9 Things I Forgot To Thank My OB-GYN For

During our first meeting, I made it clear to my OB-GYN that I had a history of disordered eating, and preferred to not know my weight at any point during my pregnancy. All I needed to know, I told her, was if at any point my weight crossed into some kind of "danger zone" and at risk of being unhealthy for me or my baby. I never needed to remind her of this again, and she never let a number slip.

Late into my pregnancy and at one of my appointments, I was lying on the examination table for one of our regular examination things. At this point in the game, and as a super pregnant lady, I was pretty used to the poking and prodding. In fact, I would even go so far as to say I was generally at ease with your doctor doing whatever down there. I'm particularly good at playing "the patient," in that if someone asks me to do something, I do it.

So when I heard my OB say, "just press a little bit" while her finger was in my vaginal canal, I interpreted that as meaning that I should be the one doing the pressing. So I summoned my kegel muscles and pressed, basically clamping down around her finger with my vaginal walls. "Oh, not you!" she said, with a laugh, and then expertly and professionally moved on like this happens all the time (maybe it does?) and did her thing. What she meant, I realized, was that she was going to be pressing down on me with her finger. Duh. I was red with shame, but she didn't even blink.

First and second trimesters were pretty gnarly when it came to Vomit Town, and the only things I could muster an appetite for were carb-filled goodies like mac and cheese, plain pizza, and cheese sandwiches. I worried that one day I'd walk into my OB-GYN's office and she'd tell me I have to lay off all the starches and carbs and, instead, choose an all-vegetable, high protein diet.

Thankfully, that never happened. I received a kind high-five from my doctor for my pizza eating, and for that I am grateful.

The day I went into labor wasn't ideal, like, for her. She had planned to be sailing with her own young children. It was a beautiful September day, with blue skies and warm (but not too warm) weather, and I still feel bad about having torn her away from time with her own kids to be there for me. I'm sure I could have easily been cared for by one of the other three doctors in her practice, but she insisted on coming back for me and taking care of me herself.

I was freaking out during the latter part of my surgery. Like, losing it, especially after the baby was out and my husband and the baby had left and I was being stitched back up. My OB-GYN kept on reassuring me everything was A-OK, and that I was doing great. She never wavered in sending me confident, badass vibes, and even though I felt like I was falling apart, I am grateful that she made me feel I was in expert hands.

The first few weeks after my surgery, I never thought I would ever look at my incision with anything more than disgust. However, now, I kind of like it. It is thin, faded, and even kind of cute. It hides right above my bikini line, unnoticeable even in the most revealing of bikini bottoms. She even cut open into it to retrieve my second son, and it still healed beautifully.

We had worked really hard to try to prevent a c-section birth with my first son. First, when my son hadn't turned by the week babies tend to turn upside down, she scheduled me for a procedure to have him manually turned from Breech position (called a "Version"). In the hospital, during labor, there were several scares, including a very low heart rate from the baby, early on in my labor. Throughout those scares, though, my OB-GYN held fast to our plan to delay the c-section as long as possible, until there really was no other choice (which I was on board with).

When it was confirmed that I had prenatal diabetes, my OB-GYN spoke to me for the better part of an hour, answering all my questions and agreeing with me about how much it sucked that I now had to monitor the one joy I was getting from being pregnant which was mostly guilt-free daily ice cream runs, a never-ending supply of cut watermelon, and gallons of sweet tea.

For the first weeks of my first sons life, I was deeply depressed. My hormone levels dropped insanely quickly, leaving me droopy, lethargic, and sad. I thought it was just the new way of life for me, especially with the lack of sleep, and what I was essentially experiencing was a normal state of being post-childbirth.

However, when I went in for a checkup and within a few minutes of chatting with me, my OB-GYN noticed something was off with me. "You've lost your light," she said, looking at my face. "You were so full of light during your whole pregnancy, but now it's just gone." Then she asked me a series of questions that doctors use to note symptoms of postpartum depression, and I had nearly all of them. Thanks to that diagnosis, I was able to seek help and get better. It was life changing.