Can I add a couple of questions to this, please?
What’s the pay model for midwives? Does insurance usually cover it, for a home birth? If not, how much does it cost? How do you find a midwife in the first place, if you don’t want a hospital birth?
I recently watched a good documentary called The Business of Being Born. It was produced by Rikki Lake and deals with midwifery in great detail. Here is the link: http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/
Lake, herself, had a home delivery and wanted to share the rewards with other people. I have to say it opened my eyes to some myths I had in the back of my head. As a cold hearted kid hater, I have to say I came away with the notion that home births are far more advantageous to both mother and child. Provided there are no risks to the pregnancy, of course.
I really recommend (?)this documentary.
recommend still doesn’t look right.
bump
Actually, that documentary is what got me started thinking about it. 
There are midwives and birth centers in the phone book. I’d like some other people to answer Renee’s other questions, though.
Well, my midwives only deliver in a certain local hospital - they don’t do homebirths or deliveries in other hospitals/birth centers - so I can’t answer the question from experience. But in Seattle, at least, I would either start with the internet and/or go to one of the relatively crunchy baby stores in town (not the big chain stores - there’s one here called Birth & Beyond, and they’re amazing). The stores have flyers/cards/what-have-you from doulas, lactation consultants, belly cast makers, midwives, and all sorts of other people up in their stores.
As for how I found my midwives… they had just opened their practice (didn’t even have waiting room furniture!) down the hall from my regular doctor. When I went to see my doc for my “am I really pregnant?” test, she mentioned them. I stopped by and talked with one of the midwives (the one who delivered my son), and it felt right. So I signed on.
Yeah, how on earth do you convince somebody to be your first baby catch? Even if you’ve been “assistant baby catcher” for a billion other people, who’s going to let you fly solo for the first time on their baby? Does there have to eventually be a snowstorm that your boss gets stuck in or what?
In my experience, insurance covers midwives at the birthing center and in doctors’ practices. Home birth midwives, I don’t think so. My memory is hazy, but I believe for a home birth it was somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand dollars.
If you want to find a midwife, going to a LLL meeting and getting friendly with some of the crunchier people might be a good way to start.
I have heard that there are even “black market” midwives who practice without a license (because the licensure rules are dumb), so to get together with them is like trying to buy drugs or raw milk - you have to know people, get vouched for, etc.
Abby_Emma_Sasha, it’s funny. What looks at first like a weird earth-worshipping hippy practice is actually much more scientifically sound than the bright, shiny, white-coated, machine-that-goes-ping model practiced in hospitals. It’s just that we as a culture tend to confuse technology with science.
Abby_Emma_Sasha, it’s funny. What looks at first like a weird earth-worshipping hippy practice is actually much more scientifically sound than the bright, shiny, white-coated, machine-that-goes-ping model practiced in hospitals. It’s just that we as a culture tend to confuse technology with science.
I tried to parse your post and failed. If one of us wants to birth au naturale then who are we to say any different? If a home birth gives both mom and baby a something something that they can’t get in the ER then more power to them.
My midwives always worked in pairs. That way one could attend to mom and one could attend to the baby, post-birth.
Midwives I spoke with worked in teams and rotation with assistants; you’d be consulted on who you preferred to birth with, but ultimately you might end up with who was on call if everyone else was out. The midwife who was to be mine for birth I med up with a few days post-birth; she was kangaroo carrying an infant who’d been born two days earlier and left with her (planned) until the adoptive parents could take the baby home (planned).
Insurance paid for it as they would have obstetrician-based prenatal care and birth.