Hospital Stay

Like most people, I’m only permitted a short hospital stay after my baby is born. But I think I’ll be itching to go home. What did you think?

Our Mommy MD Guide’s reply: Having your first baby is so hard because you don’t know anything. When my oldest daughter was born, I remember being in the hospital trying to put on her tiny little outfit. It had snaps all over the inside and the crotch. I was tired, and my mom and friend were there with me.

My mom is a doctor, and my friend is a pediatrician. The three of us struggled mightily to figure out how to put that outfit on a 6-pound-4-ounce newborn. We didn’t know what we were doing. Three Mommy MDs were standing there like it was a jigsaw puzzle. We couldn’t figure it out.

It’s amazing to me that I went through four years of undergraduate schooling, four year of medical school, and four years of residency before I could even sit alone in a room with an adult patient. Yet, they sent me home from the hospital with a frail baby with not a moment of instruction. They let me take that tiny baby home when I didn’t know a thing.

Ask for the help of the nurses in the hospital while you have the chance!

-Eva Ritvo, MD, a mom of two teenaged daughters, a psychiatrist in Miami, FL, and coauthor of The Beauty Prescription