As our lovely little girl, Anna, came early, we had to spend a few extra weeks in the hospital with her. My wife and I learned a few things:

• There’s a super-loud cricket that lives right outside the hospital entrance over by the mail boxes. Super-loud.
• Nurses are heroes.
• The hospital food was surprisingly tasty.
• The hospital food was surprisingly unhealthy.
• If you don’t eat your meal within a half-hour or so, they’ll come steal it away.
• State-of-the-art round-the-clock medical care is free, but you have to pay for was parking.
• Parts of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital look like a moon base.
• The walking trail around the hospital grounds is surprisingly nice.
• Communication might be the most important thing for worried new parents. The staff does well with this, but more is always better.
• Hospitals are given baby supplies for free by the manufacturers in order to gain the favour of new parents. This should be disclosed as not to imply a false endorsement (though I assume they only accept the good stuff)
• There’s a mystical fourth meal around 9pm called “night lunch”. I think it’s a bit like the “second breakfast” enjoyed in The Shire.
• Everything is disposable. Even the disposable utensils come in disposable plastic wrap. At least I won’t get bird flu on my spork.
• If you drop it on the floor, you throw it out (unless it’s the last of your prescription painkillers).
• You’re often told to relax and get lots of rest, but you can’t go for 30 minutes without being woken up.
• All farts in the nursery get blamed on the babies.
• In the nursery, burps are hard-won and to be celebrated by anyone in ear-shot. Don’t take them for granted.
• Two babies crying is 10 times worse than one.
• There is such a thing as a “lactation consultant”.
• Using a powerful alcohol-based hand sanitizer 25 times a day won’t eat away your flesh, as I had suspected. I got so used to this stuff that I look for it whenever I enter a room now.
• The healthy babies are called “well babies”. I resented the well babies and wanted to play pranks on them (dip soothers in lemon juice, etc.), but then our baby became well, as well.
• A cesarean-section can happen really fast.
• Chanting “Nurse! Nurse! Nurse!” to encourage your baby to nurse isn’t a good idea when you’re surrounded by nurses.
• A breast pump looks like (and may be) a medieval torture device.
• Our baby was totally the best one.