OB appointment #5: 24 weeks, 1 day

First of all I want to thank you for the wonderful comments on the last two posts. As usual, they were thoughtful and supportive. I kept intending on writing a post just to follow up on those, but I never got around to it. I can tell you that I will be rereading them!

On to the OB appointment which was actually last Friday. True to form, my OB was running late. This time when I called ahead and asked, "Is he running on time?" I actually got an honest answer that he was behind. I took that as a sign he would be really late, but we still managed to get there only 20 minutes late for my appointment. In the end, we got in to see him about 1.5 hours after our scheduled appointment. The good news is that I didn't have to wait around in a room full of pregnant ladies because my OB moved to a new office building with hallways and stairwells (with a view!) to hang out in.

I suppose many people would get pretty upset with a Doctor who is ALWAYS late. Normally, I would too. I cut Dr. Wonderful lots of slack because I know why he is always running late. Part of it is he packs his schedule too tight because he hates to say "no", but more importantly, he is willing to be your doctor at time of delivery if it is important to you. Typically he is the "on call" doctor only once a week, but he will come in on his day off, during the night, or during regular office hours (sorry, the doctor is running late) to deliver a baby to those patients who don't want to give birth with a strange doctor in the room.

Toward the end of our otherwise uneventful appointment - peed in a cup, heard the heartbeat (thrilling!), got reassured that I am not gaining too much weight - he mentioned that in just 6 weeks we would have an 85% chance of having a healthy baby with no long term side effects. "Of course," he added, "I would want you deliver in a hospital if the baby came early."

I just love that he knows my heart's desire is to deliver at home and he is still willing to see me every 4 weeks, take as much time with me as any other patient and even wishes us a "healthy home birth." Yet, when I asked him, "If something goes wrong, will you be there for the birth?" he said he would be. How lucky am I? I really, really hope I won't need his services, but it is nice to know that if I "transfer" (move to a hospital after attempting a home birth) or otherwise decide that a hospital would be the next best option, that he will be the doctor delivering* the baby.

*Note: I hesitated to use the term "delivering" the baby, because in my view, I birth the baby and my midwife / doctor attends the birth and may even catch the baby. They absolutely do not deliver the baby. Still, it is the terminology of the OB world and part of the reason I am sharing these appointments is to highlight the difference in the two practices.