Hospital Orientation & a Small Hospital Visit on Friday

On Thursday, Tyler & I went to our orientation at the Red Deer hospital. I’m impressed with Tyler because he worked Thursday & wanted to work Friday (as it is overtime) so he borrowed his dad’s SUV and drove up just for the orientation. I’ve been really looking forward to this orientation for a while as I’m a visual girl & I had no idea what to visualize in the hospital and was hoping the orientation would help.

I thought we’d get to do a hospital tour, but found out shortly into the spiel that there is a crazy baby boom and that they are averaging at least 200/births a month in Red Deer with more pregnant people coming in for the orientations so it’s just not feasible anymore to parade a large group up to the ward only to find out we can’t go in. I was going to be disappointed until she said that they had pictures of the rooms in their slideshow so I still got my visuals. There were 11 pregnant ladies in the room with all of them having partners there except for two. We went around the room saying our names, due date, etc. Of the 11 women, the due dates only ranged from Sept 19 – 23…only a four day spread. I don’t think they were exaggerating about their statistics! We had Nurse Jessica running the session, which was 2 hours, and could have been a really dry two hours but she was hilarious. I don’t know how old she was (I’d say equal to my age or older) but she had a really youthful energy and hilarious, sarcastic manner. Totally suited me LOL For example, she told us that if we come in with perfect hair, makeup & giggling and tell her we’re in labor she will probably send us home. Meanwhile if we come in with a messy side pony tail, a freaked out looking partner and we look really agitated and grumpy, then yes we’re probably really in labor!

For each topic she talked about she provided an anecdote or a humorous way of portraying it. I do have some examples but I don’t think they’ll translate too well in writing…as the tone of voice & gesturing really added to it.

One thing I learned:
If/when your water breaks note the time (as they will ask) as well as the color & any odor. Brown/greenish indicates that baby has had a bowel movement and this can affect their health and will require extra assessments post birth. Red can indicate blood and a variety of different issues. Yellow indicates that you just peed yourself. You don’t want to call everyone you know announcing that baby is coming & then have to call them back and say “actually I just peed my pants” [awesome story about that to come.] In addition to noting color they asked that we put on a panty liner or something that can continue to absorb some of the fluid so they can do a litmus test on it at the hospital. We are NOT to use a super absorbent with wings, etc as it does the job too well and doesn’t give them enough liquid to work with. Also if there is a lot of blood you are supposed to bring in everything that you bled on (sheets, clothes, etc) so they can assess how much you’ve lost.

She gave us her suggestions for what to pack for your hospital bag which I left at home or I’d have written them out for you. And she suggested that we leave our “48 step full size clinique facial set” at home as we’ll be choosing naps over skin care. For the record I am still packing my 3-7 step mini set from BeautiControl. Sometimes having a clean fresh face makes all the difference…if I don’t use it, no big deal as it’s just a mini set & not that big. Plus I have a mini bag of travel stuff always packed from traveling so much (it has all my face stuff, deodorant, tooth brush etc together in one bag) so it’s actually less work for me just to pack that.
Yesterday I bought a set of sports bras (as I don’t own any, something to do with the fact that I don’t do anything sporty I’m sure) that I plan to wear at the very least under a hospital gown. I want to go look for something night gown-y that I’d be comfortable wearing in the hospital but that won’t break my heart if it gets ruined. It was also suggested that we have slippers or some sort of foot wear so I want to find a cheap pair of those. I’m going to check out Zellers this week for that (I’ve already been to the North Walmart & didn’t have luck there).

This is going to come across really vain, but I want to look as good as possible for baby’s first pictures. Since I am such a pale & pasty girl I have a tendency to look completely horrible when I have bad hair & no make-up combined with little sleep and lots of strain. I know I’ll be scrapbooking these pictures and looking at them forever so I don’t want to feel negative about myself in them. People like Kim, or my sister & brother have this naturally tanned glow that helps them look good all the time which I am jealous about. With my purple under-eyes and blotchiness I will probably look like death. I’ll try to do what I can about that depending on the situation, but at the very least I can hopefully control the clothes & color of the clothing I am wearing so that it can be of more flattering shades.

I got a little off topic there so back to the hospital orientation. Very recently they have changed their policies so that dads are not allowed to spend the night (post birth of course). It is a safety issue for other women in the ward as well as for spacing in the room as the babies room-in with mom and in double rooms with 2 moms, 2 babies & 2 dads it is just too many obstacles if they need to get to a baby in a hurry. I’m not sure how I’ll feel about that at the time, but I totally understand where they are coming from. If you are sharing a room with another lady it would be weird to be left alone with her partner in there. However, the nurse said that they try to stack the rooms in such a way that if possible you are alone and if you aren’t then they try to put the person leaving the soonest in with the person the longest type deal.

People in your room during labor: pretty much you can have whoever you want in your room while you are in labor. During the actual deliver they ask it be limited to two people. Jessica said that if there is someone in the room that you don’t want there (such as a mother-in-law) to feel free to “use your nurse” to get them to leave. That way you & hubby don’t get any hard feelings aimed at you. I think that is really cool & a good idea. At this point I can’t imagine wanting anyone but Tyler in the room but I could change my mind and like that I can.
So after the orientation I was a little bit concerned over the size of my feet & ankles which had swollen quite a bit in a matter of days. I thought I would consult my ‘babycenter’ pregnancy book to see what remedies they offered. Swelling is referred to as edema and isn’t a huge concern UNLESS it is accompanied with some other symptoms…listed as: nausea (which I’ve had), headaches (which I’ve had), vision issues (not really), uterus pains at the top (not that I’ve specifically noticed) and sudden swelling (which I felt had been the case as I hadn’t noticed it before then all of a sudden I had flintstone feet on Tuesday). These symptoms can indicate a condition called pre-eclampsia which can be quite serious and may lead to bed rest, induction &/or c-section.
I’m reading this at 10 o’clock on Thursday night & Tyler just left to go back to work and I was a little freaked out by it. Everything had been going pretty well during the pregnancy and I didn’t want things to suddenly take a turn for the worse. I had my prenatal appointment booked for Monday and I was torn because I don’t want to be a hypochondriac and insist on going to the doctor on Friday but I don’t want to ignore symptoms or wait and regret that. So on Friday morning I called the clinic and said that I had an appointment for Monday but I was having some symptoms that I wasn’t sure if I should be worried about so was wondering if there was someone who could advise me if I needed to come in. It turned out that they had an opening in the prenatal clinic that day at 11:50am and they suggested that I could just switch my appointment to that day. This worked out perfectly as it was a female doc working at the clinic that day so she was able to do my Strep B test that day as well instead of having the male doc doing it on the Monday.

At the appointment, Dr.Courellis took my blood pressure & tested my urine for protein and both were in the normal range. If I actually had pre-eclampsia I would have had high blood pressure. However, she saw that I was a little worried/freaked out so she said I could go for a non-stress test at the hospital just to ensure baby was fine if I wanted (as I was having a triage of symptoms that do indicate possible issues). The test was suppose to be about 20 minutes and I didn’t have anything going on for the rest of the day so I opted to go do it (better safe than sorry). It also provided me with an opportunity to go up to Unit 25 (the maternity unit) and see where it was and experience it.

The non-stress test is done in the same assessment room that I will go to when I go into labor. There are four beds in the room & when I got there, there was one other woman already on one bed. The nurse wanted a urine sample but luckily when you’re pregnant you have to pee all the time so that wasn’t an issue LOL Shortly after I settled onto the bed, two other women showed up so there was a full room and only one nurse on. We were all separated by curtains, however it’s a small hospital room so I could easily hear all the conversations going on around me. Woman #1 was there because her water had broken and that was disconcerting as this was baby number two and she was scheduled for a c-section but not until Sept 15th. She said she had been at work moving around some boxes and all of a sudden she had fluid all the way down her legs (she was wearing gray slacks that would have shown wet spots and I didn’t see any so I think she may have changed before she got there). They hooked her up to the same non-stress test that I was going to be getting (it measures baby’s heartbeat & if you are having any contractions) and proceeded to do the litmus test and an internal exam. It took a while, probably about 45 minutes, but they told her that her results were negative and that her water hadn’t broken and she wasn’t in labor. Reading between the lines: she peed herself. I heard her sound very confused and ask the nurse what happened then and the nurse was like “well our bladders are getting a lot of pressure on them and are squished so…” Ugh, I hope she didn’t call too many people and announce that she was having the baby! Plus she had done it at work so she’d have to explain to everyone there…just goes to show you that what Jessica told us the night before was very KEY to remember LOL

Couple #2 were having their first baby and were from Drayton Valley or Drumheller (I can’t remember which as I always confuse the two). Hubby was a doctor but didn’t practice obstetricians and both were from somewhere in Africa I think (I can’t 100% remember). She had been induced but wasn’t having any labor yet so they wanted to double check the signs before they drove all the way home. The nurse on that afternoon was from England so she struck up a conversation with them about him being a doctor in his own country. He said he doesn’t like practicing obstetricians because in his country the midwives were very arrogant or misinformed and wouldn’t call him until essentially it was too late for him to do anything. So he saw a lot of needless baby deaths. That was sad to hear. They ended up leaving without any signs of labor.

Pregnant lady #3 was there because she was concerned about the low frequency of baby movements. Her mom & 4 year old were there and they kept bumping my curtain which was really annoying. Her results were normal so she also left.

All three of the other ladies got to leave before me, and another couple came in with their 4 year old. Apparently they had gotten into an automobile accident (minor fender bender) so were double checking on baby. I can’t describe exactly why, but they were a very weird family.

My tests went well. I was there from maybe 12:30pm until nearly 2pm. The reason it apparently took so long was because my baby decided to sleep most of the time and so she was waiting for a read out once he awoke. If I had known that I might have poked & prodded him a bit LOL She called the doctor I saw that day and reported that “his sleep cycle was a little long but activity was good after that”. I couldn’t help but think “woo hoo, maybe I have a great sleeper!” ha ha They also tested my blood pressure again which was 121/69 which is considered normal and tested my urine which had “slight” traces of protein but nothing they were concerned about so all is good.

The receptionist at my clinic suggested that I could test my blood pressure at any pharmacy that has those machines if I wanted to keep an eye on it (rather than coming in to the doctor). I did it at Walmart yesterday but was having some anxiety for some reason and found it very high. I decided to ignore that result and retest again in a couple days as my blood pressure has been almost perfect the entire pregnancy.

When I left the hospital a guy in a black truck yelled "hey Crystal!" and then a blonde girl got into the truck. My first instinct was that it was Scott & Shelley as it kind of sounded like Scott & looked like Shelley. I walkd over and it turned out to be a guy I graduated high school with (Ryan Eastman for those of you who went to high school with me) and his baby mama Lana I think her name is (who was less than friendly I might add). They were there getting tubes put into their toddler's ears (an outpatient surgery I believe). Apparently the baby mama & toddler (who's name is Rylyn - a combo of mom & dad's names) live in Red Deer now so he's thinking of moving to the area from Grimshaw. Eastman (as I call him) has for the most part always been really nice & friendly to me and seems like a decent enough guy. It was fun & weird to run into him so randomly!