Interviewing a midwife
Categories: Pregnancy & birth, Health & safety
The Wisconsin Guild of Midwives has a list of questions to ask when interviewing a midwife. It is detailed and thorough, but based on my experience, I have something to add.My third child was born at home.
Yes, I planned it that way. It went so very well, in fact, that I planned to have my fourth one at home with the same midwife. But, the pregnancy was difficult. At 26 weeks (on Christmas morning) I was admitted to the hospital for an induction because the doctors thought I had an unusual, but possibly fatal, pregnancy complication. I was too ill to talk, but John called the midwife to let her know what was happening. She came to the hospital and stayed with us for ten hours. I don't really remember much from that day.
After my odd recovery (women with HELLP syndrome don't generally get well until the baby is delivered), I was doing well enough to stick with my original homebirth plan. But, at 33 weeks I had an emergency c-section due to a placental abruption.
When things had settled somewhat, I got in touch with my midwife. Early in the pregnancy we'd paid her fee in full. I expected that she'd refund a portion of the payment, and thought that I'd be charged for each of the prenatal checkups I'd had, along with any other expenses. I was really surprised when our refund check arrived. She'd charged us an hourly rate of $100 for the ten hours she'd spent with us in the hospital.
I'm not saying that she wasn't entitled to charge us for that visit, or even that she overcharged us for her time. However, I do wish that we'd known about her policy beforehand. We would have called her on Christmas, but asked her not to come to the hospital.
If you are interviewing a midwife, ask her what her policy is in cases where she has to turn over your care. Find out what her hourly rate is, and ask her to notify you when get into a situation where that would apply.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
LB 8-30-2006 @ 5:42PM
FWIW that was all spelled out in the contract I had with my home birth midwife.
I'd also suggest that ask your home birth midwife to what extent she will help you with insurance billing.
Our midwife was a trooper for us. We had paid her upfront but she filled out paper after paper for the nearly ten months it took us to get out insurer to pay us back. (Of course we never had any trouble getting out hospital births paid for) Some provider's offices are charging the patient for paperwork considered above and beyond normal billing-DH had a problem with this but got it waived.
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Keri 8-30-2006 @ 9:11PM
My midwife also spelled out very clearly the hourly fee before we paid her. Thankfully my home waterbirth went so very smoothly that I look forward to the next one.
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