Born Free?

IN 1974 my young wife, then 21 decided to have a home birth "WITHOUT" a doctor present with just her and I there. At the time I thought, "Well. This is pretty crazy!" But, I also knew my 1st wife was at about 160 IQ and very self directed at that time in her life. So, I knew likely I was going to have to go along with this.

So, our strategy was to have the child alone at home and first take a Lamaze Class which told us how to do it then in 1974. So, we bought like the Lamaze class taught us shoestring to tie of the umbilical cord, Denatured alcohol for sterilizing the shoelaces and scissors and rubber gloves to make sure my hands were sterile for delivering our son. About one month before the actual birth we had a friend of ours over to help but it turned out to be false labor. Also, I gave this lady too much attention and so my wife didn't want her there during the birth. I was 26 and my young wife was 21.

So, when the big day came I was sort of unsure about all this but we were both young and thought we could do no wrong and felt sort of immortal the way young people often do at that age if they are physically and mentally and emotionally healthy enough.

So, I delivered our son. But, she had some trouble because it was her first birth and the natural birth process is sort of like having a watermelon pass through your vagina so when she had some difficulty with my holding her arms under the armpits standing I realized that sitting on a toilet would be the place to actually crown that would feel more normal to her. What was interesting about this was that I had no idea at all about how much fluid (amniotic and blood and everything) that actually comes out that actually filled the bathroom up to about 3 or 4 inches deep in the stuff so it was also slippery. So, she crowned on the toilet and then slipped off and delivered him into my arms. He was kind of blue or purple at first so I massaged him and got him crying and sucked the stuff out of his mouth so he could breathe with a squeeze bottle that can be used for this. Within a few hours we told my parents about the birth and they came over and at that time they had an osteopath that was a friend and he signed the birth certificate like he had delivered the baby. My parents were trying to protect us from legal repercussions because of our youthful way of looking at things.

Then later we went back to our Lamaze class to show our baby and told them we did it alone and everyone there just about had a heart attack in realizing what we had actually done. Because no one in the class actually had the balls in the end to do natural childbirth without any pain killers except us.

But, then we were very alternative too so this was something quite natural for us then in 1974.

My son is now 45 and has a bachelors of Science degree from CSU San Bernadino and lives in Oregon with his wife and  5 year old son now by the way.

I guess the point here is: Lamaze class $25 then in 1974 and scissors, shoestrings, squeeze bottle to remove fluid from his mouth and denatured alcohol for sterilizing everything including rubber gloves brought the total to about $35 total.

So, basically my son was born for about $35 then in 1974. Lamaze class taught us how to do natural childbirth alone if we had to so that's what she decided to do because she was very very smart and read about 25 books at the time of how it was done. Then we worked with Bahai ladies who had all had natural childbirth at home too at an electronics company then in California.