midwife!

so yesterday I did some internet research and read up on various local homebirth midwives.  chose to call Lis Worcester of the Bay Area Homebirth Collective. ~ www.jadelotusmidwifery.com ~  www.bayareahomebirth.org ~ because she seemed like a nice one and the bay Area Homebirth Collective appealed to me.  The childbirth educator for them is Jane Austen, who is a very well known prenatal yoga teacher here at Yoga Tree.  

Anyways, she was super nice and asked could she call me back in the evening so we could talk at length after she put her kids to bed.  (RAD)  So she called me at 8:15 and we spoke for nearly an hour.  She is an RN, since 1986.  Wanted to be a midwife all along, but felt she was too young when she left nursing school.  She started as a labor and delivery nurse, then left hospitals to be a nurse practitioner doing primary care, then became a doula and then went into direct entry midwifery training.  She has been CPM since 2003.

I like her.  She said that nutrition is a big focus for her, she likes moms to follow a whole foods diet and she works a lot with specifics of nutrition.  She used to be a gestational diabetes educator when she was an in hospital RN so she is very savvy about GD.  And their care is so cool.  They come to your house for prenatal visits, which are between an hour and an hour and a half long each time.  She has an intern who she works with all through, a woman who had three homebirths.  One with a midwife and two on her own with her husband!  For most tests she uses her own lab, and she has me drink a big bottle of juice for my gd test instead of glucola.  So hooray.  At the birth would be her, her intern and a another midwife from the Bay Area Homebirth Collective.  They do everything, and would accompany me to the hospital in the even of needing a transfer to a hospital birth.  But their rates of that are fairly low.

Anyways, after delivery they stay for about 3 or 4 hours to make sure we are all tucked in and cosy and have what we need.  They come back the next day, check me and do all the baby care.  Then they come back for extensive postpartum and newborn visits on days 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 40 and 60.  Can you imagine?  Post partum care and breastfeeding support extending to day 60?  In home newborn screening and care so we don't have to rush out to a pediatrician?  Getting to rest in your own bed with your husband and baby and other children after you deliver?

guess how much?  for everything, start to finish, all included: $4000

That is not very much money.  Not at all.  It is unbelievable really.  We are so happy.  She is coming over next wednesday with her intern to meet us and so we can interview her (her words).  If we didn't like her we could check out others but I like her a lot so far.  I expect she'll be my midwife if we get along when we meet on wednesday.