We are moving in 2 weeks into an apartment closer to Brian’s work so he can walk to work while I am bedridden. Because he’s blind we had absolutely no choice in where we could move to; these are the only apartments this close. Unfortunately, these apartments charge $450 per animal in pet deposits, and $250 of that is non-refundable. Because of this, we can only afford to bring one cat with us. We have another cat that must find a home. She is 5 years old, a gray tabby cat, spayed, declawed, and current on all her shots. I have been in tears all morning because the lady I thought was going to take her in just called and said she can’t. I have had ads out since mid-June with no other responses, and I have called everyone I know. Even the local pet shelters won’t call me back. If I have to put this cat to sleep I will have nightmares for the rest of my life; I need to know she will be with a good home. If anybody can help, please let me know.
We did our tour of the hospital today to get it all taken care of before I go on bedrest. The LDR rooms here are pretty huge, too, but I won’t be seeing those again. Here they take regular babies away immediately after birth, then give them back for recovery, then take them away for another hour for bathing and warming while they transfer you to a mother-baby room. I don’t like that at all; just reinforces my original decision not to give birth in a hospital. But, since I don’t have any choice in it now, I guess it doesn’t matter. The way they explained it was, they only have 23 LDR rooms. They used to use them for postpartum as well, but now they’ve run out of room, so they converted the rest of the floor to the mother-baby rooms so they would have more spaces available. I guess it would be pretty sad if they had to turn somebody away because there was no room; they already have to stick people in non-LDR rooms, itty bitty things, if they get too busy. And they said normally the separation between recovery and the mother-baby room was just long enough to clean mom up and get her there. Still don’t like it.
Another thing I don’t like is Brian can’t stay with me while they prep me for the cesarean, he can only come in when everything is ready, so I’ll be all alone for most of it. But again, I have no choice. There are only two hospitals of this level in town, and I think the other one is pretty much the same. After the regular tour, the tour guide nurse snuck us into the cesarean room so we could see what that would be like. Not pretty, but I feel ever so much better having a picture of what to expect instead of this big gray area. We found out that I will be on the maternity floor no matter when I go in; for preterm labor they’ll put me in an LDR room until I’m stabilized and then move me to a mother-baby room until the birth, when I go back to LDR to prep, into the operating room for the section, back into recovery, then back to mother-baby later. I guess I’m going to be seeing every room in that place!! I’m definitely going to have to customize my room if I’m there more than a day or two. I despise institutional-looking rooms.
We didn’t get to see NICU tonight after all; they had a situation when we finished the tour and didn’t want us up there, so we’ll have to try again later. They had 43 babies in ICU this weekend!!
Also found out I’m going to be highly decorated, with three ID bracelets of my own, and an additional one for each baby. The babies each get two bracelets, wrist and ankle, and a fourth is supposed to go to whoever gets into the nursery. So we get to cheat; everybody else can only let that one person go into the nursery, but I can let in three!