We took the tour of Henrico Doctors Hospital today. HDH is where Jean's OB practices, so there's a 90% chance that baby will be born there. While Jean's health plan allows her to have the baby at a number of hospitals, we've both gotten the sense that her doctor doesn't like work in anyplace but HDH.
The hospital we liked more is St. Mary's, run by the Bon Secours. I admit to a predisposition towards the place for tangible and intangible reasons. Our friends had their daughter there, and Jean and I were both favorably impressed with the place then (a year and a half ago). When we wanted to tour the two hospitals, St. Mary's had a tour within a week or two that we could attend. HDH couldn't fit us in for two months.
The tour of St. Mary's (back in September) was fun. The birthing room is huge, large enough to accommodate more than a dozen people. While there is no way we'd ever let a dozen people in the room, it's nice to know there's plenty of room for me to freak out, should that be necessary. The way I am, the hospital folks might need to wheel in a second bed, and it's nice to know there's enough room. The recovery room (isn't that a nice way to put it?) is also big, though it's smaller than the birthing room. The one they showed us on the tour was almost a mix of a hospital room and a hotel room. Beyond the accommodations, there were some smaller things that made us like St. Mary's. Probably my favorite was the fact that volunteers knitted the multi-colored baby caps that the infants wear. That's just too cool.
Henrico Doctor's Hospital is owned by the Columbia HCA system. A couple of years ago Columbia was taken to federal court for billing irregularities. Right about that time the ads on television stopped for Columbia hospitals, and a new campaign for "Your Neighborhood Hospitals" began. Tell me those ads didn't have the fingerprints of desperate marketing types all over them. I can't say I blame them, but Columbia's always felt like the hospital version of Microsoft (the Borg). I can't walk into the place without being reminded that they're in this for profit.
With this bias in mind, we arrived at the hospital just in time to start today's tour. I liked the nurse who gave the tour: I bet she's a Yankee. She wasn't hospitable in the Southern sense, though she was certainly nice. I found that refreshing. But as she started talking in the lobby of the Women's Pavilion about general issues, my hands came to rest on the back of a chair where I was standing. The chair looked like the kind you'd get in a nice furniture store: upholstered, with nice wood showing. But the upholstery was vinyl. Good looking vinyl, but vinyl nonetheless. As I felt the slick but textured fabric in my hand, I tuned out on the nurse and imagined the decision making process for the chair: just in case somebody's water breaks while they're sitting in the main entrance, we don't want them doing it on nice fabric.
I'm sure there are other considerations, and I'm also certain that this kind of choice is practical. My biggest objection is that someone projects women in labor having to sit in the lobby of the Women's Pavilion at all. Why don't they just wheel the mother-to-be to the birthing room? Do we really need to conference in the lobby first? If it's such a concern, why not put mom in a wheelchair so she won't have to move as much if her water does break. The choice of their initial environment says much about their attitude.
Okay, okay. Enough about the lobby. The tour was just about as I thought it would be: both the birthing and recovery rooms were smaller than their not-for-profit counterparts. While we looked at the birthing room (which can also, to its credit, hold about a dozen people), I tried to imagine where I would be sitting during the birth. I'm looking forward to being at Jean's head, but there's no room the way I see it. Perhaps they pull the bed out, or maybe they push some of the equipment further away. Hopefully we'll find a way. Sadly, the hats HDH puts on the infants seem to be fabric cut from tubing of some sort. The little hats the nurse showed us were folded up, but both the pink and the blue hats were closed at the top by a rubber band. The recovery room was the worst part. It is a hospital room, nothing more, nothing less. The curtains had little streaks of pink and blue in them, but the room was small, white, and hospital stark.
In a perfect world, we'd be heading to St. Mary's. But baby will be born at Henrico Doctor's Hospital (barring unforeseen incident). Jean and I have talked it through and we want to do everything we can to have her OB deliver our child instead of some other doctor. We feel that even though she's agreed she could deliver at St. Mary's, there's an increased chance she wouldn't be the one catching our daughter. Since we want her experience more than a big or comfortable room, we really don't have another option.
© 1998 Kevin J.T. Creamer