Women’s Health Associates Midwives – Our Regretful Experience

We thought Women’s Health Associates (173 Worcester St, Wellesley, MA) was the place for us, and then they did the unthinkable: they dropped us as clients based on ONE meeting, ONE question, and a lot of judgement from ONE midwife in the practice. We shared our story with family and friends and the outrage has been unanimous.

I have been chronicling our steps every week, so the following write-ups were written on that week.

Here’s our story:

Week 17 of Pregnancy

This week I had two “interview-like” pre-natal appointments scheduled: one with the Newton-Wellesley Hospital midwives, and one with the Cambridge Birthing Center midwives; however, after going to the former, I decided to cancel the latter. WHA is the midwifery group that services Newton-Wellesley Hospital. The midwife we saw was Midwife A. The practice has 3 midwives in total, which is great, because that means I’d only have to go through the trouble of meeting two other midwives in preparation for delivery (any one of them could be on call that day, so it helps to know all of them personally). Midwife A sat us down and started explaining their philosophy: most women come to them because they are interested in a drug-free delivery, and that is their specialty. She calculated that about 25% of women receive an epidural when under their care (making for a 75% success rate with natural deliveries, which was encouraging). She was very patient with all of our questions, which ranged anywhere from “can I eat liverwurst?” to “I want to stop taking pre-natal vitamins.” I told her that my biggest fear around hospitals was that because the epidural would be THERE, I’d be inclined to ask for it, even though that is NOT what I really want. I told her I really needed a strong support team around me to help me through this. She said that, although the epidural IS there and they will not deny it to anyone, they will probably take my request and ask me something like “well, why don’t we try this position for the next couple of contractions?” things like that, to try to keep me away from the drugs. That’s EXACTLY what I wanted to hear. Her response was very reassuring. She also explained that, because they don’t work directly at the hospital as staff, they are able to stay with you for most of the time you are in labor (this is different from other hospitals, where the midwives have multiple deliveries going on at once and might pop in once every couple of hours). She made us feel great and like this was the right place for us.

Week 25 of Pregnancy

We visited midwife #2 (of 3), Midwife C. I do have to say we got off on the wrong foot. First off, I wanted to have some time to discuss our birth plan, just like we had done with Midwife A on our first appointment, but Midwife C was in a rush saying we only had 20 min for our appointment and that there would be “plenty of time later.” This threw me off a bit, because I was expecting to have more time. So I just jumped to my first question: can I have a say on when the cord is cut? Her answer, No, they have their own policy to cut it once it stops pulsing. I asked her what if I wanted it to stay on for 15 min. She said No, because there is a risk of hemorrhage, to which I responded that that didn’t make any sense. When you cut the cord has NOTHING to do with when/how the placenta is delivered (which is what she was referring to with the bleeding risk). That’s the point when she got defensive and basically told us that they have their policies, and if we didn’t like them, then we should probably just have a home birth, and by the way, don’t even think of having all your pre-natal appointments here if you are going to end up having a home birth in the end, “we don’t do that.” At this point I was crying. I did not feel taken care of, and I wanted to just walk out and have a home birth. But Brian, with his completely leveled head, told her that our information is coming from Nancy Wainer, and she’s got to understand that we need her help to balance out the information we get from Nancy. To this, Midwife C responded that all midwives crinch at the mention of Nancy’s name, and they disagree with a lot of the things she does, and she’s surprised that she hasn’t convinced us to have a home birth yet.
At the end, Midwife C was trying her best to smile, and said she would do some research regarding the hospital policy about when to cut the cord, and that we should call her this weekend.

Week 26 of Pregnancy

Called Midwife C back. I had my script down: “I think we got off on the wrong foot, we really don’t want a home birth, we want to make this work, and we need your help to balance out the information we get from Nancy.” I was hoping she’d be more open, but she continued to go off on her rants. She even got to the point of explaining to ME why natural birth was better than not, and how their practice was the best “middle-point” between doctors and home births (ummm… hello, we already did the research, you’re preaching to the choir here). And she also added (repeatedly) that maybe a home birth would be best for us. I had to just cut through the unnecessary and useless fluff with a machete as if I was walking through the rain forest, tried to ignore her remarks, and I tried to focus on my questions: “please explain what you mean by ‘active management’ of ‘3rd stage’ delivery,” or “you mentioned jelly beans, are those regular store-bought jelly beans?” and other technical things like that. I stayed away from any other controversial questions, but she continued to lecture. She made her agenda very very clear, and I did not appreciate it one bit. Midwives are supposed to help you with YOUR agenda, not impose their own onto you. She was even saying some scary stuff about how I should not be selfish and I should put my baby first at all cost, etc (which is scary because that’s the kind of orthodox phrasing that doctors use to convince you to do C-sections). I know she’s against surgery, but her obvious strong opinions about every single topic and every single test was made very obvious, and I did not feel listened to, taken care of, or even taken into account in the process. She had said to come back in 4-6 weeks when we were in her office, and now she was saying I should make my appointment for 2 weeks from now. I asked her why the change, and she said they don’t usually see people who “are off doing their own thing” that often. So basically, regardless of what we were telling her, she had already written us off as “these people are not good for US” and sent me packing to not come back but in a month or so. I was furious at this. I made the decision right there that I might not have any say on who’s on call on the day of the delivery, but I do have a choice on whom to have my pre-natal appointments with, and I do not want to see Midwife C again.

Week 27 of Pregnancy

This week I reached a breaking point. You may recall my rant on this blog (called The Stress-free Natural Birth Paradox) last week where I expressed frustration at all the mixed information. I was depressed and I would cry without warning. My poor husband was at a loss. He didn’t know what to do to make me feel better. Our interaction with Midwife C was making me feel devastated, confused and unsupported.
Our next stop was to make an appointment with the 3rd and final midwife, Midwife B for our 28-week check and hope that appointment would go smoother. However, considering the amount of stress I had been feeling rooted on our last visit with Midwife C, we decided to make our next appointment with Midwife A instead. She’s the first midwife we met who made us feel so comfortable and supported.
And then we got this letter (click to enlarge)

They bumped us!!!!! All based on ONE meeting, ONE question, and a LOT of judgement on Midwife C’s part. We plan on reviewing them on the Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, Yelp, and anywhere else where we can reach critical-thinkers who are looking for a supportive practice.

To read my full pregnancy journey, start at The First Trimester.

Read our review on Yelp!

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