RAGE #2

 

[ORIGINAL VIDEO]
[SUBBED VIDEO] by heavibear

There are three of us now! Congratulations are in order! Yes, yes, yes, thank you, thank you, yes. Wait. It's Rage. Raging at...Yudin Maternity Hospital. The topic of childbirth is pretty off-putting to me, as it is to a lot of other people. We all know that it hurts like hell, that there’s a lot of blood and mucus, and that they cut the umbilical cord. Blegh. So I agreed to be present at the birth. What else could I do? Alina and I do everything together, and at such a crucial moment, I had to support her, especially since she herself said that it would be easier for her if I was there. Plus I've often heard and even seen how hospitals treat newborns and their mothers. So just monitoring the process would be nice. Looking ahead...it's a good thing I agreed.

All the tests were taken 33 times, I've already seen my son at the ultrasound several times, we almost finished the animation for the 3rd episode and should have passed it on to the compositing soon. Whew. We had some free time and decided to quietly, with no stress, no rush, choose a maternity hospital where Alina would suffer. The closest to us turned out to be the Yudin Maternity Hospital. In my opinion the distance is important, because if anything happens, we are only 10 minutes away. While all the other other hospitals are about 20-30-40 minutes away. Anything could happen during that time.

The reputation of this maternity hospital was also pretty good. We have a few friends who gave birth there relatively recently, and said everything was fine. Everything is modern, new and freshly renovated. And those who had chosen paid services said that there was nothing to complain about. We also read the reviews, and everything was fine there, too. Was. Apparently. Because I started having questions as soon as we got there. What is that? What is that? Does it work? If it is, then why the fuck is this construction site working as a maternity hospital? There's dirt everywhere, dust, construction debris. Well, screw it. Alina's preliminary delivery date was September 1st. And it was early August at the time, so I thought, "Maybe by then things will somehow be...better."

We entered the admission ward. Everything was actually nice there, so modern, pretty, clean. We signed a contract. It's some crap about how if the ambulance picks us up, it has to take us to this particular maternity hospital, because we have a contract with it. We were told that according to the contract Alina will stay in a 6-bed room, will eat like this, and the room will be like this. But there is also a contract that you have to pay for. It includes: a doctor who will take care of you until the birth, a separate single delivery room with a private bathroom and other privileges, a separate or 2-bed postpartum room where you will recover, and 4 meals a day.

Dima: Are air conditioners included in the contract?
Doctor: Of course! It's just that we are having renovations here, so it doesn't work here on the first floor. But up there, where the room is, they work fine. And you know, this heat will probably pass in a week and air conditioning won't be needed at all. It's August after all.

We agreed.

Dima: Yeah, let's do it on a fee basis.
Doctor: That'll be 120,000.
Dima: How much?!
Doctor: That's the minimum. You can also pay to have your own nurse, your own couch…
Dima: Wait, wait, wait. You do realize that a trip to Cuba with an all-inclusive plane ticket for a week costs considerably less?
Doctor: Uh-huh.
Dima: And here a person is essentially going to be in the hospital for three days. And you're charging 120 thousand for that?
Doctor: Mm-hmm.
Dima: What are you gonna feed her, black caviar?
Doctor: Well, if you don't like it, let's do it for free…
Dima: No, no, let's do it on a fee basis!
At least those who gave birth on a fee basis did not complain about the attitude towards the client. Or clients. The number of clients, after all, is...increasing.

Anyway, we paid 120,000 and were immediately assigned to a contract doctor, whom we immediately met. She stated the following:

Doctor: You're doing fine. But just to be on the safe side, take these tests.
Dima: Okay. Which office do we take them in?
Doctor: Office? Hahahaha! There is no office! You should do them with your own money in some lab, and bring the results to me here.

By the way, before signing the contract we were sent for an ultrasound and CTG. Just to be on the safe side. Only after signing the contract were we asked to also pay for these services, like, "Well, you did it before the contract."

But whatever, let's go back to our doctor.

Doctor: The childbirth should be in early September. And now listen carefully: if you have contractions, you shouldn't run to the maternity hospital. It could be a training contraction.
Dima: Uh-huh.
Doctor: And the time between the training contractions and the real ones can be more than a week. So if you don't want to stay here for a week, come only when you have contractions every three minutes for two hours.
Dima: So if the contractions are repeated every 3 minutes, but suddenly stop for 30 minutes…
Doctor: That's nothing. It'll just hurt and go away.
Dima: And if, like, this so-called plug comes out…
Doctor: That's also nothing. If the plug comes out, it could still take three days to go into labor.
Dima: Uh-huh.
Doctor: So if contractions start, don't panic and just count. Labor is a pretty long process.
Dima: Well...thanks.

August 24. It's still approximately a week before the birth. We decided to relax, so to speak, to celebrate finishing the animation of the 3rd episode. Alina was watching a movie, I was sipping a beer. The contractions started in the afternoon, but Alina has downloaded an app which helps her figure out if these are training contractions or not. They seemed to be training contractions. But the pain made Alina unable to eat or sleep. In the meantime, I, like a perfect father, kept sucking on my beer, confident that the birth is still a long way off.

The evening of August 24. Alina was still writhing in pain, but the app showed training. Like, "Calm down, everything's cool." So I keep sipping.

The night of August 25. Alina already felt like passing out, but the contractions continued. And apparently they were still training contractions. Why the fuck do they go on for so long? I was kind of already thinking about going to sleep, after all I've had 7 cans of beer. It was bedtime. But Alina hasn't been able to fall asleep for 20 hours and she wouldn't let me fall asleep either. The contractions did not occur every 3 minutes though. The gap between contractions was not reducing. Sometimes it was every 20 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes even an hour, and so on.

The morning of August 25. By the time we were both like this, Alina's water broke. Holy shit. The doctor who just wrote that it's all training, suddenly told us to come to the maternity hospital. But how?! I can't call a cab, no cab driver will take Alina. So I called an ambulance and a GAZelle arrived. [A type of shitty old Russian van.] Wow, we're so lucky. What a fucking rarity. But what can we do? We took everything we needed, our pre-prepared clothes, and got in the van.

Doctor: What's your interval between contractions?
Alina: 3 minutes.
Doctor: Well, why did you wait till the last moment, mama? As soon as it happens every 15 minutes, you have to go to the hospital! Do you want to give birth in the emergency room? We already had a case like that today.
Dima: I don't doubt it.
At this point, I really wanted to punch someone in the face.

The gazelle arrived 15 minutes later, having hit all the bumps in the road. A bit further away from the emergency room. And we were drowning in the mud, because everything had been dug up. So we went to the entrance, and there began a 40-minute bureaucracy: filling out paperwork, checking data. All this while the person is literally toppling over, writhing in pain. At last they took her inside, and they asked me to wait. I had already forgotten about sleep, and all the beer came out of me along with the sweat.

Alina: By the way, while you were sitting there waiting, I walked myself to the delivery room. Up the stairs. To the second floor.
Dima: Did they help you in any way, like give you a hand or...
Alina: No. No, I didn't get any help. Ah, wait, she walked ahead and showed me the way. Thanks for the help. That was the only help she offered.

After about 10 minutes, the same doctor appeared and said to me:
Doctor: You're contractually required to be present, aren't you?
Dima: Yes.
Doctor: Well, put on a change of clothes and come with me. Oh, you don't have a change of clothes with you, huh? Oh my, that's a shame. Well, I can't let you in like that.
Dima: What if I go get a change of clothes?
Doctor: Well, you could try, if you’re quick.

I took a cab and rushed home, grabbed my clothes, rushed back, plopped into the emergency room, but they wouldn't let me in. "Well, you should call your doctor. We don't know who you are." I didn't have the doctor's phone number, so I had to wait another half hour for her to come down.

Alina: I want to tell you how it all happened from my side, too. So, I was dying in the delivery room and the doctor came in and said, "Where did your husband go? I'll go get him, they won't let him in."

I just want to mention that I was in a completely disoriented state, near death, and I mumbled something like, " At the entrance."

The doctor was like, "What entrance?"

"To the hospital?" What was I supposed to tell her?

“I know it's the hospital,” she started getting mad, “But which entrance?”

I don't fucking know! I didn't see the entrance number behind the scaffolding, I'm sorry. Besides, if she came down, like Dima said, she should have seen which entrance they drove us to. I didn’t immediately respond to her because I had a contraction at one point, and she was apparently outraged by it, and right in the middle of a contraction yelled, like, "WHICH ENTRANCE, CAN YOU EVEN ANSWER?" I swear, even in my normal state I wouldn't have told her what entrance it was.

Dima: She knew which entrance it was. She walked me out of there.

Alina: Exactly, I realize that now, but, like... What the hell was going on?! Why the fuck was she even bothering me? And she was like, "In the main lobby?" Seriously, a person is dying of contractions, gonna give birth in about 20 minutes, and you ask her, "Where exactly, which lobby?" Do you want me to show you a fucking map or something?

So of course I was telling her something, like, "I don't know. The same place they brought us to." Then I had another contraction, and when she started asking me again, I didn't answer. Sorry, I was in a little bit of pain, too distracted. To which she just said, "You know what, this conversation is not serious." Turned around and walked away. And left me in total confusion and lack of understanding if my husband will or will not be brought to me, if she was offended or not, if I should ask her to forgive me or what? Will she ever come back?

Dima: When they finally let me in, I found Alina in a near-death state. She was completely out of it, her eyes were rolling, completely malnourished. But that wasn't what struck me, it was that she was TOTALLY ALONE. No doctor around, no one. Like, "You stay the fuck alone until you give birth while we take care of more important things."

Our doctor would come by every 15 minutes, say it was too early, and leave. What a great fucking hospital. And what a view from the window, mmm! A man standing on scaffolding laying insulation. Do you realize that pieces of insulation are flying right into the open windows to the newborn babies?! Besides, how is it okay to have a man on scaffolding standing outside the window, staring into the room where a woman is giving birth? Holy shit, this is fucked! I thought. But it wasn't totally fucked yet.

The fuckery started when Alina finally extracted our son into the light after 2 hours of torture. I don't even know how to fucking illustrate this. Even the scribbled version would not look so good. Anyway, Alina was placed on the bunk, the baby was placed on her belly, and then it turned out that there were no diapers in the delivery room! No blankets, no cloth, nothing! The nurse looked around the room, then stared at me and was like, "Is your shirt clean?" "Yeah, it's washed." "Take it off, we need something to cover the baby." I was fucking stunned, but I took it off. And that's how my son spent the first minutes of his life under my t-shirt. And I stood there with my bare torso and waited for one of the nurses to come and finish this shit, because we were left again for half an hour.

After about 40 minutes the baby was finally weighed, measured, and wrapped in diapers. And I was told that I could go home, come tomorrow, the visiting hours were from 2 to 5pm. I left, slept at home, and in the morning Alina informed me of something that almost made me jump. "They forgot to bring me dinner. They forgot to bring me breakfast. Bring me food and WATER, it's not here either."

Alina: Well, they actually had a cooler, but it was somewhere in the middle of fucking nowhere, far, far down the hall. And I definitely wouldn't have reached it on the first day.

Dima: Can you fucking imagine forgetting to feed someone after they give birth? Twice! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think even murderers in prisons get fed right!

I packed food and water and went straight to the maternity hospital. At that point I was about to start bombarding everything. What the fuck kind of security is this, I went through and nobody asked me anything! What the fuck are these elevators? Everything here is so modern, so fucking awesome, but the elevators are fucking like this! It's like the Middle Ages. There's even an operator to control this complicated machine. What the fuck kind of doors are these? Why the fuck won't they close? Oh, I see. It's all so fucking new, huh. What's with the sugar? Why the fuck is it broken? Why the fuck is everything broken?! Do you know what the fuck this is? It's a fucking diaper bucket that gets taken out once a day! And it's made for two. Four of these buckets won't be enough for two people! What's with the nurses, where the fuck are they? It’s like there's only one on the entire floor.

Nurse: Here I am! It's lunchtime! Here... What's that? Oh, you shouldn't have brought that, she can't have that!
Dima: But you don't even give her what she can have! You've starved her to death!
Nurse: Oh, come on, don't say that. Here! And... Wait, there's two of you?
Yes, the person forgot to bring food for one of the moms right in front of me, like it was one meal for two.

What the fuck's wrong with the air conditioners? Why the fuck don't they work? It's fucking 32 degrees Celsius! Considering the water's so hard to find, you could really die of dehydration here. I wouldn't be complaining if we hadn't paid 120 thousand for this! For what?! Also, when I was leaving, I was stopped by some chick who said, "I didn't want to stop you, but the visiting hours are from 2 to 5, Wazowsky!" "I'm afraid that if I came at 2pm, I would have found 2 corpses here."

And the final chord hit when we finally got Alina out of that hellhole. We were standing there, smoking. "You'd better smoke farther away, it's a maternity hospital!" "OH, YEAH?! Listen, you fucking shithead, you stupid cunt! Doesn't that fucking bother you, you asshole?" Is what I wanted to say, but I was so stunned that I just blinked at her silently.

What conclusion can we draw here? I understand that many will now say, "Pft, I had a free birth! There were 20 people in one room, no one back then even knew the word conditioner! And the doctors shouted at me with foul language so I would shut up already with my contractions, otherwise they won't hear their favorite TV show!” But that's exactly why we decided to have a contract birth, to avoid all this fucked up shit! We didn't. Man, I wonder what would have happened if we'd done it for free, would it have been like... "GIVE BIRTH, BITCH! HERE'S YOUR LITTLE SHIT, CATCH IT!"

It turns out that in order to be treated a little better than a free client and provided a room for two, not six, you pay at least 120 thousand? And if you complain about the violation of the contract, you'll just get publicly shamed? Like, "Well, they didn't swear at you, so why are you complaining? Privileged jerks!" And it makes you wonder, is this really considered the norm in maternity hospitals, or is this specific to this maternity hospital. Either way, it's all minor things. The birth of a child is probably the most significant moment in every family's life. It’s already marred by a great ordeal for the mother-to-be. And when the staff at the hospital do not think these ordeals are severe enough, they crank them up to the max, either because they're jealous, or because that's how they gave birth themselves, or because they've got Satan in them, I don't know. But I hope that our sad experience will be of some help to those who are yet to have a new addition to their family.