Give birth at a big hospital unless you want an unnecessary C section

This morning my wife gave birth to a healthy baby girl, via caesarian section at a clinic in New Taipei City.

Her due date was October 25th, and we came to clinic to be induced on the 26th, following advice from the doctor not to go too far over 40 weeks, which I don’t personally believe in, but I listened to my wife. Me, my brother and sister were all born at 42 weeks, but that would never be allowed to happen in Taiwan.

48 hours after being induced, my wife had absolutely no labour pains, or any kind of strange feeling. Its safe to say we came to the clinic too early. The doctor told us she needed to have a C-section. From what I understand of our conversation, clinics don’t like you to go over 40 weeks due to the increased risk of complications, whereas regular hospitals will let you take that risk as they have the staff and facilities to deal with the increased risk. What the doctor said made sense, but we immediately regretted coming to this clinic, instead of a regular hospital as we didn’t want a C-section but had no choice.

Ultimately a C-section was successfully completed, and I was cutting the umbilical cord with those blunt scissors within 20 minutes.

My recommendation to other soon to be parents would be to quiz your potential birth clinic or hospital on how long they will let you wait before they make you have a C-section.

My question to other Forumosans is, did you or your partner give birth at a hospital or clinic and how long did they let you wait before sharpening their knives?

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All my kids were born via C-section.
The first two were in a breech position, so C-section was pretty much the only choice. The third one was due to risk of complications if delivered vaginally after two C-sections.
They were all done in the same hospital which was a big one.
However, in all birth I couldn’t be present, nor cut the umbilical cord. I wonder why it was different in your case. :idunno:

There is an overuse of C-sections. This isn’t specific to Taiwan.

In my experience my wife pushed it out naturally. I wasn’t allowed to attend the birth.

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You can perfectly time births.

My clinic asked me if I wanted to cut it, I said yes, and they allowed me to. After the baby had been delivered they called me in, put a medical gown on me and handed me a pair of scissors. The scissors were so blunt that it took me thirty seconds to cut the umbilical cord. I guess that is so you don’t accidentally cut the baby. They even recorded me doing it, which was cool.

If I wanted to I could have been there to watch them lift the baby out of the womb, but it would have cost loads more money and my wife wouldn’t let me unfortunately.

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I think this is one of the main reasons people voluntarily choose to have C-sections in Taiwan. Even we decided to delay the C-section by a day so that the baby wouldn’t be born on the 28th, which apparently is not a good date to be born according to some religious book. My wife didn’t really care about this, but her mother did.

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Congratulations!

It’s done, forget about it, you have a healthy baby and wife! Many, many others are not so lucky.

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May I ask why if it’s not too personal?
They gave me the option, but I didn’t really think I could say no. It was a crazy experience.

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But yes, OP. I don’t get why people want a clinic, especially when they pay more. We’re having our second soon and I ruled out anything but a real hospital right away. We were lucky, first one was natural, almost C section. I think they’re more dangerous the doctor said. 2nd one is easier I think, so it’ll likely be the same.

I should say the rooms aren’t that great right away, but sharing a room is a small price to pay for top doctors imo.
A better room opened up the second night and I sleep slept in a chair for 3 days haha

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To be fair to the clinic, it is very nice and our room is amazing. It is better than any Taiwan hotel that costs less NT$3000 per night. The nurses are also very helpful. However, the reason we chose this clinic is that it is right next to our house, so the weekly checkups towards the end of the pregnancy were very convenient, especially when I wasn’t able to accompany my wife.

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Congrats on the baby! I don’t have anything helpful to add to this conversation. We had our first one born in a big hospital naturally, and it was all one gigantic blur (except for the vivid memories of my wife snapping at me due to her reduced ability to tolerate my attempts to help her).

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They said no. Not enough space.

Did you not explain to them how crucial men are to the whole process?

I’d done my bit.

Yeah I could have made a big deal of it and pulled out a camcorder, but to be honest I was happy not to observe the event.

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Interesting. Thanks for sharing. The room I was in wage huge. They encouraged me to take video and pictures haha. Seriously though, they did. They next couple had their GoPro

Men are pretty useless from start to finish really. “Err… want me to hold your hand?”

If they told me not to go in I would not argue. If anything goes wrong who is getting the blame?

It’s a serious medical intervention and the experts understandably don’t want any random factors involved, such as big bloke who is a bit squeamish fainting. They want to get the job done and get home.

I would have willingly observed the birth, but I was equally happy to be told I couldn’t witness the birth.

Back a few decades when the whole idea of dads being present was fairly new, one who I worked with asked the Doctor if he could be present when his wife gave birth. The Doc replied “I should bloody well hope so, you caused this”.

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OP the fact that they surprised you with this last minute info tells me this hospital may have a communication problem. They should be up front about all of these things early on, different people care about different things. The only way to ensure people are happy is to be very clear about this stuff, both formally and informally, that is it should be brought up, by your obstetrician/midwife/ what have you, in your consultations. If engaged they will probably point to some fineprint somewhere, but it sounds like they need to do better.

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I forgot to congratulate the OP…
Congratulations on the baby, @meishijia ! May she grow health and strong!

And since we are at it…

Congratulations!

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