Sunday, February 19

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.

8 comments:

Bearette said...

yay! i'm so excited for you as you draw closer to your due date.

SK said...

Sometimes men are like machines and you have to "program" them for something even though when you need to run the program (i.e. the day of birth) a bug gets in and shuts the program down. :)

You are very lucky to have a great husband that wants to be involved in all that (even if he's a little uncomfortable, I'm sure it's natural). I know women who's husbands were like "Whatever" until the actual day.

Mike said...

Sounds really cool. Yup, us guys can ttoally melt down at times. I hope when/if I get there I'll be calm and collected. My attitude in everything anymore is twofold. 1) There's plenty of time if you don't panic.
2) At least no one's shooting at me, so it's got to be good.

Deb @ Sugarfused said...

Looks like a good place to deliver :)
Wish you could deliver at the hospital where I work...our OB rooms are awesome!

Anonymous said...

Interesting addition of the baby-meter. Preganancy takes an awful long time doesn't it? Groundhogs only take a month.

Janet said...

Oh, Scott was a bit different on our tour of the hospital. He wanted to know about the positioning of the bed, the state of the art sound system in the birthing suite, and the plumbing in the bathroom! Once we did go into labor and had to go to the hospital (this was 9 year ago), he was so calm and wonderful making sure I was comfortable, that the right music was playing, and the whirlpool tub was at the right temp so that I could ease through the contractions in the water.

Isn't it all so exciting?!!

Sue said...

Wow, 30 weeks... I can't believe it's happened so fast though I guess it doesn't feel that way for you. My first was born at 37 weeks, weighing seven-and-a-half pounds, and surprising us all since everyone told us first babies were always late! I didn't even have my bag packed...

Lisa said...

I get freaked out by the idea of it---and I'm a woman. If, God and saints forbid, I should ever get pregnant, please just knock me out the minute the labor pains start
and wake me up when the kid is 18.

Not that I don't love kids. I do. I can't wait to be an aunt. But the mechanics of having them? Don't love that so much.