Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Hospital Stay

After the lovely experience of labor and delivery the baby and I had to stay in the hospital an additional two nights. The above picture is one of my dinners: potatoes, broccoli with cheese whiz, and steak (Phil bought me the diet dr pepper).  Not pictured is an eclair and a little salad. I can't really complain about the food, just the strange hours they feed you: 9am, noon, and 5pm. You're left to fend on your own all the rest of the day (5pm-9am is a long time). 
But you can have your baby with you as much or as little as you'd like. It's very comforting to know there are tons of nurses around to help you out. You have to give him up sometimes for newborn screening, rounding, etc.
Lastly though is the actual hospital room. If you've never been admitted to the hospital before, you might not realize that a hospital room is actually a little highway. In post-partum you and the baby each have a nurse, you each have a physician, there is someone for the birth certificate, for cleaning the room, for checking to see if the room was cleaned, for bringing the food, for taking it away....It's almost impossible to get sleep in the hospital. Every night everyone needs to come in to assess you (or the baby) every 4 or so hours (and these schedules are not synched). 
It's nice to be home.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Have I told you my philosophy of why hospitals are like that? They need to be inconvenient enough that the patients want to leave. The same goes for the ER... the wait needs to be long enough that you don't want to come back. :)

Martha said...

It looks to me like the hospital is trying to ensure you come back after a diet of their meals.