Week 14: Making progress

Notice how the "widget baby" on the right gets bigger as the due date comes closer? It's kind of freaky, right? Especially because that's what is actually happening! Anyone who has talked to me lately (basically anyone within a 10,000-mile radius of me) knows what a hard time I've had finding a hospital I like here. I like the idea of public health care in theory. Actually, I like the idea of public health care and think it works in a lot of countries. But it doesn't work here very well and the hospitals are the best representation of that. They are, uh, butt ugly to say the least. Think Soviet-era with paint crumbling off the walls. And you are packed in like sardines. No birthing suites, no private rooms. Often there is no bathroom in your room (a room full of from three to six women) and you have to pad down the hall in all your glory with your little toiletry kit when you want to go to the bathroom. Did I mention you typically are in labor in a room with a bunch of other women, some of whom have already given birth and are being visited by their families? Their families who may be celebrating and eating lasagna and cake while you are in agonizing labor? So the doctor comes in to check how dilated you are and there's a party going in the bed next to you where everyone gets a full-frontal view of your labor progress. This is if you are lucky to get a bed. If there are no beds, you agonize in the corridor. On a gurney if they haven't run out (happened to Cristiano's mom in the hospital - she recently waited ten hours for carpal tunnel surgery while alternately standing or sitting on a chair outside the OR. She then had to "hop up" on the operating table as if it were a simple visit to her local dentist). If they are out of gurneys, you are in labor in a wheel chair. Yep, it happened to my upstairs neighbor. She then "slept" in the corridor for the first night. Another friend also was forced to "sleep" in the corridor and had her purse and all her belongings stolen...

Don't even get me started on how hard it is to get an epidural here. They've convinced Italian women that epidurals are very, very dangerous and so Italian women are frightened of them. Or they tell you that (we are in a Catholic country here, after all) your suffering now will reap you rewards in heaven. I'm sorry but that's barbaric and a bunch of patriarchal crap dreamt up by male church officials and male politicians who want to keep costs down in the hospitals so they can pocket the money for more time on the Italian riviera with their silicone-enhanced (obviously in Switzerland, not here) 22-year-old girlfriends. We pay 50 percent of our salaries in taxes and women have to give birth in depressing corridors here and bring their own sheets, maxi pads, pee cups and Band-Aids to the hospital with them? That doesn't sit right with me. Look for my Michael-Moore style exposé on this. I'm seriously considering writing a book and am taking copious notes on this whole experience.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a warm and fuzzy blog about the baby. Where was I? Oh, I think I actually found a hospital I like. It's brand new and is between our house, Monza and the villa where we had our wedding reception (for those of you who came to the wedding). I can't get a private room but there are only two women to a room and the baby is kept in a room on the other side of a glass partition so the mother can decide to do "rooming in" or if she's tired, leave the baby in the "glass room" for a nurse to attend to. The hospital has a low C-section rate (Italy's rate is 38% - the highest in Europe) and advocates a natural delivery though they will give you an epidural - after you've taken the class where they try to scare you out of it. Anyone who knows how, um, adamant I can be even when I'm not in labor can only imagine how I will get when my water has broken and I'm writhing in pain. Some hospitals promise an epidural and then when you ask for it, they make up some reason why you can't have it. Make no mistake about it: I...WILL...GET...MY...EPIDURAL. It just figures that I'd have to go almost to Switzerland to get some decent health care around here.

Sorry that that was a little on the controversial side but, you know me. I can't hold my tongue. I'll be in the U.S. in less than a month. Can't wait to see you all!