Friday, July 18, 2014

Birthing in Japan

This past week I gave birth to my forth baby, second son, Barnabas Spooner. It was a... less than perfect experience.

As a pregnant mother, I hoped that my baby would be born just a little early. The last stages of pregnancy are hard and even harder when it is hot and humid.

But my baby didn't come early.


At my second to last doctor appointment they told me that they didn't like to let women go past 42 weeks and would like to talk about possible inducement at my next appointment 5 days later. We didn't go into labor between those appointments and on Monday I was back at the hospital. I have my sister and sister-in-law here to help me with the kids when I am in labor and time is running out with the baby already late. I ask the doctor if I can be induced the next day, Tuesday. The doctor seemed thrilled that I would want to do it so soon, because my baby was all ready "3400 grams" and they are seemed worried about delivering such a "large" baby (even though this is less than the weight of two of my other children at birth). So I then have to get some tests done. I get my blood taken again, an x-ray is taken of my abdomen and chest, I get my heart checked, and a breathing test is done. I then proceed to the admittance office and take care of paperwork. To finish things I pay for all the medical work done and head home. I will be back at the hospital at 10am Tuesday for the inducement.

I go home and take care of as much as I can before I have to be in the hospital and tell my sisters that I should be back in a day or two with the baby (if I am healing well and there are no problems). Little did I know that things were not going to be as I was thinking they would be.

Going into this, I did research about what it was going to be like and what I should expect, having a baby in Japan. I knew that they didn't always let the father witness the birth, but they had given me the choice before hand so Paul was already cleared to be there for the birth. I had to pack more things for my stay at the hospital, like towels, a cup, my own pjs, soap, basically everything and anything that I would want or need for a stay at the hospital. I also knew that for this induction I would not be given or offered any pain killers and would have to cope with it as best as I could. There are other differences you can look up yourself that I haven't mentioned.

So Tuesday morning, Paul and I set off on the train to the hospital with the impending, dread of an induced labor without an epidural. We arrive to the hospital without problem and get sent up to the women's floor, the 8th floor. My height and weight are taken and I am put in a room with 3 other ladies. I leave the room to have an examination and talk to the doctor about what's going to be done, drug wise. They inform me that they are going to try an oral drug first, followed by IV drugs. I think to myself that they are going to just do them one right after the other, get everything done and out of the way as soon as possible, but I turn out to be wrong about this too.

I am give 4 pills, one every hour for 4 hours. During which I am put on and off fetal monitoring. The pills start some very mild contractions that don't do anything. I am examined again after the 4 hours of 1 pill per hour, to reveal that nothing has changed and that they will start an IV tomorrow (it was about 5pm). I am a bit surprised by that they are not going to start the IV that night and get the whole thing over will. I go back and eat dinner and get ready for bed. Paul stays the night and sleeps in the twin bed with me.

Day two, Wednesday, I am checked to see if there was any change over night, there isn't. The doctor informs me that they are going to start IV fluids and drugs. I go back to my room and wait for the nurse to come in and do my IV. The nurse comes and try to start an IV in my right arm. She fails, and it hurt, I start to feel sick as she tries my left arm. She manages to get it to take in my left arm in a vein at the base of my wrist. I don't end up throwing up, but it hurt and it takes about 20 minutes for the pain to subside.

These drugs in the IV don't cause much to happen. Much like the pills, they just barely make a dent in my labor condition; The contractions are 4 to 5 minutes apart and not very strong. I go through two bags of the stuff and get check again and very little change has occurred; They remove the IV. Its about 5pm again and I am back in my room waiting for dinner and feeling very sick about the idea of having them try to get another IV started tomorrow, Thursday. Paul goes home to make sure things are fine with the children, he will be back in the morning around 8am. I try a few things that night to get labor to start on its own, but nothing worked.

Thursday morning rolls around and I am given a new IV with new drugs. This time things really start. The contractions are stronger, regular, and there is pain. The nurses come and up the dose very frequently, until I am checked by the doctor again and they move me to the delivering room; I am at almost 4 cm; The time is about noon.

They try to get me to eat something, which I do but the pain keeps me from eating much at all. I am regularly progressing and yet they still came around and upped the dose every half hour. They tell me that "the baby is doing well, so we give you more". By 1:30 the contractions are very painful and I going into transitional labor; They up the dose again.

By the time I have been in transition for and hour and half I start to loose it. I start crying and hyperventilating, it was terrible pain and ask for someone to kill me. My cervex was not getting soft and effacing so I am give drugs to speed that along. After another 20 or 30 mins I get this sudden urge to use the toilet. I get up and walk out of the room towards the bathroom and try to go. I end up going a little with lots of crying and trying to get the pain to stop. I rush back to the room to try to get to the "bed". I end up collapsing on the floor in pain.

With the next contraction my water breaks all over the floor. It was so scary, I have never had my water break on its own; I have always had it broken for me. I get Paul to help me up onto the bed, just before the baby's head crowns. I am then told to "WAIT"! I don't, I have had people tell me that before and its not something I was going to repeat. They then  rush about getting things.

Then the real surprise happens.

Somewhere between 10 and 15 people file into the delivery room, 2 of whom are men. There is now 4 midwives 2 on each side of me around where my thighs are. There is another midwife scrubbed up ready to catch the baby and 2 doctors next to her, and then the 2 men, and about 4 baby nurses (granted the only number I can say for certain is that there were 2 guys there (other than my husband) watching my baby come into the world).

Baby is born within 5 minutes. They take the baby into the "baby room" where I can't see him, Paul follows the baby. The doctor them proceeds to take very painful steps to force something into my vagina to stretch it so that she and the other doctor and everyone behind her can see in, all the while she is very roughly and painfully massaging my uterus. I weep, it all continues to hurt very badly and I have nothing to cope with the pain. I ask over and over again  for the doctor to wait, please wait. No one translates for me to the doctor and the pain is overwhelming. Finally she stops and tells me that "you did a very good vaginal delivery" and leaves.

I am then given a chance to hold and nurse my baby. The moment is short lived. I have continued to cry this entire time. After just a few minutes, just as the baby has latched on, they come and say they need to take the baby away. I let them, thinking "they will give him back when they finish!"

I was wrong again.

I continue to cry as they finish cleaning me up and measuring the placenta and the fluids I lost. Then Paul comes in to tell me the bad news. They have taken the baby and placed him in an incubator and won't let us have him. My heart sinks even lower. I am too tired and in too much pain to rush down and demand that I am given my baby. I am still on an IV and have a bag of 500ml that I have to finish.

A nurse comes and tells me that she is going to check my bleeding.  I will have to have to use the toilet and change my pad before she will take me to see the baby. I get up and hobble to the toilet to the surprise of the nurse. When I come out, she has a wheel chair ready to wheel me 10 feet back to the delivery room.  I ask to see the baby and she wheels me and my IV pole down to the nursery.

In the window is my baby. The baby I have waited 9 months to hold. The baby I just went through hell for to get out of my womb.

He is in a box... alone... with no warm mommy holding him... with no breast nursing him. It was one of the hardest moments of my life. I have never hurt so bad in my life.

I ask the nurse if I can hold him and she says the doctors says baby needs to stay in the box. I explain that I am sad that no one is touching my baby. She informs me that I can go and touch him. I go into the room and open the little door and touch my little baby. The tears fall. I feel like I am being punished for loosing control in the last half hour of labor. I don't think this is the case now, but that is how I felt at the time.

I return to the delivery room to eat dinner and to wait for my IV fluid to empty into me. Paul is outraged, and I understand, but I also don't think he is in the right. I am hurt and it was hard to see the baby like that, but I don't wish to make trouble for the doctors; So I wait to see how things turn out.

I am moved back to the room I started out in, with the same 3 ladies. I am allowed to go and touch the baby when ever, Paul can only look at the baby through the window from 3-4pm. I go and visit the baby as soon as I am able. They tell me I can express milk for the baby and feed it to him every 3 hours. I manage to get some "milk"(clostrum) out for the baby with the help of one of the nurses, who is very rough with my breast. Every nurse who "helped" me get milk out was very rough with me.

Friday rolls around and I go to get my baby at 8am, the time I was told the night before that he would be taken out of the box. The nurse tells me that the baby can't be taken out of the box, and that the doctor is not in until 9 or 10am. I do my best to not show my disappointment and sadness, and ask the nurse if I can take him out for just 5 minutes to nurse him. She leaves and comes back with word from the doctor that I can. She takes him out and hands me my baby.

It has been more than twelve hours since I have held my baby. I nurse him and all to soon they take him back and put him in the plastic prison.

I leave and come back at 9:30 to talk to the doctor about the baby's condition. The doctor comes and tells me that the baby has to stay in the box and that this evening she will lower the oxygen level and see how he does. I tell them about Paul leaving and that my sisters are not staying forever and that I won't have anyone to take me home if they don't let me leave today (Paul would be leaving for a business trip early the next day). She says that she can lower the oxygen level at noon instead of at 5 or 6, and that I can come and nurse him when he needs it.

Finally things start to look up. Things go very well. The baby is taken off of oxygen and is taken out of the box around 2. I can now hold and nurse the baby as much as I want to, but I can't take him from the nursery. Also around this time Paul's Japanese rep arrives and talks to the doctor's and gets them to let us leave that day around 5pm. Yay! Things move forward and at 5pm we are on ground level paying for our hospital stay. We take the train home and enjoy one night together as a new family.

So, yeah, I don't recommend having a baby in Japan.

I don't blame the doctor's for what they did, but I do think they were in the wrong. I feel like they put the baby in stress by taking him from me and not letting him nurse. I feel like his breathing condition was caused by their actions and that there was never anything wrong with the baby. Everyone was very nice, but I did feel like both sides took advantage of the language gap. Us and them both trying to manipulate the other.

I am very happy that the baby is doing well and that we are not in the hospital anymore.

No comments:

Post a Comment