What A Weird Day

This morning at 7:15am the whole fam headed down from our temporary 10th floor apartment to load up to take the children to school (30min away) and then make an early appointment. This is what we found when we got to the van...... That's never good. Luckily we have a lease and this is our temporary van while we wait for an Odyssey and apparently one of the reasons you pay out the nose for a lease is the service. Nathan called our contact guy and he and the police showed up bringing another substitute van while this one is being fixed.

I jumped in a cab with the 3 children and we headed to school. The entire ride was understandably, filled with a bazillion questions about bad guys and how "the" bad guy did what he did and how many bad guys are there and where are they...

Come to find out, the navigation system in all Toyotas is the same and so right now it is a hot item to have stolen- recently made considerably worse by the typhoon, so we were told. It was a very professional job, power drill to the window, pull it out drop it to the ground. Reach in pop out the console with a screwdriver, cut one wire, unplug 3 things and walk away. I would be surprised if the whole thing took more than one minute. And I was very grateful that it was taken care of fairly easily.

So, okay. We've had baby doctor drama. A little bit. Last week when I went to my appointment with the OB (my 3rd with her, I'd seen her 2 weeks previously) it really didn't go well. She is SUPER nice and easy to talk to. However, she didn't really remember me and went 2/3's of the appointment thinking I was 30 weeks. I thought something was weird and it was confirmed when she tried to make my next appointment for 4 weeks. I said, "I'm due in less than 4 weeks." She was confused and shocked but eventually switched gears to the "time to pack your bags!" speech. I asked her my questions about her policy's and I didn't love the answers. Especially regarding episiotomy's. She admitted to cutting 50% of Westerners having their 1st child- what?! and had stats for subsequent births telling me I'd 'probably' be fine. I said, "but you'd ask me before you would do that right?" She said, "I wouldn't ask you, I would tell you but yes." *frown/glare*

Then she took me on a tour of the hospital. Things went from bad to worse. Usually they only have one labor and delivery room the rest of the time you labor in one room and then are moved to the delivery room (old school like our mothers did it). The dr. explained how it get's intense at the end of labor (cuz it's my 4th and I am unaware of this) and if I'm waiting for a delivery room I "might have to hold the head in" for a bit- like that is even possible! And these are sparse rooms with no soaker tubs or showers even, a bed and tv and that is about it. Post partum rooms were shared 90% of the time. And they keep your baby as much as possible though my friends who delivered here said they were able to get their babies back after a several hours. Overall, I wouldn't be supported in a natural birth by this doctor and I was less than enthused about the hospital.

We checked out a birthing center but it is at least an hour from our home, with traffic could be much more. I was advised to not risk having the baby in the car. The birthing center was better but really far away. Then, in an answer to prayers, a new kid joins Kohen's class and Nathan is chatting with the mom who is a Doula (birthing coach). What are the odds?! She suggested the Veteran's hospital right in Tianmu that is 10-15 min away from our house. This morning she took me over there to check it out.

If you saw it you'd die. Hospitals and health care in general are SO different here. It is not clean and Dr..'s lack the bedside manner we are used to. But I am getting used to how they all look creepy scary now and am coming to realize there is no way around it. Anna has been here 12 years and has the system down. There is absolutely NO WAY someone like me could just walk in and figure out what I'm supposed to do. She got me registered got me an unscheduled appointment with the Dr. who is open to however I want to have this baby and he answered all my questions favorably, then showed me L&D which I took in through half closed eyes. Anna kept telling me, you just have to ignore the dirt! It is very true. Everything is old and grimey. But postpartum here is much more to my liking, I can have things more my way and I liked the Dr. as well.

I am excited to have a Doula this time around, having an advocate especially in this situation seems priceless. Before we left we went to get my blood taken and Nathan had to take a picture because no lie, the place is swarming with people and it is just like the DMV...crazy. But I can see there are definitely pros to socialized medicine. Where else could I switch OB's with just over two weeks left? And pay $40 bucks for the Dr. visit, blood work and ultrasound?!