Month: December 2013
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A Newborn Baby’s First for the New Year.
I feel a little like Edward Snowden here but it has to come out sometime. Someone will blow the whistle eventually… There is no first baby of the New year! I know each hospital in every city competes for the honour. And then, at least in Canada, there are the provincial competitions, and even national winners… But it’s […]
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An Obstetrical Christmas
Christmas means different things to different people: stories surface, myths revive and the more hopeful among us find solace in the often blatant messages of charity and benevolence they radiate. I’m not sure why this time of year tugs so much on the heartstrings, but it does. We expect it; we await it; we demand it… […]
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A night on call
I got a thank you card the other day; someone had put it in my mailbox at the hospital. I suppose it was nothing special, but it touched me: a name I didn’t recognize, an enclosed picture of a beautiful baby, and hand-written with unforgettable penmanship a heartfelt thanks that I had helped the couple in their moment of joy and unexpected […]
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Nature versus Princess Nurture
I’ve often wondered how much of a role acculturation plays in modelling who we are. Am I a gynaecologist because my mother restricted my prairie play-things to a rather effeminate teddy bear named Girl and a doctor’s bag that probably wasn’t? Or did I choose to play with them -as opposed to, say, waving tree […]