So. I skipped my NST and OB appointments today, both because I shouldn’t be driving myself places and because I am pouting over the brush off I received on Thursday. I passed the buck to my husband, enlisting him to call and ream out the OB for being mean to me, and to get a plan set in motion for Operation: Get This Thing Out of Me. He called Friday. He called several times today. Finally, when he reached a live person, he learned this:

Are you ready?

The Doctor? You remember; the one that I love? The one who I was grateful for, given that I was so upset to be transferred away from my midwife. The young, up and coming hip doctor from the teaching hospital who didn’t blink when I refused a PAP smear and said she doesn’t even use labor stopping drugs anymore? Is on vacation this week. Out till Monday. I was in her fucking office on Thursday, Internet! I was 6 feet away from her, crying in her waiting room. She couldn’t be bothered to come speak to me that day, and I was already mad as hell about THAT. Imagine my dismay when I learn today that not only could she not be bothered to speak to me Thursday, but she purposely had them schedule me for today so that she wouldn’t have to meet with me at all.

My appointment was scheduled with the in-house midwife, who unfortunately this afternoon was on the receiving end of the rarely seen but much feared Luft Wrath. Her only answer was to offer to call in a sleep medication, which as it turns out is not covered by my insurance unless a Doctor authorizes it, and of course when the pharmacy tried to obtain that authorization they found that the office was closed.

This feels like a sitcom episode. Perhaps the writers for Notes From the Underbelly will read this and somehow turn it into witty banter and cute cliché’s. Hahah! Look how insensitive doctors can be! Hee hee! See how neurotic women can be when they’re in pain! See how women think they’re the only ones ever to suffer the classic pains of pregnancy! See how funny it can be when phone lines are burning up with missed messages and huge pharmacy bills abound!

Is this normal? Is it normal to have had a conversation with a person about a delivery in the 37^th or 38^th week, based just as much on her fears of the risk factors involved in the pregnancy as my own intolerance for two straight weeks of regular contractions, and then to find that she’d simply omitted the fact that SHE WOULDN’T EVEN BE HERE? That even if I DID start to dilate this week, the only doctor willing to facilitate the VBAC won’t even be here to attend me? Oh my god. I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.

My good friend Mary made me eggplant parmesan today. Maybe I’ll just go into labor tonight and this will all get resolved in our bathroom.

So much for my healing fucking birth.