Good Gossip

Turns out that finding a birth practitioner is a lot like looking for a suitable life partner: very hard to find the right fit.

I interviewed a midwife and she was not bad. I found her very down to earth and I liked how reassuring she was about the prospects for my next birth. Turtle came relatively quickly and easily and she thought that a second delivery would be the same only more so. On the other hand, she took multiple phone calls during our half hour interview, then trotted me out the door just on the dot of 30 minutes. Plus, during one of those calls, she seemed to be blaming a new mother a bit for her trouble with nursing. So I left thinking, yeah, she's someone I could work with. But I wasn't in love.

Next I went to meet a woman OB in an all-women practice. We'll call her Doctor Friend because I felt right away that under different circumstances she could be a friend. She won me over right away by snorting in agreement when I said that Zofran really didn't seem to help me. Everyone else has touted it as a sure cure, but she was like, "look, that was developed for chemo. We don't know that much about pregnancy nausea, but there's no reason to think it works exactly them same way as the chemo-induced kind." She said she'd never seen anyone with true hyperemesis helped by Zofran. I just felt vindicated. Everyone else made me feel like an ingrate for not appreciating the wonder drug. There were lots of other good moments and Dr. Friend delivers at the hospital with the lowest C-section rate in the city. So I'm sold.

I did feel a little bit bad about dumping Dr. "I refer to women as 'Pregnant Ladies' and address them as 'Madame.'" But that was before he scared the daylights out of me for no reason, insisting that my anatomy-scan results merited an amnio when in fact the hospital geneticist assured me that there was absolutely no cause for concern. So that'll be it for him, though I still haven't placed the call...

I am eating everything now and going off the pump was no problem. Still very tired, but I guess that's what you get for taking to bed for two months.

Ciao!