I've decided to be proactive and in the meantime I am going to start "interviewing" midwives who do accept Medicaid to see if any are a good fit. Ideally Hubby would be participating in these little meet and greets but he feels we should wait to hear from Medicaid. However, I have been told it could take up to 90 days from when I applied to get an answer and that leaves me with another 62 days of waiting.
I have my first meeting tomorrow and I'm very excited. Below are the questions that I plan to ask, some of which I found here thanks to twitter friend @twopinklinez. I've organized them in the order that I feel I'll actually ask them.
If anyone has suggestions of what to add or things I should be looking for in a midwife I'd love to hear them. This will be my first midwife experience and I'm excited but a little nervous because I don't quite know what I'm doing!
I will of course blog tomorrow about how my first interview goes. Wish me luck! :)
QUESTIONS I'LL ASK MY MIDWIFE
Why did you become a midwife?
What does your fee include? Prenatal, birth, postnatal care? Postnatal for how long? Lab work, sonograms?
What kind of Medicaid do you accept? What is your fee if paying out of pocket? By when would it have to be paid in full?
Will I ever need to go anywhere besides your office for lab work, sonograms or other testing/consultations?
How many patients do you usually have at a time?
When would I start coming to you? How often will we meet? What can I expect at our visits?
How many births have you attended?
Have you ever lost a mother or a baby at a home birth?
Do you work with a doula or birthing assistants? How many? When will I get to meet them? What role do they typically play?
If you don't work with a doula or birthing assistants, how do you feel about me hiring one outside of your practice?
What are your normal guidelines for weight gain or do you just stress good nutrition?
What do you normally do while I am in labor?
During labor, how active would you be in checking me and the baby? What do you use or how do you check us?
How do you feel about me eating, drinking or showering while in labor?
How do you help manage pain?
What medications, if any, do you bring?
What supplies and equipment do you bring? What should I have ready at home? Birthing stool, birthing ball?
Do you perform water births? Will you provide the tub? Where can I rent or buy a tub?
Are you affiliated with a hospital and/or a medical consultant? What is your recommended hospital to transfer to?
How often have you had to transfer a mom to a hospital?
Under what circumstances do you transfer?
Do you stay with me after the transfer and offer support for my decisions the best you can?
How familiar are you with procedures in the hospital?
What conditions make me high risk ? How would you treat these conditions before they make me high risk?
If I develop a condition that makes me high risk, do you have a doctor you normally use to transfer my care to?
At what point would placenta previa make me high risk?
Do you also try to use this doctor for transfers during labor?
What is your cut-off for considering a baby to be premature and requiring a hospital birth?
What happens if I go past 42 weeks?
How do you feel about episiotomy? Under what circumstances do you do them?
How do you work to prevent tearing?
How long are you willing to let a client push, or do you base it solely on the baby's stress level?
If my water breaks before labor starts, how long will you wait before trying to start labor, or transfer to the hospital?
What would you consider to be urgent or an emergency? Do I call you first or go straight to a hospital? WIll you meet me there?
Have you ever performed a natural, vaginal breech birth? What is your method of turning the baby?
What happens if you are unavailable to meet me? Who will attend to me?
Are you ok with someone video-taping and/or taking pictures throughout the entire birth?
What do people do with the placenta and the "mess" after giving birth at home?
What procedures do you do after baby is born? Weighing, mucus suction, cutting the cord, fingerprints/footprints?
Can daddy-to-be "catch" the baby and/or also cut the umbilical cord?
How soon after giving birth do you re-visit?
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