Week 15: Hospital visit

So we went to visit a hospital this past Saturday. Actually, the hospital that I had mentioned in a previous post that has a pretty progressive "rooming in" policy for Italy. Typically in Italy the baby is taken away from you right away and put in an incubator. You may go 12 hours without seeing your baby. This hospital, on the other hand, puts a strong emphasis on mother-child bonding and gives you the child right away. The mother and the father (the other good thing is that visitation is open to fathers from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. while in other hospitals, some fathers are only allowed in for a few hours a day) are then responsible for taking care of the baby - bathing, feeding, etc. If you get tired or don't feel up to caring for the baby, you can leave him in the nursery. So, I like the philosophy. It's very free-to-be-you-and-me but in the safety of a hospital setting. These are the advantages.

On the downside, I'm not sure they will give me an epidural. Epidurals are a fairly new development in Italy (I'm told they are not offered at all in the more religious south) though they are definitely not offered freely or encouraged. The hospital I visited has a low C-section rate and puts an emphasis on a natural birth. That's great but I want an epidural. I'm willing to take the course meant to scare me out of it, be checked out physically and sign all of the waivers. The thing is that there is no guarantee that when your time comes, they will give you the epidural even if you've done all that. This frightens and angers me but I don't think there's much I can do as no hospital in Italy is all that epidural friendly. The other thing is (and I know this is superficial but...) aesthetically, I was not wow-ed by the hospital. Compared to others I've seen, it's not that bad. No peeling paint, anyway. I had been told it was "new." OK, well my idea of what is new and an Italian's idea of what is new are two different things. New to an Italian could mean 30 years old and, in fact, this hospital could be just that. The maternity ward is quite institutional - concrete walls, ugly tile floors, a faded paint job. Put in some lockers and install some metal detectors and it could be an inner city high school.

At least there are only two women to a room and there is a bathroom in each room. And each room has a big glass window that looks into where the babies are kept when they are being tended to by the nurses. That's a nice touch. I guess I just have my heart set on the birthing suite in a nice American hospital and I know I can't have it, so in comparison, everything pales. I'm trying to stay positive because I really have no choice but to give birth here as I have no American insurance (speaking of which, in Michael Moore's new film Sicko, he classifies Italy as number 2 in the world for health care - not sure how they did their rankings but the only good thing about this system is that it is open to everyone). Apparently this hospital has a neonatal unit but compared to American hospitals, I saw very little equipment. Even the nursery seemed bare bones as were the examining rooms, which were empty except for a desk, a chair for the doctor, a chair for the patient and a cross on the wall. Again, brought to mind a school nurse's office. Where is the equipment?

The hospital is fine and that's probably where I will give birth, but I'm just not all that enthusiastic about it. Cristiano keeps reminding me that "It's free. What do you expect for that price?" It is true that while I do have to bring my own toilet paper, maxi pads, bedding and baby essentials to the hospital, I will not pay a dime to give birth here. Thus this is why the hospitals don't go out of their way to look nice. It's not a "business" and they don't need to attract "customers."