Here is a short list of the really important things Allison didn’t mention or that she probably didn’t notice or remember because she was too busy pushing a baby out of her vagina. You should read her post first if you haven’t already.

• They let you order food at the hospital like room service in a hotel. You call a number and then someone brings the food into your room on a tray. When we first got there the nurse told us that if they ask who the food is for, you should say it’s for the mother even if it’s for both of you. My guess is that insurance only covers food for the mother or something like that. The portions were also extremely small. Every time I would call and order food it would sound like this:

Jack: So I want one cheeseburger, one quesadilla, one meatball sandwich, a bowl of macaroni, a yogurt parfait, two cookies, one apple juice, and one milk.

Person on phone: OK. Who is this food for?

Jack: Um, it’s ALL for the mother.

• The best food at the hospital was the cheeseburger and the omelette. For the omelette they actually let you customize what you put inside.
• They have a TV with On Demand movies and TV shows but the audio doesn’t come out of the TV itself. It comes out of a custom TV remote, which is this big, plastic thing on a fat cable. The audio quality is about as good as the music that plays from the baby’s bouncer.
• Game Night is a really bad movie.
• Allison went from feeling normal to fully dilated/unbearable pain super fast. We were watching Finding Dory and we were at the part (Spoilers) where the truck is driving away with all the fish and everything was mostly fine. We had to pause the movie when Dory actually meets her parents cause the nurse came in and discovered she was 10cm already. Now we will never know what happens to Dory.
• Allison says we never used any of the notes we wrote for the different stages of birth. We did use some of the breathing and massage positions, it’s just that it went by so fast that she probably doesn’t remember.
• Since Allison was already 10cm and nobody was expecting it, the nurses had to rush and find everyone quickly. They mentioned the anesthesiologists were in the middle of helping someone else, but since Allison’s was way further along they said they would have them come over now. It must have sucked to be the other mother who had to have their epidural paused.
• While they were setting up I couldn’t tell where I was supposed to stand. There were 4-5 people all moving around in the room and so I tried to get out of their way, but then they would ask me to try and comfort Allison so I’d have to go stand right next to the bed and be in the way.
• Allison did a very good job of not moving while the anesthesiologists were doing the spinal injection and epidural. I remember the nurse telling her to stay still so they could insert it and she would curl up in a ball and get really still even though the contractions were happening.
• During the actual pushing, I was positioned on Allison’s right side while she was pushing and I was helping to hold up her right leg during contractions. I basically had to hold it in the same froggy position that we hold the baby’s legs when we are trying to get him to fart/poop.
• During each push I would be looking to see if I could see anything come out. For a while I didn’t see anything, even though the OB was talking about how he was almost out. Then after one set of pushing I noticed something weird sticking out and I thought to myself “Hm, is that the head of the baby? It looks weird. We’ve been pushing for a while and we only got that little bit. I guess this will take a lot more pushing.” But then on the next push he just slipped out like a greased up hot dog. The OB grabbed his head, twisted it, and the rest of his body just came out really easily.
• Allison seemed to push extremely efficiently. Once everything was in position and she actually started doing real pushes, it probably took a max of 10-15 rounds of pushing to get him out. Good job mommy.
• There was a pile of gauze with 10 or so barcodes on the tray of tools that OB was using. I’m not exactly sure what happened but somehow the barcodes got cut in half or damaged by the OB. While they were cleaning up one of the nurses was slowly taking all the barcodes and lining them up to scan while the OB apologized to her. I’m guessing they needed to scan them for inventory purposes or something.
• I forgot to take a picture of the placenta. I saw it sitting there in a bowl but didn’t think to take a picture.

All pregnancy posts

• What Allison Missed About the Birth
• Pregnancy with an Auto-Immune Disorder During COVID-19 Pandemic: Birth Story
• Pregnancy with an Auto-Immune Disorder During COVID-19 Pandemic: Drive-Through Testing, IV Infusion, and OB appointment