Who Wants a Home Birth When You Can Deliver Like a 19th Century Queen?
I don’t want to say that other people are delivering their babies wrong, but the women delivering their babies in a mountain stream with bugs and dirt around are totally doing it wrong. Well, no, that’s a joke. Everyone should labor and deliver however she wants to, and if the process ends with everyone alive and happy, it should be considered a rousing success. For me, I’m going to skip the rocks and dirt and crickets and fly to Japan so I can have my next baby in what looks like a cross between a 19th century palace and a lingerie store.
According to Rocket News 24, the world’s fanciest obstetrics and gynecology hospital is the Mizuguchi Hospital in one of the swankiest neighborhoods in Tokyo. It specializes in ultra-luxurious births inspired by haute couture fashion. Patients are called “guests” and are waited on by “total birth coordinators” who oversee everything from fetal health to the scones that are served with the afternoon tea.
(Actual post-natal afternoon tea service at Mizuguchi Hospital)
This whole over-the-top luxury birth model might sound crazy, except that tradition holds that the rich are never called crazy, merely “eccentric.”
The ultimate in pre- and post-natal luxury is the Elisabeth Plan, which is unfortunately not named for me, but for the much fancier Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Empress Elisabeth was crowned at the age of 17 and was renowned throughout Europe as being the most beautiful woman in the world. (She was also batshit eccentric in a “slept standing upright, tied to a metal bedpost, with a leather mask stuffed with raw veal strapped to her face” kind of way.)
The Elisabeth Plan does not involve masks of veal or delivering upright strapped to a bed. In fact, the Elisabeth Plan’s bed has a gold headboard tufted with pink satin, and every surface that can be covered in gold has been covered in gold. There are crystal chandeliers, marble floors, and I have absolutely zero idea where they store the fetal heart monitors, but I’d bet $20 they’re covered in Swarovski crystals. There are even costumes involved. If you want to cuddle your newborn while dressed like a 19th century princess, Mizuguchi Hospital will hook you up.
I’m pretty sure this is where Eloise was born before her mother shipped her off to The Plaza to be raised by a doting British Nanny and a precocious pug dog.
I wanted to make more fun of this, but then I saw that this is what Guests at Mizuguchi Hospital eat after delivering their babies, and I remembered that I literally received a cup of yogurt, three slices of white bread, and a slice of bologna after my own 36-hour delivery (I had my baby in Germany, and German hospitals are really, really good at lots of things, but food is not one of them.) Now this whole “luxury childbirth” thing seems like the best idea ever.
