When do you want to find out the sex of your baby? What are you going to name him? Her? Do you plan to have an epidural? Are you going to breastfeed? There are a thousand decisions that come along with having a new baby. One of the big ones is where you’re going to give birth, but if you’re like many parents, you may not have thought further than the hospital where your health care provider works.
However, since no single doctor or health care provider is on-call all the time, there’s always a decent chance that the doctor who attends your labor won’t be anyone you recognize, no matter where you go for delivery. This is why it’s doubly important to choose a delivery location you feel good about.
- Hospital: Hospital births are generally agreed to be the safest choice for pregnancies which have or might have complications, but not all hospitals are alike. If there’s more than one delivery hospital in your area, now is a great time to think about factors like C-section rates (women who deliver at hospitals with higher C-section rates may be less likely to have vaginal births), skin-to-skin contact after birth, visitor policies, and other factors which may be important to your family.
- Birthing center: A birthing center is a facility that’s staffed and set up for maternity care, but which is somewhat separate from a hospital (most are associated with hospitals and have a strong relationship with those hospitals in case of complications during labor), and which uses the midwifery model of care, or other alternative or holistic theories of maternity care to help families have the birth experience they may be looking for.
- Planned home birth: Planned home births aren’t recommended, and carry additional risks that hospital and birth centers do not. They’re only a viable option for healthy, uncomplicated pregnancies, and since complications can crop up unexpectedly, most medical authorities recommend against planned home births, although some services associated with planned home births may be covered by some medical plans.
Your delivery coverage
Your health plan may offer coverage for the costs of delivery.
If you would like to review or have questions about your health plan benefits, call the number on the back of your member ID card.
