Our midwife, Roxanna Maurer, performing the newborn exam on baby McKay.
Choosing a midwife for your home birth can be very overwhelming, especially if you have many wonderful options in your area like I do! As soon as you find out you are pregnant, you need to make appointments with a few midwives in your area that you want to consider hiring. The best midwives usually book up months in advance, so don’t waste any time! Talk to other home birthers in your area and ask them who they recommend. You can also find great recommendations in local Facebook groups for home birthers or your state’s midwifery organization for direct-entry midwives.
Once you have a few interviews set up, you’ll need a list of questions to ask each of the midwives. The questions you ask will depend on your personality and birth preferences, but here are some example questions (these are the ones I used):
How long have you been a midwife?
What is your title? How did you get your training/education? Why did you choose that path?
What equipment do you bring to births?
How will you support us during labor?
How many moms/babies have you lost? (This can be a very uncomfortable question, but I felt it was important to know and also see how she responded.)
How many transports and for what reasons?
Under what circumstances would you recommend we transport?
What is your philosophy of birth?
What is your response to people who don’t think home birth is safe?
How will you help my husband feel more comfortable with home birth? (My husband was very nervous about having the baby at home!)
What tests and procedures do you recommend? (Gestational diabetes, Ultrasound, Group Beta Strep, etc.) Do you perform them or do we go somewhere else? Where do you suggest we go for them? Are they included in your fee?
If I have questions/concerns between visits, how do you prefer I get ahold of you and how quickly are you usually able to respond?
How many clients do you work with each month?
Who will be assisting you at my birth? If you can’t make it for part or all of my birth, who will be our midwife in your place? Will I have the opportunity to meet her/them?
What is your fee? What is included in that fee? How many prenatal/postpartum visits do you do?
Consider using any or all of these questions along with any other questions that you would like to add. After interviewing a few midwives, choose the one that makes you and your partner feel the most comfortable and safe. Once you have the perfect midwife in place, you will be able to look forward to pregnancy and birth with excitement and peace!
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