maternity words and wards

Prenatal class has been informative, comforting and, well, amusing. We got to see the video "The Miracle of Birth" done by BYU's nursing program, and it was exactly what you're imagining. A live birth video. Whoa baby.
Trevor handled it well, a bit surprised at amount of fluids, and said the video showed a lot he didn't "expect to see." Like the color of the baby right after its born. Other than being intensely uncomfortable, we both learned a lot. Such as:

• No one is allowed at the hospital. No one. Just Trevor and I. No in-laws, friendly visitors or any of the like. You can come when we're home and settled with the babies.
• We're not going to do the "count down" thing with the contractions. Numbers aren't my friends. But letters are. So Trev's going to recite the alphabet, and we'll keep track of which letters we get to. ("That was a J contraction.") Letters = the basis of words and stories, numbers = confusion and frustration, none of which I want during labor.
  
• I really hope I don't have a C-Section. Please please please please.

We got to tour the maternity and delivery unit at the hospital. I was absolutely amazed at how nice the rooms are. I couldn't believe it - they're like hotel suites. I looked around and no one else seemed as awed as I was, and then I realized the only maternity wards (or hospitals in general) I've spent any time in are military hospitals growing up. You're lucky if they pitch a tent for you on the cement floor. No privacy, no nurses, just cold hard metal. When my brother had cancer, my mother and I practically spent a whole year in the military hospital in San Antonio.
So seeing the luxury maternity ward was like the first time I flew on a commercial airliner. Oh my word - talk about the height of comfort! The only airplanes I'd been on till I was about, oh, thirteen years old, were cargo planes without a great deal of insulation, which meant any 'passengers' had to wear earplugs the whole time on pain of causing deafness. There was one porthole window at the front of the plane, usually iced over and too far away to see. We sat on canvas bucket seats, and every once in a while they'd give us military-issued rations. Plane trips were cold and long, and kind of how I imagine long trips in a horse-drawn carriage over the English moors in the dead of winter may have been like.
I'm pretty sure growing up in the military makes everything else in civilian life look like the lap of luxury, including maternity wards.