Questions to ask on hospital tour tomorrow?

[Tigerlily01]

I'm taking a tour of the local "natural friendly" hospital tomorrow evening, and I'm totally blanking on what questions to ask! I'm hoping for a hypno-birth (possibly a water birth) with the midwives.

I do know their c-section rate is 16% overall (which is pretty low for the US), and I think it is even lower with the midwives (11% maybe?), but I want to confirm that.

I also want to know how many water births they can accommodate at once, what the IV & monitoring policies are (or if it is specific to the provider rather than the hospital), confirm that I will be allowed to deliver in any position I want as long as there are no complications, I want to know the availability of things like birthing balls/stools, squat bars, etc or if I have to bring my own stuff...

What else? I had a mental list of about 9000 things I wanted to know, but now that I'm about to go on the tour, I'm totally blanking on all of them!

 

[sept2010]

You have plenty of time yet til the actual delivery so i would start making a list so you can ask them in future? Will that hospital be doing your ante natal care? Just ask as you go along... but i think you pretty.much covered the basics...
You can ask about whether they allow a physiological 3rd stage? Delayed cord clamping?

 

[Tigerlily01]

I guess I should also ask if I can eat/drink during labor and where LO would be transferred if anything happens, since it is a lower risk hospital.

That's true, I can ask in the future, but this is a good chance to ask about 'hospital' policies (vs. provider policies), since my provider's office is outside the hospital.

Good ideas, thanks!

Edit: oh, and the reason I'm asking, is I'm trying to decide between 2 different hospitals...and the midwives/OBs would be different depending on which hospital I choose, so if I want this hospital, I'll be switching to a different clinic for my maternity care.