Interesting stuff, and it's one area where I'm glad there's been some pushback against too much intervention.

When my wife was pregnant, we initially went to an OB that some friends had used. She seemed fine, and was generally supportive with my wife wanting as little intervention as possible (she wanted to do a wholly-natural birth if at all possible). Ultimately we had to change practices, though: after talking to the OB, we realized that we of course couldn't guarantee that she would be the one on call when my wife went into labor, and that other doctors in her practice weren't as willing to go with it. Her privileges were also in a hospital that was much more interventionist.

So for the last couple months, we went with the local nurse-midwife practice. We were fortunate in that my wife was under 30, healthy, and in good physical shape, which also made things easier and had more options. VCU hospital was fantastic, and they're totally cool with low-intervention births.

What was great about this was that it allowed us to gradually increase what was done. My wife's water broke around 1:30am, and by 7am she was like 7cm dilated and ready to go. But after pushing for awhile things just kind of stalled. She tried different positions, tried the tub, but just couldn't make progress. Rather than pushing petosin, they offered an epidural so that she could take a break. She agreed, and the anesthesiologist was good enough that my wife could still walk afterwards. She rested for an hour or so and then got back to it. By around 4:00, though, things were still stalled. Our daughter was positioned funny, and the midwives tried moving her and/or the kid around, to no avail. Finally they brought in the obstetricians on call to discuss further intervention (e.g. forceps). They poked around a little, and said that the baby was too far back for that to be a good option, and recommended a c-section. Part of it was that after 12 hours from the water breaking, infection starts to become a concern. My wife was also exhausted, since she'd been in active labor for a good 8 hours by this point. I talked to the midwife, and she agreed. It turned out that our daughter was asynclitic, meaning that she wasn't in the birth canal crown first (her head was kind of sideways). The c-section went off without a hitch, with the added bonus that it was the birthday of one of the obstetricians who performed it.

I tell all this just to say that the way things went from the medical care standpoint was pretty much perfect. They stepped up the intervention only as much as was necessary to try the next step, but at the same time didn't shy away from needing to do something more aggressive once that started to make sense. This push can be stupid -- see the comeback of anti-vaxxers, of snake oil (read: homeopathics) in places like Whole Foods, etc. As with all things it's a balance, and our experience represents that balance perfectly.