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DH and I are in the midst of this process right now, actually. I met with a group of midwives around 7w and will meet with them again around 9 or 10w for a second official meeting with my husband.

I used this document as the basis for my questions: http://www.mothersownbirth.com/questions%20for%20midwives.pdf

I've known for a long time that I wanted to give birth at home, and that midwife care would be the perfect complement to that. Major factors for my choice were having a comfortable/safe setting to give birth (as my mental and physical comfort will directly affect the birth), and the state of my physical/mental health (very good...lots of interventions would just make them worse).

I liked that the midwives focused on good nutrition, exercise, and preparedness as the best ways to prevent complications in birth. I will get continuous one-on-one care with them, which I would not get with a doctor. I'll know every single person at the birth. They will offer emotional support, and will also provide all of the expected medical support. With a good midwife, I'm getting excellent whole care and am not getting shuffled through a (frequently inflexible) system.

In my experience, midwives also expect you to be well-informed, and will encourage you to do your own research on all aspects of birth. Come to the meeting prepared!

I chose to switch to a midwife practice after the OB practice I had been going to told me they would not be supportive of a natural birth ("well you can try but if it goes over 6 hours we do generally add pitocin"). Had a great experience and an unmedicated birth.

My women's care practice has GYNs, OBs, and Midwives. When I called to let them know that I'd gotten a positive pregnancy test, they set me up with a midwife to confirm and at that appt I was given the option to stay with the midwife group or transfer to the OB group. We decided that because I was a low-risk pregnancy and wanted an unmedicated birth, I'd stay with the midwives. I loved my experience with them throughout pregnancy because it was very relaxed and I never felt rushed at appts. I didn't have the option for a birth center - they only did hospital deliveries. That ended up to be an amazing thing because I had an emergency c-section... my girl's head got stuck on the way out

I went with a group of midwives that serve a local birth center (in central TX). All are CNMs or CPMs, and we rotated through the different midwives for our various appointments, so that we'd at least have met with whoever was on duty when we went into labor. I wanted to try for a medication and intervention-free birth, as well as have the option to move around during labor if I wanted to do so. I felt that the birth center midwives would be more supportive of those desires than my OBGYN at the time. Working with the midwives during my pregnancy and then during labor/delivery was absolutely fantastic, and I'd do it again with no hesitations.

Questions to ask: what certifications do they hold, whqt hospital privileges if any do they have, what emergency and hospital transfer procedures do they have in place, what is their transfer rate, what postpartum care/checkups do they offer?