15 ways you know you gave birth in Germany

Since getting pregnant in Germany, I’ve been thrown into a whole new world that now mainly revolves around boobs, poo and sleep. Along the way, I’ve marvelled at how Germans prepare themselves for childbirth and beyond - although I have to admit, I've never given birth anywhere else. Here are 15 ways you know you gave birth in Germany:

1. Perineal massage
   It starts in the ante-natal class when the midwives give you instructions on how to massage your lady bits. Apparently it’s supposed to reduce ripping. I can tell you that it’s a big fat waste of time if your baby is 4.3kg.
2. New words
   Your vocabulary will expand to include terms like “mother cake” (Mutterkuchen) and “mother mouth” (Muttermund) – otherwise known as the placenta and cervix in English.
3. Thorough medical care
   I often think that Germans have mild hypochondriac tendencies, and you wonder if this accounts for the very thorough - and perhaps a bit overzealous - medical care before birth. I'm not complaining, but most of my UK friends seemed to manage fine on a handful of visits to the midwife. In Germany, I saw the gynaecologist 17 times before birth.
   In the final weeks each one-hour appointment involved checking the baby’s heartbeat, my blood pressure, weight, urine, iron levels and an ultrasound. Everything was noted down in a “mother passport” – a little booklet with my medical records, which I took everywhere with me.
   Once you’re home the midwife visits you for an hour every day for the first 10 days, then up to several times a week until 2 months have passed.
   Actually, what I'm really trying to say is, it's the kind of care that every country should aim for.
4. Ridiculously good maternity leave
   With all these doctors' and midwives' appointments, you need a lot of spare time. Luckily you have that by the bucket-load in Germany, with six weeks maternity leave before the due date and eight weeks after the birth on full pay, then two thirds of your salary up to a year after the birth. This generosity may all boil down to the fact that Germany has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, so they’re doing almost everything to encourage women to get up the duff. Unfortunately, many women are forced to take long periods off work because childcare is about as scarce as the Yangtze River dolphin, especially if you want a full day before the child is three.
5. Hospitals tout for your business
   Apparently childbirth is quite lucrative for hospitals. Before making our selection, we went to several parent evenings where the doctors enticed us with the promise of free taxis and fancy rooms.
6. Induction cocktail
   If you’re overdue, you might try the labour cocktail: a mix of castor oil, champagne and apricot juice. It kind of worked. I got some contractions, but it wasn’t enough to avoid getting induced in hospital.
7. Pain is what you want
   Don’t expect laughing gas to blow your mind during labour. When my husband told Svetlana, our Russian midwife in the delivery room, that he thought I was in lots of pain, her blunt response was: “That is what we want.”
8. Full staff
   In hospital, it’s not uncommon to find 12 people at a time in the room fussing over you.
   The checks on the baby are also very thorough. Our eyes almost popped out when the paediatrician said “Yup, she has an anus” on examining our daughter for the first time. Apparently not all children do!
   This and all future checks were noted in another little booklet, with the child’s compulsory appointments listed for the next five years. Apparently social services come knocking at your door if you miss one.
9. Getting intimate with your baby
   Intimacy with your baby begins with a visit to a “carrying advisor” to select a device to carry your baby close to your body.

   

   Wearing my baby.

   Forget a Moses basket, in Germany your baby will sleep snuggled in a sleeping bag in a three-sided cot next to you so that you don’t even have to get out of bed to feed them – just roll them across the fourth open side.
   Efficient and wholesome.
   If you’re feeling really hippy, you might try one of the naked play dates – better known as Pekip.
10. Breast milk is good for anything
    Boobs are not a taboo – it’s acceptable to whop them out for a feed almost anywhere, and breast milk isn’t just for feeding the little one. We first got a whiff of this in hospital when the midwife wouldn’t throw out the 5ml of expressed milk that our daughter had left in the bottle. “It’s too precious” she exclaimed, and suggested I use it for face cream instead.
    Since then, I’ve squirted it into her bath, and used it to treat her nappy rash, unblock her nose and disinfect her umbilical cord.
    Still haven’t tried it on my face.
11. Potty training from birth
    I was sceptical at first, but if you hold your baby over a pot and let her do her business, she does actually stop doing it in her nappy, which – as far as I’m concerned – is a lot more hygienic. Strictly speaking, it’s not a German thing though, as I think it’s been adopted from Asia.

    

    The thermos flask means we always have warm water to clean her bum

12. Virgin wool and heat lamps
    The nappy changing routine involves a changing table kitted out with a heat lamp. If your baby has a sore bum, you will probably blow dry it and apply some unwashed virgin wool – it allows the air to circulate and the natural oils moisturise the sore spot. It does actually work.
    You’ll probably try reusable nappies at some point too.

    

    Tear a bit of wool off and slip it in the nappy to treat a sore bum.

13. Baby heat pads
    If your baby has colic or too much gas, you might try rape seed heat pads – put them in the microwave for 30 seconds and place them on your baby’s belly. Another favourite cure is a baby massage.
14. Quark and cabbage on your boobs
    Ok, so they do white cabbage to soothe engorged boobs in England too, but I’m pretty sure they don’t use quark, which is the messier alternative.
15. Paperwork and perks
    One word of warning: if your baby is born during carnival in the Rhineland it may be weeks before the local bureaucracy has stopped dressing up like clowns and you’re able to register the birth.
    There’s a lot of form-filling after the new arrival, but there’s one thing that comes automatically without any extra paperwork: the baby’s tax number for life.
    After all that admin, you’ll be rewarded with EUR 184 per month in child benefit until she’s at least 18 – maybe longer if she goes to university. Plus you’ll get a German passport for a bargain EUR 13 – eight times cheaper than the UK one.

I saw a naked man

I saw a naked man this morning.

As my head dipped under the water and popped back up again swimming a length of breaststroke in the Melbbad open-air pool in Bonn, my gaze locked on to a smooth bottom. I noticed that something was hanging loose between his legs.

His penis continued to dangle around as he slowly pulled his grey boxer shorts up.

He was just on the side of the pool getting changed and it didn't seem to bother him one bit that we'd all just seen everything. In fact, it didn't bother anyone.

There was no giggling and pointing at him - it was like he didn't exist.

To be fair, I see nakedness every time I come to the pool in Germany - but usually it's the women in the shower, a closed space. This time it was a man out in the open air.

I've also seen naked men before - at the sauna. Everyone goes naked into the sauna in Germany: young, old, saggy, droopy, wrinkled, hairy, shaven. I've seen it all and learnt a lot: I never knew balls could drop that far!

But today, as the morning sun hit the arch of his back and the birds cooed, I was surprised. This man had just upped the game in my perception of German attitudes to nudity.

In fact, I think that the Germans' relaxed approach to nakedness is actually quite natural and healthy.

It's something very intuitive and de rigueur, rather than shameful and brazen. What's surprising to many foreigners is that there does not seem to be a whiff of sex in the air when Germans go naked in public.

Usually the only naked people we get to see are models and film stars in magazines with their blotches and rolls of flab airbrushed out. Seeing other mere mortals disrobed makes me realise that my body isn't so bad after all, and it also gives me a taste of what my body might look like in years to come.

In terms of my own body image, living in Germany has been a very positive experience.

It also makes getting changed at the pool much easier... no huddling under a towel and trying to get dressed without exposing any of your bits, as is the custom in Britain. You can just whip it all off and get on with it.

Ordnung muss sein

I stood on the supermarket forecourt gawping for a good twenty seconds after the stranger strode over to the bicycle, booted it to the ground, lifted his bike over it and cycled off with his rust covered jacket flapping in the wind.

He hadn't heard my friendly quip and seemed utterly enraged that someone had blocked him in.

It was the second time that day that I saw a German get annoyed by rule breaking. The first time was just a few moments before.

"I'm sorry, I've had it for a long time and I kept forgetting," I stammered to the supermarket cashier, as I attempted to iron out the piece of paper.

She raised an eyebrow as I handed her a faded crumpled receipt for the empty beer bottles I'd returned to the machine over 3 months ago.

In Germany, the shops pay you to recycle. But there's a system. You return the bottle to a machine, take a receipt and collect your money at the cash desk before you leave. I hadn't done that. I'd returned to the supermarket over and over, and each time I got to the cash desk, I'd forgotten to surrender the receipt. Through my forgetfulness, I had broken the rules.

"It may not work," I said, nervously trying to pre-empt her rage.

The bar code on the scrunched up paper didn't work, and the woman’s frizzy greying hair seemed electrified with annoyance. She raised another eyebrow as she stabbed the reference number into her keypad. Maybe she was irritated because I was costing her time. Maybe she was incensed that for 3 months, two weeks and four days, I had forgotten over and over again to do this. Or maybe it was my nervous apologetic tone that she couldn't handle. After all, wouldn’t a German be more mater-of-fact about this?

The pensioner who had gone before me snatched his last jar of pickled gherkins and muttered something under his breath. Either he too was fired up about the non-conformity of my receipts or he was relieved that I'd given him enough time to bag all his shopping before the cashier started racing my groceries over the bar-code scanner.

As I left the supermarket, I walked into another uniquely German uncomfortable situation.

I fully admit I'd realised when I chose the parking spot for my bike that it might be controversial. It had been an opportunistic decision - I'd seen a space beside the stack of carbonated water bottles and gone for it. As I parked it, my hairs stood to attention and I almost expected a comment from someone nearby about what a thoughtless place it was to park my bike.

But no-one decided to get involved in my business that day.

On my return to the scene, I notice a middle-aged man had parked his heavy Dutch bike even further into the supermarket's pavement displays of special offers.

I was relieved, and decided to offer up some jovial camaraderie.

"It looks like there's a bit of a traffic jam here at the moment," I said with a smile, gesturing at the bikes on the curb which were blocking us both in.

Before he could reply, I watched in slow motion as he forced the offending bike to the ground, lifted his bike over it and cycled off without a word.

I stood for a few moments in utter disbelief. It was only later that my boyfriend Daniel explained this mysteriously violent behaviour.

"Germans don't like it when people break the rules or when they disrupt the order."

This same fear of chaos and desire for order is what drives Germans to buy a train ticket, even though there are no ticket barriers to check up on them. It's what stops Germans from crossing the road on a red light, even when there are no cars.

Instinctively this characteristic feels sinisterly militaristic and I wonder whether it dates back to a Prussian addiction to rule making. But perhaps it's what also allows Germans to have a transport system that's based on trust. One thing’s for sure though, it's non-negotiable: Ordnung muss sein.