Home Coming

We arrived home today after being away on a house-hunting trip in ND. The joys of being in one's own house reminded me that I wanted to write a post about coming home from the hospital. I have a chronic problem of desiring to write and imagining lines for so many more posts than I actually find the time to blog. Anyway, since Tobias is the last baby we will bring home from the hospital, I wanted to capture the experience.
Whenever I am late in pregnancy, I always get well-meaning advice to stay in the hospital as long as possible when the baby arrives so that I can recover before returning to my other munchkins at home. However, I always find the hospital to be less restful and just less desirable in general than my own home. It's not because of the people, our nurses this time in particular were absolutely fabulous. In fact, I had the very same postpartum nurse that I had with Benjamin. She was thrilled to see Benjamin when he came to visit Tobias. I bet nurses don't often get a chance to meet the babies they help take care of when they are a little older.
No, it wasn't the people, the problem with being in the hospital was 3-fold: the rules, the bed and the food.
Hospital rules require that poor mothers who are supposed to be resting get woken up, not only by their newborn babies, but by nurses coming to check vital signs in the middle of the night. I wanted to tell them that if I started dying I would let them know right away. Honestly, as soon as I am aware that Death is on his way to collect me I will push the nurse call button, I promise. Until then, you can assume that all of my vital signs are present and accounted for. It is unlikely that I would even be comfortable enough to slip into unconsciousness much less die anyway because of the awesomeness of the hospital bed.
Oh, the bed. Is there any more amazing piece of technology? The bed self-inflates based on how much pressure your body is putting on various parts of the mattress! The bed can be adjusted to multiple heights! The bed's head can be raised and lowered so that you can sit up to feed your baby and then lay down to go back to sleep! The bed is great for so many things! Except sleeping. Not so good for sleeping. The bed is uncomfortable. When it self-inflates, it sounds like your neighbor is mowing the lawn. Under your bed. When you raise or lower the head it creaks like the Titanic did as it was sinking into the Atlantic.
When you are able to shut out these noises, ignore the discomfort and drift off to sleep, you have disturbing dreams about being hired to mow the lawn on the Titanic while a screaming baby is strapped to your back. To me, this is less than restful.
After an eventful night of nursing, yard maintenance, and witnessing the death throes of a massive ocean-liner, one can naturally expect to be quite hungry; famished, in fact. At our hospital, they have a lovely system in which you call the cafeteria when you are hungry and order a meal off of a menu located on your bedside table next to the phone. The cafeteria then makes your food and supposedly it arrives in your room in about 30 minutes. In reality, the food arrives anywhere in the neighborhood of 1-3 hours after you order it in varying states of temperature and quantity. Sometimes you get two pieces of French Toast for breakfast, sometimes eight. An entree salad comes with one small packet of dressing. A side salad comes with 3 large dressing packets. A baked potato or a stack of pancakes comes with a single pat of butter. A solitary dinner roll arrives with four. Each tray of food arrived with a receipt delineating what was on your tray. Sometime quantities listed on the receipt differed from that in the tray. Specifically, only one cookie often appeared when the receipt said two. I think there was a cookie thief in the kitchen.
To stave off the pangs of food deprivation, Marc and I would imagine what was happening to cause such massive delays. We envisioned a giant Rube Goldberg machine much like the mousetrap game so that each time a tray needed to be loaded with food, someone had to spend 15 minutes setting up the machine and starting the chain reaction with a giant metal ball. We also speculated that perhaps there were cafeteria worker union regulations that only allowed them to prepare a certain quantity of food i.e. 3 trays in any given hour. Despite getting often cold, often tasteless food hours after we ordered it, we found it very difficult to complain. That is because the cafeteria has a secret weapon. Her name is Valentina. Valentina would bring the trays into our room with the air of one bringing in an expensive catered dinner. A matronly figure with a bubbly personality, blonde curls, dimpled smile and a beautiful Russian accent, it was impossible to complain to Valentina. You could just tell she sincerely wanted to help you and she sincerely wanted you to enjoy your food. We always felt embarrassed when food was left on the trays because we didn't want Valentina to know that it was less than delicious. Such were her powers that I believe she could negotiate peace in the Middle East. No one would be able to bring themselves to complain about the policies of neighboring countries with Valentina in the room. A treaty would be signed in no time.
At any rate, we were relieved when the hospital released us early to come home. Being married to a pediatrician has its perks. It was so nice to come home to my own bed. Marc didn't check my vitals even once in the night. It was great to get meals cooked by my mom or members of the ward and it was fun to see the "Welcome Home" decorations the boys made for us and Tobias. The pictures and signs were very sweet, even David John's random signs that read "Yogurt" and "Bubbles". The point is, there is no place like home and that is where I want to be.