The Baby Hotel

We took a tour this week of the place where you’ll be born. It’s called a hospital, but I’m going to call it the baby hotel because it’s just so much easier to describe a hotel as “smelling like a hospital,” than it is to do the same for the former — too awkward and recursive. There you go little dude, your vocabulary leson for the month!

The hospital has 8 or none or ten floors, and the really cool thing about it is that you’ll get the opportunity to be born on one of them– the 2nd floor — and then live on another –the 8th floor — for about a day and a half. Yep, I don’t know why the doctors chose to have the second floor of the hospital be the birthing center, but they did. Maybe they mistakenly think allthose ladies are just fat and need the exercise of going up and down all the stairs. (This delusion is probably further solidified when those ladies make the trek up to the 8th floor and come down a day later and 20 pounds lighter. Stupid doctors.)

Another really cool thing about this hospital? It’s about 35 miles from our house! This means that on the day you decide to come out, daddy gets the chance to do the one things he’s always wanted to do: drive a hundred miles an hour on the shoulder with his hazards on and honking the horn.

As a matter of fact, I’ve been dreaming of this even more since we took that trip to meet your Cousins up North™ and we saw somebody doing the same thing. The mom was in the back seat with her feet up on the headrest of the passenger chair, and the dad was driving pretty dern quick (he passed me, who was speeding) with his hazards on to make it to a hospital about thirty miles away. He was driving a yellow Lincoln Monarch, and I thought to myself: Man, that’s the same type of car my parents had when I was a kid!

• Your mom said: Whoa!
• I said: I’ve lived a long time,and I’ve never seen anything like that before!
• Your mom said: Me neither! And I just got done reading about what to do if you go into labor in your car. Oh god.
• I said: What, NOW!?!
• Your mom said: No. But I was thinking…what if this is a sign of things to come?
• I said: Well, we’d better practice. I’ll turn the hazards on, you get in the back seat!

That should be a fun trip when we get to take it. But your mom won’t play the practice game, so I have to practice with the cat. He doesn’t like cars very much, but his cries do sound eerily like a woman in labor.

The rest of the trip around the hospoital was pretty enlightening, but did create some worries within your mom and me. They’re a little too concerned with safety over there. I know, I know…and yes I’ve read all those stories about the crazy people who sneak into hospitals pretending to be nurses, but end up walking out with a free baby and a cool smock. Yes I know that happens, but the amount of security they have at this particular hospital is just confusing.

See, every time a nurse comes into our room, we’re supposed to ask for her to show her three forms of ID.

• A Picture of Herself. Fine, cool. I get that one. Makes sense. I have several of those forms of ID myself, and could understand why I shouldn’t have somone else’s picture and say it’s me. (This could become an even larger problem on that planned trip to the hospital in a few weeks.)
• A Hospital Pass. That’s a good idea, too. This person better work at the hospital where you’re born.

Ok, maybe I’m a little overzealous in thinking the hospital is overzealous with security. Maybe they’ve got a good plan in place here. Oh, wait a second. I forgot about the third one.

• A Sticker Depicting a Cute Animal. And this sticker changes daily and at any moment. We will only know if the sticker has changed when we are told it’s changed. How the heck am I supposed to remember all that? And isn’t that the unsecure back door forall the crazies to come in?

What if some dude with a scraggly beard busts in the room, and his ID all seems to check out, so I throw that curveball at him: Oh yeah buddy? What’s the cute sticker of the day?

“Oh, yeah.” [snorts a line of snot back into his nose.] “It’s uh, right here.”

That’s a mustard stain.

“Yeah. they done changed the sticker, just like, a couple seconds ago. Gimme your baby, he needs a ride to my hou…he needs a shot or something.”

They changed it to a mustard stain?

“Yeah.”

Well, I guess it IS sort of a cute little mustard stain. Ok. Here you go.

“Thanks dude!” [skedaddles.]

What then? I ask you. What then? And what about the other times when I have to show off my own ID, so that all the hospital staff doesn’t think that I’m the crazy guy with the mustard stain? Who’s really in charge at this place?

It seemed that I wasn’t the only one who was worried about these security measures, because your mom and I were listening pretty closely to another girl on the tour. she was there with her entire family, and looked like she had about an hour and a half before she was due to give birth. She was very nervous about the security, and her questions led us to believe she ought to be.

“So, can I lock my room’s door?”
“How often do people come into the rooms?”
“Can I have a certain person stay with me 24 hours a day?”
“What if I don’t want the baby to go to the nursery, ever?”
“When do they lock the doors to visitors?”
“They won’t put the baby’s last name on the nursery beds will they?
“Can we make it so certian people can’t visit?”

She’s obviously got a concern to deal with, little dude. I’m kind of happy she was so pregnant, because that means she’ll give birth before you decide to come out. If her problems are so worrisome that she needs to barricade herself and her baby inside a room, and that she needs to move around with a gang of people, I don’t want you anywhere near her situation. We’re not going to raise you in that sort of an environment. There will definitely be mustard stains, but we’ll promise: no crazies.