I know what you're thinking.

Ok, I know some of you must think that when I post about our "frequent flyer program" that I am being insensitive to poor first time mom's that just aren't quite sure about when they are in labor. You same people probably also think that we all laugh at these people as we send them home for being too dumb to know the difference between when they are in labor or they are having Braxton Hicks contractions. We don't. I am not talking about people that come in for a labor check, or two, or three or even four or five.

Last night, as we were reminiscing over some of our recently (and not so recently) delivered patients who were enrolled in our frequent visit rewards program we started to wonder which one actually had the most visits. The winner had a whopping 81 labor checks over a period of 2 1/2 months before she was finally induced at 40 weeks, probably because her doctors were sick of it. You can blame that one on them.

Now, when you come in to the hospital 81 times thinking you are in labor, especially when it isn't your first baby, to me that signifies a fundamental problem in following oral, written and even demonstrated instructions. And, had she have actually called her doctor first (the very first instruction always given) she could have saved herself some gas mileage on what I am going to guess is at least 78 of those visits. Although, that wouldn't be quite so dramatic and she would have missed the 18 phone calls always made to let everyone know that she had to go to the hospital again.

The point of that rant is to never fear, your nurses aren't thinking you are nuts until you have been there so many times that they have your name, address, social security number and the phone number of your seven emergency contacts all memorized, or of course you think your water broke but taste it to see if it was really pee and then admit it.