Whelp. I’m back! Hallöchen, Lieblings. I’m Mari, a sci/fi and fantasy author, who has been living in southern Germany since 2014.
It has been a while, right? Pregnancy was not my friend. Once I got to the third trimester after returning from my trip back home to the States, I learned very quickly that I did not have the brain capacity to multitask like I could before. Between nesting and growing a whole human being, whatever was left over was dedicated to finishing my latest novel.
If you have followed me for a while, you’ll probably remember me mentioning it. If you haven’t, it’s a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, but it’s a clash of cultures instead of societal classes. My Lizzy is Peruvian-American and my Mr. Darcy is German. I found it interesting that we Americans see Germans as stereotypically “cold” and “arrogant” while a lot of Germans see Americans as “fake”. Such misinformation is bound to cause a horrible…..with a capital H……first impression. Oddly enough, the original Lizzy and Mr Darcy had similar prejudices in the beginning.
The novel is done and currently being queried to different agents … since I have to wait several weeks for responses, the timing with this pregnancy and subsequent baby had worked out.
Then of course said baby arrived and the whole adjusting to motherhood thing was a lot more difficult than I anticipated. Especially cause my mom is half a world away and I do most of the child rearing myself.
We’re also adding to our house! As you may have seen in the intro of my video (see at the end of post).
Overall a lot has been going on and – to be frank – I just didn’t have the capacity to also tackle YouTube.
But I did take notes when I could and I have so many episode ideas! Don’t worry, Lieblings, I didn’t forget about you! I want to talk about my pregnancy, giving birth in Germany as an American, raising my kid here (she’s eight months now!), building a house in Germany, on top of my usual random topics…..
So let’s start with the birth…..
So my kid was born back in October – meaning it has been a hot minute since that birth and already the hormones have blurred a lot of the details…mostly the pain, but I still remember a lot of it. I talked to some friends back in the States with their own birthing stories and this will be the beginning of a new series talking about giving birth in the US vs Germany going from pre-natal care, post-natal and eventually the whole parenting…thing….it’s going to be fun.
But for today, we’ll just focus on the days leading up to the birth, the big event, and the first days after…..
My baby was due on the first day of Muswiese….if you don’t know what that is, I have a few vlogs of this glorious festival. It would have been kind of a big deal if she was born during Muswiese….1. It would have cemented her place as a truly Hohenloisch Kid (Hohenlohe being the region of Germany I live in) and 2. It meant that every year for her birthday, she would be expected to buy drinks for her friends while at Muswiese. While number 1 was cool, number 2 wasn’t ideal in my opinion….but at least as a girl, she wouldn’t be expected to spent so much compared to if she were a boy. It’s a culture where the birthday kid pays for everything compared to where I come from in the States where everyone buys the birthday kid a round of drinks. It’s just different.
ANYWAY – I had planned to go to at least get my Muswiese Wurst….I figured if my water broke even in line, the folks would let me get one before having to head to the hospital. My mom came from the States to help out, but really it was because she also wanted a Muswiese wurst. She has also a die hard Muswiese fan.
In the end, the kid didn’t come.
Here in Germany, once you are over the due date or the Entbindungstermin – you have to go either to the hospital you’re registered to or to your gynecologist every two days until the birth to make sure nothing is wrong.
The first day, I went to the hospital and met with one of the doctors. They did a CTG scan to measure if I was having contractions as well as the baby’s heartbeat. No contractions and the baby’s heart was fine. I talked to the doctor and we discussed my risk for preeclampsia, the fact that my heart rate was constantly increasing (I had to measure it every day in my third trimester) and that while this particular hospital usually waited until 10 days after the due date to induce, but because of my risk, they didn’t want to wait that long. I was also given the choice to choose the date.
The doctor asked if I wanted to come in that Tuesday for the induction, but I had an appointment with my gynecologist and I also wanted to talk to my midwife before I made a decision. The head doctor was super supportive and then asked if I wanted Thursday or even Saturday. I said Thursday only because I had this gut feeling but I still wanted to talk to my Gyno and Midwife and the doctor said I could call on that Thursday and let them know then.
On Tuesday I talked to my Gyno and Midwife and both said that my numbers were good and I could wait and let my body decide when it was ready for birth. While my heartrate had been increasing, it still wasn’t THAT HIGH for alarm.
So Thursday comes around, I call the hospital to make my appointment (you have to call on the day for these appointments) as well as to let them know that I wasn’t going to go for an induction, but I still needed an appointment.
A midwife at the hospital answered the phone and was a total bitch. She didn’t understand why I was calling them for an appointment and not my Gyno. I was flustered and tried to regale this whole conversation with the doctor from my last appointment with them but she didn’t listen. She found my name in their system and saw that I was scheduled for an induction and I told the woman that I had changed my mind, then she rudely demanded why and it was…..it was awful. I don’t remember how the conversation ended because I was crying at this point. She was so rude and why?
Ten minutes later I get a phone call, it’s another doctor from the hospital who had heard the midwife on the phone and thought something wasn’t right and wanted to apologize for the midwife’s behavior because her tone wasn’t professional. I started crying because I did not expect the kindness and apology. This doctor spoke kindly and told me that she was here for me and for me to take my time (cause I was crying). One of the reasons we chose this hospital was because it was so highly rated in terms of care … and also because there’s a children’s hospital connected to it – in case I had trouble with preeclampsia and my baby had to come early. This phone call proved to me why people regard this hospital so well.
Once I had calmed down I was able to explain the situation that I just explained to you. The doctor thanked me for giving her the full picture and now that she understood she started by saying that NORMALLY women should go to their gyno’s during the week and she asked if it were possible for me to do the same. BUT since I had had this conversation with one of the other doctors as well as my risk, she would go ahead and give me an emergency appointment just in case.
My gyno is currently overwhelmed – which is a topic for another day, the whole doctor shortage here in Germany is a big topic to discuss – I knew I couldn’t get a same day appointment so I was going to go to the hospital anyway.
It also happened to be the last day of Muswiese so we went there for lunch. I got a Langos – it was delicious. Then we dropped my mom off at home and went to the appointment. I met the lovely doctor who I talked to that morning. The CTG scan went well, but during the ultrasound they found that I had no more amniotic fluid … turned out I had to be induced that day. My gut instinct was correct.
I had brought my suitcase filled with what I needed for a hospital stay to every appointment in case I got a prognosis like this so there was no problem for my husband to leave me at the hospital.
That’s right….leave me. This hospital had pretty strict corona regulations and I could only have a max of two guests for a few hours and since I wasn’t in active labor, he had to go home.
So I was induced. The pain was horrible and it didn’t take long for me to go into active labor so I was able to call my husband back. I spent the night having the CTG scans attached to my belly and I had to try different positions because “baby wasn’t happy”.
I never figured out which mean midwife I spoke to, but the midwives who took care of me while I was in labor were literal angels from god. They were so kind and supportive – I felt safe and looked after. This is a big difference between giving birth in the States vs Germany. In the States, you have nurses looking after you until the on-call doctor comes for the birth itself. In Germany, midwives and doctors work together. I could have paid extra for my midwife to oversee the birth or gone to a birthing house which is strictly run by midwives OR given birth at home…..but honestly, I wanted access to the pain meds. #sorrynotsorry.
Anyway, I was pumped full of pain medication and eventually had an epidural. I also spent a good portion of the night throwing up, so that part wasn’t fun.
Eventually the kind doctor from the day before returned in the morning for her next shift and took one look at my CTG and said I would need a c-section. Turns out that with every constractions – my baby’s heart rate went down. I was also only about 4cm, which meant I had hours to go. Hours my baby probably didn’t have….
She apologized that I wouldn’t get a vaginal birth, but honestly I was fine with it. My birth plan was to literally go with the floor – both follow my gut instinct and work with the medical professionals and if a c-section was necessary, like in this case, then so be it.
Within an hour I was sliced open like a Christmas ham and my kid was born. Honestly, after all that throwing up, I was glad for it to be over, I didn’t have the strength to have a vaginal birth, I was happy that we all came out the other side safe and healthy.
Because I had a c-section, I was expected to stay at the hospital for five days. I think I will tackle those days in another episode, only because I can use it to highlight more differences between the US and Germany, but there was taken care of by nurses – which sidenote: it was a catholic hospital and a nurses was called “sister” or “schwester” which could either be a reference to the sister or catholic nun or the shortening of the German word for nurse which is “krankenschwester” or “sick sister”. This is a question for my German expert….which is it? Or is it a little bit of both? Let me know in the comments below.
Overall, I am so glad to have been at that hospital – I was scared that my birth would be traumatic. It wasn’t. It was hard, of course, it’s birth, but if we ever decide to go again, I would probably like to go back to this hospital.
Oh and in case you’re wondering….this was all done in German, no English for this foreigner. But my German is definitely enough to be able to navigate my corporeal health and birth of my child so that’s a win. An immigrant level unlocked, I suppose.
Wow what a come back eh? I will try to post more often. I am at a point where my little Maus has more of a routine where I can more or less get things done besides being her servant. But it’s not guaranteed. It does feel good to be back though and I have a ton of episodes planned….
What do you think? What are your thoughts on all of this? Have you given birth in a country that’s not your country of birth? See what I did there? What were your experiences? I would love to know your thoughts. Let me know in the comments below!
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And that’s it. Until next time. Adee.
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