Monday, September 19, 2011

"It's a beautiful life, and it's a beautiful world"*

I believe I tempted fate with my last post because The Boy decided to make his appearance right in the middle of the hurricane! He was 17 days early (still full term, but his nursery wasn't quite ready for him!) and mommy and baby are happy and healthy. (And, no, if The Boy had turned out to be The Girl, we would not have named her Irene!)

What I learned during the whole labor and delivery process (don't worry, no gory details) is that it's great to have a plan, but expect that plan to be thrown out the window (and whisked away by hurricane-force winds). My doctor was on vacation (of course) and so the on-call doctor (who I had never met) was there for the delivery. She was perfectly competent and an experienced doctor, but let me just say that I wasn't used to her brand of bedside manner. It wasn't that she was necessarily rude or mean or uncaring, she was just a bit odd.

Case in point, the doc and her husband has purchased property a few blocks from us. We noticed this piece of land because what had been a tiny old, dilapidated house surrounded by overgrown plants was very quickly transformed into a huge, gorgeous house with a manicured lawn and nice cars in the driveway. It came as no surprise that a doctor had bought it. When we first learned she was the on-call doctor, my husband recognized the name from the property transaction in the local newspaper.

During the early part of my labor (when I was still coherent and interested in engaging in small talk), the doc mentioned that she was in the hurricane evacuation zone, but that her husband was going to stay in the house with the dog. I was like, "Oh, yeah. You live not that far from us." Then I went on to compliment her on her nice new home.

Big mistake! I realized it was kind of weird that I knew where she lived and quickly explained that we had noticed how quickly the house had been built and saw the property transfer in the paper. The doc was like, "It bothers me that anyone can see how much I was taken for a property by the water." The she went on a bit of rant about how a suspicious car was driving up and down her street recently and she didn't understand why she couldn't find out who it belonged to by looking up the license plate but it's posted in the paper how much properties go for.

It seemed like a weird time to vent about such a trivial thing (given that I was in labor 2 1/2 weeks early in the middle of a hurricane) and I wasn't really in the mood to debate what goes into public records and why. Yet she kind of has a point. I don't necessarily care that property transactions are listed in the local paper, but I do think that certain things should be kept private. Hence why I'm not posting The Boy's name or a picture of him on my blog. There's no way for me to control who sees it and I'm not interested in blindly pasting my precious baby's information for any old pervert to see it.

But it I know you and you'd like to see a picture of him (and haven't already), I'd be more than pleased to brag about my perfect little guy. Just let me know!

*Fisher