Well, it looks like Divine intervention stepped in and the decision of birth center vs. homebirth is no longer in our hands. A day or two after I met with the CNM who would potentially do our homebirth, she emailed to inform me that her partner (the CPM), who is usually her backup, will not be taking any more December births due to a recent family emergency. Since there’s a chance that the CNM may be traveling over the holidays (when we’re due) and wouldn’t have a backup midwife, she had to decline service to us.

At first I was very disappointed, because we had decided mid-week that we were going to do the homebirth this time around. However, we never aimed for an unassisted homebirth. Since we have no other options for a CNM who’ll come to our house, we’ll happily continue with the birth center, whom we’ve already paid a hefty non-refundable deposit to.

To clear up some of our previous CONS to using the birth center, I ended up calling them during business hours and finding out that the last midwife I saw is the 4th CNM at the birth center and is fairly new. She is who saw me at my last appointment. Since she’s the newest of the bunch, they’ve not updated their Facebook page or website with her information and photo yet. I also found out that the email address I’d attempted to email three times is not really assigned to any specific member of the staff. They assured me that they’re working on having someone check it more regularly. So two of my biggest concerns weren’t really reasons to not use the birth center.

If this birth center is the closest thing available to having a home birth in the comfort of our home, then we’ll take it. I’m sure over the next 10 weeks I’ll get to know the midwives even better, and we can bring whatever items we want to from home to the birth center to make it as “homey” as possible while in labor, delivering, and in the first post-partum hours. It looks like God has a plan for where he wants our little girl to be born… and we’re happy to have a birth center as a reliable alternative to a hospital setting.

You can read more of Bitty Mama’s Birth Journey by…


…turning back to read more about the decision-making process… Decisions, Decisions (Part 1)

…reading the next page, her thoughts on support and encouragement during her pregnancy… Birth Encouragement