Choosing a “green” birth

Have you ever thought about the environmental impact of your birth choices? How can your provider and your place of birth be a green choice?

Midwives Support Natural Options For a Healthy Lifestyle

Midwives are likely to encourage you to choose organic or natural foods over highly processed foods. These foods are grown or manufactured in ways that have less environmental impact than conventionally-grown foods. She will likely be able to help you find local farms where you can access these foods, which encourages you to “buy local.” She’s more likely to say “carry a refillable water bottle with you,” than recommending you drink prepackaged sugary juices and sodas. By discouraging you from eating processed food and “fast food,” your midwife will be encouraging you to prepare foods at home, which ends in less landfill impact, as well.

Fewer Disposable Products

Yes, we use chux pads, gloves, gauze, umbilical cord clamps, and a few other disposable odds and ends. Some midwives buy or make their own reusable chux pads, and some mothers may choose lotus birth (which would mean no umbilical cord clamps). Midwives also make use of reusable towels and washcloths. And, as a way to give back to the earth, many homebirthing families choose to bury their placenta under a new tree or encapsulate it rather than incinerate it as the hospital would. Likewise, the birth pool can be drained into the yard, again giving back to the earth.

Hospital Birth Uses More Natural Resources

A lot of resources go into a hospital birth! Think about all that goes into the typical hospital birth. Consider the amount of electricity used to run the monitors and the resources needed to keep each and every room running on hospital floors.

Of course, we know there are times when a cesarean birth is the best birth. But, giving birth at a hospital puts you at a much higher risk for having an unnecessary cesarean birth than having a planned out-of-hospital birth. Surgery and hospital procedures require more human resources, more medications, more instruments and equipment, and produce more waste than a vaginal birth at home.

Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is the greenest way to feed your baby! There are no bottles to wash, no manufacturing process to support, no cattle to graze — just you, your breasts, and your baby. Women who give birth at home or in birth centers have a nearly 100% breastfeeding initiation rate, and much higher than average rates of exclusive breastfeeding at 6 weeks postpartum compared to hospital births.

When you’re thinking about where to give birth and how to give birth, the environmental impact of that choice may not be at the very top of the list of your concerns, but it may be something to think about. If you’re already planning to give birth at home or at a birth center, this is just one more reason to feel really good about that choice.