From a Dad to Dads
*The 7 Secrets of Being A Home Birth Dad *
By Ven Batista
Ven Batista wrote this article after his wife, Bel, had her second daughter at home in London.
All Dads-to-be are nervous, or at least skeptical, when their wife/partner first mentions the idea of having a home birth. This is nothing to be ashamed of – us guys are conditioned by a lifetimes constant bombardment that Doctors know best and that it is our patriarch’s duty to always make the safest choices. That’s why when my wife Bel first brought up the idea for the birth of our second daughter, my first train of thought was about risk. Images of John Hurt’s chest cracking open and a tiny, evil alien being screeching its bloody arrival to the universe ran through my mind. I looked up at the walls of our apartment and wondered whether an arterial spray of blood could ever be washed out of that particular shade of off-white.
Ten minutes’ googling dissolved my misconception that home birth is reckless (with Bel peering over my shoulder and directing me to websites she’d already read). In a nutshell, there are studies for and against, but if you listen to your own common sense you will probably agree it’s just as safe, if not safer. You can find all that stuff for yourself, what I want to really want to talk about is the second train of though that ran through my head – why?
Why have a home birth? My wife had her reasons and she laid them out for me. Bel had a horrible experience in hospital with our first daughter and that was a big part of it. As Bel explained it to me I nodded and said ‘umm’ a lot and was happy to go along with it because I knew it was what she wanted. But I never had reasons of my own – from my selfish perspective as a Dad – until after I had experienced it for myself. These reasons are the 7 secrets I want to share with you Dads now so that you can appreciate your home birth the first time round.
