Good Medicine

My doctor rocks. Really, he's just awesome. I've been going to him since our first loss & amazingly he's never lost hope that we'd someday be parents. He's also very pro-life & when you lose a baby as early as I usually have, you don't want it to be called "tissue" or a "fetus". It's a whole person in the making. So he told us at the very first appointment that he has his staff only call it a baby & when there is a loss it's seen as a death in the family & they mourn with us.

Then of course there was the day before my D&C when I saw him for my pre-op appointment. He came in & asked how I was doing, physically & emotionally. Then he asked how Jeremy was doing. How many doctors bother to even consider the father? I knew then that he was a keeper & the long drive was worth it.

Now we're approaching the birth of Shaylin so we've had discussions on my birth plan. I've been so happy to see how supportive he is of me going natural. He wants me to stay home & labor through as much on my own as I can. And if I want to walk around in the hospital to work through contractions & a nurse tries to make me stay in bed, all we need to do is call him & he'll take care of it.

At Monday's appointment we brought up to him some disturbing news we learned while at our birthing class. We learned that there is talk of the hospital changing a policy so that when the baby needs its bath they won't let the father come to the nursery to observe. Our fear has been that this could be implemented soon since most policy changes tend to take place on Jan. 1. Needless to say there was a big uproar in the class & it had me nearly in tears to think about someone taking my baby away from me where we can't see her. Jeremy let the nurse who taught the class know that we've waited 3 years for this baby & there's nobody who will keep him from her.

So we told the doctor & he's aware of the change. He said it's going around in many area hospitals all because of some kind of HIPPA violation. It's something that is very minor & shouldn't be an issue but it sounds like someone created enough of a fit about it that now it could ruin things for all other parents.

But he reassured us that he doesn't see anyone taking our baby from us. If it does get implemented by the time Shaylin's born, we'll just make other arrangements, even if that means using the sink in the L&D room bathroom. He understands what this birth means to us & there's no way we want her separated from us.

So if you're pregnant, find out if this is going on in your hospital. If you don't want your baby taken from you, fight it. It's YOUR baby, not the hospital's. You have the right to keep your baby with you.