Expecting moms and dads have a few options when it comes to where to give birth to their newborn baby including at home or at a hospital. In this episode of The Lab, Daddy Brad visits another facility parents may consider, a birthing center. Midwife assistant Cat McGrath gives a tour of a birthing center and discusses the services this type of facility provides, including prenatal care, as well as labor and delivery. She also explains the difference between birthing centers and hospitals, and describes how the staff of midwives and doctors deal with emergencies that may arise during natural childbirth at a center. DadLabs Ep. 638 is brought to you by BabyBjorn.

Daddy Brad: As an expecting family, there are several places you can actually deliver the baby home, hospital, or a hybrid of the two. Some place like this, the Austin Area Birthing Center. Stick around and assistant midwife, Kat McGrath is going to show us around. Tell the dads, specifically out there, what is a birthing center?

Cat McGrath: Ok, so a birthing center is an out a hospital setting where you can come to not only do all the routine prenatal visits, also labor and deliver here in the facility like in a room just like the one we are in now. And also do 6 weeks of follow up for the mom and baby. So we have 3 birthing rooms two of the rooms have large 150-gallon Jacuzzi jet tubs that can be used for labor, hydrotherapy, or to deliver your baby in if the mom chooses. We do have all of the birth supplies and oxygen tanks and all that kind of stuff in here. We do have things like fireplaces and you can light candles and play soft music. It’s a homier atmosphere. Where working with two-type s of midwifes here in the facility. Certified Professional Midwifes who are the highest trained and licensed for out of hospital birth. They are experts in out of hospital birth and then we work with certified nurse midwives. Who are actually the highest as far as educational standard. We have a consulting physician. His name is Dr. David Berry and we consult with and him and may send our patient over there and he checks everything out. He is our prescriptive authority and makes the final call of whether the baby and mom should transfer out of our care. So we do have a consulting practice with a physician. Let me talk a little bit about how your baby is born here with us and the differences between delivering here and in the hospital. When your delivering the baby the mom has a lot of options and choices on how she wants to deliver. We offer all kinds of different ways and suggestions on how to deliver your baby and whatever is working best. The baby is born skin to skin with mom, unless of course, there is some sort of emergency and we need to take the baby for some reason. Now if there is an emergency we transfer out EMS. If we do transfer out we’re going to go to North Austin Medical. Yea. Which is five minutes door to door from the facility. Our emergencies if we do have them most of them do happen around the time of delivery or postpartum. Again like hemorrhage is a major concern, the baby needing resuscitation and things like this. Number one all of our midwives are highly highly prepared to deal with an emergency and so are the caregivers. We’re all certified to resuscitate infants we have neonatal resuscitation certification and we have all the same medications that a hospital has to deal with an emergency.

Daddy Brad: You said all the births here are obviously natural and non-medicated births.

Cat McGrath: That’s correct. We do offer one pain medication , which is a narcotic. Of course we don’t offer epidural s like they do in the hospital. Yea, but we do offer a narcotic that’s called Nubain. It’s given through a shot and it lasts in the system for about two hours. It allows the mom to rest in between her contractions again it’s a narcotic so it makes her a little bit sleepy and little croggy.

Daddy Brad: Cat, thank you so much for sharing with us this wonderful place. Now, folks in the Austin area or central Texas area interested in getting in touch with you what do they do?

Cat McGrath: Sure, well you can go to our website at www.austinabc.com and also you can always give us a call our number is on the website. And schedule a tour free of obligation. Totally free. Yea. Come in and talk with the midwifes and get a better idea and more personalized idea of if the center is the right for you.

Daddy Brad: That’s awesome. Now are they’re any for folks that don’t live in Austin or Texas are there any national organizations that go find that information on?

Cat McGrath: Yes there is. The Midwifes Alliance website is a very very good website.

Daddy Brad: Well that’s great. Well thank you very much. If you got comments or ideas about birthing centers or more natural childbirth. Please leave us a comment on this video or go to DadLabs.com and join our conversation. That’s it.