PREGNANCY AND BIRTH

Intro Midwife practices in Leiden Homebirth or Hospital birth? Leiden mums' homebirth stories Leiden mums' hospital birth stories Pregnancy Homebirth Hospital birth The 'Kraamperiode'

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Leiden Mums' Hospital Birth stories

I had both my children in hospital in the Rijnland Ziekenhuis, Leiderdorp and found the whole experience quite wonderful. I do have to say that I wanted and had prepared myself (as much as one can) for a totally natural birth, which is just as well as there is no sign of medical intervention in the room... if you have been in a UK labour suite you'll have seen the plumbed in gas and air; here there is no such thing. Nursing staff approach all births (unless there are obvious complications) as natural and don't expect to deliver anything but soothing words and beautiful babies.
With my first child my waters broke at 11:30pm and the mid-wife visited home about 1am and much to my shock said I was only 2 cm dilated. After some back rubbing, and concentration I managed to get to 6cm in the next 90 minutes and we went off to the hospital. This is the BIGGEST piece of advice I can give to anyone about to deliver in the Netherlands. HAVE CHANGE FOR THE WHEELCHAIR. At 2:30am we arrived in a flurry of sweating and panting and none of us had any change for the wheelchairs: I arrived in the birthing suite on my hands and knees. My daughter came two hours later in perfect health and to great delight. After weighing for her, showering for me, a cup of tea we were all home for breakfast that same morning." Noeleen

I was always going to have home births! It sounded wonderful and natural and just the thing I wanted. I had a look in the Diaconessenhuis about 3 months before and I decided that was definitely not for me. Unfortunately, they thought Jake was breach about 2 weeks before I was due to give birth and I had to go to the gynaecologist for a check up. All was fine, but Jake appeared to be very small and they noticed there was only a little bit of amniotic fluid left for Jake to drink from and they decided that I had to have a hospital birth. So from then on I had to go back for a check up every other day. They did an echo and an ECG every time we went back and explained everything to me thoroughly. I told them I was really worried about giving birth in hospital because it all looked a bit old, cold and sterile. The nurses and the gynaecologist were understanding but couldn't obviously change anything about it. They told me I could bring whatever I wanted to make myself comfortable, like music, books, aromatic oils, you name it. In the end I found it really didn't matter I was in hospital. I could have been in the middle of the highway and would have pushed my baby out even if a million people had been watching. I found the woman gynaecologist who delivered Jake quite cold. I was in quite serious pain, Jake's heart became very weak at times, but she wasn't very sympathetic to my worries. I did get pain relief when I asked for it though. First I got an injection of Pethedine so I got some sleep in between contractions. In the end I had some laughing gas. Wonderful stuff but unfortunately they don't use this for labour any more. When Jake came out he was very blue and wasn't breathing and I had lost over a litre of blood. I had a quick look at him, a quick kiss and then they started slapping him about a bit and helped him breathing by giving him oxygen and put him in his little 'green house'. After 1 hour my placenta hadn't come out yet so I had to have surgery to have that removed. When I came back it was finally time for me to hold my little Jake, 1,5 hours after he was born. He had swallowed some meconium, so he was quite nauseous for a few days. I had to stay in hospital for the next three days, until Jake stopped vomiting. The nurses on the mother/baby ward were fantastic. Lovely and warm. They made the whole staying-in-hospital thing very bearable. Simone
 
They told me straight away that if I was ever going to have another baby, it would have to be born in hospital. So that was Luke. Who decided he was just not going to show up. Two weeks after my due date I rang my gynaecologist in tears and said I was really fed up and I really needed my baby to come out. He told me to come by. But after my visit he said both mother and child were in perfect condition and he didn't really like to induce if it wasn't necessary. After 2 weeks and 2 days I rang back again, in tears again. A very dear friend of mine lost her baby after 9 months of pregnancy and it just kept playing on my mind. They finally told me to come back the next day, which was a Saturday. They induced me Saturday morning with some gel. Even though I had contractions all day and all night, nothing seemed to happen, not even 1 centimetre!!! They gave me some more gel and Simon and I played Scrabble all morning. A little after lunch time my sister and Jake came over for a visit! They stayed 1 hour and around 3 the gynaecologist came over to check on my progress. 4 cm, I had no clue! We were straight away wheeled into the delivery room after quickly phoning my sister, who was also going to be at this birth. Luke was born around 09.30 that night. I had a full tear, so they took some time stitching me. The assisting nurse was very young but she knew what she was doing. The gynaecologist was quite a young man with very good English, which was very reassuring for Simon. After a wee and shower I was allowed to go home. I was home at 12.15! 
 I would tell mums-to-be this:
All in all the hospital births weren't as bad as I imagined them to be. It lacks the warmth of home but on the other hand...it feels quite safe being in a hospital. I found that nobody tells you anything, probably because all staff are so busy. So make sure you really ask lots and lots of questions. Who cares they're busy... YOU're the one having a baby in a foreign country. Simone

At the end of my first pregnancy I began to doubt that I actually did have a baby inside me. My due date came and went, as did one week and then another six days. I was really beginning to wonder whether I would ever give birth. I was getting really fed up by then and was irrationally cross when Princess Maxima had her baby when she wasn't even due let alone overdue. It just didn't seem fair that she'd jumped the queue just because she was a royal.
I didn't have to make the decision about whether to give birth at home or in a hospital because I had a large fibroid. This meant that the hospital (the LUMC) would monitor my pregnancy and that I would give birth there. I think I'm one of the few foreigners in the Netherlands who actually would have chosen a home birth and to be monitored by a midwife. At the time of this pregnancy there was a lot of public discussion about whether women should be entitled to ultrasounds when pregnant; I seemed to have an ultrasound every time I went for a check-up at the hospital and it got to the point where I wished they wouldn't. This was mainly because they kept telling me that the baby's legs were "too short", but then saying that I shouldn't worry.
The LUMC is a training hospital, so there were often students (co-assistent which is a house officer in English) present at my appointments. There were also midwives, junior doctors and gynaecologists.
When I went past my due date, the hospital explained that if I got to two weeks overdue they would induce. On the day before my two weeks were up I had an appointment to have the baby monitored on what I think is known as an ECG. They then made an appointment for me to be induced the next day if I didn't go into labour in the night.
As nothing happened during that last night, we set off to hospital at a civilized time in the morning with our Maxi Cosi and a hospital bag knowing that the next time we came home it would be with a baby.
At the hospital we were shown to a room and the midwife, after monitoring the baby's heartbeat, came and applied a pessary that she said would soften the cervix and hopefully get the contractions going. This worked and I began to get mild contractions. I remember thinking that I could cope with this and wondering what all the fuss was about.
The midwife came back sometime later and wanted to monitor the baby's heartbeat again. This meant I had to lie on the bed, either on my side or on my back, with pads stuck on my tummy that were attached to the monitor. The monitor was one of those pieces of hospital equipment that shows a waveform on its screen. I think it must have shown the baby´s heartbeat as one waveform and another one of the contractions. At any rate, I could see the contractions on the screen. The time between contractions was a horizontal line that would gradually turn into a waveform as the contraction approached. The monitor could sense a contraction before I could, which was quite unsettling. It made the time between contractions seem even shorter than it was and was a bit like seeing that you're about to have a car crash but not being able to do anything about it.
The contractions were the real thing now rather than the lite version and I was no longer feeling quite as chirpy. I began to think about the maternity gym classes I'd attended. The trainer had told us that you dilate about a centimetre per hour. After I'd been having contractions for about four hours they were becoming more and more unbearable and I could almost see the next one coming on the screen before the present one had finished.
I asked the midwife if she could disconnect me from the monitor because I felt that I would be able to deal with the contractions better if I could just move around a bit. The midwife, who was rather brusque, refused because, as it was an induction, she wanted to monitor the baby. I then began to calculate that, four hours in, I would now be about four centimetres dilated and if I had another six centimetres to go that would be another six hours of this. This would be unbearable, I concluded. The next time the midwife came I asked her about the possibility of pain relief. (I did have a slight hope that I was more advanced than I thought, because the other thing I remembered from my maternity gym was that the further on you are in labour, the further up you breathe so that whereas you first can breathe from your stomach it goes further and further up until you can only take short breaths. I was now only able to take in short breaths but didn't like to get my hopes up.)
The midwife said that she would first have to see how far I was. I felt like a real wimp for asking for pain relief so early on. It took a while before the midwife did check how far I was progressing and I felt slightly vindicated when she said in surprise that I was already nine centimetres dilated and that it was too late for pain relief. The pain then seemed do-able again because I knew I was so far.
I was finally allowed to push but wasn't progressing very well. After I had been pushing for about half an hour there was sudden flurry of activity and the man with the ventouse was summoned. I found out afterwards that the reason for summoning Mr Ventouse was that the umbilical cord was wrapped round Jay's wrist. The room filled with people in white coats. The first attempt with the ventouse failed but the second one worked and, much pain and swearing on my front later, Jay was born. My husband, Jeroen, has a different memory of Jay's first moments: his is all pride and teary eyes and an incredible feeling of, "that's my son!" Mine was more massive relief that they'd got him out and that I could have a rest. It was a bit of an affront when the midwife began badgering me about the afterbirth. I'd completely forgotten that there was that too and felt that was an incredibly cruel trick to play on women. One afterbirth later and the midwife announced she would need to put in a few stitches. I don't really remember if she used any kind of anaesthetic. Probably not, knowing her. The beschuit met muisjes that the nurse ceremoniously produced seemed a bit a meagre after all that pain.
Once I'd had a bit of time to recover I actually could take the time to look at Jay and wonder at how I had managed to give birth to the most beautiful baby in the world. I really truly believed that.
As I'd lost a lot of blood, Jay and I spent the first night in the hospital. Jeroen was sent home. It was very strange to have my baby next to me finally. I stayed awake for ages just watching him. It was great to be able to ring a bell and have the nurse take him away when he was crying. I wished for that at home in the first few weeks of his life.
We had to wait for the doctor to come and check Jay out in the morning before we could leave the hospital because one of the nurses had discovered a funny extra dimple at the bottom of his back. The doctor finally arrived and decided that it was all fine but that we should make an appointment to have his kidneys checked out in a few weeks´time. Then we were allowed to go home. Marianne

Maddy is my second child but my first was induced, so I was wondering if I would recognize the beginning of labour and was also wondering if I would be able to go into labour without being induced. As my first child was two weeks overdue I was expecting Maddy to be too. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when just two days after my due date I began to get the feeling halfway through the night that this might be the beginning of labour. I got up and went downstairs so as not to disturb my husband, Jeroen (I'm way too nice, I know). I spent the night, from about midnight until about five in the morning, on the sofa downstairs. With this labour I felt a lot more able to deal with the contractions. I think not being strapped to a machine made a difference. With each contraction I would kneel on the floor and lean on the sofa, this sounds a bit yoga-y and I didn't even go to maternity yoga, and go with the contraction and imagine that I could feel my cervix widening. I certainly felt a lot more in control than during my first labour.
At about five in the morning the contractions were coming every five minutes, I think. It was the time that they recommend phoning the hospital if you're having your second child anyway. I went upstairs and woke Jeroen who immediately leapt out of bed and into his clothes without touching the ground in between and without giving me the chance to reassure him that we had time. He phoned the hospital and they wanted to talk to me. They decided that we should come in. Jeroen phoned our friends down the road and took our son Jay to them. We then walked across the square to the car, stopping for a contraction on the way. At the hospital I announced to the night porter that I was in labour. He offered to get a wheelchair but I opted to walk to the ward, which entailed a few contraction stops on the way.
We were shown to a room at the maternity ward. The labour progressed with me being able to chat to Jeroen and the junior doctor who was along for the ride in the moments between the contractions. During each contraction I would jump off the bed and lean on it and, I don't know if this was just psychological because I had to lie on the bed during my first labour, but I really felt in control and didn't feel that I needed any pain relief.
The worst part was the last centimetre. I got to the point where it was hard-going and, having decided I wanted a shower and then getting to the shower and deciding I needed to push, I was hugely disappointed when the midwife (a nice one this time) examined me and found that I was only nine centimetres. I then lay on the bed on my back, closed my eyes and took a break from being in labour. The contractions slowed down and, as I hadn't slept all night, my body seemed to be taking a rest before having to push.
The staff noticed that the contractions had slowed and encouraged me to get to work again. I think I got back off the bed and leant on it again and the contractions picked up again. That last centimetre was horrid. I was really relieved when I became fully dilated and heard the magic words that I could now push.
This time I was determined that they wouldn't have to use a ventouse (my son was a ventouse delivery and he cried a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, and I reasoned that the ventouse was the cause). I therefore pushed with all my might and ten minutes later at ten in the morning Maddy was born. I breastfed her almost straight away, rather than waiting, as I did with Jay, for the nurse to help. When the nurse did ask if I wanted to breastfeed her he was surprised to hear I already had.
Unfortunately, I had torn quite badly. The midwife called in a few whitecoats who all came and had a look. They would have to take me to theatre to sew me up, they decided. This was a huge shock but I didn't have much time to react because they were soon whisking my bed away through the hospital (I think they stopped to cover me up beforehand) and down in the lift to the theatre where I had to sit up for them to administer an epidural.
I hadn't had any sleep that night so kind of drifted away whilst they were sewing me up. Then I was wheeled to a recovery room where a nurse tried to make smalltalk, which really wasn't what I wanted. She then did some cursory "can you feel that?" tests and didn't seem worried when I said that I couldn't feel or move my legs. Although I was worried that something had gone wrong, the feeling soon returned and I was wheeled back to the delivery room where Jeroen had helped bath Maddy.
We spent a couple more hours in the hospital and were released at about five o' clock that same day. I called my sister-in-law from the car on the way home and remember how surprised she was that I'd given birth and was on my way home already. Marianne

In my culture (Italy) it is normal that when you are pregnant you see a gynecologist, so I asked for one and got one. It may have been easier for me because my husband has had a heart condition since his childhood. However, I am pretty sure that if you are adamant you can be referred by your GP
I gave birth to both of my children at the Diaconessenhuis. I visited prior the birth, and we were always treated really well. It was great to give birth in a room on my own (in Italy there can be more than one mother in one room giving birth!) Pain relief? I could have got it but I was so taken by the breathing exercises that I did not feel the need. With Sara there was no time. out she came within 4 hours.bless her!
TIP!!If you are a first time mum do prenatal classes: they are really helpful. You also get a lot of info during your visits to the hospital, as well as an evening where they show you around to make you familiar with the birthing room and the procedures. Fantastic!
The only thing I found a bit strange is that once the baby is born they do not seem to clean/wash him /her: they plonk him on your chest and then eventually he gets dressed.I think in Italy they wash him first then they will let you have him.
I only spent one night at the hospital when Mark was born. I did not enjoy it but it was needed since they had to check on Mark after his forceps delivery. For Sara we were "kicked out" after 2 hours she was born! They were busy and fully booked on that day, apparently!
The best bit is the after care: Kraamzorg, who were a great help.
So all in all I can say that our experience was positive and I would recommend the hospital.
Do not be afraid to ask for scans, gynecologists, blood tests. they will make sure you feel happy and have a stress free pregnancy. Olimpia