Chip off the Ol' C-Rock

Chip is judging you...

Our baby boy has arrived! He showed up inconveniently early, makes lots of grumpy old man faces, and hates having his picture taken... so, Chip pretty much takes after his Pops.

 




During our brief hospital stay, C-Rock managed to get himself banned from the cafeteria and was accused of conspiring to kidnap a baby. I wasn't present for the first offense, but it did result in my getting more Starbucks and Chic-Fil-A instead of hospital food - so I'm not complaining. The second incident arose from the combination of several misunderstandings: 1) hospital accomadations are not meant to be comfortable for anyone other than the patient, 2) the nurses really are allowed to burst through the door at any moment 24 hours a day, 3) checking out of a hospital is not like checking out of a hotel, and 4) someone who has recently given birth to your child is not considered a "wimp" because she requires a wheelchair to exit the hospital.

Misunderstandings 1 and 2 led C-Rock to demand we be discharged immediately once we had met the minimum stay requirement of 24 hours. He called the nurses' station to notify them that we were ready to leave. Forty-five minutes later, the nurse arrived with a mountain of paperwork. As she and I began to go through the stack, C-Rock became increasingly agitated. The nurse noticed we had accumulated a lot of stuff in our recovery room, so she suggested C-Rock take a load down and bring the car around to the front entrance. She said by the time he did that and came back up to the room, Chip and I should be ready to roll out. Then he could grab the last of our stuff, she would assist me and the baby in our wheelchair, and we could all head down to the car together. Well, that might have worked except in the time it took C-Rock to return, we had barely finished the paperwork and the nurse had just disappeared after promising to order us a wheelchair. After a half hour of fuming and pacing around the room, C-Rock insisted that the elevator was extremely close to our room and surely I would be fine to carry the baby out while he carried the rest of our stuff.

So, following C-Rock's lead, I began to shuffle down the hallway holding our precious bundle. When we were about to pass the nurses' station, they saw us and flipped out yelling, "WHAT do you think you are doing?!" I explained that my husband was getting very impatient and did not wish to wait for the wheelchair any longer. They then explained that it was a requirement that I be wheeled out - not a luxury that we could 'opt out' of. Further, if we did try to walk out of the hospital with a baby, the 'baby kidnapper' alarms would sound. Parents of the year award - here we come!!