Having a baby at the hospital is the most common choice, but that does not mean that it is the only one. If you are pregnant and you are trying to decide what to do, you need to consider having a midwife do the job instead. When you hire someone who went to a certified nurse midwife school, she can then come to your home to help you with the entire birthing process. This is the way that babies were born for thousands of years, and it is still an option that you can choose today if you would like to do so.
There are a few advantages to having your child at home. For one thing, you never have a frantic trip to the hospital, cutting through traffic and hoping that you get there on time. The week before you have a baby can be rather stressful as you always try to figure out if it is time to go to the hospital or not, and some people even end up going a number of times as false alarms, and then they wind up being late when it is really time. If you just have the baby at your house, you can forget about all of this.
Using a midwife can also make it less stressful because you are in a familiar environment. Do hospitals just tend to make you nervous, even if you are just going there to visit someone? Does the sterile atmosphere put you on edge? This is true for many people, so it would not be surprising if you feel this way as well. At home, you can relax and just concentrate on doing what you need to do for a healthy birth, never worrying about anything else.
Finally, hiring a midwife might be a good idea because you get to meet with her and get to know her before the actual birth occurs. You will have a strong relationship and you will really trust her. When something so big and important is happening, the last thing that you want is to be put into the care of someone that you just met, which is exactly what often happens when you show up at the hospital. The midwife can get to know you and find out if there are any special things that you would appreciate that would make the whole process a bit easier.
