Where The Plan Broke Down

Posted on by Jordan

Now that things have settled down to a somewhat predictable, if very different than before, life with a baby in the house, I thought I would take a minute to go over some parts of my “go to the hospital” plan that didn’t work so well, and maybe a few that did.

Before that I suppose I should give a quick rundown of events leading up to the birth of Hannah. Tuesday December 18th, Heather and I both went to work as normal. About 4:30 that afternoon, she called me to ask that I come straight to her office and take her to the hospital. This meant that we simply asked Heather’s mom, Pam, to pick up the bags we had packed for this very event. It also meant that the first of a few mistaken assumptions on my part were exposed.

Assumption one: I will be the one to pickup the bags. We had attached a list to the bags, detailing daily use items such as a toothbrush that would need to be added at the last minute. The list only contained items for Heather, because I only needed a couple extra things added. Namely, toothbrush, deodorant, kindle, nexus tablet, charger for all three devices.

Assumption two: Because I would be picking up the bags, I could pull on the sweatshirt that wouldn’t fit in the backpack. Warm clothing for me has the unfortunate habit of taking up an enormous amount of space in a bag, so I decided to just wear the clothing at least until we got to our room.

Packed items that I overdid:

Granola bars: A few of these were nice, given that Pam and I were acting as backup nurses basically all night, and couldn’t really leave the room. What we didn’t need were two entire boxes of bars.

Distraction items for Heather: We had movies, music, massage lotion, books… you name it, we had it. None of it got used during labor. Heather did watch a movie or two in the postpartum room.

Distraction items for Jordan: I had made a point of loading up my kindle with a bunch of books, and had queued up a nice backlog of interesting articles on my RSS feed. The reality was that pre Hannah I needed to be attentive to Heather (even when she didn’t need anything per say, she just wanted to feel like she wasn’t going through things alone). Post Hannah I was too tired to think about pleasure reading.

Vending machine money: This seemed like a great idea, but I already had granola bars, and if I had time to go down the hall to a vending area I had time to hit up the cafeteria and get real food.

Unexpected wins:

My tablet. I purchased A Nexus 7, expecting to read and maybe play a few games on it while at the hospital. What I ended up using it for was for communication. E-mail, Facebook and Skype all worked surprising well, and were a much greater priority than I expected them to be.

A blanket. Yes, the nurses brought plenty of blankets into our room… or they probably would have been plenty if the “cot for dad” built into the wall wasn’t built into “floor to ceiling windows on 3 sides” alcove, and Hannah didn’t come right before a blizzard. The blanket was theoretically for Heather I think… I can’t actually remember what I packed it for. Given that I didn’t have a sweatshirt, a nice soft fleece style blanket was a lifesaver.

I think that covers the majority of the adjustments / reflections I had regarding the items we packed for the hospital.

-Jordan

Practice Run

Posted on by Jordan

What did we do this weekend?

As always, that is the easiest question to spin into a blog topic. Had the weekend gone as planned, there wouldn’t have been a lot to say, other than that our friends from church had a nice baby shower for Heather, and that we don’t really have anything else on the calendar until the baby gets here.

As it happened, Heather wasn’t feeling great Saturday morning, but figured she could power through a little discomfort if she just laid down for a few minutes. An hour later, she threw up, and we thought maybe that was going to be the turning point to her feeling better, so she composed herself and headed to the shower.

When she got home several hours later, I learned that she had thrown up three or four more times, and was feeling much worse. Given that every day of pregnancy is uncharted for us, and she didn’t seem to be getting better, I contacted our doctor. Her advice was to take Heather in to the hospital “just so they can check on her”

We grabbed a few things and headed out the door. Once at the hospital I don’t actually know how much time they spent thinking about her symptoms before deciding to send her to the maternity area as I was parking the car. On the bright side, Heathers mom had been a guest at the shower, and was able to accompany us to the hospital, so I didn’t have to abandon Heather while finding a place to legally leave our vehicle.

I made it inside just in time to accompany Heather down to the maturity area, where they immediately hooked up monitors for her vitals and the baby, followed by an IV running at what the nurse described as a quick pace. Once all of that was in place the nurse told us they had been seeing a lot of the flu that  weekend, and that Heather should be fine once she got hydrated.

Four hours and two liters of IV fluid later, the nurse recommended that we spend the night, because Heather was still dehydrated. This meant that I needed to take Heather’s mom back to our place, and pickup a few overnight items for myself and Heather.

Once back in the hospital room, I discovered a few things: First, that the cot the nurse had so helpfully provided wasn’t very comfortable, Second that I was too tired to really care, and finally, that the monitor tracking our child somehow got turned up making the dominant sound in the room her heartbeat.

It was an interesting experience. I hope it’s the last time I ever fall asleep listening to her heartbeat, but at the same time it was rather reassuring.

By morning, Heather was feeling much better, and the doctor came in to look her over and gave us the all-clear to head home. We decided it was a good practice run for our “real” trip to the hospital coming up soon, given that we now know exactly where we need to go, and what items we should have brought (or a few more anyway).

 

-Jordan