If you have a perfect, incident-free pregnancy and birth, Brookhaven will work well for you. Here's the thing: birth is hugely variable. You can be low risk, do everything "right," and prepare in every way for a perfect home or birth center birth, and still end up needing a transfer or cesarean. It's just the way birth goes. I know this from personal experience. If you experience a birth outside of Brookhaven's scope of natural birth center or home birth, they don't know how to handle it. You will be left feeling ashamed, ostracized, unsupported, confused... for this reason alone, I cannot recommend Brookhaven.
I'm going to summarize here because it's a review and I don't want to write a novel, but for anyone seeking more information, I will gladly forward you the full email I sent to Brookhaven over a week ago that has, unsurprisingly, gone ignored. Just shoot me your email address. It's not all bad, but it's not all good, either. It took over a year of healing and a lot of courage for me to type up that email and hit send, but they don't have the decency to respond to it or address any of the very valid concerns that I brought up in the email. Again, sadly, I expected this.
-Transfer/cesarean plans were not discussed and were actually discouraged because I was low risk and "probably wouldn't need them." I think the problem with this mindset is obvious given how variable birth is.
-From the moment I gave birth, I felt ashamed about how my birth played out. This is largely due to how things like cesareans are talked about at Brookhaven. I didn't have a beautiful crunchy flowery water birth, so my birth was something to be sad about.
-When I attempted to discuss parts of my birth with Misty, she would twist it into something bad or evil the hospital staff did. The hospital staff was great. I loved them. I had a great hospital experience. This attitude only led to confusion and more shame surrounding my birth experience.
-There is no support system for transfer/cesarean mothers. We are invisible. We are sent emails with Brookhaven's treasured client's birth stories in them, highlighting their water births/home births/whatever, but our births are not celebrated. We don't fit the business model, so we are hidden.
-Finally, going off of my previous point: if you're going to aim to support ALL women, empower ALL women, and give ALL women the opportunity to "Birth Without Fear," you have to prepare women for all types of birth and celebrate all types of births, not just the ones that fit your business model.
Brookhaven birth workers, please pick up a copy of Homebirth Cesarean and read it thoroughly. Again, I offer my own treasured personal copy for you to use if you'd like. read more