Chapter 8 - Choosing a Birth Team
I believe that one of the greatest decisions to impact your birth is your choice of care provider and birth team, including any family or friends you choose to have present at your birth. While the right and responsibility of choice as it pertains to your birth belongs to you, you must understand that when you hire a provider you are giving a degree of authority or jurisdiction over what happens at your birth to them as well.
Anyone given that kind of access should be someone you can walk in wholehearted agreement with.
The process of choosing a provider typically looks like a search for someone you feel is well qualified and experienced who also takes your insurance and/or is affordable. Some take it a step farther by inquiring whether the provider’s routine practices agree with the type of birth they envision, like limiting intervention perhaps. The majority of maternity care relationships in this country are usually pretty formal. Interaction between provider and client is brief and impersonal, often feeling like you’re just a number. There’s not a whole lot of time or opportunity to build rapport and when you arrive at birth, they still seem pretty much like a stranger.
There’s not necessarily anything inherently wrong with any of the above. Obviously, we have to be able to afford the person we hire. Obviously, we all want a wise, intelligent provider who is fully competent to handle anything that may arise with clarity of mind and dependable skill. Perhaps becoming chummy friends doesn’t take precedence over the importance of their job qualifications. However, what is it that really makes someone wise and reliable in their line of work? Is it only their degree of training and education, level of experience, or the number of stars in their reviews? What if there’s more to determining which provider is best for you?
