Where will you give birth?
Where will you give birth? What options are available in your state? Please share the status of midwifery in your area!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Chris D. on
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Hi, what part of MN do you live? I'm in rochester and work in the OB dept at Mayo. I moved here from WI - where many of my friends support homebirth.
The sad thing about the article is that I first read it through Medscape Nurses - the abstract was very biased and didn't give all the information of the article.
The research is quite flawed and far from evidence based. I find the results suspicious
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Permalink Reply by EmilyK on -
I have given birth twice at home. This time will be at the local hospital's birth center for strictly monetary reasons. Only LM's are doing home births here in Vermont, as most CNM's find the insurance costs too monstrous to cover them. Medicaid covered all of the prenatal care for my home birth but not the birth itself which averages about $1,000.
I can only speak to my area, but it seems that in Vermont home birth is recognized as a valid choice. I've surprised lay people with my place of birth, but no physician has ever seemed shocked or even judgmental. Even the laws regarding what kinds of births are deemed safe to have at home are easy to find on the state website.
I'm sure I don't know all the ins and outs of home birth in Vermont, but I've found it easy and simple to find a care provider and still feel like I was in a safe working relationship with my local hospital staff in case of an emergency. There was no underground, scary feeling about it.
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Permalink Reply by Samantha on -
I have no children but work as a birth doula. I live in the Chicago area and the options are homebirth or hospital(we have no birth centers in the state). Some hospitals offer waterbirth but they are few and far between. Only CNM's are legal in our state to do homebirths, but many CPMs still practice. Many people do look at you like you have two heads when you say you had your baby at home or went all natural even. Big difference from where I grewup in Southwest New Hampshire.
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Permalink Reply by Carol Van Der Woude on -
The Homebirth Safety Act (SB 3712 with house amendment 001) is in the Illinois legislature. This bill provides guidelines for certification for CPMs and practice guidelines. It is possible to read the text of this pending bill by going to www.ilga.gov and then going to Senate Bill 3712, clicking on full text, then clicking on House amendment 001.
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Permalink Reply by Samantha on
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Oh I know, I did the walk for midwives in Evanston and am friends with CPM students. I hope things finally work out this year.
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Permalink Reply by Katie on -
I'm pregnant with my first and am planning to birth in a hospital-based "Midwifery Center" in Norfolk, VA--one of the only facilities of this kind in the state. I love it, and I'm glad to share about it, because I believe it could be an excellent model for the rest of the hospitals in the country! Allow me to gush...
It is a separate wing from L&D and is only staffed with CNM's. Hardwood floors, large jacuzzis for waterbirths, and queen-sized beds are in each room. Rooming-in/ co-sleeping are encouraged to facilitate breast feeding and bonding. Normal, physiologic birth is respected and healthy prenatal practices are encouraged to keep pregnancies low-risk--that means no EFM's, no IV's, no routine episiotomies, and no Pitocin. If a laboring woman encounters any "special circumstances" during labor, she is seamlessly transferred to the L&D for any *truly necessary* interventions that may be required to ensure a non-surgical birth. If more serious high-risk scenarios dictate, the on-call OB working with the midwives can take over if needed. The c-section rate for the center hovers just under 10%, and the rate for the entire hospital is 15%.
As you can tell, I am tickled with this gem we have here! I fully support home births, but monetary reasons have restricted me to a hospital birth. This doesn't even feel like such a compromise! I haven't delivered my baby yet, but I feel so comfortable and unafraid of birth (which was NOT the case before I came into their care) that I can't wait! And because I know I need to remain low-risk to deliver there, it has given me a tremendous incentive to stay healthy--exercising regularly and eating more healthily than I ever have before!
I hope this can be the model by which other hospital-based birthing centers are designed, instead of these "gingerbread" L&D units that only APPEAR to support normal birth to attract clients, but are, in fact, facades covering highly medicalized, intervention-heavy birth practices.
Here's hoping for the future!
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Permalink Reply by Samantha on -
I live in California and there are a lot of different options for you to choose from here and i love that there are CNM & CPM and of course OBGYN too. I know there is a birth center not to far from me but i having this baby in the hospital since its a surrogate baby. The hospital i am going to which is the closes to me and the one my doc works will does not have a birth tub but other then that they have big labor and delivery rooms and let you have as many people as you wont which is nice. I have heard of place that limit how many people can be in the room. I happy to read that it seem like there are a lot of choices for the most part for women.
But we need to get it where there are choices in every state and close by a that women can use them. i think every women should have the choice of where they birth and how they birth.
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Permalink Reply by Katrina L. Gray on -
When another child comes along, I will go back to The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee. I was completely spoiled by the midwives there during my first birth. I'm in Nashville, and the in-town choices for a gentle birth are sparse. To get such an amazing experience, the 75-mile drive is worth it. Nowhere else would compare!
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Permalink Reply by Katie on
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Katrina--that would be my DREAM!! I have a friend living in TN, and I briefly tried to orchestrate a scheme to end up down there around the time of birth--unfortunately that didn't pan out...ha ha. I bet it was amazing!
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Permalink Reply by Chrissy on -
I plan to deliver in a hospital with a CNM, hopefully I will have a water birth. The hospital only has one tub. So, I am praying I will be able to use it while in labor and delivery. Midwives are allowed here in Illinois but illegal by direct entry. They are limited in central illinois where I am located, and very hard to find. I will be driving an hour just to see mine for appointments and to the hospital where I will deliver.
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Permalink Reply by Angela Daniel on -
I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Natural Birth here is on the rise again and I am very impressed with the choices. We have some wonderful midwives to do home births and we have some midwives that birth in the hospitals. The Ochsner group here is a midwifery lead OB/GYN practice, they birth at the new birthing center in the Ochsner hospital. They have 3 rooms with built in birthing tubs! This is where I will birth for the next one. I birthed with these midwives at another hospital with my first baby. I rented a tub in hopes for a water birth, but we had complications. We have a free standing birth center in Lafayette, LA about an hour away. The doulas in this area are well know and respected by the doctors/midwives and in the hospitals. I am very excited about the future of natural birth in this area. I hope the momentum keeps growing.
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Permalink Reply by Rita Gleason on -
With my first I gave birth in the hospital in MI, with a FP. It was an o.k. experience. I had planned my second birth to be in a hospital with a CNM. Home birth is an under the radar legal by grey area there. I was not comfortable with a home birth simply because the doctors will not work with you if you choose one. It's very depressing there. Then midway through the pregnancy my husband got a new job and we relocated to Montana when I was 30 weeks pregnant. Our options here are much better, You can have a home birth with a CNM, you can deliver in a free standing birth center, or hospital. Though we are very remote and too far for the home births midwifes to come here. Nearest hospital/doctor/ midwife 56 miles to the east and 72 miles to the west, 100 miles to the north, and 70 miles to the south. In short we are in the middle of no-where. I knew I did not want an OB for this baby, very normal pregnancies. So I searched for every Midwife I could find. Turns out there are only 5 in the area. I spoke with or met every one of them before deciding on a midwife in Helena. Carol was the best I could hope for, while still delivering in a hospital. On my big day, I was allowed to labor as I felt most comfortable, I was not required to have an IV, no pain meds and no petocin. Carol and the nurses at St. Peters Hospital where amazing. I was so scepticle about a hospital birth after my first child was born. But, this experience could not have been better... well, I would have like to skip the hour drive to the hospital, but, hey still way better than anything I could have imagined. I still dream of one day being able to have a home birth. But if we are still in the area when/if baby #3 comes around I would be very comfortable going back to see Carol and the nurses at St. Peters.
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