Last night, we toured Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland (~20 min away), and did a meet-and-greet with the nurse-midwives who practice there today. Let’s just say that making this decision won’t be easy.

The guide who did the tour of Evergreen was a short, older lady with… the most annoying habit of talking in short sentences, making the last two words sound crucial, and talking slowly. And the way she talked to the little two or three year old that was with us… UGH! It made it a little hard to focus on the tour, but as Jason said – over time, you kinda warmed to her, or at least uncooled towards her. It was the first maternity ward I liked the layout of, oddly enough. The rooms were nice enough, had a decent amount of space, various supplemental birthing supplies (ball, squat bar, jacuzzi tub, rocking chair, even birthing stool, I think). She talked a fair amount about the support for natural childbirths, one-on-one nursing (they try to keep you with one single nurse during each shift), their openness to avoiding interventions if not warranted, and even talked about the vaccination waiver process. (I’m not planning on not vaccinating this kid; don’t worry. I’m not so fond of giving a DPT, Hep B, and Hep A vaccine all at once withing 24 hours of the stress of birth. While I have much more research to do on this front, I’m of a mind to try to space the three out over the first month or so. We’ll see.)

This morning, we met with one of the five nurse-midwives at the Center for Women’s Health at Evergreen (not to be confused with the Evergreen Women’s Health Center, aside from the fact I confuse them every single time). She was an interesting combination of very patient (we were there for 40 minutes, asking questions, after all), and medically efficient. It’s a combination that I think I like. I was disappointed to hear they don’t do vaginal breech delivery, as I’m a little annoyed at the reduced care available because people aren’t trained. (Seriously, lack of training and experience is the biggest reason breeches aren’t delivered vaginally. In *some* breech presentations, it’s not more risky to do a vaginal birth, if the provider is trained. But, no one trains them anymore. Sigh!) But I was pleased about the discussion over various methods of version in the case of a breech. And I was pleased with her response to my question on episiotomies, which was somewhat vague in the “depends significantly on the woman” but she discussed the other methods they use to avoid them focusing on giving the baby’s head plenty of time to do the stretching naturally, and finished by saying that in her 15 years of midwifery practice, she’s probably done about that many ‘routine’ episiotomies.

As an final irony, the assistant at the chiropractor’s office I go to mentioned that she used to work in the birth center that we’ll be interviewing at next week, and she thinks I would really like two of the midwives in the group of three I’m interviewing with. She doesn’t know the third, because she left before the new midwife came in, who also happens to be the person we’ll be interviewing with. And, she knew the midwife at the birth center we already interviewed, and suspects I’ll take to the other midwives better. Definitely a small world!

So, this all leaves me very uncertain where I want to give birth and who I want for a provider. Evergreen falls into the “acceptable” category, and Jason does like the immediate proximity to emergency facilities (though I’d add that the other birth center is literally two blocks from the maternity center). The main differences are the environment – can I find myself just as relaxed in a hospital? – and only the birth centers offer water birth. And when it comes down to these two relatively small differences (as far as I know now, without having given birth, anyway), I suspect it will strongly come down to who do I mesh the best with.

The decision has gotten difficult!