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prenatal course
Sep. 7th, 2011 12:30 pmWe had our first prenatal class last night; it's a course for expats, so there were about 12-13 couples where at least one of the couple was not a Dutch-speaker. (Two of the partners were Dutch; the rest were from all over, Italy, Greece, Spain, UK, Japan, Indonesia, Argentina, and us from the US.) The demographic was very odd; many of the people had been living here longer than we have (and we've been here 6 years!) and we were by far the youngest. At least two couples were 10+ years older, and most were at least 5. And it's first kids for everyone. I wonder if I had taken a ordinary, Dutch-language course if the demographic would've been different?
I was also rather surprised at the distribution of birth plans. We went around the room and said who we were, where we lived, what we did, what the due dates were, whether we'd done any prenatal yoga, and whether we planned to give birth in the hospital or not and with pain relief or not. I was one of the few who hadn't done any prenatal yoga, but on the flip side, all but two of the other women very adamantly said "hospital, with epidural". Of the two who didn't, one said home birth was her preference but her partner wasn't convinced (the only couple where the man, when asked about his views of birth/labor, didn't just say "whatever makes my wife happy"), and the other was clearly doing it because of anti-hospital views; she asked later about whether immunizations were compulsory, and was it really the case that Dutch hospitals had a yearly quota on the number of epidurals that they had to give each year? It was actually a bit creepy...it certainly bothered me that since I'd said I was planning to give birth at home barring any reason not to, simply by association alone the other couples may have lumped me in with the crazies. I have no objection having my baby in the hospital if there's medical reason to do so. We're definitely planning on immunizing, and while for the most part I am a "live and let live" kind of person, immunization is one place where I do think people have a social/moral obligation to do it, because failing to immunize your kids doesn't just put them at risk, it puts others at risk too.
Joel was also of the "whatever my wife wants" disposition with respect to birth, though honestly it's not something we'd really discussed explicitly. We did so at home after the class, and his primary motivation is in fact that -- as he put it, I'm the one who is going to be going through the most work, so I have the biggest say in how things go, and whatever I think will be the right choice for me is what he thinks is right. But he did go on to say that he also saw a number of pros for home-birth combined with cons for hospital-birth (in particular with the latter, there's the simple fact that hospitals are full of sick people). So it was comforting to me to hear that his assent to our plan is also in line with his preferences.
Another point that came out was the teacher asked us all about our current prenatal care, whether it was a single midwife, a group of midwives, or an obstetrician. She reminded us that when the time comes that we make the phone call, we're going to get whoever is on call, and it may not necessarily be the one that we've been seeing exclusively/the most -- in fact, in some cases it might be someone we've never seen before, as it can happen that all of the midwives of your practice are busy and thus an external freelancer needs to be called. But what she also said was that after a certain point, the woman generally doesn't care, but just wants someone there who knows what they're doing and does it. This reminded me of a conversation I'd had with Andrea after my last midwife appt. I was quite pleased that I was in and out in about 10 min., she confirmed I had no questions, checked my iron levels, checked my pulse, felt around on my belly and said "everything looks fine", and I was out. Andrea compared that to seeing a regular doctor and said one thing she really appreciated about her care was the personal touch -- appointments lasting 45 min. - 1 hour, with discussion about emotional wellbeing, etc. I'm pretty sure that if I wanted that -- if I wanted to talk about these things with my midwives -- I'd easily be able to prolong the appointments and do so. But I don't really want to. What I want is someone who will keep up with my physical well-being, who has demonstrated to me that she is competent in what she does, and thus I can trust she will be competent to do what she needs to do when the time comes. Whether it's someone I know and have seen many times, or whether it's someone new or I've only seen once or twice, I don't really care, so long as she's well-trained and competent. For emotional well-being and support, I've got Joel. That's way more important to me than having an emotional connection with my midwife.
I was also rather surprised at the distribution of birth plans. We went around the room and said who we were, where we lived, what we did, what the due dates were, whether we'd done any prenatal yoga, and whether we planned to give birth in the hospital or not and with pain relief or not. I was one of the few who hadn't done any prenatal yoga, but on the flip side, all but two of the other women very adamantly said "hospital, with epidural". Of the two who didn't, one said home birth was her preference but her partner wasn't convinced (the only couple where the man, when asked about his views of birth/labor, didn't just say "whatever makes my wife happy"), and the other was clearly doing it because of anti-hospital views; she asked later about whether immunizations were compulsory, and was it really the case that Dutch hospitals had a yearly quota on the number of epidurals that they had to give each year? It was actually a bit creepy...it certainly bothered me that since I'd said I was planning to give birth at home barring any reason not to, simply by association alone the other couples may have lumped me in with the crazies. I have no objection having my baby in the hospital if there's medical reason to do so. We're definitely planning on immunizing, and while for the most part I am a "live and let live" kind of person, immunization is one place where I do think people have a social/moral obligation to do it, because failing to immunize your kids doesn't just put them at risk, it puts others at risk too.
Joel was also of the "whatever my wife wants" disposition with respect to birth, though honestly it's not something we'd really discussed explicitly. We did so at home after the class, and his primary motivation is in fact that -- as he put it, I'm the one who is going to be going through the most work, so I have the biggest say in how things go, and whatever I think will be the right choice for me is what he thinks is right. But he did go on to say that he also saw a number of pros for home-birth combined with cons for hospital-birth (in particular with the latter, there's the simple fact that hospitals are full of sick people). So it was comforting to me to hear that his assent to our plan is also in line with his preferences.
Another point that came out was the teacher asked us all about our current prenatal care, whether it was a single midwife, a group of midwives, or an obstetrician. She reminded us that when the time comes that we make the phone call, we're going to get whoever is on call, and it may not necessarily be the one that we've been seeing exclusively/the most -- in fact, in some cases it might be someone we've never seen before, as it can happen that all of the midwives of your practice are busy and thus an external freelancer needs to be called. But what she also said was that after a certain point, the woman generally doesn't care, but just wants someone there who knows what they're doing and does it. This reminded me of a conversation I'd had with Andrea after my last midwife appt. I was quite pleased that I was in and out in about 10 min., she confirmed I had no questions, checked my iron levels, checked my pulse, felt around on my belly and said "everything looks fine", and I was out. Andrea compared that to seeing a regular doctor and said one thing she really appreciated about her care was the personal touch -- appointments lasting 45 min. - 1 hour, with discussion about emotional wellbeing, etc. I'm pretty sure that if I wanted that -- if I wanted to talk about these things with my midwives -- I'd easily be able to prolong the appointments and do so. But I don't really want to. What I want is someone who will keep up with my physical well-being, who has demonstrated to me that she is competent in what she does, and thus I can trust she will be competent to do what she needs to do when the time comes. Whether it's someone I know and have seen many times, or whether it's someone new or I've only seen once or twice, I don't really care, so long as she's well-trained and competent. For emotional well-being and support, I've got Joel. That's way more important to me than having an emotional connection with my midwife.
