Tampa Bay Midwifery Care with Barefoot Birth FAQs! | Tampa Midwife

Folks have all sorts of great questions for us and we want to answer them! If you don’t find the answers you are looking for here, reach out!

+What areas do you serve for home birth?
Currently our office is located at 2915 North Boulevard Tampa and offer home birth services within ONE HOUR of this location. This includes Hillsborough, Pinellas, and some parts of Manatee, Polk, and Pasco counties

+I really want to have a home birth but my partner/spouse/family objects.
Midwifery care and home birth in particular may seem foreign to many Americans. We recommend watching documentaries like The Business of Being Born, Why Not Home, or Pregnant in America with your people. These help to generate great questions you can ask potential care providers and help to clarify what home birth and midwifery care in the US actually looks like. We also love this blog about spousal objection from our wonderful colleague Evelyn Ojeda-Fox. We love answering the hard questions for folks too so don’t hesitate to reach out to set up a free, no obligation consultation.

+Who is a good candidate for home birth?
Anyone in good health, experiencing a normal and low-risk pregnancy is a good candidate for home delivery. Our midwives follow Florida Law and Rule in regards to risk assessment which means that we can care for folks with certain considerations with collaboration. If you have questions about whether or not you’d be a candidate just reach out!

+Where do visits with your practice take place?
We offer primarily office visits with two standard home visits for our home birthing clients.

+How many midwives are in your practice? How does it work seeing them?
Our practice currently includes 2 Florida Licensed Midwives and one Certified Nurse Midwife. Clients rotate through seeing each midwife and if planning a home delivery one midwife and assistant attend the birth based on our call schedule. This collaborative model allows for fantastic continuity of care and we rarely need to use a back up midwife unlike single-midwife home birth practices.

+Can I have care with you and deliver in a hospital?
Yes! We love providing all of the benefits of traditional home birth midwifery care to folks who would prefer or need to have a hospital delivery. We have lots of options for care with our practice which are outlined here.

+Does your care include childbirth education?
Yes! We require our first time clients to attend a 4 week childbirth ed series specifically designed for clients planning unmedicated births. This is included in our care for most clients.

+If I have had a previous cesarean can I still have a homebirth?
The short answer is YES! The long answer is there are a lot of considerations to planning a Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC.) While for some folks a VBAC at home is the right choice there may be health considerations for other folks that makes a hospital VBAC a better choice. Either way we can support you in either setting! We’d love to answer your questions about VBAC options and help set you up for your best birth no matter where it needs to occur!

+Birth at home kind of worries me. Do you have a birth center instead?
In the state of Florida, birth center and home birth is almost exactly the same. The only difference is essentially who drives to whom. There is nothing a birth center offers that we do not at home aside from occasionally nitrous which we do not support the use of in a community birth setting at this time based on current literature. As midwives we have all worked in birth center settings and strongly believe that birth belongs at home whenever possible.
If you’re curious about birth center vs home birth read this blog! If you have special circumstances that would make a birth center a better choice for you we’d be happy to refer you to some of our local practices that offer this option.

+Do you take insurance?
The short answer to this question is no. The long answer and the what behind the why can be found here. We do have a fantastic 3rd party biller that clients can utilize to bill their private insurance for reimbursement of our services. ALL private insurance that is not self funded is required to cover the services of Licensed Midwives in the state of Florida. Even with what many consider ‘good’ insurance coverage we have found that most people get surprise bills after choosing hospital birth with in network providers because they are lead to believe everything is ‘covered.’ We skip the middle men and charge a direct and affordable fee. We do gladly accept HSA, FSA, and health share co-ops. We also offer 3rd party long term financing to make care accessible to families!

+Do you take Medicaid?
Yes! We are currently contracted with Sunshine and Simply Medicaid managed health care plans. Medicaid does cover our prenatal-care-only option fully. We are no longer able to accept Medicaid for home birth services. If you want to know more about Florida Medicaid and the issues we face by accepting it as well as the details about their coverage with our practice please read this blog.

+Do you accept barter for payment?
Yes! Have something you’d love to barter? Let’s chat! We may be able to put you or your services to good work!