ICAN

As most of you know, I am co-leader of our local ICAN chapter. Since starting this chapter, I have had SO much fun planning meetings, thinking up discussion topics, answering our emails and facebook inquiries, and helping moms seeking VBACs make important decisions about providers and birth location.

Our first meeting was a huge success. There were THREE Certified Professional Midwives in attendance (that’s 3 out of 5 in this area!) and several wonderful and experienced doulas! We also had three moms interested specifically in VBAC, but also in more information about local providers and homebirth. It was such a fabulous meeting and we covered a LOT of information. Having the midwives there was so helpful as they are so knowledgeable and having doulas there was helpful because they know the local providers, hospitals, and birth climate in general since they’ve worked with many moms and a variety of providers and locations. We talked a lot about local stats such as Chattanooga’s over 80% induction rate and higher than average cesarean rate. (SAD but unfortunately true.) We discussed various providers and their pros and cons and which providers will section no matter what once they know you are attempting a VBAC. (There are some like that around here. Sick, huh?) And providers who do intervene too much (like forced episiotomy/pitocin/IV etc), but are also generally good about not being scared off by VBAC clients. We also discussed home VBACs since all three midwives present attend those with great success and impeccable stats (much better than our local hospital stats!).

I think ICAN could be incredibly helpful to any mom or mom-to-be regardless of whether or not she has ever had a cesarean. Coming to meetings and being informed about the local providers, birth climate, birth practices, midwives, doulas, and homebirth would be useful for anyone! I wish more moms would come before their first disaster birth that ended unnecessarily in cesarean so that all that could be avoided to begin with. *sigh* But that’s also why ICAN got started!

Anyway, I am enjoying it immensely and feel that we are providing a very valuable service to families here in Chattanooga! At our first meeting, the moms expressed that they are very interested in all the birth options available but that many husbands/dads are very wary of birth alternatives such as doulas, midwives, waterbirth, and especially the homebirth option. These dads are (understandably) scared of the unknown and worried about their wives and babies. These moms felt their husbands needed to have their eyes opened a bit and have opportunity to hear more, specifically from other dads. They thought it would be more influential coming from other dad’s who’ve done homebirth rather than just their wives. This gave us a great idea for a meeting!

So for our next ICAN meeting, we have several experienced homebirth dads (including Steven of course!) committed to speak about what they’ve learned about birth and how they came around to fully supporting homebirth and how things went for them. I think this meeting has such huge potential to impact these fathers-to-be in a wonderful way. I think dad-to-dad talks and questions should be more available to men in general. I’ve also already had three other homebirth dads volunteer to be there to share information and answer questions! This is going to be amazing! I just hope we have a good turnout of the families who were interested in this sort of meeting to begin with!

Other meeting ideas: Cesarean Healing, a screening of birth movies (such as Business of Being Born, Pregnant in America, or Orgasmic Birth), Home VBAC, Hospital VBAC… and lots more! We have lots of ideas lined up already!