Hospital bag

[origamist]

I packed my labor-and-delivery hospital bag sometime around week 36, just in case, following some checklists I found on the Internet (here and here). I also wrote up a list of things (such as my toothbrush) that I wanted to take to the hospital but that I used often enough not to want to store them in the bag. Here's a review of what I used and what I did not.
Things we used in both Labor & Delivery and in recovery

• Bed pillows and blankets. We spent 52 hours in L&D, so being able to sleep comfortably was important. Micah and I (especially me, late in pregnancy, when I had to sleep on my side) both like to sleep with lots of pillows, and our pillows and blankets from home were more comfortable than the hospital ones. (I did end up using a hospital blanket after they broke my water and I was messy enough not to want to use my own; the hospital blanket was not as warm as the ones I brought and not as soft.) Sleeping comfortably in recovery is also good, although I would probably have been fine with the hospital pillow at that point, as I could then sleep on my back; the real thing I used my mountains of pillows for in recovery was to prop myself and Isaac up to nurse.
• Cell phone.
• IPad (me) or laptop (Micah). A lot of induction was sitting around waiting for things to start happening, or waiting through contractions that weren't yet painful enough to stop me from reading. A lot of recovery was lying around while my body healed, too. We used the IPad at night in recovery, actually; Isaac does seem to sleep better with white noise and there are white noise apps that we can install. (My IPad will hold a charge through the night while playing white noise and have battery left over. It can't run its display through the night, though. The first thing we tried was Youtube videos of white noise ("Ten hours of vacuum sounds!"). The apps work better because they keep going even after we turn the display off.)
• Toiletries. I was in the hospital for four days. I didn't actually manage to comb my hair or brush my teeth all that often, but it felt sooo good when I did.
• Chapstick. Including my backup chapstick, since I dropped my regular chapstick on the floor a few times and had trouble picking it back up.
• Hand lotion. Hospital air can be kind of dry.

Things we used in Labor & Delivery

• Birth plan printout. The nurses all read through this and told me it sounded reasonable. An anesthesiologist came by and introduced himself pretty early on (and if things had been just a little bit worse I would have been very grateful), but I think the birth plan might be why nobody offered me an epidural during labor. (I would probably have taken it, and given how long labor took even without the epidural, I'm just as glad I didn't have one.)
• Food. I was allowed to eat whatever I wanted when I was just on Cytotec, and my doctor allowed me to eat fruit when I was on Pitocin. I probably didn't need the fruit--I was being fed sugars and electrolytes and things through the IV--but it felt pretty good to eat with my mouth and have something in my stomach.
• IPod Touch. This is the thing with a camera in it that actually worked.
• Soothing lozenges. I didn't need any of these, actually, but Micah did.
• Spare socks. I was tied to a fetal monitor most of the time, but it was nice to be able to walk the corridors during the few hours when I wasn't.

Things we used in recovery

• Bar soap. Once I wasn't tied to the fetal monitors, I wanted a shower, and the hospital did not appear to provide bar soap for us. (Maybe I was supposed to use the liquid hand soap? Maybe a nurse would have given us soap if we'd asked? Whatever. It was nice having a bar of my favorite brand of soap.)
• Lansinoh nipple cream. I used this when my nipples started hurting. I would say I wish I'd also brought my coconut oil...except that I didn't realize that I really wanted unrefined coconut oil until the nurses pointed it out, so I didn't actually own the right kind.
• Prenatal vitamins, over-the-counter herbal lactation supplements, and probiotics. I probably should have taken my prenatals in L&D but was too distracted. I have PCOS, which increases my risk of breastfeeding supply issues, and I wanted to avoid undersupply. (If I wound up with oversupply, I figured that was easier to deal with.) And I was given a lot of penicillin during delivery because I was positive for Group B Streptococcus, and I wanted something to counteract it.
• Plastic bags. At least one element of our clothing got stuff spilled on it at some point, and this made it easier to take it home.
• Reasonably photogenic shirt. Because there is at least one photography company that has figured out that people in recovery rooms are likely to want their services.
• Bra. One of the things they used to deal with my poor damaged nipples was breast shells, which can only be held in place with a bra. (Note that I don't think I would have used a nursing bra--I was still trying to do as much skin-to-skin contact as possible, especially while nursing, and I didn't figure out how to nurse with Stuff On for a week or so.)

Things we used for coming home

• Car seat.
• Onesie. I brought about three onesies and a couple of footed sleepers because I didn't know what size he'd be. Obviously we only used the one, but the others still served their purpose. A footed sleeper is actually a better travel outfit than a onesie because it keeps the sun off his skin, so we've used those for all his doctor's appointments, but I was actually kind of glad that we had a onesie at the time because it meant the nurse let us run off with one of the hospital blankets. (Since I'd forgotten to register for any blankets, this was useful.)

Things we brought but didn't use

• Camera, camera cord, batteries. My digital camera is about ten years old and kind of dying, so we wound up just using the IPod instead.
• Headband and hairpins. I wanted to be sure my hair would be out of the way. As it happens, braiding it works fine, so I just rebraided it a few times.
• Apple juice. Hospital policy was "clear fluids only", so I wanted to make sure I could get juice is I wanted it. A it happened, I was fine with water; what I really wanted was food, and juice does not count.
• Bathrobe and slippers. My bathrobe is kind of heavy, and when I went walking, I wore shoes and socks.
• Books and my laptop. As it happens, I mostly just used my IPad (smaller than my laptop, but still able to reach the internet).
• Coming-home pants for me. I used the shirt, bra and socks for various things, but the outfit as a whole, not so much. Pretty early on they had me change into a hospital gown, and I just wore those the whole time. So the pants I'd worn to the hospital were in fine shape to wear home from the hospital. (Also, I only have so many pairs of third-trimester pants and I didn't want to waste one being in my bag all the time; I did try bringing second-trimester pants but I was still too big for those by the time we went home.)
      Possibly I missed the point here: the checklists might have meant to bring specifically a dress or overalls or something else that would be comfortable even if I had a C-section. Which is a reasonable just-in-case item to bring, but what I brought was not that.
• Footed sleepers. I should have used these for going home, I suppose, but if I recall correctly the onesie fit better.
• Halo sleepsack. I registered for both a Halo sleepsack and a Miracle blanket with the intention of figuring out which one we liked better, and then brought one of them (chosen more or less at random) to the hospital in case we had trouble swaddling him in the hospital blankets. This would have been really useful if I hadn't accidentally registered for the three-month size instead of the newborn size.
• Mother's milk tea. This is another herbal lactation supplement. But the pills are a lot simpler, and I'm not much of a tea drinker at the best of times.
• Nursing pillow. I have used this pretty much every time at home, because it lets me nurse while sitting upright in a normal chair; in the hospital, I nursed in my bed, which reclined, and used some of our ridiculous number of bed pillows to prop up on.
• Scratch mitts. Isaac has nails, but so far I don't think he's scratched himself (or at least, not fussed over scratching himself).
• Spare pillowcases. Potentially useful, I suppose, but as it happens we didn't end up getting any of our pillows at all messy.
• Tennis balls. These are for back massage. Friday the pressure from Micah's hand was plenty, and Saturday I didn't have any back pain in particular (as opposed to generalized contraction pain). I'm glad I brought them, I suppose, because I might have had back labor...but I didn't, so I didn't use them.
• Ultrasound picture. Our birth class teacher suggested bringing one of these to focus on during contractions, but I found it just as helpful to close my eyes and focus on something I was visualizing inside my head.
• Baby hats, underwear and pads, towel. The hospital provided these for us and the hospital version was adequate. (Admittedly, the towel was only acceptable because I was willing to dry off with three hand towels rather than one full-sized towel.) I bought the pads knowing that I might not use them in the hospital, but figured that they were a good thing to buy anyway so I would have them. I wish I'd bought lightweight pads in addition to the heavy-duty ones, though.

Things we did not bring but would have used

• Scissors. My IV lock started getting loose after a day or so and the nurses used the wrong kind of tape to fix it. They did leave the roll of tape, and we did do some taping ourselves...but not enough, and we might have done more if we were cutting the tape and not ripping it.
• Unrefined coconut oil. Forget lanolin, forget gel pads, this is the stuff that is really effective at encouraging damaged nipples to heal, and somehow the hospital has not figured out how to supply it. Possibly because you buy it from the grocery store, not a medical supply company, and in big jars and not little ones. Maybe they could get the kitchen to take care of buying this stuff and putting it in little jars for patients? This really ought to be something they can do.
• Miracle blanket. Isaac has slept in the Miracle blanket every night since a day or two after we brought him home. Swaddling him in a regular rectangular blanket has never worked; he can get his arms free almost immediately. We finally bought a Halo sleepsack in his size after a few weeks; it works to calm him down when he's crying and thrashing around, but he can get his hands free at once and his arms free after an hour or so. Maybe he'd have been willing to sleep in it...but the Miracle blanket actually keeps his arms restrained (edit, 10/23 for the first month or so; as of last night he can get them free in the time between feedings, which is three or four hours at this point) and so he sleeps pretty well in it.
• Lightweight bathrobe or kimono that opens down the front. Hospital gowns pretty definitively open down the back, and nursing hospital gowns just have slits down the front rather than opening down the front; the slits are probably fine if you've got a little bit of practice nursing, but of course I didn't, and anyway I wanted to do as much skin-to-skin as possible.
• White noise app. Isaac sleeps better when there is white noise playing. A nurse showed us the Youtube white noise videos, but to use those you have to leave the screen on, and that draws power much faster than just the white noise. I think we downloaded a white noise app at some point while we were there, so the iPad could play white noise while the screen was off, but it would have been more convenient to have installed this before he was born.