Today I felt like a character in one of those children's books. You know the ones. They have titles like, "Suzy's Big Day Out!" or "Sammy's Zoo Adventure!" But mine would have been titled, "Barb's Big Day Out that Would Have Been Bigger Had She Not Been Stymied at Every Turn!" Too long? I'll have to work on it.
In any case, here's how today went. First I woke up at 7am to head out for the wonderful glucose tolerance test. I had imagined it was the two hour, but nope! It was the one hour! Huzzah! That was a wonderful gift to a tired, hungry, pregnant lady. I guess this gift came with caveats though, seeing as it's still the dreaded sugar-sludge-chugged-in-under-5-minutes-prisoner-for-an-hour-before-bloodletting crappy test that it always is. I have very high hopes of passing it. It feels weird to trust my body at this late stage, but I believe I'm starting to do just that.
After that I wolfed down the first breakfast I could find and then collapsed for a nap before getting ready to head to our hospital for pre-registration! I am quite excited about our beautiful hospital and had only seen it from afar and on the website before today. It's exclusively for women and babies and has pretty much everything you could want for delivery and infant care. And all rooms are private! My excitement waned some this afternoon though when I came upon rain and 2 accidents on the interstate - never a good thing. It took me almost 2 hours to drive the 13 miles necessary.
When I got to the hospital parking garage, what I had thought was a $5 bill in my wallet turned out to be two ones. I told the attendant I'd just turn around, but then he asked how much I had. I told him $2.50. He told me it would be silly to turn around and to just give him the money. I thought this was a very gracious gesture on his part before he handed me the stub that said "$1 Parking Pass." Upon reflection I came to the conclusion that the arrangement was perhaps more beneficial to him than I had thought. If he gave me a $1 parking pass, and I gave him $2.50.... Well, I imagine you can put 2 and 2 together. Oh well. He could probably use the money, and I still saved $1.50 on parking, so all benefit.*
The hospital itself is beautiful. There is a waterfall people - and lots of glass. The lobby is gleaming, and the staff are almost frighteningly pretty. I was directed to admissions for my paperwork. It was sobering to fill out information about my son. My son. I was feeling very sentimental of course. Then the mobile NICU went by with lights flashing, and the thought of someone's precious baby in there almost made me cry. Of course the crying is pretty frequent these days.
When I took the forms back to the desk, they handed me a buzzer like you get at restaurants. Weird. Has anyone else had these? I was glad of its portability though because by this time, I had not used a restroom in over 2 hours.** Even the restroom was fancy. Something that tickled my funny bone was the sink set up. There were no real sinks. There was a slab of frosted glass a few feet across that angled to a trough. The faucets were positioned above the trough at the back of the slab. I thought to myself, "How fancy!" before leaning over to wash my hands. I often forget that my belly doesn't clear things like it used to. I had to chuckle as I huffed and oomphed leaning into that damn glass to reach the faucets. The cleaning lady chuckled with me too when I said, "This sure is pretty, but they weren't thinking much about the patients here when they designed it!"
When my buzzer rang... "Please return to the admissions desk at this time. Thank you!" I was directed to a little office where a woman sat to sign a bunch of consent forms. I can't imagine doing all this while in labor. If you can pre-register, do it!
I signed a bunch pertaining to my health and care, and then she handed me a set of what looked to be identical forms. "These are for the baby," she said at my quizzical look. I initialed and signed and then came to the part that says, "relationship." At this she said, "Now instead of self, you write Mother," and gave me a warm look. Wow. That almost did me in. I'm signing for my baby. I'm signing for another human being's welfare. I am responsible for another human's life. My face got warm and my eyes burned. My chest felt light and full at the same time. Our baby. It doesn't get better than that.***
*Well, except perhaps the hospital coffers, but I think they're getting enough from me and my insurance company. What they don't know won't hurt them.
**Not an acceptable amount of time even when I wasn't pregnant.
***And indeed it didn't as my next adventure involved trying to find some maternity shirts that fit as I'm rapidly running out again. It's hard to do regular large shirts anymore due to the damn bazoombas. I wanted some dresses. Yeah right. Out of 10 try on items, I found 2 that were ok. (Mainly because they were so cheap). Then I drove home through yet MORE awful traffic, and this trip took me 50 minutes. I guess it was an improvement over 2 hours.
P.S. The hospital cafe is AWESOME
Big Day
Update Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 6:46 PM.
Dalam topik crazy sh*t,happy times,Me - Pregnant?,musings
Dalam topik crazy sh*t,happy times,Me - Pregnant?,musings
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