First Doctor's Visit

June 19, 2006 Monday
We had our first Doctor’s visit this morning. Keith went with me. The medical building is bland and brown. There is a tiny little waiting room, crammed full of women, pregnant and otherwise. We sat on a loveseat while we waited for awhile, until some more pregnant women came in and there wasn’t enough seating. The wait was long. I was standing and Keith plopped on the floor next to the wall. The women next to me said she had been waiting for hours, so I went up to the grouchy woman hiding behind a tiny window which led to the back office and asked how far they were backed up. We had been there a half hour after our appointed time. She said I was next and shortly after a woman came and took us into a nice little corner office full of diplomas and baby announcements. The woman didn’t introduce herself; in fact she sat us and ran out. We sat there for a few minutes looking around at the native America art and sculptures that were in a cabinet behind us. Finally a nurse came and sat at the large oak desk in front of us and started to ask me questions while inputting my data into the computer. She told us a little background of her and her daughter and her awful cesarean birth experience. It’s then that we learned that the woman who sat us was the Doctor and she had ran over to Grossmont to birth a baby really quick and would be right back.

Our Doctor is a one women show, which explains the wait time. She will be the one at our birth and completing my appointments. She has similar philosophy on birth as I, and a kind and funny demeanor. I liked her. When she returned about 20 minutes after she left, she put me in an exam room and we saw a picture of the baby. S/he’s about 1/2 inch long from crown to rump and looks like Casper the friendly ghost. It’s finally more real now. I was kind of stunned, they just stick a magic wand inside you and wall-la! There’s your tiny peanut! It was fascinating. We got 3 little pictures of our child. No way to tell the sex yet of course. I have an appointment to go back in 4 weeks, July 17th.