When my doctor was having this conversation with me I heard him, but I didn’t really hear him if you know what I mean. I was more excited about the sweet little sonogram picture that he had just handed me, and his promises that we might be able to tell the sex of my little bundle at my next visit. Priorities and all that! Anyways, the importance of the hospital tour just coasted in one ear and then sailed right on out the other.
It’s not that I meant to blow it off, I truly had the best of intentions, it just kind of happened. You know how it is, you mean to get something done, and then life has a way of taking over. Especially when you’re having a baby!
So good intentions or not, it soon came to pass that I found myself blindly walking into my hospital of choice for my induction with no hospital tour under my belt. I did feel a slightly guilty at ignoring something that my doctor had made to sound so important, but it also might have been just a small contraction. Anyways, I thought, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Ha! I was sooooooo naive!
After all, have you heard of Murphy’s Law? Yeah well, meet Murphy! If something strange is going to happen, then it’s going to happen to me. There’s just no two ways about it. So read on while I show you both how NOT to have a baby and why you should definitely make the time to take a hospital tour.
You already know that I was being induced, but what you don’t know is that they let me pick what time I wanted to get this party started. I thought the earlier the better and said 6am. That way we can pop this kid out by lunch! I had such grand plans. So, they handed me my little piece of paper and told me to show up 30 minutes early to take care of the paper work. No sweat.
The big day arrives and with my husband and sister in tow I waddle my way into registration promptly at 5:15am. I’m cool, I’m confident, and I’m even a little pleased with myself that we managed to get here early. That is, until we ran into my first hurdle, I didn’t pre-register. So the “paper work” that they were talking about ended up taking every bit of an hour. Let me tell you something, filling out paper work for an hour is NOT a great way to start any day, much less the one where you become a parent! I swear that stack of forms was thinker than the SAT and took twice as long.
When we finally get back to the unit they take me to a room and get me all settled in. I get to meet my nurse and instantly like her, she’s sweet, she’s bubbly, and she’s much more fun than the gorilla with the forms. My day is looking up. They take my blood (which incidentally they then proceeded to throw into the sharps container so they had to stick me AGAIN!) and tell me to get comfy while the get everything ready to start the IV. After a few minutes, nurse sunshine comes back with a woman that looks about as happy as my eighth grade math teacher. I’m not worried until I find out that shift changes at 7am. So nurse sourpuss is the one that’s going to be with me for the duration. I have no other choice but to sit there in stunned silence as my wonderful sweet nurse gives me a quick hug and promises that she’s leaving me in good hands. Then she’s out the door and Helga is barking at me to turn on my left side, “NOW.”
Had I taken that all-important tour, I would have known about the nightmare that is registration and about the all important shift change. It wouldn’t have made a real difference with my nurse, but at least I would have known the change was coming. And I could have taken the time to pre-register rather than just waiting until the last minute.
Now let’s fast-forward a bit. It’s around 4:30 in the afternoon, and I’ve just had my daughter. They showed me the sweet and sticky little bundle and then whisked her away to get cleaned up. At that point we had some time where the doctor was dealing with me, and the nurses were dealing with the baby, so it was probably about 15 or 20 minutes before I got her back. Not a big deal really. I’m loving on my little one and sharing her with the family, because while this hospital seemed to have policies about everything else, they didn’t really care how many people you had in the room. We threw a party (rather my wonderful sweet husband did) and had about 6.
Anyways things were just getting good when Helga showed back up and held her arms out for my baby. Instinctively, (and since Helga gave me the creeps) I pulled her back and asked what she wanted her for. That’s when I was informed that the hospital had a policy that they kept the infants in the nursery for the first 5 hours after birth. Yeah, I handled that well!
My husband managed to restore peace in the valley by getting Helga to say that she would bring me the baby to nurse after I was all settled into my room. I wasn’t happy with the plan, but really wasn’t in any shape at that point to really fight with them. As in, my legs were still numb and I couldn’t really move them yet, so I went with it.
It took some time to get settled into the room, but very soon I started asking for my baby again. My husband, now desperate to avoid a huge scene started trying to think of ways to distract me. Nothing worked until he dangled the thought of a hot meal in front of me. Since I hadn’t been allowed to eat anything since midnight the night before, that got my attention! He pounced on that menu like a drowning man on a life raft. Then, menu in hand he headed out to ask the nurse how to order me some food.
I should have known something was up when he showed back up with no menu and a very worried look on his face. But I was still talking to family and didn’t notice that anything was amiss until he handed me a tiny little specimen cup sized apple juice and a pack of crackers. It turns out that the kitchen at the hospital closes at 4:30pm. After that, you are on your own. Meaning, no dinner for me. I must have turned 17 shades of scarlet at that point because my husband ran for his keys, grabbed his father, and pulled him through the door shouting promises of very large pizzas over his shoulder. And my sister went in search of my baby.
What I’ve given you is just the bare outline of the crazy things that happened that day. But it all boils down to this. If I had known about these rules and policies before I walked through the door, I would have chosen a different hospital. It’s just that simple. It wasn’t that the overall care was bad; it’s just that it didn’t fit what I wanted from my birthing experience. And it could have all been avoided had I made the time to take that all-important hospital tour. So be smarter than I was, save yourself the headache, and take the tour! You can thank me later.
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