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DISCLAIMER: This post is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding you or your baby’s health. Please read my Medical Disclaimer for more info
You have two crucial birth choices: the provider and the place of birth you choose. These are the most impactful choices you will make to determine your childbirth experience and outcomes.
But firstly, before making these decisions, you must think about what you want your experience to be like. Do you want it to be as low-intervention as possible? A highly medicalized birth? Or somewhere in between? All of these are good options if you feel empowered with your decisions. and are provided with truthful conversations about different benefits and risks.
Choosing Your Provider
Your provider’s job is to know all the evidence and provide you with truthful benefits versus risks conversations.
Some factors that impact if your provider is a good fit include:
- How up to date they stay with the research
- Their experiences (personal and families they have worked with)
- Their beliefs surrounding childbirth
Our maternity care providers work for us and we need to start asking them questions when we start seeing them. Check out 20 Questions You Need to Ask Your Care Provider to find out if they could be a good fit.
Many providers out there believe birth is a dangerous event that is best managed with interventions. While many others believe birth is a physiological, normal life event that is often best if left alone. The difference between these two providers is that one is backed with evidence on its side, and the other has never been proven to improve birth outcomes.
Evidence shows that birth outcomes are better when left alone most of the time. We see this in healthy pregnancies, healthy breech babies, and more. On the contrary, no research shows medical birth is safer for women and babies. Actually, research shows more risks for mother and baby when the birth team “expects trouble” and where medical intervention is routine [1].
Birth Choices: Choosing Your Place of Birth
Your birth team and your environment directly impact your hormones during labor, affecting your progression of labor and perception of physical discomfort. Check out 5 Things You Need to Create a Calm Birth Space to learn how to work with your birth environment and hormones to have the best birth possible!
Furthermore, a study done in Canada looked at the same midwives providing care for both women planning a homebirth and women planning hospital births and found that there were fewer interventions and better outcomes when the midwives attended homebirths, suggesting that the hospital restrictions and routine interventions influence outcomes even with the same caregiver [2].
So, if you’re looking for a low-intervention birth and you have a healthy, low-risk pregnancy, midwives are trained to recognize what’s normal and what’s not, and because they base their care on the evidence that birth usually goes best without interference, midwifery care is safe or safer for healthy pregnant women than obstetric care [3].
Also, if you’re just now adding a midwife to your list of birth choices but you don’t know where to start, check out How to Choose Between a Midwife or an OB-GYN? In this post, I go over obstetricians and the different kinds of midwives in the United States.
Regardless if you have a high or low-risk pregnancy, or what degree of medical interventions you desire, your birth choices should make you feel empowered and in control.
You are encouraged, educated, and empowered. Talk soon, mama!
Sources:
[1] Goer, H., and Romano A (2012). Optimal care in childbirth. The care for a physiologic approach.
[2] Janssen PA, Saxell L, Page LA, Klein MC, Liston RM, Lee SK. Outcomes of planned home birth with registered midwife versus planned hospital birth with midwife or physician. CMAJ. 2009 Sep 15;181(6-7):377-83. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.081869. Epub 2009 Aug 31. Erratum in: CMAJ. 2009 Oct 27;181(9):617. PMID: 19720688; PMCID: PMC2742137.
[3] See note 5, Chapter 19; Lancet special series on midwifery (2014) available at https://www.thelancet.com/series/midwifery
DISCLAIMER: This post is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding you or your baby’s health. Please read my Medical Disclaimer for more info
DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links, meaning I may get a commission if you decide to purchase something through my links at no cost to you. Please read my Disclaimer for more info.
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