The Unassisted Birth Of Oscar Paul

Many people thought we were crazy to talk about having a baby at home by ourselves, but that didn’t stop us from wanting to do it anyway. Besides, haven’t people learned by now that we don’t live our lives very traditionally?!

Healthcare in Alaska is pretty expensive, even more so than the outrageous prices in Pennsylvania. So when we found out we were expecting another baby, we did some price checking.

We paid a midwife $1,200 for the birth and prenatal care with each of our other children.

Cheaper than cheap.

Up here, hospital birth and prenatal care comes to around $20,000. A midwife costs $7,000 if you self pay before 37 weeks pregnant. Gulp. That’s a pile of money when all your money is going into building a house.

Then Andy fell off the roof and broke his hip and we had those hospital bills to work on.

So the idea of having a baby on our own started as a money thing. We thought it was ridiculous to pay so much for the birth of a baby when most of the time it happens naturally and uneventfully.

Enter the idea of doing it on our own.

This freaked out pretty much everyone we talked to, but “on our own” didn’t mean we wanted to put the baby at risk. First we got a medical ultrasound about halfway through the pregnancy where they checked the size of Baby’s heart, kidneys, head, leg bones, etc. It was very thorough and we were relieved there were not any deformities visible.

The pregnancy progressed very normally with no red flags. At 34 weeks gestation, we went to a midwife an hour and a half from here to make sure Baby was head down and in a good position for birth. He was.

Two weeks later we went back and the midwife walked us through emergency situations that can happen at birth and things to do if the cord were wrapped around the baby’s neck, or if the shoulders got stuck, or if the baby was blue and not breathing. I also read several midwifery books during this time and we both watched neonatal resuscitation videos just in case.

I realize that head knowledge is not everything, but it definitely went a long way to making us feel prepared and by giving us tools to use in case of an emergency.

We were getting pretty excited at this point about having a baby here at home by ourselves despite the subtle hints from relatives and friends about our insanity. It was no longer about the money and more about the freedom to have the kind of birth we wanted. I especially liked the part about not having to leave the house and drive an hour and a half to the midwife.

Our other babies came really fast, so we were expecting this one to pop right out in under two hours. Imagine our surprise when it took a whole nine hours.

It was great to be here at home the whole time, and we had a friend from church pick up Gabe and Jasmine to baby sit for the day.

Oscar took his own sweet time to make his appearance, but there weren’t any red flags. We kept tabs on his heartbeat by using a Doppler borrowed from another church friend.

At 9:40 AM on April 4 Oscar Paul was born. His head was a bit blue and he didn’t cry right away, but with some stimulation he pinked right up and cried, blinking up at us with big eyes.

We had gotten a fish scales (Andy is excited about using it for fishing in the future) so once we clamped the cord, he weighed in at a whopping 6 pounds 7 oz. Not too bad considering he was a full two weeks early.

About two hours later the midwife drove down from Kenai and did a quick check up on Oscar and me. We both checked out just fine, and she was impressed with Oscar’s color and reflexes.

So that was that! We had the baby at home by ourselves and it went fine. We didn’t have to use any of the emergency techniques we had learned, and it was even boring at times.

We like it that way.