Best Place to Deliver a Baby in Portland, OR?

I had both my sons at St. V's. Had a great experience and great doctors! Love it I would not go anywhere else.

If you are a healthy woman with a normal, low risk pregnancy, then the safest place for birth for both you and your baby is your own home. Birth is safe. Interference is risky.
I would recommend interviewing more than one home birth midwife and finding one that "clicks" with you. The kind of care and attention that a woman receives from the right midwife is unparalleled.
Someone recommended watching The Business of Being Born, that is an excellent film along with Orgasmic Birth and the book with the same name. The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth and Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering are also excellent book choices. If you are on Facebook, check out Birth Without Fear's page. Lots of great info and support on there!
Don't let fear of the unknown keep you from making the choice to birth at home. There's lots of great information and support out there and home birth has proven itself over and over to be the safe choice for the majority of mother's and babies.
Blessings!

I was going to say the exact same thing as Momof3girls! LOL Doesn't matter where you live, the best place to deliver a baby is at home. :) Of course, assuming everything is healthy and no major complications. And, the Henci Goer book should be required reading for every pregnant woman! I didn't read it until my 6th pregnancy, and I learned so much! Congrats!

The best place to have your baby is a birth center or at your own home. As long as you are healthy and your baby is healthy research has proven that it is safer to deliver at home than the hospital. Check out the movie The Business of Being Born and read this book by Henci Goer; The Thinking Woman's Guide to Better Birth.

In response to Jennifer W. the majority of women that give birth at home are attended by a professional midwife. A midwife is an EXPERT in normal childbirth. When surprises arise at home the midwife knows how to handle them. Mortality rates at home are lower than they are in the hospital for low risk women. This is a proven fact. And you saying women that give birth at home are nutty is just downright disrespectful.

St Vincents is WONDERFUL... You should see Dr. Krishna at nw womens clinic, she delivered both my babies :)

I would say of the 3 choices -- go with Emanuel...
But as mentioned in other posts, if possible do not do a hospital birth, do a home birth with a midwife. I have done all routes, a hospital birth, home birth and an emergency c section -- of all three the home birth was 5000% better in all ways. Besides, hospitals are one of the most filthy germ invested places, so much easier for you and your baby to pick up some nasty germ/disease. Also hospitals are for the most part cold, uncaring, impersonal. Unless the baby or you are in some emergency, do it at home - people for thousands of years did it that way, less stressful, healthier environment - and things done Your way, not dictated by some nurse.

E.,
It really depends on what you're looking for! These hospitals all have a little bit of a different feel, different options and different providers. If you're interested in cesarean rates, this blog has a run down of c-section rates by hospital http://www.nurturedmoms.com/portland-doula-cesarean-rates/
And, of course, there is always the option to give birth at home or in a birth center. It's definitely not nutty and, really, we should all remember to keep this forum respectful. I had my two babies at home and, though we had some minor complications, my midwife helped us handle them beautifully. Unfortunately, there are always risks, no matter where you give birth. With a home birth, you run the small risk that something will happen suddenly that could be handled more quickly if you were in a hospital, but in a hospital you run the risk of being injured by medication errors, hospital-acquired infections or interventions that aren't truly necessary. We all make the decisions we think are best, based on the information that we have. So! Gather tons of information!
As a doula, I've attended births at Providence Portland, Kaiser Sunnyside, Good Samaritan, Legacy Emanuel and St. Vincent and I have no complaints about any of them. Definitely, if you know what you want and know how to advocate for yourself, you can have a great birth anywhere.

I delivered my second and will deliver my 3rd this summer at St. Vincent's. It was great! We have Kaiser insurance so I can't speak about the doctors, but the nurses were fantastic and I felt like I had much better monitoring than with my first at a different hospital. The delivery rooms are very nice but the postpartum rooms are not great. Ours was tiny. But overall it was far better than my first delivery experience and I liked knowing that there was a NICU there just in case.

Have you considered a birth center? There is Andaluz birthcenter. It's where I had my first baby. They have two locations. Their Tualatin location is right across the street from Meridian Park. They are GORGEOUS places (check out their rooms): http://www.waterbirth.net

As for hospitals, all your listed ones are good. St V's and Emanuel are level 3 hospitals (would be able to handle more emergency type situations than lower levels). Meridian Park is a level 2, or was when we lived there. That means there is a possibility baby could be transferred to a more capable NICU at a different hospital, if something went wrong. for me, if I'm going to a hospital, I like to know that the odds are quite low that the baby would be transferred somewhere away from me.

Have you looked into OHSU?

Good luck!

E., I had both of my babies at St. V's and absolutely loved it. The nurses there (deliver and post-partum) were amazing and incredibly kind. I was also very very grateful that St. V's has an NICU. Because I had preeclampsia, my first was delivered a month early and was in the NICU for about 10 days. My second baby was (and still is) a wonderfully big, healthy girl. We had a wonderful delivery without any problems. However, in the middle of her first night she coughed up thick mucus, choked on it, and stopped breathing. I was so tired that I barely realized it, but I felt like something wasn't right, so I called my nurse, who was there right away. I was so grateful to be there then because we no sooner pulled the emergency cord than a team of wonderful, expert nurses and a doctor were there to resuscitate her. They were incredibly fast and coordinated, and I wish a world of blessings for them. My daughter stayed in the NICU and had one more instance of choking and stopping breathing, which they were able to care for immediately. And then nothing. The problem just disappeared. Apparently some babies just have problems with thick mucus. It isn't that common, but it happens. And I am so so so incredibly grateful that my beautiful baby is still with us because we had people around us who knew how to handle that emergency and a NICU with a pediatrician who specialized in these situations and brilliant nurses to care for us. So I love St. V's.