Having a baby in another country has a serious learning curve. Having a baby anywhere is quite an experience….but when you add to it a new healthcare system, and no family around, there are stories! I'm sure all of this is completely obvious to anyone who grew up here....but it wasn't to me.
Things that I learned:
- Unless for some reason you have a high risk pregnancy, not only do you not need an ob/gyn to be your first point of call, chances are you don't want one. Find a good midwife. It is more flexible, cheaper, easier, more informative, less medicalised, and an all around friendlier experience. In the hunt for someone to provide medical care, I visited 7 different ob/gyns, and was unhappy with *all* of them for various reasons. Most of them were perfectly competent health professionals, they just weren't what I was looking for. The issues ranged from being too busy to talk to me during a 15 minute appointment, only having 2 free slots for appointments in the whole 9 months of my pregnancy, costing 20x what my medical aid would cover, trying to schedule in a c-section when I was only 20 weeks pregnant, would do the check ups but not the actual delivery, to being an hour's drive away. I was absolutely fed up in a search for an ob/gyn, really wondering how anybody in Johannesburg had children…until I found a midwife! It was such a relief. She was friendly, had time both for appointments, and to talk to me, explained everything, and had what I see as a perfectly positive and balanced approach towards natural childbirth. I never looked back!
By coincidence, when I found a midwife, she came with a place to have the baby! More on that later...
- Depending on where you go for delivery, they come with lots of 'extras' - lactation consultants, ante-natal classes, and so on. I didn't particularly feel like I needed any of them (or was possibly too busy to take advantage of any of them), but other people I know would have benefitted from them. If you are looking for these things, pick a place accordingly. Otherwise, you'll have to hunt around for these separately....and hunting around for things is low on the list of things you want to be doing when you can't fit into any of your clothes.
- Getting decent information about what your insurance covers and what it doesn't is virtually impossible. After many hours on the phone, I gave up, and concluded it's better just to save up a little extra money and cross my fingers. I'm insured by Discovery, which is supposed to be about as good as it gets, and would be impressed if anyone had a different experience with other insurers.
- Being obviously pregnant is a fabulous conversation starter. It's as good as being obviously white on a taxi. This does have a downside (WHY do people think it's acceptable to talk to you about their hemorrhoids?), and the volume of unsolicited advice is astounding, and amusing, but the amount of good will is really lovely.
- There are hundreds of lists out there of things you need for a newborn. You don't really need any of it, and even if you have all of it lined up, you're still going to have to make a last minute run to the shops, so chill.
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