01-14-09 – Our Tour at Huntsville Memorial Hospital (Huntsville, TX)

01-14-09 – Our Tour at Huntsville Memorial Hospital (Huntsville, TX)

Last night we attended our first scheduled touring hospital appointment towards the delivery of our baby. It was a packed house in the conference room, seemed like lots of college students as the hospital is located in a college town. We got lots of questions answered, I had a lot of course, we got to speak to one of the hospital Epidural Anesthesiologist asking and having lots of questions answered and watched a video on receiving epidurals.

Then after the questions and answers session we were taken on tour of the Maternity portion of the hospital and the rooms, including the Nursery.

WOW, times sure have changed since I had my first child 22 yrs. ago. Back when I had my son, you had to request a specific style of room. Rooms were broken down back then into Private, Semi-Private and then the birthing room. I chose the birthing room with natural delivery with my son never leaving my side.

NOT NOW, now ALL rooms are set up in a birthing room environment, so that was awesome. The hospital has actually adopted the fact that the baby unless having medical issues or Mom has surgery medical issues, NEVER needs to leave the side of Mom, so our baby will be set up in our room with us at ALL TIMES unless baby or me has problems. When we toured the Nursery of course NO babies in there as they do not put babies in there unless necessary BUT are set up to take care of babies with medical struggles. We are also allowed to request that the baby is even kept with me in recovery if a C-section is necessary, if I intend to breast feed as they want baby breast feeding with willing moms within the first few minutes of life. SO COOL!

I wanted to request we got the birthing room, my baby never leaving our sight and how I intended to breast feed, now I don’t have to say any of that, it is already set up that way.

Another interesting thing we were told . . .was that because babies stay with Mom/family at ALL times, no staff member that is not wearing a pink badge is allowed to remove your baby from the room or Maternity floor. Baby will also wear an alarm ankle bracelet that alerts the staff if the baby is in the wrong section of the hospital. Parents will be showed where baby can actual travel on the Maternity ward/ a path, without setting off any alarms. Also the monitor on the baby’s ankle alerts nurses if something goes wrong with the baby’s vitals. Parents and or family are NOT allowed to carry baby out of the room in their arms, baby will of course be in the glass cribs in the room with Parents and family once baby is able to come out from under the heating lamp set up in each birthing room, baby has to be wheeled out in the crib if exiting the room to avoid accidental injury by the person carrying the baby accidentally tripping, etc. Each room is also set up with a flat screen TV and a monitor that allows the Maternity Ward Front Desk Staff see the baby/room inside at all times.

It is mandatory that Mom remains in the hospital for at no less then 24 hrs. after a natural delivery, longer of course after a C-section, etc.

Mothers going into labor should NEVER enter the Emergency Room where germs might be present, so they advised us on how to bypass the Emergency room and go to a special window set up for Mom’s in labor, to check in, which is SO COOL! No sitting time in a damn ER room.

We look forward to having the baby in this hospital, it was very clear, the staff was very welcoming and had lots of smiles and never hesitated to answer our questions, gave us numbers to the top Maternity nurses for any complaints, etc.

We got pre-registered and signed all the preliminary paperwork for consenting to an Epidural if we choose to use that option, etc. I am personally thinking about an pain control IV Drip they mentioned that was like drinking two large Margarita’s, ha ha ha ha.