See I had a fairly good hospital birth as well. I didn't HB from my first baby, as much as I wanted to (my own crap, after experiencing the loving care of IM's I'd never go back to a hospital based program, no matter how seductive the allure of a Medicare covered birth is). It wasn't perfect the way DD2's birth was, DD1 had her cord clamped fairly quickly and was taken to be suctioned, but the actual birthing was pretty darn close to my HB. I think those women, the ones that just don't want to hear or acknowledge HB, are frightened of how they may feel about their own experiences. I know many women whose bar is very low in terms of their pregnancy and birth care, like you said Cassius. The fact that they narrowly avoided say, an episiotomy, and didn't have a crappy middy, that shouldn't be any woman's standard (unless of corse that's exactly the experience they want). I think, having a hospital birth and then having a HB, I can see that these women (and when I say these women, I don't mean every hospital birther, I mean the negative ones) simply don't know how good it can get. Ignorance is bliss, and when society tells you that you should just just up and be damn grateful you and your baby made it out alive and healthy, well, that's an incredibly low standard in a developed and privileged country IMO. No wonder so many women don't want to hear about empowered birth, especially at home, I can imagine for many it must trigger deep feelings of 'why didn't I deserve that' and 'what does she have that I don't?' And I think that that is that HB has outstanding continuity of care, intimate, respectful, evidence based and individual care. Which EVERYONE deserves, but few actually receive. I thought the care I had in my particular HB program with DD1 was great (not sure what other ones are like), but I really just didn't know how good it could get until DD2. What hospital will offer you a midwife who is on call for you 24/7 after you have your baby and are struggling with PND, to come and be with you and support you any the of the day or night? Having a HB was both life changing and completely and utterly average, it felt natural and normal because it is. I don't think I'm better than anyone because of the way I gave birth either time...often I feel as if I had better experienced than some people, but again, that's relative to each woman. At the end of the day, not every woman wants what we want. That's cool with me, I just don't think we should be shunned and ostracised because our standards, our beliefs and our desires for birth differ from the mainstream way of birthing.


Anyway, rant over LOL!