Day 193 - Stand and Deliver

K___ and I have been discussing various things to do with home births over the last weekend. We've started to put together our birth plan. Once we've had an opportunity to discuss our choices with our midwife, we'll probably post it up here.

As you may have picked up from these pages or other UK pregnancy-specific sites and resources, there are a number of different options for the birth. The main ones are:

• A home birth
• A hospital birth
• A hospital birth under the DOMINO scheme

The DOMINO scheme is where you build up a relationship with a specific midwife over the course of your pregnancy and she accompanies you into hospital for the labour (for a normal hospital birth where you just turn up, you get whoever is on duty) and then takes you home about six hours after labour. DOMINO stands for 'DOMiciliary IN And Out'. DOMINO is available in much of the UK.

It just occurred to me that it may not have been the best idea ever to give that particular name to an option for a birthing procedure. Imagine the poor, flustered father, his wife goes into labour and all he knows is the name of the people who are going to accompany his wife to the hospital. He gets the number from the phone book, tells them he needs a delivery and twenty minutes later the door bell rings. He goes and answers it and there's a callow youth with a pizza...

Conversely, if the labour takes much longer than expected, does the midwife have to give you a free garlic bread?