By Joanna McClanahan of Ramblin’ Mama
Dear Hospital Staff:
We understand that certain emergency or extenuating circumstances, including but not limited to a zombie apocalypse, may not allow for the accommodation of goals listed below. But if you could do your best, that’d be great.
Who we plan to have present: the mother, the father, our doctor, three nurses (give or take), and as many residents-in-training that you can squeeze into the room.
Feel free to let our in-laws in during the labor and/or birth without our expressed consent, and tell them to stay for as long as they’d like. Make sure they don’t forget the camera to document every moment!
We would like to labor at home as long as possible, or until the panic of not making it to the hospital on time sets in and the mother decides she’d rather take her chances with the whole “not being able to eat” thing than have to potentially labor without drugs.
The birth environment is important to us. Please ensure the fluorescent lighting is as bright as possible. We will bring our own music, but luckily it won’t drown out the ambiance of natural sounds, such as the woman screaming, “DEAR GOD, MAKE IT STOP!” down the hall.
The mother may wish to wear her own clothing but will be told wearing the hospital gown is standard practice, making it impossible to do anything without showing her giant, pregnant ass to anyone who walks by.
The mother would like the opportunity to be up and out of bed as much as possible during labor and prefers not to have an IV administered, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Since she won’t have the ability to move freely, the mother would like to have drugs administered through said IV as soon as humanly possible.
We would prefer a birth without unnecessary medical or chemical intervention (except the drugs; keep those coming), but we understand that there are procedures which may become necessary. So please be sure to guilt the heavily-sedated mother into any procedure you see fit by using our baby’s health as a bargaining chip.
The mother prefers not to have a catheter, but if she does, you better have already doped her up with the good stuff.
The mother prefers not to have an episiotomy (seriously, she doesn’t even understand why people still do them). So, if you’re going to give her one anyway, make sure it is under the guise of any situation you deem to be an “emergency.”
The mother would like to push at her own pace, but that won’t stop all three nurses from yelling at her at once about her breathing and the way she pushes. Go ahead and introduce as many godforsaken birth props that we don’t know what to do with as possible.
If labor or delivery seem stalled, we would like the opportunity to try different positions (KIDDING, we both know the mother won’t have any control over her lower extremities by then).
When the doctor decides that the labor has stalled for too long, or the mother has no energy because she’s been eating motherfucking ice chips for the past eight hours, or the doctor remembers that he has an early golf game the next morning, or in any other case a cesarean section is deemed necessary:
The mother would like to be conscious but, you know, given way more drugs if you’re going to cut her open, move her guts around, and pull that sucker out of there. The father would like to be present but would like to be issued a blindfold, as he’d like to have sex with the mother again someday and worries he won’t get past the sight of her innards spread haphazardly all over the place.
We would like to hold our baby as soon as possible, which means after they are bathed, weighed, examined, given several shots, and had gunk smeared all over their tiny baby eyes.
Go ahead and let in visitors immediately after the birth. The only thing more relaxing than trying to soothe a screaming newborn is trying to get them to latch onto the mother’s breast with as large an audience as possible.
Nurses, feel free to ask us to go to the bathroom in front of you as much as necessary. The mother just asks that you up her drugs about 30 minutes prior so her sense of shame is good and numb first. Oh, and don’t forget to press deeply into the mother’s healing tissue every 30 minutes for the remainder of her hospital stay — the harder, the better.
We would like to meet with a lactation consultant before leaving the hospital to make sure we are feeling as frustrated and helpless as possible prior to departure.
Thank you for taking the time to help us birth our third baby!
*****
About the Author
Joanna McClanahan is Editor at Mock Mom. She’s also a Contributor at Sammiches & Psych Meds and has been published on Scary Mommy. You can find more from her on RamblinMama.com, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.