Everyone's been asking me how Japanese hospitals differ from American hospitals. Let me put this in bullet form:- Japanese hospitals really encourage women to stay in the hospital at least 5 days. It is an effort to make sure that mothers can really take care of their babies upon discharge.
- The hospital food is quite healthy. I had salmon for breakfast. There were hardly any carbs in my diet, except for an occasional roll.
- The hospital where I stayed is quite popular with expatriates, but I still found it really difficult to overcome the language barrier. I got quite frustrated, actually.
- I ended up leaving the hospital after two nights because I was really bored (and to make sure that Joseph didn't freak out). I think that if I had had some American TV, I would've stayed a bit longer. I would have been happy watching Oprah all day long. I was bored because I was just tired and had to stay in this tiny, tiny room (see above).
- Other than that, the processes were quite similar. Gracie got the same treatment as she would back home. The only thing that I was shocked by was that the hospital didn't have any pacifiers! And they really didn't push formula as much as they did back in Milwaukee.
Oh, one other thing.... I had to carry around this blue book that was my maternity "bible" here in Japan. The doctor recorded all my information (and the baby's information) in this book. He even put a post-it note on the cover of my book so that the nurses wouldn't forget to do some procedure once I entered the hospital. I'm not sure what I would've done if I had lost that blue book. I never saw my info recorded in a computer program!
All in all, it was fine to deliver here in Japan. I was well taken care of. But the language barrier was enough to cause some tears of frustration. All's fine, though!
