This post is sponsored by Best Start Birth Center in San Diego, California.
If you are a new (or new again) mom looking for alternative birthing options for military spouses in the San Diego area, Best Start Birth Center may be the birth experience you are looking for. Best Start Birth Center offers natural birthing options for military spouses and civilians to include water births and births with a home-like experience. Certified midwives are available for every step of your pregnancy and birthing experience. Read more about what Best Start Birth Center has to offer:
Best Start Birth Center: Birthing Options for Military Spouses in San Diego
Best Start Birth Center is located in San Diego, California and offers birthing options for military spouses on both Tricare Prime and Tricare Select. They specialize in natural births with certified midwives as well as prenatal and postnatal care including lactation consultants and other postpartum needs.
Best Start Birth Center offers personalized, family-centered Well Woman, Prenatal, Birth, and Postpartum care from midwives who work together with you, to meet your needs.
Who is a Candidate? Healthy women seeking personalized care, including a team of highly qualified professionals from midwifery, nursing, obstetrics, nutrition, social work, childbirth education, and postpartum support.
Pregnant women receive a private room for giving birth where you can:
- Make yourself comfortable.
- Wear your own clothing.
- Eat when you feel hungry.
- Soak in a tub or have a water birth!
- Best Start welcomes your children, your parents, and your friends so you can decide who will be with you or near you as you give birth.
- Best Start gives you continuing support; holistic pain management; and information on infant care, breastfeeding, parenting, and family planning.
- Laboratory, ultrasounds, and other diagnostic testing.
- Consultation with physicians as necessary.
- Transfer to a hospital if the need should arise.
Our Story
Before there was “Best Start” there was “Midwife Services” (started in 1981), which was a midwifery practice that was first conceived by four CNMs who formed a group practice and were invited by the administration department of a large San Diego hospital to admit clients to labor and delivery. The hospital administration department was confident that the community would be pleased and supportive to have the option for CNMs to attend their births at the hospital. They happily anticipated the new and expanded use of the labor and delivery unit.
In the 1980s technology had begun introducing new obstetric interventions —continuous electronic fetal monitoring, intrauterine pressure catheters, fetal scalp blood oxygen sampling, and the epidural. As midwives, we were concerned with the fascination of these interventions as their use was being encouraged for all moms, and creating distrust for natural, normal, physiologic childbirth. The obstetricians and anesthesiologists on the labor and delivery unit saw no value in sharing their space with our midwifery practice as our practice resisted the use of new technology for normal pregnancies. Eventually we were pressured to leave.
When this happened, our clientele… our moms… said that rather than lose their midwives they would have their babies at home. Those that lived too far away for a home birth wanted to come to our office for their births. At this juncture, two of our group opted to leave and Janice Aline Hutsell, CNM, and Roberta Frank, CNM, continued to operate Midwife Services, attending births in homes and in the little office that was soon outgrown.
1983 to 1989 found us in a cute little house across from Balboa Park (1,800 SF), one birth room and a room for prenatal visits that often doubled as a second birth room. When life changes took Janice away to Texas, Midwife Services was dissolved and Best Start Birth Center was born, (Incorporated in 1989), under the leadership of Roberta. By 1989 we were as busy as time and space would allow. Needing more space, Best Start Birth Center moved to a larger location at 3343 4th Avenue, 92013. Our 4th street location has seen well over 5,000 babies come into the world over a period nearly 3 decades. Due to a need for additional parking, Best Start relocated in January 2018 to our current single story Spanish style facility located at 3630 Enterprise Street, 92110. We hope to call this home to birthing women and their families for future decades to come.
Best Start Birth Center has matured from a small staff of 3 (2 CNMs and a receptionist) to our current practice consisting of midwives, birth assistants, front and back office staff, billing, and administration. From peg board accounting to computers, paper charts to electronic health records, fee for service to Managed Care to the Affordable Care Act. A common thread throughout all these years which has remained the same is the quality and success of the midwifery model to produce high quality outcomes.
Best Start is the first Nationally Accredited and licensed birth center in the State of California. Best Start has received contracts and agreements with Medi-Cal, TriCare, and many private insurance companies. We have witnessed normal, natural childbirth being “revalued” as consumers and payers alike realize the importance of physiologic birth. Best Start Birth Center has established a record of outcomes that is exemplary. Our moms and their babies do exceptionally well. Our cesarean section rate is approximately 1/10th of the hospital rate. Virtually 100% of our babies are breast-fed for extended time periods.
Best Start is proud to be helping preserve knowledge of normal birth in a medical culture that had devalued this knowledge. If it weren’t for midwives working in homes and birth centers, the skills and knowledge and ability to support normal birth would no longer exist here. And we are honored to have a place for women who want normal, natural birth. So…welcome to Best Start Birth Center. We are pleased to offer you a place where you can bring your loved ones to witness and welcome the birth of your new baby, born your way…naturally.
If you are interested in learning more about a birthing experience with Best Start, contact them below:
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WANT TO READ MORE?
Check out this article on Tricare and Birth Centers: Your Questions Answered
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