If Jacob ever has a sibling, I’m sure we’ll find these notes useful. Other new parents may also find some gems here.
1. General
Mt Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA was a superb place to experience labor, delivery and the first few days of our bundle of joy.
a. Can’t get there from here
i. Coming from the north, the Garmin and Google suggest taking some side streets off the second Fresh Pond Parkway (Rt 2) rotary, but this might have been too big a challenge for my memory, and the streets were quite bumpy for my pregnant wife the first time we did it, so we decided to go with the more direct route of taking Route 2 a bit further.
ii. There are signs for “No left turn” from inbound (East) Route 2 onto Mt Auburn Street, but below one of them, it states “No Trucks”. Is this for the left turn, implying that cars can and truck’s can’t? It appears that the west-bound traffic is stopped when the east-bound traffic can go, but I’ve never made the left at that busy intersection, and instead gone two more breaks in the curb, and done a sort of U-turn, (more like 150 degrees instead of 180) where Route 2 turns onto Memorial Drive.
iii. On Sundays, Memorial Drive is closed to motored traffic at Route 2. One of the friends who visited us on Sunday made the U-turn at the first break in the curb, where there are two big, red signs that say “Do not enter”. Another visitor kept going on Route 2, across the Charles River, onto Storrow Drive and finally made it back via North Harvard St somehow.
b. Food
Karen joked that we checked Zagat’s while picking our hospital. The food is quite good, and the selection in the menu was ample.
i. We brought some snacks from home, and that has come in handy. During the c-section discussion and with the operation imminent, we weren’t thinking about ordering food. It was nice to have a couple handfuls of trail mix before heading into the OR.
ii. There is a public kitchenette which provides saltines, juice, ice and water, hot tea and coffee.
iii. But the real action is the food service delivered to your room…
iv. It takes from 10-45 minutes for the food to arrive after you call it in from the phone in the room.
v. Before calling, jot down what you want. It’s hard to remember everything while the busy operators are taking your order.
vi. Order everything you think you want, paying special attention to condiments. If you don’t ask for breakfast syrup with your French toast, you may end up with the sugar –free syrup from the public kitchenette.
vii. It’s easier to have the table cleared ahead of when the food trays arrive, but you can just use a chair if you’re blogging on the laptop or something when they arrive.
viii. A nurse said you can order as much as you like, they just want you to eat it all. She said that one person was ordering nine trays, but then frowned a bit and said that some of it might have gone to guests. Karen got both scrambled eggs and French toast (with breakfast syrup!) this morning.
ix. It may be a coincidence, but the week-day food-service staff collected the trays from the room, and the weekend staff expects you to return them to the carts in the hallways.
x. We usually got what we ordered, but not every time. The food service people aren’t waiters. We just dealt with the swapped or missing items, like onions instead of lettuce and tomato for a sandwich.
c. Wi-Fi – The entire maternity floor (five) has wi-fi, as did Women’s Services on the first floor. Before you can get internet access, you must try to open an internet site from a browser, and click the accept button to connect to the MAHGUEST wireless network. E-mail will not work until this happens.
2. Labor and Delivery
a. Sleep
i. The baby’s heartbeat was dropping during monitoring, so the team had Mom-to-be wear ECG transducers. The monitor amplified the baby’s heartbeat throughout the room. Despite how sleepy I was, it took some time to get used to the sound (or perhaps it was just that I was soooo tired I didn’t care anymore). Ear plugs may have allowed me to get better sleep.
ii. Since Titi (Auntie) Betsy (aka Doctora Betsy) was in the room with us, Karen asked for a cot so that we’d have a place for everyone to sleep. The cot was much more comfortable than the reclining chair for sleeping.
b. Food – For whatever reason, food is brought to the nurse’s station. From there, nurses brought it to our room, but another new dad whose child came via c-section a day later than Jacob told me that he had to collect his food at the nurse’s station himself.
3. Post Partum
a. Feeding Baby
Take advantage of the nurses’ offers to assist, especially starting at the 2nd day. This is one silver lining of a C-section birth: you are there four days, not two, and get a lot more time with nurses and lactation consultants who have a lot of effective tricks. By the 25th hour, baby’s reserves are getting low and needs to eat. Jacob went from 6 pounds 10 ounces to 6 pounds 4 ounces in a couple of days which is normal.
i. Getting the baby to eat can be thwarted by several problems:
1. Improper latching
2. Falling asleep
3. Baby’s frustration at lack of milk
ii. Some of the techniques we use:
1. Get baby not only awake, but lively
2. Express colostrum /milk to whet the appetite
3. SNS – supplemental nursing system. In this technique, one uses a 10-ml syringe with a long thin tube full of formula. After baby latches, sneak the end of the thin tube into the corner of the mouth. Jacob slammed the 10 ml in about five seconds and went on for another 5 ml (about ½ ounce total). Our nurse Chrissie had never seen it go down so fast.
4. Keep ear, shoulders and hips of baby level
5. Try different chairs and positions, pillows
6. Ask the lactation consultant or nurse for help
b. Food for Parents
i. In the post-partum section, food is delivered right to the room.
ii. Since condiments don’t always make it, even if you ask for them, I stockpiled the items I like: ketchup, pepper, breakfast syrup. These are in disposable packages which I’m nearly certain are simply tossed if unused. We were in labor and delivery for under 24 hours, and in two different rooms, so it didn’t even occur to me to stockpile.
iii. We ate the Mt Auburn salad nearly every lunch and dinner. It is that good. Despite concerns, all the fish dishes we ate were excellent. The desserts are worth it.
c. Sleep
i. Since the cot worked out so nicely, we asked and received another one.
ii. Squeezing the cot into the room was a challenge. After a couple of times, I got a pretty good system down. When Mommy takes the baby to be weighed at night, I moved most of the furniture into the room’s hallway, outside the private bathroom door. I put the pull-out chair next to the sink, but to do this, one must angle the bed. The bed has wheels with brakes on it, and I think our bed had not been unlocked for quite a while. The first time I tried to move it, I had to push a lot harder than I expected. After the wheels finally rolled, it was much easier to move. The bed has status lights at the foot of the bed, one of which indicates that the bed is unlocked when lit. With the pull out chair out of the way, there is room for the cot. In the morning when Mommy showered, I fold the cot and switch it back around so that we have room for visitors.
iii. At my request, my parents brought me ear plugs which I used for only the first night. Karen needed me for something in the middle of the night, and it took a while for her to get my attention.
d. Shower – The water pressure is too strong when the shower head is in its normal position. The jets of water are so fine and fast that they sting. We ended up rotating the head so that water sprayed from the edges. Messy, but it works.
e. Security
i. Mommy, Daddy and baby all get wrist bands with the same number. Each time there is a transfer from staff back to the parents, they match baby’s number with a band of the parent.
ii. The baby gets a little Lojack-like device. We never tried it, but they said if you try to move the baby beyond the line before the doors of post partum without some sort of authorization, the doors lock and alarms go off. We’ve seen and heard the alarms go off a couple of times. A red light blinks in our room when this happens.
iii. The baby Lojack offers a bit of comfort because on occasion unfamiliar nurses take the baby to the nursery for tests.
iv. The post partum doors are locked after 11 PM. Abuelo (Grandpa) Ismael’s 6 PM-arrival flight in was delayed due to bad weather, and he did not arrive until after midnight, so the nurse unlocked the door for us.
f. Visiting
i. Visiting hours for grandparents are anytime. For everyone else, it’s 1 PM to 8 PM.
ii. If baby is born on a Friday, friends and relatives can plan to visit over the weekend. Just remember that Memorial Drive is closed to motor vehicles on Sundays.
g. Administrative
i. It only took me three tries to get the birth certificate filled out right. Sheesh. I put Karen’s place of birth as our home town, only 1500 miles off. And I misspelled her middle name. Woops. Fortunately I was able to claim lack of sleep.
ii. One of the reading materials given to us had a chart for feeding and diaper-filling which was handy to have when the nurses asked about such things.
iii. Karen was supposed to chart her self-medication, but since she never took it much, there was little to fill out. I used to call her a dainty flower, but I may have to change that to super Mom as she was refusing her pain meds just a few days after major surgery.
iv. About an hour before we left (I’m writing this from home now), I filled out the form for the 25 free baby announcements, courtesy of MAH. Who knows if and when they’ll arrive. If you don’t receive one, it’s probably because they never mailed them to us J
The staff at MAH were all fantastic, really gave a sense that they care and had the experience and know-how to send us home with confidence. Doctora Betsy said it felt surreal experiencing such a well-run institution compared to places where she has worked. Ok, time to click “publish” and get some sleep.