Choosing a Hospital
As first time parents, we knew next to nothing about what we should even be thinking about when we chose a place to have our baby. We ended up delivering at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, affiliated with Stanford Hospital, because we felt like it was the most comprehensive – if anything went wrong or if Lily needed any special care, she would be at one of the best children’s hospitals in the country, with all sorts of exotic specialties.
This isn’t necessarily a bad approach, but it was a little bit paranoid, because we weren’t high-risk parents, and, in the words of our OB, “pregnancy is not pathology.” In other words, pregnancy isn’t a disease; normally everything goes right, and generally Mom’s body does exactly what it is supposed to do to bring the birth to its natural, successful conclusion.
The downside to being at LPCH had to do with its maternity ward – we ended up sharing a room the first night after delivery (in a semiprivate room) which meant that we were separated by a curtain from another mom and another newborn baby. With the limited space, there was no place for Dad to sleep – in fact, hospital policy is that Dad’s are supposed to go home at night, and only be at the hospital during daytime hours. This is somewhat loosely enforced, perhaps dependant on the good graces of our nurse, but many parents might want to avoid the possibility of being separated so soon after birth.
With this in mind, here are a few other factors to at least consider when choosing a hospital:
1. Is the labor and delivery room and the maternity room integrated or separate? Are they private? If they are semi-private, how often are both beds occupied? Will Dad be able to stay with Mom and the baby at all times? It isn’t that big of a deal for labor and delivery to be separate from maternity, but note that in general, the nursing coverage for labor and delivery is much more comprehensive than for maternity, at least based on our experience at LPCH and Stanford.
2. Am I able to do public banking of cord blood? This might not be a big issue for most people, and it ended up not being a major determinant for us, but I believe more hospitals over the next several years will probably support public cord blood banking. We looked into public and private cord blood banking, and ended up deciding it just wasn’t wortht the expense. But, if public cord blood banking was an option at our delivery hospital, we would have done it.
3. Will I be able to match recommendations for a good OB/GYN and a good birthing experience? Ideally, you would get feedback from friends about a good OB/GYN, and a good hospital to deliver at, and the OB/GYN that you choose will practice at that particular hospital. However, it is important to realize that even if you choose an OB/GYN, it is very likely that they work as part of a OB team, and odds are that your OB will not be the one to deliver your baby, since they work a rotation for the actual deliveries. Also, different OB practices have very different policies on ultrasounds – some only give ultrasounds twice, and some give ultrasounds almost every appointment. You may want to decide what works best for you – after going through the whole process, I know the temptation is to have as many ultrasounds as possible, but in the end I don’t think they are very necessary beyond the “mandatory” ones, and extra ultrasounds are probably more likely to cause more harm than good.
