Choosing medical care during pregnancy & delivery?

pfchoice

Dear Moms or Moms-to-be,

 I'm a graduate student at Stanford interested in the factors that influence women's/parents' choice of medical care for prenatal care and delivery. I'm trying to get a sense of what this experience is really like for women through an informal survey of women, since I haven't had a baby myself.

The survey will take about 5-10 minutes and can be found here: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDdjcWNVWHJiM0ZOal96ZkNKR0ZpYkE6MQ#gid=0 

This is NOT a research survey, nor will any of your answers be used in research. This is more to help me understand the process so that I can ask the right questions. 

Please feel free to reply to this post with any general comments or questions. 

Best, Patricia 

MangomamaFL

Your questions assumes that the woman/parent would choose an OB and hospital or birth center.

What about home birth with a certified professional midwife (CPM)?

What about those who chooses an OB based if they have a CNM (certified nurse midwife or who the CNM is? In other words, the parents choose a particular CNM first.  They work with the OB that works with the CNM.

 

 

caralck

I agree with PP.  You need to do far more research into pregnancy care in the US and abroad before actually forming your final research question.  There are more than OBs who do deliveries/pregnancy care in the US.  Family physicians do OB care and midwives (lay midwives, CNMs, etc) are very popular choices and in many other countries, midwives are the primary OB providers and actual OBs only step in when emergencies occur requiring more advanced intervention.  Historically, delivery at the hospital by an OB was to be avoided because they had higher mortality rates due to infection issues and women much preferred midwives and home births because of this.  Then the connection was made as to why this was happening, thankfully, and infection rates dropped.  Good luck on your project.

BLuvsE

You posted this on a board for people who are planning to deliver naturally - most of us are using midwives. That option is not available on any (except one) of your questions.

Also, you'll find a lot of the answers from this board will be similar because we all have a similar philosophy towards birth. If you haven't already, I'd recommend posting on other boards as well.