Midwifery

Our learning process continues! We've already learned a lot about how the whole process, from conception to post-partum care, is different in Germany, but we still have much to learn.

One thing we've discovered is that most of the heavy lifting during the delivery process is done not by the obstetrician, or even by the labor and delivery nurses, but by midwives. Each mother-to-be is assigned a midwife ("Hebamme", in German) at the hospital, who is responsible for checking on you, monitoring your labor, delivering the baby (with the doctor in the room, but the midwife will actually be in the catcher's position, so to speak), and coordinating post-delivery care for you and the baby. Now, we made very certain to find an English-speaking doctor, many moons ago. That seemed too important to risk to my German skills. But what about a midwife?

It turns out that you can bring in your own! In addition to the staff midwives who are on duty at the hospital, there's a list of midwives with privileges at each hospital. If you want, you can make arrangements with one of them to be on-call for your delivery - to meet you at home or at the hospital, and go forward from there. It's a slightly more expensive option, but when push comes to shove (ha ha), we really want to make sure the key people in the room speak our language!

So we got a recommendation from our doctor, and met yesterday with the midwife he suggested. Katrin O'Malley is a lovely lady of German and Irish parentage, who did most of her training in Germany but worked in Ireland for several years as well - which also means she's more comfortable than I think many German midwives would be with some of the ideas and questions we have, coming from our American context. She's seen various ways of practicing medicine, and recognizes that the German way, great as it is, isn't the only possible way to do things.

This also means that we'll be able to do pre-natal classes, since those offered by our hospital are all in German. Katrin has two other American couples she'll be working with, and suggested getting all of us together for two intensive class sessions. We're relieved that we won't have to miss out on these classes. And I'm super relieved to have found a midwife! From what I've been able to read online, she'll be very important to this whole process. I've been stressing for a while about how that would work, and am so relieved to have checked this particular box!

Speaking of which, one of the many routine services she'll be able to provide for us is pre-registration at the hospital - so when the time comes, we can just waltz on in and not have to worry about paperwork. She even gave us the consent forms for epidural and other anesthesia to fill out in advance, so that's taken care of. The less paperwork in German we have to confront when we're in labor, the happier we'll both be!