I haven’t been blogging as much lately, but I’ve got a pretty good excuse: I had a baby three weeks ago, and my recent meals have mainly been limited to takeout and old-standby-dishes John and I can make in our sleep. (I suppose I could post my new daughter’s review of formula brands, but since she’s a little gourmand, the review would read in its entirety, “Food is good and I want as much of it as possible.” We’ll work on expanding her palate when she’s a little older, say, oh, six weeks?)
But we did have one unusual food and, uh, hospitality experience recently—our stay at UNC Women’s Hospital. I expected “hospital food” to look and taste like something from a school cafeteria, but we were able to order or pick up all our meals from the café. They were surprisingly good, for a hospital. I’d rank them about a notch above food-court fare, on average. The offerings included breakfast food like pancakes and biscuits, Southern food (Carolina BBQ and fried chicken), typical fast food (hamburgers and chicken fingers), Sbarro-grade pizza and pasta, generic Americanized Chinese food, and sushi (for all the raw-fish-deprived formerly pregnant ladies who just can’t wait). There were even a few slightly more elaborate dishes, such as shrimp and grits and tilapia en papillote (!). Everything was decent and tasted all the better because we were usually ravenous once meal time rolled around. I recommend the mac and cheese: It’s better than Q Shack’s or Backyard BBQ’s.
“My Name Is Ashley and I’ll Be Sticking a Needle in You Today”
Birth is big business, so it shouldn’t have surprised me that the hospital offered delivering moms little amenities, like bags of hotel-worthy toiletries that came with a little card stating, “We hope these will make your stay more pleasant” or a free pasta meal to take home. But this convergence of the medical and the touristic did make for some bizarre moments. For instance, more than one staff member introduced herself by saying, “My name is X and I’ll be taking care of you today,” making me half expect to be handed a drink menu rather than a blood pressure cuff. (What’s next, “Can I start you off with some Motrin, or perhaps a little Percocet?”) Does the hospital make staff go through some kind of cheesy customer service training, or have they adopted the current American waiting-on-people vernacular on their own—and which possibility is more unsettling?
No Hospitality for Husbands
John, however, was not made to feel like a welcome guest. The hospital has some strange policies regarding visitors that may make sense for folks who swing by for an hour to cheer up a patient, but not for people supporting a woman throughout birth and the immediate postpartum period. John was told he technically was not supposed to use the bathroom adjoining our room but repair to the visitors’ bathroom, which was down the hall, around the corner, and did not have a shower. We also found out that the café only delivered meals to patients free of charge: Visitors were taxed an extra $7 fee for delivery, so John hiked down to the café to pick up his food rather than have it sent up to him. And the “husband couch” he had to sleep on was singularly uncomfortable.
Some women may have their friends or relatives take turns staying with them while their partners go home to get some sleep or take a shower, but many doubtless prefer not to. Dads and primary caretakers will naturally want to be there for their child’s first hours of life.
And, in fact, if you’re a first-time parent, it’s really essential that your partner be with you the entire time. You’re given a ton of baby care information in those whirlwind 24 to 48 hours, and, if you’ve just given birth, you’re going to be too sleep-deprived and hurting and gobsmacked by the entire experience to digest most of it. Even using the bathroom is a challenge right after delivery, and yet you’re somehow expected to absorb the rocket science that is breastfeeding. If for no other reason than the fact that two sleep-deprived brains almost equal one functioning one, you need someone with you the majority of the time.
It’d be easy for the hospital to make partners feel like, well, partners, and as vital to the well-being of babies and new moms as they are. They could create a new class of “visitor” for people spending most of or the entire stay with delivering mothers, and make it a little easier for these folks to do basic things like shower and get fed so they can have more time and energy to support new moms and learn about their babies. Oh, and more comfortable couches wouldn’t hurt, either.
“Full-bodied, with piquant notes of raspberries and oak . . . Oh, who I am kidding? CHUG CHUG CHUG!”
The post Hospital-ity appeared first on Matters of Varying Insignificance.