finding a practioner sucks

I made an appointment 5 weeks ago at a place called Clementine midwiferey. They have offices in Park slope and are affiliated with St. Vincents hospital in Manhattan. A friend of a friend who is a doula and has researched the shit out of this stuff said they were her top recommendation for a midwife in all of New York. And they were in my network so I tought everything would be great. Thursday afternoon at 4 PM I get an email from them that they don't have any more openings for May deliveries and would be cancelling my Monday appointment. I was in shock that they would cancel 2 days before when I had made the appointment so many weeks earlier, you would think if they didn't have room they could have noticed earlier! I asked the charming office manager if I could come in for a first appointment since it was such short notice and then have more time to find someone else to work with. She said NO!

Turns out union insurance is not the most progressive in the world. There's no paternity leave and only a very limited and rather odd bunch of midwives are considered in-network. I went against my better judgement and made an appointment with a midwife who is connected to St. Vincents hospital and does not have a single review on-line. Apparently she's been working for 23 years and there is literally not a review of her anywhere. She was so much worse than I ever imagianed she would be. The office is located on the 9th floor of the spellman ward in the hospital, the creaky elevator barely made it up that high. We walk in and they start throwing documents at us to fill out. I asked if I could use the bathroom and they threw a cup for a urine sample in my hands and declared that my husband could start on the paper work. It shocked me that in NYC in 2009 anyone would make the assumption that he was my husband. The waiting room was freezing. I asked for water because I was thirsty after the ride over, they told me they didn't have water. The examining room was like an icebox. And the midwife finally came in and immediately started going over my medical history then asked if I had any questions. I said no. She said no questions? And Mr. T said do you mean questions about our medical history? And she said no questions about anything.

It went downhill from there. I could not have connected less with this woman. Turns out there are 2 midwives and 3 doctors in her practice and any one of them can be there for labor. I asked if I could meet the others and she said if that mattered to me she could arrange it. Then she started listing all the diseases that she would recommend testing for immediately and started advertising some new and expensive procedure where you save your placenta in a cord bank. She suggested that I take the survey even if i am not interested because I would get a $50 gift card. That's when we decided to leave her office before she tried to touch me or things got any worse.

We walked out to the freezing cold NY morning and i started to cry. Mr. T went to work but agreed to revisit the idea of doing a home birth. Home births seem to be quite trendy in Brooklyn these days. I was scared by the idea because the hospital closest to our apartment is not supposed to be very good but after today's experience it is looking more and more appealing.

I have another consultation with someone also connected to St. Vincents but who has her own office in Manhattan, tomorrow. I also made an appointment to visit the Brooklyn birthing center.

How do people with jobs have time to deal with all this crap? It's such a headache, so stressful and time consuming and I have time to put in to it!

After the appointment i had to take a long walk to decompress and talked to my mom about her births, they were all natural and without any complications. She also confessed that she didn't see a doctor when she was pregnant with my brother until she was 6 months pregnant! Ahh the 70's.

Needless to say I haven't had much time to look for jobs today so no cute Craigslist postings on this 19th of OCtober. . .