by croaker » Thu Nov 16, 2006 2:49 pm
My wife tells me to add a quick "how it went for us" to this thread.
With our first, we signed up with a Birth Center associated with a local hospital. We did the Bradley thing so were pretty well prepared. The day comes (14 years+1 day ago) when contractions really start. It's a Sunday.
As we were supposed to do, I called the Birth Center phone and got a message along the lines of "Leave a message, or if it's an emergency, try this other number." So I leave a message. It's not like there's anything "emergency" about our situation. My wife's doing what she needs to do, nothing's going wrong, plenty of time before we'd need to come in.
So an hour or so goes by and no return call. Waiting a little longer, I finally figure out that they're not going to be checking messages this evening. So, this time I go for the emergency number, which is what we were *supposed* to do. They got back to us in a half hour or so, and told us to come in. Except for my wife deciding to toss her cookies (out the window) on the way there, nothing much special happened; our daughter emerged 3 or so hours later and we were home before noon on Monday.
I explained to them about their phone message and they agreed to change it so that its intent was clearer: if you expect to get a reply before the next regular work day, use this other number.
For our second, we opted for a true Midwife (instead of the Nurse-Midwife model we used before) along with a second "support" woman. Officially this isn't quite legal where we live, but whatever... Our son emerged into our bedroom also early in the morning, with less hassle than we had with the first one. (Why is it always in the middle of the night, anyway?) It's nice not having to be the one that travels to give birth.
I'd certainly recommend the home-birth option if circumstances permit. And congratulations on your new one to come!
