|
In Taiwan a woman has the right to decide to give birth at home or at the hospital. However, giving birth at a hospital is the mainstream choice for women in Taiwan, and there are still less than 0.2% of women who choose to give birth at home. Obviously, the rate of home births in Taiwan is very low, many women do not know how to arrange it, and even doubt that a midwifery model exists. This study focuses on the experience of homebirth in Hualien and explores the supported networks behind the experience. Based on interviews with eight women and analyses of birth narratives, this research examines the reasons for and experience of planning and building toward a homebirth. The women make a plan for home-birth, organize a team to support the birth-care and evaluate the risk. With the cooperation of midwives, relatives and friends, they jointly practice for “making home” and “making bodies”, and then do special ritual behaviors and share the placenta dish as the final party of homebirth. This is a unique home-birth practice, also a special social network for birth caring. During the community cooperation in homebirth practice during 2010 to 2017, the “community supported homebirth” has been developed and created a special collaborative care model after years of practice. Members of the community inherit the experience and knowledge of homebirth, provide birth-space, accompany each other, and represent the spirit of women supporting women in the past. The community-based homebirth is constructed by the content of fertility policy, the new structure of nuclear family, local society, midwifery and a group of new-age mothers. And the cooperative-care model is a new birth-care model woven by homebirth family members, midwives and friends. In other words, the cooperative-care model has rooted in the local community rather than the medical system or hospitals. It reverses the single imagination of birth-care and creates more diversified birth care patterns and highlights women ' s pursuit of giving birth and life.
|