Special Beginnings is a free-standing birth center. A birth center is a place where healthy pregnant women receive care during pregnancy and deliver their babies with the help of Certified Nurse-Midwives. It is a place where you can have the kind of birth experience most women only dream about. The environment is warm and welcoming. In a homelike and peaceful setting, you can relax in labor, wear your own clothes, be with friends and family, eat, drink, walk or soak in the Jacuzzi.

• For the choice of place of birth (birth center or hospital)
• For the welcoming home-like environment
• For the low-tech, high touch approach to care
• For the freedom to labor and birth as desired
• For the much lower cesarean section rate
• To avoid unnecessary intervention
• To enjoy the comforts of a Jacuzzi in labor
• To share birth with children, family and friends
• To birth in a setting designed for healthy women
• For the care, teaching and nurturing midwives give
• To enable fathers/significant others to participate fully
• To give birth, not be delivered, in privacy, peace and dignity
• To avoid separation from the new baby

All healthy, low-risk women who have a normal pregnancy and labor are eligible to birth at the birth center. Women who have health problems or difficult pregnancies are better off having their babies in a hospital setting, where acute care is available, with Certified Nurse-Midwives. Risk screening of each pregnant woman is done throughout the pregnancy to make sure the birth center is a safe setting for you and your baby. If you become ineligible to birth at the birth center our Nurse-Midwives can still care for you and attend your birth.

YES! If you are a healthy, low risk woman having a normal pregnancy, the birth center can offer you a wonderful environment and the freedom to birth as you choose in a setting designed to help women and their families have save, healthy births. Highly trained Certified Nurse-Midwives, with labor assistants (registered nurses) will care for you. While a birth center is not a hospital and can't provide acute care, basic medical equipmentis available and used if needed. Mother and baby are carefully monitored in lavor and after birth for any sign of a problem. If problems develop, the mother and baby will be transferred to Anne Arundel Medical Center for care by our nurse-midwives or obstetricians and pediatricians.

Birth centers throughout the United States are covered by most insurers. We are working with the insurers in Maryland to provide full coverage at the birth center. There is a major advantage to insurers because the cost of a birth centerr stay is much less than the cost of a typical hospital stay. Also, because the chance of a mother having a cesarean birth is so much lowerk the added expense of surgery and a longer hospital stay is avoided by the insurer. We will assist you in making arrangements with your insurer to cover the cost of a birth center birth.

If you would like more information or decide Special Beginnings Birth & Women's Center is for you, call us at (410) 626-8982 to sign up for a "Motherhood Experience" or to schedule an appointment with one of the Certified Nurse-Midwives: David Paad, CNM, Joanne Hasman, CNM, Jessica Linzmeier, CNM, or Melissa Youssi, CNM.