Thursday - Kaiser Check out

The car seat trials were a full on clinical test with heartrate monitor, pulse oximeter, and two other electrodes. Of course the pulse oximeter (taped to the foot) worked about half the time setting off a loud alarm when it fell below the threshold. Because I chose to do this at 4am, the babies were asleep for most of the test, which was of course the whole point.To avoid this alarm waking up the baby I had to hold the sensor for the entire hour. I was in an akward stanging position and my arm went to sleep frequently. It was torture.

I negotiated this quite room and a 4am start time for these trials. I certainly did not want to strap them into the car seat and have them scream for an hour. My plan was to feed them and let them sleep their way through the trial.

This Kaiser test came out of a couple of pre-term ride home deaths where the baby's head fell forward suffocating the baby. I can only imagine what the Kaiser lawyers said after that. It is utterly idiotic to make both our babies go through this torture, but rather than argue that we only live 15mins away and there is no law requiring this, I figured I might as well play along if I could.

Nico went first. He seems to be a little more difficult to get settled, but he was off to sleep in a second. At that time the nurses are relaxed and willing to make small talk which I used to relax everyone and nicely ask them to shhhh occasionally. The nursery door had the loudest electronic door solenoid I have ever heard. It was like a sack of potatoes being dropped on the floor every time a nurse swiped her card to get entry. I don't know what geniuses designed this nursery, but clearly they were not 3 days old!

Our nurse Irma was very nice and let me remove Luca after only 45 minutes. By 7am, a hospital is in full swing with sleepy eyed, monday morning, get it done workers. It is not the lazy quite of the small hours.

Luca responded perfectly and with a little rocking of the car seat, was pushing out zzzzzzz before I knew it.

Passing this test was critical to a smooth departure with happy smiles from the Kaiser procedure enforcers. Having made a significant issue out of the needle heel stick, passing this test would make any further interaction with the head pediatrician much easier. If we didn't pass, the babies would be asked to stay in the "nursery" without Mom or dad. We definately didn't want that!

Luca passed the test at 6am, and when i got back to the room i realized i needed to get a least a little sleep so I could deal with any last minute burocratic nonsense involved in checking out. I turned out the light and finally slept at 7am.

I was woken up at 9am. There were two satisfaction representatives going over something with Barbara. After they left she said it had been non stop since 7am and she was really looking forward to going home.

The nurse told us that the head pediatrician was coming by to do the final examination for jaundice by eye, just like the nurses in the outpatient area we will be visiting tomorrow. To do this you take the babies into daylight and observe their color. What a concept!

There are possibly two reasons why all the babies are not evaluated this way, first they do not get paid for the time it takes to walk outside and hold a baby up to the light, and second, its far faster for a doctor to scan down a column of numbers at 7am than taking 20 babies outside. I tried to explain this to Nico, but he fell asleep when I got the part about the bean counters.

The head pediatrician, is a very nice middle aged women who's visit we really enjoyed today. She said that it was obvious to her even under the neon lights that the babies had no signs of jaundice and then hung out holding them both while I fed them. She was clearly enjoying this part of the job.

The rental Biliblankets arrived and so did the duty nurse assigned to discharge us with a three inch stack of paperwork. I decided to sit in the rocking chair fearing I might snore too loudly otherwise. We signed here, here and here, listened patiently to cautions about this that and the other thing they might get sued over and finally compared wrist tags of babies to parents. The last step of this process is possibly the most painful.

This hospital has an army of volunteers. These are very pleasant older folk that obviously have nothing to do and love interacting with people and being of help. We were informed that the wheelchair would be pushed by one of them who would also give us a special cap. I assumed that they sit at home at night knitting these things, but I didnt ask as i coulndt deal with the guilt of the final destination of these works of love.

The worst part about this, is that right at the moment you want to move as fast as possible, you have to walk at a snails pace behind this well meaning OAP shuffling along with a satisfied grin as everyone admires your babies in slow motion. It was an exercise in patience.

Once we got out of the parking lot, it became very emotional as we realized we were now a family. I had so much attention on dealing with Kaiser, that I had not really been experiencing my feelings, and it caught me by surprise to realize how significant this moment was. We had finally begun OUR journey together.