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Comment by moksly | Hacker News Reader

I’m happy to have had my baby in Scandinavia. We read up on all sorts of literature for preparation, but it’s an ocean of disagreeing information, but because having a child is hard, you’re assigned a nurse educated in infant well being by the government for free.

They help you with a range of things, one is to setup a sleeping setting where there is minimal risk of the baby dying. Not too warm, always sleep on their backs, have room to move stuff like that.

As usual Finland is just better at Scandinavia’ning than the rest of us. Good job Finland!

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Now compare this to Italy, where my wife was denied an epidural injection for 4 hours, depleted all of her strength from enduring so much pain for so much time, finally got the epidural which an apprentice failed to perform properly resulting in my wife having her right side paralyzed for the rest of the childbirth.

That led her having to stay completely laid down, and to several nurses literally hopping on top of her and pushing our baby into life using their elbows like it's 1900 again.

Then, nobody helped her into start feeding our baby and while the baby was loosing more and more weight day by day, once at home we had to call a private obstetrician and I BEGGED HER ON THE PHONE to come save my baby and my wife.

She came over to our house, showed us what to do and how to do it, and almost two years later my baby is now a giant just like me.

Here in Norway we my wife and I stayed in a family room in the hospital "hotel" both times, but the last time I left the next day with our older daughter and my wife joined with the youngest a day later.

We both automatically get two weeks off work as a birth leave and option to have a "jordmor", what you would call a midwife in English, visit and help if needed. Then we had ten months of parental leave combined, I had four months and my wife had six.

One thing foreigners freak out over is that during the day we have the babies sleep outside in the strollers in winter. They're usually wrapped in wool materials and are very warm. Is this common elsewhere in Scandinavia? They sleep very well out in the cold :)

> Is this common elsewhere in Scandinavia

Same in Sweden, babies are left outside while the parents sit in a coffee shop and kindergartens have a line of baby strollers outside for the young ones to sleep in.

Same in Iceland. I slept outside all year round as a child and now my daughter does. And also in wool clothing.

Used to be common in Scotland too, not sure about England so much. Me and my brother were put out in the front garden by my granny!

Can confirm it's still going; our first was an autumn baby and had his daytime naps by the open tenenment window. Sash and case barely keeps the cold out anyway when they're closed!

Hypothesis: this practice prevents or delays atrophy of the brown adipose tissue used for non-shivering thermogenesis.

Why would it? The kid isn't sleeping in the snow outside like a Husky, they're in a stroller, sleeping bag, wool etc. All put together it's probably better insulated than your house.

In France hospitals usually keep the mother and new born baby for about 5 days. They use that time to teach the mother how to care for the baby and to monitor how she's coping so that they can refer her to get more social help if needed.

Stupid question : where is the father supposed to learn ?

In Germany (and probably most other central european countries), it has become common for the father to stay with the mother and the kid in the hospital for the first few days (if job conditions and the income situation permits this), at least for the first child. This way, the father is also able to learn from basic child handling from the nurses in the hospital right from the beginning.

For our firstborn, the (finnish) hospital provided us with a family room for 3 days. Due to the circumstances of the birth, it was me (father) who got all the instruction at that point. I actually got to teach my wife how to change nappies and bath the baby afterwards :)

We also had a family room, to ourselves, for 3-4 days post-birth over Christmas. I was also the one who got the most instruction too.

It does have to be said that the rest of the talk/instruction/help was very focussed upon the mother (as you'd expect). I remember that all the meals we were provided with had labels:

* The meals for the mother had her full-name on them.

* The meals for me just said "father".

To some extent, the meals thing is probably just because the mother is the one who is the admitted patient, so her name will be readily on record. As the father is likely both a) not in need of even a contingency of medical care related to the birth process and b) not even necessarily well-established, present, or even alive at time of birth, I can see that being a more ephemeral label.

The father has 11 days of paternity leave in France.

In Iceland the father has 3 months of paid paternity leave. It is required, however, that parents leave the hospital the next day if everything is normal.

From the mother, for example.

I remember our first night home with our first child. It was an extremely difficult birth(long labor followed by a C-section due to complications) and so my wife needed lots of sleep(we only got 3 nights in the hospital and she was in no way recovered). I very vividly remember standing there, carrying a 3-day old baby crying while covered in poop and trying to figure out WTF I was supposed to do...

The answer is: you eventually figure it out after lots of panicking :P

And the midwife will visit at home 2-3 times in the following weeks

We live in France and we've just had our 3rd baby and the quality of care that we've got is simply amazing here. Hospital facilities are good, well designed and people there are very welcoming, helpful and polite. You stay 3-5 days in hospital, you can have a dedicated room and everything is taken care of. I contrast this with the country I'm born in (Eastern Europe) were the care is not bad, but very far from standards in France.

Also, my mother was shocked when we went to a pharmacy to 'buy' some stuff for newborn and my partner, and we didn't pay anything at all. I think you can fully appreciate all that only if you were raised elsewhere, otherwise you just take it for granted.

We had a child in the US and the overall experience was pretty decent: there was a nurse who gave us some basic info (that's how you wrap it, that's how you wash it and you sleep it on the back) and a separate breastfeeding consultant.

Probably depends on the hospital.

As for the sleeping box, we just put our son on our bed where he slept happily for the first year.

In germany, a similar feature exists. Unfortunately, these nurses are so much in demand that you have to book them when you are planning on having a child (atleast where I reside).

Its amazing how much we've been impoverished in America by anti-socialist sentiment.

My son was born in Vienna, and their system required parents to enrol infants in child care 24 months before they are born!!!! Well, they told us the waiting list is 2 years for infant care.

Its not very different here :/. We have to register kids to school as soon as they are born, else its extremely hard to get one. (There are new laws combating those, but i don't know how effective they are).

Where I live, there has been a massive boost in population because of rapid expansion of industries here. Unfortunately, the other services are unable to keep up.

The problem is not necessarily high demand (although our birthrate has started to recover). Insurance premiums are killing the occupation: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2017/no...

(We couldn't find one either.)

In the US, we’ve had access to free birthing classes, infant CPR, and a lactation class. At the hospital we will be assigned a nurse and a lactation expert to help my wife. The infant CPR and birth class covered sleeping.

All the above are free and provided by the hospital. It helps that we are going to the hospital with the most births in the US.

“Free”!!! You will be paying 10k+ after the birth if you dont have excellent insurance. At least thats what I had to do.

"All the above are free"

No, just no. If you have insurance, there will be copays, and they can vary from trivial to significant.

If you don't have insurance, enjoy the massive debt.

Nothings free wether it’s a baby box given by a Finland hospital or an infant CPR class. It’s all paid by you either with tax or post tax depending on your country.

Except that taxation is relative to income but the services are the same for everybody, and in a single-payer system you can’t be denied insurance based on ”preexisting conditions”. Massive difference.

Being pregnant and other pre-existing classifications were fixed by ACA aka Obamacare in 2014.

>Insurance companies can't refuse to cover treatment for your pre-existing condition or charge you more.

https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/pre-existing-condition/

"Except that taxation is relative to income but the services are the same for everybody"

That's a shortest complete rebuttal to the idea that "nothing is actually free" I've seen so far, thanks!

You are mistaken. Free classes like this are common at hospitals in the US. Not paid by insurance... free. Do a quick search and I’m sure you’ll find plenty. They’re typically called “community wellness” or “community education” programs.

I had the same thing in the US and no, there were no copays or insurance billing associated, beyond the fact you're getting your care at that hospital.

But... Finland is not in Scandinavia.

FWIW, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia points out:

> In English usage, Scandinavia also sometimes refers to the Scandinavian Peninsula, or to the broader region including Finland and Iceland, which is always known locally as the Nordic countries.