January 2, 2008

giving birth overseas

Sorry for not posting more pictures sooner. Miesha is 3 weeks old today and she has been crowding out my former blogging timeslots in my schedule. Who am I kidding, there is no more schedule! No complaining here – being a mom is so great!

Giving birth in a foreign country…honestly, I have to tell you that over all it was a really good experience. Not that I am super surprised or anything. South Africa is a unique country in that it has both the most modern and the most rugged of options for medical care. We live in the biggest city in the country and since we have international insurance, we were able to have our child at a nice private hospital 3 minutes from our house.

The place was clean, the staff were friendly and other then the fact that occasionally they would forget we were English speakers rather then Afrikaans speakers, it went great. Most everyone figured out we were Americans with funny accents pretty quick and switched over to English for us which we were super grateful for. Our Doctor was the biggest culprit in forgetting! He was chatting with the nurse in Afrikaans while breaking my water and then turned to us and said, “So, we’ll cut her out in about an hour.” He totally forgot to explain in English the new complication and how important it was to do a c-section get baby out quickly. Dan and I were a bit shocked!! It was also weird to be coherent, not feeling anything, and not being able to understand a thing the Doctors are chatting about while cutting me open.


Although I would’ve preferred to have family nearby, a Dr who explains my surgery in English, and be able to recover in the super nice rooms at Salmon Creek Legacy Hospital…I am grateful that our baby is healthy and I am recovering nicely as well. God is good.

1 comment:

Kelli said...

So proud of you guys...so excited to meet her!!!!