What are the differences between hospitals and birth centers?
A Birth center is designed for healthy low-risk mothers and healthy babies. They provide a caring and homelike setting that balances technology and touch to provide the woman with supportive and safe care before, during, and after birth. Birth centers screen their clients throughout the pregancy, labor and delivery to make sure they are low risk. Birth centers do not do the routine interventions that are most often done in the hospital such as IV’s, continuous monitoring, epidurals, pitocin inductions, and cesarean sections. Often routine interventions are done at hospitals that are not necessary for a low-risk woman laboring naturally. At birth centers babies are monitored intermittently with a small hand held doppler rather than the continuous electronic fetal monitor that keeps the woman tethered to a machine and restricts her freedom. Birth Centers promote breastfeeding and bonding as babies and mothers are never separated. The midwives and nurses at birth centers have training and
