Hospital Tour

Time is ticking away. I’ve finally decided to add one of those pregnancy timelines to my blog. I’m just about 30 weeks along and three quarters of the way through. The baby will be full term in a mere seven weeks, although I’m not due until May 2nd.

As my belly expands my life is becoming much more focused on getting prepared for life with baby and his entrance into the world. Saturday afternoon we took a tour of the hospital that I’ll be delivering at, Seton, so that we arrive there in a bit of a panic we’ll have some idea of where to go and what to expect. It actually was quite comical. There were only half a dozen couples, so I got some good people watching in. The anxiety level on the men was incredibly high and each of them reacted differently.

Of course, my man denies feeling anxious and said that it was all pretty much what he expected based on what we had seen during our previous experience. He thought the whole thing was just a rehash of what we had been told at our Refresher Childbirth Class last week and would we all just relax, because these people know what they’re doing because they’ve done it thousands of times before. Yes, as I learned last time, his way of dealing with an uncomfortable situation is to sit back and apathetically deny his discomfort (and he wonders why I’m still talking about arranging to have a doula).

One of the men brought out a camera and started snapping pictures. It’s just the tour dude. Who knows, maybe he’s planning on sharing them with concerned family members that couldn’t be there.

One man, who towered over the rest of us and his 5’1” wife was cracking jokes the whole time.

I think the basic gist gotten by the men was: park in this area, come in this door, do not bug the people in the emergency room, and here’s the cafeteria. In all honesty that’s about all they need to know, although I’m sure much of it will be forgotten in the heat of the moment.