Homebirth Midwife Interview

We interviewed our first homebirth midwife yesterday. Her name is Debi, and I felt very comfortable with her. She is a born-again Christian. She's a Certified Professional Midwife and has performed 563 births so far. She has 30 total years of experience (including the five years of training/interning she did). She is able to suture, if tearing occurs, and even teaches suturing to others. She's delivered all of her seven grandchildren. She's never lost a baby or a mother while she was the primary midwife.

She said that she has had to transport some of her patients to the hospital, but her intervention rate is something like 0.6%. She said that some of the reasons for transport included: prolapsed cord (where the umbilical cord came out before the baby) and hemorrhaging after the birth (where she couldn't get the bleeding to stop). When she was explaining the situations, she seemed like she knew what she was doing and got both mother and/or baby to the hospital safely.

Her care includes prenatal visits and two postnatal visits. She would visit our house once before the baby is born, at 37 weeks, to ensure she knew where to go and that we had all the supplies necessary. She would perform a comprehensive baby exam after birth, so we wouldn't have to take the baby to the pediatrician for five days after birth.

She also recommended a pediatrician - the same one that our Bradley instructor recommended - as well as another pediatrician who can perform circumcisions and is the best in town at doing it. We will be changing our medical insurance as soon as the baby is born so that we can use someone other than Kaiser for the baby.

She seemed very down-to-earth and friendly - someone you can really get along with and is easy to talk to.

I'm totally sold on the idea. I think Rob has warmed up to it, but isn't quite all on board yet. His biggest concern is that, while it is legal to have a homebirth, it is not legal for midwifes to deliver at homebirths. According to Debi, it is a misdemeanor for her to practice in Georgia. They apparently don't actively enforce this, but aren't in any hurry to change the law either. Debi said that two midwives in Georgia have been put under investigations (she is not one of them). One was dropped pretty quickly, and the other went through the investigative process and nothing was ever done.

So we now have two options: homebirth with a midwife (my fav option) or hospital birth with a Douala. We will have to interview some Doualas if we decide on the latter. We also have two other names of midwives that we could interview for the homebirth option.

We will see...