Hospital Talk

alishakay · June 2014

Only 10 more weeks and a sweet baby boy will be born and if all goes as planned entering our family! We can't wait! Does anyone have any hospital stories to share? Hopefully positive? We will be present for delivery, but will not be able to stay at the hospital at least overnight that is. We have a meeting with hospital staff in a few weeks to discuss how everything will go down. I'm just curious about others experience and what I should expect?

RoscoeTGoatt · June 2014

Like Pinkie78, our son was was born when we got "the call". We met him when he was 27 hours old. He had to stay a total of two nights at the hospital and the hospital staff was AMAZING. We had been told we were going to have to stay at a hotel but after the BM was discharged, they let us stay in a room. They brought us mugs of water and wrote "Mom" and "Dad" on them and people kept giving us stuff. Two of the nurses made him blankets and everyone was so helpful and happy for us. Everyone kept coming in to meet us. They also loaded us up on formula and diapers (which we needed because we still had to spend a night in Oregon until we got interstate clearance). We still keep in touch with the nurse who delivered Jack and we visited the hospital when we visited his BM for the first time. Even though we weren't present at the birth, it never felt like we missed something because we heard so many stories. The night nurses nicknamed "Fire Hose" because if his habit of soaking anyone around him during diaper changes. These are the stories we will put in his adoption book and tell when he is older. From what I have heard, every hospital is different and hospitals that may not know a lot about adoption or have handled adoptions may be a liitle more stringent with rules.
Oh, one more thing- I am not sure if you are going to circumcise but the doctor at the hospital didn't feel comfortable doing it because of the legalities (even though BM's rights were terminated and we had the forms from the agency giving us consent to make medical choices). It definitely wasn't a big deal and totally understandable but that might be a question to ask if applicable. Good luck with the meeting and how exciting! 10 weeks! :-)

alishakay · June 2014

I believe the hospital she is delivering at is very familiar with adoptions. At the beginning of our journey we were told they would set us up in a room, but since then the hospital has changed their policy. So we will either stay at a hotel or drive home, only an hour away, but I know it will feel much further when we do have to leave. I think the hospital was having trouble with both birth family and adoptive family being there, and trying not to cater to one vs the other. I'm sure they'll explain all of the details when we meet this month. It's so great you still have those connections, sounds perfect!

alishakay · June 2014

Your poor little guy:( Thanks I'll have the discussion with birthmom and hospital staff at our meeting!

orangecupcake · June 2014

We were present in the delivery room for DD1. Our experience was mostly positive as far as the hospital staffing. DD ended up with an infection and had to spend 2.5 days in the NICU. The NICU would not allow us to see her because BM chose against us being in there. The first night we stayed in the hospital, but made ourselves hermits because we were on the mother/baby unit, with no baby. The hospital social worker was horrible, but everyone else was great. Day two we stayed Ina hotel, then day three we stayed at the hospital again, but with DD, then discharged the next day.

maryoosa · June 2014

The hosptial our son's mother birthed at was not adoption friendly. In fact, I'm pretty sure we are the only adoption they have done. We missed the birth by about 3 minutes--- she just went to fast and though she asked for us the whole time she went from L and D triage to OMG there's a baby in less than 20 minutes... on the regular LD floor rather than a birthing center, so we couldn't be in there. We were in the room to cut the cord. The hospital provided no services to us. We booked a nearby hotel room and only stayed as long as our son's mom wanted us there- always certain to check in with her if she wanted us there or not. We also had an AWFUL hospital social worker- she had no idea adoption was going on. The hospital also made our son's mom's lawyer bring her own witness because they refused to allow the staff to be witness to the adoption. All in all it was awkward in a 1000 ways.

My best advice is - if you are in the same town as the hospital etc... have a friend nearby. It would have been really helpful for us to have more than just each other to talk with...we, my partner and I, were both so tense that it was ridiculous. I wish we'd brought someone else to have nearby.

justjinny · June 2014

I think it is great that you are meeting with the hospital ahead of time. We didn't do this, so we really had no idea what to expect.

Luckily for us, our hospital experience was far better than I could have hoped for. The staff was for the most part really considerate about the adoption and circumstances with multiple family members visiting. Since the L&D floor wasn't full, they let us have a room down the hall from BM for the 3 days we were there. We were able to share care (mostly we cared for the baby, but took him to BM's room whenever she wanted him) and we got to meet all the extended birthfamily members when they came to visit. A lot of the visits were in our room since BM was recovering from a c-section and needed lots of rest.

We had a copy of BM's birth plan, so we could help make sure the hospital staff was following what she wanted. She had asked for some of the baby's first items, name tags, bracelet etc. and we made sure she had them when we got discharged. We were also sensitive to when discharge happened and only left when she was ready for us to go home. Some of the hospital staff wanted us to go a day early, but BM really needed more time with LO before discharge.

We had talked ahead of time about circumcision, so luckily we could do that right away in the hospital. BM had to sign the consent form for it.

One of the difficult things for us was getting to eat on a regular schedule. The hospital we were at was really small and the cafeteria was open for very short hours which we kept missing due to baby stuff or visitors going on. We ended up eating a lot of meals at a diner just down the street, which was ok but also made me anxious to be away from the baby and the hospital for even those short breaks. On the third day of our stay we got a really nice nurse who set us up to have two meals delivered to our room. That.was.awesome! Definitely have an idea of what you'll do for some food during your stay.

plus12012 · June 2014

The hospital where DD was born was great to us and to B-Mom. They actually had a room for us but, we wanted to respect B-Mom and give her the time to heal, mourn etc. so we commuted back and forth during DD's stay in the hospital. We visited with her both in B-Mom's room and in the nursery. B-Mom signed the consent form in the hospital and was released before DD. The day B-Mom was released we did stay at the hospital with DD. The only hiccup we had was I did have to ask a nurse not to refer to me as Mom in front of B-Mom. We really wanted to respect that at that time she was still Mom and she had the right to make whatever decision was the right one for her. She said she never had any doubts that she would place with us but, I am sure it was a stressful time for her and we wanted to help ease that as much as possible.

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