So you are deep into your pregnancy and want to birth at home. Maybe you just moved to town, or maybe you are seeing the writing on the wall at your OB’s office, or maybe you were worried about the financial commitment of hiring a midwife in your first trimester.
For whatever reason you have, if you are still pregnant, there is usually still time left to align yourself with the support you are desiring for your birth.
The best thing to do is reach out to local midwives. We often know who might have spots available, if we don’t feel like we have the capacity we will refer you to someone who hopefully does!
Yes, usually there is a steep financial difference for someone coming in late to care, but I will caution:
Coming in at the end of pregnancy makes our job as a midwife harder. We don’t know you! We don’t have the relationship of trust and safety that we usually have with our clients who hire us at the beginning of care, because we haven’t had the time together to form a relationship.
The relationships of trust and of safety we form with the families we work with is what makes midwifery care, and home birth care, exemplary and safe care.
It’s called Continuity of Care, and there is a great article about it here. In short: seeing the same midwife or team of providers throughout a pregnancy statistically leads to much higher rates of spontaneous vaginal births, improved experiences for families and decreased emergency interventions.
When you come in late, we have to work overtime to get to know you and your family and your baby and get your labs and records, if applicable, from your previous providers and clinically and emotionally get to know you, your family and your baby.
Usually when clients sign up for care at the beginning of their pregnancies, it implies they trust their bodies and their abilities to birth at home. It implies they really want to commit to a home birth. When someone comes in at the last minute, we do have to wonder “why now?” “what shifted?” “Do they really understand what a home birth is? What a midwife does? What a midwife doesn’t do?”
In my experience, late transfers are often the families who transfer to the hospital in labor to birth. In my opinion, it is because we weren’t “all together” in our commitments and expectations of what a home birth entailed.
In my experience, late transfers usually do not get insurance reimbursement because we don’t see that much of you!
So, yes, you will get a discount if you come into care late, but please be ready to do the work to establish a relationship with yourself, your baby and your midwife to make the remainder of your pregnancy, your birth and postpartum experience as fulfilling as possible.
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