Childbirth- My Experience and Experiences in the Netherlands

My First Experience with Childbirth

When I found out I was pregnant with my first child, my husband and I could not have been happier. We wanted everything to be perfect including the way he entered the world. Like other first time parents, we were nervous about the actual delivery. So, we took all of the classes offered to us. We went to the child birthing classes and understood the options we had when it came to deliver. We toured the hospital and talked with the lactation nurses. We packed our bags several weeks before my due date and had everything ready at home.

The week of my due date I was concerned by the sudden lack of movement from the baby. I stopped by the doctor's office daily to hear the heartbeat. After several days of little movement, the doctor did a stress test on the baby and decided to induce me on my due date. We left the doctor's office that day with mixed emotions. We were so excited to meet our precious baby, but anxious about the delivery.

We spent the night at the hospital, and I was given sleeping pills to help me relax. However, I was up most of the night and in pain some of the time. The next morning the nurses began giving me Pitocin to induce labor. I was given an epidural for pain in late afternoon, and by late that night my water broke and I was fully dilated. As I began to push, nurses realized that the epidural had numbed me so much that I could not feel any contractions. This began to be a problem when I wanted to sleep rather than give birth. The baby would not come down into the birth canal. After two hours of trying to deliver the baby, I got a fever and the baby's heart rate became very fast. Because the baby seemed to be in distress, there was an emergency C-section planned. All of a sudden, everything seemed to be happening so fast, and we were terrified. I was given a second epidural at this point in order to go in for surgery. During the surgery, I was given several other medications to help with various things. The baby was born in the middle of the night, and I remember very little about the next 24 hours. We were at the hospital a total of five days before we were able to bring our new bundle of joy home.

I chose this example because it was my first experience with childbirth, and it was a very stressful situation. I was thinking I was going to try natural childbirth up until the day I entered the hospital. Without medical care, this delivery could have gone terribly wrong. I was so thankful to be in a hospital with great care. There are several things that could have happened to affect the baby's development, but in my case the care I was given during my delivery saved the baby's life. My son is a healthy, smart boy who loves to play sports. It always amazes me how vivid this experience is in my mind.....a memory that I will never forget!

Childbirth in the Netherlands

After reading about childbirth in the Netherlands, I realized that there are many differences from childbirth in the United States. First, expectant mothers see a midwife instead of seeing an obstetrician, unless there is a high-risk pregnancy. Second, Dutch women have a choice as to whether they want to deliver at home or at the hospital. More than half of women choose to deliver at home. In fact, all women are required to pick up the medical supplies for a home deliver. If the mother chooses to deliver at the hospital, the midwife will make a home visit to decide when hospital care is necessary. If a hospital delivery is chosen, it is unlikely that the mother would get an epidural. The majority of all Dutch women have natural childbirth.

This kind of delivery is obviously the complete opposite of what I experienced. It would be nice to be in the privacy of your own home for delivery, but I would worry about the lack of medical care. There is such a sense of security knowing that the doctors and resources are there if I or the baby needed them. Another major difference that I noticed as I read is that if there are no complications in the hospital deliver in the Netherlands, the mother and baby can leave as early as two hours after delivery. In the U.S, it is at least two days before you are dismissed, and in my case, we were there for five days. The last difference in childbirth in these two countries is that in the Netherlands a nurse comes to the new parents' home to provide medical care and also cleans, cooks, and gives advice for the first seven days after delivery. Now that would be nice!

http://www.parents.com/pregnancy/giving-birth/vaginal/birth-customs-around-the-world/