the underwear drawer

hopefully the last meta post for a while

Despite my long-held reluctance to shut down or screen the comments section--what is hell do you think this is, Au, Nazi Germany?--I realized I should have shut the thing down a while ago when, the day after I finally pulled the plug, I just felt like this huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. It wasn't so much that I couldn't take the comments myself (though of course I didn't love reading the more crack-potty of them, they did on occasion have a certain amusement value) but I did cringe at the prospect of other people, like Joe or his family reading comments critical of them, and thinking that I instigated or goaded the more extremist faction in some way. As it is, Joe has asked me more than once in the past year to not write about Cal anymore, or to change Cal's name on my blog (a subterfuge that I don't think would work at this point, after three and a half years to call him "Stan" or something), because, in his words, "there are too many fucking psychos out there." I know that taking down comments doesn't change the fact that unpleasant people exist, but it certainly projects a little distance so that it doesn't feel like I have people screaming in my front yard. I mean, if I had a yard to scream in. So anyway, for now, let's just carry on as we have, only now minus all the distracting background noise.

Oh wait, one more thing: I woke up this morning to a filled e-mail inbox, and after the initial residual oh shit, what now dread of opening up those first few messages, I found myself speechless and overwhelmed by all your kindness. I'm always afraid of seeming like I'm fishing for the nice e-mails, because that's lame and I'm sure you have better things to do than cushion my delicate flower of an ego, but man, after that last post, they really helped me feel better. So thank you all so much for taking the time to write. I'm humbled and re-energized to keep up my end of the deal.

So.

I believe now that I have fully done everything that pregnant women are supposed to do to spur on premature labor (or at least labor at term), but so far, no dice. This is truly one tenacious kid I have up in there. Working a twelve-hour day, on my feet and racewalking nearly the whole time I thought would surely get things moving. Not drinking enough water because water is only for people with time to stop by the cooler, and who has time for such frivolity? Running up to that stat intubation in the ICU earlier this week, with all those stairs and the beeping and the big fat patient not interested in the fact that oxygen is necessary for, you know, living. Nothing. Everyone at work has been so nice about this pregnancy--not letting me push the heavy stretchers or lift my patients, but honestly, at this point, I'm like, "300 pound lady needing to be positioned in lateral decub? Let me help! And then jump up and down while eating pineapple dipped in castor oil!" Anything to get this show on the road, for god's sake.

Due to the specificities of fitting in appointments that match up with my work schedule and the winter holiday season, I don't think I've seen the doctor who's supposed to be "my" OB since...oh, probably 32 weeks? Which is fine. I liked my OB in New York quite a bit, but I really haven't gotten a chance to get too close to this OB that I've been following here and I don't feel married to her by any means. Anyway, while it would be nice to feel all BFF 4-evah! with my practitioner, I largely view my OB as my facilitator to move baby from point A (inside) to point B (outside), so barring any glaring evidence of poor training or judgement, I am pretty much happy with whoever the practice throws me.

This past Monday, for instance, was my first time being examined by a male OB, and despite some initial knee-jerk qualms (not so much over the fact of the male gender itself so much as the size of his hands, if you know what I mean) I have decided that he is my favorite one of all the members of the six-person practice, and wish that, if I had known more before we moved, that I had just gotten in with him on the ground floor. He just seemed very nice and efficient and receptive, and was of the age that I could easily imagine that I would have gone to med school with him or something like that. Which, I guess would have been kind of weird, almost as weird as when I had Cal and the OB intern who did my intake exam had been one of my medical students just a few months prior. Awkward!

Anyway, we are now at 3cm, 50% effaced, and I had my membranes stripped, for what it's worth. So we'll wait and see. Ling Ling still has nine hours to make it for a 2008 tax break, which would mark the very first and probably last chance he could have to actually save his parents some money.