Last night, Dan and I attended a transfer class at the Kaiser Walnut Creek Medical Center. We’ve been going to Kaiser Richmond for our regular prenatal checkups throughout the pregnancy, but since the Richmond clinic does not have an actual labor & delivery department, we have to go to either the Oakland or Walnut Creek hospital when it comes time to deliver the baby. Although the Oakland hospital is closer to us, we chose to birth at Walnut Creek because of its successful midwifery program, private facilities, low C-section rates, and their reputation for being supportive of natural births — which is something that is important to us, as we mentioned previously. In order to birth at either hospital, you need to attend a transfer class at which you sit in on an orientation with information about the facilities and the staff, get any questions answered, fill out paperwork so that its in the hospital’s database for when you arrive, and get a tour of the hospital.
The drive to Walnut Creek is roughly half an hour away (40 – 45 minutes in traffic), and so it’s not really around the corner for us, but we were impressed with how clean and well-maintained the hospital was. When we arrived at the transfer class, there were about fifteen other couples there, with due dates ranging from late March to early June. I don’t think I’ve ever been around so many other pregnant women before, so it was kind of fun to see. (When we were initially wandering around trying to figure out where the class was being held, someone pointed us in the direction of a herd of big-bellied women and told us to “Follow the bellies.”)
At the introductory information session, one of the midwives talked to us about the labor and delivery department and the midwifery program at Kaiser Walnut Creek. The hospital has nineteen midwives, at least two of whom are always on duty, accompanied by several nurses that will monitor and care for you during triage, labor, delivery, and postpartum recovery. The midwives work and communicate closely with the doctors who are on duty, in case any of them need to be brought in for emergency operations such as vacuum or forceps extraction or a C-section in case a complication arises. One of the laboring rooms has a labor tub (although it is not used for birthing), and the midwives are very supportive of alternative pain relief measures (other than drugs and epidurals), intermittent fetal monitoring, and allowing you to move around and be in different positions during labor. Kaiser Walnut Creek boasts one of the lowest C-section rates in the state of California, at around 15% (compared to the national average of over 33%).
The midwife had the couples in the room each share their name, due date, and why they were interested in Kaiser Walnut Creek, and you could really see that several of the couples were there because of their desire to have natural/unmedicated births or VBACs, and because of the great midwifery program that Walnut Creek has. From what I gleaned at the orientation, the midwives at Walnut Creek act more like OB/GYNs in the sense that they handle multiple patients at once and check up on you intermittently (rather than being one-on-one with you the whole time) and run from room to room catching babies while the LDNs handle you during labor. Considering that Walnut Creek delivers 4,000 babies a year, and an average of ten babies a day, you can’t really expect to have a midwife be one-on-one with you during labor and that is something we’ll have to accept since we’ll be delivering at a hospital instead of a birthing center. Still, we’re grateful that we have such a progressive medical center nearby that will be supportive of our birth plan.
After the information session, there was an extensive Q&A during which the midwife was very helpful and thorough in answering the plethora of questions that everyone had for her. After turning in our paperwork, we went on a group tour of the hospital, where we got to see the laboring rooms, birthing rooms, and postpartum recovery rooms. We, along with a lot of the other couples, were surprised at how spacious and nice the birthing rooms were. They come furnished with (besides the birthing bed) chairs that fold out into beds for partners and TVs and didn’t really feel like the sterile, cold hospital rooms that we were imagining at all. It’s nice that mothers can be in rooms that are so cushy and private for the first hour or so that they’ll spend with their babies after delivery, before getting moved to the more cramped postpartum recovery rooms (which still didn’t seem so bad).
The security at the hospital is of course excellent, and the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit, for babies who are high-risk or suffer from complications) is one of the best in the Bay Area. Hopefully our baby will be born healthy and strong so she will never have to see the NICU, but it’s great that it’s there just in case!
Overall, we were very impressed with both the facilities and staff at Kaiser Walnut Creek, and the transfer class and hospital tour reaffirmed our decision that it is where we want to deliver our baby. Fortunately, I can continue my regular prenatal checkups at my home clinic in Richmond instead of going all the way to Walnut Creek, so I suppose the next time we’ll be at Walnut Creek will be when it comes time to deliver. We’re just counting down the days now — I’m nearly 35 weeks, with about 35 days to go, give or take a few!