I mentioned in an earlier post that our doctor is a D.O. I would also like to mention that she rocks.

Last week we did a tour of the Labor and Delivery wing of the hospital, and we were a little disappointed by a number of things. According to hospital policy, once we are admitted Ashley won’t be allowed to have anything but ice chips until the baby is born. The general theory behind this (misguided) practice is that it’s better that women in labor have empty stomachs in case they need to be anesthetized for a c-section or other surgery. Of course, like most of these modern techniques in hospital births, not having enough calories to push can make the labor go on “too long,” and the doctor will likely recommend a c-section. We were also shown the “baby’s first bed,” a sterile little plastic enclosure that will fortunately not be our baby’s first bed.

Anyway, on to why our doctor rocks. We went in for an appointment to see if the baby is still sitting breech (yep), and we brought a list of questions with us (because we kept forgetting our questions in the appointments). To our relief and excitement, our doctor said she let’s all of her mothers eat during labor! Not that Ashley will necessarily want to eat, but she’s read great things about drinking Gatorade or miso broth to replace electrolytes.

We also talked to her about what will happen if our little bug wants to stay breech. She said she has delivered many breech babies vaginally, but never on first time pregnancies. And this is where my respect went through the roof: she said if the baby was still breech and we still wanted to deliver vaginally, she would do it and call in another doctor she knows who’s done a lot more breech deliveries to help. How cool is that?! She’s willing to try something she hasn’t done before, and she’s also cautious and knowledgeable enough to bring in help!