hospital tour and our final verdict

After visiting with one of the homebirth midwives, she, as mentioned, set us up with another of their trio so we could arrange to take a tour of the hospital's birthing facilities and learn about the procedures that they follow there.

And yesterday our stars finally aligned, and were able to meet her, check it out, and get all our questions answered.

It was great! I mean, the birthing facilities were ok - not as confortable as the Friendly Birthing Center in Taiwan, but not even close to as sterile and cold as the hospital birthing facilities over there either. For example, one or two of the LDRs have birthing tubs, so a water birth is possible, which is cool - though a water birth is no longer a thirst of mine really.

And procedures-wise, we were really happy with what she could tell us in terms of the very high likelyhood that our wishes would be upheld as long as we let them be known (so a Preference Letter would be vital).

I mean, as long as there were no medical reasons requiring the following, we could opt out of it: internal checks, fetal monitoring (they would listen with a stethoscope once in a while, which I'm ok with),the semi-recline and perinium-assist to avoid tearing - I could birth in the position I felt comfortable with, the shot of pitocin after birthing the placenta (or is it before? can't remember now), and vitamin K shot.

They also do not suction the baby's mouth and nose unless really necessary, and though they do not measure and weigh the baby in the delivery room, both mom and dad can head over with baby to the nurse's/doctor's check-up room for this procedure - which is done respectfully, meaning they do not stretch the baby out to get the length, but wait for baby to kind of kick out/unfold to get as close a measure as possible...vs Taiwan where they hold the babies up by their ancles (!).

I can choose to birth the placenta before cutting the umbilical cord, or just wait until it stops pulsing if that is as long as I wish to wait - again, writing it in my preference letter would be important here.

We could then choose to head home around 4 hours after the birth if all was well with me and babe, or we could move down to the 'hotel' for new moms downstairs and stay there for three days, where Judge and Leona could also stay for a small fee. If there were some extra needs, there were special rooms up in the birthing facilities where we would stay.

So all in all we feel quite comfortable with everything there, and confident we could have a good birthing experience.

Our deciding factor, however, is that I will feel more at ease and comfortable at home than in the LDR (like I said, it's ok, but not cozy comfortable). And therefore our decision is to go ahead towards a homebirth.

Exciting to have made our decision!

[Taken this weekend out in Djupvik -

what an wonderful getaway we had visiting friends in this beauty]

 

 

 

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