When I enter the room for my pre-op appointment at the Anna Jaques Hospital Birth Center, I am greeted by a pretty nurse with blond hair, stylish glasses and a friendly smile. It’s a face I recognize immediately because we’d been in the same local music class together with our kids just this spring.
We exchange the greetings you’d expect two people to make when they meet again under these more intimate circumstances and then get down to the business of prepping my body to bring another life into this world.
One day this nurse – who I didn’t know was a nurse – and I are side-by-side singing Hickory Dickory Dock with our toddlers bouncing on our laps, and the next I am beside her letting it all hang out in an unflattering hospital Johnny while she checks my baby’s heartbeat.
It’s a Friday, the week that school has let out for the summer. And if I wasn’t sweating bullets from the heat, I was sweating them from the anxiety that had been building in the days leading up to this, the birth of my fourth – and final – child.
On Monday, when I show up for my scheduled C-section, one of the O.R. nurses turns out to be a woman I know through a mutual friend and the local Mother’s Club, someone I exchange pleasant comments with over Facebook and see around town and at the hockey rink. We chat casually over the clink of sharp tools being laid on a metal tray and a giant needle being inserted into my back. Again, I am in an unflattering hospital gown, my backside exposed for all to see.
But it’s not an awkward feeling.
Neither of these instances was. Instead, I feel connected and comforted by the fact that people I know – even if only casually – will care for my baby and I during his birth and in the following days. It’s one of the things that I love about having a hospital right here in town. (Not to mention the handmade hats that local volunteers knit for all new babies.)
But the truth is community hospitals get a bad rap. They’re not advanced enough. The staff isn’t as educated or experienced as some of their larger counterparts. They don’t have enough resources. Plus everyone, and I mean everyone, has a story about their cousin’s sister’s niece’s medical emergency gone awry and wouldn’t you know that she was treated at the local hospital.
People said a lot of things when I told them I was pregnant with my fourth child. Reactions ranged from ones of excitement and admiration to not-so-subtle accusations of insanity.
“You’re crazy,” was a fairly common response.
I laughed off many of these comments. But when someone suggested that I really should think about having this baby in Boston – after all, it was my fourth C-section – it gave me pause. As a parent, I was vulnerable, as we so often are. I wondered if I was somehow doing my baby – and myself – a disservice by keeping it local.
I considered the options. Switching healthcare providers. Finding childcare for my three other children and schlepping into the city for all my appointments. Showing up to a hospital where no one could remember my name or why I was there without looking at their medical charts.
I don’t know the statistics. I’m sure you can find them. All I know is that I had three beautiful, healthy children at Anna Jaques. I had been well cared for by the same wonderful doctor for nine years. I had been encouraged then consoled by the same understanding lactation consultant. Treated by many of the same caring nurses time after time – all in my own back yard. Why would I change all that? Easy. I wouldn’t.
You want to know another truth? Each of the four times I gave birth to a child at AJH, I didn’t want to leave. Not even when things hadn’t gone perfectly according to plan. And especially not after my fourth child, my last perfect little baby, was born on June 23. I wanted to stay wrapped in my little cocoon of newborn nirvana in room 270-A with the spectacular and compassionate nurses who cared for us both – as I imagined they would have cared for their own family – for just a little longer.
Now that I’m done having kids – no, really, I am – I look back on my birthing experiences a bit wistfully.
Were they all perfect? No. But nothing in life is. I don’t work for Anna Jaques Hospital, nor am I receiving anything for touting my fondness for it. But does anyone have a union-battle leftover “I Support Anna Jaques Hospital” sign? I’d proudly display it in my front yard, still.
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