During my entire pregnancy, I was visiting a private maternity hospital, which was expensive. I figured it was worth it. The idea of spending nine months in endless lines in a Soviet hall under hospital’s cabinets was unappealing. The private hospital turned out to be good. Besides its Western-style building, equipment and nice medical staff, visiting my doctor for lots of procedures was not stressful at all.
But giving birth at that hospital was just too expensive – on par with a private clinic in Austria, which I considered to be unreasonable. In addition, I was somewhat skeptical of private medicine in Ukraine because of a number of scandals some private clinics were involved in. So I decided to turn to a state hospital, where presumably all the best doctors were.
I wasn’t just choosing one of the state hospitals. I was obsessed in doing it the best I could because I knew how important that was. Labor is not just another visit to your dentist. It’s a long process and a tipping point in your life. You don’t want some mean nurse to spoil it, particularly because you tend to be vulnerable to the environment and people around you while in labor.
To exclude all of that, the most important step was to find a doctor who I would be comfortable with and book a separate ward with bathroom. Usually wards in hospitals are designed for up to eight patients with one public bathroom on the entire floor. Call me spoiled, but you do need privacy with your baby and husband after quite an event. And as of now, I can tell that a private and clean bathroom is absolutely necessary for the state you are in after labor.
In an attempt to find some independent advice on a doctor, I started looking at Internet forums. Reading endless stories written by new mothers, I got nothing but additional fears and headache as a majority of them were bad experience. I even started learning what I should do when something goes wrong in labor. Luckily I got bored of reading that.
I was looking for a doctor that would share my views about natural labor, i.e., without pain relievers and stimulants, which are widely used today, often without a reason.
Eventually I did choose a doctor in a state hospital that is considered to be the best one in Kyiv. It did really feel better than others. But, of course, there still were typical rules of bringing a bag of everything necessary. And the red tape of registration that takes 30 minutes and, for some strange reason, you have to go through that when the time actually come to give birth, i.e., while enduring contractions. But the price was fair.
Preparing a bag for the hospital was like setting up a hospital. The long list included everything that you can possibly need, from medical syringes, gloves, catheters to bed sheets and toilet paper.
When everything was set up and ready to go I was 40 weeks pregnant and I still wasn’t going into labor. The situation was getting dangerous because, at this point, labor had to be induced. That contradicted my desire to have natural labor. And so I had to do a check-up with my new doctor at the state hospital, which – as it turned out — shed the light on the true state of things. At the appointment, I received the treatment typical of state hospitals (I won’t go into all the details).
But it made me feel completely miserable. I was frustrated with my doctor so much, although she looked trustworthy all this time. So I decided not to give birth there.
The very next day, I signed a contract at the private hospital where I went for prenatal care. I did not choose a specific doctor, for which an additional fee is charged. Six hours later, I went into labor. It turned out that the doctor who was on duty that day was the one I wanted and he did turn out to be the best one. They say the baby is the one who decides when to be born. And I guess my baby boy did so when he felt that it was safe.
Giving birth was not easy. But thanks to the tremendous support of my husband during the labor it all went very well. After 12 hours of labor, my lovely son David was born on Sept. 17. He was 53 centimeters tall, weighed 3.58 kilograms and now smiles at me every day.
