Home Birth At Homestead

"Conviction" Or Fear-Mongering?

Most of the women at Homestead Heritage have their babies at home with the assistance of church ladies who function as unlicensed midwives. Since these "midwives" are not licensed by the Texas Midwifery Board, they cannot charge for their service and cannot take any responsibility for a woman's pregnancy or birth. If something should go wrong-- and things have gone very wrong in some situations-- a couple can only transport to the hospital claiming that they were trying to have a baby by themselves without assistance. So much for honesty. When this information was told to a founding member of the North Texas Midwives Association, the Association of Texas Midwives, and the Midwives Alliance of North America she strongly disagreed with the approach as a midwifery standard of care. 

In Homestead's book Parental Conviction on Responsibility in Home Birth: Assuming Responsibility before God for Your Birth we read:

. . . [W]e may have a conviction that home birth is the ideal pattern, but a constitutional midwife is not available. A circumstance may arise, then, where the Body fails to realize God's grace to us through this particular form. This may not be anyone's fault, It may only mean that your particular situation (a new fellowship) allows only for a new midwife to serve you. And since it is your birth and not the church's or the midwives' and since you enter into this situation fully knowing all of this, you should never, under any circumstances request the church's support or a midwife's attendance unless you are absolutely convicted that you can never hold either the midwives or the church responsible in any way for the outcome, effects or consequences of your birth. It is totally your decision whether or not to have your baby at home. You cannot, therefore, hold accountable people whom you have requested to serve you without pay. God alone is justified in holding them accountable--not you or the State. To ask assistance is to automatically agree to this. (p. 42, emphasis added)

This is problematic when the parents who are supposed to be the ones responsible for the birth are expected to submit to an untrained, unlicensed midwife or face abandonment as outlined in Parental Conviction on Responsibility in Home Birth: Testing Your Conviction.

45. What if the sisters suggest that the mother do certain things in the course of her pregnancy, such as gain more weight, take more walks or eat different foods? Will the wife be willing to fully comply with the suggestions of the sisters concerning diet, exercise and so on and to comply with the patterns of the fellowship in regard to these things? What if they suggest certain things in the course of her labor or birth, such as walk, change positions, correct her attitude or exert herself further? Could she willingly comply full of victory and faith? Could she comply in this attitude even if it involved something she didn't want to do or didn't even feel capable of doing? Even if she were in what she considered unbearable pain? If you as the expectant mother and father felt it was not God's will but all the sisters felt it absolutely was, could you accept without resentment the fact that the sisters might feel compelled to leave since they can't, and certainly would never even want to, do as medical professionals do and get a court order that forces you to submit? (p. 9, emphasis added)

So an expectant couple must submit to these unlicensed "midwives" that "God alone" can hold accountable should something go wrong. 

Although medical options for birth aren't prohibited at Homestead, they also aren't presented in a very positive light in Parental Conviction on Responsibility in Home Birth: Assuming Responsibility before God for Your Birth.

Once you go into the hospital, you become subject to the whims of medical technology with its frequently destructive interventions. Statistics reveal that hospital births are much more dangerous that home births. In a group of 1146 hospital births as compared to the same number of home births, "birth injuries were thirty times more common in the hospital."⁹ In this same survey, "there were nine times as many episiotomies done in the hospital and nine times as many third- and fourth-degree tears in the hospital."¹⁰ "Babies born in the hospital" are "four times more likely to need resuscitation" and "four times more likely to become infected." ¹¹ Today, 25% of all hospital births are Caesarean sections,¹² many of which are performed against the mother's will. Beyond the physical injury this operation inflicts, its violation of natural birth patterns can also damage the mother spiritually and emotionally. Medical procedures have also severely injured and even killed babies: babies have been blinded by too high an oxygen content in incubators and have even died when doctors have forced too much oxygen into their lungs, literally exploding them. Infants born in hospitals often develop dangerous staph infections. Improper, rough handling by doctors during births have caused permanent neurological and other damage to children. Many other dangers accompany hospital births.¹³ Children have even been given to the wrong mother.¹⁴ In the best of circumstances, once you put yourself under the hospital's control, you forfeit to the State ultimate authority over your child's care and well-being. All this shows how critical it be that it truly be God who leads you to this option, for as David warns, "Let me fall into the hands of Yahweh . . . but do not let me fall into the hands of man." (pp. 45-46)

 Of course, it would also seem that "once you put yourself under the" Homestead untrained, unlicensed midwives' "control, you forfeit to" Homestead "ultimate authority over your child's care and well-being." Unless something goes wrong. Then your're on your own.

Many young parents raised in Homestead have only been informed with Homestead's perspective on medical options for birth. As you can see in the above paragraph, a hospital birth more closely resembles a house of horrors. Who would want to choose that option unless in the most dire circumstances? Many of them will choose the "care" of untrained, unlicensed church members who they cannot hold responsible for any mishaps. They are told that

Babies who didn't breath for long periods of time came to life through prayer. Mothers bleeding to death stopped bleeding through prayer. Mothers with prolapsed cervixes gave birth at home without suffering. The battle is very real; we must fully employ every weapon in our spiritual arsenal. In such times of crisis, you must have the power of conviction. (p. 47)

This view of the superiority of home birth is so strong that choosing a hospital birth is looked at as inferior among Homestead members.

On the other hand, you might feel convicted that God has told you for some reason exceptional to His pattern to go to a hospital, and this makes you feel shamed before brothers and sisters who improperly judge you as lacking faith. (p. 47)

You can say that somebody is "improper" for judging someone for going to a hospital, but the judgement itself speaks volumes about the general attitude among members. No one should feel shame for seeking medical attention.

Noticeably lacking from the conversation on birth choices is choosing to have a baby with a trained, licensed midwife. Presumably, a licensed midwife is also not God's ideal pattern because she is approved by "the State, which increasingly demands sovereignty over the birth of your child." (p. 45) And members are given extreme examples of how the State exerts this sovereignty.

Unfortunately, on a number of occasions we have seen parents who had wanted to have their child at home but did not press to a conviction suffer the consequences of carelessly and unnecessarily relinquishing authority for their birth into the hands of man. We have seen the doctor decide, against the parents' will, to keep the infant in the hospital after the mother is sent home. In one case, the parents refused to approve an operation for their newborn child, only to find that this opposition to the doctor's choice led to their immediate loss of custody over their child. The newborn infant immediately became a ward of the court, and the State's judge automatically mandated the decision of the State-licensed doctor. The social services department, like sharks cruising around bleeding fish, pounced on this couple, and tried to convince the judge that the parents were unfit to care for their older children as well. God's grace finally extracted these parents from this harassment but only after much torment. Another couple had their baby detained in the hospital for a week after the birth even though she wasn't sick at all. The doctors administered medication and exotic tests to the baby as if she were a guinea pig. (pp. 46-47)

I'm all for birthing choices. But I don't consider it much of a choice when the State sanctioned medical option is presented in such a negative light compared to Homestead's socially preferred method of having your pregnancy and birth controlled by untrained church members that must be submitted to. In a worse case scenario at least a doctor can be sued. Not so much with the malpractice of church members playing doctor.

Quoted material from:

Adams, Blair, Howard Wheeler, and Joel Stein. Parental Conviction on Responsibility in Home Birth: Assuming Responsibility before God for Your Birth. Elm Mott: Colloquium Press, 1986.

Parental Conviction on Responsibility in Home Birth: Testing Your Conviction. Elm Mott: Colloquium Press, 1989.