Meeting the midwife tonight!

I'm pretty excited about our meeting tonight. Having said that though, I am concerned about a few things:

1. The birthing center is 45 minutes away from us. Without traffic. I don't know if any of you have seen this area during morning or evening rush hour, but it ain't pretty. And rush hour is really rush hours. like three of them at least. So there are six hours out of every day when driving to the birth center will be agonizing. I'm a little concerned about being in labor and stuck in a car for that long. (Plus, pregnancy bladder precludes long car rides without stops...) This is another strong case for home birth, but I'm just feeling like our house is a little too cluttered with stuff and kitties to make that an enjoyable experience. The good news is they will do all the prenatal visits at our house instead of us having to drive out there a million times.

2. There's a lot of Jesus on their website. While I have no ill will towards people who are religious, the fact is that we are not. I am wary of being preached to or being asked to pray during my birth experience. Most of the references to God were from people who have used the midwife group, which is understandable given that the majority of home births are in religious households (Amish, Mormon, Fundamentalist Christian, etc.), but they did have books like "Jesus Centered Birth" on their website. Maybe they just know their audience? I'll reserve judgement until after the meeting. If there's a prayer circle, though, I just don't think that's the right environment for us.

The other bit of good news about the birth center is that it's only three miles away from an awesome vegetarian restaurant. Yum! I guess it says a lot about me that I am planning the birth of our child relative to good vegetarian restaurants...