Since it would not be feasible to wait for Vicki to go into
labor to drive the 4.5 hours from Sanmen to the closest Western hospital in
Shanghai, on April 20th we temporarily moved to Shanghai to await
the birth of our baby.
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| LiLi enjoying a snack in the hotel room. |
We stayed in the Sky Fortune Boutique Hotel, which is a
5-star hotel Mark’s company puts their people in when they are in
Shanghai. This means we had a nice sized
room for a toddler and also a great breakfast.
Mark’s company covered the cost of the hotel for the duration of our
stay in Shanghai since it was considered a medical need.
Our first weekend in Shanghai was fairly relaxed. On Sat. we just picked up some dress shirts
Mark had ordered at a fabric market and
picked up some stuff for an extended hotel stay (like laundry detergent to wash
clothes in the sink, snacks, water, etc.).
We then ate Korean BBQ for dinner with some friends. These are the friends who we had planned on
having watch LiLi once Vicki went into labor.
They have lived in Shanghai for 4 years until George was recently
transferred to the Sanmen office, which is when we met them. They have three daughters ages 9, 2, and 5
months. Since the 9 year old is established
in her Shanghai school already, George’s wife, Sonthi, is only in Sanmen with
the two youngest girls every couple weeks while her sister, who lives with
them, stays in Shanghai with the 9 year old.
It seemed like going to their place would be perfect for LiLi. She already knew all of them and their
Shanghai apartment is literally across the street from the hotel we were
in. However, they had to go to Hong Kong
to work on some visa issues from Thursday, April 26th to Monday,
April 30th. Of course, it was
during this time that KaiXin arrived!
More on that later…
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| The concrete aircraft carrier... |
On our first Sunday in Shanghai, Mark got up early and went
on a bike ride. It turns out Mark could
follow pretty much follow one road strait west for 25 miles until he hit “Oriental
World”. Oriental World is an amusement
park that also includes a full size concrete model of a Russian air craft
carrier sitting in a small pond. This is
then adorned with many retired aircraft.
Mark ended up missing one turn and instead of riding on the main road he
road on a wide boulevard which included fake intersections (since nice
boulevards should have intersections) and people setting up tents in the middle
of the median. The one new construction here
was advertising 1000 sq.ft. for $1.25 Million.
On the way home Mark came across three
Chinese cyclists all kitted out. They
offered an impromptu race and Mark had fun holding an intense race with the
fastest of the three riders.
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| On our walk to meet BaBa. |
Anyway, while waiting for KaiXin’s birth, Mark was able to
work out of his company’s Shanghai Consortium Office, which means he still worked
an 8AM-5PM work day (i.e. we did not have to use any vacation/sick days while
waiting for labor to begin). LiLi and Vicki
met Mark for lunch most days, making a full work day seem like less.
While Mark worked, Vicki and LiLi had their own
mother/daughter Shanghai vacation. On
that first Monday of work they walked the 5K from the hotel to Mark’s office –
stopping in at a pet store with many expensive animals ($13,000 Bengal cat,
etc.) along the way. LiLi really enjoyed
visiting the animals and it broke up the walk quite a bit.
We had a prenatal appointment that afternoon which was
pretty basic. It was with the doctor
who, at 32 weeks, had previously told us that we would need a c-section because
the baby was too big and Vicki needed to “start exercising and eating
healthy.” The doctor was actually tending
to an emergency, so our appointment time was delayed by about 20 min. At one point when a nurse walked into the
waiting room she harshly informed Vicki that she should sit down even though
she preferred standing (why not let gravity help?). They brought us apple juice as an apology for
making us wait (apparently they’ve never been to a doctor’s office in the
States – 20 min. is hardly a wait!) and then almost immediately took us to meet
with the OB. We hadn’t seen this doctor
since we argued with him that first time, but apparently he remembered us. He was actually very reserved and even timid
with us. We didn’t mean to offend him
last time… we just wanted him to know we disagreed with his assessment and
thought it was even poor medical advice. It was just a basic appointment though so we
barely conversed about anything.
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| Ocean World sea lion show that LiLil loved. |
The next few days were pretty basic for Mark – go to work,
eat lunch with LiLi and Vicki, and come home.
Vicki and LiLi had some fun mother/daughter time though. On Tuesday they went to Ocean World. It is an overpriced attraction in general,
but the sea lion and whale show was pretty good. LiLi was enthralled by the show. On Wednesday they went to the Shanghai Mamas
Honqiao Coffee. Shanghai Mamas is an
online community that helps to connect expat moms with each other. It is
a very large community that is useful for finding things in the city,
discussion of cultural norms, and for building community while abroad. While not technically a Shanghai Mama, Vicki
joined this closed online community shortly after we got here since we knew we
would need advice on prenatal care, etc.
It has a lengthy application process in order to screen out spammers as
well as Big Brother. Knowing our Sanmen
friends would be in Hong Kong for a few days during our wait for KaiXin, some
of the Shanghai Mamas volunteered to be available to watch LiLi – day or night
– if we went into labor during that time.
We went to the coffee to meet some of these other expat mom’s in
advance.
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| Baby goats at the zoo. |
On Thursday we went to the Shanghai Zoo and then went to
another Shanghai Mamas home for a play date so LiLi could get to know her and
her 3 year old son if she needed to be dropped off at their home. LiLi had a great time playing with this other
kid’s toys. Living in a hotel room for a
week had left her toy deprived even though we were active.
On Friday, Vicki and LiLi stuck close to the hotel because
around 10AM Vicki started having timeable contractions, though they were
neither long nor strong. That evening we
walked the mile to Hongmei Lu for dinner and ate at the Spanish
restaurant. Still, the contractions were
ever present but not very strong – Mark didn’t even know when Vicki was having
one.
Since the contractions still weren’t very strong at bed
time, we took the advice LiLi’s midwife had give had given us: if you have
contractions start at night, have a glass of wine and take a hot shower. It is supposed to make the slow down so that
you can get some rest before they come back as more frequent and strong
contractions. That worked, and at 9PM
Vicki went to bed with the contractions having completely stopped.
However, at 11:30PM Vicki woke up with contractions
again. She jumped in the shower hoping
the hot water would help them subside again and went back to sleep. At 12:30AM she awoke to her water breaking –
so we finally knew it was the real deal, but anticipated being able to make it
through the night still before having to head to the hospital.
We didn’t want to leave for the hospital too soon for a few
reasons: 1) we didn’t really want to call someone in the middle of the night
that Vicki had only met once to watch our kid if we could make it to dawn, even
though the Shanghai Mama was completely sincere about being available anytime;
2) we didn’t want to traumatize LiLi by unnecessarily waking her in the middle
of the night to leave her with a stranger while Mama was in “pain” (since
semantics are shown to affect perception, we prefer not to use the terminology
of pain when talking about labor, using the term “intensity” instead, however
LiLi would likely see Mama as in pain; and 3) we wanted a natural birth without
much medical intervention so staying at the hotel longer met not having to
interface as much with medical people.
Having a baby isn’t a medical condition.
With LiLi’s birth, Vicki labored for 24 hours and we were at
the hospital for 9 hours – even with showing up at 7cm dilated already. We wanted to avoid going that soon this
time. Anyway, at 12:30AM, Vicki hopped
in the bathtub and started timing the contractions, which were now more
frequent (5-7 minutes) and much stronger, but still not very long – only lasting
about 30 seconds each. Mark packed some
things in the room, still hoping we were going to make it to dawn before going
to the hospital. Suddenly, at 2:30AM
Vicki yelled that she had to push. We
were planning on heading to the hospital when Mark saw the intensity threshold
and a little fear in her eyes, like last time.
However, even through the delivery, Vicki never really reached the
‘threshold’ that we did last time. At this
point the contractions had increased quickly and were only about 2 minutes
apart, though still not long.
Mark quickly called the front desk at the hotel and asked
them to hail a taxi, dressed LiLi, and pulled Vicki out of the bathtub and got
her dressed. Now, through every
contraction Vicki is yelling “Don’t push, don’t push!”
We climb into the taxi and the hotel concierge closes the
door. The taxi driver then turns to us
and asks, “Nǐmen qù nǎlǐ?” –
where are you going? We had told the
front desk where we were going and they hailed us a taxi and didn’t bother
telling the driver where he was going to take us?!?! Mark summons the concierge back, but quickly
realizes that this guy doesn’t speak English.
Vicki finishes a contraction and yells “Xianxia Lu” – the road the
hospital is on. So Mark tells the driver
we want the hospital for foreigners on Xianxia Lu. The taxi driver pulls out very slowly and we
quickly realize he still doesn’t know where he is going. The driver calls someone to try to get
directions while Mark calls the midwife on duty to let her know we are on our
way. He tries to get the taxi driver to
talk to the midwife for directions, but he refuses and keeps driving
slowly. We then PASS the exit for
Xianxia Lu and driver is going slowly and even sitting at green lights – still
clueless as to where to go. Meanwhile
Vicki is still yelling “Don’t push! Don’t push!” through each contraction. Mark calls the midwife back and makes the
driver talk to her. A few minutes later
the driver pulls up to the Chinese hospital next door to ours and Mark
instructs him to keep driving to the NEXT hospital. The 5 minute drive ended up taking about 12
minutes.
We pull up to the emergency room and get out of the
taxi. The emergency room staff just look
at us from inside. However, once inside
when they hear Vicki’s “Don’t push!” mantra things turn chaotic with people
running every which way. They try
pushing Vicki into a wheelchair in the middle of a contraction while Mark yells
at them to just wait another 15 seconds.
Labor isn’t an emergency! They
get us up to the 3rd floor of the hospital and into a labor and
delivery room and again try to force Vicki to move during a contraction instead
of focusing through it. When the midwife
checks Vicki she declares (with some astonishment) that we are already 10cm
dilated – something we’ve already known for some time… I guess they are used to people showing up in
the middle of the night at 4cm thinking they are about to have a baby. The nurses tell Vicki NOT to push since the
doctor isn’t there and Mark leans over and tells her to do whatever she wants –
we’re not in a taxi anymore. We don’t
need a doctor to catch our kid. So Vicki
pushes while the nurses yell at her not to.
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| LiLi with "WaWa" (Mandarin for doll) at the hospital waiting for KaiXin |
Upon entering the hospital room Mark had put LiLi on the
couch and gave her a few toys, where she quietly sat – concerned about the
situation but not upset. The nurses tell
Mark the baby is about to be born and to grab the camera – he responds we don’t
really want pictures of this part but gets the camera out anyway and gives it
to LiLi. Thinking it’s HER job to take
pictures, she gets off the couch and comes to join Mark.
Calvin KaiXin (凯欣) Schow was born at 3:30AM – 15
minutes after exiting the taxi and only 10 minutes after getting to the labor
room. He weighed 3.9kg (8lbs 10oz) and
was 21 inches long. Vicki had no
tearing.
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| Both kids sleeping after a busy morning. |
Because everything was so rushed upon our arrival the
hospital staff hadn’t reviewed our birth plan that was in our file
(understandably). This meant a few
things didn’t go as planned – the doctor had her hand on the baby’s head and
was pulling really hard with the last few contractions, and the umbilical cord
was cut before it stopped pulsing. There
were also a lot of things Mark had to be quick to instruct them on – like we’re
doing skin-to-skin for awhile so you cannot take him away even though the
pediatrician is here to see him (at which point they offered for the
pediatrician to check him while we did skin-to-skin… which makes one wonder why
that isn’t standard practice anyway?!), and trying to use breastfeeding to
contract the uterus instead of jumping straight to Pitocin.
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| First time holding "DiDi" |
After KaiXin had been born Mark brought LiLi off the couch
to see her new little brother. He tried
to shield her a bit from seeing the placenta being delivered but she was
peering around him to see. Vicki’s
comment on the subject was that it was not much different from the slaughtered
pigs she sees at market. LiLi responded
by nodding and saying “zhu, zhu”, which is Chinese for pig.
Overall though, the hospital staff was very hands off and
good at asking us what WE wanted. Vicki
bled longer than normal so they asked again to try Pitocin – which we agreed
to. We just didn’t want to use
unnecessary interventions; we’re not opposed to them if needed.
They left us in the labor room until about 6:30AM – largely
to monitor Vicki’s bleeding better. At
6:30AM Vicki took a shower and we moved to the recovery room. By 9:30AM Vicki and KaiXin had their
discharge papers, but we had to wait until 3PM to get the birth certificate.
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| Finally a "Jie Jie" - big sister |
With LiLi we stayed at the hospital for 30 hours. With KaiXin it was 12 hours from taxi to taxi
– and that seemed like a few hours too many!
With LiLi Vicki felt like she had just finished a 24 hour mountain bike
race, but with KaiXin it was like finishing a 2 hour race – fatiguing but
quickly ready to pick up and move on. We
took turns chasing LiLi around the hospital floor while the other one stayed
with KaiXin until the birth certificate was ready.
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| The kids don't look as excited about our first family photo... |
When checking out of the hospital, Mark went to the nurses’
station about 30 min. before we could leave to see if there was any checkout
process we could begin so we could leave as soon as the birth certificate
arrived. With LiLi’s birth there were a
series of things that had to be completed for us to leave that the nurses kept
delaying on because they were not happy about us leaving at 30 hours, despite
having pediatrician and midwife approval.
These nurses said there was nothing to do, and sure enough, once we got
the birth certificate we were simply instructed to take the elevator to the
first floor and make sure we signed the insurance direct billing release at the
cashier’s station. We then jumped in a
taxi and were back at our hotel a few minutes later. Who knew a China birth could be so easy?
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| Awesome Chinese birth certificate. |
It was really the best birth experience we could imagine in
Shanghai – a natural birth with as little time spent in the hospital as
possible. Having LiLi present was also
great because we didn’t have to leave her with a stranger and then reappear
with a new baby – plus, she got to see her “dìdì” (Mandarin for little brother)
right away and begin adapting to the new normal. More to come soon…
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