Walmart Hospital

Uuuuggg...here I am again in the wee hours of the morning, just sitting down to write. Emma's crying in bed and I forgot to give Jax his acid reflux meds before his last feeding and he's kind of a mess too. Feeding is not going so well, and my bubs feel like they might just fall right off. But contrary to how I sound right now, today was a really good day! This first week is just such a roller-coaster, and I guess it makes sense to be a little wound tight at 1:00 in the morning.

So here we go- our days in the hospital. First, maybe I should preface this with the fact that we referred to the place where I had Emma as the country club. It was just a really great hospital, and Matt's mom had warned me that it wouldn't be like that here. She was right. :) I guess the philosophy of our hospital here is to give the family their space and not interfere as much as possible. Um, okay, I suppose that's nice, except for the fact that i have a home in which we can have family time. If I'm going to be in a hospital for a couple days, it would be kind of nice to get some help so I can maybe recover and not go home feeling like I not only gave birth but also got hit by a truck as well. Maybe that's just me.

The first night I asked the nurse if I could put Jax in the nursery between feedings so I could get a little bit of uninterrupted sleep. I hadn't slept at all the night before while I was in labor and well, I did just push an 8 lb. person out of my bod. Just sayin'. The nurse told me how they really like to keep the babies with the moms as much as possible. Oh. Well, thanks for the generous dose of guilt. She came back at about 1:30 and I asked again. I know, I'm a bad mom. Jax was back at 4:00 so I did get a whopping 2 hours of sleep that first night. When the OB came in at around 8 the next morning she took one look at Matt and me and told us we looked awful. Matt explained what had happened the night before and she said that they have a tendency to make people feel guilty; they'd had many conversations about it. She would put a sign up on our door and order that he stay in the nursery for 4-6 hours. Aaaaahhh, my new hero. We felt so much better after getting some rest and were ready to face the day.

Unfortunately, we had more problems throughout the day. Whenever I asked a nurse a question her reply was always,"I don't know. I don't usually work on this floor." After hearing that from 3 different nurses I felt more like I was in Walmart than in a hospital. A little frustrating. That night I asked again if we could put Jax in the nursery between feedings so we could get more than 2.5 hours of sleep. This time the nurse's reply was that the only person in the nursery wasn't from this floor and we may not want to put him in, in case he spit up and had to be suctioned or anything. Seriously? So...what is there a 15 year-old who just took a baby-sitting course taking care of the babies or what? I thought we were in a hospital! You're telling me that the person in the nursery isn't competent to help my baby if he starts choking? Awesome! So Jax spent the night with us again and we slept an hour. ONE. HOUR.

Our little Jax has the same acid reflux problems that Em did and could not be put down at all after feeding without continuous screaming. When I finally did get him down and drift off to sleep at about 1:00, at 1:15 the nurse woke me up you get my vitals. Are you kidding me? Then again at 4:00 I fell asleep for about a half hour when another nurse came in and woke me to ask about Jax's pees and poops. Again, information that I would prefer not to give while sleeping. I was so ready to get out of there and started asking about being discharged at 7. At 4:00 they finally let us go. I was seething as I waited 45 minutes for wheelchair man to arrive to wheel me out. By the time he arrived I was trying to hold back sobs as the crazy new mother that everyone avoided looking at on the way out. Oh dear. I feel like I was pretty level-headed and they did all they could to make me crazy before I left. Thankfully the sunshine, a smoothie, and a stop at Target on the way home helped me jump off the crazy train.