Care Provider

When I was pregnant with our first baby, I spent hours reading reviews on carseats, cribs, and strollers...wanting to make sure I got the best!  When it came to a care provider though, I have to admit that I choose the first one I went to based off an ad I saw in the school newspaper.  I thought, "Oh...this is a women's clinic, they specialize in working with women...this must be good."  How shallow I was!  This played a key role in how my birth eventually turned out (cesarean).  My childbirth educator explained it this way:  If you go to a Mexican restaurant and expect to get Italian food, it probably isn't going to happen.  If you want Italian food, go where they make Italian food.  If you want a natural birth, go where they do natural birth.  I had always known that I wanted natural childbirth, but I hadn't realize that I was going to a doctor who was trained to approach childbirth in a technological way.  And you can't blame a doctor for being that way...they go to school to know exactly how to deal with medical emergencies, (which we are grateful for).  But that is usually all they go to school for.  Most doctors have never actually seen a fully natural childbirth.  They are not trained and experienced in the natural course that a woman's body takes during the laboring and birth process.  Naturally...for them...when things are not looking like "the average," there is some sort of intervention put in place make things go "more smoothly."  The truth is that all women's bodies are different.  There are averages for length of labor, size of baby, heart rates of mother and baby, positioning of baby, etc, etc,...but more than likely no one is "average" in every way.  Make sure that you know what the philosophies about childbirth that your care provider has are and make sure they match your own.  If you tell your doctor that you do not want an episiotomy but he believes in episiotomies, then you will most likely get one even if he says you don't have to have one "unless he feels you really need one" because in the heat of moment, he will do what he believes in and feels most comfortable with.  Don't be fooled. 


I believe that there are many misconceptions surrounding beliefs about midwives.  Most people I have talked to have a feeling that they are somehow old-fashioned.  Well, I guess childbirth itself is old-fashioned.  People have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years...so why wouldn't you want someone who believes in doing things the way that time has proven works?  Midwives go through extensive training to obtain their licensing and certifications.  The difference is that they are trained for natural births, not emergencies. BUT, they are trained to recognize the signs of an emergency and stabilize a mother or infant until emergency services can be obtained.