For your baby’s six week check up a doctors appointment and a child nurse appointment will be scheduled.  It is best to arrive at least ten minutes early as your baby will need to be weighed and measured first.  The baby will need all their clothes off for this.  You can keep the nappy on [...]

In Norway you have to register with a doctor.  You can only register with one doctor at one time and this registry is recorded in the big government system.  You cannot register with any doctor you want, only doctors that have available places at their clinic.  This is so the doctor-patient love can be spread [...]

* Warning: Some of the information in this post is not for the faint-of-heart.  I feel that the information is important for two reasons: 1. It gives an example of the ideas and procedures of the Norwegian birthing system, and 2. I have yet to find any resources that discuss some of the ’secret’ things [...]

There is a set procedure when you have pre-eclampsia.  If A doesn’t work then you move onto B, and if B doesn’t work then you move onto C.  Each step increases in intensity and depending on how your body reacts to each step will greatly impact on the next.
I was admitted into the maternity [...]

At my last doctors appointment (yesterday) there were some symptoms that have caused concerns.  My normal doctor is still on holidays (a Summer hazard of Norway – everyone disappears for six weeks all at the same time) so I had a very young female doctor.  Two scary words were brought up at the appointment: [...]

What I took away from my last Ultrasound appointment was how forthcoming the information was.  I didn’t have to pry it out of the physician and I believe it is because I knew what he was talking about from the get-go.  Over the years I have done a lot of study on pregnancy and birth [...]

The only reason you will have a third trimester ultrasound is if your doctor needs to get an ‘inside’ view of an ‘outside’ signal.  Some signals might be the amount of amniotic fluid, the position of the baby, low foetal movements, bleeding or lower back pain.  For me it was fundal size (the size [...]

In the last 1000 years in Norway, it was common for Norsemen to have hordes of kids.  This was largely due to the survival rate but also the more kids, the more farmhands you had working.   These days it is most common for Norwegian families to only have two kids.  Because of this, Norwegian [...]

Whether you are seeing a doctor or midwife, regular ‘controls’ are generally the same in terms of check-ups: heartbeat, blood pressure, tummy measurements.  However, the experience of going to a midwife for controls in Norway can be very different than seeing a doctor.

Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337), Cappella Scrovegni a Padova – Depiction of Midwife Salome [...]

Nowadays most people find out they are pregnant through a home pregnancy test. When they test positive the next step is to book a doctors appointment. In Norway this is called a pregnancy check-up (Svangerskapskontroll) and (because the compound word is such a mouthful) medical practitioners often use the word ‘kontroll’ (or control [...]