Limited Time Offer! Get Your Doula Now!

Our last prenatal appointment, which was ostensibly to check my weight, blood pressure, urine, and make sure that Stanley is still in there, was supposed to last 15 minutes. But the woman who came in to greet us was a midwife, and she was clearly drugged to the teeth with thoughts of Baby. "Glorious!" was one of the first things she said, outside of introducing herself to me and to my husband (the first time he has actually been acknowledged without prompting--admittedly a point in her favor). The dialogue went downhill from there.
"Fantastic!"
"Isn't it wondrous?"
"Oh joy!" were all interjected into the conversation, which she carried on mostly by herself, needing only small amounts of prompting ("No problems, just a small problem sleeping, but I hear that's norm-") to tell me all about breathing techniques and homeopathy and how badly she slept when she was pregnant and whatever else came to mind before she ran out of air and had to breathe in more. Both my husband and I were now late for work, and so I tried to shorten my answers to monosyllabic yeses and nos, until finally, 45 minutes later, we were let go.
Please god, shoot me now.

That was a few days ago. Since then it's been mostly quiet on the baby front, to my infinite relief, but today a woman sauntered into my office on another pretense and asked that tired old question: When are you due? Distracted, I told her, which she used as an opening to introduce herself as a doula, and did I know about the doula program and here was all this information about doulas, and she would be happy to answer any questions I had about the doula program-
Please, please go away now.

But wait! There's more to giving birth than just midwives and doulas, not to mention registered nurses, doctors and... oh yeah, the woman actually giving birth... in case you were worried if you were going to be able to keep it all straight in your mind, we've introduced...

wait for it...

wait for it....

the prenatal coordinator.

We get to see the prenatal coordinator next month, where she will most likely ask us if we've given any thought to a birth plan.
Yes, I expect I'll say. I plan to give birth.