Thank you!
I am looking for an English Speaking midwife to follow me through pregnancy and birth. Ideally, it would be someone who works associated with a hospital where I could give birth. I would really like the same person who is with me in my prenatal care to also be with me for birth.
That's difficult to achieve - you can give birth at any time and that particular midwife may be at home with their family, on holiday, or involved with another birth.
Certainly don't plan for that.
But for before - I'm sure that's possible.
Good luck!
That must be a very early retirement
We got a list through our gyneacologist of midwives in our district and it also contained the languages they spoke.
Thanks! I will check with my doctor about that :-)
It is actually pretty common that midwifes will be oncall (for those who do births).
Most of them work only on home births though, which isn't my favorite choice. Some of them though are authorized to work at certain hospitals, and if you pay an additional fee they would then be oncall for your birth, and go with you to the hospital, and stay with you during labor.
Well, you seem to know all about it so i guess it shouldn't be too difficult to find an English speaking person.
Thanks for being so helpful.
https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/triemli...ghebammen.html
These are independent midwives who cooperate with the City Hospital called Triemli.
Two of them are shown as speaking English.
You can have literally anything you want for an additional fee.
I know someone that may be able to help you. Let me confirm that they want to be considered as English speaking though.
Thank you very much!
Well it turns out my contact is only interested in German speakers due to the potential circumstances. However, this link was offered which you may find useful.
https://www.hebammensuche.ch/sektion...-schaffhausen/
You can search by hospital and language. Hope that helps.
You could always try a first aid training company I know called healthfirst.ch. They have an English midwife and other English nurses working for them, some are in the Geneva area but others are not too far away from you. Plus they're probably well connected and know others in the same field. Very friendly too and run pre-natal courses.
Responding to this thread to get closure and also share information on what I learned.
It seems most hospitals have a list of their "beleghebammen", who are midwifes that can be hired to be oncall for you. This fee is usually somewhere in the 1000 CHF ballpark out of pocket.
Some of the hospital pages even inform which languages their "beleghebammen" midwifes speak, so you can be comfortable you're picking someone you have a common language with. You have to contact the midwife yourself, and check if they have availability to be oncall for you. If so, then they will schedule an appointment. These women are very busy because there are just two or three of those per hospital. As an example, Triemli has three (not all three are English speaking).
I ended up picking a midwife who works in Triemli, because this hospital is very close to my home.
It seems each midwife works in a different way with the pregnancies they are following: some do checks in between the doctor checks from week 16, and others meet you at the start (around week 15) and then you'll meet them again every two weeks from week 30 (then you no longer need to see your doctor).
Once you go into labour, you call them, they will meet you at the hospital and lead your birth experience with you. Mine asked to inform the hospital at my arrival that my birth would be midwife led. As they are part of hospital staff, they will be the ones taking care of you.
Personally, the idea of having someone familiar with me in the hospital for labour is very important, so I am opting to pay this extra and have the peace of mind.