Birthing Experiences

Well, this was a tough one for me....Besides whatching videos during my educational career I have not expreinces an actual child birthing.  I myself, don't have any children and I am the oldest between my sister and I and she does not have any children either.  Additionally, none of my close friends have children either - this may speak a bit to the growing trend of generations of young women who don't want childre (I guess we can discuss that issue later).

However, I did recently visit a young couple of a mutual friend of ours who had just had their baby hours before.  As a bit of an "observer" it was interesting to me to whatch the scenes unfold in this hospital room with this family.  I was wonderfully shocked about a few things.  First, was the size of the room!  It was huge, certainly enough to accomodate this small families entire extended family.  They had their own private bathroom, the bed for the mother of course, a large recliner-rocking chair and a large bench seat that doubled as a bed for the father so that he could also stay in the room with them.  Then there was a "tray" of sorts that held all of the newborn's supplies (as requested by the family) and this is where the babies "crib" was when needed.  A second thing that I found interesting was the amount of people that were in and out of the room - no questions asked.  I guess I had an assumption that if you were visiting a nursery you had to check in to ensure that babies were not getting sick or needlesly exposed to anything - but that was certainly not the case.  Family, friends, nurses, doctors were all in and out!  The baby was also always in the room and stayed and recieved all care in the room with the parents.

All in all it was a wonderful experience and a great observation opportunity for me.  I love the fact that the whole family is invited in, encouraged to stay and are all kept together as a unit.

In comparison I felt that I would like to look further into Japan's birthing culture.  I once had an instructor from Japan and she had spoken to us a bit about the differences of toilet learning between Japan and the United States, so I was curious as to what the primary differences would be.  I actually found a few resources, which I will list below, one was a generic posting of a few of the primary differences and one is a "story" of sorts about an American couple giving birth to twins in Japan.  I few things that wer of interst to me were the differences in the way that fathers are treated, nursing and after care of women and children.  In Japan fathers do not usually take part in the birthing process at all, in fact many Japanese women go to their maternal mother's house for birthing - leaving their husbands for up to three months to care for the child.  That is a long three months that a child misses out on bonding with their father!  This is definately different in our culture and in comparison to my friends birth - the father was expected to stay in the delivery room with her for the extent of her stay.

Nursing is also interesting difference in Japan.  It seems that many hospitals there have a "policy" that babies be completely seperate from their mothers for three days.  Apparently the idea here is to allow the mother to rest and recover.  However, during this time, the baby is obviously fed formula and therefore breast feeding is not necessarily encouraged.  This is different from the friends of mine experience - a nurse came in to the room several times to offer help and suggestions for breast feeding.  Also, I do not think mothers in the United States would tolerate being completely seperate from their newborn babies for that length of time!

It is so interesting to see, read about and learn of different cultures in pre-natal and birthing procedures.  Their is a side to every story and reason behind everyone's practices.  What matters most is that any family is allowed to practice what is best for them, their family and their cultural beliefs!

Here are the links to the two resoruces that I gained information from.  The personal story is very interesting and contains a great personal perspective:

http://www.health.qld.gov.au/multicultural/health_workers/Japanese-preg-prof.pdf

http://www.globalcompassion.com/japan-birth.htm