First night in hospital: what do you wish you'd done/brought?

[ethicsgirl]

For dc2 I want to be a bit more prepared as I had a horrible time with ds1. I spent the night in a ward with noisy women, ate vile food and hardly got a wink. Looking for suggestions of what might improve my stay this time round. I felt so lonely and anxious last time.

moist loo wipes to keep clean and fresh each time you pop to the loo!!

I brought half my household with me (but I was in for 9 days or something stupid)!

-three (yes, three) decent pillows of differing degrees of softness. Helped me to sleep and helped prop me up in bed for breastfeeding.
-Photos and postcards to stick on the side of my cabinet to cheer me up. (I put these up in labour - they included my favourite scan photo)
-Huge amounts of food, including fibre-rich stuff like dried fruit, nuts, muesli, etc. DH and my mum kept me stocked with fresh salads and so on.
-Small digital radio, tuned very quietly to the birdsong station (now defunct ) which provided a sort of white noise to cut out the tv of the woman next to me, which was on 24/7.
-Lots of books, notepad, a good breastfeeding resource.
-Something to do with my hands (I had some patchwork and some crochet).
-Camera and lots of space on memory card! I hated DH missing out on bits of DS while he was at home.
-Lots more babygros than you think you need. I had to keep sending DH out to Mothercare, because DS was wetting through all the time.
-Olive oil for their dry skin!

Ok, I was in for a while afterwards (hypertension) but I really needed that lot!

Food - so so important for me - things I actually wanted and fresh fruit. And I didn't eat a single meal from the hospital - I thought it was very imortant to eat well so my husband brought me breakfast lunch and dinner (At Chelsea and Westminster so very lucky to have loads of restaurants and cafes around - my first dinner after giving birth was pizza - yum).

And also - this has probably been mentioned - I took face wipes and used them to "wash" if I couldn't be bothered to have a shower for a while but felt like freshening up. It made me feel so much better.

A fan - I didn't bring one but god it was so stuffy in there. I actually had a window bed which was much better - more room and a view and a window I occasionally opened (But didn't let anyone know as I am sure this was against the rules with all the newborn babies - it was so stuffy it felt like a germ factory!). If you can, ask for a window bed - or ask to move if one becomes available and you are staying for longer!

A bottle of gin! It'll help sleeping