As I said in my previous post, delivery happens in The Netherlands preferably at home. That's in contrast to most places in the Western world. So I thought it would be interesting to post how my wife's delivery at home went. It turned out to be a 'full' experience in the sense that she did a part of the delivery at home and a part in the hospital. But the baby didn't want to come out, so it ended with a caesarean section.

First of all: although a delivery is hard work, my wife and I thought it would be much harder. Although you shouldn't ask her that when being in labor :)

Anyway: Sunday evening my wife feels weak contractions that are getting stronger. So she consults the midwife. The midwife says that it looks like the delivery is beginning, but there is still a chance that the contractions will stop. The midwife doesn't work for the hospital by the way. She works for an independent company.

So we climb into bed. And I mean literally 'climb', since our bed is raised by 30 centimeters for about 4 weeks now. Our bed stands on 8 steel poles. That had to be done to prevent that the midwife has to lean over all the time. You can have a home delivery from week 37, so you have to raise your bed before that. A less visual alteration to the bed is an extra cover over the mattress of my wife. That will prevent blood seeping into the mattress.

Two hours later in the middle of the night, the contractions are strong, regular and they come often. We haven't slept at all and my wife is in agony, walking through the house as if she could walk away from the pain. So we call the midwife again. She comes to our house to check the dilation. It appeared to be 5 cm. Then she manually breaks the amniotic sac, which was still unruptured at that time, to speed up the dilation. We agree to call her again at either seven o'clock or earlier if the contractions of my wife become that strong that she will start to groan. After then the midwife heads back to her own home to get a little bit of sleep.

Well, my wife is quick because within three hours we call the midwife again and within half an hour the midwife is back at our bed. She concludes that my wife is almost ready to expel the baby from the womb. The midwife immediately calls the "kraamverzorgster", somebody who helps us managing our household and the care for the newborn in the first week.

But after two hours there still isn't any progress. The baby is stuck in the vagina. So the midwife basically has to give up. We fetch all the things we could need in the hospital, give my wife some clothes, I put a special clean cloth on the seat of our car and we drive to the hospital, a trip of about 10 minutes. The kraamverzorgster leaves our home a bit later, after she cleaned up the mess in our bedroom.

The hospital part is probably less interesting for you, but as you understand I can't stop here with my story. To keep it short: they attached in the hospital something to the head of our baby and tried to pull a bit, while my wife had a contraction. But that didn't work either. So they had to get our little girl with a caesarean section. So after an hour we were finally with the three of us together.

There's only one thing: since the first delivery ended in a caesarean section, we have to have the next one in hospital. We are not happy with that, because not everything went well in the hospital. But that's another story...


As you may see, it has been quiet on this bloog the last two weeks. That's because I'm busy settling into the new situation and helping all the visitors that come to see the baby. But that doesn't mean that I don't have something to post. It will just take a little while for me to find the time to write.

Labels: labor, medical