Too Good To Be True

***Warning! This post might exceed the too-much-knowledge limit of the most sensitive readers***

I should have known.

Everything went so well with the pregnancy. The only thing bothering me was the extreme exhaustion. The first three months I just wanted to sleep. And then again at the end of the pregnancy, I was very tired. I didn't even have the energy take my friend out for jumbo drinks, when she visited us in November! But otherwise everything was fine.

Then there was the child birth. Well, I didn't get the epidural this time either. But on the other hand, I had to spend less than twenty minutes at the maternity ward before Baby was born, so I guess I cannot complain.

But then there was my post-natal check up. The doctor found out that there was a piece of the placenta still attached. There was no specific reason for this, I just had 'extremely bad luck', as two different doctors put it.

So, on Thursday I had to go through an operation which included general anesthesia.

The setting for my Valentine's Day

I must admit that the eight days before the operation, when I had time to imagine it all in my head, were actually worse than the operation itself.

But now everything is fine. And most importantly, the baby is fine.

*****
Olisihan se pitänyt arvata, että jotain vastoinkäymisiä tulee. Raskausaika meni mukavasti, vaikka olinkin sekä alku- että loppuaikana todella väsynyt. Ja synnytys meni nopeasti, tosin en taaskaan ehtinyt saada toivomaani epiduraalipuudutusta. 

Mutta sitten jälkitarkastuksessa todettiin, että istukasta olikin jäänyt palanen jäljelle. Ja se piti poistaa nukutuksessa. Mukava ystävänpäivä! Mutta nyt kaikki on hyvin.

Having a Baby In Germany: the Hospital Part

Now, don't get all excited - I'm not saying that we are having another baby! But I have been writing about all baby related things I have come across here in Germany, like the paper work required and how the healthcare of a newborn is arranged. So the two things missing are the pregnancy and the hospital parts.

We moved to Germany about a month before Fräulein was born, so I don't really have much experience about being pregnant in Germany. But she was born here, so I can tell you about choosing the hospital and what is to be expected there. I know that more and more women are giving birth at their own homes or these 'birth homes', which are not medical facilities. But when I was pregnant with Fräulein, I only considered different hospitals, so this post is really only about that choice.

Like all doctor's offices, also the hospitals are private here. In Finland, you must have your baby in the hospital, which happens to be 'your' hospital, based on the city you live in. But here in Germany, you are able to choose the hospital. Because of this, there is a bit of competition between the hospitals, as they want as many customers as possible. And I guess that is partly the cause why especially the smaller hospitals seem to be very cozy and friendly. That is something I'm not sure I could say about Finnish hospitals...

The hospitals have introduction events (Info-Abend) for future parents, usually 1-4 times per month. There you have a short lecture about the hospital and their services and afterwards you can have a look at the delivery rooms and the maternity ward. I think this is great, because then you can meet the staff and really feel the atmosphere of the hospital. Although some of the lectures might be a bit too praising...

When you have chosen your hospital, you should contact them to arrange a meeting, in which their collect your personal data and information about your pregnancy. Hospitals usually recommend to have this meeting about 8-6 before your due date.  You can also go to most of the hospitals without this pre-meeting, but when you have done this beforehand, you don't need to worry about the paper work when you are going to the hospital to have your baby.

When we moved to Wiesbaden, we were a bit in a hurry in choosing the hospital. There are three hospitals with maternity wards in Wiesbaden. One of the hospitals, HSK, is a big one and they also have a ward for sick children. The other two are smaller and cozier, but if there is something wrong with the baby, she/he will be moved to HSK for treatment.

We went to see all of the three hospitals. It was clear for me that, as there wasn't anything exceptional in my pregnancy, I would choose one of the smaller hospitals. A friend of mine had had her baby in Paulinen Klinik and had liked it a lot. So, I called them to make an appointment. Already on the phone I got a bit funny feeling, as the nurse did not speak any English and giggled a lot. I was able to make an appointment, but at the meeting the nurse, who was taking my notes (not the same one as on the phone), giggled in trying to find the right words. So much so that she had to leave the room at one point.

This experience made me think that I wouldn't like the nurses behaving like that while I was in labor. There is nothing wrong in trying to find the right words or being in a good mood, but I really didn't like to face that giggling in the delivery room!

There are a lot of Americans here in Wiesbaden, because the U.S. Army is based here. I thought that maybe these American families would prefer the other smaller hospital, catholic St. Josefs-Hospital. And I was proven right. I was able to make an appointment on a short notice and in the waiting room I talked with an American mother, who had given birth a couple of hours earlier (she was already leaving the hospital!). The nurse I talked with spoke perfect English and they even had many documents translated in English. So, my decision was made: Fräulein was to be born here!

And so she did. I won't go into details of her birth here, but I must say that I was very happy with St. Josephs Hospital. Everyone was nice and professional. On the maternity ward they even arranged so that we were taken care of by the nurse who was the most experienced in speaking English.

Three-days-old Fräulein in her hospital bed.

Before Fräulein was born, I had some questions about the German system. There were also things I didn't even come to think of. I'll list some of them here, in case someone else in wondering the same things. And yes, some of these things might sound completely normal for some of you, but I'm from Finland and used to the ways things are handled there.

• There are anesthetics available for you while in labor, if you choose to have some. At the pre-meeting I was given a document about all the possible drugs so that I could read it in advance and just sign the consent when needed. Everything went so quickly that I didn't have time to get any drugs, but I wondered afterwards, why they didn't offer me any laughing gas, which is quite popular in Finland. 

• In Germany, you usually stay in the hospital for three nights, because then your baby can have her U2 check done at the hospital. You can leave the hospital as soon as a couple of hours after birth, if you feel like it, but then the hospital wants to make sure that you have booked the U2 check with the baby's doctor before you leave.

• Many hospitals have family rooms, but you cannot book one in advance. In our case, there was only one other mother with her baby in the ward when we arrived, so Herr Welle was able to stay with us in the room which was normally equipped for two mothers.

The view from our 'family room'

• In Germany, the hospital doesn't provide the towels or the clothes for you to wear while you stay there, so you must pack those in your hospital back. They do provide clothing for the baby.

For some reason, all the baby clothes at the hospital
were very big for a newborn (56 or 62cm)

• If you are not German, you should take your own birth-certificate to the hospital with you. And if you are married, take also your marriage-certificate and the husband's birth-certificate. I can say from experience that it makes things a whole lot easier...

• In Germany, you must give a name to your baby soon after the birth (in Finland you have two months to do this). They asked for the name as soon as Fräulein was born. We only had one name decided at that point. The two other names we filled in the form, in which all birth details were documented. This had to be filled before we left the hospital.

• They do not teach how to wash the baby's bottom under running water. I have been told that, in Finland, you cannot leave the hospital before you know how to do that safely. But here you just wipe the bottom with baby-wipes or wet towels.

• Many German hospitals have a certificate called 'Baby-Friendly Hospital'. The main points of the certificate are that the breastfeeding is encouraged in every way possible and the hospital practices rooming in, so that the baby shares the room with the mother. I would have taken these things as granted, but apparently they are relatively new practices.

• And something I did wonder a lot, although it now sounds a bit silly: You can go to a catholic hospital even if you are not catholic yourself. The nurses were not dressed as nuns, actually the only 'catholic' thing there were the crucifixes above the doors.

Fly, Baby, Fly!

How to get your baby to fly? You need to get her a passport. And to get her a passport, you need to get her a citizenship.

It was exactly one year ago, when we had a bit of drama with our daughter's passport.  So, I though I would tell you about all the snags there are in getting a citizenship and passport to you baby, when she is born abroad.

1. Do not give birth without the birth certificate
We didn't know that, when you give birth to a child, you must also prove that you have born yourself. So, when our daughter was born in Wiesbaden, it wasn't enough that I had my passport with me to prove my identity, but I was supposed to have my birth certificate with me as well. And Herr Welle's (baby's father's). And our marriage certificate.

The lady handling all the paper work in the hospital was certainly not happy with us. First of all, I didn't have German insurance card (not my fault, but more about that in a later post). And then we didn't have any of these certificates with us. On the day we were leaving the hospital, Herr Welle spent quite a while on the phone trying to get these papers. There were two snags: none of the Finnish registry offices thought it was their job to help us, as we lived abroad and didn't 'belong' to any of them. And we wanted the papers in English (well, German would have been the first choice, but much too difficult).

We finally convinced the lady that the papers were on their way and she let us leave. But this meant that after the certificates arrived, we had to make an extra visit to the office where babies are registered. But finally we had a certificate to prove our baby was born (well, plural 'certificates' would be more appropriate, because you get several documents for different purposes).

On our way home from the hospital

2. Be ready to travel because of a stamp
One could think that as both Germany and Finland belong to European Union, things would be relatively easy to sort between these two countries. But we couldn't just send the German birth certificate to Finland. We needed a certain stamp, called Apostille stamp, to the baby's birth certificate, so that Finnish officers would believe the document was real and original.

OK, we would get the stamp. But even if the listing we found on internet said otherwise, the closest stamp was in Darmstadt. This meant that Herr Welle had to make a nice road trip (about 100km, 60 miles) to the city to get the stamp. Finally, the stamped document was sent to Finland.

 3. Wait for the officers to choose who should look at the papers
Normally, there wouldn't be any rush in getting the Finnish citizenship and the social security number when you live in Germany, but you need that information before you can apply for a passport. And you need a passport quite urgently, if you have planned the christening of your baby to be held in Finland before she is two months old. Fortunately, they promised to call us from the registry office as soon as our baby was officially Finnish, so that we wouldn't have to wait for the notification to arrive by post.

4. Try to get your baby to keep a strate face
While you wait for all this paper work to go forward, you can get a bit of extra excitement by taking your baby for passport photo.

The rules for passport photo are quite strict:

• your eyes must be open, 
• your mouth must be shut,
• your expression should be neutral,
• you should look straight to the camera so that both of your ears are shown, and 
• the background should be smooth and neutral.

This is difficult even for an adult, so try to get a passport photo of a three-weeks-old baby... Fortunately, the officials are not so strict when it is a baby's photo. In her passport photo, our daughter has eyes open and both of her ears are showing. But also her mouth is open, her expression is surprised, and there are a lot of shadows in the cloth on the background... I later thought that it would had been easier to lay the baby on her back and take the photo from above.

5. Be ready to travel with the baby because of the passport
When you apply for a passport, the person who it is for must be present, even if she is a newborn baby. So, I couldn't send Herr Welle for another road trip, but the baby had to present in the consulate.

There is a Finnish consulate quite close here, in Frankfurt. But it is a honorary consulate, so they do not handle any of the important stuff, like passports. The real consulate is in Hamburg, but the distance there is more than 500km (310 miles). So, the closest one is actually in Luxembourg, only about 200km (130 miles) from Wiesbaden. Great that you can pass the border without a passport!

As we were in a hurry, we needed to get to the consulate as soon as our daughter's information was registered in the Finnish system. Conveniently, Herr Welle spent that week in Korea, so I packed my six-week-old daughter to the car and we drove there just the two of us.

This trip we made exactly one year ago. Now the memories are smoothened a bit, but on that day I swore I would never laugh at this.

There were quite a lot of roadworks going on, so the drive took us about four hours. And as the consulate is only open for a couple of hours before noon, we really needed to get there in time (I wasn't willing to drive there again the next day). Fortunately, the baby was so young that she slept the whole drive there. I found the right place quite easily, but the parking lot, where I had planned to park my car in, was full and I didn't have time to wait to get in. After a small search I found a place to park at the railway station. I unfolded the buggy (that took some time, as I hadn't yet had much practice) and ran to the office.

I took the elevator up to the third floor, but the door didn't open and I couldn't get out on the right floor. So, I went back down, took only the basket and the baby with me and ran upstairs. It was five minutes before the closing time when I stormed in. The paper work was quickly done, but I was a bit disappointed, that the officer didn't even take a look at the baby to check that the photo matched. Fortunately, the officer promised that we wouldn't need to drive back to Luxembourg to get the passport when it had arrived, but they would send it to us.

Before driving back home, I needed to feed the baby and change her diaper. Looking back, I don't know why I didn't breast feed her in the car, even thought there were people passing by. But I took her to the toilets at the railway station. There were a lot of stairs but no elevator. Just as I was mid-way down the stairs, my phone rang and it was Herr Welle calling. I just angrily replied "I'm in no mood for talking" and hang up.

Luxembourg Railway Station

As I was in the toilet feeding the baby, I heard noises outside. It turned out, that someone was being resuscitated inside the men's toilet. When we left the toilet, there were a lot of paramedics and police officers there in the toilet area, but none of them helped me and the buggy upstairs.

As I was walking back to the car, I checked my phone and noticed a SMS. Herr Welle wrote that they had phoned him from the consulate, because I had left my own passport there. I could go and get it (they would let me in even though they weren't officially open) or they could send it to us with our daughter's passport. I decided to pick it up, as I use it as an ID in Germany.

After our second visit to the consulate, I took this picture,
even though I didn't know I would use it one year later in my blog!

After another visit to the consulate and up to the third floor, I quickly ate something at McDonald's and then we drove back home. When we got home, we were both so tired that we fell asleep at 8, even though my daughter had a habit of crying her colic until midnight. As a result of this trip, I got myself a breast infection. And we still had other thrilling moments to come when waiting for the passport to arrive.

But I guess this is enough for one post. I'll tell you about this thrill in a later post. Stay tuned! :)