"You promised to take me to the apron expo today."
We went to a baby expo at our hospital of choice this weekend. A baby expo is a convention for the expecting to tour the hospital’s birthing facilities and communicate with non-profit organizations that want the best for your future child and businesses that want to sell you goods and services you never knew you needed. Ellie wanted to see the rooms where she would spend several days virtually bedridden. I wanted to collect all the free stuff the businesses were giving away to attract you to their booth.
First we toured the birthing facilities. This being our preferred hospital, and when I say “preferred” I mean “only option,” we wanted to see the layout of the rooms, find out what kind of accommodations they offer, and investigate the food I’ll be eating while Ellie recovers. Even though we still live in the same area, this is not the same hospital that delivered Abbie. We have four hospitals in Des Moines, but Ellie works at one of those hospitals and delivering there would be weird. That leaves three hospitals, but Ellie’s OB group only works at two of them, eliminating another before we even have a chance to evaluate its food offerings. Ellie chose the hospital to deliver Abbie from the two remaining options because of some bad experiences she had with the cabal that operates the other hospital. We enjoyed our experience at that hospital as much as possible with a horribly painful life-altering event, but we’re stuck delivering the twins at the hospital that jerked Ellie around in the past. Twins have a high probability of needing care in the NICU,* and the NICU at the hospital where we delivered Abbie consists of a nasal aspirator and a warming table with a power switch that must be jiggled just right to turn on. Forced into her last choice of hospitals, this was Ellie’s chance to evaluate the facilities and determine if a couple bad experiences mar the delivery center.
It turns out, they do. Unlike the hospital for Abbie’s delivery, this hospital will shuffle us between two rooms during our stay; one for labor, and once the twins are born they move us into another room, the post-partum room, which I see as a clinically cold name that unfortunately reminds me of post-partum depression. There could be a third room if you count the C-section room that Ellie will likely have to visit. Ellie was miserable over the multitude of rooms we’d have to visit, but I was pleased that the tour’s hospitality room offered a fruit tray to keep Abbie occupied during the expo, and some awesome frosted sugar cookies.
We took the elevator down and traversed a long and winding hallway to the vendors and the rest of the expo. Along the way, we realized that having the expo spread over four floors on two different wings was a depressingly accurate premonition of the room shuffling we’d have to do. Since Abbie is young and the horrors of her first year are still fresh in our minds, I wasn’t looking for much information on having a baby. I hoped to find some information on multiples, but all we found when we mentioned twins were a lot of joy and even more sympathy.
My main goal was looting as much free stuff as possible from the vendors. Most booths had candy like Tootsie Rolls or Hershey Kisses to attract people, not realizing the obvious superiority of the frosted sugar cookies upstairs. We collected a decent board book from a toy booth, a two-pack of diapers, formula samples which aren’t our brand but are in single-serving travel pouches so I will find a use for them, and breast pads aplenty. Two area dairies had booths at the baby expo for some strange reason, but I was glad they came because one handed out samples of yogurt to entertain Abbie, and another handed out ice cream on a stick to entertain me. One of the neatest items we found is a dry-erase board for the fridge where we can write instructions to the babysitter should we ever feel wealthy enough to hire one to watch three children under two. It has spaces for us to write down acceptable snacks (“None. Well, maybe one animal cracker. One.”), bedtime (“9:15. Sucker.”), and special instructions (“We know exactly how much is in the change jar so don’t even think about it.”). We picked up a few pamphlets too, such as one on tooth development so when I fret over her teeth erupting late I can have a baseline to compare it to. We also gave away our private information to vendors in exchange for a miniscule chance of winning a prize in a drawing that may or may not ever actually happen. The only thing we didn’t find was coupons, so I’ll just have to keep building my collection through flyers. I compensated for my coupon deficiency by heading back up to the birthing center for a couple more frosted sugar cookies on our way out.
* NICU is a Latin word meaning “the place for really sick babies.”
First we toured the birthing facilities. This being our preferred hospital, and when I say “preferred” I mean “only option,” we wanted to see the layout of the rooms, find out what kind of accommodations they offer, and investigate the food I’ll be eating while Ellie recovers. Even though we still live in the same area, this is not the same hospital that delivered Abbie. We have four hospitals in Des Moines, but Ellie works at one of those hospitals and delivering there would be weird. That leaves three hospitals, but Ellie’s OB group only works at two of them, eliminating another before we even have a chance to evaluate its food offerings. Ellie chose the hospital to deliver Abbie from the two remaining options because of some bad experiences she had with the cabal that operates the other hospital. We enjoyed our experience at that hospital as much as possible with a horribly painful life-altering event, but we’re stuck delivering the twins at the hospital that jerked Ellie around in the past. Twins have a high probability of needing care in the NICU,* and the NICU at the hospital where we delivered Abbie consists of a nasal aspirator and a warming table with a power switch that must be jiggled just right to turn on. Forced into her last choice of hospitals, this was Ellie’s chance to evaluate the facilities and determine if a couple bad experiences mar the delivery center.
It turns out, they do. Unlike the hospital for Abbie’s delivery, this hospital will shuffle us between two rooms during our stay; one for labor, and once the twins are born they move us into another room, the post-partum room, which I see as a clinically cold name that unfortunately reminds me of post-partum depression. There could be a third room if you count the C-section room that Ellie will likely have to visit. Ellie was miserable over the multitude of rooms we’d have to visit, but I was pleased that the tour’s hospitality room offered a fruit tray to keep Abbie occupied during the expo, and some awesome frosted sugar cookies.
We took the elevator down and traversed a long and winding hallway to the vendors and the rest of the expo. Along the way, we realized that having the expo spread over four floors on two different wings was a depressingly accurate premonition of the room shuffling we’d have to do. Since Abbie is young and the horrors of her first year are still fresh in our minds, I wasn’t looking for much information on having a baby. I hoped to find some information on multiples, but all we found when we mentioned twins were a lot of joy and even more sympathy.
My main goal was looting as much free stuff as possible from the vendors. Most booths had candy like Tootsie Rolls or Hershey Kisses to attract people, not realizing the obvious superiority of the frosted sugar cookies upstairs. We collected a decent board book from a toy booth, a two-pack of diapers, formula samples which aren’t our brand but are in single-serving travel pouches so I will find a use for them, and breast pads aplenty. Two area dairies had booths at the baby expo for some strange reason, but I was glad they came because one handed out samples of yogurt to entertain Abbie, and another handed out ice cream on a stick to entertain me. One of the neatest items we found is a dry-erase board for the fridge where we can write instructions to the babysitter should we ever feel wealthy enough to hire one to watch three children under two. It has spaces for us to write down acceptable snacks (“None. Well, maybe one animal cracker. One.”), bedtime (“9:15. Sucker.”), and special instructions (“We know exactly how much is in the change jar so don’t even think about it.”). We picked up a few pamphlets too, such as one on tooth development so when I fret over her teeth erupting late I can have a baseline to compare it to. We also gave away our private information to vendors in exchange for a miniscule chance of winning a prize in a drawing that may or may not ever actually happen. The only thing we didn’t find was coupons, so I’ll just have to keep building my collection through flyers. I compensated for my coupon deficiency by heading back up to the birthing center for a couple more frosted sugar cookies on our way out.
* NICU is a Latin word meaning “the place for really sick babies.”
posted by Matt at
9:58 PM
4 Comments:
Dude, you want coupons I can get you coupons out your wazoo. Have you gotten any presents yet? A check of your registries shows that a total of 0 items have been purchased out of alot. I got my eye on something for you guys, and I won't be cheating this time with giftcards or cash.
By
Anonymous, at 8:37 AM
We had our babies at a hospital for women (meaning all they do is deliver babies). During the tour we were shown the "birthing rooms" that were nicely decorated and had a chair that folded into a bed for daddy. We thought that was great until we were told that twins were delivered in the O.R. because of the risk. We ended up with the C-section so it was moot but man, I would have liked that birthing room.
Advice: GET OUT OF THE HOSPITAL ASAP. YOU WILL NEVER GET ANY REST UNTIL YOU GET HOME. YOU WILL HAVE MORE HOSPITAL STAFF THAN THE ENTIRE CAST OF ER VISITING YOU.
Be warned. =)
By
Anonymous, at 2:47 PM
adam: I'll let you know the next time we're in Omaha, and you can give us all those coupons coming out your wazoo. I don't think we've told too many people about the gift registries yet. The showers are still a ways off, we just wanted to knock out the registry process while we had time. You can get us whatever you want as long as it involves a travel system.
matthew: Twins are automatically delivered in the OR? Ouch, I don't think our hospital does that if you're planning on a vaginal delivery, but I'll have to check. I remember being in the hospital with Abbie and being bothered at all hours. I didn't mind too much since I was probably awake anyway. What do you mean I'll get more rest at home? Do you mean I can just leave the twins at the hospital when I go home? ;)
By
Matt, at 9:52 PM
I, too, delivered my twins at a Woman's Hospital, and they are automatically delivered in an OR there, too. The reason for this practice is that there are so many personnel needed for a twin delivery (neonatologist, nurses for each baby, respiratory therapists, etc.) and the OR offers more room. Mine wound up being a c-section, so I would have landed there even if it wasn't their policy.
By
Amy, at 11:39 PM
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