I gave birth to my baby daughter at the GW Midwife Center with Whitney Pinger in early 2011 in a starkly different experience than I had two years back at Sibley when I gave birth to my son.
I live overseas in Lao, PDR, and came back to Washington D.C. (which is my permanent home) to give birth after Whitney and I stayed in touch over email and phone while I was living abroad.
I was able to have a natural vaginal birth (in fact, it was a VBAC) because of Whitney's care and support. She knew all the right things to say and do, beginning at the moment I started having contractions. At every stage, she was able to give me the right advice to help my contractions develop and to make my breathing and laboring and pushing as effective as possible. I trust her 100%. I also want to commend the nursing staff at GW Hospital whom I found extremely attentive and caring, with their priority always being the mother and baby.
In contrast, when I had my baby boy at Sibley, the doctors were extremely aggressive and put me on a 24-hour time clock to have my baby. They immediately started me on pitocin, even though they knew my strong desire was to have a natural birth. They poked and prodded me on the hour and after 26 hours, I had to end up getting a c-section. I felt the hospital was more interested in selling me things than taking care of me and my baby. Within 24 hours of giving birth, I was visited by professional photo company and asked if I wanted to buy nursing bras. In addition to this, the nurses pushed for my newborn to have formula, when I wanted to exclusively breastfeed. I am 100% convinced that if I had been with Whitney for my first birth, it would have also been a natural vaginal delivery. I know this because she would have given me very different advice than what the doctors at Sibley had given me.
I can only hope that the medical field will fully back and support Whitney and the midwifery field.
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