Midwife = home birth supporter right?

Unfortunately, not always.

Let's dig deeper.

B.R.A.I.N. or B.R.A.N. are two commonly used acronyms that you may come across in your pregnancy journey to help you make informed decisions in birth.

B - benefits
R - risks
A - alternatives
I - intuition 
N - nothing

or 

B - benefits
R - risks
A - alternatives
N - nothing 
(p.s. why did someone decide removing intuition was a good idea?!)

While these are great starting questions and a wonderful guide when discussing things with your care provider, I encourage you to go beyond that and ask yourself some questions too.

When I was a baby doula, I put all my focus of getting my clients informed of everything that could come their way. I did this because of my own personal experience. As a first time parent, I did the common "go with the flow" technique which really for me meant putting my hands up and releasing responsibility over the experience and the outcome of my birth. With the second baby, I became so hyper focused on flipping that, and getting super informed about everything. I remember reading the line "If you don't know your options, you don't have any" from Diana Korte and Roberta Scaer and it really struck me. Because of that, I thought that I had to spend all my time getting to know everything so that I always had options.