Belgium Hospital Stay

A normal hospital stay in Belgium is 5-6 days! That is insane! Especially considering that you basically do everything yourself so it’s more like being in a nice (and hot) jail cell in my opinion.

Insurance only covered a shared room and I didn’t care enough to fork out the extra 150 euros per day for a private room so we went with it.

I got wheeled into the room and my roommate had people over for visiting hours (speaking dutch). The midwife told me I couldn’t get up on my own until 9pm…which I really really couldn’t because I was still attached to the IV. She said to ring the button if I needed to pee or if the baby cried…then she left.

Ryan chilled for a little while. We got me setup and he left around 7pm to go retrieve Kherington from her friends house.

I chilled. Luckily I had saved a book to read while I was in the hospital…I’m not sure what else I would have done. Kevin slept.

The night shift midwife came around 10pm to take the IV out and help me got the bathroom…basically just tell me how many pads to put on (3 ginormous pads…yeah, lost of bleeding). After that she left. I rang the call button when Kevin cried the first time…I had no idea why I needed to, but they had told me to. The mid wife came in, checked his diaper...he hadn’t pooed, so she handed him to me and left.

Basically we were on our own. When he cried, I tried feeding him…he LOVES to suck...I QUICKLY found that breastfeeding is VERY PAINFUL the second time around. My uterus contracted like crazy giving me worse contractions than I had had when I was in labor! To make matters worse, I hadn’t had any type of pain meds. I finally rang call button and asked for some pain meds…come to find out what they give you is about the equivalent of tylenol (not very strong) so I was still painful. Not only did the uterus contract. I think this is because his suck was so strong!

Long story short, some things that are different in hospital stay in Belgium are as follows:

1. You bring everything – towels, extra pillows, clothing, etc.
2. Only 1 bottle of water was provied – this might have been because it was a weekend, but I thought that was very strange considering in the US they gave me a ginormous water bottle and expected me to drink like 3 a day.
3. The baby stays with you in the room all the time – even when I went down the hall (public hall mind you) to shower in the morning, they told me to just leave the baby in the room (not very secure…except for the fact that I had a roommate)
4. Shower was down the public hall
5. You bath the baby yourself – they had a room with a couple sink and you’d wheel the baby down the hall, give him a bath, weigh him and dress him on your own.
6. I had to request the pain meds – they were never offered to me
7. Rooms were HOT – the sun had been shinning and there was no AC in our room…ugh
8. You just walk out of the hosptial…no need to ‘check-out’ – they told me if my gyn and ped both said it was okay I could leave….but the med wife and nurses never actually signed me out or anything

I luckily was able to leave the hospital after just 2 nights. When we left the hospital Kevin weighed 3090 grams (6 pounds 13 ounces). Because I left early, a midwife comes to the house to check on me and Kevin.