how long in hospital?

mrsberries

First time Mammy to be here. Im 12 days overdue and scheduled to be induced on Friday so its going to happen pretty soon

My inital thoughts were that I wanted to stay in hospital for the bare minimum but my mother and sister convinced me that I should stay for as long as possible as I am a first time mother and to be honest am a little clueless about babies. However as the time gets nearer my feelings are that I want to spend just a night there.... I know this all depends how the delivery goes and how the baby is. Just wondering what your thoughts are?

thanks

Ayla

This one's easy - just see how you feel & whether you're ready once you're there. You don't have to decide ahead of time, in fact in my experience, the staff generally ask you each morning whether you're staying another day.

Of course, if the docs have a strong opinion one way or another they'll voice it, but otherwise it's up to you.

aniascor

I felt the exact same way about staying in the hospital. I don't know what I thought it would be like there, but I expected to hate being there and just want to be home. Instead, I found the staff helpful, and in the end I actually stayed an extra day to get more help with feeding my little guy - which was the total opposite of what I thought I'd be like. I fully expected to try to get home early.

January

I stayed 5 days on number 1 (c section) and number 2 (1 day before birth and 4 days after as she was in SCBU for the 2nd night they wanted us to stay to make sure she didn't need to go in again). If things go well you may well be able to be released on the early release scheme and have a midwife come visit you at home for a few days .

cynder

It really depends on when you want to go, i stayed in 4 days with my first, with my second i was released on day 2 with my son (25 hours old) who 5 weeks premature (healthy at 7lb 6oz) and with the 3rd i went home on day 3.

in the uk my aunt went home just 6 hours after her son was born.

bulmersgal

I stay two days on the monday i had her, on tuesday i was ready to go but had little of experience with babies so said i'd stay just in case and then after not callin any midwives or doc for the whole day i knew that i could cope so asked to go home the wednesday morning. I could of stayed till thurs, I went 7 days over and had a easy enough birth only a few stitches so i was grand myself. Best of luck with having baby my baby is 1 year old and still feels like only yest sitting around wishing her to hurry up

mrsberries

Thanks all. Im planning to breastfeed too so guess I should make the most of the help in there. Ill play it by ear. At this stage Ive too much time on my hands thinking about what the whole experience is going to be like and imagining how Ill feel about it all

Moonbeam

On my 1st I had a lovely private room with my own bath and shower and it was lovely.
The staff were always around and it was lovely.so I stayed in for the 3 nights.

On my 2nd I was on a semi private ward with 6 beds and had my lovely just gone 2 year old at home so I wanted out so only stayed the 1 night and would have happily not stayed at all.

Wait and see.

Cat Melodeon

I stayed 2 nights. The first was lovely, I had my little man at 8.30 pm and didn't get to the ward until nearly midnight (they left us to our own devices with tea and toast in the delivery room for ages, it was very chilled) so everyone was asleep when I got there (4-bed ward). The night midwife was so lovely. She showed me how to breastfeed lying down and got me to cosleep that night so I wouldn't have to get up - we ended up cosleeping for the next 9 months, it was brilliant.

The next night was not so great, Different nurse, didn't support cosleeping at all ('you'll smother him!') so I was up and down all night, baby was starving as my milk hadn't fully come in and I found it a bit stressful - I felt everyone else on the ward was cursing us for keeping them awake (they weren't really). I didn't get a wink of sleep and couldn't wait to get home the next day. My doctor wanted me to stay in a bit longer but the nurses all supported me going home so I went. It was so lovely to get back to my own bed.

It's probably different when you already have children. On one hand you probably want to get back to see them, on the other it might be nice to have a bit of time alone with the new baby.

Kalimah

I'm an older mother than most of you here-I'm 48-and my oldest is 21 and the youngest 7. I stayed in for 5 nights on number one in 1989 and 4 nights on babies two and three in the 90s. When I had number 4 in 2003 I had three days in hospital. I'd recommend staying as long as you can. When you get home you really feel the tiredness. I was lucky in that I was in Mount Carmel and they took the babies at night and only brought them to you if you were breastfeeding.

stargazer 68

Well its a while since I had my 2 - they are 18 and 12 - but I would definitely recommend not rushing home as soon as you can. Even an extra day is very helpful!

How Strange

I'm also a first time mammy. I could've been discharged within 24hrs but the doctors did a blood test on my little fella and it took 48 hours for the results to come back so we had to stay in the hospital. In hindsight I'm glad I did as I got lots of help and support with breastfeeding and the night midwives were great for reassurance as he cried all night both nights.

Also there was a ban on visitors so it was nice thst the three of us had that time together. I was exhausted and was so glad I didn't have to make conversation with lots of visitors.
If I have no.2 I'll probably go home asap if I can but i'd say stay in the hospital as long as you can on your first.

RIRI

As others have said, you don't need to decide now & to be honest I'd put it out of my head for the moment if I were you.

You say you are planning on breast feeding so my advice would be to stay as long as you can to get as much help as possible from the experts. I did not find breastfeeding at all easy and really depended on the midwives to help.
Very best of luck to you on Friday

Das Kitty

My friend brought the carseat into the delivery ward. It was her 5th, but still I was :eek:. Went home 2 hours after the birth.