1 reaction to this article

Barbara Summa posted: 03-12-2008 | 5:48 PM

I had two children in Amsterdam as a foreigner and I admit it took me a few months to get into the whole Dutch system. But now I wouldn't want to have children anywhere else.

It is not that the Dutch system is so concentrated on natural birth as such, it's just that they rightly refuse to consider pregnancy as a medical condition, unless, indeed, medical problems are involved. Something included in the recomandations of most countries, including Italy where I am from, but rarely put into practice.

Epidurals have always been administrated in the Netherlands whenever necessary, but there are enough serious studies proving that it has a number of consequences, and that the baby gets drugs into circle, which often cause breathing problems, thus creating a medical condition. So your care-takers rightly inform you of that.

The greatest thing about the Dutch system is that they do everything so that the mother can make an informed choice amd being an active subject in the organization of her own delivery.

Anyway, lots of info about having children in the Netherland has recently appearen in a number of blogs in italian, so I give you one reference for those interested in reading on a number of child birth experience in the Netherlands of Italian women.
www.mammamsterdam.blogspot.com