Doctor Lottery

I found out today that my obstetrician may not deliver our baby. In fact, it's highly unlikely that he'll be the doctor on-call. I'm five months pregnant and my understanding was that he would be on-call for us most of the time, but if he were for some reason unavailable, then we'd get another doctor. I probably misheard the secretary months ago, but in my head my odds of getting the doctor that I've been seeing for 5 months were about 85%. Those odds suddenly dropped to 10%.

I was upset. I told the staff how impersonal this was, and that I didn't trust hospitals to begin with and now this... The nurses and staff were surprisingly reasurring, and I left with the goal of getting to know EIGHT doctors who might deliver our child one day in June or July. They thought I had time to meet each twice.

I was thinking that when I grew up in a small town I never would have imagined getting to know a staff of eight doctors that might be needed at an important medical moment. I had two doctors. One got old and then the next one was young and nice and, well, one guy.

I never realized how nice that was until today.

I wonder if our child will experience a team of pediatricians...