The pregnancy process is different here but I like the changes for the most part here. It is different than what I saw my friends do in the States to a point. Most of the differences I actually LOVE. I am very thankful to be having our first baby here in NZ. We have been going to prenatal classes for 3 weeks and have 3 weeks left to go. To say Sam doesn't enjoy it is a GRAND UNDERSTATEMENT, nonetheless he goes each week with me. I have enjoyed it, mostly because for me I wanted to understand the NZ hospital/pregnancy and delivery process.
One major difference is that everyone has a midwife in NZ(unless they know they are having a high/special needs baby). They tend to be a little different than the midwife "stigma" or "stereo type" in the States. Midwives here are highly trained specialists of pregnancy, birth and the medical side of both of that for the baby and the Mom. They train specially in birth/health/medical care for 3 years here and 2 of those years they are in classes as well as with a midwife learning hands on. We have a student with our midwife currently and we really like her. The experience looks exactly like my friends. I go to the office once a month, then twice now I am closer to the due date then every week once I hit 36 weeks. The midwives are seen as specialists here since their schooling was focused specifically on birth/mother/baby. They have very few OBGYN's and they are brought in if there is surgery/complications. As a "patient" once we get to the hospital we are under the midwives care. If there is something the hospital is telling us or asking us to do we don't feel comfortable with we talk to our a midwife. It is almost as if they "rent" the space from the hospital. Yet we get all the perks of the hospital too. There is always an OBGYN on call and always a Midwife on the hospital floor that is employed by the hospital. Our midwife is great! We have really enjoyed her and her professionalism is just like the doctors I have seen when going to appointments with friends. They just have the luxury of focusing only on delivering moms and picking the number of moms they take each month.
The other VERY cool thing they do here is PLUNKET. After you have your baby you have a Plunket nurse assigned to you who comes to see you to make sure you are doing okay, baby is doing okay and helps you with things like bathing, breast feeding, and/or wrapping your babies or anything else. They teach you here to swaddle your babies, which I saw in foreign countries all the time and saw friends that went to foreign countries and worked in orphanages always do....granted I am technically in a foreign country :) It is a very cool process and you can go to the Plunket nurses for as long as you like and they are always available to you. Pretty cool!
Before we see the Plunket nurses we stick with our midwife for awhile and she looks in on us the first week after the baby then hands us off to Plunket. Our midwife was actually a nurse for quite a few years then has done midwife for about 15. She is so fun and nothing is ever a "BIG DEAL." She is very empowering too always reminding us that I am doing all the work her and Sam are just there to cheer me on. Now reality is she does more than that but she just has a way of disarming things. Even our little hospital scare she handled so well. She is perfect for my personality and very OPINIONATED and STRONG which is what I want when we are in the hospital. I am so hoping that she is who delivers Max, it all depends how many babies she has that week/day. She has two back up midwives that will be fabulous too but I want her, of course.
Now back to our classes. It is amazing to see 12 woman all walk through the same thing and have such different responses. I am the ONLY one that has cried! Not once, not twice but three times. Now remember there has only be 3 classes so far! The used a replica of the bones that move in a woman to birth a baby and a doll to show what happens in birth and even in that I had tears streaming down my face while the other women were in SHEER TERROR of wondering how a baby was actually going to come out of them. Sam just looked at me and shook his head smiling at the fact that I was crying. And he could tell I was using all my strength to not ugly cry. Then we watched the birth video...of course, tears! No one else even flinched. I am sure in their Kiwi staunchness they had emotions inside but NONE came out. This week we toured the hospital and I heard a wee tiny baby cry/whimper and had to stop myself from bursting into tears!! Sam just looked at me and said this was quite emotional wasn't it? YEP.
One thing our midwife did tell us is that while Max is tight and secure in a head down position he is on the right side of my body. She wants him to move to my left side. Evidently most babies by nature move that way to then "slide out" in birth. Long labors and deliveries tend to be due to the baby making his way over there at his own pace, combined with your body getting ready makes for long and sometimes hard labor. So I am doing all the things I can to move his little body to the left. Plus I have two ladies specifically praying for the delivery/labor process and one of them made me DIE LAUGHING this morning in an email (which is why I asked them to pray because their humor and emails that we will be able to get on our phones in the hospital will keep me smiling and laughing!) with a simple Beyonce song to get Max to move...."To the left, to the left, to the left." HEHEHEHE if you know the song I bet you are at least smiling. If you haven't heard it google it and it will make you laugh too! I might need to download that to my phone so I can play the song whenever I need to remind him to move over!
We have another class tonight and then only two more left. While Sam is not enjoying it there are things that are helpful. :) With all the differences I thought a little explanation would be fun for you to see what we are experiencing.
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