Trying to decide who will deliver your baby? – The right Midwife or OB can play a big part on your delivery.
What is a Midwife?
A Midwife is a trained medical professional with a license to practice. They provide their service to healthy women during labor, delivery, and after the birth of the baby. Midwives can deliver babies at birth centers or at home.
Women choose midwives when they want little medical intervention during their delivery.
What do Midwives do?
Midwives can provide care before, during and after. They help with:
- Provide family planning
- Do prenatal exams
- Advise you about diet, exercise, and staying healthy
- Educate and counsel you about pregnancy and childbirth.
- Give you emotional and practical support during labor
- Deliver your babies
What is a OB?
An Obstetrician (OB) is a doctor who specializes in pregnancy, child birth, and a women’s reproductive system. They are trained in high risk pregnancies unlike midwives.
Ob doctors go to medical school and have to graduate from a four year residency program in obstetrics and gynecology. They are trained on pre-pregnancy health, pregnancy, labor, childbirth, health problems after childbirth and more.
What do OB do?
During your pregnancy an Obstetrician will take care of :
- Monitor your health and your developing babies’ health, including doing routine ultrasounds, measurements, and tests
- Check for health conditions that could cause problems during your pregnancy
- Advise you about diet, exercise and staying healthy
- Help you cope with morning sickness, back and leg pain, and other common pregnancy complaints
- Deliver your baby
Midwife or Ob?
Now that we know the differences between the two is your time to decide which of the two options you would rather go for. There isn’t a right or wrong answer when it comes to who can do the best job. You need to choose who aligns better with the type of childbirth you want to have. Some people like to have home births and be more personal, so they choose a midwife, and some feel more comfortable having their baby at a hospital.
At the end of the day, choosing who is going to deliver your baby is a very personal choice. Midwives and Ob are both there to help you navigate your options and feel comfortable before, during and after your pregnancy.
