Where I gave birth and how I chose my OB

There a lot of decisions you need to make when you learn you are pregnant. Two of the important ones would be who will be helping you give birth and where you are giving birth. What drives this decision? For us, it was our financial ability and OB GYN affiliation.

When we got married, I told hubby that I wanted to give birth at The Medical City. It was new, modern and looked clean. To me the older hospitals kind of seem dirty. I said we will save up so that I can give birth there. Anyway, we had at least one and a half years to save up (when we got married we decided it will be just the two of us the first year and a half). But then, St. Luke' Global City opened and it was newer and looked really nice. I had second thoughts. I heard it was expensive. I did my research and the price was not far from what TMC would charge me so we found us an OB at St. Luke's.

Our relationship was promising at first but she was always late and there was always a long long wait (because she was late) and had a lot of patients (which seemed like a good thing since it seems a lot of people trusted her). She even had celebrity patients (who cut in line of course and that added to the wait time). We saw her for about 4 months before we decided to look for another doctor. The last straw was when she was out and had another doctor for a reliever. We went through the usual tests and then she went about checking the heartbeat of the baby. All was good. For our next check-up, we saw our original doctor and after the usual checks, she said that she'd check the heartbeat of the baby next time we see each other since we won't hear it yet. I didn't say that we already heard it previously, we just decided then that we would rather switch doctors.

That's when we met Dra. Conception Alfiler. We were at hubby's aunt's house one time and we were talking about our OB experience and she mentioned that she knew someone she could recommend. We decided to see her and we never looked back. She was great with her patients. She was really strict but motherly at the same time. You will never feel hurried. She is very thorough and she quickly checks the baby's stats via ultrasound every month. We saw Datu every month since his 5th month. This was one of the reasons why we did not opt to have a 4D ultrasound. We did not see a need for it because we saw him every month anyway and it was an added expense. She was this way with all her patients. So you never want to be the 8th patient she sees because you will most likely wait at least two hours for your turn. But she is very rarely late. You'd want to see her on a weekday and be the first or second patient in line.

Dra. Alfiler with my boy

Going back to the hospital choice, I still wanted to give birth at St. Luke's BGC. The thing is, our OB was only affiliated with TMC. We really liked her so TMC it was. Then, I found out more about the fact that it was a breastfeeding-friendly hospital and they encouraged rooming in soon as the baby was born. I felt it was the right decision.

About a month before giving birth, my mom, hubby and I checked the maternity ward of TMC. We checked their Lamaze rooms and birthing suite. If I remember correctly, both are on a first come, first-served basis. We were not able to check the labor room since it was a sterile environment and our visit was not scheduled. Our next step was to find out their room rates. If I remember correctly, the Lamaze room was about Php 8, 000 for the first 8 hours and you can opt to extend per hour for a fee. I can't remember exactly as we didn't get to use this as I had a C-section. They also had birthing packages that you can avail but that means staying in the maternity ward. I wanted to avail of the package but my husband was firm that he wanted me to stay in a larger room because he wants me to be comfortable. I was thinking I can buy more nice things with the money we can save like a new LED TV (lol).

We set aside a budget from our Christmas bonuses the previous year. We found out I was pregnant December so it was timely. There were some left over but we decided we didn't need a new television set and we can use it to add to baptism expenses.

How about you ladies, how did you choose where to give birth? For those on the way still, you may want to check out this list from Smartparenting. It lists maternity packages for 30 hospitals in Metro Manila.