The Hospital Tour

Tonight, Nilda and I went to a meet and greet with the practice Nilda's doctor is part of, followed by a tour of the birthing floor and postpartum rooms at the hospital. The hospital is Columbia at 168th Street, nosy. They do this meet and greet about every six weeks, which seemed pretty often to me. I was thinking that there would be 3 or 4 couples and that we'd have a quick chat in the lobby followed by a short tour. But we get there to see a ton of people and chairs set up for a presentation and a spread of cheese and crackers and OH MY GOD THERE ARE SO MANY PREGNANT PEOPLE!!! At least you know the cheese is safe for pregnant women.

There were maybe 45-50 couples there, easily 100 people. I had no idea that there were this many pregnant women in New York, and this was just one practice at one hospital. I'm sitting there thinking, "Wow, these humans can really reproduce quickly!" And these women were pregnant, like, really pregnant. I was concerned that some of them would pop and there would be baby all over the walls, and we'd be picking baby out of our hair for days.

One of the doctors says that the 7 doctors in the practice do about 2-3 deliveries every day, and that the hospital as a whole does 10-15 deliveries a day. I haven't put my fact-checkers on this, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that's a lot of babies.

P.S. - Note to the universe - let's not have many deliveries around December 17, so that Nilda and I can get our own room. Just putting that out there.

Serena Morgan

On Sunday at about 4:28 pm, my sister gave birth to her third daughter and my sixth niece. Introducing Serena Morgan:
Nilda and I rushed in to Philly to meet her. Rushing to the hospital to see the baby reminded me of when Francesca was born, except instead of everyone expecting us to rush in, we heard, "You don't have to come in, it's a big trip." Serena, welcome to being the third born, just like Andrew and I. I'm sure you will have an empty baby book and your oldest sister will complain about how easy you have it, just like your mother still does with me.

The first person I congratulated when I got to the hospital was my mother. I think her goal in life is to populate the planet with as many grandchildren as possible. 2011 is looking to be a productive year for her.
That morning, Caryn had been complaining about not feeling well, but refused to call the doctor. She would say, "I'm just having a moment," which turned out to be contractions. When she finally was got to the hospital at around noon, she was already 4 cm. She gave birth just 4.5 hours later, all natural. I know her labor was difficult, but god damn she makes it look easy.
Francesca, who is 8, was holding Serena and said, "I'm doing great." She is. Serena, you are lucky to have Francesca for a big sister, just like I was lucky to have Caryn (and Julie!) for a big sister.
Lacey, who is 5, had a different reaction. She kept saying, "She's gonna eat BOOBY!!" When I told her that Serena wasn't really eating booby and that milk was in the booby, her eyes got all wide and she said, "Really??"
Between Forrest's two girls, he now has five girls. FIVE GIRLS!!! He said, "I'm done. I don't know about Caryn, but I'm done."
With some of the other girls, Caryn had worked hard to get them to stop sucking their thumbs. Serena, therefore, was born already sucking her thumb (see the top picture). The nurses actually said, "We've never seen a newborn suck her thumb like that before!" Good luck, Caryn.

Serena already knows I'm better than Uncle Andrew. She's so smart!
I wound up watching the first quarter of the Sunday night Eagles/Falcons game in the hospital with Caryn & Forrest, then I watched the second half with my dad on his giant tv. A pretty great day.

Babymoon

Vampire Diaries starts again tonight, which means it's time for me to blog. We went on our one last trip before the baby comes and it was great. Here are the highlights I feel like writing about:

• Having Nilda wake up at 3:30 am to make a 6:35 flight was a FANTASTIC idea! She was excited and enthusiastic to be getting an early start.
  
• We took a small plane to meet our non-stop flight in Philly. Philly is really pretty from the air. God damn, I'm excited about Michael Vick this year.
• The purpose of the trip was to relax, nothing more. I love days where your biggest decisions are ocean or pool; which chair to pick; what to drink and where to eat.
• Whoever decided to call a rum and coke a Cuba Libra was a genius.
• The ocean water was fantastic and warm. But I swear to God, between the sun and drinking, I think I peed in the ocean enough to raise the global temperatures at least 2 degrees.
• MVP of the trip = my new prescription sunglasses.
• It's much easier having Nilda be able to speak in Spanish to everyone who works there. The price is that, inevitably, the conversation always comes around to my ability to speak Spanish. Nilda proudly says that I'm able to understand, which I don't have the heart to tell her is a lie. Yes-o, I under-o stand-o.
• "Estoy tomando para tres" = I'm drinking for three.
• There is a sisterhood among pregnant women. Among pregnant men, not so much.
• The resort had a pair of guys that went around singing at dinner, one playing guitar and the other rocking the maracas, and I mean rocking the maracas. But in the end they were a disappointment, since they couldn't play my request for "It's Raining Men."
• Nilda was cryng real tears on the way to the airport. Not because the trip was over, but because after the babymoon comes the baby. I was starting to plan our next trip only to remember that we would not be going on another trip like this for a long long time. But, I cannot wait for the trip to Disney.

We're getting ready for the kid. As part of some kind of study that Nilda's in, she had a 3D ultrasound last week, where she saw the kid moving all over the place. He flopped around and pushed when he didn't like the position Nilda was in. She was utterly amazed and exclaimed, "There's a baby boy in there!" Like there had been an armadillo there before. It made it real that there's a boy in there and he's going to be out here before we know it, pooping like a champ. It's really exciting.

P.S. - Nilda acts like her bellybutton is the baby's peephole, moving her stomach around so the baby can see things.