On making very small people in Germany

Apropos of nothing: who came up with a system in which 11:00 PM comes after 12:00 PM?

As reported earlier, my first offspring, dubbed the Gummybear, will be arriving, we are told, early this May.* In preparation for this joyous and, by all accounts, messy event, Rose and I visited a hospital and a midwife clinic (Geburtshaus) for tours of their facilities and explanations of their procedures.

Rose suggested that it might be interesting to write about the differences between the American and German traditions of baby manufacture, which is what led me to start this post. I've realized, however, that I can't be entirely certain of what the differences are. I can tell you how German supermarkets are different than American supermarkets because I've experienced both, but I moved to Germany in my early twenties, before I'd ever held permanent employment or reproduced. My entire life experience of labor law, marriage, and gummy bear extraction has been made here, so things that seems strange to me may very well be identical to how they are done back home, and things that seem perfectly normal to me may fly in the face of American convention.

The first thing that surprised me here was learning about German labor laws concerning new parents. Mothers get sick leave from six weeks before they are due until eight weeks after they give birth (so if your child is overdue, you get more leave). After this, they are free to return to work if they choose, but for up to a year, either parent can stay home and receive two-thirds pay for up to a year. Fathers are encouraged to take some of this time off by a relatively new law that grants a couple an extra two months if the paid leave is shared between both parents. For another two years after that, parents have the right to unpaid leave or partial leave (i.e. reduced hours), after which their employer must return them to the position they had previously left.

The birthing process itself has also presented a fair number of surprises to me. For example, I seem to remember my mom coming home with my little brother within hours of his birth, but it's common here for a new mother and child to spend two or three days in the hospital. Our hospital will even rent us an extra bed for me to sleep in if I request it. And post-partum care doesn't stop when you leave the hospital - a midwife will visit daily for several days and then at increasing intervals for some weeks to check on the mother and baby, answer any questions, and help new parents learn skills like changing diapers and nursing.

And you can probably tell from the fact that Rose and I visited a midwife clinic that natural birth and home birth are making big inroads into the mainstream here. Having read their literature and listened to their presentation, I'm really not convinced. When you deliver with a midwife, you're an ambulance or taxi away from pain medication and emergency medical care. I grok the argument that childbirth is a perfectly natural process, but that doesn't make it safe. Giving birth is dangerous for everyone involved (I'll be wearing pads and a helmet), and having seen newborn babies as well as the opening ours is supposed to emerge from, I think it's fair to assume that Rose is at least going to want an aspirin or something at some point during the process. The midwife giving the presentation also read off some statistics on the incredibly low rate of complications the clinic experienced, which seemed very impressive until she read us the list of all the pregnancies they wouldn't deliver. If a hospital refused to handle premature deliveries, late deliveries, mothers with diabetes, breach babies, babies with congenital defects, etc., they would probably have a pretty low rate of complications, too.

We will be taking advantage of the clinic's other offerings, however. We'll likely choose a midwife from there to do post-partum visits, and since they are right around the corner from us, we'll probably attend some of their activities. I, for one, am very excited about the class entitled "Baby Massage for Daddies." The class that amuses me the most, which we'll also probably join, is the "play group" for newborns. Now, I've spent some time with newborns, and their main activities, pooping and crying, are pretty solitary endeavors. I imagine a more accurate title would be "chat group for new parents."

*I realized I was writing a run-on sentence there, but then I noticed I was writing it entirely out of three-word clauses and decided to just run with it. I admit that it got a little out of control, but my life revolves around such small joys.