My German birth story
Tags: Birth, Pregnancy, Baby, Parenting

I cannot believe I actually gave birth. I’ve always been really apprehensive because giving birth sounds really scary and in fact it is. So many things can go wrong and even though I knew the probability that something goes wrong in a German hospital after what was a relatively problem-free pregnancy is really low, it’s always the worst case scenario that comes to my mind.

My pregnancy felt really, really long. Being pregnant in the middle of a global pandemics isn’t so fun, except for the fact that I didn’t have to go to the office, which is pretty convenient when you are throwing up constantly for 4 months. Overall, I didn’t enjoy the experience so much — mostly due to the above-mentioned constantly throwing up. But weirdly, now that my daughter is out of my belly, I kind of miss it. My husband had been saying this would happen during the entire pregnancy and I would tell him to stop mansplaining me my feelings about my own pregnancy but he was right: my body is lying to me, making me forget everything I hated about pregnancy so I only remember the cheesy moments talking to my belly or taking selfies in cute maternity dresses. My body and my mind are tricking me into wanting a baby number 2, but that’s probably a story for another time (in a long, long time).

My due date was the 11th of August. I planned to deliver my baby in Vivantes Klinikum im Friedrichshain, a Berlin hospital I read and heard mostly good things about. I never considered doing a home birth or going to a Geburtshaus because again I’m a “always think about the worst case scenario” kind of person so for me the hospital was the only way to go. This hospital was only a 15 minutes drive from my place, which I thought would be great if I needed to rush there. Eventually we never needed to rush there since my baby decided to belong to the 3% of babies in breech position (head up, butt down) and we had to schedule a c-section.

When the doctor told me I’d need a c-section (I was in week 37) I wasn’t ecstatic, I never had an operation before and I thought I’d miss out on the vaginal birth experience (FOMO big time), but everyone had been telling me “don’t expect anything specific from the birth, it never happens how you picture it” so I realised yeah, they were right. Really quickly I accepted the idea of having a c-section, even if it’s a major surgery and it’s no joke, it has undeniable advantages: no pushing for hours, nothing the size of a watermelon has to go out your entrejambe, no tearing (well at least not in this area)… Having a scheduled c-section is also convenient because it’s, well, scheduled. So I had time to bring my dogs to the dog pension, take a bath, do a puzzle (it relaxes me…) and pray that I wouldn’t die (it worked so far, but I read that like after any surgery you have higher risks of pulmonary embolism for 6 weeks so I guess let’s see).

The c-section was scheduled for the 4th of August, one week before my due date. On the day of I woke up early and I was weirdly calm, unlike my husband who couldn’t stop talking like he was on acid. We drove to the hospital where we were supposed to be at 9, after making sure I had enough snacks for the entire stay (German hospital food is scarier than a c-section if you ask me). When we arrived, a nice midwife student welcomed us and started monitoring the baby’s heart while another midwife checked that the baby hadn’t turned. She hadn’t. Then it was time to give me an IV, the midwife asked the midwife student to do it to train. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for learning by doing, but when it involves trying to put a needle inside of me for 15 minutes I’m a bit less enthusiastic. Eventually the other midwife did it but I thought I had enough suffering for one day and I wanted to cancel the whole thing but they needed to get the baby out of me so it wasn’t an option.

After a bit of waiting (there’s only one operating theatre for the c-section so if there’s an emergency you need to wait) it was time for me to go. My husband had to wait because for some reason he couldn’t be there for the epidural so I had to go alone. To my surprise there were a lot of people in the room (around 10 in total) because there were also some students (at least the midwife student and an anaesthesiologist student) and in general a bunch of people but I didn’t necessarily understood who was doing what, I was just listening to whatever they were telling me to do. They explained that I should curve my back so the lowest part should stick out so they could do the epidural, but somehow I guess I don’t have a really flexible back despite all that yoga because they kept repeating I should curve my back, they explained it in German, then in English, and they were looking for someone who could speak French when I told them I got the idea but my back wasn’t just doing the thing it was supposed to do. Then I started to cry because it felt like nothing was working for me that day and I was a bit overwhelmed to be naked in a room full of people speaking to me in German about pushing a needle half the size of my arm in my lower back (I didn’t look at it, I just know it’s big, but you should never look a it is what people told me). They were super nice to me and one guy in the anaesthesiology team let me squeeze his hands while the midwife student tried to make me breathe properly. Finally it worked and a really strange feeling started to run in my legs. They lied me down, attached my arms on the side like a pregnant Jesus and installed a little curtain below my breast so my husband and I couldn’t see all the blood down there. They put a catheter in my bladder since I wouldn’t be able to move for one day after the surgery so I couldn’t go to the toilets. My husband arrived and sat next to me. Again he looked more stressed than me, at that point I was a bit high from the epidural and I was just asking everyone around me “Ist alles gut??? Ist alles gut???” even though we hadn’t started yet. Then they started, it felt like they were taking out all my organs and moving them around, it obviously doesn’t hurt but it feels really weird. I kept asking “Ist alles gut???” until a guy told me that the baby was out. There was a big silence for 10 seconds — felt like 10 years but could have been 3 seconds; and she cried. This was the moment I realised what was in my belly all this time was actually a baby and not too many donuts, and I cried harder than her. They brought her to me and lied her on my chest, and it was the most magical moment of my life.

Then they took her to clean her and do some routine tests while they were putting me back together. I kept asking if everything was ok every 2 seconds until they said it was over and they carried me to a bed where they brought my daughter to me again. We spent the afternoon with my daughter and husband in the recovery room, trying to make sense of what just happened. The time in the recovery room is like a little haven of love, everything is just so beautiful, you’re still high from the epidural and you don’t feel any pain yet. Then it was time to go to the room and my husband had to leave because of the covid restrictions. I stayed 3 days and my husband could visit one hour per day. It felt a bit long but it was pretty fast given the fact that I had just gone through major surgery. I won’t go into details regarding my hospital stay, it was a lot of needles, crying babies and mommies, Abendbrot and other German delicacies. The pain the day after the c-section is really challenging and makes it really difficult to comprehend the beauty of what just happened, but fortunately it gets better pretty quickly.

Overall I had a good experience, what I’m most grateful for is that during the c-section, the medical team managed to make the atmosphere as magical as possible, which is a challenge when you’re being cut open. I was scared that it would feel more like a surgery than a birth but thanks to the support, cheering and words of encouragements from the staff, it was a beautiful moment. The drugs definitely help too. Except one bad experience with a midwife who made me cry (in her defence, making a new mom cry is the easiest task ever), the midwifes and doctors who took care of me during my stay were wonderful. They made sure that both mothers and babies were well taken care of, didn’t complain when I rang the bell for the 5th time in an hour to ask random things like “my baby has hiccups, is she gonna die??” and were overall really supportive. I’d definitely say this is a positive birth story and I’m so happy and relieved that everything went well. Now I’m recovering slowly and learning to live with a tiny human, the most beautiful I’ve ever seen in my life (obviously). Postpartum isn’t a walk in the park and maybe I’ll talk about it later, but for now I just want to say that women are warriors, the crazy s**t we go through to have children is unbelievable, I still don’t understand how I did it all, and I had a pretty easy pregnancy and birth compared to other women who struggled much more through it all. So no matter how tired and stressed you are, I hope you know you’re the best!