The Tales of Doctors Wish-She-Could and Done-Nothin, The Russian and The Saint

PART ONE
 
Unsure. Put out. Absolute. We had three children, three births, and four obstetricians in our adventures. When you're going through this particular adventure, your obstetrician is your lifeline; the one you put your trust in, who helps you to understand and bring the concept of having a baby into the reality of having one, for better or worse. Sometimes your very thoughts and memories of this time in your life can be shaped by their place within it. For better. Or worse. These are the stories, and they may be long but not tall, of our obstetricians, names changed for good reason, as you will see.

Dr Wish-she-could was cold, quiet and straight-forward. She didn't seem to have any human emotions; I've since learnt that's not necessarily a bad thing. She didn't seem to show any great sympathy or compassion to Mrs Mango's sufferings, as she probably, literally hears them every day and our needs were best served by her playing it a bit impartial. So we let her in, got used to the fact that she would be the one that brought our first born into the world, got excited about it and went about all the business necessary to get the job done, learning her ways, and understanding her tone. Now, you know the scene in that movie Knocked Up, where they ring the obstetrician as they're going into labour and he's off on holidays in Honolulu? Yeah. That whole movie from that point on pretty much describes Little Mango 1's birth.

Two weeks away, as we're very close, starting to get very ready, starting to feel very comfortable in the fact that we know what is going on, and how this new and scary adventure will all go down; in fact, relying on these certainties to deal with the uncertainties; at some random appointment, she just says it as if it's nothing, as if she hasn't known for months since she booked them, or forgotten that it had been around nine months since we first saw her and it always seems to happen about that time – 'Oh, I'm going on holidays from today – this strange doctor next door, who you've never met before and have no idea about; even though you came to me because you were recommended by someone else and could trust that I would do a good job and be the one there for you; yeah, I'm not going to be the one, and I won't be there. Dr Done-Nothing – he will be delivering your baby.'

I probably can't explain how that affected us, but basically, it took all the security that we relied upon, that was leading us where we were going in a nice, orderly fashion; and set a tornado amongst it. Blew it to bits – it just made the seemingly 'everyday' feeling that we got from this doctor, a little bit more 'everyday'. So she left our lives, never to return, as Doctor Wish-she-could, apparently couldn't.

Which brings us to Dr Done-Nothing. We started seeing him as if nothing had changed, now more anxious than ever. I guess you could say that he was a lot more compassionate and helpful during the pre-birth appointments, and we actually started to feel a bit better about this change – perhaps he was a better doctor. How little did we know. Weeks later, when I saw Dr Done-Nothing, after several minutes of desperate straining and pulling, fly backwards and hit the floor hard, the skull-cap of the ventouse (vacuum) still in his hand and my baby not born yet (I thought he had pulled my son's head off), that was probably the moment I decided he didn't really have any practical place in the world, and I seriously wanted to take him out of it.

We showed up at the hospital at six in the morning, for an eight o'clock induction. Eight o'clock came and went, so did nine o'clock; and then finally somewhere around ten, in strode Dr Done-Nothing, as if he was taking a walk in the park. I started to get a feeling, but really I should have known in my stomach that something was wrong with him in the brain. He casually walked over, looked out the window, and then at myself, Mrs Mango(to-be), and our birthing partner.

'Sorry, I'm a bit late. Had a bit of trouble with my washing machine.'

A bit of a slap, but I laughed it off, 'I thought you were going to say there had been some sort of emergency, like somebody had to deliver a baby on the side of the road or something; you know something life threatening....' Or important.

'No, no, no....... just my washing machine – I live by myself you see.' That figures.

We let it slide. After the induction, off he went again, to sort out some other papers and appointments. This sort of shocked me, but now I realise that hospital and surgeries still continue on amongst the everyday events of having babies, no matter how much life-changing importance we put on these days, and it's something you have to get used to. So we were left with our mid-wife (if there is a god, his children are actually mid-wives) and let us get on with all those things you get ready for: music, showers, back-rubs, giant inflatable balls, and contractions that move from ten minutes apart to five in the space of one contraction. In other words, it was happening very fast.

Somewhere in the next couple of hours, Doctor Done-Nothing came backed in, looked at us, then looked out of the window for five minutes, then left. I started to wonder what was so friggen exciting out the window. As Mrs Mango moved into transition, which is the time that mother's lose it and begin to ask for insane things, he waddled back in and spent a couple of minutes somewhere between looking at his watch, out the window again, twiddling his thumbs, and telling us we could be there for hours. No, no - that bits very true.
'It's all right, (Mrs Mango) - it's just a little while longer. Soon, our baby will be here and this will all be over.' Words of encouragement that may mean nothing but perhaps sound like everything.
'Well, we can't very well say that. I mean, she could be there for hours.' I'm not joking. I looked at him. Our birthing partner looked at him. The midwife looked at him. I'm pretty sure the janitor walking past looked at him. That's a bit rough! Was he serious? 
'We were just trying to comfort her.' said our birthing partner in a tone that reflected the stupidity of his statement.
'I'm just concerned about her mental condition - she needs to know she could be going through this for a very long time.' I couldn't really believe that he was still talking. Even if she was there for hours, in contrast to the entirety of an average human life, it would actually only be a very short period of time. And anyway, did we need to tell Mrs Mango it was going to be hours? She was on a completely different planet, with a bunch of cute gas fairies and a lot of pain, trying to deal with those things PLUS this pain-in-the-ass warthog that kept showing up and rooting around. Actually, scratch that - he was more like a seagull, you know he just hovered there for long periods of time, just really kind of in the way and annoying - like we were constantly trying to shoe him off, and then every now and then he'd take a crap on something you really didn't want him to. Even the midwife was vocally glad when he left. It was like when he took me aside and explained that Little Mango 1 had his hand around his head, making it harder for the process to move along, and that the ventouse was the best option and what that meant (I won't go into the details, it's just one of those horrible birthing things). He told me he needed to do it, he thought it was the safest path and the best thing to do, and I said fine. 'Do what you think is best.' Then he kept explaining and I was clearly distracted because, having thought the conversation was over as I had agreed and told him to go ahead and didn't need to hear it again, I was now back with Mrs Mango.
'Ar... Are you listening to me?' he said. 
I walked back over to him and patiently listened again, like a teacher would listen to a slow child, explain the same thing over again to me, at the end of which I again told him, a little bit more curtly, to go ahead and do whatever he thinks is best. I wasn't sure how else to say it, or what else he wanted me to add - I mean, luckily, I had covered all of this in my six years of university and ten or so years as an obstetrician and knew what everything he was saying meant... oh, no wait - that was him, I was a camera operator who shot weddings and soccer games. I didn't know what was best - if it's the safest route and he thinks it the best call, then isn't it obvious that's probably the way to go? It wasn't my young age or my lack of experience that was telling me to blindly follow wherever he took us, and so needed the extra uninformative explanations, but plain common sense. If a mechanic tells me I have a problem with my radiator, I don't usually disagree and tell him to adjust my roof racks - I just say, 'please fix the radiator then.'
But now the biggest problem I had with him was this: after looking back on it after many years, a couple of extra births, and a chat with my sister, a nurse, what he didn't say when he explained it several times, was exactly how much danger Mrs Mango and my baby boy were in. They both could have died, I was told much later. Because when the inevitable time came, just before he nearly ripped my son's head off, they hit the alarm button (which they told us was for emergencies) and suddenly there was about twenty people in the room. Since I've now been at other births and this hasn't happened again, despite circumstances just as dire, I have come to the conclusion that we weren't told the whole truth; this doctor, while explaining, had told me nothing. And so this ridiculous, infuriating, and seemingly incompetent excuse for a doctor we didn't ask for, who now sat on the ground with the ventouse in hand, and unsure about why a baby hadn't come along with it; who didn't shut up but couldn't say a thing; who I would nearly have to beg to be able to cut the umbilical cord (the only thing I was sure I wanted) because he was obviously eager to leave; who would be unsympathetic putting stitches in, and taking them out six weeks later after they hadn't dissolved (perhaps if he had used the right ones); who obviously had no idea of speaking to or dealing with living human beings; would be the one to bring our first born into the world and change our lives forever......