A.S.
I, like you, wanted as few interventions as possible. My husband and I studied the Bradley method and were confident in our abilities.
I had a midwife at Sherman who was fantastic. Unfortunately, she has since semi retired and moved to Texas. Her name was Mary Traub. She does have a succesor, who I have seen a few times for regular Gyn visits who seems very nice, her name is Linda Meilahn. They are both with Fox Valley Women's Healthcare http://www.fvwh.com/. I had my son at Sherman, but unfortunately, I did have to have some interventions as he wanted to come at 29 weeks. Thus I was in the hospital for over a week, and then on meds and bedrest. I did end up delivering full term, but it wasn't all as I had hoped. Because I was Strep B positive, I had to have the antibiotics so I had to be hooked up to an IV, therefore I couldn't move around alot. I was induced because of the fact that I was already so far progressed and I was Strep B positive, plus I live in Crystal Lake, so there was a good chance that he would have come before they had the chance to give me the antibiotics. I knew it was a small chance of him being infected with it, but I wanted to be safe, rather than sorry.
My wishes were followed very well, other than that. I was able to nurse my son immediately. He was bathed in room and we were allowed time to bond with him before he was taken for any testing. I declined any pain meds up front, and other than them asking one time if I was sure, no one pushed it. I requested no episitomy and didn't have one done, but he came so fast that I ended up having a major tear anyway.
He ended up in the NICU because he couldn't maintain his blood sugar, which was hard because the NICU was on another floor. So every time he was hungry I had to get a nurse to come and wheel me down to him, and half the time he wouldn't eat. The LC there could have been alot better. They would come to my room and tell me things I already knew, but were never around to help me when I was actually trying to feed him.
My old midwife also reccommended to me Midwest Midwifery, who I believe practices out of St. Alexius. The head midwife there went to school with my old midwife. http://www.midwestmidwifery.com/
If you are looking to go completely natural with no hospital at all, there is a local clinic, Homefirst, that does home births. I would love to do this if I knew there would be no complications, but my next child I will probably have to have a cerclage cause it seems my body doesn't want to hold the baby in that long. http://www.homefirst.com/
Good luck to you, and Congratulations! Feel free to email me if you want any further info.