In this quick listen episode Tiffany guides listeners through 23 essential questions to ask during a midwifery interview:
00:00 Introduction to the Episode
00:24 Understanding Midwifery Interviews
01:51 23 Questions to Ask in a Midwifery Interview
14:43 Exploring the Role of a Midwife
18:47 Next Steps After Choosing a Midwife
20:08 Closing Remarks and Future Opportunities
Links to all the extra good stuff:
CLICK HERE to Join the brand new Beautiful One Beta Birth Class!!!
Free Download: Questions to Ask in a Midwifery Interview
Join our email community + get instant access to our awesome Sleep Freebie: HERE
Browse all our favorite women’s supplement recommendations: HERE
Submit your answer-on-the-show questions: HERE
In this quick listen episode Tiffany guides listeners through 23 essential questions to ask during a midwifery interview:
00:00 Introduction to the Episode
00:24 Understanding Midwifery Interviews
01:51 23 Questions to Ask in a Midwifery Interview
14:43 Exploring the Role of a Midwife
18:47 Next Steps After Choosing a Midwife
20:08 Closing Remarks and Future Opportunities
Links to all the extra good stuff:
CLICK HERE to Join the brand new Beautiful One Beta Birth Class!!!
Free Download: Questions to Ask in a Midwifery Interview
Join our email community + get instant access to our awesome Sleep Freebie: HERE
Browse all our favorite women’s supplement recommendations: HERE
Submit your answer-on-the-show questions: HERE
Welcome to At Home with Kelly and Tiffany, where naturally minded women gather together as we pursue simplicity and confidence in health alternatives, so we can show up better in our busy lives and feel more at home in our bodies. Join your favorite home birth midwife duo for conversation, candor, and community.
Welcome back to at home with Kelly and Tiffany. This is Tiffany. And today we are doing a quick listen episode, which is essentially a really Actionable piece of information that you can learn quickly and turn around and actually do something with the information. So it's just me presenting to you today, the interview questions that you want to bring. to a midwifery interview. What should you even ask in an interview with a midwife? And I have 23 of them for you today to consider. These, of course, can be used in other pregnancy and prenatal care provider interviews. We encourage everyone to consult and interview or do some kind of meet and greet with a potential care provider because oftentimes you get started with care right away and you didn't have a chance even to. Check out what these people are about what type of care they're going to provide. You kind of have to experience it while you're making the decision. And once you're already in the office, already in the care, it's harder to untangle from it. So if you go back to last week's episode, you will hear all about how to find a midwife. We talked about locating a midwife and the things that you do in order to Make sure that you're getting paired with the right midwife and that can be a really helpful place for you to start. But what we're going to share today is just the questions to ask in a midwifery interview. And I'm going to tell you guys what types of answers you're potentially looking for as. You ask these questions. So to start out, we provided open ended questions so you can bring these questions to your midwifery interview and ask them exactly how they are and gain a lot of information with the responses that you get. So number one, the question is, what is your philosophy about birth? And this is an important one to lead with. Because there's a lot of philosophies about birth out there. And you want to hear what this particular provider thinks about birth. What do they believe about it being potentially a normal family event? Some event that is best managed by the care provider, or a mix of those things is going to kind of come out in the answer to this one. Number two, what aspect of your care gets you the most excited? This is a great one to get to know the personality of your care provider a little bit and try to understand what lights them up about their job. You want to hear about that, right? Number three, how did you know you wanted to be a midwife? Every single midwife has a story of how she became a midwife or how she knew she wanted to become a midwife. And hearing a little bit of that backstory is important. It helps you to get to know the history of your care provider. Number four, what sets your practice apart from other midwifery practices? This is a great question to ask on the consumer side. You want to know why should I choose your practice? Usually all the midwifery practices in a certain area tend to kind of look the same on paper. The community standard tends to just. Be very similar and so finding out from that midwife what she thinks sets her apart is an important thing to know as you're considering your other options. Number five, what does the ideal client midwife relationship look like for you? This is an important one in order to understand that these types of interviews work best when they go both ways. And so you know what you're looking for in a midwife potentially, but you want to hear what your midwife is looking for in a client. And an experienced midwife should know and should be able to articulate the families and the clients that she works the best with, that she feels the most connected to. And that is a valid. That's a valid point because a midwife and a birthing family are a partnership and there's a relationship there. And the reason that home birth stays so safe for low risk moms is because that relationship is developed over time and communication over time. And so you want to hear from your potential midwife if you would be a good fit for her too. Number six, what is the schedule care? What is the schedule that care is provided on? So, how often will you see me in your office? Are all those visits in your office? What days and times do you see clients during the week? That one's just about logistics, like Are you going to be able to easily schedule time with this midwife for your prenatal appointments? For example, Kelly and I right now are only providing appointments for clients on Friday mornings. So if that's a huge scheduling conflict for the families that we work with, then that relationship is probably going to be a struggle the entire time. So that's just a logistics question you want to know. Number seven, what does a typical prenatal appointment look like in your care? You want to know, when I walk into the office, what should I expect? How much time are we going to spend talking? How much time are we going to spend checking on the baby? How much time are we going to spend am I going to spend waiting in your waiting room? All good things to know, right? Number eight, what supplies do you bring to the birth and who comes with you? This is just a good way to get familiar with home birth midwives, what they bring with them, and Who they plan to bring midwives always bring an assistant. And so who would that person be? Number nine, tell me about a time when something unexpected happened at birth and how you handled it. Here's an opportunity for this potential midwife to showcase her skill to you. Unexpected things happen at birth all the time, and we are always prepared for those things. And so she should be able to really quickly. give you an example of something that happened to her once and how she responded to it. And it will give you an idea of her problem solving skills, her preparedness her ability to handle a situation and should build confidence as she's telling you about that. Number 10. What is the financial investment for care and how would we expect to pay it? That's another important logistics question. Financial investment for midwifery care is all over the place. It depends on what area you live in, the credentials of your midwife, if your insurance is going to cover it, if your midwife even works with insurance. And so that's why the next question, number 11 is. Our insurance company is blank. What kind of reimbursement can we expect? And you want to hear from her what the process is like working with insurance companies and how you should expect that to work with her office and with insurance. Number 12, what are your views on or experience with blank? So you fill in the blank with something important to you. It could be, what are your views on doulas at birth? What is your experience with siblings at birth? What are your what's your experience with thyroid health in pregnancy, et cetera. So you pick a topic that's important to you and you ask for that provider's experience or views on that subject. Number three, these are the main goals that I'd like to achieve dot, dot, dot. You fill that in what your main goals are. What would your general approach be in helping me reach them? Again, this gives that potential care provider an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to provide individualized care, to give you a really personalized approach to your goals. And for her to say, Your goals are my goals. We're on the same page. Let's do this together. That's the feeling you should get from how she answers this question. Number 14 is, are pharmaceuticals your go to for treating issues in pregnancy, or do you first use herbs, homeopathy, nutrition, diet, and lifestyle changes? And this question is not as open ended because it is kind of fishing for a certain specific answer, but you want to hear how well versed she is in alternative modalities. If that's important to you, or potentially how well versed is she in a pharmaceutical option or a more allopathic option, if that's important to you. And so you want to hear a little bit more about the tools and the skillset that your midwife. That your potential midwife has number 15, what pregnancy conditions would risk me out of care? And this is an important one because the answers for this can be really varied and it might seem like it's this universal thing that all midwives agree on that specific things would risk. Women out of care, and that would just be across the board, but it's not so there's some really obvious ones that would risk women out of care that hopefully all midwives would agree that preeclampsia or preterm labor or some other serious condition in pregnancy would risk you out of care, but there's some conditions that are real gray areas for midwives, for example borderline high blood pressure. Or your water being broken for over 24 hours. Those are things that you want to know ahead of time. What is the tolerance and flexibility that this midwife has? And does that match what you're looking for? Number 16 is what labor or birth circumstances would require a transfer? So, In the situation that you're in labor or that, that you're in the middle of your birth event, what would require a transfer? Again, you want her to articulate. This is what I would transfer you for. I would transfer you if you were GBS positive and you refused antibiotics at home. I would transfer you if you developed a fever during labor. I would transfer you if you had a blood loss of a thousand. CC's or more. I would transfer you if right. And so you want to you want to hear some examples of what a transfer would would need to be necessitated by and then you might have some ideas in your mind too. in labor, you know, how would you handle it, would that be a transfer? Would we, or would you try to keep me at home? Number 17 is, do you ever go out of town while you're on call? And the reason we developed this question is because there are some midwives in our area who go out of town quite frequently and they put somebody else on call for them and they don't always tell their clients and that is one way to manage An on call lifestyle and kind of a workaround of sustainability, but it's important to know is this provider 100%, you know, barring some emergency going to be at your birth? And if not, Then knowing over the next nine or 10 months that they are to be available to you, are there times when they're going to be unavailable and then what is the plan for that? Number 18, what is your process around cervical exams? Do you require them? Do you do them at every birth? What if someone declines a cervical exam? This is important to know based off of your own feelings and desires around cervical exams for yourself. Some midwives require them or strongly recommend them when they first arrive to your birth. And so you will want to know, will you strongly recommend or require a vaginal exam upon admittance of labor? Will you strongly require one before I begin second stage and start pushing? Depending on what your comfort is and what your desire is, you want to know how that piece matches up. Number 19 is, when labor is long and the mom is tired, do you suggest a hospital transfer or let them come to that decision on their own? And if you bring it up, how do you usually present the idea? So again, this one is not quite so open ended. It's kind of looking for a specific response. You can tell who asked the question, which was Kelly and I the, the idea is how quickly will a midwife suggest a transfer if labor is long and hard? And does that response match to what you especially if you're a first time mom, it's really common for that first labor to be longer and just require stamina for everyone on the birth team. And so you want to see what that tolerance is, what that timeline looks like, what the tools look like, what the patience looks like for your midwifery team to help you manage that in the way that you want it to be managed. Number 20 is, what is your protocol if my water breaks before labor begins? How long are you comfortable with me staying at home with ruptured membranes if there's no fever? This is an important one to understand. I know I gave that example in a couple of these other scenarios, but some midwives have a 24 hour rule or they have an 18 hour rule or they have some other situation where it would be really great to know ahead of time. What those boundaries are for that particular midwife so that you can plan ahead because this one catches women by surprise a lot. It feels like, Oh, I had no idea this was going to be the thing that was going to interrupt what I'm trying to do with my wonderful home birth here. Number 21 is what do you see your role as at births? What do you usually do at a normal straightforward birth? And this is an opportunity for that potential midwife to say, Here's how I like to participate in births here. This is how I feel like we can work together. This is how, this is how you can observe me at your birth. And as an example, Kelly and I let our potential clients, our own clients know when we first arrived to the birth. It's going to be a little bit busy. We're going to be unpacking our things. We're going to be taking all of your vitals. We're going to be assessing labor. We're going to be helping you as needed. And then, if you're coping well, and we're all just waiting, and you have us there just to be around and observing and prepared, Then we're going to go more into the background and you're going to see us just kind of hanging out. We're going to be very quiet. We might be in another room. We're going to come check on you periodically. We're going to be around if you sound like you need more help or assistance, but we're going to be. Acting pretty calm, pretty quiet, pretty laid back. And that's how you know everything's going well. If your midwife looks like she is just hanging out, everything's going well at a birth. And that gives a mom an opportunity to say, Oh, well, I was actually hoping to have a midwife who's going to be incredibly hands on because my last birth, I felt completely abandoned and alone. And I'm hoping a midwife can fill this role of having a woman around me and being with me constantly. And then that gives. You know, the midwife, an opportunity to say, Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You say what you want and how the kind of support that you would like, and we will provide it. So lots of different scenarios that can kind of get hashed out there, but that's why it's important to know how midwives see themselves at birth and, and the role that they play. Number 22 is, how do you screen potential clients as being the right fit for your care? And that kind of nods back to one of those first questions that we answered or that we asked, which is giving the midwife an opportunity to share who her ideal client is, which clients do the best in her practice. And not all midwives are going to feel really comfortable sharing this and not all midwives have. I don't have really specific or detailed parameters, but something that Kelly and I have discovered after doing this work for several years is that it is better for us to be upfront with clients in this initial getting to know you stage before they hire us who works the best with us. And so we will say things like. You know, we have, we've decided that, you know, women who are really eager for information, who want a lot of feedback, who are excited to be at their appointments who like to have a lot of communication women who kind of prefer a more hands off birth women who, you know, really want to learn to trust their bodies and, and practice that confidence in letting their body do the work. Those are the, those are the women that we tend to work the best with. If a family wants a lot of hands on care, a lot of technology if they don't take their appointment time very seriously, if they kind of just want someone there. On the peripheral in case, you know, they, they need something, then they'll reach out that kind of thing. We've realized that we're not the best fit for that family or that individual. We really want the relationship. We really want the good communication. We really want to foster trust in the birth process and support women. And owning that experience themselves. So a really good question to kind of help flesh that out a little bit. And then the very last question that we have is number 23. If we decided to move forward with your practice, what are the next steps to begin care? And that just helps your brain as you're deciding who you want to move forward with and what that looks like and just gives you a couple next steps. We have, you know, we've talked before about. How sometimes women have tried to hire us on the spot. They feel really sure that we are their midwifery team and they love us and they want nothing more than just to secure us right there on the spot. But what we will say is, well, the next step actually is for you to go home, for you to talk with your partner for you know, you guys to sleep on it, pray on it, talk about it with, you know, some other people who usually help you make big decisions. Kelly and I are going to. Are going to do the same and then reach out to us in the next couple of days. And we can kind of touch base on how we feel, like how we feel like today went and if both parties want to move forward. So that is a part of being a good fit and hearing communication and boundaries from your potential midwife. And then also just knowing like, Oh, well, the next steps would be. You tell us you want to come into care. We'll accept you into care. We'll send you paperwork. We'll set your first appointment up as soon as possible and we'll just get started. So it's just nice to know what happens next. We have this entire list of questions available to you ladies so that you can Read this list, modify it, print it out, take it to your midwifery interviews, and you can grab that in the show notes. It's 23 questions to ask in a midwifery interview. So go ahead and grab that freebie in our show notes. It's a great tool for this very first stage of looking for a midwife. And if you're listening to this episode and you are just falling in love with the midwifery model of care, you know that you can bring this philosophy. You can bring this concept. You can bring this trust and familiarity and comfort and confidence into any. birth situation, any setting with any care provider. And we're really excited to provide that through our first ever child birth education course, which is going to be launching in full sometime during this summer. So summer 2024 and just a few months from now, we are going to have an entire course available with all kinds of beautiful midwifery philosophy. midwifery model of care and the perspective of enjoying pregnancy, preparing for birth, embracing motherhood and postpartum, all from that framework of trust and confidence. And you can get on the wait list in the show notes as well. And that wait list is going to plug you into a whole lot of great information. You're going to get special emails and resources from us. And you're also going to be the first to know when this course launches. So as you're listening to this, if you have a due date that is later in 2024, and you want to grab this course over summertime, you got to get on that wait list so that it can be available to you. And we're really excited. So, I hope you guys have loved this quick listen. Kelly gets to do the next one, so you'll get a little heads up and get to hear from her also. These really actionable teaching episodes. We're hoping to do more of them and just provide some context for the things that you do with some of these ideas around midwifery care. All right, ladies, we will see you here again next week. Bye.