Seems many people need to look at actual statistics about safety of home vs sick-people-building birth...
Also might peek at how awful this country's infant mortality rate is compared to other countries where homebirth is more the norm, and think "I think we're doing something very very WRONG".
They just had their doula. I don't believe doula's have medical schooling. I kept thinking they are so lucky everything went ok. So many complications could have arisen, cord around neck, bleeding, breathing, etc. And they had no doctor or midwife to help.
I bet they know where a hospital is.
If Mrs Duggar doesn't count as a midwife by now (the vast majority of her births have been done the normal way) I do not know who does.
Bet they had allll sorts of good proven ways of helping any problems...better than what most OBs know to do!
(There are states where homebirthing is illegal--hence the....hush hush midwives.)
Clarification...some states might prosecute attendants for attending a birth, but the actual homebirth is NOT illegal. Seems a petty difference, but the actual reality of "homebirth is illegal" vs "it's illegal for some attendants to attend" is HUGE.
Jim Bob's reaction made me laugh too....the silence when Josh said they were thinking about a homebirth said it all, but it was nice that he didn't give him a lecture and trusted them to make the right decision for their family.
I wish they would have mentioned a midwife if there was one there. Unassisted homebirths (not having anyone trained to deliver babies there) are becoming more popular, and that can be risky for Mom and baby.
I do believe many of the Duggars births were at home. I highly doubt he actually questioned it; perhaps wanted to make sure THEY were doing what they truly wanted, but I doubt he had a true issue with it.
UCs are the way to go in my book. I'd always dreamed of it, was talked into midwives by new hubby, biggest mistake I ever made. Having people around me was horrible. I needed to be alone in a small room, not watched like a clock. Attendants caused my body to react like I was a deer in labor and they were lions circling, but they wouldn't let me flee.
I don't really know a lot about home births so I'm curious- do they have to go to the hospital anyway after the birth??? What would they do with the placenta at home, throw it in the trash? If someon can fill me in, I'd appreciate it! Thanks
No need for a hospital visit unless something's actually wrong. Weigh baby in whatever way you want. Can throw away placenta, can plant it, can eat it (it helps control bleeding and can help keep depression away! it's amazing!), can dry it and take as capsules later (again, bleeding suppression and depression aversion).
One of my sorrows of having the attendants I did, and going along with their idiocy when they washed their hands of me and plopped me at the hospital was that I was so tired that I didn't think to have them give me my placenta. I never even saw it. It's a pretty big sorrow for me, along with the other sorrows of going to the place where they keep the scalpels.
I loved the idea of a home birth myself, but I was told not to try it with my first baby because you never know how your body works as far as labor and delivery go until you've tested it out once. It turned out that mine doesn't labor at all without pitocin, so I've always had my babies in the hospital.
Aw hon...I bet your body would labor on its own. I bet you have just reached the legal limit of time that your attendants would give you, before their insurance insists that they DO something. Hubby was a 44 week baby. His mom didn't go into labor until then; if she'd had the same OB situation as is happening today (her docs said "You want surgery?" and she said "No", and they shut up and let her continue without daily calls) she might have thought she didn't labor without help, but she did.
Her first birth was unattended in rural Korea. Took 5 days from start to finish. 100 lb woman raised in occupied Korea had a 10 lb FIRST baby. If she had medpros around she likely wouldn' thave done it, but left alone she did. I wish I'd known this story BEFORE having DS.
Anyway, most of my friends tried that line on me, and it helped me get to the midwife "you can't have it alone with your first", and like I said above, I found out TOO LATE that my bod doesn't work in front of other people. Big bad problem to find out too late!
So happy for this new baby being born at home, so happy for the mom and dad who got the joys of not being surrounded by scalpels (or bad midwives like mine were), and who definitely had an experienced woman nearby!!!!!
No idea what they did.
It actually made me feel sick to my stomach just watching it.. If I were there, I would have been in the bathroom barfing.. 
I guess that comes with old age though: weak stomachs; fear of heights; claustrophobia; etc..
I can remember a time when that kind of stuff wouldn't have bothered me at all.. Sigh.................
I think the grossest one was the melted mounds bar dirty diaper.
