Hi, anyone has given birth to twins in St thomas in london? I am 20 weeks pregnant with twins (fraternal) and starting to research delivery. I am getting contradictory messages and information from midwives and obstetrcians at the hospital and it's making me anxious. The midwive that has seen me so far insists the delivery will be midwive led and an obstetrician will only be called if needed. The obstetrician, who i only saw by chance, says there will be an obstetrician during delivery. I'm concerned that none of the people I have seen seem to have specialist knowledge of twin delivery and that on the day, my health or my babies will be jeopardize becuase they will not be in a position to make the right decisions. I'd appreciate if anyone out there could tell me about their experience.

Hi - I think my hospital say 30 mins. But I'm stubborn and had a birth plan which said "I've given birth at home 3 times no problems, will come to hospital for twins but on my own terms... just leave me to get on with it and I'll be ok."

So I think it was 1 hour 50 between the babies. I wasn't happy with an IV drip, but they did intervene to break twin 2's waters after 1 hr 40.

I wouldn't say it was the most pleasant 2 hours of my life. My research suggested the cervix would stay open, but my vague memory of that time is:

- 15 mins "rest" cuddling my daughter
- slight build of contractions
- feeding daughter brought on some wicked contractions - sure I was thrashing about but all 4 1/2 lbs of her was hanging on for dear life.
- in wild transition for nearly an hour
- scared MW spent most of the time 'explaining the risks' to me instead of supporting me, until I let her...
- ...break the waters for twin 2
- 5? 10? mins pushing

Helluva way to cure a needle phobia.

I have 6wk old twin boys and our local hospital (in Australia) allows 20 mins between births, but if the second twin is breech they only allow 10mins. My second twin was easily born breech 4mins after his big brother.

My experience was that Twin 2 came after 46 minutes. They said the time limit was 30 mins, but I argued for 60 mins based on research.

I was on my hands and knees for twin 1 to be delivered but they got me on my back for twin 2 because they wanted to prevent twin 2 turning breech.

In the end I decided this was slowing everything down. When the doc asked for the ventouse to be prepared that got me into action and I negotiated to change position (I figured that I had nothing to lose!). Got on my hands and knees again and Twin 2 arrived no problems.

All the reading and researching did pay off in this case (I was panic reading from 8 weeks!!).

All the best

not significant. I had mildly high bp (and a resting pulse of 101) when they did bp monitoring after a stupid sonographer screwed up and decided the babies were transverse from memory after forgetting to write down where they were. They came in saying "you're the one with the transverse babies who wants an MLU delivery aren't you?" I was like "What?! NO! They are both head down!" but they did bp monitoring before they redid the scan to confirm they were both head down so I was stressed. I was briefly diagnosed with borderline PET/PIH but undiagnosed again when all the monitoring, blood and urine tests came back negative! Thanx E3! Plan was off briefly but is back on now providing they are born before monday or I can manage to keep my stress levels down when I have more monitoring then! lol

Galaxy, that is interesting re the wait times. I have Homerton's protocols that I will do my best to send you. I also have the Royal London's and UCH, but they are in hard copy and therefore cannot send them. They are all broadly similar however.
There may be some delay with sending these to you as I so rarely get on the computer, but I will try to do it on monday when I don't have a child around.

BIG BIG luck to you curiosity. I think you are going to have a brilliant birthing of your babies, everything is in your favour and 38 weeks is just fab! (I say that, although I have spotted you have bp problems and haven't had time to read the details on those - I hope they are not significant problems and you are still on for your nice, straightforward normal birth).

Broke - yes! I have Selina Wallis, I've found her really very good. The sifting she does with the rebozo I think has helped my twin2 to decide to be head down. She's also intelligent, knowledgable, instinctive and a good advocate.

The baby always seemed to turn head down after sifting and an inversion despite being inclined to move around a lot the rest of the time. Would recommend her and the twin consultant obstetrician Dr Leanne Bricker and the consultant midwife for normalcy Simon Mehigan at LWH.

I'm still hanging on at 38 + 2 weeks. Please e-mail me if you want to know anything else c u r i o s i t y . k i l l e d @ h o t m a i l . c o m

50 minutes for us but hosp would have waited up to two hours (I asked).

Hi Ladies,
I have been listening to the stories the twin mums tell me of their births at the monthly coffee group associated with my twins antenatal classes. thought the best was 2 hours between babies at basingstoke and another topped it with 2 hrs 30 min between baby 1 and 2!
I hope that gives you hope or move to basingstoke
I will be running a twin birth study day in Reading september 2010 for antenatal teachers doulas midwives and any interested parents to be.
I hope to get someone to speak about the preliminary results of the multicentre twin birth trial, as well as experiences from independent midwives.
If anyone has twin birth protocol I would be very grateful for a copy, I have the st thomas one as a london mum came to my classes.
I also teach for TAMBA and think their 1 day session is good, however I choose to run a weekly class for people like london lottie so mums can socialize
ps I think mars is fab twin mummy and doula supreme.
If you wish to contact me you can get in touch at
info.havingtwins.co.uk
galaxy

Hi Curiosity, would you be using Selina wallis by any chance ? I have a meeting with her in a few weeks to discuss exactly the same scenerio and am also going to insist on LWH rather than the local Arrowe Park if I can.
Am looking forward to hearing your birth story and tips.
All the best