Hospital tour & goodies!!!

Yesterday we had our tour of the birthing wing at Grand River Hospital along with about 6 other couples. It was a relatively uneventful evening - heard a couple babies crying but no mamas screaming their way through active labour (fine by me - we had our fill of that several weeks back during our Triage visit.) The birthing rooms aren't bad, but I'm definitely not a fan of the position they generally require women to deliver in. Seriously, who came up with the idea of laying a woman on her back with her feet raised UP in stirrups for the delivery? The last time I checked, gravity causes things to fall downward, not parallel to the earth. I'm in the middle of Active Birth right now, and it's really convincing me that there are much better birthing positions. I just hope the medical staff are receptive to some of these alternatives, as I believe this choice should be made by the labouring woman and her birth partner(s) based on what is working best for her (as long as it isn't dangerous and doesn't prevent access to receive the baby) as opposed to what is the most convenient for the staff. But I digress.

Here are a few things we learned during the tour:
- Every birthing room is equipped with a shower and a nice, deep bath tub. Cool!
- Yes, you can wear your own clothes during labour & delivery though gowns are available if desired. (Not sure who would prefer a gown, but anyway.)
- Bringing other stuff to help with labour such as your own birthing ball, extra pillows, etc. is supported and encouraged.
- Grand River's Caesarean rate is 25%. Yikes. Apparently that's up from 16% several years back since more and more women are choosing to schedule c-sections now. (Apparently they will support VBACs, but it's not the standard or the preferred approach.)
- The labouring woman is only allowed to have clear fluids. Eff that. Chris is gonna sneak me in some tasty stuff ;) (shhhhhh)
- On a related note, that's NOT an ice *cream* machine in the kitchenette. Dammit.

All in all, we're feeling pretty good about having our little one at Grand River. Generally speaking, the staff are super nice, our experiences have been positive there so far and it seems we won't have trouble with the vast majority of items on our birth plan. Just a couple sticklers left to work through. :)

In other news, two packages were waiting for us when we got back home last night! First of all, our Bummis cloth diapering kit! Yay! Check out all the goodies and look how cute the covers are!


















(Note - the diapers on the left are the AMP duo pockets I bought previously, but everything else here came in the kit!)

Also received our NoseFrida! Found this sucker (pun very much intended) a few weeks back when I was looking for a good aspirator to add to our registry. Evidently so many people have issues with the bulb aspirators either not working or being uncomfortable for their babies that I looked for an alternative. This thing has rave reviews (despite its grossness) and appears to work like a charm, so I thought we'd give it a whirl! Is it wrong to say I'm looking forward to our little one getting a bit snotty so we can try it out? :)