Hospital Tour

33 Weeks, 5 Days

Labor Room

Last night, Vicente and I took a guided tour of the OB floor of the hospital where I'll be delivering (Greater Baltimore Medical Center.) My doctor recommended that we take the tour since we opted to skip childbirth classes. She said it would be helpful to see the hospital and the delivery rooms so that we'd know what to expect when D Day finally comes. I'm glad we went, although nothing was particularly surprising to me.

Here's how it should all go down if everything goes according to plan...

Once my contractions start coming close together at regular intervals and my doctor tells me "it's time," Vicente and I will trek up to GBMC (hopefully with mom in tow if she's in town) which is about 30 minutes from our house. We can conveniently pull into valet, or he can drop me off at the front lobby and go park in the nearby garage.  I'll get checked in and then wait until the nurse comes to get me. From there, I'll be taken to a private pre-admission room with a fetal monitor to determine the frequency and intensity of my contractions. A nurse practitioner will do an exam to determine how far along I am in the labor process and then she and/or the doctor on duty will decide to admit me if I'm in active labor.

From there, I will be taken to my own room where I will labor and ultimately deliver the baby (assuming all goes well and I don't require a C-section.) Hopefully I'll make it to the hospital with plenty of time to receive an epidural. I don't see the point in experiencing the excruciating pain of childbirth when there are perfectly safe options to help moms cope with the pain. Although I 100% respect other people's decisions to go with natural childbirth. I can have up to four visitors in the labor and delivery room with me at a time, even when I start pushing. However, I only want V and my mom in the room when that intensely private time to push finally comes. My knees started shaking when I was in that room just thinking about what the whole experience is going to be like. EEK.

Once the baby is out, they'll take him to an incubator in the corner of the room to weigh him, suction out his mouth and nose, give him a shot of vitamin K, perform the Apgar tests, and put some gel on his eyes to protect them from infection. Then they'll bring him back over to me to hold and snuggle while the doctor works me over. I'll recover in the same room for about an hour, and hopefully the baby will be happy and healthy and we can keep him with us during that time. I learned that I get to breastfeed in that first hour after delivery, should I choose, and I'm really excited about that. I have no idea why, but it seems like such an incredible bonding moment. I'm getting all teary eyed just thinking about it.

From there, I'll be wheeled down to another private room where I'll spend the rest of my hospital stay. Baby V will be pushed by his daddy down to the nursery where he'll get worked over my the nursing staff. That's when he'll get his first bath, have his footprints taken, get some blood drawn and have his first vaccination. I'm sure a lot of other stuff goes on during that time, but they didn't get into the details. Once the nurses are done making my baby cry, they'll bring him back to our room where we can have him "room in" with us for as long as we want. Some new parents prefer to keep their baby with them the whole time, while others ask to send the baby to the nursery so that mom can get some rest after the exhausting labor experience. At this moment, I want the baby to stay with us in the room, but I'm not firmly committed to that because I have no idea how I will physically feel in the moment.

So, that's that! I should only have to stay in the hospital for 1-2 nights if all goes well. I'm starting to get pretty anxious about the whole thing, but I feel a lot more prepared now that we took the tour!