I signed up to take a tour of St. Mary's maternity unit this evening. I worked at St. Mary's in the medical ICU so I'm very familiar with the hospital in general, but not the maternity floor. Nick is very familiar with the maternity floor there- he just finished his OB rotation there around Christmas.
I was not expecting the tour to be exactly good. I told Nick not to come. He wouldn't learn anything, and he really doesn't have the time to spare. He's on his surgical rotation right now, currently pediatric general surgery. He has to be at the hospital at 5:00 AM, and gets home about 13 hours later. Today he was done just in time to be picked up at the children's hospital and go with me to the tour of St. Mary's, which I totally warned him about. But because he's nice, supportive, and wanted to spend time with me, he came anyway.
The tour was a little worse than anticipated. The very quirky nurse who lead the tour was definitely trying to indoctrinate us to her point of view. She kept insisting that we REALLY SHOULD take the birthing class that we're not signed up for. She bad-mouthed western medicine in general. She seems to think that no one should need an epidural (which is really the only reason I'm having my baby in a hospital.) She insisted that labor pain wasn't any worse than menstrual cramps, and so you should be able to sit on the birthing ball and just feel great about it. Nine out of ten women screaming in pain disagree.
The tour went on for over an hour, and I found out that our tour-guide, who constantly spoke of her own labor experiences but her youngest is a junior in college, is teaching the breastfeeding class I'm signed up for. I told Nick not to go to that either.
I'm still glad I went on the tour. I think familiarity with the set-up and normal working operations of the unit will be good when it comes time to be a patient there. I'm just sorry that Nick got dragged into it. Of all the things he could have stayed up past his bedtime for, this was the lamest.
4 comments:
Love this!!! You crack me up!
No epidural is the way to go, in my opinion! I got an epidural with Colette just minutes before delivery, so didn't do me much good, and with baby Vera, no epidural, which was great, as there was no recovery time and no bill from anesthesia! The nurse at the hospital talked me into no epidural--maybe labor & delivery nurses are told to talk women out of one!?! Good luck with everything--sure is exciting being a new mommy. Take care.
Soundns like Nick needed an epidural just to survive the tour.
Kudos to those who dont get an epidural. That being said, I would rather die than not get one. Once you feel those hard contractions, you will NOT regret the epidural decision. Your little baby is coming soon!
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