Hi all,
Having met my community midwife...well... I just don't like her at all. She had a weird bedside manner, said some very odd things and I don't trust her. It may be that I warm to her over the next few months but my first impressions are usually right and it's made me think, especially as this is a much wanted first baby and it's taken 3.5 years to get here. So although I'm not mega neurotic I am concerned.
It's my 12 week scan on Thursday, so assuming all is ok, I think I'll start looking into some options of help / secondary advice. We are definitely going to have a hospital birth, because our house is too far from the hospital if anything goes wrong. I would ideally love a home birth but I just can't take the risk and also we live in a terrace and I don't think the neighbours would appreciate the noise!!! I'm also planning on doing hypnobirthing and I'm not sure how supportive the hospital will be of this.
So at the moment I'm just weighing up an independent midwife vs a doula. I know that they can come into hospital but ultimately can't be responsible for medical care because of NHS contractual reasons and as I'm not planning a home birth we think that we maybe want to go down the doula route but I'm just not sure. I think really I want a bit of hand holding and someone bolshy who can get us the correct care in hospital so that we're not left to work it out ourselves. I also want some help through pregnancy and to be a double check on the advice we're being given by the NHS midwife.
We don't have huge amounts of money but this is so important I'm totally willing to save to get the best care.
Any experiences / advice would be great! Thank you in advance :)