Hospital shopping.
Jul. 9th, 2009 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sister_luckIt's a slightly misleading title, Hospital shopping, because I'm not talking about shopping for things to take to hospital, no, we are in the process of choosing the hospital where I'll give birth to the little one, so we're basically shopping for a hospital. This is all the rage here. As most women go to their regular ob/gyn or to a freelance midwife for the pregnancy checkups, the hospital is chosen fairly late compared to other countries. The other women at yoga were shocked that I hadn't decided yet and hadn't gone to the various open evenings/days that the hospitals use to advertise their services. That was about three or four weeks ago and yesterday, we finally went to our first open evening.
My reluctance is easily explained, I think - we were still waiting for my doctor's pronouncement that now it looks like little one won't be arriving much too early (*knocks on wood*), as that would have limited our choice of hospitals. Anyway, this whole desire to find the perfect hospital to me seems mostly to be a way of trying to gain control over a situation that is by its nature not one that you can control in its entirety. You get the illusion of control and power (something the kind doctor yesterday kept emphasizing: The woman is the one who calls the shots, he maintained). You can and should plan ahead, I don't doubt that, but ultimately, when push comes to shove, all your shiny plans might fly out of the window...
Still, living in a bigger city means that the choice is ours and we've got a shortlist of three places, all with a neo-natal unit in the same building or just across the street and so far it seems that they all have their upsides and downsides. (Obviously!) Yesterday's hospital is fashionable, situated in a posh suburb and everything is very close together, on the same floor. The 25-minute drive to get there is doable. They were good at selling themselves and they showed us the nice delivery rooms a lot longer than the delivery room that doubles as an operating theatre for the c-sections. The rooms on the ward were a bit small for two to three women and their babies.
There were about 70 people there, mostly couples with the women in various bump stages and the men looking slightly panicked. The woman sitting next to me, who'd come with her mother, remarked that she didn't see many "Dings" there, a word that can substitute for any other word, similar to 'thingy', not like at that inner-city hospital and you know mum, I don't want to say it out loud who I mean by that - foreign-looking people with headscarves and darker skin.
This obviously makes my hackles rise, so I'm thinking about choosing that other hospital just out of principle. It's closer and my doctor has good things to say about it - 'provided I don't mind the headscarves both on the staff and patients'. Which I don't. She told me about a patient of hers she'd sent there to have some examination and that patient was annoyed because she had to get undressed in front of someone who was 'hiding behind a headscarf'. Err, no doctor or doctor's assistant has ever volunteered to take off their clothes with me out of solidarity and there are plenty of countries where the doctors and nurses wear some sort of headgear. It used to be the norm, didn't it, a little cap at a jaunty angle for the nurses? And in an operating theatre you'd expect everyone to cover their hair.
So, next week we're off to inner-city hospital (nearly as protestant as yesterday's place despite the headscarves) and university hospital which is closest, but a bit disorganized I am told. It's also the place where I was born and spent the first six weeks of my life and where I miscarried in January 2008. It would mean going full circle, but I don't think that the symbolic value trumps efficient staff...
We'll see how good they are at selling themselves (and it all comes down to business from their perspective) and then I'll go with the one I feel most comfortable with.
My reluctance is easily explained, I think - we were still waiting for my doctor's pronouncement that now it looks like little one won't be arriving much too early (*knocks on wood*), as that would have limited our choice of hospitals. Anyway, this whole desire to find the perfect hospital to me seems mostly to be a way of trying to gain control over a situation that is by its nature not one that you can control in its entirety. You get the illusion of control and power (something the kind doctor yesterday kept emphasizing: The woman is the one who calls the shots, he maintained). You can and should plan ahead, I don't doubt that, but ultimately, when push comes to shove, all your shiny plans might fly out of the window...
Still, living in a bigger city means that the choice is ours and we've got a shortlist of three places, all with a neo-natal unit in the same building or just across the street and so far it seems that they all have their upsides and downsides. (Obviously!) Yesterday's hospital is fashionable, situated in a posh suburb and everything is very close together, on the same floor. The 25-minute drive to get there is doable. They were good at selling themselves and they showed us the nice delivery rooms a lot longer than the delivery room that doubles as an operating theatre for the c-sections. The rooms on the ward were a bit small for two to three women and their babies.
There were about 70 people there, mostly couples with the women in various bump stages and the men looking slightly panicked. The woman sitting next to me, who'd come with her mother, remarked that she didn't see many "Dings" there, a word that can substitute for any other word, similar to 'thingy', not like at that inner-city hospital and you know mum, I don't want to say it out loud who I mean by that - foreign-looking people with headscarves and darker skin.
This obviously makes my hackles rise, so I'm thinking about choosing that other hospital just out of principle. It's closer and my doctor has good things to say about it - 'provided I don't mind the headscarves both on the staff and patients'. Which I don't. She told me about a patient of hers she'd sent there to have some examination and that patient was annoyed because she had to get undressed in front of someone who was 'hiding behind a headscarf'. Err, no doctor or doctor's assistant has ever volunteered to take off their clothes with me out of solidarity and there are plenty of countries where the doctors and nurses wear some sort of headgear. It used to be the norm, didn't it, a little cap at a jaunty angle for the nurses? And in an operating theatre you'd expect everyone to cover their hair.
So, next week we're off to inner-city hospital (nearly as protestant as yesterday's place despite the headscarves) and university hospital which is closest, but a bit disorganized I am told. It's also the place where I was born and spent the first six weeks of my life and where I miscarried in January 2008. It would mean going full circle, but I don't think that the symbolic value trumps efficient staff...
We'll see how good they are at selling themselves (and it all comes down to business from their perspective) and then I'll go with the one I feel most comfortable with.
