After our first five children were born in very typical hospital settings, the Lord led us to homebirth our sixth and seventh children.
When I was pregnant with Molly I heard about someone I know who had a homebirth. I remember my first thought was "She's crazy!" Then, knowing what a godly couple this is, I thought that she must have a lot more faith (and a much higher pain tolerance) than me. It was never something that even *remotely* appealed to me. I liked my epidurals, thank you very much!
When we were expecting MaryVance, we moved to Mississippi. The prenatal care I received was adequate, I have no complaints about that. Being that we had only lived here for a short while, we had no one to care for our other children when I was birthing MaryVance. Our ob was very sympathetic (and liked pitocin!) and agreed to induce at 40 weeks. (Knowing that our other babies were born at 41 and 42 weeks should have been a clue that this wasn't the best idea...) The induction went smoothly but took a very long time as she was just not ready to be born. Her labor and delivery were very "normal". However, the rest of the hospital stay was horrid! Let's just say there's a reason why Mississippi is a "medically underserved area"... I won't go into details but when I got home I remember telling Tony that if we have any more they will either be in Memphis or at home!!!
(During the pregnancy with MaryVance, the Lord had been dealing with me in a lot of areas. One of those areas was trusting Him. He kept asking me "Do you trust me?" and I'd answer "of course I do!". He kept asking me over and over and over and I just couldn't understand why? Wasn't I answering correctly? I did trust Him--He is God! So I began to ponder exactly what trusting Him really meant and to try and discern if there was some area in which I was not trusting Him. After much prayer, He revealed it to me--my family! I was not really trusting Him with my family. If you want to read the rest of this story, click on What Is QuiverFull?) Our decision to follow the Lord into homebirthing was directly related to our decision to give our attempt at 'family planning' back to Him.
We prayed very diligently to be in His will when I was pregnant with Elijah and He led us to homebirth. We prayed again with Isaac's pregnancy and He led us to homebirth again. If He blesses us again, we will bathe the decision to homebirth in prayer and if He leads, we will homebirth again. It is a truly amazing experience!!!
