Hospital Tour 2011

Kevin and I went for a hospital tour on Saturday with a bunch of other expectant parents, including one woman due this week and one woman expecting twins! The tour mainly consisted of sitting in a hospital conference room and having one of the maternity nurses talk about miracles and make strange analogies to the NICU being like Sully landing in the Hudson River.  We did that for about an hour and a half.

But it was still helpful because she walked us through what to do and where to go when we get to the hospital on delivery day. She also gave us a list of what to pack in the hospital bag/s. Even though that's available on numerous websites online, I like the hospital's list the best because it's very minimal. I was overwhelmed by the online ones. Now I can use the short list and see if there's anything else from the long lists that seems like a good idea as well.

Finally we got to actually walk through the maternity floor, but all the labor rooms were blocked by fancy construction to improve the floor, set to end by Mother's Day, which is of course way after I have our baby. And all the maternity recovery rooms were in use because they had a lot of labors that day, but I sort of peeked into one of the shared rooms. They look crowded to host me, Kevin, baby, and other guests, but the mom I saw was blissfully playing with her quiet baby so it still looked pretty great.

Then the best part of the tour- the nursery! I have sadly spent a lot of time in hospitals in the last year and I can assure you that newborn nurseries everywhere are on super-secure lock-down, so this was really a special treat.  They even had some boys that had been born just a few hours ago, basking in the heat lamps like they were at a fun nudist beach.  They were big for newborns and had dark hair so I could really imagine our little guy doing the same.

Not our actual hospital nursery because I would have been arrested.

Oh, and if any of you need extra motivation to come visit me after the baby is born, my hospital has girl scouts selling girl scout cookies in the lobby every Saturday. If I'm lucky I'll deliver on a Friday.