My Italian Hospital Birth Story
On October 6th at 8am, I entered the hospital through the ER to do a routine check-up. Here in Italy, starting at the 37th week of pregnancy, one goes to the hospital once a week do be hooked up to the fetal heart monitor machine to check on the baby and to see if there are any contractions. Afterwards, the doctor does a quick check-up, and then prints a summary of what transpired. This summary is then taken to one's actual doctor so that she can be aware of what's going on and make plans accordingly.
I was 41 weeks pregnant on the 6th. I entered at 8am hoping to beat the rush, which I did (yay!). After this appointment I planned to take my parents to get granita for breakfast before heading out to show them the castle here in Catania.
Well, so much for making plans. I was having no contractions, but I was 4cm dilated and 60% effaced. At all the other appointments I had been just 2cm and 50%. Apparently, being 4cm dilated and 41 weeks pregnant was enough for them to not let me go home.
Disclaimer: I was an ICU nurse for 2 years before Alan and I moved here. If you've heard that saying that nurses are the worst patients...well, that's not true for every nurse, but it is true for me. That being said, I was an ICU nurse and not a labor and delivery nurse so I'm not super familiar with what's standard care in this situation in the states.
So they admitted me and moved me to the labor and delivery room. I was told that I could not have anyone with me until I was in "true" labor. At this point, I was sneak texting Alan, telling him that I thought this was ridiculous since I was having no contractions. The reason I was sneak texting was because they told me that I wasn't allowed to have a phone or camera in the room with me, which again I don't understand. How was I supposed to tell my husband when he could come? Anyways, I digress. By noon, I had seen nobody. I was sitting in a chair by the bed and I was bored out of my mind. I texted Alan that the next time I saw someone that I was going to ask to go home. So, Alan and my parents, who had all been waiting outside since the waiting room was under construction, decided to go home. Alan took them home around 1:30 or 2pm.
While they were gone, a doctor came by my room to find me pacing the room. He looked at me aghast, and asked what on earth I was doing standing and walking. Then, things got moving. One of the ostetricas (as far as I can figure, she was kind of like a midwife...not a nurse and not a doctor...but I could be wrong) entered and told me that I was going to be induced. When I asked how and why, they informed me that it was because I was already 41 weeks, 4cm, and the baby was very big. Didn't seem like the right reasons to me, but I didn't feel like I could really say anything at this point.
So they started me on pitocin around 2:45. I had texted Alan and told him I was being induced. He was completely befuddled, since he was expecting me to convince them to let me go home. He had also just arrived back at the hospital from dropping my parents off at home. They let him enter my room finally, and he called Rina and Stephano and asked them to pick up my parents. We had no way to communicate with my parents since we hadn't thought to give them one of our cell phones, and apparently my parents had almost left the house to go for a walk when Rina and Stephano arrived. Good thing they didn't, or they would have missed getting picked up.
At 3:15 my water broke. I was on the fetal heart monitor again, and they checked me but no changes had occurred yet except for the water breaking. They increased the pitocin. The contractions finally started, and they were horrible. I had been planning on trying to do it all natural, but when the ostetrica asked me if I wanted an epidural, I said yes. Alan tried to remind me of all the reasons why I didn't want one, and I just looked at him and said, "At this point, I just want a c section...and if they'll give me the epidural I'll take it." Well, by the time they got the anesthesiologist and came back to check me, I was complete. I'd gone from 4cm 60% to 10 and 100% in an hour. Maybe that explains the intensity of the contractions. Who knows. Anyways, that meant that I couldn't have an epidural, so I did end up doing it all natural.
So at 4:30 I started having the urge to push, and the ostetrica stayed with me for the rest of the labor. I was extremely out of it for the rest of the labor. I think I labored with my eyes closed 90% of the time. I opened them when someone talked to me. I said maybe two sentences to Alan the entire time, and he said that whenever someone asked me a question, it was like I came out of a daze every time, and I had to ask them to repeat what they had said.
I was pleasantly surprised when they asked me if I wanted to get out of the bed and they took the fetal heart monitor off. Yes! I so wanted out of that bed. So I labored standing for a while, then squatting, and then finally they brought me a labor chair. I have no idea how long I pushed in these positions before they told me I had to get back in the bed. Some kind soul continued to wash my face with a cool rag in between pushes, and Alan fanned me the entire time.
I was never placed on the fetal heart monitor again, thankfully. My vital signs were checked once - when the admitted me. I never again had my blood pressure or anything else checked, which from a medical standpoint is maybe a little scary, but from a patient standpoint it was really nice to not have anything hooked up to me.
At some point they put an oxygen mask on me (again I was totally in a different world so all the details are kind of vague). Alan told me later that my lips were purple, and looked totally done in. I was in the middle of a push, when I felt them give me a (surprise!) epiosotomy. That got my eyes open, and I became aware that my room was filled with people. Alan later told me that there were at least 9 people in there. Is that normal? I don't know. Anyways, on the next push, the doctor grabbed Davey's head while another doctor who had massive forearms (yes, this thought did pop into my head at this point in my labor) pushed on my stomach to force him out. I don't think I even pushed him out at this point. The pain was so excruciating that I just tensed and I was sure I screamed my head off. Alan later told me that I didn't scream my head off, that I just said, "No" once and that I was a really polite laboring pregnant woman the whole time. Well, go figure....
Anyways, David Alessandro arrived at 8:38 pm after 4 hours of pushing! I didn't realize what time it was until someone shouted out his time of birth. He was purple, and my first thought was that his head was massive. They unwrapped the umbilical cord from around his neck and they immediately passed him to me while they dried him off. I was in shock. I had my eyes open for the first time in a while and I kept looking at him, and around the room, and to Alan. My brain finally kicked in and it hit me that he was finally here. Just when I felt brave enough to start touching him and looking at him, they took him away to the nursery to be checked out and cleaned up. I had seen the top of his head while he was laying on my chest for maybe all of three minutes. Alan told me that he had pretty blue-gray eyes, and I realized that I hadn't even seen them. I thought them taking him away so soon would make me sad, but honestly I was so exhausted that I didn't mind, especially since I knew I would get him back soon.
They told me he weighed 4340g (9lbs 9oz) and was 52cm...but when he was remeasured it was 57cm (22in).
After they took Davey, who at this point was actually still nameless, they kicked Alan out as well. They finished with me, and then I was rolled into a room that they obviously used for storage, and there I waited for 2 hours by myself until they found me a room. On the way to my room, they rolled me by the waiting room and let my family and visitors (the Spinas) come see me. They showed me pictures of Davey since the nurses had brought him by for them to see shortly after his birth.
I was taken to a room that had another pregnant girl in it. She was 41 weeks pregnant and basically waiting to go into labor. There was another empty bed in our room, but it filled up before the night was out with another young girl who was only 8 weeks pregnant but was being treated for kidney stones. It was a room with three lockers on one wall for our belongings, three beds lined up in a row, and there were no curtains. Luckily, I was familiar with this set-up after staying in the hospital for 2 weeks back in August when I went into preterm labor. It prepared me to not be shy.
That first night, they brought Davey to me after I settled. I don't think I slept a wink; I just kept staring at him. Alan and I texted back and forth and decided on his name that night.
I was there for three days total before I got to go home. Three days are obligatory if you gave birth naturally, and it's four days if you had a c-section. During those three days, I got to know my roommates and their families very well. There really was no privacy, but when there's no choice you just get over it. I remember the first day, the nurse came and checked on me and cleaned me up. While the nurse was doing this, the really young pregnant girl stated in shock, "Is it normal for there to be so much blood." And that's when I knew that anything that happened in that room would be subject to observation. The only thing that was a major struggle for me at the hospital was breastfeeding. I was obviously new to it and still learning, but I felt a lot of pressure. The women in my room (my roommates and their mothers or sisters who stayed with them overnight) would literally come up and try to help me and tell/show me what I needed to do. Needless to say, with no privacy and that kind of pressure, it didn't start off very well.
Visiting hours were from 1-3pm only. So Alan didn't get to see Davey again after the birth till the next afternoon. The room was always chaos during these two hours, because there was no restriction on the number of visitors. So there was usually around 20 people in the room at once visiting. One female relative was permitted to stay overnight from 7pm-7am. My mom stayed with me each night. She had to sit in a little metal chair, poor thing, but I felt so much better having her there with me.
There's an Italian "tradition" that we don't do in the states. When a baby is born, you offer all of your visitors confectionery candies (like those candied almonds we have at weddings). They have to take an odd number of them, so a lot of people take three instead of just one. So we had blue confectionery candies and some almond bread cakes that are traditional to here to offer to our visitors and the hospital workers.
On Thursday morning, after the pediatrician checked on Davey, we were discharged. So I grabbed his stuff and mine, and walked out the door. There's no wheelchair escort here like in the states, and nobody stopped me on my way out to see if the baby I was taking with me was indeed mine. Of course, since nobody escorts you out, they don't have anyone check to see if you have a car seat or if it's properly installed (as they do in American hospitals). That makes sense though since I see a lot of people just carry their babies in their laps in cars. I don't think the rules are as strict.
So there's my birth story. Below are some facts about my hospital stay that are different (not better or worse) than a typical stay in an American hospital that I thought you might find interesting.
1. Bring everything you need - gown, toilet paper, pads, soap for the bathroom, sheets for the baby's crib, EVERYTHING! They provide nothing except one roll of toilet paper a day, which does not last long when you have three pregnant/post partum girls sharing it.
2. The food is actually good. Ok, by Italian standards it's not that good, but compared to American hospital food, it's like dining at a 5 star restaurant. It also seems much healthier. There was a pasta, meat, vegetables, fruit, and a bottle of water with each meal. Oh and breakfast was latte macchiato or tea with cookies.
3. Shared rooms and no curtains. Don't be shy.
4. The doctors come into your room for rounds twice a day (morning and afternoon). Again, no privacy so be ready for your roommates to make comments to the doctor about YOUR issues or plan of care. However, this can come in handy when you're a foreigner and it's hard to remember all the medicines/instructions they verbally tell you. I had one of my roommates help me write everything down the doctor had just told me and she helped me spell the medicines correctly. So it's not all bad.
5. Speaking of doctors, it was a different doctor each day and each round. I didn't have an "admitting" doctor. There was always a doctor on the floor during the day.
6. Baby stays with you the whole time, unless there's a medical reason for him to stay in the nursery.
7. There are windows that open and let it wonderful fresh air! But they also let in mosquitoes...
8. You'll feel like a family...really. It's hard not to when you have nothing to do but talk to your roommates and their family members all day. You'll even end up sharing food that family members bring in.
9. There was no toilet seat on the toilet. Welcome to Europe...
I was 41 weeks pregnant on the 6th. I entered at 8am hoping to beat the rush, which I did (yay!). After this appointment I planned to take my parents to get granita for breakfast before heading out to show them the castle here in Catania.
Well, so much for making plans. I was having no contractions, but I was 4cm dilated and 60% effaced. At all the other appointments I had been just 2cm and 50%. Apparently, being 4cm dilated and 41 weeks pregnant was enough for them to not let me go home.
Disclaimer: I was an ICU nurse for 2 years before Alan and I moved here. If you've heard that saying that nurses are the worst patients...well, that's not true for every nurse, but it is true for me. That being said, I was an ICU nurse and not a labor and delivery nurse so I'm not super familiar with what's standard care in this situation in the states.
So they admitted me and moved me to the labor and delivery room. I was told that I could not have anyone with me until I was in "true" labor. At this point, I was sneak texting Alan, telling him that I thought this was ridiculous since I was having no contractions. The reason I was sneak texting was because they told me that I wasn't allowed to have a phone or camera in the room with me, which again I don't understand. How was I supposed to tell my husband when he could come? Anyways, I digress. By noon, I had seen nobody. I was sitting in a chair by the bed and I was bored out of my mind. I texted Alan that the next time I saw someone that I was going to ask to go home. So, Alan and my parents, who had all been waiting outside since the waiting room was under construction, decided to go home. Alan took them home around 1:30 or 2pm.
While they were gone, a doctor came by my room to find me pacing the room. He looked at me aghast, and asked what on earth I was doing standing and walking. Then, things got moving. One of the ostetricas (as far as I can figure, she was kind of like a midwife...not a nurse and not a doctor...but I could be wrong) entered and told me that I was going to be induced. When I asked how and why, they informed me that it was because I was already 41 weeks, 4cm, and the baby was very big. Didn't seem like the right reasons to me, but I didn't feel like I could really say anything at this point.
So they started me on pitocin around 2:45. I had texted Alan and told him I was being induced. He was completely befuddled, since he was expecting me to convince them to let me go home. He had also just arrived back at the hospital from dropping my parents off at home. They let him enter my room finally, and he called Rina and Stephano and asked them to pick up my parents. We had no way to communicate with my parents since we hadn't thought to give them one of our cell phones, and apparently my parents had almost left the house to go for a walk when Rina and Stephano arrived. Good thing they didn't, or they would have missed getting picked up.
At 3:15 my water broke. I was on the fetal heart monitor again, and they checked me but no changes had occurred yet except for the water breaking. They increased the pitocin. The contractions finally started, and they were horrible. I had been planning on trying to do it all natural, but when the ostetrica asked me if I wanted an epidural, I said yes. Alan tried to remind me of all the reasons why I didn't want one, and I just looked at him and said, "At this point, I just want a c section...and if they'll give me the epidural I'll take it." Well, by the time they got the anesthesiologist and came back to check me, I was complete. I'd gone from 4cm 60% to 10 and 100% in an hour. Maybe that explains the intensity of the contractions. Who knows. Anyways, that meant that I couldn't have an epidural, so I did end up doing it all natural.
So at 4:30 I started having the urge to push, and the ostetrica stayed with me for the rest of the labor. I was extremely out of it for the rest of the labor. I think I labored with my eyes closed 90% of the time. I opened them when someone talked to me. I said maybe two sentences to Alan the entire time, and he said that whenever someone asked me a question, it was like I came out of a daze every time, and I had to ask them to repeat what they had said.
I was pleasantly surprised when they asked me if I wanted to get out of the bed and they took the fetal heart monitor off. Yes! I so wanted out of that bed. So I labored standing for a while, then squatting, and then finally they brought me a labor chair. I have no idea how long I pushed in these positions before they told me I had to get back in the bed. Some kind soul continued to wash my face with a cool rag in between pushes, and Alan fanned me the entire time.
I was never placed on the fetal heart monitor again, thankfully. My vital signs were checked once - when the admitted me. I never again had my blood pressure or anything else checked, which from a medical standpoint is maybe a little scary, but from a patient standpoint it was really nice to not have anything hooked up to me.
At some point they put an oxygen mask on me (again I was totally in a different world so all the details are kind of vague). Alan told me later that my lips were purple, and looked totally done in. I was in the middle of a push, when I felt them give me a (surprise!) epiosotomy. That got my eyes open, and I became aware that my room was filled with people. Alan later told me that there were at least 9 people in there. Is that normal? I don't know. Anyways, on the next push, the doctor grabbed Davey's head while another doctor who had massive forearms (yes, this thought did pop into my head at this point in my labor) pushed on my stomach to force him out. I don't think I even pushed him out at this point. The pain was so excruciating that I just tensed and I was sure I screamed my head off. Alan later told me that I didn't scream my head off, that I just said, "No" once and that I was a really polite laboring pregnant woman the whole time. Well, go figure....
Anyways, David Alessandro arrived at 8:38 pm after 4 hours of pushing! I didn't realize what time it was until someone shouted out his time of birth. He was purple, and my first thought was that his head was massive. They unwrapped the umbilical cord from around his neck and they immediately passed him to me while they dried him off. I was in shock. I had my eyes open for the first time in a while and I kept looking at him, and around the room, and to Alan. My brain finally kicked in and it hit me that he was finally here. Just when I felt brave enough to start touching him and looking at him, they took him away to the nursery to be checked out and cleaned up. I had seen the top of his head while he was laying on my chest for maybe all of three minutes. Alan told me that he had pretty blue-gray eyes, and I realized that I hadn't even seen them. I thought them taking him away so soon would make me sad, but honestly I was so exhausted that I didn't mind, especially since I knew I would get him back soon.
They told me he weighed 4340g (9lbs 9oz) and was 52cm...but when he was remeasured it was 57cm (22in).
After they took Davey, who at this point was actually still nameless, they kicked Alan out as well. They finished with me, and then I was rolled into a room that they obviously used for storage, and there I waited for 2 hours by myself until they found me a room. On the way to my room, they rolled me by the waiting room and let my family and visitors (the Spinas) come see me. They showed me pictures of Davey since the nurses had brought him by for them to see shortly after his birth.
I was taken to a room that had another pregnant girl in it. She was 41 weeks pregnant and basically waiting to go into labor. There was another empty bed in our room, but it filled up before the night was out with another young girl who was only 8 weeks pregnant but was being treated for kidney stones. It was a room with three lockers on one wall for our belongings, three beds lined up in a row, and there were no curtains. Luckily, I was familiar with this set-up after staying in the hospital for 2 weeks back in August when I went into preterm labor. It prepared me to not be shy.
That first night, they brought Davey to me after I settled. I don't think I slept a wink; I just kept staring at him. Alan and I texted back and forth and decided on his name that night.
I was there for three days total before I got to go home. Three days are obligatory if you gave birth naturally, and it's four days if you had a c-section. During those three days, I got to know my roommates and their families very well. There really was no privacy, but when there's no choice you just get over it. I remember the first day, the nurse came and checked on me and cleaned me up. While the nurse was doing this, the really young pregnant girl stated in shock, "Is it normal for there to be so much blood." And that's when I knew that anything that happened in that room would be subject to observation. The only thing that was a major struggle for me at the hospital was breastfeeding. I was obviously new to it and still learning, but I felt a lot of pressure. The women in my room (my roommates and their mothers or sisters who stayed with them overnight) would literally come up and try to help me and tell/show me what I needed to do. Needless to say, with no privacy and that kind of pressure, it didn't start off very well.
Visiting hours were from 1-3pm only. So Alan didn't get to see Davey again after the birth till the next afternoon. The room was always chaos during these two hours, because there was no restriction on the number of visitors. So there was usually around 20 people in the room at once visiting. One female relative was permitted to stay overnight from 7pm-7am. My mom stayed with me each night. She had to sit in a little metal chair, poor thing, but I felt so much better having her there with me.
There's an Italian "tradition" that we don't do in the states. When a baby is born, you offer all of your visitors confectionery candies (like those candied almonds we have at weddings). They have to take an odd number of them, so a lot of people take three instead of just one. So we had blue confectionery candies and some almond bread cakes that are traditional to here to offer to our visitors and the hospital workers.
On Thursday morning, after the pediatrician checked on Davey, we were discharged. So I grabbed his stuff and mine, and walked out the door. There's no wheelchair escort here like in the states, and nobody stopped me on my way out to see if the baby I was taking with me was indeed mine. Of course, since nobody escorts you out, they don't have anyone check to see if you have a car seat or if it's properly installed (as they do in American hospitals). That makes sense though since I see a lot of people just carry their babies in their laps in cars. I don't think the rules are as strict.
So there's my birth story. Below are some facts about my hospital stay that are different (not better or worse) than a typical stay in an American hospital that I thought you might find interesting.
1. Bring everything you need - gown, toilet paper, pads, soap for the bathroom, sheets for the baby's crib, EVERYTHING! They provide nothing except one roll of toilet paper a day, which does not last long when you have three pregnant/post partum girls sharing it.
2. The food is actually good. Ok, by Italian standards it's not that good, but compared to American hospital food, it's like dining at a 5 star restaurant. It also seems much healthier. There was a pasta, meat, vegetables, fruit, and a bottle of water with each meal. Oh and breakfast was latte macchiato or tea with cookies.
3. Shared rooms and no curtains. Don't be shy.
4. The doctors come into your room for rounds twice a day (morning and afternoon). Again, no privacy so be ready for your roommates to make comments to the doctor about YOUR issues or plan of care. However, this can come in handy when you're a foreigner and it's hard to remember all the medicines/instructions they verbally tell you. I had one of my roommates help me write everything down the doctor had just told me and she helped me spell the medicines correctly. So it's not all bad.
5. Speaking of doctors, it was a different doctor each day and each round. I didn't have an "admitting" doctor. There was always a doctor on the floor during the day.
6. Baby stays with you the whole time, unless there's a medical reason for him to stay in the nursery.
7. There are windows that open and let it wonderful fresh air! But they also let in mosquitoes...
8. You'll feel like a family...really. It's hard not to when you have nothing to do but talk to your roommates and their family members all day. You'll even end up sharing food that family members bring in.
9. There was no toilet seat on the toilet. Welcome to Europe...
Wonderful post Rachel!
ReplyDeleteIt remind me my days at the hospital to deliver my children!
Love, Rina.