New Life Center

Sorry I haven't posted in a while! I keep thinking that I'll wait until we take another picture, but I keep feeling unattractive by the time Dan gets home after work... I'll work on staying pretty until 5:30 tonight :)

We did get to tour the birthing center at St. John Hospital on Thursday night. It is REALLY nice. All of the rooms are private, and are designed to be labor, delivery, and recovery rooms, so you don't have to leave once you get there. Each room also has a jacuzzi tub :) There is also a snack area with Jello and other snacks for moms and dads. MMm.

Since we're moderately high risk, we will sadly have to deliver in an operating room, which is right down the hall. Even if the girls are in good position for a vaginal birth, there is a big possibility that Izzy will flip around and be breech after Abby comes. I'd REALLY rather not have to recover from BOTH a vaginal birth and a C-section, but again, whatever is best for the babies!

I wrote up our birth plan the other day. I was giggling because the template that I was using (just something I found on a baby site on the Web) had SO many options for specifying EXACTLY what you want...one of the items said:
If labor is not progressing, I would like to try the following options before getting a shot of Pitocin:

...and then it listed a bunch of things you could choose, including sexual intercourse. Come on! You're IN LABOR and IN A HOSPITAL ROOM and you're going to be all, hey baby... do you ask the medical personnel to leave? I mean, how the HECK does that work? We did NOT make that selection :)

Anyway, I was thinking, goodness gracious! Overall, we just won't have a lot of those options, or at least, our mindset is that we want to be VERY informed, but for the most part, we will do whatever the doctors deem medically best for the babies. I've had to make a lot of adjustments about how I feel about things (C-sections and epidurals, for example) just because we're having twins, and I figure that reading about something might make me informed, but the doctors are still the experts. I guess the most important thing is that I really trust my doctor to do what is best for the babies, so I'm not worried. So, our birth plan basically says, Do what you think is best for the babies, but keep us informed.

Anyway, we really like the "Center for New Life" (which sounds like the name of a church to me!), and the hospital there in general, but if the babies come before 36 weeks, we'll be in an operating room at UTMB anyway. But we're praying that they come in March, which is our "safe zone."

Five days until the Schoobs come to visit! Hurray!