Tours, crucifixes, swabs, and maybe an early reprieve

Last night was our "Stork Tour" or, for the uninitiated of you, our tour of the Labor and Delivery unit at Mercy Folsom, where baby McDaid will make his/her first appearance into the world.

The tour was well-worth the hour or so of our time because it helped us check-off a ton of "unknowns" about where to go and what to expect on "D-Day", things like: Where to check-in during regular hours, how to get buzzed-in during off-hours, what the delivery rooms looked like, where we would go for the c-section, how long we would be in labor and delivery, and where we would go for the post-partum section of our stay.

The good news (not that there really was any bad news) is that the Labor and Delivery and Newborn units at Folsom are small and friendly. Granted it was a quiet night for them but there are only 8 rooms and they've never had a situation where they've all been filled at the same time, so you can imagine that it can't get too hectic around there.

The room where c-sections are performed is right there in the main labor and delivery unit - its one of the 8 delivery rooms - and so you don't have to leave and go to another place or surgical unit if you're going that route. It's literally just down the corridor. You also still get a standard labor and delivery room when you check-in and return to that same room when the surgery has been completed.

Basically the c-section system at Mercy is that mom goes in for prep (inc. anesthesiology) while dad stays in the delivery room. Once mom is ready to go, dad is called in for the actual delivery of the baby. The baby is then checked-out right beside you and, if doing ok, can spend some skin-to-skin time with mom before dad takes off with the baby, back to the delivery room while mom gets sewn up. (Clearly dad gets to play a bigger role in the c-section process.) After getting sewn-up (about 45 mins), mom returns to the delivery room, joining dad and baby for an uninterrupted hour of recovery, after which time visitors are allowed in. All going well, mom, dad, and baby are released to the post-partum/newborn area about 2 to 3 hours later.

Standard stay for vaginal births is 2 days (starting at the midnight after birth) and 3-4 days for c-sections.

The rooms themselves are standard, just about what you would expect - small with nasty hospital colors - but did have a couple of perks like a sofa bed for Dad and a tv with DVD player (in both delivery and newborn rooms). A couple of cool features of the newborn unit are that the nursery is literally right outside your door, no matter which room you're in, and that the nurses can be contacted by cell phone directly from your room so, if you need anything, all you have to do is call!

The one thing that freaked me out just a tiny bit was the prevalence of crucifixes on the walls of the rooms. Granted, Mercy is part of 'Catholic Healthcare West', so I shouldn't be too surprised, but it just made me think of the frickin' exorcist, seeing Christ impaled on the wall right next to the bed. What do they think, that the baby might come out posessed with evil spirits that need to be expelled or something? I don't know, it gave me the heebeegeebees. Not wanting to offend anyone here but I wonder if they have an objection to you taking it down during your stay?

So, that was the Stork Tour. Honestly, I was ready to be admitted right there and then. Let's get this show on the road, people. I'm D-O-N-E.


This morning was our 35 week ObGyn appointment. (Yes, I know our lives already revolve around the baby.) All is well with baby, whose head is down still (confirmed both from external and internal examinations) but mom did put on 4lbs in 2 weeks. Yikes. I'm not going to stick under 30lbs if I keep this up but the reality is that I'm hungry every 2 hours now and its not like I'm eating a lot, so I'm not sure what else I can do. However, I am going to go back to watching what I eat a bit more again. If I gain 4lbs a week between now and week 40, that's another 16lbs, almost 30% of my total weight-gain to date!

We also did the swab for the strep virus today - results next week - and chatted a bit more about c-sections. Sounds like, if we do decide to go the c-section route, we'll be looking at scheduling it 7-10 days ahead of my due date, which would put us between March 29th and April 1st for baby's birthday. While I'm obviously not thrilled about being sliced open, the thought of slicing 1+ weeks off my due date is so enticing I'm almost giddy with excitement. Again, no firm decisions made until our ultrasound in just under 2 weeks - 3/17. Moving forward we'll be doing one doctor's visit a week until the baby is born.