Ohhh baby!

Today baby and I went to playgroup.  It was lots of fun!  While there, the moms were discussing having babies in Europe.  It seems that pregnancy and delivery are quite different here than in the US.  The women were swapping stories and most of what I heard surprised me.  Instead of epidurals for pain control, they tend to use nitrous oxide (laughing gas) during the labor process.  You can get an epidural if you specifically ask for one, but they aren’t handed out like candy here.  Apparently this isn’t just in Denmark but also in the UK and other countries.  The nitrous oxide doesn’t kill the pain but calms the mother down during contractions.  They also said that usually you don’t stay overnight in the hospital unless there are complications with the delivery.  The one mom was told she could go home 6 hours after the baby was born and the other mom went home 2 hours after birth.  Pretty sure I couldn’t really walk that soon after birth but I also had an epidural, not the laughing gas.  If you do end up staying overnight at the hospital, you are in a room with many women (unless you pay to stay at the “hospital hotel”).  I think they were talking about 4-6 women in a room, not quite sure on that number though.  Sometimes you don’t even get a curtain around your bed!  You are on your own to take care of the new baby, too.  No nurses to do the dirty work for you!  So to summarize this, there are 4-6 new moms in a room with 4-6 new babies….sounds really restful to me (dripping with sarcasm). 

So say you have a baby and then are released from the hospital some hours later.  Most people here do not have cars.  So how do you get home??  You can’t ride a bike (obviously) so I suppose they take a taxi.  I was reading on the internet about this subject and someone said that the ambulance will actually take you home if you need a ride.  That website also said that women are known to ride their bikes to the hospital while in labor (yikes).  You can also call an ambulance when you’re having contractions, too.  Now say you get home and you live on the 3^rd floor of the building and there’s no elevator.  I’d hope that my husband loved me enough to carry my happy butt up the stairs.  Of course with a baby and a stroller, we picked a building that conveniently had an elevator.  We had specifically asked for buildings with elevators or an apartment on the first floor for that reason.  I followed the guy showing us apartments while house hunting up 4 flights of stairs carrying the baby and promptly told him no as soon as I hit the door of the apartment (huffing and puffing…trying not to die lol).  Gorgeous place but there’s a reason it wasn’t rented out.  So after this discussion of having children in Europe, I have decided that we won’t be having babies anytime soon and if we do, I’m going to the US to do it J