By Chandelle Brink Growing up in the great state of South Dakota, my husband and I always considered it to be a matter of pride to say, “I am a South Dakotan”. South Dakotans pride ourselves in hard work, protecting our freedoms, personal responsibility, and logical thinking. In most cases, that is still true. However, I was shocked to find out what was happening “back home” while we began our family out of state. After having 3 wonderful home births with two different midwives, it was obvious that is the way birth is meant to be- a loving caring environment for BOTH the mother and the child. Midwives are the experts in normal, healthy birth which allows them to identify issues sooner. My midwives were a source of positive reinforcement that everything was going the way God intended it to. In all pregnancies my midwives were proactive in many areas, they guided me to better nutrition to prevent unnecessary bleeding and encouraged protein in plentiful amounts to prevent a host of problems. When we moved back to South Dakota, there was no question that we would have our children in the safety and security of our home. We knew that midwives were scarce up in the “north country” and had heard that most if not all were practicing only in hospitals. Shortly after moving back home, we found out the exciting news that we would be bringing another child into this world. That excitement soon turned to question – Would we be able to find an experienced person to assist in the birth of our child? The yellow pages did not have a midwife section like Missouri. ? We heard of a few practicing midwives across the border, but knew the home setting was safest for our family.

My husband and I have an amazing, beautiful girl who is God’s blessing in our lives. Grace is a breastfed, unvaccinated, regularly chiropractically adjusted, healthy, happy, smiling, beautiful child. I am in awe of her presence and her grace already in her short life. I thank God everyday that she is my child and I am honored to be her mother. I need to say that in order to say this. Gulp. My heart is broken. I have failed myself, my child, my husband. I have physically harmed myself and my child by bringing her into this world on a medicated journey in the hospital. But, I want to heal. I want to reclaim what is my right - natural, beautiful birth. I need it, my daughter needs it, and my husband needs it. I’m hoping writing this birth story will help in my healing process. Grace’s birth was always planned to be natural. We do not use medications. Open our bathroom cabinet at our home and you won’t find any medicine. In fact, we don’t call it a medicine cabinet at our house because there’s nothing like that in it. We eat organic food. My husband is a chiropractor and we work in the office together. We are adjusted almost daily. Everyday we talk to people about the dangers of medication and masking symptoms with prescriptions. I have to say this in order to let you know how serious I am about not using drugs and living a healthy, natural lifestyle. That’s why it constantly catches me off guard and embarrasses me to say that Grace’s birth was medicated. I am fully aware of the danger I have exposed us both to during her birth. It’s eating me up inside.

By a South Dakota Dad

My wife had a typical pregnancy, and, as expected, a typical labor, meaning several hours over a couple days under the watchful eye of our midwife in a cabin in a neighboring state. Much prayer and consideration of our limited options went into our decision to have our baby in this setting. We had a great relationship with our midwife and did not feel safe birthing at home without her expertise. Because of South Dakota’s prosecution of midwives, we were not able to find a midwife who would come to our home to help us deliver our baby. Going to our local hospital meant a c-section, as they would not allow my wife to try for a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean), even though our last birth was a successful VBAC.

So here we were in a rented cabin, making the best of our situation. Progress was slow, despite early water breakage, a first for us. Our midwife advised us that once the water breaks, introducing outside germs through pelvic examinations was a risk

After several hours of labor we decided a pelvic was needed to determine progress. Dilation was slow but sure as we continued our out-of-hospital, but out-of-home experience. As my wife began to feel more and more like the baby was coming, we prepared for the eminent birth.

She had had very long hard labor episodes in the past, so the midwife and I took turns applying back pressure and supporting her abdomen. During that time, my wife began to shudder, a sign, during previous deliveries, of the transition into the birth, but this time, the baby didn’t come.

As she had been doing on a regular basis throughout the labor, our midwife checked the baby’s heart rate – it was elevated and unstable – we recognized there was potential danger to both mother and child. Again, after prayer and consideration, we decided to transport to the hospital.

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

When I woke up that morning I told my unborn baby that it was a great day to be born – of course I had been saying this everyday for at least the last two weeks. It was May 31st – 3 days past our due date and it really was a beautiful spring morning. I had a few light contractions when I got up, but nothing different than I had been feeling off and on for weeks. We had an appointment later that morning with our midwife, so I had a quick breakfast and took a shower. By the time I came out of the shower my contractions had really picked up and I told Quint he had better call the midwife and tell her to bring all her stuff to the appointment. This was to be our first home birth and I was very excited and a little nervous. We decided on a home birth because our last labor had lasted only 3 hours and we were concerned about having this baby in the car.

I was so glad we had made the decision to stay home as Quint made phone calls summoning those who would be at our birth. Taking care of the children that morning (our 3 ½ year old twins and our 18 month old) and getting a meal in the crock pot were wonderful distractions from the discomforts of my
labor.

When our midwife arrived she checked the baby’s heart rate and my blood pressure. Everything was fine but I was very uncomfortable lying down, so I spent most of my labor moving around the house tiding up and visiting with the friend who had come to watch the children. Our midwife noticed when I started to get really uncomfortable and showed Quint how to put pressure on my lower back. She even had a bag of rice she heated in the microwave to add some heat. That felt wonderful! It was like the pain was instantly cut in half.

About 3 ½ hours after I had taken the shower that morning I told everyone that I thought we should move up to the bedroom where we planned to have the birth. It was not easy for me to get up the stairs at this point, but with Quint’s help, I made it.