How Do You Know When It’s Time To Go?
I finished my residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1997. I have been delivering babies for almost thirty years. I have participated in every type of delivery possible. I have done quick deliveries, and deliveries that took days. I have done emergency deliveries and calm relaxing deliveries. I have done deliveries where the mother almost died. I have done deliveries where the baby was dead. I have done operative deliveries and instrumental deliveries and unmedicated deliveries and deliveries that have occurred in every imaginable position. I have delivered twins. I have delivered a baby in a bath tub. I have done several in the emergency room and one in a parking lot and one on an airplane. I have done thousands of deliveries. I cannot remember a time in my adult life when I was not delivering babies. I have loved delivering babies. Being an obstetrician has defined me.
But now I am done.
When I have been asked how long I would continue to deliver babies my answer has always been the same: I will do it until the joy and the thrill of delivering babies no longer outweighs the sacrifice. I have always enjoyed this life. I have been excited to be the person who so carefully and expertly brings a baby (or babies) into the world. I have even secretly loved being in a dark and mostly empty hospital at night while most of the world is asleep. But the down…
