TK & The Wife tour the Birthing Center

Little Baby Beyonce is now the size of a head of cabbage, I am informed, albeit a kicking, thrusting head of cabbage (according to The Wife) and also the most perfect head of cabbage EVER, like the progenitor of the Ur-Slaw, wow is this metaphor ever going awry let's get back on topic.  ANYWAY, as it turns out, hospitals don't let you just cruise in on the Appointed Day and be all "Hola! Let's get a baby out of this woman!"  No, you have to sign up and take a Tour of the Birthing Center first to have a look around and it's sort of like when you show up at an apartment cattle call and everyone awkwardly pokes around except in this situation all the women are pregnant and instead of a formal dining room there's a Lactation Center.

So last night we show up and all the couples convene in one room and then The Wife and I silently judge all the other couples.  There's the Vulpine Shaved Head Guy with a woman in a caftan who's having twins but it looks like it may be triplets or more.  There is a solo guy who is later joined by an Important Business Lady Type who shows up late and talks about her mentor and a seminar she went to the whole time.  Some of the couples already have a toddler with them like they're lording it over us about how "We already did this once" and well aren't you just special.  One of these aforementioned toddlers won't shut the fuck up the whole time and makes it very hard to hear the Patient Navigator who is not, as you may guess, someone in charge of steering a ship who is also very good at waiting but instead is the person at the hospital who is designated to help us out with any non-health-care related things like, I guess, how to work the TV or keep my Mom away from the whole thing as long as possible.

So we trundle off to see some delivery rooms and aftercare rooms or whatever.

Fig. 1 The Whelping-stalls

The actual room where it goes down is pretty nice, with a very fancy bed for the birthing and a couch and stuff and also a TV.  I forgot to ask what cable package they have, but they better have CSN Bay Area because on Beyonce's due date the Giants are at the Brewers at 5:10 p.m. 

There's also an operating room for like C-sections and whatever.  You can bring one support person into the operating room.  The Wife tells me if she has to get opened up I have to come into the OR with her.  I already feel like I'm going to faint.  Mom of Won't Shut Up Toddler asks - and I SWEAR TO GOD I am not making this up - "Can we have a photographer in the operating room?"  The fuck?  You want a professional photographer to shoot your surgery?  Do people do that?  "Hey, I'm getting my gall bladder out on Monday, I'd love to get some color glossies, maybe shoot some video, are you available?"

(The answer, BTW, is you can have one Support Person in the OR.  If that's your photographer, so be it.  Maybe this is my out for not having to go to the OR.  If The Wife has to do that, I'll line up some papparazzi stat.)

At the end we cruise by the nursery.  There was one Actual Baby in there.  Cute!  Seems like a lot of effort to get one, though.