We Had a Baby! In HONG KONG!

We tried our best to spread the news via e-mail, text, and Facebook, so hopefully you have already heard that we added a little girl, Monroe Victoria, to our family on December 12th.  We've received a lot of questions about her name.  Monroe is after Monroe, Michigan, the town on Lake Erie where Nate and his extended family made many wonderful memories at his grandparent's lake house.  Victoria is a nod to our beautiful 19 months in Victoria, Australia, but is also now a double whammy of a name as we live just up from Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong, half way up Victoria Peak.  Needless to say, it just seemed right.   

Having a baby here in Hong Kong was definitely a bit of a contrast to having Isla in the United States.  Most importantly though, the medical care we received was great, and we are all doing very well 3 weeks in!  However, quite a few things were comically different.  On our private health insurance, the OB that I saw mostly has a patient panel of ex-pat women who have husbands with demanding ex-pat assignments in this country.  This became evident when I was asked when I'd like to schedule my induction.  I was surprised as I'd had a very normal pregnancy, so I asked if anything was concerning or if there were specific reasons I should be induced.  The reply I got was, "No, no, you are totally fine.  I just suggest you look at your husband's work schedule and pick what day you'd like to have the baby. Then just email me the date."  Hmmm...interesting. 

Luckily, no induction was necessary. As we were getting ready for bed on December 11th, I told Nate not to worry and that we didn't need to do anything, but just to be aware that I was starting to have a couple contractions an hour. He stared at me for a minute and then replied, "Are you sure you know what you are doing here?  I mean, your track record is crap since you didn't correctly identify labor until you couldn't walk last time."  (That's actually a fair response.)  Then he followed it up with, "Let's go to sleep and if you could just hold off labor until like 6am, that would be awesome."  I almost made it to 6am.  At 4am, I realized it was the real deal, and at 5am I woke up Nate to let him know we needed to leave for the hospital soon, but that I was going to quickly go eat everything in the kitchen.

Then, at 5:45am, I took the most painful, uncomfortable taxi ride ever on the one-lane winding road up the mountain to the hospital on the Peak.  Once at the hospital, other than actually having the baby, all services and interactions were much more like what you would expect of  staying at the Marriott instead of a hospital.  Nate was promptly greeted by staff and asked for our credit card to take a deposit. Then we were asked if we brought champagne and would we like it chilled. (I answered "yes" and "yes" to this in between contractions.)  The best part was that they actually printed a bar-coded patient label with my name and personal info on it to stick onto the champagne bottle before popping it in the fridge.  

Monroe was born just after 10am, and we were brought to our official room where I had booked us for a "2 night vaginal delivery package." I know that sounds totally disturbing, but that's what we officially booked and paid for.  (Note, there is also an option for a 3, 4, or 5-day vaginal package.)  Now, being located on top of a mountain on an island, the hospital took full advantage of its view and the room didn’t disappoint with a great balcony to get some fresh air and for a Isla to blow bubbles for pretty much 24 hours straight. The hospital staff treated you like you were in a hotel and barely even came in to see us, except for a midwife who came twice a day with a heap of drugs that I could choose from because, as she put it, "Your doctor really doesn't believe you need to experience ANY pain just because you had a baby."  Touche.  I took some ibuprofen and pocketed the rest, just in case.  That was actually completely unnecessary though as the pharmacist brought me another massive bag of drugs to take home with me upon check-out.  That was just before the billing specialists came in to settle the balance of the bill as we were packing up to go. (This type of process is actually a pipe-dream of mine as a former hospital manager!) 
And so, our vacation...I mean "hospital stay" was lovely and, as an added bonus, we got to bring home a beautiful baby.  Not too shabby.

Our first order of business upon returning home was to get Monroe a Hong Kong birth certificate.  I love the candidness of instructions in this country.  The instructions are divided into two sections with the following titles underlined and in bold:
  USE THESE INSTRUCTIONS IF YOUR CHILD IS LEGITIMATE  USE THESE INSTRUCTIONS IF YOUR CHILD IS ILLEGITIMATE
(Hong Kong and their directness and/or hilarious language translations still kill me.)  I'm happy to report that we got our daughter a Hong Kong birth certificate, plus two notarized copies in case we can never get them again once we are state-side.