Hospital Questions for Labor & Delivery - Follow Up

A few weeks ago I wrote about our Hospital Questions before going on our tour of Plano Presbyterian.

Ya'll gave some fabulous feedback and additional things to think about.

Our tour was small (four other couples), given by a very friendly nurse and addressed many of our questions before we even asked. Although I did ask so many questions that at one point that the nurse made the assumption that this was NOT our first child, that I had "done this before." I laughed and told her, "No, I just read . . . ALOT." Yes, I know, it's a little bit of a sickness.

A few things I didn't realize before going on the tour were:

• Hospitals are competing for our business. Apparently there are other hospitals in the area who serve lobster as a way to get you in the door. With that in mind, we tried to listen objectively and discern if we were just being told "what we wanted to be told."
  
• Doctors give the orders. If my doctor is supportive of our birth plan, then the nurses will follow his instructions.
  
• Some of our questions (mostly regarding the practices of keeping the mother with the baby) were totally out-dated. 

I've come to the conclusion that I will feel most comfortable in a hospital setting, even if we decide that we want a natural/unmedicated labor/delivery. I've never had a baby before, and while I've had no complications thus far in my pregnancy, it would ease my mind to be at a place where medical help is instantly available should anything be abnormal or wrong.

With that choice to deliver in the hospital, I've also come to realize that I'll probably be making the following compromises:

• I'll have to have a Hep-Lock (an IV if they deem it necessary)
• I'll have to have fetal monitoring (intermittently if everything we are doing okay).
• My labor has to progress at a satisfactory rate (1 cm every 2 hours), otherwise they'll augment it with Pitocin.
• I won't be allowed to eat anything while at the hospital.

It was encouraged that if we were going to have a natural/unmedicated labor/delivery that we ask for a nurse who has experience in unmediated births.  Overall, I was very pleased with the hospital and the staff and, other than the quasi-long distance up the Tollway, am glad we'll be having Baby Boy there in just a few short months.

The day after our hospital tour we had our 28-week appointment with my doctor, so in my next post I'll share some of the questions we ran by him during that visit.