July 2007

New Guide Outlines Local Birthing Options
UW Breastfeeding Expert Honored for her Service to Mothers

The Great Starts Guide to Hospitals, Birth Centers, and Home Birth Midwives in King County shows expectant parents how to define their expectations for their child’s birth and how to find the care providers and facility that can meet their goals and medical needs. The Great Starts Program of Parent Trust for Washington Children has published the consumer-friendly guide, which gives Puget Sound parents details for services in 16 facilities and 24 home-birth options.

The role of expectant parents in determining what happens at the birth of their child and who participates in the birth evolves with changes in health care and parents’ expectations, according to Janelle Durham, Great Starts program manager and the guide’s lead author. In the 1910s, women advocated for medication for labor pain. In the 1950s, expectant mothers began asking for childbirth education to prepare them for what to expect. In the 1960s, some dads insisted on being allowed into the delivery room. Today parents consider the role of a doula, elective cesareans and many other options.

Great Starts has helped parents navigate the shifting terrain with comprehensive birth services surveys since the 1950s. Results from the current survey include the following:

• Local hospitals delivered between 219 to 6,800 babies in 2006;
• All hospitals provide one-on-one nursing during active labor;
• All hospitals allow doulas;
• All hospitals have flexible visitor policies which allow family and friends (including the mom’s other children) to support mom throughout her labor;
• Seven out of 12 hospitals have nurse-midwives on staff;
• All hospitals encourage their clients to take childbirth preparation classes;
• Water birth is not allowed by any hospital, but is allowed by all out-of-hospital midwives and all birth centers.

This year, the new Consumer Reports style magazine makes the data easier for parents to use. In addition to articles about options for care providers and birth places, the guide includes comparisons of rates of interventions at various birth places and charts of policies and routine procedures at each of the services surveyed. It is available online for $7 at www.greatstarts.org or may be purchased at some local maternity stores and baby boutiques for $7.99.

The Great Starts Program has guided expectant and new parents through the challenges of childbirth and early parenting for 50 years. It provides counseling, and childbirth books, as well as classes in Seattle, Edmonds, Redmond, Burien and Bainbridge Island. For more information, call 206-789-0883 or visit www.greatstarts.org.

Great Starts is now under the umbrella of the nonprofit Parent Trust for Washington Children, which provides parent education and family support services through home- and community-based programs. The agency operates the toll-free Family Help Line for families in distress at 1-800-932-HOPE (4673).

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