Amy Paulin, now a New York State assemblywoman pushing for more independence for midwives, was 27 when she became pregnant with her first child and started doctor-shopping in New York City.
One hospital mistakenly told her she had the Tay-Sachs gene, and one doctor counseled her against eating pizza, she recalled on Thursday. Irked, she ended up having her daughter, now 26, with a midwife in a Bronx hospital. Her next two children were born at her home in Scarsdale, also with the help of midwives.
Although her last two midwives were affiliated with a hospital in the Bronx, she said, it was a formality. “I knew, and the midwife knew, that if there was a problem with my birth, I wasn’t going to make it to the Bronx,” Ms. Paulin said. “I was going to go to White Plains Hospital,” five minutes away, she said.
So to Ms. Paulin, New York’s requirement that midwives have a “written practice agreement” with a doctor or hospital seems like an unnecessary hurdle.
Full story: Obstetricians Fight Midwife Bill – NYTimes.com