Can you recommend a midwife/birthing center in San Diego?

[mamaliberty]

Hello-I will be moving back to SD soon to have my first child and would like to meet some midwifes/birthing centers when I go out next month. I am looking ideally for a place to have a water birth that would be connected/near a hospital if needed. Things like that exist in Santa Cruz but not sure about San Diego. Any help is much appreciated!!! Thanks, Caitlyn 

[southernmommie]

I can only recommend the one and only freestanding birthing center that San Diego has. It's called Best Start Birth Center. I had my 3rd child there. She is a water baby. Was born in the tub. I highly recommend them!

[firewoman]

If you want to be in a birth center you could use Best Start.  The midwives are awesome and they do offer waterbirths.  They are a freestanding birthcenter in the Hillcrest area of San Diego which is near downtown.  It is very close to UCSD Hospital which is where all emergent cases would be taken (meaning if something was wrong, they would ambulance you to UCSD).  If a woman gets tired and decided she would like the relief of an epidural, they ambulance you further away to Sharp Mary Birch.

The other birth center is UCSD birth center which is on the first floor of the Hillcrest UCSD hospital that I mentioned before.  I received prenatal care from the midwives at UCSD during prenatal care from my homebirth midwife.  The care from the UCSD midwives was similar to that of an OB-GYN.  There can be long waits and they spend about 15 minutes per appointment.  Also, you see different midwives and could get any midwife during your birth.  The same is true of Best Start.

I am spoiled and loved the hour long appointments that I had with my homebirth midwife.  I also like knowing that it would be her there to attend me.  Three of the five children I have were born at home in water.  I have always trusted my midwife's ability to assess any situation and to know when if it is time to get to the hospital.  I fortunately never had any experiences with homebirth that I needed to go to the hospital but I do know that it happens.  Safety was a primary concern and that is why we chose the midwife we did.  Her name is Gerri Ryan.  She used to run her practice out of her home under the business name A Better Birth and now she has expanded into an office with another midwife named Marla Hicks who is also and RN.  Their practice is called The Center for Natural Birth.  They also run a school teaching midwifery.  My friend is having a homebirth with Gerri and I just went with her to an appointment this week.  They are just the most wonderful appointments and she is so informative and on the ball. 

So there are some choices.  Depending on where you live, even if you do give birth at home, you could be extremely close to a hospital.  We have a lot them here!

P.S. My avatar is a picture of my last daughter emerging straight into the arms of the midwife and my oldest daughter.

[onlygirls]

I had 2 births at Best Start and it was wonderful.  We moved to Texas and I had my 3rd at home.  I think that giving birth at Best Start prepared me for my home birth, although you could go straight for home birth, nothing wrong with that.  We chose Best Start because our insurance paid for 100% of the birth and home birth was not covered.  My doula for my 2nd birth was Gerri Ryan's daughter.