A Surprise Meeting

The other day my husband attended an event in Abilene where VIPs were wined and dined and, of course, asked for money. No, my husband wasn’t a guest, he was working it!

His job was basically to small talk with the guests. To his surprise, one of the guests was someone he knew. The man was Dr. R, the fetal specialist we were sent to once, and towards the end of my pregnancy, twice a month for an ultrasound and monitoring of our babies.

Dr. R didn’t recognize my husband. I don’t blame him. I’m sure he sees hundreds of couples a week, and that was a year-and-a-half ago. But all my husband had to say was “We were the ones, you know, with the twins…” and instant recognition hit him.

Oh yes, he definitely remembered us now! (I found out toward the end that we were kind of famous throughout the hospital. Once when I went in for special monitoring in a building I’d never been in before, the nurse talked to us then said “Oh, you’re the ones.”)

Dr. R, of course, was on my obstetricians side during those last weeks of fighting for mine and my babies’ rights to a birth as God intended. He believed then that I was putting my babies at serious risk. I can still remember crying in his office as yet another person persisted that I was being an irresponsible mother.

After a glass of wine and some small talk, Dr. R said something completely unexpected. “You know,” he told my husband. “Looking back, I think you guys did the right thing.” (If you’re just joining me on my blog, “the right thing” was telling the medical staff I didn’t need them and having my twins at home with a midwife.)

I couldn’t have been more shocked when my husband told me what he said. Shocked, and a little proud.

It restored the smallest, slightest, tiniest bit of faith in doctors for me. I think it just shows that even doctors, when not staring in the face of what they see as a possible lawsuit, can think logically. When they are not in their offices, with staffs and colleagues to impress, medical schools loans to pay, and the incredible responsibility being laid on them by patients who are entrusting them with their babies’ lives, as well as their own. Without all those pressures, the rationale of so many thing can become incredibly clear.

I just wish more people understood the pressure these doctors are under and–whether they will admit it or not–that those pressures have a heavy influences on their decisions.

Please don’t simply do whatever your doctors says. Do your own research, or at the very least get a second opinion. Doctors are only human. But that’s a whole different post…

Tagged as: birth