By Samantha Fisher, Brookings, SD

We moved here from Southern California in March of 2006. We had researched laws regarding midwife attended homebirths before we left and knew things were not as good here as they were in CA. We had no idea how bad they really were until we actually got here and were able to have conversations with other families and professionals. We found out that there were NO midwives here able to help families birth safely at home. The only Certified Professional Midwife we found was only able to help if we crossed over the border into Minnesota. That kind of defeats the purpose of having a homebirth.

We hired a Certified Nurse Midwife and toured the hospital and quickly realized that option was not going to work for us. We have already had 6 births in CA and knew what was acceptable for our family. Only one of those births was in a hospital. The next birth was at a freestanding birth center with a CNM. The rest of our births took place at home with a CPM. We experienced many different types of labors and births including a birth that did become complicated and was resolved with the expert help of our CPM. Touring the hospital here was a huge eye opener at how hard we would have to fight to have a natural labor and birth and to keep our baby safe from unwanted, unnecessary, and possibly harmful routine interventions and hospital policies.

After this tour we contacted our midwife from CA and discussed in depth our options. Ultimately we decided to
stay at home and birth this baby unassisted. Our midwife felt with our history, our experience and the knowledge we both had from our previous births that this was an acceptable option. She also offered her services via phone if we had any questions. This was a very difficult decision for us to make. We weighed all the risks and picked the set of risks we could accept the best. We were both somewhat leery but we knew we had no real choice. The state of South Dakota made it for our family.

Labor began about three weeks before my estimated due date. I had had some pre-labor a few days before. I had never gone early before and we had not ordered any birth supplies. My husband was able to pick up some of the bare necessities from an emergency OB kit from the local fire department. We had cord clamps and a sterile scalpel to cut the cord with. We had a nasal aspirator. We didn’t have much else! I went into labor in the middle of the night. My husband had worked the swing shift and my contractions started as he got home. I didn’t say anything; just let him go to sleep. I got up and soaked in the tub, watched TV, walked around anything to see if the contractions would stop. They didn’t, just increased slowly. About 5:30 AM, I had to really concentrate on them and started OOOHHHing through them. I knew there was no turning back now. Baby was coming whether the birth kit was here or not.

At 6:00 AM, I woke my husband and told him it was time. He did some basic record keeping items including timing a few contractions, blood pressure, check for dilation at my request and noted these items. I labored for about another hour and a half and needed to push. I was in the tub and began pushing. Baby was coming down slowly. My water still had not broken and I knew it needed to break. I asked my husband to break it. With some struggle through several contractions he got the bag to break. Finally I was able to really push. Baby was born about 15 minutes later. My husband brought him up to my chest and quickly grabbed towels to cover him up and checked and wrote down the time. Baby started crying quickly and pinked up very quickly. We got out of the tub to wait for the placenta. We tried to get baby to nurse and he just wasn’t interested yet. We finally cut the cord so I could squat to try and encourage the placenta to come out. That did the trick. I took a shower and crawled back into my bed to take a much needed nap with my newest son. He did finally latch on and begin to nurse later that morning. He was 7lbs 6oz born at 37 weeks. He got off to a slow start nursing but with good chiropractic care and monitoring, he did just fine! He was born at 8:08a.m. on 8/8/06.

Send us your beautiful birth story! We plan to share these on a web site that will be linked to sdsafebirth.org as well as print some in upcoming newsletters. E-mail your story to chair@sdsafebirth.org.