Home Birth In The Newspaper!
Erie Times Announcement
I am sure that it would come as no surprise to anyone to hear that our family doesn’t usually read the newspaper. Reading the news online just seems so much easier these days. It is greener. No stacks of newspapers to store until recycling day. I can choose what kinds of news (regional, national, international, politics, health…) I want to read and just skip over the stuff that doesn’t interest me (sports, comics, obituaries…) So why would we care about going through all of the steps to make sure that our birth was listed in the newspaper?
Well, frankly, let me just say that I am a bit ashamed that we don’t read the newspaper. I think that our children could probably benefit from seeing us reading it and become inspired to read it themselves. Finding creative ways to reuse the newspaper seems like something our kiddos would be into as well…we just saw a PBS special in which grade school kids made a fairly complex engineering project with newspapers and masking tape. Not to mention the glass cleaning properties or using it to stuff into wet boots in the winter. But I digress.
I was inspired by a friend of mine who had her homebirth announcement printed in the newspaper almost 2 years ago. It is assumed that a hospital birth will be printed in the paper. As a matter of fact, in 2003, when I had Bug, we had to choose to opt out of it while we were still at the hospital or else the information was going to be sent automatically when we were discharged. So earlier this month, when I called the newspaper about printing our birth announcement, the employee I was speaking to was very confused as to why the head nurse had not given me the form when I was discharged from the hospital even though I had already explained that we had our baby at home. Homebirth was just so far off of her radar that it took hearing it several times before she could understand what I meant. And even then, without the forms from the hospital she had no idea how to proceed with the information. It took a week of phone calls, emails and messages between our midwife, the newspaper and me to make it happen. It really struck me at that point: as normal and healthy as homebirth seemed to me, my family, and my circle of friends, the majority of the population still had almost no clue that it even existed! It is so easy to forget that it has taken me two decades, five babies, a dozen trainings and workshops, hundreds of books and videos, and thousands of websites and blogs to get to this place and that many people have never done more than take a hospital-sponsored childbirth preparation course.
So, did I place our announcement in the newspaper because I want all of our friends and family here in town to clip our announcement and glue it into a scrapbook next to a picture of our Little Chief? No. I did it to create a place in the newspaper where homebirthing families can choose to announce their birth right alongside hospital births. I did it so that all of the people who read the newspaper today will get to see the words Home Birth and perhaps have it infiltrate their subconscious so that it doesn’t sound as odd, or crazy, or irresponsible, or impossible, or as confusing as they thought it was yesterday. I did it so that we can publicly proclaim that homebirth is a safe and valid alternative to birthing in the hospital and deserves the same recognition. When a hosptial birth is printed, we have no idea what the circumstances of that particular birth were. However, when a homebirth is printed, there are certain assumptions that can be made about what the birth was not: we can count it as one more birth that was not surgical, medicated, or induced. It is one more piece of evidence that proves how safe birth can and should be.
I know that many fellow homebirthers tend to live a little off the grid, and like me, aren’t that tuned in to mainstream rituals, like reading birth announcements in the newspaper. I’m so very proud of how wonderfully healthy and happy our two homebirths have been and see no reason to keep it a secret. If we want more families to learn about all of their birthing options, then we have to be more willing to put our personal stories out there for others to learn from. I hope that more families will join me in making the Home Birth section of the birth announcements a regular part of our newspaper. As my friend, Bob (a devoted Daddy to a homebirthed babe) pointed out to me today, “the newspaper (any newspaper) is, to a degree, the official historical record of everything that happens in the town in which it is published,” and if we want history to be accurately recorded, then we owe it to ourselves and to our grandchildren to put homebirth front and center. Please contact me if you would like more information on who to contact if you would like to announce your homebirth in the paper, too!
Man, now I wish I had thought of this myself! Oh well, next time, if I’m lucky enough to have a next time.
Your disconnect with the employee reminds me a little of the confused woman at the town hall when I went to pick up my home birth paperwork in order to get a birth certificate, and then again – even more so – at the Social Security office. It’s not as visible as a birth announcement, but hey, those are two people who might be a little less surprised the next time it comes up.
Ha! Yes Anne, I had a similar experience at the SS Administration when we had T-Bird. The employee just kept repeating “Your OB and the hospital does this automatically when they send in the birth certificate info” I finally had to have the midwives write a letter! The whole concept that a parent could be responsible enough to handle these issues is mind-boggling for many folks! They keep asking where the proper *Authority Figure* has given you permission to do this! Let’s hope that we have provided a wider view of the world for one or two people along our journey <3
Excellent point, Justine, and bravo on paving the way for homebirthers in today’s world!
That was great to have it printed. I do read those notices and it jumped right out at me! Hooray! I pointed it out to everyone and facebooked the news – way to go. I would love to have the contact info (you worked so hard to get!) and share it with other homebirthers. Yay again!
What an awesome idea! I will totally spread the word to my childbirth ed students.
Excellent point, Justine, and bravo on paving the way for homebirthers in today’s world!