This brought stuff "up" for me, as I wait for phone calls and emails (sent an email to the other local sister to ask for insight)...
OK so some of you might know I'm not so much into hospitals, doctors, OBs, etc (and not even midwives except for one in OR that I would trust). I hired idiot midwives who did just about everything in their power to mess things up, pulled a big (illegal!) powerplay on me (pretending they were leaving me), hubby, and my aunt, forced me to the hospital b/c their "time" was up (but they didn't SAY that of course), then the OB on call was getting ready to go on his memorial day weekend trip (seriously, not kidding) and coerced me into absolutely unneeded, unnecessary, useless stupid surgery and cut DS's nose b/c NO ONE knew that he was at +3 station (despite my being only 9 cm!) AND posterior. NO ONE KNEW, b/c no one was checking. They just decided I was too old to have a kid (34!) and too heavy (only food I could eat from around 3 months on was ice cream, basically), and no one thought to figure out WHY labor was so completely funky (for anyone who doesn't know, posterior babies aren't impossible to get out, but you're going to have a WEIRD, long, slow, labor, along with the back labor! emphasis is on the WEIRD part...everything else can be dealt with, but the weirdness was the really super hard part).
So anyway, I was the Dreaded Homebirth Transfer, I fired my "midwives" almost as soon as we got there, I had a husband who had gone mute, an aunt who was an idiot, a "best friend" who was just so GLAD I had "come to my senses" blah blah blah, I was my ONLY advocate and I failed myself.
Anyway, Eamon was taken out at 7:45pm.
I had a FULL BREAKFAST at 8am the next morning. And a full lunch at noon. Full dinner.
Next morning? They started the process to discharge me, while feeding me the whole time.
I was discharged 42 hours post-op. Having eaten from only 12 hours post-op. Never had even a bowel sound, let alone the other things that competent doctors and hospitals generally require to be discharged after major abdominal surgery.
Exciting, eh?
I lived in a 3rd floor walkup apartment an hour away. 43 hours postop I was walking up 3 flights of stairs.
The nurses kept telling me it's just my insurance company's policy. No, no, WA law requires them to allow a 96 hour stay post-op. I didn't even get the 48 hours that a normal Birth gets. And I was fed the whole time.
I had a cyberfriend who had a baby who was brow presentation. She was in the hospital 6 days (wasn't sick, they just figured she had worked hard and deserved to stay). She wasn't fed A THING until 4 days had passed.
And it turns out the hospital had my insurance company wrong; I was given an OB who was with Group Health, and they thought I had GH. I had Great West. They had it wrong (and gosh I cannot believe that GH's policy is to boot patients at 42 hours postop).
And then adding insult to injury, the OB billed as though it was my CHOICE, when HE was the one screaming emergency all over the place. I got to pay for an out of network doc, b/c he REFUSED to rebill correctly. I went to an in network hospital, never expecting an out of network person to be there.
Doesn't that all sound like FUN???
Now here are the two things that I can come up with as positives (DS was always going to be here and healthy, and they only made him LESS healthy by taking him out before he was ready (he had signs of prematurity b/c long pregnancies run on both sides...hubby was a 44 week'er...so even though he was "old" by OB standards, he wasn't "cooked" yet) and cutting his nose):
1. the food was AWESOME. it's a catholic hospital and the food is donated by catholic charities, so I wasn't even billed for that food (donated to the partner, too, so hubby got fed).
2. by being booted out, no one knew that it took until the 5th full day for my milk to come in, no one was watching over me urging formula. DS and I just holed up in our treehouse apartment (that's how it felt to me) with my minions (husband and aunt, at whom I was BEYOND angry and they knew it,knew they'd messed up, and just did my bidding as long as I wanted it), and we played cavemama and cavebaby. With no one breathing down our necks, we got to that 5th day, colostrum started changing over, it was lovely.
Sure do wish I'd fired the "midwives" BEFORE they got me to the hospital, though...turns out I just don't "work" when watched. I'm like a cat. I should have holed up in my closet.
I also had a typical American baby shower that had people I didn't know well (b/c the friend that took over for the friend I'm worried about today decided I had too few friends and invited HER OWN FRIENDS out of pity), when I wanted a very small, intimate, blessingway...
So I'm doing things differently next time, but completely opposite from what most people want! (though I'm throwing my own blessingway, not relying on friends to do it, LOL, and I'm giving myself the presents I really want)