birth story: where's the baby?

While we were enduring an interminable hospital stay following the Cesarean, we met a host of medical characters, some of whose company we enjoyed and others that rather rubbed us the wrong way. One such character in the latter camp was a doctor among the Family Medicine staff at OHSU. He struck us both as a self-important, arrogant fellow, instructing us in infant care in a manner both condescending and overly didactic. He treated us as though we were from a lower class of Portlander. Perhaps it was my refusal to put clothes on (once you've suffered several days of labor under the care of dozens of midwives, nurses and anesthesiologists, you rather lose your modesty altogether) - or M's refusal to change his (we hardly planned on a multi-day stay and he could not bear to leave me)- whatever it was, this fellow seemed to deem us quite beneath him.

One day this doctor entered our room just as I was waking from a nap. M had taken X into his bed for the hours preceding and was cuddling and keeping him for me so that I might get some desperately needed rest. The doctor spritzed his hands with an antibacterial hand sanitizer, checked his pager and then turned to me, his eyes glancing wildly from my bed to the hospital-issue bassinet and back to my bed. Bewildered and alarmed, he exclaimed: "Where's the baby!?"

"Oh no! Where's the baby!?" Matt retorted, his wit as quick as lightening. M jumped up from the bed and shrugged in faux confusion, then promptly turned and retrieved the baby from behind him where he lay peacefully sleeping on the bed.

I burst into laughter, as did M, at our little joke. The punctilious doctor was not amused. "The baby should be in the bassinet!" he instructed us. I tried to explain to him our purpose in leaving him with M, but by this time the doctor had finished with us and our intolerable impudence. He made quick business of his visit and left in somewhat of a huff.

Needless to say, we transferred from the care of this good doctor to that of another a bit more caring. We never saw him again, nor do we hope to. But every now and again one of us will bellow in jest, "where's the baby?!" and we'll have another good laugh at his expense.

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Note: Since I failed to record my observations during and after the birth in real time, I hope to draft small reflections from time to time on various memories of my experience. Thus, the term "birth story" precedes the title of this post and is meant to indicate just such a reflection.