I had always imagined going through pregnancy surrounded by family and friends. But when I found out I was pregnant, my husband, Alex, and I had just moved from San Francisco to Chicago. I knew almost no one.
I ended up finding a community where I least expected it: at a medical office.
CenteringPregnancy is group prenatal care offered by more than 600 practices across the country. Rather than the standard 15-minute individual visits in an exam room, women who are due around the same time and their partners meet as a group for two hours with a clinician, usually a midwife.
In other words, take one of the most intimate chapters in a couple’s life and have them experience it with a bunch of strangers.
I was wary. It seemed like a convenient way to cram more patients through the door and give them less attention. But when, at my first prenatal visit at Northwestern Medicine, midwife Carol Hirschfield told me the practice happened to be launching its first CenteringPregnancy group, I figured it might be a good way to meet people.
That turned out to be the best decision we made during the pregnancy.
To read the full story, written by Jenny Gold and produced by Kaiser Health News click HERE
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