Last night they finally moved me upstairs to the post-partum unit that I've been hearing about. Jesse took four trips of his own with all my things before I was rolled up in a wheelchair. As the nurse pushed me into the elevator I was smiling ear to ear. I realized that my new home wouldn't be much different from my old one, but I hadn't set foot out of room 316 in a week. The prospect of new kinds of hospital furniture was enough to get me fantasizing.
Upon entering the fifth floor, I was excited about some things and disappointed with others. The nurses behind the nurse station were wearing polo shirts and looked very young. My room was more private, but also about a third the size of my old room. I had also gained an entire wall of window to look out, but Jesse had lost his bed.
Against one wall are two hospital bassinets. This I like very much. I'm facing them from my bed and look at them often.
Trying to imagine a baby in each one.

After Jesse had unpacked all my things, Colleen and Dave came to visit. It was very nice. Jesse and I smiled at each other in approval of our new location.
When the visit was over, Jesse made a bed on the couch and we turned out the lights. We laid in silence facing each other. I said, "I don't like this room."
He said, "Me neither."

At 4a.m., Nurse Karen came in. All the lights came on instantly, and in her most day time voice she told me that it was time to monitor the babies. She then proceeded to audibly argue with the machine she couldn't get to work. Eventually she pulled in another nurse to help her. Jesse and I communicated our murderous rage when ever we made eye contact.
In the nine days since we arrived at St. Jude, I've had a lot of nurses, and a lot of monitoring, and this woman was exceptionally incompetent. She was apparently oblivious to the fact that she had just woken up a pregnant woman who is having enough difficulty sleeping in a hospital. When she did get the monitors on, she didn't even check to see if they were catching anything before saying that she'd be back in twenty minutes and, "Would we like the lights off so we could sleep?"
I told her that she could keep the lights on.
That we weren't going back to sleep.
When she left the room, Jesse and I had to find the right place for the monitors and hold them in place. An hour later Nurse Karen came back, blaming someone else for letting her keep them on so long.
When all was done, that beautiful window next to me started glowing with morning light. It was going on 6a.m.
I managed an hour or two of sleep before waking up to breakfast. I had a nightmare that my blood pressure rose and the nurses weren't letting me have visitors. I dreamed that my belly was very big and my belly button kept distending like a hernia.

Today we have Nurse Nancy. When she went to give me a thermometer, Jesse almost attacked her. I had to do some damage control before she left. When she was gone I asked Jesse, "What was that all about?"
He explained that he just didn't like them interrupting my breakfast. That the nurses down stairs never interrupted my breakfast.
I understood where he was coming from, but asked that he let me do the talking in the future.
I ate what I liked of the breakfast, and Jesse had the rest.
I turned on my side facing the window. I saw a cloud that looked like a baby. I watched it turn into Snoopy and then disappear all together.
Jesse asked me if I wanted a coffee. I turned to my side facing the wall and said no. He asked if I'd like him to close the blinds, and I said no. He sat quietly for a moment, and I told him he should get out and run some errands. He obliged.
At 10:45a.m. I called the nurse to tell her that my medication was due at 10a.m. She said she'd look into it.
Okay, why don't you look into it.

The moral of the story isn't that this place sucks.
It's far from sucking.
If this sort of thing had happened in the first three nights, we wouldn't have given it any thought.
So I guess the moral of the story, is that you never want to stay in a hospital so long that you know when people are screwing up.
Because it will piss you off far more than it probably should.
And last long past your 12 o'clock jello parfait.