Let the Stork live forever!

The greatest gift we received at Haukeland was time.

Debate

This is a debate post. The entry was written by an external contributor, and quality assured by BT’s debate department. Opinions and analyzes are the writer’s own.

There was only one just under a month left until the due date when I, my husband, the family’s four-legged friend and my increasingly large belly boarded the train from Oslo to Bergen. With a pregnancy pillow and maternity ball stowed together in the compartment, we left our home in Oslo.

I was 40 years old when I became pregnant with our daughter. And even though my health was perfectly normal, my age alone led to the “high risk” label being placed on a problem-free pregnancy. More and more “no’s” became an ever greater source of stress: I couldn’t go over the due date. I did not get give birth at the ABC clinic. I would not be born in water; I had to be monitored electronically constantly.

In the months that followed, my anxiety grew and I mentally prepared myself for battle. The fear got a foothold, and gradually I moved from my body into my head – the perfect recipe for a stuck birth.

So, in space Christmason Christmas holidays with the family in Bergen, we called Bergen’s alternative maternity ward.

“My wife wants to give birth at Storken,” said my husband.
“Do you have an upper age limit?”
“How old is she?”, they asked.
“Forty,” he replied.
And then something happened that changed everything.
“Gorgeous. You are most welcome here”, was the reply he received.
“You don’t need to apply. Just call when she has contractions and we’ll take it from there.”

From that moment, I got calm. The head rested and the heart rejoiced.

Then it rained to say every single hour of every single day in the month of January in Bergen. But then, for the first time in weeks, the light returned. The sunset on February 14, 2022 – Valentine’s Day – was so spectacular that my phone flooded with photos throughout the evening.

Only a few hours later the contractions started and we knew who to call.
When we arrived at the Storken in the morning, we were greeted with a safe calm, and the room we were given was ours throughout four shifts of duty. Thirty-two hours after the first contraction, our daughter was born.

We stayed at Storken in the days that followed the birth. There we had the chance to lose ourselves completely in the magical bubble of love as first-time parents, with time and space to let the body heal and carefully watch over the fragile, new life that lay next to us.

In the birth certificate mine I wrote that I wanted a “very experienced midwife”. I imagined someone who would largely show me how to give birth. I was wrong there. After giving birth, I have realized that a truly experienced midwife has a fundamental belief that women know how to give birth to their own child, and only intervene when help is needed.

When today, with a one-year-old daughter, I look back on our birth experience at Storken, I realize that the greatest gift we received was neither the large room, the acupuncture needles, nor the extra bed for my husband. That was the time we were given, unreserved time. The kind of time that is only given in total trust.

Most expectant mothers will not be able to travel 460 kilometers to have the birth experience they want. We were lucky to be able to rely on my husband’s family in Bergen in the time before and after the birth. But for everyone who lives in Bergen and the surrounding areas, I hope Storken lives forever.

Now that the ABC clinic in Oslo has closed its doors for good, I think a lot about all the women who at the time of writing are refining their birth certificates, in the hope that their wishes will be met and respected. My hope is that, if nothing else, they are given the time and trust they need and that they so deeply deserve. A lot has been done then.