Sunday morning marked my first appointment at the premiere maternity hospital in Dalian. I didn’t want to go. I am beyond sick of hospitals at this point and every time I go see the doctor, they tell me every thing’s fine. To add to the nuisance, prenatal care in China follows the same pattern as prenatal care everywhere else in that upon reaching your thirty-seventh week of pregnancy, you get to celebrate by hanging out with the doctor every single week until the baby comes out or until you die, whichever comes first.
Oh, and to add to the fun and excitement, you’re not supposed to eat before these appointments because at the Magical Maternity Hospital, they prefer to not tell you which tests you’re going to have to take at each appointment. And you need to show up first thing in the morning because if you don’t, you might have to stay at the hospital overnight just waiting in lines. There are a lot of lines.
We arrived on time for once at eight-thirty in the morning. Between not being able to sleep the night before and not being allowed to eat breakfast, I’d managed to burst into tears once before even stepping out of the car. I was still drying my eyes when we met up with Christian’s Chinese coworker who, for some reason, volunteered to play translator for the day (she’s quite possibly the most patient person on the planet) and we got into the line to pay the registration fee. After the registration fee, it was off to the “Perinatal Area” where I was weighed and my blood-pressure taken and then told to go sit down and wait by the nurse.
Two hours later, it was finally my turn to see the doctor. She measured my belly, listened to the kid’s heartbeat, and calculated my due date. My last doctor had given me a due date of March 3rd after consulting some god that lived in the ceiling and drawing some pictures on a piece of paper. Sunday’s doctor, however, used a very scientific-looking chart for her calculation, which returned March 8th as the day on which I have a 95% chance of not giving birth. Personally, at this point, I prefer the mystical method to the rational one.
Then it was time to take some tests. In all, there were four vials of blood drawn, an icky swabbing was done, a tech checked out the state of the kid’s umbilical cord with a doppler machine, and I was hooked up to another machine that listened to the baby’s heartbeat for half an hour and recorded the results. Each of these tests involved waiting in more lines until the hospital shut down for an hour lunch break. I finally arrived back at the doctor at around one in the afternoon for her to interpret the various results.
The good news is the fetus passed splendidly. The bad news is there’s some weird part of me that views passing all those medical tests as an accomplishment. I have a bad feeling this makes me a prime candidate for a future “soccer mom” position. The even worse news is I get to do this again next weekend and every weekend thereafter until the kid is born.
So if anyone has any suggestions for encouraging labor to start immediately, I am all ears!