This is a continuation of my previous post called My Hospital Birthing Experience. For the whole story of the birth of my twins, I recommend reading the previous post first.

Healthcare Hooligans

To Swaddle or Not

After the delivery, while Jenn and I were recovering, nurse Ratched came in to show us how to swaddle our babies and explained that it would help them to sleep. We visited with family and then after a short time were taken to the maternity ward where we were told that they don’t swaddle at that hospital. Exhausted, we explained that we had just been shown how to swaddle by another nurse and that we were now going to get some sleep. Our new maternity ward nurse awkwardly grumbled something about nurse Ratched and left.

Breast Feeding Nazis

The hospital that we delivered our children at has a “breastfeeding friendly” policy, which in retrospect seems like a poor name for their policy. Jenn and I had always been fully on board with breastfeeding our kids and needed no convincing. Every nurse that walked in was astounded to find her tandem nursing both kids within hours of their birth. However, they were hungry hungry kiddos. Jenn’s milk production wasn’t what it needed to be for two mouths, and so I started making visits to the nursing station to get some formula to help supplement Jenn’s milk. Each time I went I was given what amounted to a stern talking to about how we shouldn’t be using formula, and that you need to increase the demand for milk for the production to go up. Yes, sure, but you see we have two and they are hungry, so give us the formula.

After visiting with the lactation consultant and our original “cool” OB/GYN and explaining how long Jenn was breast feeding every day and how the kids didn’t seem to be getting enough, they 100% agreed with us that the kids needed more, and they told the nurses to lay off and give us formula when we asked. Relieved at the conversation with the “professionals” Jenn and I spent some time enjoying our new family members, which meant that I waited too long and went to get formula from the nurses after a shift change and apparently they left no notes, so again we were given the runaround when asking for formula. They even suggested that we shouldn’t be asking for formula because, since they were giving us such small amounts, they had to throw away most of the bottle of formula they were giving us after a short period of time. Really??? Hey I have an idea, how about you give us a whole bottle?

Jenn was an absolute hero when it came to breastfeeding our kids, and put in a ridiculous amount of time and effort to get her milk production up. The result of the hospital policy, however, was to make me feel like 1) an ignorant parent 2) an incompetent parent and 3) a beggar any time that I asked for formula. What’s worse than that was Jenn was made to feel inadequate as a mother. Ironically, when we finally went home with our kids we found some orange coloured crystals in our son’s diaper and so we called the nurse’s hotline and learned that was a sign that he was dehydrated. Hmmm, how would that happen, oh yeah by not being given the formula he needed in the hospital.

Parting Parental Competency Check

We were only in the hospital for 3 days, but honestly I was so frustrated by the experience that on the final day I was ready to bolt out of there. Hold on though, before you go there is one last hoop for you to jump through. Brought to you by the health care professionals that brought you:

Assisted delivery without discussing the course of action to take in the event of a breech delivery Breech delivery Swaddling contradictions Implied parental incompetence which resulted in #5 Withholding formula to the point of dehydration

So, as our parting gift, we had to demonstrate that we knew how to properly buckle our kids into a car seat. I actually think this is a good idea, but the irony of being evaluated on my ability to perform this task by these people was really frustrating to me.

Needless to say, I didn’t really enjoy my birth or postpartum experiences, but I felt significantly better and comfortable in my role as a parent once we got home. I would absolutely love to hear stories from others about how they feel about their birth (dads included) so feel free to make use of the comment section below.