and it is decided

The visit to the birth center called Agoola, located in Beit Lechem Haglilit (aka "Bethlehem of Galilee"), took two hours of bus-riding from Haifa to the destination, with three bus transfers. The last bus was not run by Egged (the Israeli public bus system), but a private charter company. Declan got car-sick midway there, and vomited a little bit on himself and Daniel. As Declan inherited this trait from me, I also felt pretty ill by the end of our travels and really zoned out during and after the (also) two-hour-long bus ride home.

However, it was all worth it.

Beit Lechem Haglilit is a moshav, that is, a community farm with individually-owned family units. The birth center, Agoola, is actually just the basement of my midwife's house converted into a homey apartment-looking place, equipped with all the thing one needs for birthing and postpartum tests. There's a room for dry births and overnight stay, and a huge luxurious cocoon-esque jacuzzi tub with a headrest in the bathroom for those interested in water births. Plus a kitchenette.  I was all set to do a home birth at my actual home in Haifa just so I could be spared the commute up north, but one look at that tub and I'm pretty much decided on renting a car to Beit Lechem Haglilit for the birthing. 

I learned a lot from my midwife about the antepartum, birthing, and postpartum care and medical system here in Israel. For example, new moms who are Israeli citizens receive a stipend from the government for giving birth, and their birthing is free no matter where they give birth. On top of that, the government pays the hospital in which the woman gave birth 11,000 shekels. This is also why, as non-Israeli citizens, we must pay 11,000 shekels right off the bat in order to give birth at any hospitals here, not counting other actual birthing-related costs. Thanks, Israel, for making my decision to not birth in a hospital that much easier. (Although, for our current arrangement, should complications arise and I have to be transferred to the closest hospital, which is in Nazareth, I'd need to pay my midwife her fee of 5000 shekels as well as the typical hospital bill.)

The things left to do are to find out what my health insurance really is and also a doula. If it's Clalit Platinum, we might be able to get some subsidy for hiring a midwife and/or a doula.  Daniel wasn't sure, after our pleasant experience at Agoola, whether we still in fact need a doula. Our midwife said that most women who opt for home births usually don't feel they need one, but I plan to interview some anyway because of the Declan factor. Last time I gave birth, there were my doula, midwife, mom, Jess, *and* Daniel as part of my team at the hospital. This time, it would just be my midwife and Daniel since my mom--if she actually makes it here to Israel for the birth--would need to help watch Declan back at home. And if my labor goes long, I'd feel a lot better if my midwife still has someone to help her care for me while Daniel drives back to Haifa to take care of Declan. We have a really high-maintenance son who has never went to sleep for a nap (except once, with Judy) or bedtime without either his dad or me being there, and even then it's always been something of a fight unless he was really exhausted.  So that's something I still worry about for my daughter's birthing--how my son's going to handle the strange disruption of our absence.

But that is a small potato compared to what I had been worrying about, which I don't have to worry about anymore. Thank God.