Den unfortunately couldn’t come with me on Saturday for the tour (not that he was severely disappointed by this), and I, being a moron, forgot to reschedule the tour to a different date. So I went alone. But I got a ton out of it and was really glad I went! Bummer that Den couldn’t go, but oh well.
I might just write down all the notes I took, just so I have it all for posterity.
The L&D building has free valet parking, which I’ve never used before, but figure it will come it extra handy when I’m in labor! Unfortunately the tour guide (henceforth known as TG to save me typing) said the valet parking is only available between 8am and 4pm on weekdays. “So have your baby then!” she said. Bummer man! Finding a parking spot at this hospital is something equal to repeatedly banging your head on your dash. Just as an example, for this tour I ended up parking in a parking garage on the far other side of the complex and having to walk 15 minutes through the hospital to get to the L&D building. This brings up an interesting problem: does Den drop me off and go park the car, or do we park and go in together? Logically it makes more sense to drop off the laboring woman and go park and catch up later, but that leaves me without my husband for a good 10-20 minutes. I’m not so certain I like that idea. I guess we’ll have to figure that out when the time comes.
So when I’m in labor and I go to the hospital my first stop is the Registration desk. Pre-registration has already been completed for me by my Midwives (I asked), but you still have to check in there. Next stop is Triage (WITU or something?). We got a tour of triage. It’s on the first floor, and has two “pods” of four beds each. There was no one in there when we toured through (or they wouldn’t have let us actually into the pod). The pod is VERY similar to when I had my laparoscopy, the same kind of setup – one bathroom for the group of four “rooms”, and each room has only a curtain to pull across, it’s not really fully private. It was nice that it was familiar to me. There were monitors, of course, that they will hook you up to for a minimum of 20 minutes to check your contractions, and I assume they would also give an internal to check to see how far along you are. TG said to ask if you need anything at all to make yourself more comfortable… they can bring in rocking chairs, birthing balls, you can use the shower if you want to… she said most women in labor seem to just sit there waiting to be told what to do, lol, but that they want to make us as comfortable as possible. Interesting fact about Triage is that guess who covers it? My midwife group! Anyone else who comes into Triage, no matter who their care provider is, sees whichever midwife is on call. So I get to see the same provider throughout my stay, no strange OBs at all. That’s fabulous for me, especially knowing how positive my Midwife group is about natural birth and such.
Once they determine that I should stay – and TG said there is no set “rules” as to who gets admitted and who gets sent home, she said it depends on a lot of things. But if they determine that you ARE in full labor then you’ll probably get admitted. So they’ll transfer you from Triage up to the first floor, which are the LDRP (Labor/Delivery/Recovery/Postpartum) rooms. There are 37 private rooms. We got to tour two rooms – the room with the hydrotherapy tub, and one of the normal rooms. Now the hydrotherapy tub is interesting. There is only one room with a tub, so they do want to keep it open as much as possible. It is a fully equipped room, like the others, but you do not get assigned to it. If you wish to use the tub and it is open when you are admitted you get transferred to that room and have free use of it for as long as you wish. (If it is in use then you are shit out of luck.) At any time you can choose that you don’t like the tub and don’t want to use it at all anymore, at which point you get transferred back to a normal room (so they can clean and disinfect the tub and room for whomever else wants it). Or you can stay as long as you want. They do not “allow” you to give birth in the tub at this point in time (though they are trying to push through a policy change on that), but you can give birth in that room on the bed. After delivery you would again be transferred to a normal LDRP room for your postpartum stay. The good side is that, despite there being only one tub room, she said it is rarely ever in use! Most people choose epidurals or just have no interest in the tub, so it sits unused most of the time. (Of course the two other pregnant women I was touring with were also planning natural births, so we were all eyeing each other and asking, “So… when are you due?” LOL)
The “normal” LDRP rooms are what I would be staying in the entire time I was there, unless I have a c-section. Like I said, they are all fully private – and a pretty good size, too. There is a bed, a couch thing that folds out into a bed for the husband (though she said if it is uncomfortable they can bring in a cot for him instead), a desk, a TV, and a station for the bassinette/warmer/whatever that thing is they bring in for the baby. The lighting can be controlled from a remote attached to the bed, so you can dim them or turn them off or whatever you want to do. You can ask for a rocking chair or birthing ball. There is a private bathroom with a shower – the shower didn’t look too large, but it had a glass door, not some curtain thing. Also, what I thought was the coolest thing ever, they have available birthing bars!! When the bed breaks apart (the bottom half comes out to reveal a place for stirrups and space for catching the baby) there are two big metal holes in the lower half of the bed. So they can bring in a bar that fits into the bed, so you can hold yourself up to squat. How awesome!! (Oh, plus she said the stirrups are for when you’re getting stitched up, if need be – not for pushing.)
The LDRP floor used to have 3 nurseries. But apparently not many people actually use the nurseries anymore – everyone is rooming in. So one has become a conference room, another a storage room, and there is only one nursery left – and it didn’t have any babies in it, LOL. They are very encouraging of rooming in with baby, but TG said if you need a shower or whatever, they are happy to watch the baby for a little while for you! And she said you can write a note to put on the basinette stating “no pacifiers or bottles” if you are breastfeeding, and they keep a log of when baby has eaten last so they know baby has been fed and if they need to take baby back to you to nurse.
All in all the LDRP rooms are very nice, very comfortable looking, and I could easily see myself spending 2 days in there. There is also a menu, and mothers can order as much as they want, as often as they want, for free, during the kitchen’s open hours (closes at 7pm). Good stuff too, breakfast foods like pancakes and eggs and french toast, and sandwiches and soups and mmmmmm. So maybe staying in the hospital wouldn’t be such a horrible thing. ;) There is also a Friendly’s cafe that is open 24/7 (though it’s not in that building, it’s quite a hike across the hospital to get there, but that’s what husbands are for, right?), and you can bring your own food in. There is one kitchen on the LDRP floor, a small little room with a fridge and ice machine and snacks and drinks available.
As for other things provided… they provide mesh underwear and postpartum pads, but no toiletries. She also said that the pillows there are rather plasticy and it’s a good idea to bring your own.
The hospital is very pro-breastfeeding. On both the LDRP and C-section recovery floors there were display cases with breastfeeding paraphernalia and information arranged inside, as well as many pamphlets. TG said that the hospital’s Lactation Services offers 24-hour breastfeeding support. It is a group of IBCLCs. They have a line you can call to ask questions and get support; they visit every mother the day after giving birth to give help with breastfeeding; and they have a wide range of pumps and supplies available for sale or rental for cheaper than you can get elsewhere. They even do bra fittings. They strongly encourage all mothers giving birth to breastfeed. I will be calling them to ask them questions about my medication – why the Midwives didn’t suggest that, I’m not really sure.
Okay, so on that floor there is also an OR for c-sections (actually three ORs grouped together). We weren’t allowed to go traipsing through the OR, but she had a bunch of photos for us. Again, it looked very familiar, just like the laparoscopy OR (well, what I can remember of it – I was so loopy at that point I can really only remember bright lights…) and the retrieval/transfer suite. This may have been the strangest part of the tour for me – or at least the part that had me surprizing myself. Peeking through those doors and looking at those photos I felt perfectly calm about the idea of having a c-section. I used to be terrified of it. But I don’t know, having been through what I’ve been through already? I would like to avoid it, sure I would. But if Devin insists on coming out the same way he went in, I’ll be okay with that. Sure I’d be disappointed to miss out on the experience of birth, and I’m not fond at all of having to recover from surgery while having a new baby to look after. But I’m not scared anymore. My lap and my retrievals and transfers were all positive experiences for me (well, other than the fucking IV), and I’m quite sure I’ll be able to handle it.
If a c-section becomes necessary, she said they will take me in alone and make sure that everyone is stable before calling the husband is. She explained that they just want to make sure that there’s nothing dramatic going on because I guess partners can sometimes freak out when their baby or wife is in danger… imagine that. And the last thing they want is someone flailing about in there, getting in everyone’s way. Now I don’t think Den would do that – he’s not exactly the type to panic – but I understand their reasoning. I would just hope they’d bring him in quickly, because I would want him at my side.
After a c-section you are moved to the second floor, which is just for c-section recoveries. These are semi-private rooms – two beds per room. TG said they do their best to put one person per room, and IF they are full and have to double up they will assign you to a room that has a mother leaving that day or the next day so that you will have the room to yourself as soon as possible. Even after a c-section they will bring in a cot for your husband/partner and he can stay 24/7 with you. The baby can room in with you as well. But to be honest, the rooms looked much more like a hospital room. Very small and cramped (especially if you have a cot and baby basinette in there!), white, stark. A c-section post-partum stay is 96 hours (as opposed to the 48 hours after a vaginal delivery). I’m not so certain I would want to be stuck in that little room for that long.
The c-section recovery floor has a nursery as well, and there was actually a baby in this one. A precious little girl… OMG. I almost started crying. She was so beautiful and tiny and I just wanted to hold her in my arms. Devin’s going to be here soon and be just as small and precious – even MORE beautiful because he’ll be OUR baby, not someone else’s. Wow. That really got to me. Sniffle. A little bit of reality shock!
The hospital does offer to take “baby’s first photo” for you, it’s done through Our365. You can order announcements or photos through them. They’re rather pricey, though. As long as I can get a half-decent pic of Devin (or 300…) then I’m just going to do my own announcements for much cheaper. I guess it’d be nice if I had no clue how to get announcements, but being a graphics designer and hobbiest photographer… well, I just can’t see spending that much money on something I could do myself! (But gosh darnit are those announcements cute!)
I can’t remember if the NICU is on the second or third floor. One or the other. There is a NICU, the only level III NICU in the area – people transfer in all the time. There are no windows to the NICU so we didn’t get to see it – just murals of zoo animals in the hallways outside it. Down the hall was step-down, which did have windows…. for babies who aren’t so critical, but still need monitoring and care. I didn’t take a lot of notes at this point (because my feet were killing me and my mind was wandering), but I do believe she said that the hospital does offer “hotelling” for parents of babies in the NICU or step-down… for a fee you can stay in the hospital to be near them. Which is nice. I know the fact that the NICU is there is one of the reasons that Den insisted on this hospital.
And that’s as much as I can remember! I hope I haven’t forgotten anything already, lol. All in all I’m feeling VERY happy about this hospital. It was the one aspect of this birth that I didn’t have a say in, so I just kind of had my fingers crossed that it would be accepting of natural births and I made sure to prepare myself in case I ran into instances where their procedures differed from my wishes. But honestly, it sounds just wonderful. I’m sure not every nurse will be completely understanding, and not everyone there will share the same views, but it’s extremely reassuring to hear that the hospital’s normal policy and procedures are right in line with what I want. Takes a lot of pressure off. I may end up cutting a bunch out of my birth plan if I feel I don’t really need to repeat what they do anyways (as I know the shorter it is, the more likely it will be read).
I’m really starting to get excited about this birth. Maybe that’s an odd way to feel about labor. But yes, in a way it’s very exciting! It’s a huge turning point in my life, it’s a big obstacle to tackle… well, maybe not “obstacle,” but it’s certainly quite a life-changing experience. I’m preparing myself as best I can, I’m feeling very bouyed and encouraged by everything I’ve seen/heard/done so far, and I am really looking forward to experiencing it and getting to meet my baby boy.
… Still quite happy to wait another 2 months, though. Have a lot to do before I’m ready!
