Great things of being mom in Germany: Healthcare

I was complaining in my last posts about how bad is seen for a woman in Germany to come back to work after giving birth. I want to talk another day about other difficulties, such as finding daycare. However today I want to write a post about great things of being a mom here, and one very important is the healthcare.

I have a public insurance (Krankenkasse), so I pay no private insurance. I always felt during my pregnancy that the german healthcare system is amazing. I was visiting my obstetrician 13 times during the pregnancy. In the beginning it was around once a month, after the week 30 every two weeks, and during the last month every week. My public insurance covered only a couple of ultrasounds (around 3 or 4), but I paid 100 euros extra which was like a "flat rate" for ultrasounds and I had many every time I was there. I know in other countries of Europe, that the public system only offers three or four visits overall! The obstetrician was amazing, and they were making me lot of tests during the whole pregnancy so I always felt quite relaxed as I was seeing that everything was going great. What a relief!

Apart from that, and also included in the public insurance, I had a midwife (Hebamme). I contacted her when I was three months pregnant and she was there always for any question I may have. I started seeing her weekly five weeks before my due date, and she was doing acupuncture in every visit. She told me she would help to make my labour quicker. I was a bit sceptic (I am sceptic by nature) but the truth is that my labour was very quick, so I would do it again, just in case! 

The best is after birth: when I arrived home with my baby, she was coming home every day for two weeks, checking that baby was fine, weighting her, taking care of her belly button, showing us how to bath her... As an expat, without family around, it was a relief to have her here. She has offered to come in the next weeks, but we told her we do not need that she visits us anymore. All these services of the midwife are also covered by the public health insurance.

I also had a good experience in the hospital. You have a lot of options to have the baby the way you prefer: water birth, or if you go to the Delivery Room, you have lot of appliances to be used during delivery such as birthing balls, ropes hanging, birthing stools... Or of course you can ask for epidural when you arrive. A midwife is there with you to help you in your decisions and ease the pain.

Once the baby is there, you stay at least three nights in the hospital until they do the second medical check to your baby. During my three days in the hospital they were all very nice and helped us a lot. I shared room with another woman. I had the chance to get a private room if I paid a fee, but there were no private rooms available, and anyway, it was much better than expected to share the room, as the other mom was very nice and gave me great tips as was her second baby. The visits schedule is very strict, it was from 2pm to 4pm and from 6pm to 8pm, so there was not much noise in the room at all. Even the food was great, we could choose our daily menu! 

In general, I feel lucky as the healthcare system here works very well and my experience was great, specially when I compare with friends in countries like UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy...

I will talk in another post of other advantages of being a mom in Germany, such as the financial support of the state.