Stay-At-Home Mom, Indeed

Home-birthing 'strange and magical,' but trade-offs hurt—like Mo. law against midwives
By Paul Stinson,  Newser User
Posted Jun 27, 2008 4:08 PM CDT
Stay-At-Home Mom, Indeed
Article author Madeline Holler is shown here in a photo taken from the Babble website. Holler developed a preference for midwife usage during her first pregnancy on the East Coast, but had to rely on an underground network to find a midwife in Missouri whose laws forbid midwives from hospital delivery...   (Babble)

Home-birthing isn’t only strange and magical—it requires some covert-operation skills, Madeline Holler writes in Babble. After finding she preferred an attending midwife in the birth of her first child, Holler found using one for her second to be illegal in Missouri, where she'd moved. As such, she found, "there were trade-offs in going off the grid to have a baby."

“Sure, flaxseed oil and white oak bark alleviated constipation and hemorrhoids," Holler writes. "But for a rash on my breasts, why yogurt in my bra? Couldn't I just use an ointment?” After a successful birth, the fate of the placenta also took unexpected twists: "Most of my moms bury them," the midwife said. "Placentas are great fertilizer." (More midwife stories.)

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