Of Hospitals and Doulas and Birthing Balls and Baby Mills

We toured two local hospitals' maternity wards yesterday. Right now, we are thinking that we like Barnes the best. One thing we like about Barnes is that they give all their maternity patients access to a doula for free. A doula is a woman who is knowledgeable about non-drug methods of relieving labor pain and can provide support and encouragement during labor. A doula can help advocate for the parents' preferences during labor. Barnes had one of their doulas lead the tour, and she seemed genuinely knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and passionate about what she does. She even went so far as to pull out a birthing ball and demonstrate how it could be used. Both the tour guide/doula and the Barnes brochure really stressed that they try to work with parent preferences during birth. Overall, we were favorably impressed.

We also toured St. Lukes (the "West County baby mill"), and were much less impressed by what they have to offer. The other people taking the tour actually had much better questions, but the St. Luke's representatives did not answer them very well. They only mentioned the birthing ball and other non-medical pain relief techniques when prompted, and then only briefly. I have had St. Luke's recommended by a couple of people, but I didn't see anything there to sway me. The only thing they had over Barnes was that they offer private LDRP (Labor-Delivery-Recovery-Postpartum) rooms - you stay in a single room for your whole time there. Whereas at Barnes you are in one LDR room for the birth, then a second for postpartum stay. I'm not sure that's a big selling point to me, though. I don't mind switching rooms once.