In going to the doctor so much recently, something has occured to me.
I like my doctors. I like my doctors a lot. So much so, in fact, that if my insurance wouldn’t cover them I would pay their fees myself without blinking. I trust them with my body, my health, my life, and even more telling, I trust them to decide when it’s really necessary to do bloodwork and such for me. With my phobia, that says a lot.
It took me a long time to find doctors I could like this way. I went through a lot of horror stories, and a lot of just ‘blah, whatever’ doctors. And how I found the people is kind of a funny story.
I was pregnant for the second time. The people who’d done my first birth were no longer in practice (which is kind of a good thing, it was AWFUL). I basically picked one from the HMO list and went to her. Things went along ok, kinda normal, until I was 7 months pregnant. At this point, I made and handed her a list of my needs for labor. I didn’t want an episiotomy unless it was NECESSARY (it almost never is), I wanted to be able to eat and drink if I chose, I wanted to have a doula there with me, I wanted Nick with me at all times (he’s my husband, half of my stability rests with him when I’m in situations where I can’t rely only on myself), and a few other things. She went down the list and told me, tick-tick-tick, why I couldn’t have any of them. Then she proceeded to tell me horror stories of women ripping when I objected to having an episiotomy automatically. shudder I decided then and there that I was leaving, 7 months pregnant or not.
I spent most of a week sitting at home, calling LITERALLY every single midwife and ob in the Oxford book. I would insist on talking to doctor or midwife who would be seeing me - if they couldn’t afford to talk for ten minutes, they weren’t for me. Selfish, maybe, but I’m the most important person in my life, and I’d had it up to here with doctors grin.
On one of those days, I was talking with someone at a center, and she warned me - warned me! - that they were a natural birthing center. They wouldn’t give drugs unless I were really in way too much pain, they didn’t like to have me lying down being monitored, etc - and if I wanted a hospital style birth I should probably go to a hospital. I laughed and went to her open house (she has them regularly). It was great. The woman is bright, cheerful, sweet, and capable, and she looked at my list and said “oh, this is all standard practice here - that’s no problem”. I had to talk with her about my history and my pregnancy so far - I was 7 months pregnant, ordinarily taking a woman that far along is not done by anyone but hospitals, but it was kind of a special case. I told her about my last doctor. She was shocked - and when I told her about the woman sticking me on bedrest for six months because I’d spotted a little in Month One, she told me I ought to report the doctor. Horror stories, bedrest unnecessarily, things like that are bad practice. I never did, but it made me feel better. And we had a wonderful birth, as weird as that sounds. It was painful, of course, but… well, put it this way:
For the first two months after I had Johnathan (with the horror story that that was), I was lying in bed feeding the baby and sleeping, sometimes watching tv, not feeling good, and swearing up and down I would never have another kid again. In fact, I swore that for three years. It was that bad the first time. When I got pregnant with Morgan, we had a LOT of fear to work through.
For the first week after I had Morgan, I was in awe of MYSELF. -I- had given birth to Morgan. No drugs, no episiotomy, no nothing. I did it. That beautiful little screaminghungrymouthbigstinkybutt had been all my work.
The difference is huge.
Having decided I loved Barbara, and having gotten my doula from a referral from her (who I also adored, and who did so much for me while I was in labor), we decided to try it again. I asked her for a referral (here, gimme a name, lemme try them type referral) to a primary physician. She gave me two, because one (the woman) was 7 or 8 months pregnant now, and probably wouldn’t be able to see me. So then I met my current Primary - who is, in his spare time, an accomplished artist, and is a very quiet/reserved, polite, and genuinely caring man.
I’m just amazed. We seem to have stumbled onto The Circle of good doctors in our area 
Anyone else have particularly good - or bad - doctors? How did you meet them, and (if bad), do you plan on getting rid of them?
-Elthia