Finding an OBGYN

Just a warning: this may be too much information. It's not boy-related.

So I'm pregnant and I have a confession to make: I don't have an OBGYN. I haven't gotten my annual exam since my post-A check-ups. I had one scheduled at the Birth Center and they told me when I showed up that they wouldn't take my insurance and it would cost me upwards of $270 for an annual with labs.

So I didn't get it done.

I've been dragging my heels because I knew I was now a post-C-section mommy, which meant I had to try and find a doctor who did VBACs (vaginal birth after Caesarean). This is not something they put on business cards, and there's apparently a fair amount of bait-and-switch: yes, first-trimester-mom, you can have a VBAC; well, it's week 28, let's start talking about scheduling a repeat C-section. So it's important to find out if the doctor has actually delivered any VBACs.

I don't want another C-section if I can avoid it. I don't have trauma; I don't wake up shuddering in the night thinking, what could have been. If there's a medical reason for a C-section, well, let's schedule the sucker far enough in advance that anyone who wants to be here for the birth can get plane tickets.

But the C-section wiped me out, recovery wiped me out, and this time we'll have both a newborn and a very insistent three-year-old to deal with. I don't need to have four weeks before I can manage a trip to both Target and Trader Joe's again. It is freaking major surgery, after all.

Okay. So I know that once I get that first confirmation exam, our insurance is like a pitbull that won't let go and the doctor who confirms is the doctor who delivers. I know, I can fight to change it, but I like to sidestep the insurance company fights, don't you?

None of my contacts have a decent VBAC doctor to recommend. I get a somewhat helpful list of "not this doctor," but that doesn't help me figure out who to go to.

I gather a list of doctors with positive reviews from yelp and kudzu. I read a couple local midwives' blogs and one name keeps coming up again and again. He's like a midwife in a doctor's body, they say.

I check my insurance list. The website search is inscrutable. I don't have a paper provider directory. I call and ask if he's on my plan. Yes, he is.

Great. I call Dr. Wonderful. I hear you're on my plan. I'm newly pregnant. I'd like a consultation to see if we click before I commit to your practice.

Of course we do consultations, but he's not on your insurance, they say. Not on your group, which is the important thing. You have to change from the Dancing Monkey Medical Group to the Twirling Elephant Medical Group. Then he'll see you.

I argue and plead. I talk to the insurance person. I wait patiently for cross-checking. "Sorry, honey," they say, but in a nice way. "You could switch to the other medical group and it would work."

Okay, no problem, I've got lots of other doctors on my list.

First one: Won't do VBACs. Thinks I'm silly for even asking whether or not they do them since the doctor will determine for me whether or not I can have one.
Second one: Won't do consultations. Quote: "If you're the kind of person who's interviewing doctors, you wouldn't fit into this practice."
Third one: Won't even talk to me because I'm not in the right medical group. I need to call my own PCP and get a referral from him (a blatant lie).
Fourth one: I don't have to time to be messing around interviewing people. I need to get in and have that first-visit ultrasound. "You do ultrasounds on the first visit?" "Sure, how else would we determine gestational age?"

I hang up. I cry. The only office that's treated me with a smidgen of kindness is Dr. Wonderful's and I'm not on their plan.

I sleep on it.

I call Dr. Wonderful's office the next morning. "Hi, I know I'm not on your insurance, but could you schedule a consultation and then if I like him I can meet with your insurance guru and go over exactly what I need to do to get covered?"

"Of course, honey. Our first appointment is..."

So I have one appointment scheduled, with Dr. Wonderful.

Long weekend

When I'm back to normal, I'll post about our weekend visit from the grandparents and our unplanned visit to the ER. Everyone's okay. Don't worry. We're all just a little sleep deprived and sick here.

The first of the delayed entry posts

Well, it happened. Anyone who is struggling with infertility probably doesn't want to talk to me because as far as I can tell, we have the, "Sure, why not a kid?" discussion and that's it. Boom. Each time I expect to spend six months trying to get pregnant and then, nope, a little earlier than either of us are ready for.

We had Vietnamese food a couple days before Easter, and I got sick. Not food poisoning sick, just queasy in a way that made me think, "Hmm, I haven't felt this way since...hmmm." The kind of sick that makes a woman consult a calendar and do some math. Yeah, maybe. But probably not.

Then a friend sent me pictures from our last Read-and-Critique group, and I looked at myself and thought, hmm, my face looks round. Surprisingly round. Round in a way my face hasn't looked since...nah. Couldn't be.

I have been falling asleep during our post-dinner Netflix ritual every night.

Good Friday, I get up at 5am, and since I have a couple spare pregnancy tests around (because after the first time you buy a single test, you realize that either way a test comes out, you'll want a second test), I take one. I'm donating blood on Saturday and so if I'm pregnant, I need to know.

Maybe there's a line. I squint and stare and decide no. No line.

I am in denial.

Saturday I donate blood. I am completely wiped.

Easter Sunday we get up. We have an Easter basket for A. We have breakfast.

I fall asleep on the couch within two hours of getting up.

I wake up from the nap, go upstairs, take another pregnancy test.

And this time, though it is faint, there is an undeniable line.

Daddy's cheese

I went to the restroom earlier today, which is generally a bad idea because two-and-a-half-year-olds only need the exact amount of time it takes a mommy to visit the restroom to wreak havoc on the household. I should get myself a catheter or a drip bag tied to my thigh and give up bathroom breaks altogether.

Anyway, when I came out of the restroom, A met me on the stairs with the, "I didn't do anything wrong at all, Mommy, I swear," look, which means something is amiss. I notice he's chewing something.

"What you got there?" I say.

He smiles and opens his mouth. It looks like frosting, but I know it's not frosting because he ate all the frosting off the cupcakes yesterday.

I go to the kitchen. On the top of the stove, at the edge, sit five half-unwrapped sticks of butter. Two discarded cartons of butter are on the floor.

"Are you eating butter?"

On closer inspection, one of the sticks is completely unwrapped, slightly fuzzy, and dotted with little teeth marks.

"I eat Daddy's cheese!" he tells me.

Of course. I eat olive oil on my bread. C eats butter. When we have cheese on bread, it's usually a soft cheese, which I guess looks a lot like butter. Ergo, butter is Daddy's cheese.

We washed his buttery little hands (God knows where we'll find globs of grease this evening) and put the butter away, even the fuzzy, toothmarked one.

Dinosaur sandwiches

A hasn't eaten quesadillas with me. Sometimes he'll eat them with C (ah, the Daddy power), but he generally turns his nose up at my quesadillas.

I made us a batch of plain cheese quesadillas today, and he announced that he wasn't interested and would rather have a cupcake.

"These are dinosaur sandwiches!" I said. He's had an Elmo dinosaur tape and played with dinosaurs today at preschool, so I thought dinosaurs would have a fresh appeal. "Would you like to eat an actual authentic dinosaur sandwich with Mommy?"

Yes. Yes he would. Enthusiastically and with vigor. And yes, after he finished his lunch, then he got a cupcake.

Birthday for the Devons

Jake and Niles, Devons of reference, turned nine years old this week. To celebrate, here's one who looks like Jake. But trust me, Jake would never do this. Niles, maybe, but not Jake.

Not a seal

When we went to Sea World last week, we spent some time looking at the walrus exhibit. A kept saying, "Seal!"

I would say, "It's not a seal. It has big tusks, big teeth. It's a walrus."

So what is a walrus called in our house now? Notaseal. With big teeth.

First eye exam

I should also report that A had his first eye exam (with our eye doctor, who I met while I was pregnant) and did splendidly well. He's got 20/30 vision right now and is a little bit farsighted, which is normal in kids this age.

Plumeria sale aftermath

I go away for the weekend's plumeria sale and come back to an onslaught of email and 82 new messages in Reader. Yikes.

No sign of the penny yet, so maybe he was just using his imagination.

Anyhow, I had to oversee setup on Friday from 9AM until 4PM, in the Casa del Prado in Balboa Park, which is a lovely place to be, but it's lovelier outside. Since A had speech therapy in the morning, C brought him over at noon to join me for the second half of the day.

He did great. I bought some paint-with-water books in Pooh, Mickey, and Little People themes, and those kept him busy for a while. He had a couple balls to throw and some of the other members would kick the ball around with him and catch it with him. Someone made him a bag of spritz cookies. Someone put him in one of the carts we use to haul plants around and gave him a ride. And it was a room with columns to run circles around and a big square to run around, so that was fun.

In short, he was completely spoiled, probably. He ran around giggling a lot and most of the people who work the plumeria sale are grandparents of older children and teenagers, so they all like those kinds of toddler giggles.

He had such a good time that he had a tantrum when I tried to put him in the car because it was time to go. Then he fell asleep before I left the parking lot.

The penny obsession goes too far

"A, why are you holding your tongue like that?"

"I ate a penny."

"What?"

"I ate a penny, Mommy."

Really? Okay.

Mommy calls the doctor.

"He says he ate a penny, but his speech isn't great and his imagination's really kicked in--"

"It'll pass. Give him lots of fluids, but kids can eat pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters with no problem."

"That's it? No X-rays?"

"Nope, it'll pass." (stifled giggle) "The big hazard is choking, and if he's telling you he ate a penny, he's okay."

"Thanks. Is this your laugh of the day?"

"Yeah, well no, we get these calls every day. Every day."

I don't know if he did or not...but we'll be watching now.

Penny!

A has discovered money.

I'm not sure how this happened. It's certainly not a concept we belabor around here. I think it's all the stupid pressed penny machines, although no, he's never gotten a pressed penny out of one.

Yesterday the car needed a tune-up (periodic maintenance, yadda yadda, car's fine an ouchie $400 later). So A and I went to Sea World while we waited for them to call us and say the car was done, since I thought it would be about the right amount of time. A picked Sea World. I offered him the Zoo or Sea World, and he picked Sea World. Fine.

While I was putting the car seat into the loaner, A went into my purse and got out a quarter.

"Penny!" he told me.

"Quarter," I said.

"Quarter," he said.

He carried that quarter around like it was a good luck charm. "Put it in your pocket," I said. He did, but then he had to get it out again to look at it. Quarter in hand, quarter in pocket, repeat.

Since we arrived when they opened the gates for the Shamu show, we went in and waited for the show. A thought all the hawkers were funny: "Water, ice-cold bottled water here!" "Pepsi, diet Pepsi, ice-cold lemonade!" A liked the lemonade vendor the best; he had a big deep voice and every time he walked by, A said, "Lemonade!"

But then the ice cream novelty vendor came by, and A said to me, "Ice cream, please, Mommy"

"I'm not sure you need an ice cream," I said.

"Ice cream please," he said.

"Have you got any money?"

He put his hand in his pocket and got out his quarter.

"Well, okay," I said. I got out my money to pay, and when I handed my money to the hawker, he gave her his money too.

Yes, it was a quarter he stole from my purse, but it was still awfully cute.