Being pregnant... in Germany

So the system here for having babies works differently than in Aus. I had had some of it explained to me by a friend here but I was still quite confused. I knew that the doctor isn't in the birth with you, you have a midwife that accompanies you through the process and is at the birth, and does the at home follow up. I didn't think this sounded too bad, but we still didn't really know what we needed to do. So at some stage between our monthly doctor apts we started to worry that we were leaving it too late to organise things, as we know from the experience of friends in Aus that you miss out on good hospital spots etc if you book to late... So after a panicked call from Brett one day that he was getting very stressed that we had no hospital organised so after some googling I discovered that the following week our local hospital was having a birth info evening, so we went along. The inf session was great, the hospital set up is really nice, their philosophy is nice, Brush likes it because he already knows 5 or 6 different ways there depending on traffic, and its close - so we decided that that would be where we would go... but this decision is apparently very early in the German system - according to the staff there we can (if we want) register 4-6 weeks before the birth that we want to give birth there, so that they have my medical info and dietary requirements ahead of time - but we don't have to register... we can rock up when I am in labour without ever having registered... so we relaxed a little :)