St. Luke's Hospital Tour

Today, we took the weekly public tour of St. Luke's South Maternity Center.  St. Luke's is one of two hospitals where our doctor has privileges, the other being Shawnee Mission Medical Center which we have yet to tour (Megan's already pretty familiar with Shawnee Mission because this is where Braedon was born).

They have everything you'd expect (NICU, round the clock security, doctors, indoor plumbing, etc.).  The biggest standout at St. Luke's that we were not expecting are the size of the rooms.  As you can see from the pics that Megan was embarrassed of me taking, they are enormous!  These are birthing suites that allow you to remain in the same room during our stay as opposed to separate delivery and recovery rooms.  Megan and I like the idea of having the whole process in one room.

I was expecting all kinds of accommodations for the mother, but sounds like they offer a lot of comfort for the father too.  They have a stocked kitchen, sleeper sofa, TV, DVD player, and the biggest bonus of all (for me) -> WiFi.

We are leaning more towards St. Luke's because of the birthing suites, but we are going to still tour Shawnee Mission because they have gone through recent renovations and we are curious as to what they now have to offer.

What's in a Name?

Naturally, naming our daughter is very important to us and we spent an awful lot of time going through quite a few names (Megan has an 1"+ thick book to prove it).  Megan is big into the more old fashion names of which I didn't care for almost all of them.  I don't really know if I have a specific genre of names that I like, but Megan didn't care for a lot of the ones that I suggested either.

I'm pleased to report that we did finally agree on a name that we both love: Stella Sorrell.  Stella is a more old fashion name from the early 1900's that is making a come back.  It's of Latin origin and means star.  A lot of people I've talked to can't put their finger on where they've heard the name, but it's most likely from A Streetcar Named Desire where Marlon Brando continuously yells the name:

Sorrell is Megan's mother's maiden name as well as Megan's middle name.

Naturally, I Googled the name Stella to see what was out there.  You'll find everything from Paul McCartney's designer daughter Stella McCartney, Stella Artois the beer, and some peculiar ferry looking creature named Stella from a 2004 Italian animated series called Winx Club that people seem to be obsessed with.

One of the neater things I found was on a t-shirt site that actually had a Hawaiian Stella t-shirt design with the following emblem:

Pretty cool because we just got back from Hawaii and that's where we talked a lot about naming her Stella.

Baby Edumacation

Less than 24 hours after the positive pregnancy test, we headed to our local Borders and purchased a pregnancy book.  Not wanting to go too outside the norm, we grabbed the universally agreed upon best overall guide to pregnancy: What to Expect When You're Expecting.  We're reading it together and each have our own bookmark.  The book basically follows the timeline of the pregnancy so we're going to try and stay a few weeks ahead of the curve. There's also a chapter I've already gone through that's just for Dads to try and make me more sympathetic towards the host aka Mom...nice try ;)