Of babies, dwarfs and models
Dear friends,
Here’s the story about the birth of baby Remi - that is if you haven’t already heard the story and learnt how to deal with undersized gynecologist assistants, oversized gynecologists in full blown midlife crisis, and what to do when your water breaks whilst in the middle of a train ride…
Here I go: Even though I had planned to deliver in Ivory Coast, the doctors there sent me home because they didn’t like my previous HELLP syndrome history (with emergency caesarean) and feared that if they had to give me a blood transfusion, it might be infected with nasty viruses such as HIV and the likes. So I left Kamiel behind and hopped back on the plane with Niko to enjoy the last days of my pregnancy in Belgium in grand style (shopping, movies, cakes), whilst bracing myself for what was to come.
As part of this ‘bracing phase’ I decided to attend a lecture for expecting mothers at the local hospital. The lecture started with a woman introducing us to a certain Doctor Ping, an assistant in gynecology, she said, who would help us deliver our baby. Then she looked at the door and beckoned a little Chinese boy who was standing there, to come forward. A big sniffle went through the room accompanied by the murmur: ‘How old is this kid?’
‘Fourteen at the max,’ my neighbour whispered - while Doctor Ping clutched the pulpit with both hands but even then his head could barely reach over it.
He was dressed in a green medical uniform and he knew some medical terms so it might not have been a joke after all, but still I wondered, especially when he started to explain us how come we were pregnant (aha, so that pigeon had nothing to do with it?!)) how long a pregnancy lasts and what the typical symptoms are (strange swellings in the abdominal region as well as regular fainting, he said, which I was about to experience myself when he then told us how babies are usually born, describing us the melon-through-the-oninon-sized-canal scenario).
Speaker number two was a bit more enlightened, being an anesthetist who told us that even though it was written in Genesis 3,16 that in agony one shall give birth to one’s children, he comforted us that these days an epidural can be requested and will be given instantly, that is if you can get around the midwives who will still try to convince you to do it the ‘natural way’ - to me as natural as asking the dentist to pull out all your teeth without administering any pain relief and anesthetics. (Anyway, if I suffered from that kind of thinking I’d have stayed happily in Africa and squatted under a bush tree to deliver the baby there and then, biting the umbilical cord with my bare teeth to give it that natural touch.)
Number three was a pediatrician who told us the importance of our newborn to start scoring straight away - you’d think they give them some relief but no, only two minutes after birth the little ones have to start performing already, trying to get as many points as possible on the Apgar score (not sure what it all tests but wouldn’t be surprised if it rates their predispositions for musical brilliance, analytical thinking and a possible knack for water polo.)
The last speaker I heard (before I ran off) was a psychologist who said that three out of four were going to experience a postnatal depression, especially the ones who had to go through big changes, such as a move of house, a change of jobs or having to be separated from the natural father.
As I qualified for all three of those, I noted the speakers’ comment that in traditional cultures the baby blues are less common as new mothers there are not supposed to be superwomen but, just like in the animal world (think of elephants and the like), get lots of support from the group. This help, amongst others, makes the mother less vulnerable to the sufferings of sleep deprivation (a well proven torture technique).
With this in mind I planned to move back to Ivory Coast (and its abundance of nannies) as soon as the baby had made its entrée and was ready for the voyage. Of course, I hadn’t counted on a violent uprising in Abidjan that would make us flee the country very soon afterwards, nor had I counted on having the fourteen year old Chinese at my bedside at the moment of truth!
A week before my due date, Kamiel arrived in Belgium. The next day we went shopping in Antwerp when on the way back, in the midst of the train ride I suddenly thought: ‘Strange, did I sit down in a puddle or did someone leave the window open and is it raining inside this train?’
As if caught in a monsoon rain, I made it home to Kamiel's parents’ place where there just happened to be a celebration for his father’s birthday with mountains of cake, but would not let me have any as I was about to give birth soon and eating cake, they said, would make it all the messier!
That was the only hard part, honestly. Though no, now that I think of it, there was another difficult bit to come, later on. But in the beginning in the hospital all went remarkably well, thanks to the administering of an epidural which made for a rather pleasant night, chatting away with my sisters whom I had called in to keep me company once Kamiel had fallen asleep (still jet lagged).
It had been years since my sisters and I’d had so much time to catch up so we talked through the night till around 4am when a nurse walked in to tell us that we better caught some sleep because we still had a lot of work ahead of us, she said. So we slept a little bit till I woke up at 6 am, feeling some commotion in my belly, which according to all the beepers and machinery that by then had been attached to my body, meant that I was ready to give birth.
Now, that was really exciting because I had never given birth before - Niko having been pulled out by cesarean while I was in a very deep sleep. So this time I wanted to be very much there and see if the Chinese was right when he told us how babies really get there.
So we woke Kamiel and moved to the delivery room, where, just like in an aerobics class, I had to do a long series of abdominal muscle exercises, pushing a lot, and that was quite hard because whenever I caught Kamiel who was never too keen on bloody sights, his face looked so full of disgust and horror that I could not help laughing, something which was not appreciated by the doctor -- which by the way was the 14-year-old-looking-Chinese boy, as my own gynecologist had developed an acute case of midlife crisis, spending his days on a Harley Davidson and his nights in discotheques surrounded by ladies with tight bellies rather than the protruding lot of me.
Anyway, so the little Chinese was in charge and he kept telling me to stop laughing and to be serious and focus on the pushing, which, as I said, was not easy and this is where the second hard bit comes in, because he then had to take his scissors out, but before I had time to register that and to start running or, at least, screaming, there was all of a sudden someone else screaming in a voice I’d never heard before…
There she was, Remi, a little baby girl covered in blood and looking very blue-ish, but nevertheless scoring rather well on her first tests and, as my own gynecologist said -- who by that time had found the way to the hospital, wearing a fluorescent t-shirt he must have raided from his son's wardrobe -- Remi came with a lovely pair of long legs and therefore with a bright future in the modelling industry.
Bisous,
Griet - late 2004
Here’s the story about the birth of baby Remi - that is if you haven’t already heard the story and learnt how to deal with undersized gynecologist assistants, oversized gynecologists in full blown midlife crisis, and what to do when your water breaks whilst in the middle of a train ride…
Here I go: Even though I had planned to deliver in Ivory Coast, the doctors there sent me home because they didn’t like my previous HELLP syndrome history (with emergency caesarean) and feared that if they had to give me a blood transfusion, it might be infected with nasty viruses such as HIV and the likes. So I left Kamiel behind and hopped back on the plane with Niko to enjoy the last days of my pregnancy in Belgium in grand style (shopping, movies, cakes), whilst bracing myself for what was to come.
As part of this ‘bracing phase’ I decided to attend a lecture for expecting mothers at the local hospital. The lecture started with a woman introducing us to a certain Doctor Ping, an assistant in gynecology, she said, who would help us deliver our baby. Then she looked at the door and beckoned a little Chinese boy who was standing there, to come forward. A big sniffle went through the room accompanied by the murmur: ‘How old is this kid?’
‘Fourteen at the max,’ my neighbour whispered - while Doctor Ping clutched the pulpit with both hands but even then his head could barely reach over it.
He was dressed in a green medical uniform and he knew some medical terms so it might not have been a joke after all, but still I wondered, especially when he started to explain us how come we were pregnant (aha, so that pigeon had nothing to do with it?!)) how long a pregnancy lasts and what the typical symptoms are (strange swellings in the abdominal region as well as regular fainting, he said, which I was about to experience myself when he then told us how babies are usually born, describing us the melon-through-the-oninon-sized-canal scenario).
Speaker number two was a bit more enlightened, being an anesthetist who told us that even though it was written in Genesis 3,16 that in agony one shall give birth to one’s children, he comforted us that these days an epidural can be requested and will be given instantly, that is if you can get around the midwives who will still try to convince you to do it the ‘natural way’ - to me as natural as asking the dentist to pull out all your teeth without administering any pain relief and anesthetics. (Anyway, if I suffered from that kind of thinking I’d have stayed happily in Africa and squatted under a bush tree to deliver the baby there and then, biting the umbilical cord with my bare teeth to give it that natural touch.)
Number three was a pediatrician who told us the importance of our newborn to start scoring straight away - you’d think they give them some relief but no, only two minutes after birth the little ones have to start performing already, trying to get as many points as possible on the Apgar score (not sure what it all tests but wouldn’t be surprised if it rates their predispositions for musical brilliance, analytical thinking and a possible knack for water polo.)
The last speaker I heard (before I ran off) was a psychologist who said that three out of four were going to experience a postnatal depression, especially the ones who had to go through big changes, such as a move of house, a change of jobs or having to be separated from the natural father.
As I qualified for all three of those, I noted the speakers’ comment that in traditional cultures the baby blues are less common as new mothers there are not supposed to be superwomen but, just like in the animal world (think of elephants and the like), get lots of support from the group. This help, amongst others, makes the mother less vulnerable to the sufferings of sleep deprivation (a well proven torture technique).
With this in mind I planned to move back to Ivory Coast (and its abundance of nannies) as soon as the baby had made its entrée and was ready for the voyage. Of course, I hadn’t counted on a violent uprising in Abidjan that would make us flee the country very soon afterwards, nor had I counted on having the fourteen year old Chinese at my bedside at the moment of truth!
A week before my due date, Kamiel arrived in Belgium. The next day we went shopping in Antwerp when on the way back, in the midst of the train ride I suddenly thought: ‘Strange, did I sit down in a puddle or did someone leave the window open and is it raining inside this train?’
As if caught in a monsoon rain, I made it home to Kamiel's parents’ place where there just happened to be a celebration for his father’s birthday with mountains of cake, but would not let me have any as I was about to give birth soon and eating cake, they said, would make it all the messier!
That was the only hard part, honestly. Though no, now that I think of it, there was another difficult bit to come, later on. But in the beginning in the hospital all went remarkably well, thanks to the administering of an epidural which made for a rather pleasant night, chatting away with my sisters whom I had called in to keep me company once Kamiel had fallen asleep (still jet lagged).
It had been years since my sisters and I’d had so much time to catch up so we talked through the night till around 4am when a nurse walked in to tell us that we better caught some sleep because we still had a lot of work ahead of us, she said. So we slept a little bit till I woke up at 6 am, feeling some commotion in my belly, which according to all the beepers and machinery that by then had been attached to my body, meant that I was ready to give birth.
Now, that was really exciting because I had never given birth before - Niko having been pulled out by cesarean while I was in a very deep sleep. So this time I wanted to be very much there and see if the Chinese was right when he told us how babies really get there.
So we woke Kamiel and moved to the delivery room, where, just like in an aerobics class, I had to do a long series of abdominal muscle exercises, pushing a lot, and that was quite hard because whenever I caught Kamiel who was never too keen on bloody sights, his face looked so full of disgust and horror that I could not help laughing, something which was not appreciated by the doctor -- which by the way was the 14-year-old-looking-Chinese boy, as my own gynecologist had developed an acute case of midlife crisis, spending his days on a Harley Davidson and his nights in discotheques surrounded by ladies with tight bellies rather than the protruding lot of me.
Anyway, so the little Chinese was in charge and he kept telling me to stop laughing and to be serious and focus on the pushing, which, as I said, was not easy and this is where the second hard bit comes in, because he then had to take his scissors out, but before I had time to register that and to start running or, at least, screaming, there was all of a sudden someone else screaming in a voice I’d never heard before…
There she was, Remi, a little baby girl covered in blood and looking very blue-ish, but nevertheless scoring rather well on her first tests and, as my own gynecologist said -- who by that time had found the way to the hospital, wearing a fluorescent t-shirt he must have raided from his son's wardrobe -- Remi came with a lovely pair of long legs and therefore with a bright future in the modelling industry.
Bisous,
Griet - late 2004
posted by Griet at 4:01 PM
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