If an OB is employed by a hospital they generally only admit at one hospital, yes. But free standing clinics it may be different- ex my OB I’ll go to for this pregnancy has admitting privileges at 2 different hospitals standard, two different systems, and can follow you for checks if you’re moved to the higher acuity facility within the system. So, it depends.
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I don’t think Rose is Catholic? If I had a spontaneous miracle I might get on the Boy’s insurance to give myself more options. You just don’t know what you’ll run into there! My sister has worked in Catholic hospitals for many years and has never seen anything untoward and says they have better nursing staffs… But it only takes once!
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Exactly, I don’t want to be the once! She might not see the bad behavior too, I’ve seen tons of horror stories from two mom families when giving birth at all kinds of hospitals.
I was talking to my mom about it and she suggested Rose too, which was initially Jewish. Could be a good way to go
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For snacks/anything you want to do that your hospital doesn’t love… a doula should be great for this, also asking forgiveness not permission.
I ate before going to the hospital both times and then I was fine until ravenous after my golden hour. It is definitely a different sensation for me than other exertion. Jels, bars and blocks are a great idea. Unlikely to cause problems, and easy to sneak if doctors are mean. Milkshakes and smoothies are great to have someone fetch
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My only experience was 13-16 years ago and all 3 of ours were hospital deliveries. For our first, that may have saved Moonfish’s life as she was septic on arrival and was immediately admitted to the NICU, and her mom also needed IV antibiotics. After that experience we didn’t consider other options for our other kids just in case.
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Update on my process! I wanted to figure out a good enough option right away, so I’m going with the hospital a few people have mentioned and found their list of OBs who deliver there. Wife is going through the list of OBs and figuring out who takes our insurance, seeing if they have openings, etc. Once we have that we’ll filter by reviews.
Most of the offices are in central Denver, so not super close, but maximizes our chances of practices with other gay people. Worth it to me
If/when things are farther along, we’ll learn more about our options and can switch if we want, but at least now we’ll have an option and hopefully won’t be scrambling. Progress!
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Yay! I hope they have better feng shui than the Catholic hospitals where I had the cuckoo 
. Seriously, the discomfort of the room is part of why I pushed so hard to go home after 2 nights post-section.
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I’ve been trying to figure out which hospital in my city is “best” and I literally can’t find any useful comparative evaluations or even like c section rates. I’m in Colorado Springs, can anyone help? 
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I’m still digging, but it seems like you could do a data request here. And it at least has overall births per hospital.
https://cha.com/center-for-health-information-and-data-analytics/data-reports/
There’s also a cost related database I found? Data Dive: Cost of Labor and Delivery in Colorado - CIVHC.org
I’ll keep poking but in case I don’t get back to it I figured I’d share what I’d found so far. My data was county and state health authorities reports.
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So this birth photographer has the hospitals listed with little descriptions, seems like Memorial North has the most mother and baby unit beds- Kate Carlton Photography
With specific facility names you might be able to get further with data.
From there, I’m pulling direct about each facility data where I can but its harder to validate piece meal stuff like this-
https://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/area/co/memorial-hospital-6840190/maternity
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Ah found some consumer reports stuff that at least does above or below average c section rates. (Although patient selection def can’t be overlooked on this)
Here’s some of CO
ETA pulled from 2014 though, boo
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Thank you so much! This is leagues farther than I’ve gotten.
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I’ve never been so happy to have one hospital in a 60 mile radius. Made all that stuff a lot simpler. Alongside the fact that no one does just OB, so I went with the family practice doctor I was seeing for primary care.
So if that experience can be at all helpful, sometimes there’s no way to choose “the best”, sometimes there isn’t any “best”, and usually that’s okay anyway.
I also, after careful selection years before pregnancy, didn’t even deliver with the doctor I chose because it was early COVID and the four FP-OBs at the clinic were doing week-long shifts at the hospital. I met the doctor who actually delivered my daughter two days before I went into labor, and in the end it was a great experience and now he is her primary care provider.
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The only one on the 2014 list that is “Colorado Springs” is all our Memorial hospitals lumped into one and it’s evaluated as basically fine so I guess that’s where I’m going lol.
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Honestly, that’s going to be your best bet in most cities- where the most births are. There are some glaring exceptions, but it’s super hard to tease it all out anyway- ex one of the “worst” hospitals in my area has incredibly high c-section rates because they have an incredibly high rate of substance use mothers and specialize in neonatal detox stuff. I’m not sure I would know that if I hadn’t done my OB rotation there, it’s not like it’s publicized. So that gets down to patient population and not docs. Add to that, some health systems docs will rotate faculties, so within a health network you don’t always get big variations anyway that are feasible to tease out.
It’s all a hot mess lol. If you have something you really want, like gas and air or a tub, sometimes you can get further researching features available like that.
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Yep! We are in a totally different system and this seems like a lot to go through
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