Hospital Tour

This weekend, the hospital where I hope to deliver, was having an open house. You could tour the whole hospital, visit information booths, etc. We focused our efforts on the 4th floor where the maternity wing is located. There were a lot of different booths set up where you could get free things such as baby lotions, shampoo, etc. They were also offering free ultrasounds!! So we immediately took our number and continued to walk around as we had quite a wait. They were giving tours of the birthing suites and delivery rooms so we jumped into one of those and checked out the potential place where Ellie will be born. After we finished our tour and waited a little longer for the ultrasound, it was finally our turn! There is nothing like seeing your little baby pop up on that screen. She was just as active as she usually is. Everyone always comments on how much she is moving. I wonder what that will mean for after she's here...:) She was still adorable (in the "i'm a lot closer to human looking but still have a touch of alien" way) and is definitely still a "she". We were glad to get that confirmation!

The hospital seems fairly new and the rooms were nice. They were pretty big and had a murphy bed (a bed that folds up into the wall) for the dads to sleep on. I've mentioned before that the Dutch see childbirth as a natural thing, not a medical issue. So 40% of women here give birth at home and a large majority of the ones who give birth in the hospital, go home within a few hours, barring any complications of course. In this hospital, we are allowed to stay overnight, especially if I give birth later in the evening. As I've also talked about before, when we go home, a kraamzorg (basically like a nurses aide specifically trained to assist after a birth) will meet us at our home and immediately help with the care of the baby. This is another reason they tend to allow you to stay overnight if you've had the baby later so you don't go home and feel completely lost. Another thing we found very funny and very European were the two bottles of wine and two wine glasses that were in the room. Seems like that might just be the time that you are ready for a nice glass of wine!:)

They also have a giant bathroom that has a giant bathtub in it where you can "relax" during labor pains. The guide told us that some women end up giving birth in there (you're not really supposed to) because they get so relaxed that the baby just gets ready to come. I hope I'm so relaxed that all of a sudden the baby is just there!!:) Then we went on to look at the delivery room and there was really nothing special about it. They had an exercise ball in there to bounce around on and also this really funny looking toilet seat type stool. Apparently this is to help if you are having trouble figuring out how to push. It gives you the illusion that you are going to the bathroom so you can figure out how to push and the midwife sits on the floor and gets ready to catch the baby. I think Dan was pretty freaked out by it but honestly it seems like gravity is in your favor on that thing!! One thing we did notice is that there didn't appear to be any equipment to monitor my heart rate or blood pressure. They had a machine to monitor baby's but not the moms. I guess when you give birth at home they only measure the baby's with a doppler.

Overall I was pretty happy with the tour and feel a little more comfortable now knowing what I'll be walking into. I think we will tour another hospital just in case this one is full or something but I'm hoping to be able to give birth here. On Wednesday we see the midwife again for our 23 week checkup! I plan on asking her about my different options for pain management during labor so I can make a decision about what I want to do. This is sure to be quite an experience!!

Housing Udate

Housing. UGHHHHH!! We have been on a hunt for a new place to live since we found out we were pregnant. We LOVE our little one bedroom, 450sq ft apartment. It is our first home after all. However, it is one bedroom and while that might work for the first few months when Ellie is here, we don't want it to have to work once she gets a little older. The other problem is that we are on the first floor(which is actually a second floor in US terms.) So anytime I want to go out with her ( before she is old enough to be put on our bikes) I have to lug this massive stroller up and down a flight of stairs. I'm pretty sure it would result in at least one trip of Eleanor bouncing down the stairs in her stroller,knowing my  clumsiness :).

So we are on the hunt. We have looked at a few houses but there is honestly not a whole lot in our budget range. We thought we had found a place that was a little further out from the city center(which is where we live now) but we think it's going to be too much work and too much money to put into it for only living there for 2 more years. It's very common here for houses to be lacking flooring and lights. You may wonder what I mean by this so let me tell you. When we walked into this house, we were literally standing on a concrete floor. The entire 2 levels of flooring had been ripped up. Also, every single light in the house had been removed. It's utter craziness. So we would have to install flooring in the entire house, which was about 810sq ft. Luckily, we had to buy all of our lights for our current place when we moved in (if you remember one of my first posts after moving here, we were without lighting for a week or two and just lit some candles and called it romance :) ).  This entire house would also need painted as the people before left the place in bad condition. It's not completely out of the question but I think we are going to offer them a much lower rent price then they are asking and see if they bite.

In the meantime, I'm still emailing realtors and constantly scouring the websites for places that pop up within our budget. We will keep looking until early June, at which time we will wait until after Eleanor is here to look again because honestly I don't want to be moving at 8 months pregnant:)

*The house in the picture is not one of the house we looked at but is just a typical Dutch house that I thought was cute. Fun fact: The house in the picture is actually located in Haarlem, which is the city where Corrie Ten Boom's house is located.

Life lately

Things have been pretty calm here lately. We have been trying to figure out our housing situation for when Eleanor gets here and I have been battling what seems like every pregnancy symptom in the book. I'm convinced Ellie is making this a symptom filled pregnancy so that she can convince her mom not to go through another pregnancy so she can be an only child:) I've had pretty bad round ligament pain, which is basically just muscle pain on the left side of my pelvis. Apparently it's from all the stretching happening to the ligaments. It's aggravated when I'm physically active, like say, ohh riding my bike? Sometimes I come home and can barely walk but luckily I have recently discovered some stretches that seem to help it when it's hurting really bad. I've also started developing heartburn in the evenings. It's not terrible yet but enough to make me think about not eating anymore. And of course, not sleeping. I toss and turn all night long, switching out pillows, stuffing them between my knees, shaking my arms to wake them up, etc. Sometimes I just look over at Dan sleeping peacefully away and I want to shake him awake because if I'm suffering, he shouldn't get to rest peacefully right? Although I guess it's better that one of us is in our right mind throughout the day ;)

But despite all of this, I am reminded daily of how worth it all of it is when I feel Ellie kicking me. It's the craziest thing and her kicks or punches are getting stronger now. This morning she woke me up with a swift kick to my bladder. She apparently is getting a good night's sleep and thought it was time for me to get up and get going. It's so fun to feel her kick and Dan has even felt her kick a few times! He was actually the first one to feel it!!

Hopefully I'll have a housing update this weekend. We have been trying to narrow it down and think we might have a winner but it won't be confirmed until later this weekend. I hope it all works out because I'm very excited about decorating a nursery for Eleanor and we already got this awesome crib for free!!! (that is not our bedding, just the crib).