Bravery has nothing to do with it.

Whenever I tell people I had a home birth, their first response is always (unless they've had one themselves) "Wow, you're brave."

Bull. Crap.

Before I made the decision to stay home, I did a ton of research, but all of that was only to validate the possibility. The truth is I'm mortified of hospital birth. Utterly, stone cold terrified.

There are two reasons for that. The first is, to most doctors and hospitals, I'm a walking surgery waiting to happen. Even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) publicly supports trial of labor (TOL) for most vaginal birth after two cesareans (VBA2C), the liability involved in "allowing" women to "attempt" VBAC in a hospital is ridiculous and dangerous to everyone involved (as a laboring woman, you can never be sure if the doctor REALLY means it's legitimately time for a cesarean, or if he's just trying to escape liability).

My two cesareans were largely routine. The first happened after nearly a full day laboring in the hospital (6-something AM to nearly 10 PM). A nurse had to push DS1 back into the uterus while the head surgeon pulled him out from the incision. The incision tore slightly during his extraction, but didn't do any serious damage. I bled a little, but not enough to be a worry. Nothing to see here. My second was even less interesting. No labor. This one was scheduled. The poor doctor had to hack through a lot of scar tissue, so it took a while to make a proper opening, but DS2 came out easy. He was a bit skinny, but required no extra help or NICU time (thank heaven!). I did a little bleeding here too. It wasn't much--my doctor called it "weeping"--but my doctor finally gave up on stopping it because it was so little and sewed me back up again. The end. No infections. No separation. No hemorrhage. Nothing.

Physically.

Well, that depends on how you define "physically."

First off, whoever claimed the second cesarean is easier, especially if there is no labor, has never had a freaking cesarean! It's the biggest line of BS doctors feed women these days, and that's REALLY saying something! Surgery sucks, okay? You shouldn't have to do it unless you have to do it.

The second reason is this: The circumstances surrounding that second delivery were not pleasant. I know I've shared the story before, so I'll keep it short. I had the VBAC rug pulled out from under me mere weeks before I was due. I had no chance to make other arrangements, so my choices were effectively give birth in the woods, or let them eviscerate me again. Under the circumstances (aka: duress), I chose repeat evisceration.

I later (much later) learned the name for what I suffered after that: birth related post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It's not an easy to describe condition. You know that feeling you get when you come dangerously close to a particularly large and nasty-looking arachnid? When your heart jumps into your throat and your muscles seize up, and you can't sleep for hours afterward? Yeah, fight or flight. PTSD feels like that.

All. The. Time.

I'm not writing this to complain. After my most recent birth experience, the symptoms are greatly diminished, though it'll likely never go away completely. Those kinds of brain changes are sort of permanent. But I digress. The truth is I think I can honestly say that I would rather die than go through the early stages of PTSD again. No really. It's that awful. And while I still have ups and downs, just like everyone else in the world (though mine are a little different, usually consisting of terrifyingly realistic waking nightmares of SWAT teams extracting me from a locked fortress so they can drag me off and cut me open again), I would never risk the progress I've made in PTSD recovery. Ever.

So even not even addressing the numerous articles and research papers saying that home birth is as safe as hospital birth, if not more so under the right circumstances (and if anyone mentions the seriously flawed and debunked Wax meta-analysis, I'll kick them in the teeth repeatedly), along with the research showing that VBAC is safer than repeat cesarean for both mother AND baby (yes, the line that repeat cesarean is safer for baby was shown to be false in April of 2010), I had a VERY good reason to stay away from the hospital in labor.

And it had nothing to do with bravery.