girl mom

At first glance, you may be a little confused by the title of this post! And if you don’t live in the Edmonton, Alberta area then you are really confused about what the Sturgeon Hospital private maternity rooms are. Don’t worry I will be sharing how my hospital induction, labour and postpartum experience went – but there are a few things that I have been dwelling on over the past month that I wanted to share.

Writing this blog post has been difficult for me because I try to keep my blog as a positive space and I try to not complain a lot, but I also want to be honest about my whole experience at the Sturgeon Hospital.

First and foremost, I have to say that the staff at the Sturgeon Hospital were great. You’ll see in my labour story that life can distract and make things less efficient, but overall the nurses and clerks and doctors at the Sturgeon Hospital did their jobs well.

navy hat, swaddle & name tag : Lulujo (similar white XO’s bundle, here) | white patterned swaddle: Lulujo

A little context to my birthing experiences (as Thaddeus is our 4th baby) – my first 3 were all delivered at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. And let me be clear, I loved giving birth at the Royal Alex – the staff were always great, and I always had a private maternity room with each birth.

Whenever I meet local moms they all have a negative connotation about the Royal Alex (whether they gave birth there or heard of a mother who had a bad experience) and I have to set the record straight that in all my experiences the Royal Alex has been the best hospital in Edmonton to give birth at.

My first was born naturally, my second I tried to do without an epidural but she was sunnyside up and I decided to receive the epidural, my third I was induced and it took 3 days but was by far my easiest delivery. So naturally I had an idea that my fourth delivery was going to be a breeze (and it was!). But just like when a mom gets too attached to her birth plan and it doesn’t go according to plan, there can be a sense of great disappointment.

And that’s what happened with the hype buzzing around local moms who praise the Sturgeon Hospital for being the best Edmonton area hospital to give birth at…

What is the difference between the Royal Alex Hospital and Sturgeon Hospital Labour & Delivery?

The Royal Alex Hospital is very similar in the protocol of the Sturgeon Hospital’s labour and delivery units – the Sturgeon’s triage rooms fit 2 hospital beds to a room that is divided by a curtain, while the Royal Alex’s triage area is a large unit made up of curtained off sections for each patient’s hospital bed. The area you wait in while being checked is the same size in both hospitals.

I personally preferred the Royal Alex’s triage area because it’s less intimate than the Sturgeon’s side by side beds with another mom who is labouring – but being in an intimate setting for labour was not an issue for me at all.

Then once you’re in active labour and 3 cm dilated, you are moved over to the delivery unit. I will say the Sturgeon Hospital’s delivery room has a lot more natural light. The Royal Alex has one small window, while the Sturgeon whole exterior wall was a giant window.

Does the Sturgeon Hospital have only private maternity rooms?

No. They may used to only have private maternity rooms at the Sturgeon Hospital, but with the growing demand of women who travel from all over the city to give birth at the Sturgeon hospital they can no longer accommodate private rooms. There are a few available (which cannot be registered for and are first come first serve) and the rest are shared.

Also the Sturgeon Hospital has started building a NICU in the delivery wing of the hospital, which also takes up room from the private maternity rooms. Where you may have been able to request a upgraded hospital room or suite for an additional charge if there were no private rooms available before, there are only private rooms and shared rooms at the Sturgeon Hospital now.

Let me tell you have incredibly frustrating it was to hear over and over again that women from far South, East, and West of Edmonton refused to deliver anywhere else beside the Sturgeon Hospital.

So be aware if you are choosing to deliver your baby at the Sturgeon Hospital based on the myth that you will receive a free private room during your stay, that is not accurate information anymore. The other hospitals around the city of Edmonton have perfectly good staff and facilities.

Back to Thaddeus’ Birth Story…

From the third trimester on, my OB/GYN knew that this baby boy was measuring large… 2-3 weeks ahead of where he should be. Though I did not have gestational diabetes, he was growing like a weed!

I anticipated, like with Adeline, that we would induce me at the hospital closer to my due date because my babies like to be overdue! Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post – Adeline took 3 days to induce me with Cervidil.

During my 38 weeks appointment, my doctor and I filled out the paperwork for me to be induced at the hospital at 39 weeks. My mother-in-law wonderfully took all 3 girls camping that entire week just in case our new baby took 3 days to induce… thankfully that didn’t happen again! But we wanted to be as prepared as possible.

Sunday: We sent our 3 girls off with my mother-in-law, then Matt and I did some chores and errands in preparation for baby’s arrival.

Monday: 6:00AM the Sturgeon Hospital calls to ask if I’ll be able to come in at 8:00AM for my induction. I was not prepared for them to be so on top of calling in early, Matt had appointments all Monday because we were expecting it to take a while to get to the hospital. So I quickly asked my mom if she would be able to come with me to the hospital while Matt worked.

I was checked and had not dilated at all, so I was given one dose of Cervidil. After I received the Cervidil I needed to stay at the hospital for one hour for them to watch me and check again at the end of the hour. The end of that hour was rough! I was starting to feel like I would need a shot of morphine or something to take the edge off because labour went from 0 to 60.

Thankfully it was only a short while of intense contractions because then I was good to be released, and once I stood up to walk around the contractions went away.

I was to call the labour and delivery unit every 4 hours, where they ask the standard questions like has your water broke? Are you bleeding? How far are your contractions apart?

I felt good and a little relieved that I wasn’t dilated at all so that I didn’t have to worry about Matt being at work. From the hospital my mom and I went straight to West Edmonton Mall to buy some wee preterm baby clothes for a cousin who had a preterm baby the night before and then drop off the present at the Misericordia where she was staying in the NICU.

Then we grabbed some lunch and decided to get pedicures. During the pedicures I was definitely having some low intensity contractions but they were similar to the Braxton Hicks false ones I felt all through my third trimester.

After pedicures I was exhausted so I headed home for a nap, and Matt was finally home. We had supper and relaxed at home that evening. At around 11PM the contractions were consistent but not too crazy, so I had a glorious hot shower and then back to bed.

I didn’t sleep too deeply since I was having contractions but nothing that was intense

Tuesday: At 6AM check in call, I was asked to come in to the hospital again at 8:00AM for another check and possible dose of Cervidil.

And hooray! I was at 3cm without needing a second dose of Cervidil! When I look back I think taking that long hot shower definitely helped with relaxing and prepping my body for the day ahead.

I was able to call Matt (who was at work, my mom came with me again) and let him know that today was the day!

The irony of every time I am induced into labour was that my assigned nurse cannot get my IV in. Matt can attest to it – for me, getting the IV was by far the worst part of giving birth. Every single induced birth they have to bring in a second nurse to put it in! It’s either my veins are too small, or my epidermis is too thick…

But once the IV was in with the drip set low, everything was relaxed in my room.

When the nurse asked what my birth plan was I asked for, what my mom calls, “the no pain plan”. I knew that my body dilates super slow, and wanted an epidural as soon as possible. After a taste of the contractions with the Cervidil on day 1, I knew what I wanted.

The strange part is that as we waited for the contractions to intensify, my pain didn’t increase as I waited for the anesthesiologist. I could feel the contractions squeezing my stomach but there was no pain associated with it. The nurse called me stoic, but I’ve never screamed or cried or wailed in labour. Plus, this time I truly was not in any pain – it was strange to me!

As they increased my drip, the pain associated with the contractions that I remember with Annaliese’s natural birth did not appear. My nurse offered me laughing gas – I tried this with Abigail’s birth when I was trying to avoid an epidural, and the gas didn’t seem to affect me – but wow did it ever affect me this time!

The laughing gas for labour used to be administered with a mask that goes over your mouth and nose, since then they’ve changed it to a mouthpiece that looks like a breathalyzer. You put it in your mouth and breath in normally.

At first I didn’t think anything of it, but after my nurse told me to take 3 normal breaths in and out she paused. “Do you feel dizzy?”, while she asked me that I wasn’t but as soon as I took a second to think and feel if I was it hit me so hard. I couldn’t stop smiling and giggling, because I really did feel dizzy and euphoric.

I continued to use the laughing gas, even though I wasn’t in any pain yet, until the anesthesiologist arrived. He was quick and thorough, applied the epidural with ease. And I know I sound like a broken record but the worst part of the epidural was the local freezing.

The anesthesiologist told me it would feel like a little mosquito, and then I winced as he put it in. “More like a baby wasp?”, he asked. YUP! That’s more accurate.

As I lay back down on the bed, I low key was freaking out because I could still wiggle my toes with the epidural – but that is normal! They don’t want you to be completely numb, just in a centralized area so that it can wear off quicker after you have your baby.

Then we waited calmly for baby boy to make his way through the contractions for a couple more hours. Eventually, he was already in the birth canal and with every contraction he would be a little in distress and his heart rate would dip a little.

So instead of waiting for him to be pushed majority of the way out by the contractions (like I was able to do so with Adeline) it was time to push!

15 minutes later and he was here! It turns out Thaddeus was sunny side up like his big sister Abigail while making his way into the world!

Though Abigail was born with a flattened nose, that reset after a couple hours, and Thaddeus was born with some bruising on his forehead from being pushed up against my pubic bone as he came out.

He was 7 lbs 8 oz and we fell in love with him instantly!

After we were all checked out and cleaned up, we were prepped to move over to the Sturgeon Hospital maternity rooms…

They wheeled us down the hallway and to our maternity room, and as you can guess it was a shared room. I was quite shocked because all the moms I had talked to about the Sturgeon Hospital raved about how amazing the private maternity rooms were. There were no options – we were told it was shared rooms only available.

Guys, I wanted to get out of there ASAP and sharing a room was awful. The couple was sound asleep when we got into our room, the bathroom is shared, there is literally no room. If you have delivered at the Sturgeon Hospital before, I want you to imagine one of the private maternity rooms split in two with a curtain with two hospital beds, two pull-out chairs, and two bassinets crammed into one room.

That is what the shared maternity rooms at the Sturgeon Hospital are.

Plus, I felt like crap and was so emotional because Thaddeus would cry in the middle of the night and I would be stressed out of my mind trying to not wake the other couple and their baby. I was trying to not make a mess in the bathroom (I don’t think I need to go into too much detail here, that would be TMI) that we shared. I didn’t feel comfortable to shower at all during my stay there.

It was a completely different experience than any of my other 3 postpartum hospital stays.

The next morning we were itching to get out of the hospital – it had been a rough night!

Another thing that I remember that was odd was that the hospital cart was not stocked (diapers, vaseline, wipes), so I wish we knew that in advance because the Royal Alex Hospital always had those things. The Sturgeon Hospital uses face clothes, that you need to wet, instead of wipes.

While we were ambitious to leave the hospital immediately, we had to give our nurse a little grace. We could tell she was distracted while we were trying to expedit our discharge, and we found out as we were leaving the hospital that her grandpa had died that morning.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, the staff at the Sturgeon Hospital took care of us well. Life happens and we don’t know what is going on in a stranger’s life.

I am glad I had the experience I did at the Sturgeon Hospital and with their shared maternity rooms! I can now educate Edmonton moms and hopefully help them avoid the disappointment I had with the lack of private maternity rooms there.

I’m curious, have you given birth at the Sturgeon Hospital? What was your experience with the Sturgeon Hospital private maternity rooms?

If you like this post, check out my Ultimate Hospital Bag Checklist post before you go!

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