many tours

2005-01-12

Where to start???

We got to the birth center tour late on Monday. Providence Hospital is like a gigantic maze. It took us almost 15 minutes to walk from where we parked to the class. We went by way of the birth center, naively thinking that the tour must be somewhere near there. We couldn't have been more wrong.

I spent my teenage years gravitating to all things "alternative". In my world, that has always been akin to "punk rock lite". The Alternative Birth Center is not punk rock at all. In fact, there are a lot of rocking chairs. And - this is the worst part - it smelled a little like pee (which is kind of punk rock, come to think of it). It would have been far more disturbing if a restaurant smelled like pee. I mean, people do pee in hospitals, sometimes far from the usual receptacle. But I don't want my baby's first breath in to smell like pee.

So, irritated by coming in so far from the class and freaked out by the pee smell, we headed to someone or other's pavilion to meet up with the group.

I liked what the nurses had to say. Another ABC nurse taught our childbirth prep class and they were of exactly the same mind that I am when it comes to birth related matters (and that's not too common a thing). We went over all of the consent forms (there are TONS). Every little thing has to be specified and many permission slips must be signed.

When the group got back up to the ABC, it smelled like cocoa. So maybe the pee smell was temporary. There are only three rooms in the ABC and they average 1 - 2 babies per day. So I might get the whole ward to myself. There's a little dining area, and each room does indeed have a huge hot tub and a queen sized (non-hospital) bed. The decor is very grandma's house. Besides the pee smell, it looks great.

There's some chance that Owen might be estimated to be too large to be born in the ABC. This has given me renewed motivation to stick to my anti-gigantic baby diet.

Yesterday my department toured the Ford Rouge Plant with an entire elementary school. The kids were really excited about everything. On the bus part of the tour, one would yell something about seeing a train and the rest would yell "Train! Train!" afterwards. That even occurred when one spotted a worker. I see the UAW all the time and I can't say I've ever been that excited about it.

The tour was actually very well done. I have seen many auto plants in my life, so I walked through it kind of quickly. I even had a chance to stop off at the gift shop (Yes! There is a Rouge Plant gift shop!) to buy Shannon a present. Unfortunately, they don't have Rouge Plant china or sheets, which would have been my first two choices. But they did have all sorts of other merchandise. Shannon - you'll just have to wait for the bridal shower.

I had a bizarre dream Monday night. I dreampt that I had carefully filled out all of my ABC consent forms. The hospital brought me my son and they had pierced both his ears! I had neglected to specefically refuse ear piercing and my son came back looking like a pirate. Bad news.

Tonight, I will see my first basketball game ever. Hope I can stay awake. And, if I do get fit by a chair, I hope its by a player so I can sue the baggy shorts off of him.

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