Edumacation

Geoff and I had our first prenatal class, "Countdown to Labor and Delivery." It was just a two-hour overview of how to know you're in labor, what to expect from Evanston Hospital, etc. One of the surprising things was that pretty much everyone in the class looked just like us. I guess we must be pretty typical Evanstonians. Everyone looked thirtyish, almost everyone was white, everyone was a male-female couple, nobody even looked like a meathead. Current average age for first time-motherhood is 25.2 or so, so it was pretty interesting that--at 32 and 36--we're not average nationwide, but seem pretty average for our hospital.

There were 17 couples there, and two already had one child. One had given birth eight years ago and therefore needed a refresher, and the other was trying for VBAC/laboring for the first time, because their three-year-old had been born via emergency c-section under general anesthesia at 30 weeks because of placental abruption. You could feel the room jointly cringe when they said that, and I thought there might be spontaneous applause when she said she was currently at 35 weeks. The poor person teaching the class is of course trying throughout to reassure all the crazy first-time parents how rare serious problems are, while anecdotal evidence sitting right there is suggesting that they're about 1 in 17.


There wasn't too much about the way birth goes at EH that surprised me or was not in line with what we'd like. They have an 82% epidural rate, and recommend you wait until 4-6 centimeters or so with labor well established to get one if you want it. Episiotomies are only done very rarely. (Supposedly they're so rare there that they no longer keep statistics on them. Geoff was skeptical and said to me later that in medicine not keeping statistics on something can be an easy way to deny that it ever happens. The L&D nurse teaching the class, though, said it's been two years since she's seen one.) You can go past your due date, but not two weeks past--they'll induce you before that point. They do external monitoring (with a large tube-top-looking belly band rather than elastic straps) but don't routinely do internal monitoring. There's a shower and rocking chair in every room, three birthing balls for the unit, and one tub.

There wasn't too much about hospital policy for after the baby is born (rooming in, visitors, etc.) but our September Lamaze class includes a hospital tour, so hopefully that information will be covered then.