Decisions, decisions

It's getting close now - the babies should be here soon! Sometimes I feel so ready and so excited, and other times, I'm apprehensive. Am I really ready? Do we have everything ready? Are we making all of the right choices? There's so much to plan and do, it can be a bit overwhelming.

Recently we've been talking about delivery methods. (Feel free to stop reading here if you think this is sharing too much.) Originally, I had thought we'd go for a more natural birth with as few medical interventions as necessary. Although some people deemed this 'crazy', I'm just not keen on the really medical approach unless it's necessary.

When we switched to Royal Berkshire Hospital, though, I began to doubt the plan for natural birth. A large part of this doubt comes from fear - fear of things going wrong and fear of the hospital's inability to properly handle situations. They haven't really been organised or on top of things, which doesn't build confidence in them, and the midwife in the hospital told me about the twin deaths they'd had when we were discussing delivery options. For that reason, she said, they had been recommending c-sections for twins as a matter of course in a knee-jerk reaction, although they were now 'calming down' and switching back to allowing twins to be born naturally. However, I was told I'd need to have an epidural no matter what.

After that appointment, I looked into things more and George and I discussed options more. We both began leaning heavily toward the c-section route, and when we saw the community midwife, we said that we'd like to go with a planned c-section. We're still waiting to hear back about a date from the hospital, but with a planned c-section, it should at least mean that we'll know what to expect, when to expect the twins and who will be available for the birth (twins means more people around for the delivery, so if that's the case, it'd be good to know that they're all definitely there, available and expecting us).

Although it would be good to have a natural delivery (faster recovery, less medical intervention, more time to bond with the babies), the issues (would still have to have medical intervention such as an epidural and assisted delivery methods, lack of faith in RBH and the stress/risks that come from that) have us going for the c-section. And hopefully that's the best decision for us all.