I loved Harry Potter. The saddest part of it was once I had finished it Sunday morning, and Eric was reading it, and I didn't have any more Harry Potter to read myself. Harry Potter withdrawal isn't any fun.

And neither is nasal spray withdrawal. Luckily, I think I realized just in time that I had been using that stuff too long, so hopefully I didn't sustain any long-lasting damage. Although this cold is STILL HERE.

I saw my first two deliveries last night (well, the first two of this year; I saw two during first year also). They were pretty cool. The first one was pushing under a failed epidural, and it can't be any fun to have to go natural when you weren't planning to -- especially not for the stitches afterward. The second one wasn't pushing at all, which made the baby's heart rate drop between contractions, so that was a tense delivery. There are likely many reasons she wasn't pushing, but I don't really think the epidural was one of them. I think the thing I was most struck with was how floppily a baby gets held once it's delivered. You spend the next six months worrying about head support, but in those first 30 seconds, it's just a vice grip around the neck and nothing else. Of course, it being private practice, I didn't get to do anything, but NEXT Monday will be here soon enough.

And while I'm on the subject of private practice, I just have to gripe about my doctor for a minute.
-She smokes. In her office with the door shut. She turns on a little desk air purifier and sucks them down like they're her last breath. Which, ironically, they are. She apologizes for exposing me to it, which I appreciate, but it's still disgusting.
-She's really, really smart and loves to educate her patients, but she takes forever to do it, which makes her run chronically behind schedule. In the first two hours yesterday, we saw 5 patients, when probably more like 10 had been scheduled. We saw the 2:45 appointment at 4:45. Why her patients put up with it, I don't know. But they really, really, really love her.
-She loves to talk about herself, which if I remember correctly, you aren't really supposed to do. But she illustrates every story and answer to a question with what happened to HER when she was pregnant, or how old SHE was at menarche, or what SHE'S doing for perimenopausal symptoms. I don't know if it's the fact that she does it at all or the fact that I've now heard it all multiple times a day for over a week that is driving me crazy.
-She's from Western KY, so she has an accent -- no big deal, everyone around here does. But she has some country turn of phrases that drive me crazy as well. Like, "Fair to middlin'" in response to "How are you?". She also says "mute point" and talks about putting her "John Henry" on documents. Seriously, she graduated magna cum laude from medical school but has been saying "John Henry" instead of "John Hancock" for almost 50 years!

There, I feel better now that I've gotten it out. Overall, I can't complain. She's a great teacher, even if I don't get to do much (but really, if I were going to my Ob/Gyn who I'd been seeing for 15 years, I wouldn't want a med student doing an internal exam on me, either). I am now very good at measuring fundal heights, though, which is trickier than it seems. She's also very frank and talks about the problems of the business of medicine, and of Ob/Gyn in particular, very willingly, which I find very interesting. But that's a discussion for another day.

Oh, and the best part about private practice? Office hours, 10-5. With a 7:30 am surgery thrown in a couple times a week, and some evening deliveries a couple times a week as well, but over all, it is not bad. For me, at least; she still rounds at the hospital every morning and takes overnight Ob call, but I don't have to do any of that, because as she says, my time will come soon enough.