Kurt's Thoughts

We had our son at UCLA Santa Monica, one of 3 places we considered.  (I’ll talk about why we selected UCLA Santa Monica in another post some day)  And overall, I’d say that having our son there was the absolute best experience we could have imagined.  Especially considering we were there for 9 days while most new parents are in and out in 3 or 4 tops.

A WORD OF WARNING…
One thing that you might consider doing, especially if you really want to “do things right”, is treating the attending nurses to some sort of snack or treat during your stay.  After all, they’re taking care of you – you really ought to consider ‘taking care of them’.  (For those of you that don’t understand this concept – you may want to go marinate in the world a little more before you actually have your kid because this is How-To-Get-Along-With-Service-Workers 101.)

Anyway, in this effort, I learned an important lesson specific to UCLA Santa Monica’s Birth Place, while there:

DO:

• Bring healthy snacks.  Carrots.  Celery.  Fruit. 
• Bring sandwiches, diet sodas, or something non-fattening.
• Make the snacks easy to get to.
• Print a photo of your child to put on the nurse’s office door.

DO NOT:

• Bring Krispy Kreme Donuts from across the street.
• Bring See’s Candy from across the street.
• Place the snacks in a location that requires great effort to get to.

WHY?
As professional as 99% of the nurses are at UCLA Santa Monica, there are a few that… well… take the whole “weight gain/loss” issue very seriously.  Some of them, I might even say, take it a bit TOO seriously and are just a donut away from going off on a tirade about how every pregnant couple that comes in, buys donuts and candy and sweets and it makes it so hard for the nurses to eat healthily and blah blah blah rant rant rant ad nauseum.

In fact, there’s at least one, uh, eccentric young nurse there that I came by our maternity ward room that felt like it was her God-given duty to ‘protect the other nurses’ from what she implied was the sin & treachery of the donuts we had brought and on top of the obligatory rant, went on to uncomfortably suggest that I take it all back because ‘it was unwanted here’.

Riiiiiiight.  I decided to drop the donuts off with the more friendly nursing staff in the “Birth Place” employee lounge who promptly dug into them and left the boxes open for all to consume.  Our son’s handsome picture was promptly put on the office door along side the other newborn photos.

CONCLUSION
So in the final analysis, if you’re gonna bring stuff to ‘express your thanks’ to the nursing staff, be aware that not all of them will welcome sweets.  If you do bring “sinful & treacherous” edibles, I would suggest you at least also bring an alternative.  Or face the wrath of those on “Jenny Craig”.