Nurse-midwife Margie Rickell posed a question to the group of seven or eight women, seated in a circle, all pregnant and all due this month: What kind of birth did they want? The women, their belly baby bumps obvious, stood up and lined up along an imaginary spectrum. On one end were a few who wanted to try to have a totally natural birth, closer to the other end were those who would have the anesthesiologist’s number on their phone’s speed dial if they could.