if you weren't there for conception...

Steve Rubin
Crowd Control, 2000
43 x 33 inches
Oil on canvas

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...should you be there for the delivery? the following is an excerpt from an email i sent a friend this morning -- i thought about not blogging about it because i tend to not want to post about the not-so-nice aspects of labor & delivery, but then i thought better of it, so here goes:

i had a tough day at work yesterday - tell me, do you have children? if you don't but think you might want to/have wanted to, could you imagine inviting all of your family in to watch the labor and delivery? i had one family that would not leave this laboring mom alone, and her boyfriend/fob (father of baby) did not too much for crowd control and i was the labor room cop and shooed them away several times. he approached me, used the *f* word and said these "weren't people, they were family!" i said "i understand that, but you need to understand that *laboring mom* is our main concern and our main priority and having to maneuver around so many people to get to her isn't condusive to a good level of care - is this your first?"

"yes."

"then it is time to be a bit more protective of your wife (girlfriend?) and her privacy." he walked away, not happy with me to say the least.

i think they may report me and i am not entirely comfortable with that, but i did what i felt was best and the chips will fall where they will.

and so it went. i left feeling like crud because i was met with a lot of glares in the hallway...from what i understand, it turned out that she failed to progress after laboring all day and went in for an emergency C-section at 7:00 p.m. i am wondering if she were able to relax and let her body do what it needed to do, would it have turned out differently?

would you want friends and family visiting during your labor (or your wife's labor, if you would be a male responder)? to me, it is tremendously invasive and there are things that are done and said while in labor and recovery, private moments expressed that are amazing and thoughtful (and not so kind and a bit vulgar, truth be told) that all the world need not hear. simply my opinion, but i am wondering what you think?

all the world is a stage...the labor & delivery suite is not.

as an aside: there is no hospital policy limiting the amount of visitors. we are a locked unit and you need to ring a bell to be let in, however lax that entire issue is when there is hospital personnel passing by and they let visitors in at will....

~sigh~