Cornelis

Cornelis
November 5, 1991
3165 gr (7 lbs)
52 cm (20.5")
head was 36.5 cm (14.4")

Cees was born at home. Home birth is a lot more common in the Netherlands than it is in the States. About 40% of the births are at home. A standard question in your pregnancy is 'Where are you going to give birth?', and they don't mean which hospital. Here in the States every one seems to assume that of course you will give birth in the hospital.

Actually with Cees, I wanted to give birth in the hospital. When I just got pregnant, I thought about it and decided I wanted my first kid in the hospital, and then I would reconsider with subsequent kids. I felt that would be the best decision for me, and would be safer for the baby.

But then the months went by and I started reading and thinking more about it. I found out that attended homebirth statistically is as safe, or safer than a hospital birth. So halfway my pregnancy I said 'No, I am not going to the hospital to have this baby. I'll just stay home!' :-) I told my midwife and she was OK with it. The only thing she did was change my the notition on my records from hospital to home birth. I did not have to change providers, all midwives do both home and hospital births.

The pre- and postnatal care system is very good. When you have a normal pregnancy and birth you always have a midwife. The midwife screens you for signs of complications and if you have complications you have to use an obstetrician. With a low-risk birth, you can choose whether you want to birth at home or in the hospital. You have to give birth in the hospital when you are less than 37 weeks along, or are having twins or have a breech birth or have any other complication. But even if you give birth in a hospital, you will be released within 24 hours. (Unless you have a C-section, then you stay for 7 days or so)

After birth you get a kind of nurse/mother's helper at home, who basically takes care of mom, baby, other kids and the household. Also the midwife visits you first every day and then every other day for the first 10 days. All of this is paid by your health insurance, you only pay a minimal amount yourself. This is really great to help you through this first week. This nurse starts out with 10 hours a day for the first few days and then the hours gradually increase to a few hours on the last (usually 7th or 8th) day.

My pregnancy with Cees was very uneventful. I was very sick in the beginning, felt great during the rest of the time. I loved every moment of being pregnant though, especially feeling the baby move around inside me. Cees was very active.

When I was 2 weeks overdue, the midwife stripped my membrames, in the hope of getting things going. It didn't. When I was 3 weeks overdue, the midwife recommended castor oil. I don't recommend it, but I did not know as much then as I do now. There is a controversy about it, one story about it being that it can cause the baby to have a BM too, leading to possible complications as meconium aspiration. I am still not sure whether that is true, but don't think I would take the risk again. On the practical side, a castor oil induction is nasty on your body, not a very pleasant way to labor!

I took the castor oil Monday morning and waited for things to happen. The whole day nothing happened, but in the evening I started to get some cramps (and diarrhea :-( After some time they seemed to be regular (5 minutes or less) and I thought they were getting painful. Since this was my first kid, I wasn't sure whether this was the real thing or not. Around 11pm I called the midwife and she said: 'Well, you still sound so cheerful, I don't think this is the real thing yet.' But she came to check me anyway, around 11.30pm, and she found out that I was not dilated yet! :-( Not at all! She told me that these cramps were just because of the castor oil and just to go to bed and get some rest before I went to the hospital to be induced the next day.

You can imagine that I wasn't too happy about that and quite disappointed! Secretly I had hoped that this was the real thing and that I would be holding my baby soon.

Around midnight I went to bed and thought, 'gosh, these cramps do hurt a lot more now I am lying down, than when I was sitting up.' And I got a lot of diarrhea and vomiting, so I was in the bath room most of the time. That's the other reason I wouldn't do castor oil again, this is not a nice way to spend your time while being in labor! Between all the bathroom visits, I still tried to sleep, which was quite impossible :-) We still thought that 'real labor' had not started yet, or maybe just a little bit. (Even while the contractions were so bad, that I couldn't breath through them anymore, but more yelled and screamed and cursed.

At 4am I got the urge to push. This took me totally by surprise! I was sure I could not be fully dilated yet, since only a few hours ago I had not been dilated at all. So I went into the bathtub (my waters still had not broken) and tried to puff puff puff the pushing urge away. Well, it was more like 'Puff, PUSH PUSH', since the pushing urge was so strong, I just could not suppress it.

Sander called the midwife, who was still busy doing another birth and stitching up the mom, so it took some time and another phone call for her to arrive around 4.55am. She was very cheery, telling me that she had a dream about me earlier that night. I had delivered a baby boy in that dream. She looked at me in the bath tub and watched me having a contraction. She told me she could see the bag of waters when I had the contraction.

She and Sander helped me out of the bath, onto the bed. I complained to her that it hurt so much. She quietly reassured me 'Yes, I know it hurts!' and somehow acknowledging it that way, made it much easier to handle for me! She broke my waterbag and we waited for the next contraction. I leaned against a few pillows and I pushed 2 or 3 times and then Cees arrived at 5.10am. He had the cord around his neck, so she had to take that off and I needed a pretty big episiotomy, since he had a big head and everything went so fast.

I still remember the amazement I felt when he was born. I was just so totally surprised by having a real baby come out! Somehow I knew that there was a baby inside, but it didn't really hit home until he was born. My first thought was not 'It's a boy' or 'It's a girl', but instead a totally stunned 'It's a BABY!!!!'. I marvelled at the wonderfullness of it.

We waited for the placenta to come, which didn't take long and was way easier than getting the baby out. The placenta was normal, but the cord had only 2 veins, instead of the normal 3.

Cees had trouble breathing, he had a lot of stridor. The midwife immediately called the pediatrician and told him to go to the hospital, and after the placenta was delivered she and the nurses (who arrived during the birth) brought the baby to the hospital. She arranged an ambulance for me, so I was picked up a little bit later and brought to the hospital. Cees was in the NICU and I got to see him through a window and then I was brought into a delivery room and she started to stitch me up. (I hated that part :-( Cees had to stay in the hospital for 14 days and was diagnosed with laryngomalacia. He also had problems growing and was throwing up a lot. The first 10 days I could stay in the maternity ward, so that I could nurse him and be close to him (at least in the same building)

After that I had to go home, since the insurance covered only 10 days for the mom in these kind of situations, so we were basically driving to and from the hospital the whole day. The only time I let them feed him was at 4am, for the remainder of the day I nursed him every 3 hours from 7am till 1am. I used to nurse him, go home, sleep for an hour, go there again, nurse him, go home, sleep for another hour and so on. I was so glad when we finally could take him home.

That was when we started the family bed. It was so good to have him near us at last. We just could not imagine to have him sleep somewhere else, after having missed out on a lot of contact in the hospital.

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