High

Frankly, there's not a whole lot to love about Obstetrics, even though there's a happy ending with a baby. It's kind of like surgery plus "Gossip Girl," if you get my drift. One of my favorite things has to be dads during Cesaerean sections. Surprisingly, most are pretty tough when it comes to blood (and C-sections are bloody). Compared to a vaginal delivery, the C-section is an opportunity where dad can contribute something other than weak words like "you're doing great, I can see the head." In a C-section, dad is mom's eyes, her reporter, and I think dads secretly relish being the first parent to see and photograph the baby. It takes the delivery our of mom's hands and makes it a team process. It's easy to forget how wanted many babies are, how immediately loved they are when a significant portion of your babies are born to mothers who don't quite get contraception.

And yet, I still love the first moment when mom holds her baby best. Today I was present in the scariest moments when it was unclear if my patient would survive. She did, thanks to the expert judgment of my Attendings. So I quietly slipped into her room as I was leaving for the night. She asked how her baby was. And I had found that lucky pocket of time when the nurses were bringing the baby to her (and I looked like controller of the universe), and so I watched from the doorway as mom, alone, held her baby for the first time. It was strangely emotional and I left the room silently. Assured that she would live, I remembered these words from Ray Bradbury's "Invisible Man" about an astronaut floating in space:

He fell swiftly, like a bullet, like a pebble, like an iron weight, objective, objective all of the time now, not sad or happy or anything, but only wishing he could do a good thing now that everything was gone, a good thing for just himself to know about.

When I hit the atmosphere, I’ll burn like a meteor.

“I wonder,” he said, “if anyone’ll see me?"