Now I'd like to share my experience giving birth in Japan. I'll try not to bore you all too much and focus on the things that seem most important or that stand out to me as being different from my experience giving birth in the US. Keep in mind, though, that there are a lot of hospitals in Japan and I'm sure they have their own ways of doing things, so I don't know which things were different because it was the Japanese way of doing things, or if they were different because it was Kaseki Hospital's way of doing things. Also, Kaseki Hospital is much smaller and older than the hospital I gave birth in when I was in the US (a large, Catholic hospital in Tacoma, Washington), so some things may have been different because of the difference in size and age. Anywho, onward!
I was admitted the day before the surgery and got settled in a private room. There was no Wifi available for me to use, and I didn't have a prepaid card to watch the hospital TV with (Braden bought one for me from the hospital the following day), but I had brought some embroidery and my tablet with some ebooks with me and they kept me entertained well enough. Here are a couple pics of my room:
Finally, pictures! I'm a *very* lazy photographer and hardly ever take pictures, so sorry for the lack of interesting visuals, but I did manage to get a few during my stay. Also, since some of my friends asked for it, here is a pic of my belly before the birth:
My room didn't have a bathroom (there were rooms with bathrooms but this option was cheaper, and being the thrifty person I am I went for it). There was a bathroom directly across the hall from me though, so it wasn't very inconvenient.
The food was pretty good. For the first couple days after the surgery I was fed a very simple diet of rice gruel and miso soup (in the US it was weak chicken broth, jello, and other simple liquids). I didn't get a pic of my rice gruel (I was always really hungry when they brought it and couldn't think of anything other than eating, let alone taking pictures...) but I did pull a pic from the internet (mine did not include the pickled plum on the side. It was also more watery.)
The day they brought me real rice instead of gruel was a happy day indeed. Most of the meals were Japanese, with rice and miso soup on the side, with the occasional western style breakfast. Here are a couple of examples of the meals that I ate (these pics I actually took myself instead of swiping them from google).
The last day of my stay Braden, Clara, and I were treated to a free steak dinner that included sashimi, stuffed tomatoes, rolls, soup, a fruit dessert, and salad. It was REALLY yummy :D. And it was free (For us. We also had the option of inviting other family/friends if we wanted, but they would've had to pay for the meal). My friend Asuka told me that most hospitals in Japan offer a special meal to celebrate the birth (she got one too when her son was born). Here's a couple pics of the meal:
This flower was made of thinly sliced sashimi (raw fish). Fancy, huh?
It was nice staying in a smaller hospital. I felt like the staff were very personable and friendly, and I think that being a smaller establishment contributed to that. I still felt very lonely at times, since Braden and Clara could only visit a couple hours a day (Visiting hours for family were 9am to 9pm, but Clara would get restless after a couple hours so they would only stay for a little while each evening). I spent most of my time reading and doing embroidery. Here's a pic of my little project:
You can't really tell from the pic, but it's a cute little blue bird.
The nurses at Kaseki Hospital were all very nice, and very patient with my limited Japanese (which at times felt barely sufficient in a hospital setting, but I got by alright). Before I went home I received a beautiful little photo album with three or four pics of little Taran already inside, along with his footprints and little notes from the nurses and midwives, a very sweet gesture, and probably only possible in a smaller setting like Kaseki. Braden and I also received a small wooden box with very fancy Japanese calligraphy on the lid, which Braden had a hard time reading, but we figured out it said that the box contained a small piece of Taran's umbilical cord. When I opened the box there was a small piece of paper inside, folded around the piece of cord.
Now I guess I'll talk about the surgery itself. It was, in many ways, like my C Section in the states. The main difference was that I actually got *two* epidurals. One went into my lower back and numbed the lower half of my body completely, the other went higher in my back and partially numbed my upper body and face. My face felt like I was at the dentist, and although the anesthesiologist stayed nearby during the surgery and made small talk with me (something that was done in the States too), I had a hard time replying because of the numbness in my face. The two Drs who did the surgery were my main Dr who I had seen during most of the pregnancy, and the main surgeon who I had met only a couple weeks previously (he did the actual cutting). They pulled Taran out and announced the time and then he was shown to me briefly before being whisked away to the nursery. I had told the midwife a few weeks before that I had wanted to nurse the baby after the surgery, which I had done with Clara when she was born, and the midwife said that although mothers usually rest after the surgery, she would try to make it possible. She didn't tell me, however, and maybe she just took for granted that they do things a little differently at Kaseki, that I would get a shot after the surgery that would make me sleepy. So sleepy, in fact, that nursing was impossible. I was too groggy to even ask to hold the baby, let alone nurse him. I also got a med that made my throat incredibly dry. After getting stitched up I was moved to a recovery room where I spent the night. Braden and Clara visited only briefly, as Clara was very upset at the time. She seemed disturbed by seeing me hooked up to the IV and epidural, with monitors on my arm and finger, and she cried so much Braden had to take her home.
Here's a pic of Taran with me still on the operating table, and one of him right after he was taken to the nursery:
Despite the sleepy meds I kept waking up during the night because of pain and my dry throat. The nurses gave me a slightly damp cloth to suck on, since I couldn't drink any liquids still, and finally around 5 am I asked for pain killers, since I felt that the epidural (which was still hooked up but had been decreased so that I could move my legs a little) wasn't enough. They gave me painkillers without hesitation, which made me wish that I had asked for some earlier (I had thought that since the epidural was still in I wouldn't be allowed to have any.) It was a long and rather torturous night, but I survived and was given something to drink in the morning. I was able to see Taran and breastfeed him that morning too, which made me happy after a long night. The nurses gave me more painkillers, and although they helped, they didn't seem as strong as the narcotics I had received after Clara's birth. (After Clara was born the epidural was removed very shortly after and I was given narcotics for pain relief). Still, I was able to move around, and the next couple days were spent staying in bed reading or going down to the nursery to feed Taran (rooming in with the baby wasn't an option most of the time I was there).
Unlike St. Joseph's in the US, I didn't get called down in the middle of the night to feed the baby, the nurses instead insisted that I rest at night and said they would feed the baby formula (Though by the third night my milk had come in and I needed to go to the nursery at least once a night because of the pain from being too full of milk). The nurses also encouraged me to feed him formula during the day if they felt he wasn't getting enough breastmilk (which was something they did at the nursery at St. Joseph's too).
The other main difference from giving birth in the US, and I may have mentioned this before, was that the hospital stay was a week instead of the three days I stayed after the C-section in the US. The longer hospital stay was good for me since I didn't have my family nearby to help after I got home (when I gave birth to Clara my mom came to help out afterwards), but it did get lonely and I was glad when it was time to go home.
Lastly, I wanted to talk about the cost of the birth. A couple months before the birth Braden and I had paid the hospital a deposit of 150,000 Yen (about $1,500). We also applied for the government benefit of 420,000 Yen that is offered to parents because a normal birth in Japan isn't normally covered by insurance. My birth was a medically necessary C-Section, so it was covered by insurance, but we were still eligible for the government benefit (The Japanese National Health Insurance covers 70% of the bill, so the benefit helped us pay the other 30%). I was afraid at first that we would have to pay the hospital first and get paid back by the government later, but that turned out not to be the case. When we got the bill, the hospital had already credited the insurance payment and the government benefit. That, along with our deposit, was more than enough, so we actually got most of our deposit back. The day I checked out, the hospital gave us back 110,000 Yen from our deposit, which meant that we paid, out of pocket, about 40,000 Yen for the birth (somewhere around $400). Not bad if I do say so myself.
And to end with, here is a pic of Clara meeting her little brother Taran up close for the first time. Aren't they precious?!
All in all I'd say that even though having a C-Section isn't easy, I had a generally positive experience at Kaseki Hospital here in Nagoya. My post-natal experience has been good so far as well, since the city of Nagoya offers some nice perks and helps to new moms, like letting your child go to daycare everyday for two weeks at very little cost and also providing home helpers to help you with chores at home if you feel you need it (which I felt like I did since I don't have my family nearby to help).
I do plan on adding some more pictures to this post in the near future, so feel free to come back in a day or two to see them.
I found your blog through a Google search on C-sections in Japan. I'm about to give birth to my first child via C-section in 2 weeks, so I'm really happy to have found this! Thank you for sharing your experience, and congratulations! :)
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