Certified Nurse Catfight

Yesterday I had two checkups, one with the clinic associated with the hospital where I had A and one with the birth center.

First up: the clinic. The clinic is filled with flyers about how to apply for WIC benefits and how to appeal for WIC benefits when your application is rejected. This is not my demographic and I felt incredibly out of place. I get shown to an examination room (after an intern takes my vitals, skewing my BP high when I realize she's an intern mid-exam) and am seen by the Certified Nurse Practitioner. She looks at my incision (which looks great), asks me if I've thought about birth control (well, no, since I haven't really thought about sex), and then refuses to sign my pregnancy disability form.

See, my midwife called as we were going out the door to our appointment and told me she can only sign off on six weeks of pregnancy disability. Since I had a C-section, I'm entitled to eight weeks and as such need to get a doctor's signature on the form for that.

Well, the CNP says no. She has very strong opinions and basically says the midwife can sign off on all the things she can sign off on and I should march back to the birth center and make them sign my form for eight weeks' disability. It doesn't take a doctor to certify that I had a C-section.

I say that this puts me in an awkward position and ask if she would call my midwife to discuss it with her.

We go to the birth center and this call has not happened. The midwife has a more thorough exam for postpartum depression, adjusting to breastfeeding (doing spiffily, btw), as well as the birth control discussion. I raise the issue of the form and she goes to call the CNP from the clinic.

Long story short, we truck back to the clinic to get the form signed by the CNP. I don't know what ruckus this will raise with the state, but hopefully HR will now be appeased. My next checkup will be in four weeks.

Boy howdy, does delivering the baby and breastfeeding make you lose weight. I was shocked by how much weight I've lost since leaving the hospital.