Under The Sun

By Eleni N. Gage

I stormed through the door still clutching the paper from the gynecologist. I couldn’t believe my husband had done this to me. He had knocked me up one month after our wedding–that was good news, especially given my advanced maternal age of 36. But before doing so, he made us move from New York to Miami Beach, because his company relocated. I was in love. I was young, unless you’re counting in terms of advanced maternal age. Reader, I married him. And now here we were, in this mess. The gynecologist I had taken so long to find, a calm, sweet woman who trained in Boston, no longer did obstetrics, so she gave me a list of OB practices she recommended. Reading the names struck fear in my heart. I could identify that feeling even above the first trimester nausea. Fear and a little rage.

“Because you are making me have this baby in a foreign country–” I yelled at Emilio.

“Miami?” he asked. “The People’s Republic of Miami?”

“Because you are making me have this baby in a foreign country,” I repeated, “all the doctors in my obstetrics practice are Hispanic men, not Indian women LIKE THEY SHOULD BE!”

I realize that I am betraying, at best, bias when it comes to medical professionals. At worst, I’m a total honky racist. But I have nothing against Hispanic men, I swear. Emilio, my husband, is Nicaraguan.
So it’s easy for him to live in Miami Beach, which is practically Nicaragua. Both are hot year-round—did I mention the sun makes me break out in permanent splotches called melasma? Both are predominately Spanish-speaking. And, ever since the Sandinistas rebranded themselves, making their official colors turquoise and fuchsia instead of red and black, the dress code is the same; it’s revolution by Lilly Pulitzer.

I, on the other hand, grew up in Massachusetts, where I had a charming Indian pediatrician named Dr. Mundra. At college in Massachusetts, I roomed all four years with a lovely Indian-American girl from Strongsville, Ohio, who later became a psychiatrist. But in the ensuing thirteen years I lived in New York, I swear I had all kinds of doctors: white women, Asian women, Haitian women.

When my Miami gynecologist told me which practice she liked, I sighed. “They’re all men.”

“Yes.” She shrugged.

My husband didn’t have anything useful to add. “Sorry,” he said. Actually, it was, “Lo siento,” because this was Tuesday and we try to speak Spanish on Tuesdays to improve mine. I just sat there and thought, “Ay, Dios mío!”

A few weeks later, I still hadn’t met my doctors—obstetric practices don’t want to see you until you’re eight weeks along. Then, on New Year’s Eve, I started spotting. I had just finished dressing for a party—we were supposed to wear white, because the hosts were Brazilian, and that’s what they do on New Year’s, wear white, throw roses into the ocean and make wishes. I contemplated buying roses and heading to South Beach to wish as hard as I could that our baby would be OK. But we were too busy manning the phones. I left messages for my gynecologist, for the obstetrics practice, for my mother and sister and college roommate. Emilio talked to the hospital, who convinced him we did not want to come in to the E.R. on New Year’s Eve.

When the obstetrician I had yet to meet, Dr. Bitran, called back, I could hear glasses and silverware clinking in the background. It was a reassuring noise. I explained my situation; I was six weeks along with what my gynecologist had confirmed was an intrauterine pregnancy, bleeding a tiny bit, and supposed to leave for Nicaragua the next day.

“Spotting is fairly common,” Dr. Bitran said. From his accent, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. “Sometimes it leads to miscarriage, sometimes it doesn’t, but there’s nothing you can do to influence it either way. I would get on the plane tomorrow, and have an ultrasound in Nicaragua to reassure yourself everything’s all right.”

Dr. Bitran wasn’t offering any guarantees, but his voice was soothing. Before hanging up, he added, “I wish you the best, my sweet.”

In Nicaragua, we saw the baby’s heartbeat on the ultrasound monitor. And when we returned, I met with Dr. Rivera, another of the obstetricians in my practice. Walking through the waiting room door, I spotted a mezuzah—Hispanic Jewish doctors! This was news my racial-profiling New York heart could get behind. Dr. Rivera chatted about his wife and baby in perfect English; I missed Dr. Bitran’s suave accent. At the end of our appointment, Dr. Rivera said it was nice to meet me and kissed me on both cheeks.

I found the first trimester of pregnancy terrifying. Aside from an ultrasound here and there, you have no contact with your baby, you feel like you have the flu all the time and can’t tell if that’s good or bad, and all the books you read contain scary terms like missed miscarriage, placenta previa, and incompetent cervix. Incompetent cervix? As if “advanced maternal age” weren’t enough of a slap in the face!
Throughout that frightening trimester, nothing reassured me as much as Dr. Bitran calling me “my sweet”, or Dr. Rivera kissing me goodbye, something none of my doctors had ever done, not even the Indian ones.
Visiting New York one weekend, I told my girlfriends that my obstetrician kisses me goodbye at the end of each appointment.

“Here we call that malpractice,” one of them responded. Uptight New Yorker!

“In Miami, it would be rude not to kiss me goodbye,” I informed them. “I’d wonder, why is my doctor being so cold? Qué pasa?”

As they rattled on about the shortage of birthing rooms in Manhattan and the impossibility of getting into Bradley method classes, I just sat there thinking, “Que afortunada que soy!”