Posted by: Alex
Continued from the previous post: Why I have joined the masses of people who don’t like hospitals…
I can be quite naive sometimes. Not having stayed in a hospital since in childhood to early to remember, I thought it would be quite novel. Stay in bed all day, have food brought to you, order it of those little mini menus, have visitors and flowers. Well now what’s so bad about that? Especially as I wasn’t going in because I was ill, this should have been quite fun in my opinion.
By 11 PM on the first night, I had changed my mind. Hospitals are noisy places, especially if they are as busy as the one I went to happened to be on that particular week. By my last night there they had amassed 18 babies, and it’s not a big hospital. I think that was capacity.
I also didn’t anticipate the loss of dignity of being prodded and checked all night long. Not the staff’s fault, they were just doing their job, but well, I just hadn’t expected it.
Summed up, the day staff were great, I met two very helpful nurses, and the rest of the ground staff were cheerful and friendly. The night staff: a little less so. I drew the card for the ‘first night on the job’ nurse who twice dropped my bed instead of lowering it gently, not going down well with the C-section. She then said “I’m sorry, it’s my first night on the job”, which, well, she shouldn’t have. I’d rather not have known. And the nursery staff were thin on the ground and not very sympathetic to a worried first time mom.
With 18 babies and 16 moms (2 sets of twins) the attendance alarms didn’t stop ringing. The hospital rooms had two beds each in them. Nights one and two I shared with a lovely friendly mom of twins. Her babies where in incubators due to being born a bit premature, so she didn’t have them rooming in with her. I felt a bit bad for her sharing a room with me because I had the crying infant who wasn’t feeding too well, and she could otherwise have been getting some sleep.
But then the final straw for my camel: on night three they moved my roommate to another room, maybe it was at her own request – I don’t know, and moved in a new mom fresh from theatre for her c-section. So she had the nurses in and out all night checking on her. Well, I hadn’t slept much the first two nights due to being check on (night one) and feeding problems with Aidan (night two) and now on night three I get awoken every time they check on my new roommate, because the night staff aren’t very subtle about doing their jobs. And the door creaked. Each time they left after checking on my roommate I’d get up and fix it so it didn’t creak, and then a few hours later the nurse would leave it in its creaking position again. Well, night three wasn’t a great one for sleep either.
Thankfully I have the most wonderful husband who was at the hospital by 7 AM each morning to hold his child while his mom stole a shower or an hour’s sleep because by the end of night two I felt so much animosity towards the nursery night staff I no longer wanted to take Aidan to the nursery at all.
I was ready and packed before the doctors did their rounds on my discharge day, so eager was I to flee my captivity. I think I would have had a serious melt down had the doc’s decided that either Aidan or I needed to stay in even a few hours more.
But they didn’t. And it’s never felt so good to be home as it did that Saturday.
Four weeks on we are doing well. Aidan isn’t the totally non fussy calm baby I had kinda hoped for, but he’s a great kid. He has some colicky / reflux symptoms, but It’ll just take some time for his digestive system to mature, and we’re weathering that storm okay for now.
And he’s just ever so gorgeous, see for yourself:
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:13 am
Most people have the idea that the staff at the hospital are there to care for them. This is a misconception, they are only there to keep you alive. Seems like they did their job, and a bit more.
Looking forward to be working in the same office as you again. lol.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Aidan us gorgeous.
I bolted from the hospital the minute they said that the baby could leave the NICU. They wanted us to stay an extra day, but we couldn’t get out of there fast enough.