doctors and nurses and midwives oh my!

So now after the pregancy movies, and reading partway through Ina May Gaskin's Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, I'm pretty darn sure I don't just want to go to the fancy hospital that the rich white folks with insurance go to in DC to get cut open. I am looking into options for birthing centers - I'd love to do a home birth but that can be noisy and we have such a tiny rental apartment that I'm concerned we both don't have enough space nor enough auditory privacy to pull it off. Birthing centers sound good. I'm going to query my OB/GYN a bit about their claim to have midwives on staff and what the implications of that are.

Thus far, I've always been pleased with my OB/GYN but I guess I've never had such an important decision to make before. I don't think I just want to accept the western medical tradition's word on this one. So we'll see.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions wrt birthing centers in the DC area? My insurance apparently will cover it instead of a hospital birth which is pretty cool. My insurance also covers gender reassignment surgery so it's actualy pretty decent insurance for this country...