also, i learn something about my ob-gyn. and my thoughts on the practice.
Josh: "You want to practice parking?"
Cher: "What's the point? Everywhere you go has valet."
What medication can French schools now distribute without the consent of the students' parents?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
Okay, I'm going to get caught up the old-fashioned way: I'm going to do one long entry.
Sunday
Darin and I had our Prepared Childbirth class, so we couldn't get Deirdre and Mom to the airport for their 1pm flight. We started looking into calling a car to come pick them up. They decided instead to fly back on the 9am flight, and for that we could drive them.
I told everybody I'd come wake them at 7, and Deirdre laughed--"Madeline wakes up around 6, we'll be up." And she was right, they were. I got to dress Madeline, and I discovered the key was to go fast, not go easy, because if you go easy you will never, ever get the baby dressed. We dropped them at the airport and trusted that not many people want to fly from Burbank to San Francisco early on a Sunday morning, so the three of them would be able to fly standby.
On the way to class, Darin and I stopped at Michel Richard, a patisserie near the hospital, for breakfast. It's my new favorite place, because it has the best chocolate croissants I've found in LA: great chocolate, not too greasy bread. Darin had an omelet he said was perfect. I sat next to a family that had a 6-week-old baby, which I kept staring at. I realized all I can think about our babies, and I used to make fun of women like that. I hoped I wasn't going to burst into tears.
Our Prepared Childbirth class had the tour of the hospital. It looks pretty well put together: 11 Labor/Delivery/Recovery rooms, and about 50 private postpartum rooms. Evidently Cedars-Sinai only has private rooms, which is way cool. The baby stays with the mother all the time, except for the hour or so when they take the baby to the nursery for weighing and first injections--but the daddy (or partner) is encouraged to accompany the nurse during these procedures.
The best part is the Emergency Room entrance we're supposed to use, which has valet parking. I am not making that up. You can, actually, leave your car in the Emergency Room area (I assume there are spaces) for about 24 hours, until your wife will allow you out of her sight so you can go park your car, or you can leave the car with the valet. I suspect I know which one Darin will do.
Valet parking at the Emergency Room. I love LA.
I wasn't thrilled during the second half of class, during which we talked about cesareans and labor variations, by which they mean "Horrible, terrible things that can go wrong, not that they probably will but we have to tell you about them anyhow." I started to curl up into a fetal ball (well, as much as I can at this point) listening to the descriptions of abruptio placentia and placentia previa (which, actually, one woman in our class has, so her cesarean has been scheduled for this Saturday). I started to get teary during the cesarean video at the part where the baby gets pulled out of the mother and starts waving its little arms around. I'm always afraid to look around the room at the end of the videos, in case a)I'm the only one overwrought by these things or b)I'm not the only one, I see someone else crying, and I'll just lose it.
But I felt much better about going to the hospital after our tour. It's like Cedars-Sinai is a well-run hospital or something.
(Did any of you see The Simpsons recently where an ambulance has to take Marge to the hospital and the drivers ask Homer where they should take her? He keeps saying, "I love her, I want her to have the best." The sign on the front of the ambulance rolls over to something like "Hospital Beth Israel," and Homer says, "I don't love her that much!" Then the sign rolls to "Our Lady of Lourdes" and he says, "I love her more than that!" Finally it gets to "Springfield Presbyterian" and Homer says, "Perfect!" Darin and I have been making jokes about that ever since: "I don't love you that much!")
Darin and I also discovered while we were there that my ob-gyn is the head of the Medical Executive committee for the hospital. (From watching ER, we thought that position was only for surgeons.) I wondered aloud if my doctor would have enough time to deliver my baby, and, since he is a big muckety-muck, if he could introduce us to Steven Spielberg--who has his name on about half the hospital--who was in Cedars-Sinai at that moment having a kidney removed.
(Darin later found out that the doctor who delivered him at Michael Reese in Chicago was also the head of the Medical Executive committee there. So it's some kind of hereditary thing.)
We decided to go to Babies 'R' Us and pick up a few things we didn't get at the baby shower, like a car seat. Remind me never to go to Babies 'R' Us on a weekend--it's insane. It's wall-to-wall people and their kids, because this is clearly the only time during the week they can come, but as I pointed out to Darin, it's not the only time of the week we can come. Half the boxes were ripped open and moving up and down the aisles was tricky at best.
We went insane and bought the car seat and a car seat stroller and a diaper genie. If the baby shows up tomorrow, we will be allowed to take her home from the hospital because we have the car seat. I have relaxed that much more--which is to say, not much, but some.
We came home and I thought, I've had a very full weekend, I'm a little tired. Darin started playing Civilization: Call To Power and kept telling me bits about it. I said, "Honey, don't you want to lie down for a bit?" He said, no, he was going to watch TV. But then he came in and sat next to me on the bed with his book.
Four hours later...
It was dark and we were both pretty groggy. We got up and did something for dinner--can't remember what--and watched The Sopranos. Eventually I decided that the charade had gone on long enough and I went back to bed.
Monday
I decided to buy some of the stuff I hadn't gotten on Sunday, such as cloth diapers (a.k.a. burping towels, or "what you must always have on hand around a baby") and a package of newborn diapers. Yes, I am really afraid of this baby showing up unexpectedly, possibly in the middle of the night when I am too sleepy to do anything about it, such as go to the hospital.
I also went by Target and bought a maternity bra (I guess my chest has increased a bit more than I'd been willing to admit) and a new pair of leggings--I need one more pair of pants for this final month.
We had a jam-packed afternoon. I was going to drive Darin to his meeting, thereby making sure we ended up in the same car at the proper time later in the afternoon. I got into my car and discovered the battery had died. (Or worse. I'm hoping it's the battery.) So we had to take one car, we had no choice. I drove him to his meeting, then stopped by Fernando's to feed his cats, then went and got myself some lunch only about 3 hours after I should have gotten it, and then went to go pick Darin up from his meeting so we could go interview a pediatrician.
This pediatrician was my ob-gyn's ped for all 3 of his kids. The office is a rather long (but doable) walk from our house. Darin and I came up with a list of questions and in his introductory spiel the ped hit every single one of them. (I guess we didn't have very unusual questions.)
Then we drove to Cedars-Sinai one more time for our penultimate baby class, Infant Care. The diapering and swaddling class. Darin let me handle most of the exercises, since I am just a wee bit more nervous about doing all of these things than he is. He figures he will have plenty of chances to practice on Bug.
The teacher started off by describing Cedars's security policy since everyone (I admit it, me too) is worried about someone walking off with their baby. Cedars puts ID bracelets on each of the baby's ankles, an ID on the umbilical cord clamp, an ID on the mother, and an ID on the father. Evidently the biggest problem is the mother allowing someone to take the baby out of her room, not someone stealing the baby from the nursery. The teacher didn't give statistics on how many babies Cedars misplaces a year, though.
There were a few women at the class alone. I said to Darin, "I feel sorry for those women." He said, "I feel sorrier for the parents who don't come to these classes at all."
There was one guy there by himself: his wife had gone into premature labor and had had their baby the day before, so he was down here learning how to care for his new baby boy.
Today
I called AAA and the guy came out to start my car. Turns out it wasn't the battery. Another AAA guy, with a flatbed truck, had to come by to load the car up and take it to the dealer. I'm trapped at home! Trapped!
Things I did not know: I looked up my ob-gyn on the web and found an interesting Village Voice article about the terrorist campaign against abortion doctors. Turns out my doctor has been shot. Yeesh.
There are several articles about my doctor (and the shooting) on the LA Times site, but I have to pay to get them. Now I'm really curious, as you might imagine. I guess this is what God gave us libraries for.
What's the most surprising thing you've ever found out about someone?
Today Xeney expounds on her hate of Ally McBeal. I have never watched the show; there was something about what I'd heard about it and the commercials that set my teeth on edge from the beginning. Darin and I watched The Practice, so I did not think it was a David E. Kelley thing, I thought it was just the concept of Ally McBeal.
I've decided it was a David E. Kelley thing.
We stopped watching The Practice a few months ago. I don't know if it was the guy-dressed-as-a-nun thing or the dentist or what. Darin started referring to it as the David-E.-Kelley-freak-of-the-week show. Every case had some bizarre twist, which led to Darin and I spending more time guessing the twist than getting involved in the show.
We also got a little disgusted by the way that every member of the firm had some totally off-the-wall case that he or she was personally involved with. It got to Jessica Fletcher levels, where you didn't want to be a friend of Jessica's because sooner or later you were going to be accused of murder. Same with The Practice: everyone connected to members of the firm is a raving looney.
There were a few other things--like the law practice itself--that had us going "Huh?" constantly. Maybe that's how law practices actually do work, and that would be fine. But Kelley, an intelligent man, would know that was not how most Americans--despite the rumors, we're not all lawyers--think law offices work. And when you do something in drama that the audience is not expecting, rather than gloss over it you have to call it out and explain it, so that everyone understands and maybe learns something. (An example: a recent ER had a shootout in the ER, but no one gets hit, let alone killed. it would have been a good place to point out that most gunfights work that way in reality: lots of noise, very little aiming, even by veterans.) The Practice just went past anomalies like they were no big deal.
In November or December I said, "Do you want to watch this any more?" Darin could take it or leave it, so we stopped watching.
Usually the show was well-written and well-acted, so I don't have any complaints on those grounds. It just got a little tiresome to see how off-the-wall they were going to be this time. But everyone takes it seriously because it's ostensibly a drama. Well, whatever: I'm over it.
I would ask in my forum what TV shows annoy you, but Xeney already asked that today in hers.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Copyright 2000 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com