I am in my frequent state of limbo. What to do. I'm at my office. It's evening, after seven. Dark in the way that November nights get deeply dark. It's so ... quiet and calm after the hectic day of patients/rounds/pages/calls/prescriptions. There's still charting to do ... always. But I COULD go home, maybe, for a little while. To see my husband and teenage sons. Maybe brush Izzy, who got bathed this morning and will hopefully smell MUCH better from a people-nose point of view. Maybe eat something, since that protein bar from 8 a.m. seems to have worn off. But - I have a patient in labor.
How do I relate the way I feel when someone is in labor? Remember when you were in college, waiting for your date to come by to pick you up? It's like that. I'm ready. I have my usual navy blue scrubs on, with my usual comfy white sports sox. My crocs (I know, I know, they ARE hideous, but a girl has to have shoes she can wash in the sink! Babies are very slippery and generally fairly messy when they emerge, I'm tellin' ya!) are kicked off under my desk. It's probably still 4 or 5 hours away. Or it could be 30 minutes. That's the conundrum - the lack of predictability. Which, sadly, was also the case with my college love. Hence, the canceled wedding a week before. But I digress.
There's a kind of mystic energy around me when I have a patient in labor. It's excitement/anticipation/concern/apprehension and I guess just plain mother hen-ness, all rolled into one. I am not a doctor that can leave my work at the office, "turn it off," so to speak. Sometimes I'm sure it would be healthier if I could. I get SO attached to my "moms" throughout the pregnancy. Even though I'm not there in the labor room every second, I have the baby's heart rate tracing up on my computer screen whether I'm in the office - or even at home. I practically pace. We live NEARby, only about 5 minutes away. Yet, sure as I head home, that baby is ready and I'm headed back. If I stay at the hospital, it practically guarantees a long labor. Really in much the same way that taking off my makeup and getting ready for bed was always sure to produce that boyfriend, 4 hours late. Little did I know that I was merely being prepared for my future schedule. Learning patience before patients.
GOTTA RUN -- THE BABY'S COMING!!
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