I had been going for check ups at a private Chinese hospital down the road from our home. There is a foreign hospital here too, but the exorbitant rates they charge together with a few strange birth stories had put me off a little; plus I figured if anyone knew how to deliver babies it would be the Chinese...they do after all, deliver the most! Now many pregnancy mags will tell you that it is important to have a "special" bond with your Gynea and that he/she should know your hopes and dreams for your delivery. What rubbish. I had a perfectly cordial relationship with my OBGYN which revolved around her 10 English words and my 10 Chinese words. My visits were brief, and much like a cow being ushered this way and that to be milked- this cup and that bathroom (but we only want your 'middle' wee), then eat this boiled egg and drink this hot milk, now sit there, drink this sugar water in 10 min, go for your blood, go to the nurses station, now for your scan. (All of this in Chinese of course, which meant a huge leap in my medical vocabulary over the 9 months). Our scans were also very short, during which time we were told our child (whose sex we still did not know) would have a big head, short legs and a big nose. Oh the visions we had of our newborn before she arrived in this world! With this being my first pregnancy, I had no preconceived ideas of how things should/could've been. For this I am grateful.
I did manage to communicate with my Gynea that I was adamant on having a natural delivery however, and that the hospital should do everything they can to make this possible for me. This because I was planning to have more than the allotted 1 child in China, because I was, I reminded her, an African woman. She agreed, and we waited until my 40th week. When there was no sign of baby budging, she told me that at 41 weeks they would be inducing me (hospital policy from which you DO NOT deviate). A date for the induction was set, and I spent the next week walking, squatting and drinking just about anything to bring on the labour.
Alas, come September 29th, there was still no sign of baby, and so off we went into hospital, knowing that come what may we would be returning as parents.
I went in for the induction with a friend, and while I had the length of a petite Chinese nurses arm inside me, yelling at me to relax for goodness sake, I remember thinking this was just the beginning. Contractions followed soon thereafter, and I did everything my South African midwife friend had told me, I was squatting, I was going with the contractions, and I was sure all was going well. I even enjoyed my Chinese lunch when it arrived. Four hours in however, the Chinese nurses looked concerned when they did the internal exam. Surprisingly, the fact that my contractions never seemed to grow progressively worse had gone unnoticed (I just figured I was handling labour exceedingly well!) After 6 hours later a horde of doctors and nurses came in and proceeded to ramble on in Chinese about the fact that my labour had not progressed well, I was not dilating, and in fact my cervix remained unbroken. This was a lot of medical terminology for my poor husband who was taking it all in and attempting to translate for me. This from someone who has only learnt the Chinese word for "period" at my first check up.
We were sent back to our room and given two choices: try another induction tomorrow (which they were doubtful would be any more successful) or have a Caesar in the morning. If the induction failed a second time however, they would definitely Caesar at the end of the day because baby needed to come out. We later discovered that I have an inverted pubic bone which makes labour difficult, particularly with big babies, and so with all this new information, we were given the night to weigh up our options. Disappointed, disheartened, alone and confused we sat together in our room and prayed for every other possible outcome: that labour would progress in the night on its own, that a second induction would succeed, could I leave against medical advice and just wait until baby was ready to come out?...Anything to avoid the C-word which we had all but banned in our vocabulary. We called home, we called every medical professional we knew on the planet, but all confirmed what the docs were saying. It didn't make the fact that nothing was going to according to plan any easier though. My body was not doing what it was supposed to, and I was sad we didn't yet have our babe in arms. I was given an injection to end the contractions and told I should get a good night's sleep.
Come 9am the following morning we had agreed to a C-section, followed by the signing of hundreds of hideous consent forms which basically state, with characteristic Chinese bluntness, that the hospital is not responsible for any of the tragic things that could result from the surgery! I was beside myself by the time they came to clean and shave me. Thankfully my husband never left my side. At 11am I was told they were taking me to prep for surgery, Kyle asked whether he should come along to which they replied " if you like". Thank goodness he did! because not 20 min later I was lying naked on the metal bed, told to 'lie still or die' while they injected me with an epidural, and sliced open even before I had said I had gone completely numb. Kyle was allowed into the operating room only because the translator was unavailable and no one else spoke English, and he witnessed the whole gruesome thing. I was completely unprepared for such major surgery, all the pulling, tugging and ripping that felt so unnatural. No one told me what was going on, and when Zipporah was born and Kyle rushed over to be with her through all her tests, I was left alone while they sewed me up for what felt like forever. Everyone talking over me, poking and proding. I didn't feel like a new mother at all. Even when Zipporah was presented to me, I had to fake a smile for the photo, all the while my mind on the discomfort I felt in every other part of my body.
By the time we got back to the room, I was all 'wired' up to machines, in quite a lot of pain, and unable to move. Things didn't change much over the next 24 hours and by lunch the next day I told Kyle that if this is what having a child entailed, we would only be having one. Sorry, I was done.
Thankfully I had the most wonderful friend who came to visit soon after the delivery who shared her own experience of a C -section, and who consoled me with the fact that eventually I would feel better, be able to move normally, and that bonding with my beautiful, bouncy baby of 4.2kgs would come in time. I was grateful for her timely advice and proceeded to take the next 3 days in hospital in my stride. I didn't laugh out loud when they washed my wound with tea, or warned me sternly against having sex for the next 3 months. I wore my allotted 'convict' like pyjamas and gown, didn't mind my engorged breast being fondled by the nurses, passed my dodgy chinese food off to Kyle when mealtimes came and was even grateful they never attempted to take my baby away from me, only for bath time. Looking back it was a very special time for our new family of 3, and by the end of day number 2 I was completely besotted with our tiny princess and would have given my life for hers, everything long forgot.
Leaving the hospital was daunting, but my recovery at home was smoothe. Looking back I am so grateful that we opted to take professional medical advice instead of fighting for a natural delivery. In the end, the fact that Zipprah and I were healthy and well was all that mattered. I remained a little disappointed that I never got my shot at a natural delivery for a short while afterward, but only God knows what we can handle and maybe it all would have been too much in a foreign country.
In just 10 short weeks baby number 2 will be born to our family, in the same hospital, in China. Call me crazy but now I feel like I know what I'm in for, so when they start rattling off in Chinese I actually feel like its normal. Heck, having a baby in an English speaking country scares me now! My advice to anyone having a baby is not to have ANY expectations. Whether you have natural or not, you have no idea what you're in for, and the most important thing is not the way the baby comes into this world, it's that it does, and mom and baby are both healthy. As for having a baby in a foreign country...would I recommend it? Hmmm...maybe not, unless mommy is there, or hubby is super helpful, efficient, sympathetic and proficient in the language (which mine was). But each to his own.
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