It’s amazing the difference that a single change can make. Valerie had spent a considerable amount of time researching the kind of attendant that she wanted during delivery and had settled on a midwife team whose offices were about a half hour away, and who would only deliver at the hospital in downtown Charlotte, about an hour’s drive away. But it was relatively late in the process when it came to our attention that, after David had been born, the attendant who would dismiss him from the hospital would not be the same attendant who dismissed my wife. Midwives and obstetricians don’t check babies – only mommies. So, whereas we had spent some months finding just the right midwife, we had to settle on a pediatrician in a matter of weeks. And here’s the rub: the primary thing we needed a pediatrician to do is to okay the removal of our baby from the hospital. Well baby visits and immunizations aside, the pediatrician’s immediate job was to be on site at the appropriate time. We had several strong recommendations for pediatricians within minutes of our apartment, one of whom was even covered by our insurance. But since they were all located directly adjacent to the hospital that was also 2 minutes from our apartment, not a single one of them would be available to dismiss our baby from the hospital in downtown Charlotte.
So we got a recommendation from our midwife for a pediatrician whose main offices were in the same building as hers and signed up for an interview. Now, I had not been present when Valerie was interviewing the other pediatricians, but I managed to make this one, and I had all kinds of alarm signals going off during the meeting. The woman was jovial and grandmotherly and seemed very very competent, but also struck me several times as having that trait you hear about so frequently in doctors: the God complex, that overwhelming sense that they are the doctor and you are not; they know what’s best in all things medical, and you do not. It’s all very well for you to go and do your own research and have your own opinions, but they’ve been doing this sort of thing for years with literally thousands of patients, so they really know what’s best in your situation. And perhaps they do. But it’s not a very comforting notion when faced with our own particular needs in our own particular situation. My child is a patient of course, but I am also a customer. However, the doctor we interviewed was competent and grandmotherly, and most appealing of all was that this office had a lactation consultant on site. The lactation consultant was very important to Valerie, and no other doctor’s office had had one. And ultimately, we had little initial choice – we needed a doctor who could check out our baby from the hospital. But we decided to stick with the half hour drive, at least until Valerie and David had settled down with nursing.
Looking back, something was wrong from the get-go. Continue reading “Change of Pediatrician”
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