Best Kaiser Hospital to Have a "Natural" Birth Experience?

I have Kaiser however, if you really want a "natural" experience then you need to look outside of your coverage and go with a licensed midwife. I use Andaluz Waterbirth center. They have two locations open, one in Tualatin and one just down the hill from OHSU. They are trained to handle any emergency for Mama or Baby. They only thing they cannot do is give you pitocin or and epidural. In my opinion the water has been the best pain relief I have ever had. Take a moment to think about it. You come home from work and your back and neck are sore and hurting, you probably take a couple of aspirin and then either hop into a nice warm shower or a nice warm bath. It is the same thing for labor. The water makes a huge difference.

Kaiser will not cover the cost of the labor and delivery, but Andaluz offers great options in how to pay. They are so worth the money out of pocket. Unless you ask the midwives to they will not do a vaginal check until you are in labor. The other nice thing about Andaluz is that anytime you need to you can call your midwife and get reassurance or an emergency appointment. When you make your appointments they schedule them for an hour so you have time to talk about everything that is on your mind, even if it only fears that you are having.

In my case I am seeing a midwife within Kaiser for the blood work and ultrasound at 22 weeks and otherwise Andaluz is doing all of my prenatal care. I love Andaluz, this will be my thrid child with them and they are so worth the cost out of pocket.

Please remember that if a natural experience is what you really want then look at someone who does not regularly use interventions in any manner. You can also schedule a 'Get to know you' appointment. They will show you a waterbirth video, give you a walk through of the location you are at, and let you meet several of the midwives there. It gives you a good basis if it really is the right thing for you.

Here is their website: http://www.waterbirth.net/

Good luck. email me if you have any further questions.

S.

The Kaiser organization has midwives to choose from. The only thing about that is that you can meet with one throughout your pregnancy, but when you go to have your baby, they give you whoever is on call...so as long as you are okay with that. I had a midwife with my last child, and it was a great experience. I went to Sunnyside hospital in Clackamas....they have a really nice and new facility as well. Good Luck to you!

Hi S.,

Congratulations on your upcoming birth and a belated welcome to Portland! I am a birth doula, and for those clients who wish to have a low intervention birth Kaiser Sunnyside is hands down THE best hospital to birth in for the kind of birth I am reading that you want. Best of luck to you! If you consider hiring a doula, please feel free to look me up at www.PersonalTouchDoula.com

My best,
T. Nelson CD

S.,
I wanted the same type of birth for my two boys and I work for Kaiser Permanente. I enthusiastically recommend the Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center. I adored both my midwives I had for each birth (1 and 3 years ago), and they completely supported me with no-intervention births both times. They really helped me have the births I wanted. And all the nurses were so supportive and truly wonderful. Sunnyside has a new birth center (I didn't get to have mine there) with fantastic rooms for your birth - very homey. I truly can't say enough positive things about my experiences, and I wish the same for you. J.

I had my first baby at Kaiser Sunnyside about a month ago. Though I had many complications (2 wks overdue, horrible cold/flu, unable to sleep for days, failed induction, 3 day hospital stay before birth, post partum hemmorrage) I was eventually able to deliver vaginally. The midwives were very supportive of my wishes to not have a C-Section and beared with me for 3 days to make it happen. In the duration of my ordeal I met 6 midwives. All the midwives were pleasant, professional, and helped me in one way or another to work toward my goal (personality wise I really liked Sharen Blake and I felt like she helped me in many ways to attain my goal of actually going into labor and Vicki Cohen -my regular midwife- was very empathetic, attentive, and effective during my duration in labor and delivery). I firmly believe that had I been in a typical hospital environment, I would have been shipped off to surgery, so if you want a vaginal delivery I highly recommend Kaiser Sunnyside based on my own experience. By the end of it, had I needed a C-Section, I would have had the confidence that it was because it was truly needed.
I do highly recommend having a doula (my doula was Sarah Young www.sweetfeetdoula.com). I had her with me along with my husband, and I really think it is the reason I was able to deliver without pain medication despite being on Pitocin (or Vitamin P, as one of the midwives called it) and basically having a 5 hour long contraction that brought out my new baby girl. Yep, once labor did start. . .wow! But it was over quickly, so no reason for complaints here!

Hi S.,
We delivered at Kaiser Sunnyside. Perhaps it is the best for low interventions, but we did not have a good experience. The midwives are really no different than having a doctor deliver, from what I could tell. I was induced, and they used miso, which brought on such hard and uncontrollable contractions that my body was a wreck for weeks, longer than if I had a ceasarean. This could have been avoided if they'd used Pitocin, which can be controlled. The delivery nurses were obnoxious and harsh, not helpful, and not at all supportive. One was just plain mean, and bullied me and hurt me every time she checked my uterus after delivering, even though I complained. As far as our birth plan, they gave it a cursory look and a shrug as if to say whatever, and ignored it from then on. We had a doula that was not very good either.

I would recommend getting a good doula who will help you stay with your birth plan, and advise you well if you have to deviate from it (so often it happens). I would make sure that you are firm with the nurses, who will tend to not listen to you and do things you don't want. Even when you are in labor, which is especially when they don't listen to you, but you need to be listened to. Make sure you talk about it with your husband too, so that he is firm with them.

Two good things about Sunnyside is that it's not as busy as other centers, and the recovery side of it was nice and those nurses were good. Also even after all that, I wouldn't have wanted to do a home birth or not be without a doctor. Our son wouldn't breath at first, had inhaled and ingested a lot of muconium in the birth process, and had to have a doctor get him going.

Best wishes! Hope I didn't scare you, but I really wish I'd been better prepared (I tried to be, but you just don't know what you're getting into)>

In many ways I was so pleased with Sunnyside--good people, great physical facility--but with my own birthing experience, nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong. If I hadn't had to have Pitocin (and the pretty much automatic epidural that went with it, since the contractions were unnaturally hard and fast) I would have had a lot of the options I wanted--walking around, a tub, choice of positions, etc. Still, we both survived and even with the extended stay we met shift after shift of nice people who seemed to really know how to, and want to, take care of us.

We had Kaiser in 2004 when my daughter was born in July 2004. at that time sunnyside didn't have its new wing so we went with SW Washington Medical Center. They have a main floor birthing wing, midwives by request, you don't have to change rooms after the birth. I requested a midwife in my birth plan and got one.
I recommend you at least check it out.
K.

I had one baby at OHSU and the second at Kaiser Sunnyside. They were comparable natural births, in terms of mininimal interventions, full access to a water tank, supportive midwives and doulas present. At Kaiser, I was overdue, but refused Pitocin at the 8-day mark and went into spontaneous labor within hours. My birth plan was respected and I labored in my own time. The mid-wife was excellent under pressure, but said "if she had realized that my first baby had been kind of stuck at birth", that I might have gotten a C-section with the second bigger baby. So this seemed to me that she was not well-informed about my med. history. Also, doctors badly misdiagnosed a post-partum hemmorrhage 5 weeks after the birth, which really soured me after the very positive birth experience. Good luck!