Oh God, I'm going to have to share this and please know I'm only doing it because your post is ME 7 years ago and I found out the hardest way what a bad idea this is. I'm not, in any way, judging you for your feelings on this or trying to scare you because I've been where you are.
Right. Just going to trigger warning here for anyone else that this includes discussion of baby loss and a very near miss with me dying also.
So I believed (and still do) that antinatal health should never have swapped from the hands of women to the medicalised hands of men. I thought the amount we intervene in birth causes far, far more problems than it solved and causes women to have interventions that lead to trauma etc etc. I imagine you're very familiar with this way of thinking.
Anyway, I consumed A LOT of material on social media that reinforced my beliefs (formula was poison, vitamin K shots were cruel and not needed, scan caused autism. you name it, some of it i took to heart, lots of it I didn't). I'm not saying you are exactly like me OP, I was very extreme.
In 2016 I fell pregnant and at the time, was completely convinced my body was designed to deliver a baby and I didn't need doctors to tell me how my body worked, I was intelligent (believe it or not), well researched and knew my stuff. I booked in with a midwife and decided to have one scan, at 12 weeks, to make sure the pregnancy was developing and after that I wouldn't need anything else. I didn't have screening as I felt even if my child had downs, it wouldnt make any difference in my choices etc etc. I was completely healthy, not classed as high risk and felt confident if anything was wrong, I would know due to symptoms or even just instinct.
At 32 weeks, I went into labor spontaneously. Fine, I thought, early, but natural so therefore fine. Because i was so early, I did decide that we would call an ambulance once baby was born (in our bed) in case she needed oxygen, NICU support or similar due to being premature. I still didnt want any medical support during the birth.
It was quick, about 4 hours in total. She was so tiny. We called the ambulance when it was clear she was going to be out in the next few minutes. They got to us within 20 minutes but she had been dead for at least a day by then.
Lyra had died inside my body due to a common problem with my placenta that, had I been monitored, would have been picked up and treated with aspirin. If i'd been to my midwife appointments, had let them listen to her and measure my bump, they'd have picked up how undersized she was in my 3rd trimester despite the fact she looked fine at 12 weeks and things could have been done to help her. I also had a completely symptom free UTI which they think is what caused me to go into labour. Again, this would have been found on a quick urine test. She died because of me.
I went on to have a severe PPH shortly after she was born. I would have been quite happy to die and sometimes wonder if that would have been the better way of things. Unfortunately though the ambulance team were already there and I spent the next few days in hospital having my life saved by the NHS. I lived and she didnt.
I didnt have a single, solitary symptom of any of it and it was all completely preventable. I've had a lot of counselling I did not deserve and I am now on the other side of the madness of influence i was under to think the way I was thinking. The thought I still go back to whenever I'm tempted to think of the medicalization of birth as a bad thing is this:
Women have given birth for thousands of years without modern medicine, but nearly half of them, and nearly half of their children died in the process. Nothing has changed about womens bodies since then, what changed is medicine.
Honestly OP, as much as i understand and as unlikely as it is that you will be in my position in a few months, that's exactly what I thought, too.
I think about the women who lost their babies of their lives before I did and just think I had the option to avoid all of it and I chose to put my child at risk. What a terrible privilege that is.