labor & delivery, ny style, post delivery

In an effort to save money, I opted out of the $400 per night private room (seriously, I could get a nice hotel room for that or a number of other things) and went with a shared room. Unfortunately, I ended up with the worst possible couple of the choices I mentioned earlier in the triage room-drama queen husband. She was actually pretty low key, but he was high strung and completely over the top. They had basically demanded a private room earlier in the triage room but got stuck on the waiting list. She joined me in the room at about 3:30 am at which point they yacked and yacked and yacked until he finally decided he was exhausted and went home to get some sleep. Oh, I'm sorry, you're tired? Did you just have a baby? No. All you did was coordinate the social event that it became with your teenage son and five gazillion relatives who came to watch. Apparently, he was very brave, though, and watched the emergency C-section that took place after 19 hours of labor.

He rolled in the next morning bright and early at 11:00 ( 7 1/2 hours later) after getting no sleep due to the phone calls and plethora of deliveries to the house. He had hardly had a chance to use the bathroom and had not even showered. Meanwhile, she hasn't slept a wink and has been nursing the baby for 2 1/2 hours. Poor daddy! After much discussion, they decide to name their baby girl Ayden (not to be confused with Aiden, which is so masculine; I'm thinking, "Hello, it's a boy name no matter how you spell it!") Olivia (Grace was rejected due to some Jewish custom where the child can't have the name if a living relative has the name or something like that). He proceeds to fuss about everything under the sun and also outlines the schedule for the day with visitor after visitor after visitor. Apparently, it was quite stressful for him to set the schedule up with so many people wanting to visit. Who knows this many people? Then the visitors start coming and coming and coming bearing gifts and exclaiming Mazel Tovs. It was Rosh Hashana which apparently is good luck. The visitors seemed quite put out when the nurse asked them to go into the hall so she could care for her patient. After all, this is a hospital, and the woman has just given birth. Just when I was really warming up to the soap opera nature of this experience, they came through with her private room, and she was whisked away. Actually, I was exhausted and not sure I was up to her busy day of visitors.

They brought in my next roommate several hours later. She was an African American girl having her first baby-a girl, thank heavens, as she didn't know what she would have done with a boy. This was her boyfriend's fifth child, however, from as far as I could gather, at least three girlfriends. His name is Biz (I'm wondering if it might possibly be short for Biiiiiiiiizzzzzzzzy, as in Busy). Apparently, there was some tension among the three girlfriends (imagine that!), and they were constantly talking in that (not to be racist or stereotypical here, but) black people way about how they were gonna beat each other up. Everyone who came to visit her brought food (most of it at her request). Meanwhile, the hospital staff forgot to bring me dinner. So they were constantly eating and jabbering away about everyone they know with very colorful language (including damns, hells, shits, and on and on). She also did an exorbitant amount of talking on her cell phone and recounting her labor and delivery experience in great detail. Apparently, she had been in labor since Tuesday with contractions every five minutes but was not dilating, so she walked all over this city to hopefully dilate to no avail. She had a doctor's appointment to go to on Thursday, and the boyfriend was supposed to accompany her but turned his phone off, didn't pick her up, and couldn't be reached. She didn't want to go alone, so she called his mother. He returned her phone calls 10 minutes later. She was ticked.

I guess the doctor sent them to the hospital where she labored while he slept. She kept waking him up and saying she needed his help, and he kept going back to sleep. He sounds like just the kind of guy you want to have a baby with, eh? I think she had a number of other friends and family there in the delivery room, though, so who needed him anyway? Apparently, he did wake up for the actual birth, though, because when they saw the head, he said, "How come this baby have blond hair?" The doctor laughed right out loud. I nearly did, too. The nurse was not amused, and the girlfriend was furious. Imagine that! That prompted a discussion within moments of delivery among the friends and family who were there about concerns with the baby's skin color. The mother was very upset about that as well. A friend who was in the delivery room then went home and told several other friends that the baby was a boy which was an outright lie. Everyone was quite upset over that. The girl kept saying she was down to her last $20, but that didn't stop her from renting (yes, renting) the tv to the tune of $5.50 per day. She kept it on constantly but didn't watch a single thing. I guess she's down to $9 now. Her last visitor (who came in claiming to be her husband but obviously was not) finally left at 10:30 (visiting hours ended for regular visitors at 8:30 and for dads at 10:00).

The next morning she placed two orders for breakfast-one with her mother and one with her boyfriend-and refused to eat the horrible (not the word she used) hospital food. Of course when they came to pick up her breakfast tray about 12:30 as I was leaving and neither of her breakfast orders had arrived (she thought the boyfriend might wake up around 2:00-and why not, he'd just had his fifth child, he was probably exhausted though he slept through the whole thing), she suddenly decided hospital food wasn't as bad as she thought. She was madder than hops at the lady who took the tray (which had been sitting there untouched for like 5 hours) and went ripping out into the hall to chew her out and get her food back. We were laughing so hard I thought David was going to bust a gut, and my stitches were in serious danger. She constantly complained about the poor service (and I admit it was kind of lousy), but every time someone came in to do something for her, she would ask them to come back later because she was on the phone. This was definitely my prime time comedy show.

So, now you see. I saved us $811 by staying in a shared room and not renting the tv. Who needed a tv anyway? I got my daytime soap and my prime time comedy. Now maybe I can spend that $811 on me. It was coming my way, anyway. Right?!