As I reached for the phone, I glanced at the clock.  It was 5:00 AM.  This can’t be good, I thought.

“Hello?” I croaked.

The answer was unintelligible screaming.  I only made out one word: “Mooooom!”  You know how kids make “Mom” a four-syllable word when they want you? Yeah, it was like that.

I did the math, as I had for the six years my younger daughter, Allison, had lived in Oslo with her Norwegian husband:  Add six hours.  It was 11:00 AM in Norway, and my pregnant daughter was jabbering from 5,000 miles away.  Something big was happening, and I prayed it was a good big thing.

By this time, my husband had run into the living room to pick up the extension . “Allison, slow down.  What did you say?” he said.

“My water broke!”

Her due date was December 18.  This was December 1.  We had plane tickets to Oslo for
December 7.

A quick conversation revealed that labor had not begun and that the midwife had told her to eat breakfast and go back to bed.

“You’re allowed to eat?” I said, remembering how pregnant women back in my time couldn’t eat or drink while they labored.  How when the OB told me, “It’s a girl!” I said, “Fine.  Where’s my sandwich?”

While Allison presumably feasted on delicious Norwegian herring, bread, and brown cheese, my husband called Delta to see if we could get to Oslo, like NOW. Meanwhile, I started throwing clothes for our month-long trip into suitcases. (Actually, I had to do laundry first.)

And then there was the matter of stuffing the duffel bags with Velveeta, saltines, Cheez-Its, ranch dressing mix, Splenda—all the foodstuffs my daughter missed living in Europe—as well as hand-me-down baby clothes from my other granddaughter..

Miraculously, Rick and I were on a flight twelve hours later.  More amazingly, when we arrived in Oslo, my granddaughter was not yet born.  In fact, my daughter still wasn’t in labor. She had taken the first pill to induce her labor.   (A pill, not an IV drip? I thought.)

She met us at the door of the hospital wearing her yoga pants, striped shirt, and blue paper booties which prevented the winter slush from slopping up the hospital floors.  After a quick round of hugs and a tour of the maternity floor, she said, “Let’s eat.”

“Are you sure you are allowed to eat?”  I asked.  She confirmed that she was, so went to a little café in the hospital.  She only ate half of her Chicken Tikki Masala.

The hospital was a brick structure in the style of a 1950s elementary school. Our son-in-law Henrik said that it was scheduled to be replaced with a more modern structure.  There were no spacious waiting rooms with atriums and signed artwork.  No magazines. No comfy couches.  No plaques or posters celebrating the achievements of the staff.

But there was an old upright piano sitting in the hall.  I don’t know why.

This hospital wasn’t trying to impress anyone, to woo anyone.  It didn’t have to.  There is no competition for patients as in the U.S.  Health care is universal in Norway.

While my daughter returned to the maternity floor for more labor-inducing drugs, we checked into our hotel and took a shower and nap.  She asked us to bring Subway sandwiches to the hospital for dinner. “Are you sure you can eat?” I asked.  She was sure.

By the time we arrived back at the hospital, Allison was laboring and in no mood to eat.  She and Henrik were together trying to bring our granddaughter into the world.

Meanwhile, we had to find a place to sit.  There was a little lounge outside the cafeteria where visitors and new moms ate.  We found a corner table and a pair of uncomfortable chairs to commence the vigil, me with a book, my husband with his phone.  Minutes later we saw something amazing.

A new mother dressed in street clothes pushed the bassinet with her newborn baby into the room.  Awaiting her was her large family who swarmed around and began taking turns holding the baby.  We couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying—they weren’t speaking English or Norwegian—but we could easily translate the oohs and ahs and “She looks just like fill-in-the-blank” that accompanies the first meeting with a newborn. Then they started passing the baby around.

And then another set of new parents rolled their newborn into the lounge and visited with their parents.

And then another!

We were so astounded by these casual gatherings in a public setting that we almost didn’t hear the phone call from Henrik:  labor was progressing, Allison had been given an epidural, and she was 8 cm dilated.  Would we like to come to the labor and delivery floor?

We found our way to Allison’s room.  If the hospital seemed, shall we say, basic, functional, and mid-century, the labor and delivery room had all the bells and whistles and was definitely a 21^st century marvel.  We met the midwife who spoke, like nearly all Norwegians, perfect English, and she inspired nothing but confidence.  She hit that perfect balance of professional and girlfriend.

The midwife asked Allison, “Are you hungry?”

And I said, again, “Is she allowed to eat?  In America, you can’t eat or drink anything during labor.”

And the midwife said, “What?” as if I had said that they ripped out laboring mothers’ fingernails.   “Of course!  The uterus is a big muscle and needs energy!”

Over the next 479 hours, labor progressed.  It was difficult seeing my daughter in pain, and I can’t say I was disappointed when, at about midnight, the midwife said things were going to get “intense” and maybe we should take our leave. We asked where we could wait, and she had no idea.  There really wasn’t a waiting room, and the café was closed.  We found two vinyl love seats outside the elevator.

About two hours later we received pictures on our phone of our beautiful Stella Lingo-Osvik, some I-don’t-know-how-many kg and cm of her, but thanks to The Google, I learned she was a healthy 7 pounds 10 oz. and 19 inches.  The midwife would not allow us to visit for another hour or so because she didn’t want any distractions as the alert newborn nursed for the first time and had skin-to-skin contact with Daddy.

When we were permitted in, we found Henrik, without his shirt, holding the baby.  Allison was sitting cross-legged (I will never get over this detail) eating Swedish meatballs and potatoes.

We learned details of the birth, how three obstetricians had come in to assess the situation and determine if a C-section was necessary, but according to my daughter, she “pushed like a muthuh” (and a “mother”), and out popped Miss Stella, whose name was picked when she was an embryo.  (Norwegians sometimes take up to six months after the birth to select a name.) The midwife, who had been with them every minute of labor, caught the baby, and Henrik cut the cord.

Because Allison was running a fever, she had to overnight on the maternity floor without Henrik, but the next morning when all was well, the parents pushed Stella in her bassinet down a ramp to the adjoining maternity hotel where the new little family would live for the next few days.  This hotel, as well as the entire birth, is provided by their government health care system to every Norwegian woman.  There are no additional costs.  (In America, a woman with employer-provided health insurance typically pays $4500 out of pocket to give birth according to a study done by academic journal Health Affairs.)

Now, when I say “hotel,” think Red Roof Inn, not Hyatt Regency. The room (with adjoining bath) was just big enough to accommodate a king-sized bed, a chair, and the bassinet.  When you were in the room, there was no evidence that you were in a hospital.  There was no call button; there was a phone you used to call for medical assistance.  The little family just started their lives together knowing there were doctors and midwives right outside their door.

A midwife stopped by a couple times a day to check on Mommy and Baby and give lactation advice.  My daughter wanted her husband to give Stella occasional nighttime bottles of formula or breast milk, but her somewhat militant midwife did not approve of this hybrid approach.  My daughter pushed back and insisted on giving Stella some formula while in the hospital.  The midwife brought a shot glass-sized plastic cup of formula and dribbled it into the Stella’s mouth!

New parents pushed the bassinets down the hall to the cafeteria for all meals. Their accompanying family members had to pay about $20 for the small buffet, which is reasonable by Norwegian standards. All over the cafeteria were clutches of families with their newborn babies digging into their brown bread and Kjøttkaker (meatballs), Brunost (brown cheese), pureed swede (rutabaga), and heart-shaped waffles.

I had told a midwife how surprised by the fact that there was no security. “When my older daughter

had a baby last year, the mother and baby wore bracelets that were scanned several times a day.”

The mystified midwife asked, “Why?”

I sighed.  “It’s just different in America,” was my simple answer to a complex question.

After three nights in the hospital setting, my daughter wanted to go home. The midwife offered another night in the hotel.  “Stay!” I urged my daughter, but she declined.

The midwife said, “You’re educated.  Your baby is healthy.  It’s your call.”

Rick and I stayed in Norway for another three weeks. It was dark 18 hours a day.  Usually about 30 degrees.  Snow, slush, ice.   But every day the parents bundled Stella up in wool and sheepskin and took her out in her pram—to restaurants, coffee shops, the grocery.  On trams and busses.  To walk the dogs in the park.  This is what Norwegians do.

And when Norwegians stop at a coffee shop, they park their 8,995 Norwegian kroner prams (about $1000) outside the door.  And sometimes they leave the baby in it!  I am not kidding.  I took pictures.

I told a Norwegian woman, “In America you would get arrested for that!”

“It’s just different in Norway,” she said.

A couple days after my daughter and Stella came home, a midwife came to the apartment to check the baby, mama, and the nursery.  She had coffee with us and answered questions.  She weighed the baby. She told Henrik and Allison they should not co-sleep with Stella if they smoked or chewed tobacco, because the chemicals seep out of their pores.

“What? You are okay with co-sleeping?  In America we have billboards cautioning parents not to bring the babies in bed with them.”

She said, “Well, everyone must have their own duvet: Mom, Dad, Baby.”

“What?” I said.  “The baby is allowed to have a blanket in the bed?  In America, parents are told never to put a blanket in the baby’s bed.  There is even a law against it in daycares.”

“Of course,” she said, aghast, as if I just said we pull out the baby’s fingernails in America.

She went over some safety guidelines for breast feeding, making sure Allison knew not to drink alcohol beverages close to the time she nursed.

“What?” I said.  “We used to intentionally drink beer before nursing to stimulate milk production.”

A couple days later, a nurse-practitioner stopped by to check on the family.  .

For the next year, my daughter and her husband are allowed a total of 49 weeks of parental leave.  During this time, they will receive 100% of their salaries to stay home and parent. (There is a complicated formula:  Mom gets 18 weeks; Dad gets 15 weeks; the parents divide the remaining 16 weeks however they see fit.)  The parent’s job is protected for up to three years if they decide to stay home for that long.

After that year, Stella will go to Barnehage, the state-sponsored daycare, for one to five-year- olds. In these schools, children play outside at least a couple hours a day.  All over Oslo we saw teachers walking with groups of snow-suited preschoolers The parents pay on a sliding scale based on their income.  The same daycare is available to every Norwegian child, regardless of economic circumstances.

This is such a contrast to childcare in America, where there is vastly different quality depending on ability to pay.  In fact, some people in America find they can’t afford to work because of the cost of childcare.

Norwegians are rightfully proud that all of their children get a good start in life.  Even one of our Uber drivers (in a Tesla, but that’s another story) was bragging about it.

In America, there are people who identify themselves as “pro-life.” This term applies to people who are opposed to abortion.  But what happens to our children after they are born, especially children born into poverty?

American nun Joan Chinester made the case:  “I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”

It seems to me that Norway better exemplifies “pro-life” in the way they provide care to every woman and baby regardless of income.  *Even though Norwegians spend half of what Americans spend per capita on health care, they have better outcomes.  Their infant mortality rate is half of America’s.  (In fact, the U.S. ranks almost last of the developed countries on this measure.) Life expectancy in Norway is significantly greater than in the U.S.

It is a fact that there are almost no babies available for adoption in Norway.  (In 2018, there were at least 5!). Why?

I think the answer is complicated.

• Sex education begins at the beginning. Birth control is provided to anyone who wants it.
• There is no stigma about needing contraception.
• Abortion is legal for the first three months, and has been since the 70s. It has never faced any political challenges.
• When a woman is pregnant, she receives splendid health care for free (paid for with taxes). When the baby is born, he or she receives health care for free. There are support systems in place to make sure families are adjusting well. Every parent has access to excellent day care.  Every parent gets paid parental leave, and their jobs are protected while they are not working.

There are many reasons Norway’s health care system can’t be replicated here, and I think I’ve heard all the arguments.

Yes, Norway is a small country with a small homogeneous population.

Yes, taxes are high in Norway, though my daughter claims hers are not much higher than in New York.

Yes, we allocate a huge portion of our budget in the U.S. to the military compared to Norway.

And yet . . .

Could we do better?  Could we be more “pro-life” in America?

Today I received this message from my daughter:  “Went to my first Mom’s Group today.  The county organizes a meeting of women who had babies born around the same time and then hosts an initial coffee gathering at the health center in the hopes the women make friends and then start to organize their own activities together.  I met two awesome women . . . we got along so well I’ve invited them over for coffee at our place followed by a stroller walk in the statue park.”

Would this be so difficult?

 

*Statistics from worldometers.org and Exposing the Medical Myths by Arthur Garson Jr., MD and Ryan Holeywell

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