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- I'm originally from New York, and I had my first child 12 years ago in London.
- I had all my four children in the UK healthcare system.
- My children are priceless – as in, I never paid for my medical care during pregnancy and birth.
When I first found out I was pregnant 12 years ago, I was terrified. At 27, I was jobless and still on my student visa after completing a master's degree in London. Scariest of all, I would be having this baby abroad, in England.
I'm a native New Yorker, and I wasn't prepared for the UK's take on childbirth.
If your pregnancy is low-risk in the UK, you likely won't see a doctor your entire pregnancy. Epidurals aren't encouraged, and midwives do everything, from checkups to delivery. It's also highly likely that the person delivering your baby is someone you first clapped eyes on five minutes earlier.
I had a pretty hands-off birth
The hospital where I had my baby had two birth centers: one for midwife-led unassisted births, and another run by doctors for anyone wanting or requiring interventions like epidurals, C-sections, and forceps deliveries.
The hospital also had two hydrotherapy pools, and when I was writing up my birth plan, I decided I could try for a water birth.
My water broke at midnight on my baby's due date, and I was 9 centimeters dilated by 8 a.m. I know this for a fact because the amazing midwife who delivered my baby came to my house first thing, examined me, and told me that if I didn't get an ambulance I would be having a baby on the living-room floor while my bulldog licked the juice I'd spilled on my arm.
In the ambulance I discovered Entonox, a mix of oxygen and nitrous oxide, also known as gas and air. You suck it in through a tube and feel pleasantly spaced-out and loopy.
I was so out of it from sucking that tube with all my might that when I eventually gave birth to my daughter in the pool, I was screaming and begging for a C-section, even though I'd already delivered her.
The room where I recovered had a five-star-hotel-equivalent view of the London skyline, with Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament staring back at me through the window. I was allowed to go home with my baby just six hours later.
We received midwife checkups a couple of times a week for the next few weeks before being discharged from care.
I've had 3 more children in the UK, and all my experiences have been positive
I've had three more children in London since 2010, all of them in the same hospital, on that same ward.
My friends always laugh when I tell them I was offered lavender and lemon aromatherapy oil-soaked tissues for pain relief for my second birth. I delivered a 10-pound, 4-ounce baby with the help of two Tylenol, some crumpled essential-oil-infused tissues, gas and air, and a birthing pool.
What was strange to me about having a baby here was that the medical system pretty much leaves you alone if your pregnancy is low-risk. You have two scans - one at 12 weeks, another at 25 weeks - and somewhere between seven and 10 midwife appointments across the whole nine months.
It's the opposite of the highly interventionist US system, and it probably made my first two pregnancies more relaxing.
My third and fourth babies were also born here, but the pregnancies were more intense, with gestational diabetes tests, an inguinal-hernia diagnosis, extra growth scans, a transverse baby position that nearly led to a C-section, and a tongue-tie operation for my fourth child.
Most unbelievably, none of this cost me a penny. My babies are truly priceless.