Hell at the hospital

So, having officially arrived at the hospital on Thursday since we checked in after midnight, we could stay there until at least Sunday and could stay until Monday.

Friday night I left the hospital and wifey was feeling well and positive. I expected to come back on Saturday morning finder her feeling great. We had already talked it over and decided we’d stay in the hospital until Monday so that we would have an extra day of help with the baby and an extra day of monitoring showing us that everything is going well.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. I call wifey to see how she’s doing and let her know that I’m on the way. She’s crying and says that she wants to leave. I ask for details and find out that she’s had a day from hell.

She’s experiencing a lot of pain from the C Section incision and is taking pain killers. The nursery brings the baby to my wife’s room every three hours since we’re breast feeding and don’t want the baby on forumula.

When wifey needs help to put the baby in the cradle and so she can go to the bathroom, she hits a call button next to the bed. It’s an intercom that rings the nurses station. She was pushing the call button and asking for help for several hours. Each time, she was told that her nurse would be there shortly. No one was coming.

Two hours passed at one point when my wife was laying in pain as she had a full bladder and was holding the baby. She couldn’t put the baby in its cradle and couldn’t get up by herself.

Even worse was that her pain was getting stronger since the nurse had also not been bringing her pain killers, which she was supposed to be getting every four hours.

On top of all of this, the nursery keeps sending the baby back to wifey’s room, waking her up about once an hour telling her that the baby won’t stop crying so she must be hungry. Meanwhile the minute wifey starts holding the baby, she is sleeping peacefully.

I’m fairly certain that the nursery was just trying to get rid of as many babies as possible. When I had taken baby Alex back earlier in the evening, they were absolutely full. I had never seen so many babies in one place and there was clearly a shortage of nurses to handle all of them.

I wouldn’t have minded them bringing the baby in and just explaining they were short staffed, but by telling wifey that the baby needed to eat, they unnecessarily kept her trying to breast feed and waking her up. Then when wifey would finish trying to feed her, she would send her right back to the nursery. This became a vicious cycle that just exacerbated the bad situation.

To ad insult to injury, when Pat (the nurse from hell) finally showed up, wifey was in a lot of pain and was upset and crying. Hell nurse starts patronizing her and telling her that she’s just emotional because of the pregnancy horomones were affecting her. She then goes on to lecture my wife telling her that she’s probably in the early stages of Post Pardum Depression, which explains why she’s crying.

Dr. Klein stopped in to see how wifey was doing. She was so upset and crying that she wasn’t able to explain to him what the problem was. The doctor went to speak to nurse Pat, who told him that she’s just being emotional.

Dr. Klein stopped back in and told wifey that we should just go home on Sunday instead of Monday. He said that I’d be able to take better care of her and keep her happier at home. Wifey agreed.

Now, to add insult to injury, the hospital’s lactation consultant comes in and starts lecturing wifey. She informs us that newborn baby Alex has lost more weight than expected since birth and that wifey isn’t feeding her enough. Wifey explained to her that the baby eats what it wants then falls asleep on the breast. The lactation nurse wasn’t convinced and continued lecturing her that she is doing something wrong.

When I arrived at the hospital and wifey explained all of this to me, I was furious. I immediately went to the nurse’s station and asked who was in charge. The head nurse, Emma came over and I calmly but seriously explained what had been happening and that I was very upset about it.

She apologized profusly and walked back to my wife’s room so that we could make things right. She immediately had wifey’s medication brought in and got someone to come and check her and help her to the bathroom and get back in order.

That night, Emma came in to check on us and let us know that she was leaving for the day but had left specific instructions that wifey should be taken care of. A bit later, two nurses came in and introduced themselves. Both were very nice and very pleasant and explained that they would both be taking care of wifey that night. After asking several times if we needed or wanted anything else, they left.

We decided that considering the events of the day, we’d bring the baby home the next day (Sunday).

I went out to get wifey some good food and came back. I stayed with her until about 1am just to make sure that she would be happy for as long as possible before I headed back home to get some sleep and to continue getting the house ready for the baby. Once I saw the new nurses come in to check on mommy and baby several times and she was comfortable, I decided I was leaving her in good hands and went home for some sleep, especially since it looked like the baby would be coming home the next afternoon and I needed to finishing getting the house ready for their arrival.

Unfortunately, the next day, the doctors were concerned that Alexandria had lost too much weight since birth and wanted to keep her for another day. It seemed like the hospital was at war with us and refused to let us leave. Rather than get upset about it, we resigned ourselves to the fact that it was better for the baby to stay another day in case there were any issues.

Luckily, Monday morning came and the baby’s weight was within the range the doctors wanted so we finally brought Alex home.

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