Possibly dumb question about midwives..

[lapetitemaman]

Hi,

We are TTC #1 and I'm looking into midwives, homebirths, etc... It appeals to me how much more "hands on" and available a midwife is than a regular OB, but I have a question....What if 2 women have the same midwife and give birth the same day? It's my understanding that for a homebirth, the midwife stays with a woman for a long time, during the most crucial hours of delivery, at least. But what if the midwife has another patient who is also laboring the same day? What happens? That would not be good if one of the women- who has bonded with a particular midwife over the course of the 9 months- all of a sudden has to have a "substitute" midwife b/c she is delivering a baby in another nearby town.

How is this scenario handled? How many patients does a typical midwife have at any given time? How does she ensure that she will, indeed, be the one who is there for the delivery, especially in a home setting?

[Snowdrift]

It's not at all a dumb question!

First, most midwives take on far fewer women than a doctor would. The midwives I use only take 3-4 women per month. Of course some months they end up with six or seven births because of the varying lengths of pregnancies, but nothing like the enormous numbers of women many doctors see.

Conflicts do occur though. Most midwives have a backup midwife they can call in that situation. Most have an apprentice or tow they will often send if one woman's early lanor overlaps with a birth. I chose a practice with two midwives and two apprentices--they work on an on-call system, so you don't knwo for sure who you will get, but they also alternate prenatals. I liked that arrangment better than having a backup because I knew both of them whereas with a single midwife my understanding is that you usually just meet the backup once, or sometimes not at all.

Fact is, weird stuff happens and no one person can ever guarantee being there, so just aobut every midwife has contingency plans for those situations.

[katt]

Sometimes Midwives work in teams of 2. I have 2 midwives. I alternate with meeting them (at least so far, only 3 appointments) and feel comfortable with both.

[Herausgeber]

I go to a practice with 6 midwives. They alternate with prenatals, so that by the time your birth rolls around, you've met them all. Which one you get for labor depends on who is on call that day.

[Drummer's Wife]

yeah most midwives have a back-up or work with one or two (or more) in a midwife group and you meet them all during prentals so you are comfy with them incase you don't get "yours" for the birth. My mom works in a midwife group and they try to take on clients with different due dates but of course it happens that someone goes early or someone goes into labor later. Also most midwives cannot possibly be on call all the time (they have their own family) so there is always a chance that someone else will be there to catch your baby. Just ask the midwife/practice you are planning on seeing. they'll let you know how they handle this

[eleven]

I would definitely recommend addressing this during your interviewing process. Ask the midwives you interview approximately how many births they attend per month and how often it has happened that they have missed births in the past.The numbers can vary quite a bit.

It was very important to me to have a lot of personal attention during this pregnancy and birth, so I chose a midwife who only attends about 1 birth per month.

Good luck on your journey!

[LizaBear]

With BOTH of my previous births, my main midwife was attending another birth when I called her that I was in labour !

With my first, she was attending a hospital birth, so I abandoned my home-birth dreams and spent 45 minutes in the car (out of a 3 1/2 hour labour !) to go to the hospital to be with her. In that instance, she was able to attend the final stages of my labour, the first while post-partum, and go back and forth between myself and the other woman (who - btw - did not deliver until several hours after my son and I had been discharged)

With my second, she was attending a homebirth and unable to leave, and sent her back-up midwife. Back-up midwife got into a car accident, had to send another midwife from the practice (whom I had not even met formally before). The third midwife did get to my place okay - but not until about 30-ish minutes after my daughter was born.

We're not holding out a lot of hope that a midwife will arrive in time this round *LOL*

[Full Heart]

When I interview mws this is one of the questions I ask. Most of the mws I know only take 2 clients a mos. They use other mws as back ups as well.

I was in labor and my mw was at a birth. She sent her assitant over and then she came over about an hour after the birth of her other client. But my mw was extremly busy. She did 2 births per week that year! The mw I will be using this time I am the only person due in March so I should be ok.