Delivering in China

I seem to be getting some street cred from the states for delivering a baby in China. So let's set the record straight. I hate to argue when people are proud of me, but delivering in China has been an awful lot like delivering in the states. I felt quite confident in each of the doctors and nurses who surrounded me. In fact, I'm in the International Section of a local hospital - meaning that everything happening here on the 12th floor meets American board regulations. A few bits and pieces have been a bit strange or overwhelming, but the experience overall has been strikingly similar to Missouri Baptist.

But just for fun, a few things have been pretty different:

Although each of the doctors and nurses speak English, they only do so to me. Amongst themselves, they always speak in Chinese. This can be overwhelming and isolating sometimes - like when they put in the spinal. But this can also be quiet and restful sometimes - like when they were finishing up the operation. It makes it much easier to tune out all of the words around me, but also much more difficult to draw distraction from them.

People laugh a lot in China. Laughs mean something is funny, someone is uncomfortable, someone is wrong, someone has been insulted, someone else could carry this list on interminably. So, I know that the nurses laughing a lot should not be taken as an insult. They are not laughing at me when I disagree. And I disagree often - the room is not too cold, the baby is not too cold, the baby is not hungry now, I will give her formula now. Nurses the world over must struggle with patients thinking they know more than the experts, and new mothers the world over struggle with overbearing nurses. I can not say if Chinese nurses are more authoritarian or not - but they do laugh at me more.

Annika takes some of her meals from a bottle, which we brought from home. As the water in China is not safe, the nurses sterilize the bottles after each use. When returned, a nurse always places a tissue over the bottle. As if the tissue is cleaner than the air surrounding it.

Tissues play a big part in this maternity ward. When I placed a burp cloth on my shoulder to burp the baby, a nurse quickly put some tissues on top of it.

They don't seem to be big on mother-child bonding. Although very supportive of breast feeding, none of the nurses seem to believe that I also want to be the one bottle feeding my child. And even when I was nursing exclusively, they gave the baby formula in the middle of the night. She was hungry, and you were sleeping.

The 12th floor is a little piece of the West in an otherwise very Chinese hospital. Meaning, only 3 elevators operate for the whole building - it took Dave 10 minutes to reach our floor one day, because he was the only person not willing to push someone for a place on the elevator. Meaning, construction noise still inhibits our lives, with drills, hammers and some sort of suction noise playing most of the morning. Meaning that coming into the hospital is not for the faint of heart, as people are being wheeled down main hallways, carrying their own blankets, food and IVs, lights are inferior, floors and walls look dirty. I'll admit - I'm a bit nervous about taking her out through what must be a germ-infested elevator and front corridor.

As I'm in on a Saturday, Annika saw a local doctor today. This was probably the most jarring experience of them all. He did not smile once. When he first saw me (still lying on bedrest) he said, What is the matter with you?

I thought about answering as plainly as I could - I just had a baby, but somehow it didn't seem constructive. He watched me suspiciously as the nurse explained that I had a spinal tap rather than an epidural during the surgery, and need to lay flat on my back to stave off headaches (yeah - it sucks).

Then, he looked at the baby. What is the matter with the baby? Again, I'm a little thrown. At this point I have to assume that his English is poor, and that he means to ask how she is rather than what is the matter with her.

She's good, I say.

A boy? he asks.

A girl, the nurse and I both reply.

He strokes her soft spot, smiles at her hands, says she doesn't look yellow and no longer needs treatment for jaundice, and otherwise proclaims her healthy. Seriously - that's the extent of his exam. As he confirmed my feelings, I had no problem with his quick diagnosis - but I certainly wasn't bringing any questions to him, either.

Perhaps the coolest thing, though. She has a birth certificate from China, just like the locals have. Its in a little green book and its a serious little document. Very cool. As soon as possible, we will take that little booklet together with our marriage certificate and 2 photos of her (wish us luck on that one!) to the Shanghai Consulate, where the U.S. State Department will issue her a Certificate of Birth Abroad. Rather than having a birth certificate from a county within the US, her official birth certificate will come from the State Department, as is protocol for any US citizen born outside of the country. Pretty cool, huh?

postscript: The nurse just entered, as I was finishing the piece. She says I "play on the computer too much. Much better if I just lay and rest." I said, I am not tired - can not sleep. She says that's okay - just lay flat, close my eyes, and rest. Like, all day long. I can not even imagine!