Top Five Reasons to Choose a Midwife

You and your baby deserve to have a midwife for your prenatal care, labor support and postpartum care. The Midwives Model of Care is a fundamentally different approach that includes safe, health-promoting and effective “natural” maternity care that avoids harmful and unnecessary drugs and interventions. Midwives believe in allowing women to make informed decisions regarding their pregnancies. Midwives are trained to view childbirth as a natural process and not as a medical problem. With a midwife:

1. Women have shorter labors. According to the World Health Organization women who give birth with a midwife often have shorter labors.
2. Women:
   • Have fewer Cesarean sections,
   • Receive less anesthesia,
   • Have a much lower rate of episiotomy

   As a result, low-risk patients who choose nurse midwives for their obstetrical care experience fewer complications. This is safer for both mother and baby.

3. Birth is less expensive. Because midwives use fewer interventions, women incur less expense, compared to similar women who choose physicians for their care.
4. Women are more successful breastfeeding past the first six weeks. One major focus of midwives is to provide the mother with individualized education, counseling and postpartum support.
5. Mothers are satisfied with their maternity care and their birth experiences. Only 1.7% of the mothers who experienced midwife-attended homebirths said they would choose a different type of caregiver for a future pregnancy.

Resources:

• www.who.int/child-adolescent-health/
• The National Center for Health Statistics www.cfmidwifery.org/pdf/CPM2000.pdf
• www.pregnancy-info.net/midwives.html

— Liza Janda, AAHCC, RYTwww.yogajanda.com

Tags: prenatal yoga, pregnancy, yoga, midwife, childbirth, home birth, midwifery, Cesarean section, anesthesia in labor, obstetrician, prenatal care, labor support, baby,