Labor and Delivery Tour

At 34 weeks 2 days (about a week ago) hub and I took the L&D tour.

You're "supposed" to do this at the start of the 3rd trimester, since that's when babies are viable, and 28 weeks is my hospital's delivery limit. We were putting it off because we put everything baby related off.

At 32 weeks my midwife had a come to Jesus talk with me and recommended I get on taking these classes. So I have a breastfeeding class on Wednesday and we finally did our hospital tour.

We are so not ready for this.

We did the tour with another couple. They we there much earlier than us (we arrived a minute or two before start time). As they waited, they were making lists of questions for the nurse giving the tour. Hub and I were discussing how odd it was that the signs were first in English, then Russian (or some off-shoot the lettering was Cyrillic) then Spanish. We were trying to figure out the ethnic make-up of the community. No. I'm not kidding.

So eventually it's time for the tour. We head up to L&D, which is were we've had all of our ultrasounds for this pregnancy, easy enough. We met with a nice nurse who took us into one of the empty labor rooms. They are very big and comfortable looking. She went through some procedures and asked us if we had any questions. Hub and I didn't, but this other couple sure did.

How many anesthesiologists are on at any given time?
How many nurses are on duty usually? 
How many nurses per patient?
How often are both ORs in use?

On and on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that they asked.. I just felt like a bad parent. Is it wrong that I assume that a major L&D hospital (with a Level III NICU) in a major city can handle birthing babies? I mean, really, I'm more concerned about the things you really can't ask in front of normal people:

What's your procedure in the event of a still birth?
How many babies have you personally had die in the delivery process?
What is the anecdotal rate of birth-surprise birth defects?

You know, all the crazy BLM questions.

We kept our mouths shut, eventually joking that we were just winging it.

The nurse showed us some of their equipment, including the monitoring available to the nurses for the laboring mom's on the floor. Turns out there were two women pushing while we were there. As we were leaving to head to look at the OR, we heard one of the baby's first cry. I looked over to hub, who was as white as a sheet.

At the OR it was my turn to turn white. A healthy baby is my main goal and focus, but if I could have that AND avoid a C-section I would be pretty happy. Surgery usually takes 1.5 hours and you can't hold your baby (though dad can hold baby next to you). Let's recap- You're AWAKE in an OR for 1.5 hours while they reassemble your organs as you wait to hold your baby. No thanks. Please.

We went to the floor where we'll stay after birth, and talked about the room situation. It is what you expect and all rather boring. We went to leave, we passed the nursery, two tiny babies were hanging out in there, all wrapped up. Hub BOLTED for the doors. It was like he thought one would glom onto him and he would be stuck with it. When he was safely outside (after be scolded for running from pregnant wife by some lady) he asked "Is there something wrong with those babies? Why are they so small? UMMM that's how they come, hub.

Poor Take Two. What bad parents.


(Note from the great re-post re-read: The room that we had our L&D tour in was the MY room- the room bub was born in!)