Birth Center Orientation

Last night was the orientation for new patients thingy at the Birth Center. Random thoughts on it all . . .

• Waldorf toys in the waiting room. The girls had great fun cooking & such while we waited for it to start.
• Video telling me why midwives/birth centers are so wonderful was a waste of my time, thanks, I research things like that BEFORE I choose a midwife practice. Though the girls enjoyed the brief parts that showed a baby being born & such.
• The nurse doing the orientation/tour made a point many times that we always have the choice to opt out of things we don't want to do.
• When she listed the lab work they typically do, she didn't mention any u/s, not sure if she just wasn't thinking of that since it would be done off-site or if they don't typically do them (lab work they DO typically do is bloodwork at 1st appointment, blood draw for GD (whenever that's done, 28 wks?), and then culture for step B near the end.
• They WILL do waterbirths (woo-hoo) they have an inflatable pool that you can use at an additional charge or you can rent your own (I'm pretty sure a friend of mine used a kids' wading pool, I'm going to check w/ her on how that worked . . . though I would guess if we rented the one through the birth center, it would roll in w/the insurance stuff).
• 2/3 of their patients choose hospital births. She said they average about 1 homebirth per month (w/ the rest of the 1/3 non-hospital births being birth center births).
• No mention was made of the rule someone else told me about, where if someone else is in labor when I go into labor, I have to go to the BC rather than doing a homebirth.
• They have a sibling class they recommend if children will be at the birth, but it's normally on Sat. I figure I'll wait and ask during one of my appointments if they'd be willing to do a Sun (or weekday) one, or provide me w/ pertinent information to give the kids on my own.

During the video, and "talking" time, the girls had brought backpacks w/ coloring books and stuff, and were doing stuff at a small table in that room. I suggested that they leave the backpacks in the waiting room during the tour rather than carry them all around. When the nurse was going over more of their policies & such while we were in one of the birth rooms, A asked if she could go get her backpack, and pulled out a small piece of paper & a pen, "wrote" a little bit on the paper, and put everything back away. On the way home she explained that she'd been keeping a list of everything we did at that "appointment" and said she's going to keep adding to the list for the whole pregnancy :) Only she can"read" her list, but I thought it was cute LOL.