Birth Story Part 2: The Search

*Disclaimer*  This post, and subsequent ones, will probably contain quite a bit of TMI and be quite long.  Feel free to skip to cute baby pictures if you're concerned about knowing me a little too well at the end :)  I am including quite a few details both for my memory and for those who might consider a Homebirth.  Obviously, every birth, momma, midwife and situation is unique.  Please don't substitute my opinion or experience for your own researched judgement.

Realizing my fear of the hospital sent me searching for the only other option available in our area, a Homebirth.  I would have considered a birthing center, but there isn't one within two hours of us.  So I started searching tge web and seeking out others who had homebirths to pick their brain and get encouragement.

First I checked out what kind of certification most Homebirth midwives carried.  I found that some didn't ever get certified, some were CNMs (certified nurse midwives, like what we were working with in the hospital), but most were LPMs (liscensed professional midwives).  Obviously it would be great to get a CNM, but most of those who practice outside of the hospital are on the west coast, so the next best option (the most common and also still a great option) was a LPN.  Liscensed Professionals Midwives go through national certification which requires them to attend over 100 births, progressively taking on more and more responsibility for each Momma's care.  They are supervised and advised by an alradeay liscensed midwife, have additional studies they have to complete along with a standardized test.  Most of these ladies also take doula and lactation training during this time.

I found a website listing doulas and LPM's in our state, but most of them were 2 hours or more away from us (again, we really do live in the boonies).  I was really hoping for someone closer but started contacting these folks in the mean time.  During this search I met up with our chiropractor's wife, who has had several homebirths, to pick her brain and hear her experiences (Dr. Grome was also shredding my scar tissue from the section during this, so my memory is a little fuzzy on convo details!).  They recommended Melanie, a midwife they knew and trusted.  I excitedly called her only to find out that she was trying to take July off (when I was due) :( she was super encouraging and recommended another, more experienced, midwife who actually only lives 20 minutes away.  She promised that if I didn't feel comfortable with her for some reason she would find a way to work me in.

This is how we finally found our way to Wantina.  In the course of our first interview we learned that she is a LPM and started the linsence process right out of high school.  She has since then 'caught' over 700 babies.  She did a great job answering our plethora of questions that first day, and the many more that came in the days and meetings to follow - including some hard ones suggested by my Mom such as have you lost any Mommas or babies (she hasn't lost any Moms by the way and only delivered two still births, both babies had fatal defects).  What sold us on Wantina was we felt she had enough experience to know if something was going wrong, AND were that the case she was going to get us to the hospital and the care necessary in a timely manner - not pressure for a Homebirth 'No Matter What'.

While we had finally decided this was what we wanted to try, a slight hangup was that we still wanted our orriginal hospital as a backup in case I needed induced or something didn't go as planned.  The difficulty was planned Homebirths haven't been possible legally in Indiana until just this year.  Although the laws states a Indiana licensed midwife can administer a Homebirth, there has not been a way to get liscensed until this year.  As such, if the hospital administrator finds out you are planning one they will kick you out of the practice.  Even if your doctor or midwife might be okay with you having a Homebirth (which mine was when I got the gumption to tell her what I was considering), the administrators are so concerned about liability they don't want any connection with one.  Since the law just changed this shouldn't have been a concern, BUT, because this is a transition time and policies are still changing, we didn't want the hospital administrator to find out because they could technically still kick us out until the actual hospital policies were changed.

So now we had a midwife and the beginnings of a plan, and really only a few weeks to go before the main event since we waited so long to switch.  We also had a lot of appointments ahead of us!