Birth Experience 3

cont...

The next week was a nightmare to put it mildly... I spent the week on a rollercoaster of emotions and decisions made by the Drs. who couldn't agree on whether to deliver me then and there. At 27 weeks this was scary - too soon. Plus to make it just great I was in a lot of pain from the cannula which of course like all other foreign things does not like my body or veins.

I am really having a hard time writing this. I really at times don't want to revisit it but then I do so it sits on my computer day after day until I add little by little...

Ok to condense it down a bit at the end of the week I discharged myself so that I could go back to my Dr and because they couldn't say for sure that I had even been leaking in the first place - even after doing a number of tests. But little did I know that this was probably an unwise and unnecessary decision as I ended up back here a week later (but in retrospect also I needed to go through this emotionally to realise that hosptial was the best place for me and baby).

In the meantime however I went to see my Dr the next day at the private hospital and was straight away admitted to hospital again. The same hospital I went to initally and there I stayed for the next week.

OK to sideline a little ... during this time emotionally it was very difficult having my 3 year old son at home. I left home saying to him that I would see him in an hour or so and was sent straight to hospital and then due to hospital policy (no children allowed to visit) didn't see him for nearly a week!! We are very close and he is very attached to me and to see him upset was heartbraking and of course when you have hours to while away in a hosptial bed your mind tends to run in the wrong direction. This was really hard on him. The gov. hospitals have some very strict rules I will outline some of them...

In the first hospital (which was stricter than the others) -

1. No children
2. Visitors only allowed during visiting hours
3. My husband had to get a special certificate to say he could visit me and even then would often get kicked out. The security officers would come around and check the rooms.
4. No electrical devices - I had to get special permission to have my portable DVD player. Oh and to top things off the TV was mainly in Arabic and was horrible reception on the English channels!
5. Had to sneak my big long pillow in as I wasn't allowed any other bedding to be bought in.
6. Had to sneak food into me also as food from 'outside' was not allowed. This was quite difficult as I got to the point where meat and rice made me gag! GROSS... not that Omani food is bad but Omani hospital food the same thing day in day out was terrible.
7. There are probably heaps of other rules that I have forgotten but these were the most significant at the time.

In the Second hospital which in the end I was lucky to stay in they were not so strict and I was allowed to have food bought in and my DVD player and pillows etc. The only thing they were still strict on was visitors and no children. So we had to use "Wusta" and go above everyone's heads and get special permission to have my son Joshua come and visit me and even then it was a battle at times to get him past the guard. There was no way though that after driving more than half an hour my husband and mother were going to turn around again without seeing me.

(Wusta - the whole country works on this and the connections you have - basically what power you have. There are varying levels of wusta and it depends on who you are and what position you hold.)

I was lucky enough to have my own room. I do not think that I would have survived in a ward full of Omani women with screaming babies. The only thing that saved my sanity was that I had a bedroom and bathroom to myself - oh i don't even want to delve into the toilet story but you can just imagine what a middle eastern communal bathroom/toilet is like...