Meeting with Dr. M

On Wednesday morning Dr. M phoned me. He said he didn't like to talk on the phone, and would I like to come to his office at 5 to talk to him about my letter. I said I would, but noted that I had to pick up my son from daycare by 6.  He suggested I pick up my son first and then come to the office. I said that I would do that.

Of course this week has been very busy at work with lots of phone meetings extending to the very end of the day.  An interview I really needed was scheduled for 4:30 and I told them I could only talk to them until 4:45.  After which I dashed out of the house, sippy cup with milk in hand, and headed over to daycare.  I picked up Jack and got to the Dr. office by 5:17. Whew!

Dr. M was not yet ready for me.  So Jack and I sat in the waiting room and I told him not to crush crackers into the carpet. Thankfully, people at OB offices tend to like babies and toddlers...

Dr. M's office had the sun beaming in. And on a day when the heat index was unhealthy and I was eight months pregnant, I was uncomfortably hot.  Jack was not keen on being in that office either and made his dissatisfaction known. It was hard to conduct a reasonable conversation with Dr. M given the conditions.

But the sense I get is that Dr. M has no answers. He is stressed about how crazy things are but there are no solutions.  At least he doesn't know any.  But for me what he did was took me out front and made sure I got the appointments I needed.  That included all the rest of my NSTs, plus another appt. with the supremely busy Dr. P who is scheduled to do my c-section.

All my appointments are set until July 25, the designated date.

Dr. M also told me that my chart was missing information about my previous c-section. Without that information he was uncomfortable letting me do a VBAC (if labor began before the 25th).  So with that heads up, I was able to contact my previous doc and get the info today.

After my meeting I rushed home and fed Jack some yogurt, fruit, toast and other foods to make up a quick dinner at the house of the family without a kitchen.  You see, we had the hospital tour to go to that night and too wanted to get the boy into bed a little early. My brother was babysitting in a very non-active way -- by watching our HD satellite TV.

It was clear from the hospital tour that the hospital has been packed lately too with maternity patients. Dr. M had also mentioned that the local paper that day had a story about how that hospital is at over 100 percent capacity.  I think he must have meant this story.

Nevertheless, the hospital is beautiful.

I asked how soon you get your baby after a c-section. Answer: 4 hours.  That's a long time.

I'm so hoping that I can have a successful VBAC ahead of the scheduled c-section because I really don't want to wait that long, and I don't want to spend 3 to 4 days at the hospital.  I want to be home with both my boys.

Comments

[maggie]

I'm glad you had the meeting, even if there were no good answers - though the fully scheduled appointments is a good result.

Good luck.

[Eva]

Wow, four hours. Surely you can't do some bargaining on that? Of course it's so hard to be assertive in that situation.

I'm sorry the doctor wasn't much help, but it seemed like he did what he could.

By the way LESS THAN A MONTH!!!

[Meira]

Hmm . . . I wonder what's up with the '4 hours' thing. Maybe there are special circumstances? It makes no sense to me -- my first (singleton) never left my sight, and my twins went to the nursery for maybe an hour . . .
The idea of making a mom wait four hours is really pissing me off.

[Aurelia]

Four hours seems unreasonable to me. Our major hospitals downtown are all crazy, but babies are only separated from moms if they have to go to a NICU, never for just a c-section.

Even a complicated c-section, the babies are just held by the Dads while Mom gets stitched up. Unless she's already nursing the baby.