area are high and both hospitals we considered wouldn’t allow us to avoid fetal monitoring, alternative birthing positions, etc.  That’s when we started looked for a midwife in southwestern Indiana.

We didn’t have much luck there either.  We found a midwife in the area but she has a history of lawsuits and told us that 90% of her first time Moms end up being transported to the hospital.  She didn’t have any emergency backup options and since Midwifery is unfortunatley illegal in the state of Indiana, we weren’t real comfortable with local options.  That’s when my wife discovered The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee.

The Farm started off in the early 70’s as a spiritual community leading the way in communal living.  One of the most successful components of The Farm community was their Midwifery Center, led by world-reknowned midwife Ina May Gaskin.  Gaskin has written several books on the subject of Midwifery and natural childbirth and her writing helped to direct my wife to go in that direction as opposed to a medicated, un-natural child birth in a local hospital with high intervention rates.

The beauty of The Farm is that just about everyone who lives there also maintains a cabin that is available for rent on their property.  A few of these cabins are primarily used as birthing cabins, where women can give birth in a quiet and relaxing home-like experience.  To be quite honest, in the beginning I still wasn’t convinced that a birth experience at The Farm was the way to.  I was urging my wife to just go “the easy way” by having a birth at the local hospital, using insurance so we didn’t have to lay out a bunch of money to have a birth.  I’m sorry that’s the attitude I carried.  We scheduled our first visit to The Farm to see if this was what we really wanted to do.

Driving onto The Farm the first time was like stepping into a time capsule.  This experiment in communal living certainly felt and looked like a hippie paradise.  Stepping into the Midwifery Center was like walking into a clinic located in some small, third world country at the far reaches of our globe.  As soon as our midwife greeted us at the front door though, it was all over for me.

The first thing I noticed about our midwife, Pamela Hunt, was her calm and warm demeanor.  As soon as we were in her presence, I felt every worry about a natural birth experience melt away and knew this was the place where we were going to introduce our little one into the world.  In addition to our monthly, insurance covered visits to a local OB/GYN in Indiana, we made a visit to see Pamela at The Farm during at least every trimester and kept in touch with her via email and telephone after every prenatal checkup back home.

Since we live more than 200 miles from Summertown, Tennessee, we knew we weren’t going to be able to hop in the car when my wife’s water broke and head to The Farm.  A rushed, frantic three and a half hour car ride while my wife is in labor just wasn’t going to be option.  That’s where the rental cabins at The Farm came into play.  Just about everyone who lives there also has a cabin available for rental.  Several of the cabins are designated as birthing cabins, giving women and their families a place to relax and enjoy a natural homebirth experience.  We opted to rent Pamela’s cabin which was right next door to her house.  It doesn’t get much more comforting than that!

We headed to The Farm two weeks before my wife’s due date and got her all setup in the cabin.  I stayed weekends and drove back to Evansville during the week to go to work, since I wasn’t going to be allowed to take very much time off.  I had just returned home very late after the second weekend at The Farm when I awoke to the home phone ringing at 7:30 in the morning.  I knew right away what the call was about.  My wife had awoken to her water breaking and was getting ready to sit and have breakfast with her Mom who was staying at the cabin in my absence.  I immediately got our zoo of animals resituated at the house and made my excited trek back down to Tennessee to help welcome my first child into the world.  In the meantime she took a morning stroll to The Farm Store down the road from the cabin and visited with Pamela about the day ahead.

When I arrived at 2pm my wife was obviously excited to see me.  We hung out for a bit and then she laid down to take a nap and rest up for the birth.  It was hot and extremely humid that afternoon but the stickiness seemed to have a certain energy about it.   Early in the evening, she woke up and was beginning to get some strong contractions about every 2 to 3 minutes.  Knowing that the birth process was starting was both daunting and exciting.

To read the rest of our birth story, check in tomorrow!

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