Photo Credit - Creative Commons: Jon Ovington

This past Sunday my wife and I took a tour of the birthing center at the Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, MD where we’ll soon deliver our third child and first son in approximately six weeks.

Even though we’ve been through this process before, it’s been seven years since our last birthing experience and felt a preliminary refresher was in order – hence the hospital tour.

While the facilities and amenities seemed very up-to-date there were three aspects of the birthing protocols at this hospital that really impressed me and seemed quite novel since our last pregnancy.

Newborn Hearing Screening

The nurse conducting the tour informed us that the day after the child is born – assuming there are no complications or admissions to the neonatal intensive care unit – the hospital will conduct a hearing screening on the newborn.

She said they’ll connect a series of sensors to the baby’s head, administer various sounds and then monitor for specific brain wave patterns associated with auditory pathways. That amazed me.

For both of our daughters, I asked about newborn hearing testing and was told by both the delivering hospital and our pediatrician that it was something we could do at home with the baby at about four-to-six months. One of us would distract the baby’s attention, while the other – very scientifically – banged on a pot with a wooden spoon.

If the baby jumped, cried or turned their head – their hearing was fine. Suffice to say we’ve come a long way baby.

Baby-Friendly Bonding

This aspect of the delivery was described as being a few years old at this particular hospital and it entailed the immediate placement of the baby on the mother’s chest following the birth rather than whisking the newborn to a warming bed for a body wipe down, respiratory check and swaddle.

The nurse said that the Baby-Friendly bonding of placing the naked baby directly on the mother’s skin was the preferred post-delivery method since mom’s body was a natural heating element; many baby’s begin to nurse immediately; and there’s often a nearly instantaneous calming effect on the child following the controlled trauma of birth.

Women have been delivering this way for thousands of years, and while this approach is not new to the doulas or mid-wives who specialize in at-home-birth deliveries, bathtub births and such – it was new information to us and made a lot of sense.

Mother-Baby Microchips

We also learned during the two-hour tour that both the mother and baby get special high tech wristbands once the baby is laid on her chest. While both bands have matching serial numbers in large font, they are also embedded with a GPS tracking device which is monitored at all times during the hospital stay.

This is intended to prevent baby mix-ups and hospital abductions. Beyond the GPS trackers, each chip in the mother’s and baby’s wristbands are programmed to a unique frequency that makes a temporary “chirping” sound that speeds up on the mother’s band as the baby gets closer.

This was a fascinating revelation and advancement that made us feel very comfortable and secure that we chose the correct birthing center.

Question: Do you have positive or negative memories about the place where your child or grandchild was born?