Meet Dr Lionel

Kell had worded us up about Dr Lionel. She described him as being quite 'to-the-point', and as someone who doesn't beat around the bush. Consequently, she said that some people found him a little abrupt. This was also backed up by Dr Adrienne who said that some people preferred a softer approach. However, the no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is approach generally works for me, so we weren't concerned at all.

On meeting Dr Lionel, we found that this in fact was the case and his style suits us well. He's very matter-of-fact and subscribes to a low-intervention approach to labour and birth. This doesn't mean he takes one-size-fits-all, production-line or removed approach - quite the contrary. He is very focussed on the well-being of the woman and this forms the foundation of his low-intervention philosophy. He's very concerned about the amount of pressure that's placed on women by today's medical community, in terms of their options in childbirth. He's also concerned about the skyrocketing number of caesarians performed today - and firmly believes that is for the benefit of hospitals and doctors rather than the monther and child.

Of course - if something is required, he will do whatever is going to provide the best result for mother and child.

After some discussion about how I felt and how I was going - and if I had any questions, he asked me if I'd like to have a look and see what's in there. We were a bit surprised by this, as we didn't know that was on the cards but agreed straight away. We got to see a little blob moving around and checked there was just the one of them. Phew!

He also checked the dates, and it appears that we were first time lucky as the dates coincided perfectly with what we thought.