Ground Zero

Tonight, our Lamaze class went on a tour of the labor & delivery unit and the mother/ baby unit. I have to say that while my anxiety hasn't decreased in the least little bit, my excitement over FINALLY meeting my son or daughter is beginning to match it. I feel comfortable with the choice I made regarding hospitals. If you remember, when we moved, I had the choice to go to a female OB and one hospital, or a male OB and the hospital I was born in. One of my coworkers at the time gave me great advice that helped me decide. She said, "When you go in to deliver, you may not get that doctor anyway. Go with the hospital that's best equipped to take care of your baby."

So, I went with the male OB and am delivering at the hospital where I myself was born. The hospital has been recognized as one of the top 50 hospitals in the nation for the past five years, and it's the only Level 3 ob unit in the area. There is a perinatologist at the hospital at all times (there are 4 of them that rotate). While I sincerely hope that I need none of these services, it does make me feel good to know that the best care possible will be available to my child if we need it. Every nurse in the OB unit is a lactation expert. Immediately after the birth of your child, they leave you in the labor, delivery, & recovery room for 90 minutes to encourage skin-to-skin contact and immediate breastfeeding. These are both things that are important to me, and it puts me at ease that the hospital not only allows it, but encourages it. The L&D nurse that is teaching our class and did our tour even told us that we can have up to an hour of skin-to-skin contact and nursing time before they take the baby for shots, eyedrops, etc., as long as the baby is in good health. They do all tests and shots right there in the room, so she said that as long as your baby is healthy, there is no reason why anyone should come and take your baby away from you unless you want the baby to go to the nursery. It gives me more confidence to hear this from an actual OB nurse that works at the hospital, because I know that sometimes the nurses that work in your doctor's office will tell you what "sounds good" without having the authority to say what the hospital really does. All this information is coming directly from the hospital's nurse, so I feel like we can trust what she says.

It was pretty bizzare to be in an actual labor & delivery room and think, "This is what the room will look like when I have my baby. I could give birth right here in THIS room." It still looks extremely....hospital-y....but you CAN have the lights as dim or as bright as you would like, you can control the temperature, and the bottom of the bed drops out so that you can labor with a squat bar, a birthing ball, or in other positions even as you're hooked up to the monitors. Even better. ALL the labor beds are like that--you don't just have to hope you get lucky and get one.

I feel comfortable with the hospital now. At least, as comfortable as I am ever going to be with anything medically related.