A key lesson I learned with our first child was "just about everything gets easier once you leave the hospital", so with our second we prioritized GTFOing ASAP. It was a good decision.
Our experience would not have been different (Austria). Especially with the first kid going from hospital home was a bit regretful because of all the services you get in the hospital you need to replace at home.
We had a family room for me, my wife and the newborn. They served food, there were replacement clothes and diapers in unlimited supply, no washing etc.
With the second we opted for having only two days in the hospital because I have to deal with the bigger one going to daycare and then we had to go to the child doctor for the remaining tests since we couldn’t do all in the hospital.
If you have a good hospital I would do that over leaving early for sure.
I would have been happy to stay in a private room for longer too, I've been around young children a lot since I have a large family, but being responsible for a newborn was a scary prospect to get used to.
Regarding food my overriding memory of being the father in Finland was that we'd get food delivered to the room and each plate was labeled. Half the meals had the mother's full-name written on them. The other half just said "man".
I'm sure they took my name at some point, as I was registered as the parent in the country-wide population index, but as far as the hospital was concerned I was just "man".
(In Finnish the word for man & husband are the same, so perhaps I was "husband" rather than "man"!)
Yes.
Having a different person coming in every 5 minutes to check something else.
Somewhat tempered by having to go back in a week later, so all these things aren't useless. Child birth isn't the risk free thing we like to think it is.
> For almost all mammals it is, just not for humans,
No, childbirth in nature is incredibly risky. But loss of life is expected in nature and disabilities, malformings etc. simply die whereas humans try to avoid life loss or any disadvantage for the offspring at any cost.
