Where to give birth

Summary

  • At home or hospital: you decide!
  • You can give birth in all hospitals in Amsterdam
  • Reservation of hospital is not necessary

If the pregnancy goes well, you can decide for yourself where you want to give birth, at home or in the hospital. During the pregnancy, but often during labor, women finally decide where they want to give birth.

Give birth: At home, birthcenter or in the hospital

As a healthy pregnant home is a safe place to give birth. If complications occur during the home birth, we refer you to the gynecologist in time. There will, therefore, be no unnecessary loss of time. Another possibility is birtcenter or hospital delivery (also called outpatient delivery). You then rent, as it were, a delivery room in the birthcenter or hospital, where we supervise the delivery. A maternity nurse will assist us at home and in a birthcenter. A nurse will assist us at the hospital. We will always come to your home first during the delivery and assess how it goes and how many centimeters you have.

When the birth has started and the contractions not descent, we ask where you want to give birth. If you want to give birth at home we will prepare everything at home and if you prefer an birthcenter of hospital delivery, we will go with you to the birthcenter / hospital of your preference. When we go exactly, dependence on the speed of delivery, how many stairs are in your home, the distance to the hospital and the time of day. But often that is around 5cm delatation about halfway through the access.

"I liked that I could choose where I wanted to give birth!"

You determine the place!

Because the delivery is best when you are relaxed, we advise you to give birth in the place where you can relax best, for some woman that is at home, for another one at the hospital. Do not be influenced too much by people around you, but go off on your own feelings. There are some situations when you can not give birth at home. For example, if the street is closed to traffic (such as during Queen's Day on the canals); if you do not live on the ground floor and there is no window on the street side of the house; if you lost a lot of blood during a previous delivery or if the placenta had to be removed by surgery. During a delivery, we always assess whether a home is safe and if that is not the case, the delivery will take place in an outpatient manner. Do you doubt whether you can give birth at home? Then ask us during the check.

Check your policy conditions to see if you have to pay a fee for a BirthCenter or hospital delivery!

Birth Centers

In Amsterdam are two Birthcenters

  1. BCW (Birth Center West), is located in the OLVG-west.
  2. BCZ (Birth Center South), is located outside the hospital.

We advise you to inquire in advance with your insurance company what exactly will be reimbursed. This can differ between BCW and BCZ! 

Hospitals

You can give birth to us in all Amsterdam hospitals. We work closely with the OLVG.